A Willing Victim (49 page)

Jellicoe did have a point, though. Stratton’s old division, C – St James’s, Soho and the surrounding area – certainly had its problems, and a fair amount of poverty as well, but there wasn’t anything that approached the unrestrained squalor he’d seen on his brief tour of the Colville and Powis area.

‘Perlmann’s got a club up West too,’ said Jellicoe, ‘but you’d know about that.’

‘I don’t, actually.’

Jellicoe looked surprised. ‘It’s called Maxine’s.’

Stratton had only once glimpsed Maxine’s plush interior, but he knew it, and its smart clientele, by repute. ‘I know Maxine’s. It’s in Wardour Street. I didn’t know it was his, though.’

Jellicoe nodded. ‘Him and another bloke. He’s got another club in Earl’s Court. Rumours of unlicensed gambling, though he’s never been had up for it.’

‘Sounds as if he’s doing all right for himself.’

‘Not short of a bob or two, that’s for sure.’

*

At least, Stratton thought when Jellicoe had taken himself off, I’ve got one potential ally. There was no record of money being found in the man’s room, which made robbery a likely motive and the money stolen would, presumably, have belonged to Perlmann, from
whom he could find no statement. Putting the map and Shirley Maples’s statement to one side, he turned back to the photographs. There were five or six, and the police photographer had done a better-than-average job: different angles and everything in sharp focus. The accompanying plan of the third floor flat showed a living room – where Hampton had met his death – with a tiny kitchen partitioned off on one side.

In the first photograph, Stratton could see, next to Hampton’s body, a television set encased in a wooden cabinet with doors that hinged out on either side like an altarpiece. From what he’d seen of Colville Terrace so far he doubted if many of the residents could have afforded such a luxury, but perhaps Hampton, as the rent collector, had been in an unusually privileged position. On top of the cabinet was a lace-edged runner, on which stood a china donkey and a framed photograph of a young woman. Stratton wondered if this was Mrs Hampton, who, according to the notes, had died the previous year. The television, according to Shirley, had still been on when she’d entered the room.

The second photograph showed a collection of empty and unwashed milk bottles, together with a clutter of opened tins, two overflowing ashtrays and several plates of congealing leftovers, one of which was furred with mould. Clearly, Hampton hadn’t kept up with the housework after his wife’s death. The lino, Stratton could see from all the pictures, was haphazardly strewn with newspaper. As Hampton was sitting on some of it, he felt it was unlikely to have been put there by the man’s assailant – more likely it was a feeble attempt to keep the floor clean. The pages weren’t crumpled or dirty: Stratton could clearly see advertisements for Radio Rentals, Double Diamond and, by Hampton’s left foot, Kellogg’s Cornflakes – the sunshine breakfast with the wide-awake taste. Turning the photograph through ninety degrees, he made out
another advert – Chilprufe vests, a must for the school outfit – and a headline: ‘Little Rock says shut schools to bar Negroes’. The paper was the
Daily Express
. Obviously recent, but he couldn’t make out the date underneath the masthead – he supposed it would be somewhere in the notes.

Stratton read through the statements from the neighbours, who struck him as an exceptionally cagey lot. There seemed to be fourteen different people living in the same building as Hampton – not counting any children – and none of them had noticed anything unusual. What was interesting was that all of them, whether white or black, appeared to have liked Hampton: words like ‘kind’, ‘helpful’ and ‘nice’ kept recurring. Several of Hampton’s immediate neighbours, plus quite a few from surrounding houses, agreed with Shirley Maples’s dad’s assertion that ‘it was coloureds’, but without elaborating further. None of the coloured neighbours had an opinion as to what might have happened – or anyway not one they were willing to voice – and, thinking about it, Stratton couldn’t blame them.

He lit a cigarette and had another look at the pathologist’s report:
Caused by a single-edged knife … Wound edges protruding, probably owing to rapid withdrawal of instrument … No other marks of violence about the deceased … No evidence of rigor …

Hampton’s last meal – consumed, according to the report, at least three hours prior to his death – consisted of minced lamb, peas and potatoes. This, Stratton knew from the statements, had been taken in a nearby cafe, along with a cup of tea, between 5.30 and 6 p.m. The pathologist estimated that Hampton had been dead for between two and four hours before he was discovered by Shirley Maples at approximately 9.45 p.m. That would mean that he’d been killed sometime between, say, 6.05 and 7.45 p.m. At that time, thought Stratton, the older children would be coming in for their
tea and the adults either home from work or off out for the evening, it being Saturday. Anyone in the house who had a television would have been watching it, as Hampton had been: the
Six-Five Special
for the kids and later,
The Black and White Minstrel Show
for the whole family.

Perhaps, though, the neighbours weren’t being as cagey as all that. With fourteen adults and Christ knows how many children clumping up and down the stairs, the place wouldn’t have been exactly quiet. Any stranger would have been assumed to be an acquaintance of another of the inhabitants, one of whom, Stratton could see from a handwritten note helpfully pinned to her statement, was thought to be on the game.

At the bottom of the pathologist’s report was another hand-written note:
It is possible that this wound was caused by the deceased rushing at his assailant while he (the assailant) was holding the knife in his hand. In the absence of other evidence to the contrary, I am unable to suggest any satisfactory theory by which the wound could have been self-inflicted
.

Stratton was just about to go through the paperwork again to check he’d not missed anything significant when the door opened, revealing the immaculately suited and ramrod-straight form of his new boss, Detective Superintendent Matheson. Stratton started to rise from his chair, suddenly very conscious of the sweaty and crumpled appearance he must present.

‘No, no. Stay where you are, man. How’s it going? I see they’ve given you all the gen.’

‘I’m catching up as fast as I can, sir. Just about to go to Colville Terrace.’

‘I told the station sergeant to make sure there’s a car at your disposal.’

‘I thought I’d walk this time, sir. Get the lie of the land, so to
speak.’ As he said this, Stratton was aware that, as in their previous exchanges, he didn’t sound like himself but like something out of a war film: decent, doughty, doing his damnedest in a gruff, self-effacing sort of way. It was the effect the man had on him: the clipped, upper-class tones, distinguished countenance and military bearing, not to mention the background and reputation, plus the fact that, at forty-two, Matheson was a whole eleven years younger than him. He had, as anybody who read the papers knew, joined the Met in the thirties, under Commissioner Trenchard’s ill-fated scheme for recruiting an officer class. At the time Stratton had, like most serving policemen, viewed the Hendon ‘boy wonders’ as a bunch of ineffective public-school washouts, which a lot of them were, but not Matheson. His successes had been celebrated, the newspapers had fawned on him, and five years ago he’d become the youngest officer ever to be appointed Detective Superintendent by Scotland Yard. And – as if this weren’t enough – he’d had a good war too. He’d been a captain in the Desert Rats and taken part in the Normandy invasion.

‘Jolly good,’ said Matheson. ‘I’ll leave you to it. Take whatever time you need to talk to people – learn a bit about them. Come to my office whenever you’ve finished. I’ve a fair bit to do myself, so I shall be here until at least eight o’clock this evening. You can give me your ideas over a drink.’

‘Yes, sir. Thank you.’

Blimey, thought Stratton, there’s a turn-up for the books. In all the years working under Lamb at West End Central he could only remember being offered a drink once, and that was because the man was retiring. Dragging his jacket over his uncomfortably clammy shirt, he headed for the lobby to inform the desk sergeant of his whereabouts for the next few hours.

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It is winter in London in the early 1950s: John Davies confesses to strangling his wife and baby daughter. It promises to be a depressingly straightforward case for DI Ted Stratton. When Davies recants, blaming respectable neighbour Norman Backhouse for the crimes, nobody sees any reason to believe him. Davies is convicted and hanged. But after a series of gruesome discoveries, Stratton begins to suspect that there has been a terrible miscarriage of justice.

Meanwhile, with her marriage in tatters, ex-MI5 agent Diana Calthrop is determined to start a new life. Despite a promising beginning she soon finds herself in trouble. And with a seemingly unstoppable killer of women on the loose, she is very vulnerable indeed …

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