Authors: Rennie Airth
‘Daddy, I can’t stop now,’ she’d implored him.
He had never found it easy to resist her appeals, and the uncanny resemblance she bore to her mother, not only in looks, but even in her gestures and the tone of her voice, only added to his difficulty. But on this occasion he had steeled himself.
‘No, wait, Lucy. I must have a word with you.’ He had stood in the doorway of the kitchen barring her exit. ‘This man …’
‘What man?’ For a moment panic had flared in her eyes.
‘This Sid!’
‘Oh, Sid?’ Her smile pierced his heart. ‘Have you met him? Isn’t he an angel?’
‘No, he’s not an angel. He’s a spiv. All that food in the cupboard – where on earth do you think it comes from?’ And when she’d failed to reply. ‘You can’t imagine he got hold of it legally?’
Two tears had appeared in her sapphire eyes.
‘Lucy … !’
‘It’s not for me. It’s for Aunt Maud. She never eats anything, but I keep hoping we can find something she wants. Sid’s doing his best.’
‘I’m sure he is. Have you any idea what it must be costing her?’
She had stayed silent. But her glance had been accusing.
‘My darling, it’s quite normal for old people to behave this way. They lose interest in eating.’
‘That’s easy for you to say,’ had been her riposte. But if you like I’ll speak to him. Poor Sid. He’ll wonder what he’s done wrong.’
Unable to detain her any longer – she’d warned him she would be ‘disciplined’ if she was late again – he had had to let her go without fixing a time for the talk he meant for them to have, and sure enough, when he’d returned after his long afternoon at Scotland Yard it was to discover yet another telephoned message to the effect that she would be working a double tour of duty that evening and would be spending the night with friends, two other Wrens who had a flat in Victoria not far from the Admiralty.
‘Does this happen very often?’ he had asked Alice when she served him what proved to be an excellent dinner. (Only after Madden had sunk his teeth into one of the tender slices of beef put before him did he realize it must be the piece of fillet Sid had brought the day before that he was eating.) Surely they can’t expect these young girls to work double shifts?’
‘Oh, I wouldn’t know about that, sir.’
Alice’s pursed lips had suggested she did not think the subject a suitable one for discussion. But on the topic of the illicit hoard of food Madden had discovered, and which continued to trouble him, she had proved surprisingly sympathetic to his point of view.
‘I do wish Sid would ask first. There are all sorts of things Miss Collingwood can’t digest nowadays. Chocolate, for example. Nor those oranges. I’m sure I don’t know what I’m going to do with most of it. You couldn’t help, could you, sir?’
‘Take it away, you mean?’ Madden had frowned at the idea. ‘But it’s all been paid for, Alice. By Miss Collingwood.’
‘And a pretty penny it’s cost her too, sir, I can tell you. But it’s not doing any good sitting there.’
‘Well, I suppose I could take some of it. There are plenty of children I know down in the country who’d love a bar of chocolate. And some of them have never tasted an orange. I’ll have a word with Miss Collingwood before I go.’
‘At least I’ll return bearing gifts,’ Madden told Helen when he rang her at her surgery the morning after his drink with Sinclair to say he would be taking the train back to Highfield later that day. And the boiler’s purring like a kitten, though no thanks to me. I keep thinking of that advertisement you see in all the railway stations. “Is your journey really necessary?” ’
As always, his first question had been about their son. He’d been hoping she might have heard from Rob since they last spoke, but Helen told him there was still no news.
‘I’m sure his ship should have been back by now. It’s weeks since they sailed.’
Since pursuing the subject would only have added to their worry, Madden had quickly moved on to other topics, reassuring her first that funeral arrangements for Mrs Laski were in hand – the thought had been causing Helen concern – then relating to her the gist of what Sinclair had told him the night before.
‘I’ve heard of criminals like him, paid assassins, cold killers, but in all my time as a policeman I never had to deal with one and I’m afraid Angus has his hands full. This man’s clever. He thinks ahead. The worst of it is, by rights the police ought to know his real name by now. It’s quite extraordinary that they don’t.’
‘Why extraordinary?’
‘Because of Alfie Meeks. I told you about him. He was just a petty criminal, but for some reason Marko took up with him. Used him, rather. Used him then killed him. But Meeks was a lead that ought to have paid off. Somehow he and this man were connected, but though the police have combed through Meeks’s record they can’t find any link between them. The answer
ought
to be there, but it’s not, and it makes no sense.’
Helen made a humming sound. In the background Madden could hear a man’s voice speaking in a monotone. She was listening to the lunchtime news with one ear while they talked.
‘I know what Miss MacFarlane would have said. She was our maths teacher at school. “Girls” – ’ Helen mimicked a Scottish accent – ‘“Remember Occam’s razor.” ’
‘What’s that?’ Madden chuckled. ‘Some fiendish surgical device?’
‘Not at all. It’s a medieval concept. Roughly speaking it says, when the solution to a problem isn’t clear, look for the simplest answer. Oh, and I’ve just remembered, darling, I won’t be here when you get back. I’ve got to go over to Farnham this afternoon. I’ve promised to help Jim Oliver with his rounds. He’s on crutches at the moment. So I can’t pick you up at the station. Can you manage? I’ll tell Mary you’re coming home. She’ll have tea ready …’
She paused for few moments, expecting a response, and when one failed to come:
‘John … ! You’ve gone silent. What is it?’
She received no reply. For the last few seconds Madden had been staring at a watercolour of Westminster Bridge with the Houses of Parliament behind it which hung in the hall above the telephone. But his gaze had lost focus: he was staring at nothing.
‘Look, dear, I’ve changed my mind.’ He found his tongue. ‘I’m not coming home this afternoon. I’m going to stay up another day. There’s someone I have to talk to.’
‘What did I say?’ She was laughing.
‘Something very interesting … the simplest answer …’
‘And why is that so interesting?’
‘Because it’s been there all along, staring me in the face, and I didn’t see it.’
Obliged to inform the household of his change of plans, he knocked on Aunt Maud’s bedroom door and, as usual at that late hour of the morning, found her up and dressed and sitting in front of a brightly glowing fire fuelled by a substance which these days was as rare as hen’s teeth: real coal.
‘He’s a resourceful young man, that Sid,’ Madden observed, after he’d poured them each a glass of sherry. But I’m not sure you should have any more dealings with him. Or you might find the police knocking on your door.’
‘An alarming thought, to be sure, though less so for me than for others.’ Aunt Maud’s bright eyes twinkled. Old age has its advantages. One can always claim senility as an excuse. But thank you for the advice, my dear.’
Needle-sharp in spite of her advanced years, she had the reputation of a tartar in Helen’s family and few had escaped her barbed tongue unscathed. But for reasons unknown to him, Madden had always been a favourite of hers, and during his stay in London their talks had centred largely on family gossip, a passion of Aunt Maud’s, whose interest these days was focused on the youngest member of the Madden clan.
‘I’m beginning to wonder if she has a young man,’ she announced before he took his leave, having arranged to spend a further night under her roof. You can usually tell with girls. They get a look in their eye. But it’s no use asking her. She’s as deaf as a post when she wants to be. Mind you, her mother was just the same.’
In the course of their conversation that day, Madden had also enquired about the hoard of illicit foodstuffs downstairs and received Aunt Maud’s permission to plunder it at will. After conferring with Alice, he filled a shopping bag borrowed from her with a selection of items from the cupboard, to which he added the chunk of homemade cheese he’d brought up from the country – it could hardly compare with the Stilton – and the pork pie May Burrows had made at his request but which Alice assured him, apologetically, she could find no possible use for.
Though anxious to be on his way – he had something of an expedition ahead of him – he delayed his departure long enough to ring Billy Styles at the Yard to ask him for directions to the open-air market in Southwark where Alfie Meeks had had his stand.
‘Are you planning to go down there, sir?’ Billy asked after Madden had made a note of its location.
‘Yes, I am. But you’d better not tell the chief inspector. He might think I was taking things into my own hands.’
‘You’re not actually doing that, are you, sir?’
Billy’s concern was so naked it made Madden laugh.
‘Of course not. It’s just an idea that’s come to me; something I can only do myself. But on second thoughts you can tell Mr Sinclair I may have a surprise for him later.’
‘A surprise—?’
‘And ask him if he’s ever heard of Occam’s razor.’
18
T
HE MARKET WASN’T
hard to find. Though it had no address as such, the piece of waste ground on which it was located, fronting a derelict warehouse by the Thames, in the shadow of Southwark Cathedral, was visible from some distance off.
‘You’ll see it upriver to your right when you cross London Bridge,’ Billy had told Madden when he’d learned that his old mentor was planning to travel down from St John’s Wood on the Underground. ‘It’s only ten minutes’ walk from Monument.’
In the event, the light rain that had been falling when he set off from Aunt Maud’s house had turned to driving sleet by the time he emerged from the tube station, and crossing the bridge, at first he caught only a glimpse of his goal as he clutched at his hat, turning his face away from the stinging pellets of ice, harbingers of more bad weather that was moving in from the Atlantic, according to a forecast he had heard on the wireless that morning.
But even before he reached the further bank the squall passed and he was able to pause and take stock of the scene. Being near the docks, it was an area that had suffered heavily in the Blitz four years earlier, and while Madden could recall the dramatic newsreel footage of the destruction wrought by the bombing and of the damage left in its wake, it was the first time he had seen for himself the gutted buildings lining the river, their walls charred by the nightly rain of incendiary bombs, and the near-mystical sight of the great dome of St Paul’s, floating calm and serene above the devastation surrounding it, miraculously untouched.
It was not a part of London he knew well – he had never been posted to Southwark during his time as a policeman – but on the journey down he had found his thoughts straying to an episode from his past, before the Great War, when as a young detective he’d been assigned with a more senior colleague to investigate a double murder that had taken place in the borough. Two bodies had been found in a house not far from the river, one of them that of a postman who had gone missing. Like the second victim, a drayman’s wife, he’d been battered to death, and detectives later discovered he had called at her house the day before with a registered letter and, finding the door ajar, had stepped inside – no more than that – most likely announcing his presence as he did so, only to be struck on the head with a heavy lamp stand swung by the already dead woman’s enraged husband, who had just beaten his wife to death after a furious quarrel.
Although the case had been easily resolved – the husband had tried to drown himself in the Thames, but lacking the nerve, finally, had struggled ashore and lain sprawled on a stretch of bank exposed by the tidal ebb until he was spotted – Madden had never forgotten it. The casual manner of the postman’s death – the terrible power wielded by chance in human destiny – had struck a chord in him that was to sound over and over again in the years ahead when his own life had hung by a thread in the charnel house of the trenches while those of so many others around him had been blown away.
Only that morning he had put the same thought into words while relating to Helen what he had learned from Sinclair about Rosa’s tragic encounter in Paris with the man who would later kill her.
‘They might so easily have missed one another in the Underground. He wasn’t stalking her. He had no idea she was here. But he saw her by chance and her fate was decided in a moment.’
The market site, when he reached it, proved to be a stretch of muddy ground cobblestoned in places and crammed with stalls whose owners were still busy removing the protective strips of canvas and other makeshift coverings they had used to shield their goods from the rain. One of many that had sprung up all over the country in response to the shortages that were now a part of everyday life, it had the air of a temporary encampment hastily pitched and liable to vanish at any moment, an impression heightened by the chestnut vendors whose mobile braziers, glowing like campfires, had been set up at whim about the site.
‘Between you and me, we tend to turn a blind eye to them,’ Billy had told him that morning. ‘A lot of the goods on sale are black market, and then there’s the stuff that’s been pilfered from bomb sites. We come down hard on looters when we catch them, but once the stuff they’ve lifted has been put back in circulation, there’s not much we can do about it. And there are always people looking for household goods these days – stoves, pots and pans, cutlery – folks that might have been bombed out themselves and lost everything. So as I say, we tend to look the other way.’
Whatever else, there seemed to be no lack of customers, Madden noted wryly as, despairing of finding any easy way through the tightly packed stalls, he chose one of the roughly marked avenues between them and started to forge a path through the dense throng of shoppers, most of them women, and some of whom were still in their dressing gowns and slippers, suggesting they must live locally. The row he had picked was devoted to kitchenware and the trestle tables lining it on either side were heaped high with crockery, little of it matched, as well as an assortment of second-hand cooking utensils and mounds of cheap-looking cutlery. At the end of the line were some smaller tables where a variety of goods were on display: cigarettes, lipstick, pocket combs. One bore a stack of American magazines beside a bottle of men’s hair oil.