Peter Turnbull - Deep Cover

‘North country?’ the villain explored, pronouncing north as ‘nawf’ and country as ‘can-ry’.

‘Sheffield.’

‘Holiday?’

‘This time of year?’ Shaftoe smiled and allowed himself brief eye contact with his interrogator. He glanced at the TV screen above the bar which showed a cartoon film with the sound blessedly turned off. What sound there was in the pub came from piped music and conversation. It was, observed Shaftoe, already crowded for an early midweek evening. ‘No, visiting me sister, she’s been taken badly. . but she’ll be alright. Just came in for a wander, to have a look at London,’ pronouncing have as ‘av’ and London as ‘Lundun’.

‘Alright,’ the wide-boy replied, pronouncing it as ‘or-white’. He then walked back to his mates and said loudly. ‘He’s alright, down from the north,’ and then added pointedly, ‘He won’t be staying long.’ And John Shaftoe, taking the hint, finished his drink and left the pub. Sometimes it was like that. He felt he had to avoid becoming a regular in one particular pub near the London Hospital, because if he did so, his occupation would eventually be discovered and he would no longer be allowed to blend with the other patrons, which was all he wanted to do. He and his wife sometimes just needed to be ‘working class’. So it was that sometimes he walked into a welcoming pub and sometimes he stumbled into a thieves’ den, which was hostile to anyone they did not know. That night he had clearly entered the latter type of pub. He would take note and avoid it in future.

By the time he left the bar of the not so jolly Jolly Boatman, dark had fallen and the rush hour, while still on, had also begun to ease. He took the Metropolitan line from Whitechapel tube station to King’s Cross, and then took an overground train bound for Welwyn. He left the train at Brookmans Park, exited the station via the footbridge and, with his hands thrust into the pockets of his donkey jacket, looking like a coal miner returning home from a shift at the pit, he walked into the leafy suburbs and up Brookmans Lane, which was softly illuminated by street lamps. Large, fully detached houses were situated on either side of the road, many with U-shaped driveways; thus the homeowners avoided having to reverse their cars into the lane. The houses all had generous back gardens, and those to his left backed on to the golf course and thereby afforded even more open space to survey when standing at the rear windows of said houses. He felt himself thinking, aren’t we smug, as he walked. But the smug occupants of these houses were also his neighbours, because although he and his wife liked to drink in working-class pubs ‘to touch base’, they were both disinclined to live on a sink estate and had bought what property they could manage to afford on his salary as a learned Home Office pathologist, and so, working class or not, they had eventually fetched up in ‘smug, self-satisfied’ Brookmans Park, Hertfordshire.

He turned right into one such large house, which had all the front room lights turned on, with a U-shaped drive — though the car by the door was only a modest Volkswagen — and unlocked the front door. He peeled off his jacket as Linda Shaftoe, tall and slender, and, he always thought, holding back the years with admirable success, greeted him warmly. ‘Good day, pet?’ She took his jacket from him as he sat on the bench beside the front door and began to tug at his shoelaces.

‘Busy,’ he said, easing his right foot out of a tightly fitting shoe, ‘busy enough to make me glad to be home.’

‘Well. . good, hot stew in the pot for you.’

‘Champion, pet.’ He eased the other shoe off his foot and reached for his slippers. ‘Champion.’

Harry Vicary surveyed the room. It was, he felt, the room of a lowlife murderer; there was a tangible cheapness of life about the four walls and the space within which reached him, deeply so. He sensed that here, in this room, humanity had little value. The contents, too, were cheap, inexpensive; they seemed to have a careworn, overused, second-hand quality about them. The cluttered room also had a sense of age, as though the contents had been allowed to accumulate over time. Snapping on a pair of latex gloves he began gingerly to open the drawers of the dressing table, ensuring that the police constable then present was watching him closely as he did so. He needed a witness for anything he might find, and also a witness that he did not unlawfully remove anything. He found little of apparent interest: some loose change, a rent book in the name of one Jennifer Reeves, which seemed to be there because no one had thrown it out — the last rent collection entered being some ten years previously. Yet, the clutter in the room suggested to him a longer-term tenant than Michael Dalkeith, who had reportedly moved into the room some twelve months previously. The seemingly long-established musty smell also seemed to speak of a long-term tenant. The owner of the property, as given on the dated rent book, was WLM Rents of Kilburn, with an address in Fernhead Road.

‘Fernhead Road?’ Vicary turned to the constable.

‘Just round the corner, sir,’ the young, serious-minded constable replied. ‘It’s the main road round here.’

‘Ah. . thanks. One to be visited tomorrow.’

‘Sir?’

‘Oh, just muttering to myself. The landlord will be someone to visit; see what he can tell us about his tenants.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Notice anything about the room, constable?’

‘Messy, sir.’

‘Yes. . too messy for someone who has just moved in. .’

‘Now you mention it, sir. Confess I hadn’t read that.’

‘These things you will learn, these observations you will be taught to make.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘And a deceased female also.’

‘So I believe, sir, but I came just now, sir, just as the body was being removed.’

‘Yes, I know. . but no female clothing. I haven’t looked in all the drawers yet, but I’d still expect to see a woman’s coat or pair of shoes. . something like that.’

‘Yes. . or a handbag, sir.’

‘Yes. . good observation, no handbag either. Runaways are unlikely to have a handbag but only unlikely. . so it’s a good observation. The door was locked. . easily forced but still locked; no one had come in and rifled the room. Sorry, just musing again.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘He brings the girl in, brings her from somewhere. . strangles her, takes all her clothing and her handbag, and heaven only knows what else. . and then goes for a walk on Hampstead Heath in a blizzard. . and does so ill-dressed for the weather conditions on that day or night, or whenever, and then lies down in the snow to sleep his final sleep right on top of a corpse that was already there, and had been for a number of years.’

‘You mean like he knew it was there, sir, like he was leading us there, sir? Telling us about the corpse?’

Vicary looked at the constable and did so with widening eyes and a slackening jaw.

WLM Rents occupied the ground floor of a house on Fernhead Road, Kilburn. Vicary had never before set foot in Fernhead Road. It was a narrow road, he found, probably wide enough to accommodate vehicular traffic in the late nineteenth century, when the tall, elegant terrace houses which stood on either side of the tree-lined road were built, but now, in twenty-first-century Britain, it would, Vicary thought, be a bottleneck during the rush hour. He walked into the office of WLM Rents and was met by a bright, airy interior, smelling of air freshener, with large colour photographs of London landmarks — Trafalgar Square, the Tower, Westminster Bridge — attached to the walls. A water dispenser, filled with mineral water, stood in the corner by the door. Comfortable looking upholstered chairs lined one wall and in front of them were two coffee tables standing end to end, upon which lay copies of London Life, Time Out and other magazines about living in London and the Home Counties. Upon Vicary and Brunnie entering the premises, a young man, dressed in a suit and tie, stood smartly, smiled and said, ‘Good morning, gentlemen. How can I help you?’