The Soho Noir Series Read online

  “He’s sixteen.”

  “Nineteen.”

  “He’s not.”

  “Nineteen. Want to know what else I know? He lives in Saffron Hill. His father is a thief and his mother is a hoister. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, either. He has a criminal record for theft. Do you want me to go on?”

  “How do you know all that?”

  “It’s my job to know things.”

  She pouted. “I don’t care. I love him.”

  “You don’t.”

  “I love him and he loves me.”

  “Do you really think I’d let my daughter step out with a thief?”

  “Then I’ll run away. Joseph said we could.”

  Frank grabbed her firmly by the shoulders. “No. You won’t.”

  “I hate you!” she spat. “If I want to see him, then I shall see him. There’s nothing you can do about it.”

  Frank struck her, once, across the cheek.

  She gasped.

  “Not while you’re living under my roof.”

  Frank’s fingertips tingled. He caught himself for a moment, breathless, and watched a single tear rolling down a reddening cheek. Eve didn’t cry; she turned away from him. Julia put a hand on his shoulder; he shrugged it off and left the room, thinking he needed a stiff drink and that there was whiskey in the drinks cabinet. Telling himself he was doing the right thing.

  CHAPTER 7

  HENRY DRAKE DRAGGED ON HIS CIGARETTE, held the smoke in his lungs and blew it out. “Newspapers Are Made At Night,” the banner on the wall said. Literally: workmen had taken out the glass in the windows last week and filled in the space with brickwork. Management said they might get bombed, paranoid that Adolf would hammer Fleet Street once things got started for real. Part of the newsroom floor had been turned into a dormitory in case bombing made travel impossible, camp beds lined up against the wall next to folded piles of linen. Henry had already decided he would sleep here tonight.

  He stared at the blank sheet of paper in the typewriter. Frustration. He started to type, just the bare facts, pecking the words out.

  Girl found dead.

  Possible fifth victim.

  Police offer no information.

  He had nothing.

  Fluff for page three, if he was lucky. Filler for the space between adverts for Colgate Ribbon Dental Cream and Carters Brand Little Liver Pills. He yanked the paper from the typewriter, tore it up, threw it on the floor.

  No, sir.

  No, sir, indeed—not good enough.

  He pushed away from his desk and looked at the row of offices at the edge of the floor: Bert White, Gregory Clayton, Roger Spruce. The Star’s top men. Dozens of awards between them. Often more famous than the people they wrote about.

  They were where he wanted to be.

  He opened his desk drawer and took out the bottle of whiskey. It was already three-quarters gone; he sloshed out a triple into a paper cup. He reached into his trouser pocket for the bottle of Benzedrine, unscrewed the top, tapped out two pills, dropped them onto his tongue and washed them down with a slug of booze, took a breath, necked the rest.

  He flipped through his notes and began a new summary of the case. The killer was prolific. Four known victims in less than a month, all brasses or half-brasses, nothing save their profession to link them together.

  Victim number one: Louisa Ann Hart, 24, Dean Street, 15th May, 1940;

  Victim number two: Henrietta Clarke, 23, Manette Street, 22nd May 1940;

  Victim number three: Freda Joanne Williams, 29, St Anne’s Court, 29 th May 1940;

  Victim number four: Lorna Elizabeth Yoxford, 32, Berwick Street, 5 th June 1940;

  And then tonight.

  Murphy hadn’t denied it.

  Speculation seemed fair.

  Victim number five: Rose Wilkins, 17, Old Compton Street, 10th June, 1940.

  The first four had all been strangled, then cut up. No sign of sexual interference on any of the bodies. No sign of robbery. A rapist or a robber might have given Murphy something to go on, even if it was only a filter with which they could fillet the index cards at the Central Records Office. But there was no rape. Purses were left untouched. No motive, except the purest and most terrifying: the Ripper just hated women.

  Henry had been the first pressman to make the public connection between the first and second girls, a week before Murphy admitted it. The rags needed a sobriquet for the killer and tried out a few for size:

  The Soho Strangler.

  Jack the Stripper.

  The Soho Slasher.

  Soho Jack.

  Henry christened him the Black-Out Ripper on the front page of the Star on a wet Monday in May. The name stuck.

  He thought of D.I. Murphy.

  He thought of Duncan Johnson.

  Murphy’s prime suspect.

  The smug face. The silver-tongue. A psychopath with time served for manslaughter, assault and rape. He had put his life story together: born 1893, Stepney. Convicted in ’35 for raping a secretary he met at the Captain’s Cabin; overpowered her in a Soho doorway, buggered her, laughed as he did it. A police suspect for six other rapes, but insufficient evidence prevented charges. Four years at Dartmoor, out in ’39 despite the concerns of the medical staff. Henry had bribed an orderly for his psychological evaluations: a genius IQ of 132, a personality described as “aggressive narcissism” and a headshrinker’s summary that included words like “glib, “grandiose sense of self-worth,” “pathological lying,” “lack of remorse or guilt,” and “lack of empathy.” The shrink said he was dangerous, and couldn’t guarantee he wouldn’t do it again. It hadn’t been enough to keep him locked up.

  So they let him out.

  Johnson found work as a stevedore on the Royal Docks. For eight months he appeared to be going straight. Then the murders started. His landlady reported him after finding a bloodied shirt in his laundry. She’d read about the Ripper and said she was suspicious, that he’d been acting strange and keeping irregular hours. Murphy nicked Johnson and put the screws to him: interrogation for twenty hours straight revealed nothing—he was a slippery customer and they couldn’t pin anything on him.

  He came straight to the Star and asked for Henry. He was covered in bruises and burns. He told him everything.

  Murphy had beaten him.

  Murphy had pushed his head in the khazi.

  Murphy had ground lit cigarettes on his arm.

  Henry could see why Murphy was fixated by him. He got under the skin. He was condescending. Smart words from a smart mouth. He said he’d declined the offer of a brief in the station. He didn’t need one, he enjoyed the experience, found it “interesting.” He said he’d intimidated Murphy—that was why he’d assaulted him.

  Henry wrote it up.

  ‘BLACK-OUT RIPPER’ SAYS POLICE BEAT HIM

  The story ran, with pictures.

  Murphy was suspended.

  The charges were investigated.

  Johnson was lying. The injuries were self-inflicted.

  The charges were dismissed.

  Murphy was reinstated.

  He rolled another sheet of foolscap into the typewriter and waited for the Benzies.

  He thought of Old Compton Street.

  A dozen other hacks scooping him.

  Just setting out the facts was for the birds.

  He needed colour, bright brushstrokes, a vivid picture.

  Something different.

  The pills buzzed.

  He started to type.

  The words came easily.

  The clock showed midnight when the familiar rumble rolled through the building. Henry planted his feet on the floor of the newsroom and waited for the shift. The sensation was followed by a tingling in the soles, then a steady vibration. Sixty feet below, beneath the pavements of Fleet Street, the newspaper’s great presses were beginning to turn.

  CHAPTER 8

  TUESDAY, 11th JUNE 1940

  FRANK GAVE UP TRYING TO GET BACK TO S
LEEP. His nightmare had woken him at five and now the burns on his chest were itching and he couldn’t settle. He lay on his back for an hour, watching the dawn light prickle through the black-out, listening to Julia’s low, shallow breathing next to him. His head was fuzzy, a dull throb pulsing through the fugue. He’d finished off half of the bottle of scotch after the argument with Eve.

  It was no good: he was awake. He levered himself upright, shuffled his feet into his slippers and padded quietly onto the landing and into the bathroom. He relieved himself, took off his pyjama jacket and turned to face the mirror. He angled himself so that he could inspect the burns on the right-hand side of his body. They still looked awful, even twenty years later: mottled, blackish-brown skin, like the flesh on a joint that had been left in the oven too long. The pocked blisters reached all the way up his neck to just below the ear, down his arm and across his breast and shoulder. A white ring of skin marked where his wristwatch had been. He raised his arm; the burns were worst beneath his shoulder. Not unusual, the doctors said. The gas dissolved in the natural moisture of the armpit. A single droplet there was plenty enough to burn all the way through the bone. HS, the lads called it: Hun Stuff.

  He hadn’t had the nightmares for years, until, last week, he’d read an article in the newspaper about the Luftwaffe dropping mustard on London. He’d dreamt it every night since: running into the empty trench, seeing what looked like an oily reddish liquid gathered at the bottom of the excavations—looked like sherry—a garlic-like smell. The captain saying the gas rattle had been sounded but he hadn’t heard it, not with the shells and the rifles. The realisation of what it was, already too late: his skin blistering, his eyes gummed together, the uncontrollable vomiting. When his stomach ran out of half-digested bully beef and hard tack, there came blood and, eventually, a sickly yellow fluid straight from his lungs. In the dream, he watched, helplessly, as Harry Sparks and the two other blokes he dragged out melted before him. Their flesh bubbled and liquefied, dripping off their bones and running away into the mud.

  Pain. He winced. He could normally stand it but it was especially bad today. He opened the cabinet, took out a jar of Vaseline, applied it with his fingertips. The coolness helped dampen the itch. He went quietly back into the bedroom to dress.

  He paused at Eve’s room, rested his forehead on the door panel. He couldn’t hear anything: she was still asleep.

  Downstairs. They had a small house in West Wickham. Nothing fancy, just a two-up, two-down at the end of a terrace of identical houses. It had cost £900 freehold when he bought it, three years ago. The mortgage set him back £1/3/7 a week, just about affordable on an Inspector’s wage if Julia was careful with the housekeeping. It was a nice place. Comfortable. He left it all to Julia. She had an eye for décor, soft furnishings and such like. The female touch. Soft green and brown wallpaper with “autumn tints”. Metal light switches with bronze finishes. An “imitation vellum” chionoiserie-inspired standard lamp with tassels in the front room. Yes: she’d done a super job. The only item he’d insisted upon was the Pye gramophone player in the figured walnut case. £17. Damnably expensive, but quality. Sounded mint. His one little luxury.

  He rubbed the sleep out of his eyes as he went into the kitchen and lit the coal for the boiler. He only had a few chores, what with Julia running the house, but this one he secretly enjoyed. Get a good little blaze going before everyone else got up. Get things started for the day. Tuesday was wash day, so he pulled the electric copper out from under the draining board and filled it with water through the hose attached to the tap above the sink. He pushed the plug into the socket. The filament in the bowl would have the water warmed up nicely by the time Julia was ready for it.

  o o o

  THE KITCHEN WAS QUICKLY FULL OF STEAM. Julia took a pair of his longjohns from the bowl in which they had been steeped overnight and dropped them into the copper. There was no agitator in the tub so she took a long dolly peg and stirred the water.

  “Where is she?”

  “Eve!” Julia called. “Your father wants to speak to you before he goes to work.”

  Frank sat at the table, eating his usual fry-up. He felt bad about the argument. He hadn’t handled it very well, he knew that. He had been drunk, and he was agitated from the scuffle at the station. But he remembered Costello’s CRO file and the embers of his temper kindled again. He hadn’t handled it as well as he might have, but he was right.

  “Eve!”

  Julia took the longjohns from the copper and transferred them to the washboard in the sink, scrubbing at the soiled marks. She was thrifty, and collected scraps of hand soap in a large jar. She scooped out a little of the waxy jelly and rubbed it onto a stubborn stain. “For goodness sake,” she said, her voice tight. She worked harder and harder at the stain, taking a pumice stone and grinding it into the fabric. “What is this? It won’t come out.” She pushed the garment into the sink. “Bloody thing.”

  Frank looked up. His wife never cursed. “What’s the matter?”

  “I can’t get the blasted stain out.”

  “No, something’s on your mind. Come on.”

  He knew what it was. She looked out of the window into the back yard, biting her lip. “I don’t know, Frank. I mean—are you sure? He didn’t seem so bad. He was polite. You met him—very polite, wasn’t he? And Eve’s so unhappy about it.”

  He replied calmly. “We talked about this, love.”

  “But she was up crying half the night, Frank. You heard her.”

  “She’s going to have to get used to the idea.”

  “But she’s so miserable. Couldn’t we sort something out? I wasn’t much older when I met you, was I?”

  “That was different.”

  Julia took the longjohns from the sink and fed them into the mangle. “Was it?” she said, turning the handle. “My father told me to be careful, too. You were no angel.”

  Frank lined up his knife and fork on the plate. “That’s as maybe. Being a tearaway is one thing, but he’s a bad apple. He’s from a bad family and he burgled a house on top of everything else he’s done that he hasn’t been nicked for. I can’t have someone like that in the family. Apart from anything else, how do you think it’d reflect on me?”

  “What if he doesn’t give up?”

  “Then I’d deal with him.” Frank had already considered the prospect: he’d have a word, explain why it was in his best interests to steer clear of his kin. He’d keep it as civil as he could but with something like this—when family was involved—well, if he needed more than a word in his ear he could arrange that, too. He wasn’t beyond fitting him up—something from the evidence room found in his pockets—and with his record he’d be looking at a stretch before his feet could touch the ground. That would be that. End of problem.

  “Eve! Time to get up!”

  There was no sound upstairs.

  “Go and get her, love. I’ve got to go.”

  Julia went up to her room.

  Frank mopped his plate with a hunk of bread. Bit of grease, that’s what he needed, sort out his bloody hangover.

  “Frank!”

  He dropped the bread.

  “Frank! She’s gone.”

  He raced up the stairs.

  The room was empty and the bed was still made.

  Frank opened the cupboard: Eve’s suitcase was missing.

  “Her dresses are gone. Her underwear, too.”

  Frank felt weak.

  “You should never have told her she couldn’t see him.”

  “Don’t worry, love.”

  “Look what you’ve done!”

  “I’ll find her.”

  o o o

  THE BOY’S ADDRESS WAS A TERRACE in Saffron Hill. Right in the middle of the Italian enclave. Early risers wandered around anxiously. Men would have been pulled out of their beds last night, taken away and locked up. Anti-Italian graffiti had been daubed on the walls of buildings. Windows had been put through.

  Frank parked the Wols
ley and got out. He walked up to the house, kicked the door down and went inside.

  An old matron—the boy’s mother, probably—screamed. Frank pushed her aside and took the stairs two at a time.

  Joseph Costello was in bed. Frank threw the covers aside, grabbed him by the throat and tipped him onto the floor, naked, face down. He put his knee into the small of his back and pressed his weight down so that bones cracked.

  “Jesus Christ, that hurts!”

  “Where’s Eve?”

  “What?”

  “Where’s Eve?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Frank pressed down harder on Costello’s back and yanked his wrist up towards his shoulder blades. Costello yelped. “Where’s Eve?”

  Costello whimpered, the words coming out fast and high-pitched. “I don’t know where she is.”

  Frank pulled a finger right back, close to snapping it. “And I won’t ask again. I don’t believe you. Where’s Eve?”

  “I swear on my life, I bloody swear it, I don’t know where she is. She came around here. This morning, bloody early.”

  “How long ago?”

  “A couple of hours ago.”

  “What did she say?”

  “That you told her we couldn’t see each other no more. She said you’d had a barney. She had a suitcase, said she wanted to run away with me. I told her that wasn’t a good idea. You’re a policeman, for Christ’s sake, it’s not like we could just disappear.”

  “Keep going.”

  “I said what you said was probably for the best. I told her we ought to stop seeing each other.”

  “And this was when?”

  “An hour ago?”

  Frank ducked his head and hissed straight into Costello’s ear. “You better not be lying.”

  “I swear I’m not.”

  Frank went back down to the car. He drove up and down, then turned off the main road and traced a path around the criss-crossed thicket of side-streets. It was still early: a horse-drawn milk-float rattled along the kerb and a handful of pedestrians went about their business. Frank feathered the accelerator, crawling the car up and down, staring into the faces of the people passing by. They looked at him nervously, probably making him as Old Bill.