Elizabeth George: A Great Deliverance

“No, not there,” Webberly was responding. “It’s merely that I thought I’d got Nies and Kerridge sorted out years ago. To have a confrontation crop up again between them is disconcerting.”

How typical of Malcolm to take responsibility for the foibles of others, Hillier thought. “Refresh my memory on their last fray,” he said. “It was a Yorkshire situation, wasn’t it? Gypsies involved in a murder?”

Webberly nodded. “Nies heads up the Richmond police.” He sighed heavily, forgetting for a moment to blow the smoke from his cigar towards the open window. Hillier strained not to cough. Webberly loosened his necktie a fraction and absently fingered the frayed collar of his white shirt. “An old gypsy woman was killed up there three years ago. Nies runs a tight CID. His men are meticulous, accurate to the last detail. They conducted an investigation and arrested the old crone’s son-in-law. It was an apparent dispute over the ownership of a garnet necklace.”

“Garnets? Were they stolen?”

Webberly shook his head, tapping his cigar against a dented tin ashtray on his desk. The action dislodged debris from previous cigars, which drifted like dust to mingle with papers and manila folders. “No. The necklace had been given to them by Edmund Hanston-Smith.”

Hillier sat forward in his chair. “Hanston-Smith?”

“Yes, you’re remembering it now, aren’t you? But that case was after all this. The man arrested for the old woman’s murder-Romaniv, I think his name was-had a wife. About twenty-five years old and beautiful in the way only those women can be: dark, olive-skinned, exotic.”

“More than a bit enticing to a man like Hanston-Smith?”

“In truth. She got him to believe that Romaniv was innocent. It took a few weeks-Romaniv hadn’t come up before the assizes yet. She convinced Hanston-Smith that the case needed to be reopened. She swore that they were only being persecuted because of their gypsy blood, that Romaniv had been with her the entire night in question.”

“I imagine her charms made that easy to believe.”

Webberly’s mouth quirked. He stubbed out the tip of his cigar in the ashtray and clasped his freckled hands over his stomach. They effectively hid the stain on his waistcoat. “From the later testimony of Hanston-Smith’s valet, the good Mrs. Romaniv had no trouble keeping even a man of sixty-two more than busy for one entire night. You’ll recall that Hanston-Smith was a man of some considerable political influence and wealth. It was no difficult matter for him to convince the York-shire constabulary to become involved. So Reuben Kerridge-he’s still Yorkshire ’s chief constable in spite of all that happened- ordered Nies’s investigation reopened. And to make matters worse, he ordered Romaniv released.”

“How did Nies react?”

“Kerridge is his superior officer, after all. What could he do? Nies was wild with anger, but he released Romaniv and ordered his men to begin again.”

“It would seem that releasing Romaniv, while making his wife happy, would bring a premature end to Hanston-Smith’s joy,” Hillier noted.

“Well, of course Mrs. Romaniv felt duty-bound to thank Hanston-Smith in the manner to which he’d become so accustomed. She slept with him one last time-wore the poor bloke out until the wee hours of the morning, if I have the story straight-and then let Romaniv into the house.” Webberly looked up at a sharp knock on the door. “The rest, as they say, is a bit of bloody history. The pair murdered Hanston-Smith, took everything they could carry, got to Scarborough, and were out of the country before dawn.”

“And Nies’s reaction?”

“Demanded Kerridge’s immediate resignation.” The knock sounded again. Webberly ignored it. “He didn’t get it, however. But Nies’s mouth has been watering like the devil for it ever since.”

“And here we are back with them again, you say.”

A third knock, much more insistent. Webberly called entrance to Bertie Edwards, the Met’s head of forensics, who entered the room in his usual brisk manner, scribbling on his clipboard and speaking to it at the same time.

To Edwards, the clipboard was as human as most men’s secretaries.

“Severe contusion on the right temple,” he was announcing happily, “followed by the main laceration to the carotid artery. No identification, no money, stripped down to the underclothes. It’s the Railway Ripper, all right.” He finished writing with a fl ourish.

Hillier surveyed the little man with profound distaste. “Christ, these Fleet Street appellations. We’re going to be haunted by Whitechapel till the end of time.”

“Is this the Waterloo corpse?” Webberly asked.

Edwards glanced at Hillier, his face an open book in which he considered whether he should argue the merits of nameless killers being dubbed something-anything-for the sake of public awareness. He apparently rejected that line of communication, for he wiped at his forehead with the sleeve of his lab coat and turned to his immediate superior.

“ Waterloo.” He nodded. “Number eleven. We’ve not quite finished Vauxhall yet. Both are typical of the Ripper victims we’ve seen. Transient types. Broken nails. Dirty. Badly cut hair. Body lice as well. King’s Cross is still the only one out of sync, and that’s the bloody devil after all these weeks. No ID. No missing-person’s call on him yet. I can’t make it out.” He scratched his head with the end of his pen. “Want the Waterloo snap? I’ve brought it.”

Webberly waved towards the wall on which were already posted the photographs of the twelve recent murder victims, all of them killed in an identical manner in or near London train stations. Thirteen murders now in just over fi ve weeks. The papers were screaming for an arrest. As if he were oblivious to this, Edwards whistled airily between his teeth and rooted on Webberly’s desk for a drawing pin. He carried the latest victim to the wall.

“Not a bad shot.” He stepped back to admire his work. “Sewed him up quite nice.”

“Jesus!” Hillier exploded. “You’re a ghoul, man! At least have the decency to remove that filthy coat when you come here! Have you no sense at all? We’ve women on these floors!”

Edwards wore the guise of patient attention, but his eyes flicked over the chief superintendent and lingered longest on the fleshy neck that hung over his collar and on the thick hair that Hillier liked to have called leonine.

Edwards shrugged at Webberly in mutual understanding. “Quite the gent, he is,” he commented before leaving the room.

“Sack him!” Hillier shouted as the door shut behind the pathologist.

Webberly laughed. “Have a sherry, David,” he said. “It’s in the cabinet behind you. We none of us ought to be here on a Saturday.”

Two sherries considerably palliated Hillier’s irritation with the pathologist. He was standing before Webberly’s display wall, staring morosely at the thirteen photographs.

“This is one hell of a mess,” he noted sourly. “Victoria, King’s Cross, Waterloo, Liverpool, Blackfriars, Paddington. God damn it, man, why can’t he at least be alphabetical!”

“Maniacs often lack that little organisational touch,” Webberly responded placidly.

“Five of these victims don’t even have names , for God’s sake,” Hillier complained.

“ID is always removed, so are money and clothes. If there’s no missing-person report filed, we start with prints. You know how long something like that takes, David. We’re doing our best.”

Hillier turned around. The one thing he knew for a certainty was that Malcolm would always do his absolute best and would quietly remain in the background when the kudos were given. “Sorry. Was I frothing?”