Truth Dare kill

TWENTY

The chase across the gardens and the sprint for the bus left me with jelly legs.

I hadn’t eaten or slept properly for days and was fighting flu and a flood of bad memories. I must have looked a nightmare to the other worthy citizens on the bus. I stank to high heaven too. A couple of old women tut tutted me. I couldn’t blame them. As my heart slowed to around two hundred, I tried to think, tried to draw on my SOE training. It was simple; I needed a safe house. I changed buses three times and kept away from empty streets or boys in blue as best I could until I got to my goal.

I kept telling myself Soho was the last place they’d be looking for me. But I had my hat wedged down over my face just the same. It was lunchtime – no time to be entering a whorehouse, though there were a few half-hearted blandishments from girls on corners or their pimps. My big worry was the reception I’d get.

But I was at the end of my strength. I was dizzy with fatigue. If I wasn’t welcome here, I might as well phone Wilson and tell him to come and get me. I turned into Rupert Street and stood leaning against the door jamb and knocked.

Mary opened the door with a smile, then the smile evaporated. “You in big trouble Danny! Your picture in papers. They say you a big time no-good murderer.

I no want trouble here.”

“What? What are you talking about, Mary? Trust me. Please let me in.”

She heard the desperation in my voice and by rights should have slammed the door on this filthy tramp – newspapers or no newspapers. Instead she took a quick look round the street and dragged me into the hall. She pressed me against the wall.

“You stay here. No move.”

I stood shoulders drooping while she scampered into her parlour and came out clutching a Daily Sketch.

“You see. You see. You front page.” She shoved it at me. I took it and slid down the wall till I was sitting on the floor. I gazed at the photo and the screaming front page headlines: RIPPER ON THE LOOSE! The photo was of me. In my sergeant’s uniform. They must have got it from Army files. I looked much younger than the image I’d stared at this morning. But it still looked like me. I looked up in bewilderment. Mary was standing over me, her arms folded and her eyes slitted. I read on:

The Ripper strikes again! But this time police have a lead suspect from evidence found at the scene. A manhunt is underway to find former Sergeant Daniel McRae…”

Police Inspector Herbert Wilson told reporters that “Every murderer finally makes the mistake that catches them out. A gun was found at the scene of this latest vicious crime, covered in the murderer’s finger prints. We believe the weapon – a service revolver – was dropped when the murderer was disturbed.

Thanks to diligent police work, we are able to match the fingerprints from the gun with those of a known criminal, Daniel McRae…”

God hadn’t finished with me yet. Caldwell and Wilson were his avenging angels. I laughed, but was near my wit’s end. This fifth girl had died two nights ago, when I was lying half demented in the shed by the Serpentine. When I woke in a strange place with blood on my hands. As I read and reread the words, my flabby grip on sanity began to slip again. I thought I’d given the gun to Millie. What was it doing by the body?

I looked up at Mary. “I don’t understand. I don’t… I didn’t…” But I hadn’t a clue what I had or hadn’t done. I must have looked pathetic and not much of a threat, for she grabbed the paper from me.

“On feet, Danny. Stop messing my hall. Customers no like.”

I struggled up and she walked off and stood by her parlour door. She pointed in.

I took the hint. I shambled past her into her room. Her dazzling room. Nothing prepares the eye for this much red. Crimson dragons, scarlet cushions, cherry curtains, carmine couch, coral chairs. A room to please a vampire.

“You stink, Danny! Don’t you sit on my best sofa.” She picked up a paper from the huge pile behind the door and spread it out on her couch and then indicated I could take a seat.

I took my coat and hat off and slung them on the floor. I sat down and saw her face crease in pity for me. Was I in such a mess? “Second thoughts. No sit. Stand and take off all clothes. You need bath! I got a business to run and don’ need stinky men about place.”

Her tone brooked no opposition but I wasn’t sure I had the strength to stand up and struggle out of my clothes. Mary had ducked into the hall and was shouting up the stairs.

“Colette, get you lazy fat ass down here! We got smelly customer need bath!”

She turned back to me and saw me struggling. “OK, big baby. You need mama take your clothes off.” She didn’t wait to discuss it, just started in on me with expert fingers. “What you worried ‘bout, big baby? You think I no seen bare man before? Iseen plenty bare man.” She pushed me back on the paper and wrenched my trousers, socks and pants off and threw them in a heap along with suit jacket, shirt and vest.

She left me sitting, too drained to be embarrassed by my nudity, while she rummaged in a cupboard. “Put on.” She flung me a huge dressing gown in ruby-red satin.

“Was he a sumo wrestler, Mary?” The dressing gown reached to the floor when I had it on.

“Just big man, Danny. Very big!” Her little face crinkled and she guffawed at a memory I was glad not to share. “Now, first you have bath and shave, then food, then you talk. What you say?”

I say thank you, thank you, let me light some incense in homage to your gods, Mary, because mine doesn’t listen. Or if he does, he’s a bloody sadist.

Mary and Colette made me sit in the steaming tin bath while they added kettle after kettle of hot water. They fed me rice and sweet chicken and tea. Mary shaved me while Colette soaped me down. Bliss. I felt better than in weeks.

Colette left us and I lay back wanting desperately to sleep and let the world go to hang.

“Now, Danny. You talk.”

She slopped water on my face. I talked. I told her everything and she interrupted for more details of how I turned the tables at Kate’s house and how I got away from the police. Mary kept darting to her feet and bringing out old newspapers from the bundle by the door to check what I was saying against the public comments. The pile of soggy newsprint grew. It was a long and complicated story. I wasn’t sure it made complete sense, or that she was taking it all in. I was wrong.

“You sure you gave gun back?”

“I don’t know. Nothing seems real. Maybe I did keep it and used it to threaten that girl. Then I killed her.”

The jumble in my head could be read any way you like. I tried to think of myself in the witness box defending myself. It wasn’t a pretty thought: I think so, your honour, I’m not sure, your honour, I can’t remember, your honour, and so on until the jury was so convinced I was lying that they’d hardly have time for their first cup of tea before they were back with a guilty verdict.

“I no think that.”

“Why?”

“You no killer. I seen plenty killers. Can tell a man by how he is with girl. My girls say you kind. They want mummy you.”

No rosettes for my tigerish bedroom performance then. But I could have reached out and kissed Mary for that vote of confidence. I splashed water on my face to mask the tears that had sprung up.

She was shaking her head. “But big mistake, big mistake give gun back.”

“I should have wiped it at least.”

She nodded. She knew the trade. I forced my addled brain to think. A strand of excitement floated up from the murk. It grew as I worked through the implications of the newspaper report. This could be the first real mistake by the killer. If I had given the gun back at Kate’s place, it meant that it was planted next to the last girl’s body. Planted either by the murderer himself or by someone who knew him.

“The question is, how did the gun get to the murder site?”

Mary was nodding furiously. She was way ahead of me. “Caldwell he give big fat bastard gun. He plant gun.”

“Possible. But how does Caldwell know Wilson? And then there’s the question of timing. When did the gun get planted? At the time of the murder or after?”

“Could be strange man around. Doing all killing. And big fat bastard want you to swing.”

I fingered my neck. “The coincidences are piling up, Mary. Especially this last one: I ditch a gun with my prints on it the same night a woman is murdered. And the gun is magically whisked from Caldwell’s hands to Wilson’s and into the murder scene? No. I think I’ve already met the killer.”

“I think too. Sounds like you know three men who might got blood on their hands.” She raised her tiny hand and stuck three fingers in the air.

“Who’s the first Mary?”

“Why, you, Danny.” She pulled down one finger.

“I thought you said…”

“I no think that. But maybe you have a devil inside that come out sometime.”

I stared at her for a while, and believed in devils for a moment. “Maybe, Mary.

Maybe. OK, who’s next?”

She lowered the next finger. “Mr big fat bastard…”

She was right. I’d half-jokingly thought Wilson had all the attributes of a murderer. He was vicious, violent and liked hurting good-time girls who could hardly turn to the police for protection. Was that why he wanted me off the scene? The last thing he’d need was a freelancer blundering around. No one inside the force would ever suspect that the DI in charge of the hunt was the killer. He was a suspect. But not my prime one. The one I could scarcely believe. Rule out nothing, suspect everyone, check everything until you have hard proof. Those were my rules.

“He could be, Mary. Caldwell gives him the gun, Wilson kills another girl and leaves the gun with my prints on it. But if Wilson was the killer, how would Caldwell know that? And why would Wilson risk him knowing that?”

“So it Caldwell.” She dropped the last finger.

“That’s my hunch. Caldwell planted the gun with my prints on it at the site of the last murder. Caldwell is the killer.”

The detective in me – and Val’s and now Mary’s faith in me – made me cling to Wilson or Caldwell being the killer. Maybe in cahoots with each other. Tony Caldwell’s final betrayal of me. Maybe – despite my dream – he’d killed Lili in France; he’d known I was due to see her and set the Gestapo on me. Maybe he’d framed me by planting the incriminating gun on the latest victim.

What was I to believe? And who would other people believe? A CID Inspector and a decorated Army Major, or a man with a hole in his head? I could feel the noose tightening already. My brain seemed to have become paralysed.

“You get dry. Get sleep. We talk later.”

I did as I was told. At least, I lay on the tiny bed she gave me in a spare room and stared at the ceiling. So many fragments swirling around. It reminded me of the time I got so drunk that I had vertigo lying down. Yet in the debris of my life at this moment, a little Chinese woman had given me hope, just by believing in me.

Maybe that slender lifeline opened a channel in my brain, for I began to wake in the morning grasping desperately at the tendrils of a dream. The familiar one, but this time there was more. I squeezed my eyes closed and tried to project it on to my lids. I got a purchase on it and hauled it in, reel by reel, to inspect it with my conscious mind. I lay as still as a corpse. It wasn’t a dream. It was a memory of that night in Avignon. A complete memory.

The clock is striking eight and I’m walking fast down the back lanes towards the safe house. I feel the familiar knot of fear and excitement in my stomach as I choose streets which I hope aren’t being patrolled. I have good papers on me and my French will stand up to simple interrogation from the Germans, though not from a Vichy militia-man.

We have a drop coming in tonight and I need to make sure everything has been set up for it. The last load was blown completely off course and landed in the town.

It was a race across the backyards of the suburbs in the dark; we lost, and twenty Sten guns and ammo ended up in the arsenal of the Gestapo. I am determined not to lose this consignment. We have a better system of flares and I’ve doubled the number of Maquis ready to pounce on the crates.

We’ve mustered nearly thirty bicycles and one truck – Gregor’s. Perhaps more importantly, the weather is with us; a soft spring evening, a gentle breeze and clear skies. Perfect. And it has to be; I’m determined to impress Major Tony Caldwell who was dropped in by Lysander a week ago on an inspection tour of all the agents in the south west.

My boots sound loud on the cobbles and the smell of wood fires salts the air. I feel good, alive, as though every part of me has been freshly oiled and polished. And I’m seeing Lili. On business. As quartermaster for the town’s Resistance forces Lili has no time for romantic liaisons even if she did fancy me. We’re finalising the plans for tonight’s drop. She took her nom de guerre from the song we’re all humming or hearing – Nazis or Allies – on the radio stations. A funny business at times, war.

I cross the last street and head down a little alley. A path leads off it to the right. The path twists and turns at the foot of the back gardens of the neat row of houses. A fence follows the path. About halfway along is the garden door into the safe house. I turn one last corner and am almost at the door when I glimpse a figure moving away from me. The retreating walk seems familiar, a loping stride, but I can’t place it.

I walk fast past the back door; it’s slightly ajar. I quicken my pace to a jog, but when next I have a clear view, the figure has gone. Up ahead I can hear running footsteps heading away from me.

I stop, turn back and go through the gate. It’s a short garden leading to the kitchen door. There don’t seem to be any lights on. Perhaps Lili’s being over-cautious. I get to the door and I’m about to knock when I notice it’s open a fraction. I push and go into the dark kitchen. There’s a smell of soup from a big pot on the range. Lili promised me dinner. I sniff the air and think it’s caught. I turn the gas off.

I let my eyes adjust until I can see where the hall is. I walk on into the hall and there for the first time, call out softly for Lili. There’s no reply. I call again. Nothing.

I find the light switch in the hall. I walk into the tiny sitting room and see a table laid for a meal; fresh bread and two places: me and Lili. I back out of the room feeling something is wrong, very wrong. The floorboards groan as I slowly take the stairs. I call her name again as I round the corner and emerge on the landing.

There are two bedrooms. I try one and find it empty. I enter the next. I can’t see much; the curtains have been drawn and I can’t find the light switch. As my eyes adjust I see the rounded contours of a body on the bed. I walk over, dread filling me. As I get close I see that it is a woman, naked from the waist down.

I lean over and touch her shoulder and say her name.

My hand touches stickiness. I find the bedside light and my shaking hand switches it on. Lili is face down in the pillow. Her hair and the shoulders of her blouse are soaked dark red. The pillow and the bedspread are saturated. My eyes are drawn down. The cleft below her spine is oozing blood. Her white limbs are parted and blooded. Between them, lies the hilt of a bayonet.

I am paralysed with horror and grief. I don’t know what to do. I want to run. I want to hold her, give her succour. She is beyond hurting, but the bayonet goes on desecrating her. I want to remove this filthy intrusion. I lean over and gently take hold of the slippery hilt. I grip it firmly and tug. It gives, and jolts her poor limbs. It releases a fresh gout of blood. There is a foul smell from her ravished body. I pull out the vile weapon. I push her thighs together and flip the corner of the bedspread over her. I walk over to the sink and drop the bayonet in it, and begin running cold water. My bloodied hands are sticky and I have to scrub at them to get them clean.

That’s how they find me. Even as the cries in German echo through the house and their boots rush through the hall and on to the stairs, I know I’ve been set up.

I turn and wait for them.

In the Kirk I wept for me. Here in this whore’s palace, I lay grieving for her.

Eventually I eased myself up and got my feet on the floor. I wiped my face and looked around. It was a little bare room with cheap Chinese prints on the wall and some red satin throws on the bed and over the one chair.

I felt drugged and stiff, like I’d swum the Channel then got roaring drunk. Or vice versa. But I couldn’t think of anything I’d done that was so meritorious.

My watch said three fifteen and I assumed that was am. But it was too light. I peeked out the one curtain to check; full daylight ransacked the room. I got here about four pm. Had I slept for nearly twenty-four hours?

The door creaked. I looked up and saw Mary’s dark fringe peeping round. I was naked but too tired to pull the covers round me. Besides, she and Colette had handled every inch of me in the bath. I don’t recall any erotic charge out of the event, just the soothing balm of warm water and gentle hands, like a child again. I wonder if I hurt Colette’s feelings? “So you not dead, Danny.” Mary came fully into the room.

“Unless this is heaven, Mary.”

She laughed. “Just back room. You sleep whole day. Now, you put clothes on and come eat. Plan next things.” She pointed at my suit and shirt hanging in smooth clean drapes on a hanger behind the door. I did as I was told. The clothes were fresh and perfectly pressed. Chinese laundry. I found my way through the labyrinth to Mary’s front room.

While Mary made more tea I kept going over my new recollection. It felt true. If only I could prove it. I stared at the mountain of newsprint she’d dragged out yesterday to check my tale. Headlines shrieked of murder most foul, starting just after I left the hospital and arrived back in London. But then a thought struck me. I cursed myself for not thinking of this sooner.

“Mary! Have you got a piece of paper and a pencil?”

I explained, and we began scrabbling among the papers until I could get the dates straight for all five murders. I knew that at least some of my fugues corresponded with a killing. Though in truth, my episodes had been so frequent it was hard not to. I jotted down the figures. Once a month I did have an alibi, and a prominent psychiatrist who would confirm where I was on each occasion. The trouble was the dates varied; they were roughly around the middle of the month but it depended on Doc Thompson’s schedule and what they wanted to inflict on me. The normal visit – talks and examination – took two days. Electrocution took a week out of my life.

I didn’t have my diary with me, but I had an idea. It was a long shot and it might prove nothing. But it was a worth a phone call to Thompson’s secretary. My one big risk was if the national press had picked up my photo and the accusations in the London papers. It was four thirty and I might just catch her before she clocked off. I used Mary’s phone in the hall. I could hear the two operators trying to put me through.

“Good afternoon. Doctor Thompson’s office. How can I help you?”

“Elspeth? This is Danny McRae. I have a query about my appointments.” Mary was eavesdropping so close I could smell her sweet breath; she was always dipping into a little bowl and chewing some cumin seeds.

No hesitation. “Hello, Mr McRae. I thought we’d confirmed next month’s?”

“It’s not about the next one, Elspeth. It’s about the earlier ones. I’m trying to check some dates. It’s to help with my memory. A little exercise for the Doctor.”

“What exactly do you want to know?”

“It’s a pain, I know, but could you give me the dates of my appointments since…”

I looked down at my pencil jottings. “… August last year.”

“Hmm. Can I call you back with this, Mr McRae? I need to check through the diary and I’m rather busy at present.” She didn’t like being rushed. Elspeth had her methods and her routine.

I looked at Mary. She raised her already elevated eyebrows. “Yes, please, Elspeth. I’m sorry to trouble you but this is fairly important. So if you could call me today? My number is…” I inspected the phone base. “…Westminster 5191.”

“I’ll see what I can do. Good afternoon, Mr McRae.”

All I could do was sit down and wait. And hope Elspeth didn’t call the police.

She didn’t call that evening and I was beginning to think the worst, waiting for the door to crash down and Wilson to steamroller through. It was a rotten night’s sleep, what with the worry and the noises through the paper-thin walls.

Those girls worked for their money. I was down in Mary’s parlour by seven thirty.

“Mary, I won’t ever be able to thank you for what you’re doing. You could be in big trouble for looking after me.”

She giggled. “I know. You gonna have to use my girls lots in future.” I doubted that. Having listened through the paper walls to the fake sounds of pleasure, I’d probably never use room service here again.

“Why are you doing this, Mary?” It wasn’t as if I was her best customer.

She studied me for a moment. “You no such bad man. You help me before. Now you ask for help, I give it. Bring me luck. Some day you give it back. That how life work.”

The phone rang in the hall. It was nine o’clock. We looked at each other. We dived through the door. She picked it up.

“Yes? Just minute.” She put her hand over the mouthpiece. “It for you.” She handed me the phone.

“Mr McRae? Who was that person?”

“We share a phone in our building, Elspeth. First one there picks it up.”

“Hmm, right. I have your dates for you. Do you have a pencil and paper?”

“Yes, yes. Fire away. Thank you.” Mary handed me the implements.

Elspeth rattled off the dates: when I arrived, when I left. Some were two days, some were six. I thanked her profusely and then sat back afraid to take the next step. Mary didn’t move, just sat with her hands folded in her lap waiting for me to pluck up the courage. Finally I reached over for the list we’d made last night, the list of dates of the murders.

Tick, tick. Nothing, nothing. Yes! Dear god in heaven, a match. In November, while someone – someone else – was slaughtering a young woman, I was safely tucked up in the hospital. I ringed and ringed the date with my pencil till the relief started to ebb away. I stood up and grabbed Mary and lifted her up in the air and hugged her. She squealed in merriment like a young girl. I put her down.

“Thank you, Mary. Thank you.”

“See. I tell you, you a good man.”

“No, Mary. You said I wasn’t such a bad man.”

She shrugged. “All men got bad in them. Some more than others. So now, only two men might got blood on hands.”

She was right. It still hadn’t quite got me off the hook; there was still doubt about Lili’s murder. But I’d have to leave that for the moment. I had Caldwell and Wilson to tackle. If either one was the killer I had to find a way of pinning it on him. I didn’t think dreams would be admissible in evidence.

Both men were dangerous to go after. Caldwell probably had a personal armoury and a strong motivation for seeing me dead. Wilson would tear my head off and ask questions after. And he was surrounded by the system; who would I make an accusation to? For the same reasons I didn’t feel inclined to surrender and ask him to check my alibi. It would prove he’d either planted evidence in a conspiracy with the real murderer or done it himself.

Mary had piled my little set of belongings from my suit and coat on her table.

It amounted to some loose change, my office and flat keys, and the list of questions I had for Kate and Liza. I picked up the crumpled list, smoothed it out on the little table and examined it.

Kate:

Are you also known as Mrs Catriona Caldwell?

What’s your real relationship with Tony Caldwell?

What was really wrong with you in the hospital the night of the bomb?

Why hire me to find out if he was dead? You could have done it yourself.

Liza:

Are you or are you not married to Tony C?

Why don’t you care enough that your husband is dead?

Did he mention the murder to you? What else did he say about me?

Why are you lying to me?

I could cross through most, now I had the answer to the one question I hadn’t posed: Tony Caldwell, alive or dead? He was very much alive, and Kate and Liza were his half-sisters and protecting him. But I still didn’t know why Kate had gone into hospital on November thirtieth. Was it important? Had she faked an injury just to make sure she had an alibi if I checked? Or had something happened to her – coincidentally – at the time of the bomb? It niggled me and I kept coming back to one of my tenets in a murder enquiry: there are no coincidences. I turned to Mary. “Mary, do you know anyone who can make me a business card?”