Without the Moon (8 page)

“'Cos you won't stop, will you? And it ain't safe, you know that …”

“Awww,” Lil took Duchess's chin in her right hand as if she was talking to a child. “It ain't safe? Not without your big, friendly detective, is it, Duch? You know, you really got me wondering about him.” Her fingers tightened, nails starting to dig into flesh. “Old friends, are you? Well why don't you give him a call,” her hand dropped and she made for the front door with a rapid, darting movement, “and leave me to look after myself.”

She clattered down the stairs and yanked the front door open, leaving her parting shot hanging ominously on the air. “Like I always used to!”

– . –

In the time it had taken to get back to the Effra Arms, Greenaway's snout had vanished. The landlord was standing behind the bar, polishing his just-washed glass.

“Need the blower, Inspector Greenaway?” were his greeting words.

– . –

Sleet was falling thick and fast in the cobbled mews, but Lil's need to escape the confines of the flat, fuelled by the drags on the inhaler the drummer had left her, was stronger than that. She had got to a point she had been to many times before in her short life. Her fuse had ignited. The soporific mental state that suffused most of her days had lifted like a veil before her eyes and she could suddenly see, all too clearly, that she had been kidding herself again.

Lil's beauty had marked her out, at an early age, from any wishes she might have had for a normal life. From the age of twelve, when the other kids on her road were still playing in the streets with dirty knees and broken nails, men had sidled up to her, asking her out for drinks, offering her pretty trinkets and baubles that she knew she was too young to take. She always knocked them back, for Mum had always warned her: “Never take money from a man.”

It was a rubric she had abided by until the age of fourteen, when she had been indentured into service in a big house by the river in Chiswick, to two old dears and their deaf old brother. On her first day she had set out with purpose, starching sheets and scrubbing floors, washing down steps and making the meals the way her mother had shown her. The old girls had loved her, said she was a “treasure”.

Pleased with herself, Lil had left for the evening to meet with a friend on Hammersmith Broadway, intending on a little promenade. A trio of young men in a sports car pulled up beside them. Lil had never met the sort of man who owned a sports car before, so she let herself be led into a public house for the first time and passed through a portal into another existence. Upon her first taste of gin, it had come to Lil with the force of revelation that only her looks stood between this tantalising taste of glamour and the lifetime of drudgery to which she had been assigned. She awoke in a hotel room in Paddington with a five-pound note on the pillow beside her, and neither the bereft old dears nor her poor mother had ever seen Lil again.

Along the way, there had been plenty of people who had promised her better – a career in modelling, the movies, and lately with the Duchess, the idea that once they had made enough capital they could set up their own legitimate business along the lines of Lil's latest fantasy, a dress shop in Mayfair. With Duch, whom she regarded as a kind of benevolent auntie better schooled in the ways of society than she had ever been, she had lasted longer than she had with any man.

Then Tom had come along, and Lil had dreamed of a different outcome. Of her very own house by the river, a loving husband and children who would never have to make the decisions she had, thanks to the money he earned.

All – she could see now – part of the delusion that had kept her the way she was: youthful, beautiful, eager to please, through all the years and the thousands of men there had been since that first sip of gin. And if Tom had let her down, Duch was no better; all she wanted was Lil flat on her back, earning money for a future that would never come. At that moment, Lil's Benzedrined mind pulsed with white-hot rage.

“If you're out there, you bastard,” she said aloud, crossing through the mews and on to Praed Street, “come and get me. Go on, I bleedin' dare you!”

11
IN THE MOOD

Thursday, 12 February 1942

Madeline Harcourt looked at the clock hanging over the bar of the Universelle Brasserie in Piccadilly Circus. The second hand ticked past slowly, as if the fug of cigarette smoke that rose above the chatter and noise was obfuscating its purpose. It was eight and Madeline was early, couldn't bear to arrive late, a part of her nature which she could never seem to overcome, even though it left her frequently feeling like she did at present – nervous and uncomfortable.

She sat at a table close to the horseshoe-shaped cocktail bar from where she had as clear a view of the door as was possible. The place was packed with men in uniform – Canadians and Americans, most of them – picking up women as easily as children picking daisies. The British officer she awaited had yet to show.

Madeline had never been very lucky in love. At the age of thirty she was separated from her husband, the chief act of defiance in her life. She had met her Second Lieutenant in this very spot three months earlier and they had gone out for meals, drinks and the odd show ever since, according to the erratic schedule of his duties. What had impressed Madeline most about him were his manners. She had conveniently filed away, right to the back of her mind, the insight that it was precisely such refined traits that had led her into a loveless match with her estranged theatre director five years previously. As her eyes travelled around the tables, she had no idea that another had been studying her while she sat there alone.

“Are you waiting for somebody?”

Madeline looked round with a start. There was an airman standing behind her, tall and slender in his blue dress uniform, a wave of unruly hair, the colour of turning leaves, falling into his wide-spaced eyes.

“I'm sorry?” she said, having to make sure it was her he was addressing.

“I asked if you were waiting for someone?” His smile crinkled the corners of his eyes. His voice purred like a well-oiled Bentley.

“Yes,” Madeline's voice came out in a gulp. “I have an … appointment.”

Half of her hoped this would deter him. Her date could be here any minute and she didn't want any complications. Another half felt otherwise.

“Well,” he said, “would you care for a drink while you wait?”

Madeline stared at him for a second. Should she? It was obvious what he was after. His type always were – they threw their money about with the reckless abandon that made them so irresistible to most of the women who clustered in the brasserie. But then, she had sat here for nearly fifteen minutes now with little in her own budget to cover the cost of another drink and no sign of the Second Lieutenant.

“Yes, please,” she heard herself say. Even as he turned to fetch them, she admonished herself. Her date had told her he would arrive between eight and nine; she had only herself to blame for all this waiting, making herself a sitting target at the bar …

“Here's to you.” A tumbler of Scotch was placed down in front of her before she had come to the end of her thoughts. He sat down opposite, raising his own glass in salute, before downing the contents of it in one gulp.

As Madeline began her first, tentative sip, the airman rolled his empty glass around in his hands, impatience rising off him in waves. She found herself staring into those strange, broad-set eyes, which, despite their pale hue drifting somewhere between blue and grey, burned with intensity.

“Why don't we go somewhere a little quieter,” he said, “and have some dinner?”

“I told you,” Madeline attempted to stand her ground, “I have an appointment.”

He brushed his hand through the front of his hair, a boyish gesture, backed up by another of his crinkly smiles. “Oh, I'm sure we have plenty of time,” he said. “In any case, I have to be back to my unit by ten-thirty.”

It was as if somebody had taken a magnet and run it across Madeline's brain, erasing clean away all the thoughts about the Second Lieutenant and their possible future together that had previously been occupying her, so that all that remained was this handsome chap in front of her, willing her to agree. She nodded, put down her glass.

“Splendid!” He got to his feet. “I'll just get my coat.”

– . –

He stayed inside his greatcoat, his gas mask slung over his shoulder, as they sat in another cocktail lounge, in the Trocadero, drinking more whisky. It was this seeming indifference to his surroundings, coupled with the fact that he had made no attempt at asking for a menu since they'd arrived, that made Madeline aware of how reckless she had just been.

“Where do you live?” he asked, fixing her with his mesmerist's eyes.

“Wembley,” said Madeline, instantly regretting having said so.

“That's a long way out,” he leaned across the table, smile not seeming so boyish any more, reminding her instead of something more animal. “Isn't there anywhere round here we can go?”

“No,” said Madeline.
I ought to get out of here
, said a little voice in her head, barely more than a hum. But somehow she couldn't seem to rouse herself.

“Are you a naughty girl?” He raised one eyebrow, his leer widening, his eyes now curiously dull. Madeline noticed how pointed his teeth were.

“No, I am not,” she said, cheeks reddening. “There's nothing like that about me.”

He gave a gruff chuckle, went into his pocket and pulled out the most enormous roll of money Madeline had ever seen.

“I'm not broke, you know,” he said. “Let me show you something.”

He started to count out the bills in front of her, one by one, like a dealer laying out his cards across the table. Madeline counted to thirty before the hum in her head became a scream and she got to her feet.

“Well, thank you for the drinks,” she said, pulling on her coat. “But I really must be going. You seem to have got entirely the wrong idea about me.”

Equally as quickly, he gathered his wad back into his pocket, stood up beside her.

“Let me walk you back to your appointment,” he said.

– . –

Madeline wanted to run as soon as they were back outside, but he placed a hand on her arm, steered her across the road.

“I'll take you to the Jermyn Street entrance, all right?” he said.

Madeline didn't answer. They crossed Piccadilly along the west side of the Haymarket, turned right towards Jermyn Street. Despite the foul weather, all around her she could hear music, laughter, people enjoying themselves just out of sight, hidden by the walls and the curtains of the blackout. Voices as disembodied as she felt herself at that moment, walking into the sleeting darkness with a stranger.

“Do you know, I knocked a girl out once?” He said it so pleasantly it took a second for his words to sink in.

“W-why would you do that?” she asked.

“Oh, her old man interfered,” he went on cheerfully. “So I kicked him in the privates and then I knocked her out.”

He had steered her down the wrong side of the road, Madeline realised. They were walking away from the Universelle, into St Alban's Street. She had a flash of her Second Lieutenant, waiting there for her, looking up at the clock the way she had … what? An hour previously?

“We're going the wrong way,” she said, stopping.

“I just wanted to kiss you goodnight,” he said, pulling her into a doorway. “Now come here …”

He took his gas mask off his shoulder and set it down on the floor, taking Madeline into his arms. Before she could think any more she was kissing him back, tasting the whisky on his tongue, feeling his arms moving up and down her body, around her waist and then under her skirt.

“No,” she smacked his hands away, “I don't do things like that!”

He pushed her further back into the doorway, a low chuckle on his lips. His hands moved back up her torso, circling around her throat and then tightening there. Madeline tried to push him away, tried to beat him with her fists. But the harder she struggled, the tighter his embrace became, a ring of steel around her neck, closing in and in, his breathing heavy, her arms becoming heavier still, her heels scuffling on the concrete below her, a horrible gurgling sound coming out of her throat.

“You won't …” the airman whispered, his eyes huge now, saucer-like, and completely void of emotion. “You won't, you won't, you won't …”

Out of the corner of her eye, Madeline saw a flash, like the beam of a lighthouse, sweeping across her vision as everything slowed down and her legs buckled beneath her.

“You won't, you won't, you won't …”

The flash came again, and with it a man's voice, the sound of running feet.

“Oi! What's going on in there?”

Suddenly the pressure was gone. Madeline's head lolled back on the pavement as the dark shadow of a man flitted across St Alban's Street and was gone.

– . –

In the cells at Tottenham Court Road station, Doris began to cry. It was nearly half-past ten now, and there was still no sign of the big detective coming back for her. Her mother was going to have her guts for garters. How had she got herself into this mess?

That was something that Greenaway intended to find out, just as soon as he had discovered what had become of his car. It had taken the best part of an hour and a half to get from the Effra Arms to Brixton nick and then back to the West End, where he had deposited his charge with the duty sergeant. He had spent the following thirty minutes burning up his private line talking to all the jokers in South London about the need for the missing Austin to be returned to Scotland Yard in haste and without a scratch.

Finally, one of them had told him what he needed to hear and now it was time to turn his attention to Doris. As he lifted the hatch on the cell door to peer in on her, he could see that her solitary confinement, listening to all the drunks of Soho ringing and singing out from the cells next door, had achieved the desired effect.

He opened the door and came straight to the point. “Tell me, Doris – I ain't had an entirely wasted evening, have I?”

Her face twisted with the effort of holding back more tears.

“I didn't really meet no airman in Piccadilly Circus,” she confessed. “I heard some girls talking about him in the York Minster on Dean Street while I was waiting to meet Johnny for a drink last night. I had the paper, see, and Johnny saw your name in the
Herald.
He said he knew you personal like, and that there might be some kind of reward for that sort of information. Only, he reckoned it would go a lot better if I pretended I had actually seen this airman face to face.”

“And this?” Greenaway dangled the portrait in front of her nose.

Doris took a loud gulp, scrubbed around her eyes with her hanky. “It's what they said he looked like,” she said, “them girls. They was describing him to some friends of theirs and I started sketching while I was listening, on the back of some paper that was left on the table. I ain't really on the bash, see. I'm a student at St Martin's. But when Johnny saw what I'd done he thought it was perfect, that we were bound to get some reward money if you clocked it.”

Greenaway rubbed his forehead. “So, you got brains enough to get into art school,” he said, “but not to stop running about with a toerag like him?”

Her eyes filled with fresh tears. “That's just what me mum said,” she blubbered. “What's going to happen to me now? Am I going to go to jail?”

Greenaway stood up. “I'm tempted,” he said. “But I reckon it'll seem like punishment enough next time you pick up a paper and read about some girl getting murdered while you and your boyfriend send me off on a wild goose chase. I could have had my suspect in custody by now. Instead, he could be anywhere. Think on that while you spend the night safely tucked up in here.”

He ran upstairs to his office. It was now three and a half hours beyond the time that the Corporal had suggested Greenaway could meet him back at Abbey Lodge for a little chat with Cummins. Knowing it was hopeless, the detective lifted the phone, asked the operator to put him through to the billet anyway.

“Oh, it's you, Inspector Greenaway,” the Corporal answered on the second ring. “I was expecting your colleague from the Service Police. He must have got through to you fast enough, it's not five minutes since he called here.”

Greenaway rubbed his temples. “Say that again,” he said.

“Seems you were on the right track after all,” the Corporal went on. “The number on that gas mask they found is the same as the one that was issued to Cummins. Soon as I had it, I sent an orderly up to his room. Seems he's disobeyed orders. He's not there. It's a shame you didn't pop by earlier, like I suggested …”