Brighton, 6.45 a.m., Thursday 19 April, 1956
Phil turned over in bed, pulling the sheet around his shoulders. The orange curtains his wife had bought were not lined and early morning sunshine leached into the room. From the garden the sound of birdsong punctuated his thoughts as he stirred and cursed silently. He found it difficult to block out the noise of the dawn chorus. It was worse than an alarm clock, though at least when he and Helen had moved out of their old digs near the front, they had left behind the gulls. Up here it was all blackbirds and doves. Still, there was something difficult to ignore about the noise and now the mornings were getting lighter it had begun to annoy him.
Phil didn’t want to open his eyes. It had been a disturbed night. He’d had strange dreams, which he couldn’t fully remember. Only half awake, he hovered like a bee over a flower, his consciousness suspended. If he was choosing, he’d go back to sleep, but how likely was that, what with the birdsong and the light? He’d have to get up for work soon anyway. Bluntly, he nudged Helen, hoping she might fetch him a cuppa. Usually she was good that way, but today she didn’t move. He couldn’t blame her. They were both done in last night when they’d fallen into bed.
Still groggy, he turned over, curling his arm around his wife’s sleeping frame. She lay on her side, facing the window. He smiled as he ran his fingers across her skin. She always felt like silk. Sleepily, he planted a hot, early-morning kiss on her shoulder and, feeling suddenly inspired, he continued kissing all the way to her hairline. She smelled of soap, perfume and deep sleep – a familiar combination. He nudged her again and slid his hand downwards, along the curve of her waist until it came to rest on her plump behind. Phil was an arse man. Always had been. The day he’d met Hel, she had been wearing a tight red skirt that framed her bottom perfectly. It had been a joy to behold – love at first sight. He remembered watching her dancing with her mate at the Palais, thinking this was the woman he was going to marry. She’d let him walk her back to her digs and, when he’d pulled her close for the first time, she’d smelled of cotton wool and lavender. He’d wanted to grow old with that smell from the moment he breathed it in.
Feeling frisky now, he snuggled closer, stroking her stomach and nuzzling her neck. Then it came to him that the bed was wet. She was wet. His fingers were sticky.
‘Hel,’ he tried, nudging her. Then, more urgently, ‘Helen.’
He pulled away, opening his eyes and staring at his hands as they came into focus. His fingers were covered in blood.
‘Hel.’ His voice was panicked.
He recoiled as he pulled back the sheet. She was hurt. A crimson stain spread from her stomach outwards. The blood had seeped into the mattress. Some had even dripped on to the thin carpet. She was deathly pale. Phil scrambled to the floor, tripping over his feet. His chest was heaving. A strange, animal-like sound emanated from his throat. His fingers fluttered as he shook his wife’s body, leaving a red handprint on her marble-white shoulder and a smear on the lace-edged strap of her nightdress.
‘No.’
The word came out strangled and very loud. Then he backed out of the bedroom and, barefoot, crossed the hallway, banging the front door as he burst outside wearing only striped pyjama bottoms and a white vest. He stumbled down the path, trampling a small line of daffodils that Hel had planted in February. His eyes darted, looking frantically for help. Far off, there was the sound of bottles rattling on a milk cart. Uniformly, all the houses along Mill Lane still had their curtains closed.
‘Help,’ Phil said, quietly, and then louder. ‘Help.’
This was a nightmare, surely. The thoughts came in a jumble and he couldn’t order them. ‘Help,’ he barked again. At first there was no reaction from the early-morning suburb. Across the road a curtain flickered in one window and then another. Old Mrs Ambrose appeared in the doorway opposite, at the same time as Billy Randall walked into the garden next door, pulling a brown woollen dressing gown round his frame and knotting it with a red cord.
‘What is it, mate? Are you all right?’
Phil held up his blood-smeared hand as if he was a child. ‘I don’t know what happened,’ he said.
Billy sprang over the low fence that separated the two gardens and, passing his friend, he walked straight into the house. He’d served in Italy. People used to say that he’d seen a thing or two, whatever the ins and outs of the Italian campaign. ‘Helen,’ he called. ‘Mrs Quinn.’ He checked the rooms one by one. The small kitchen smelled of dripping. A loaf of white bread had been left on a crumb-strewn board and the door to the larder was askew. Nothing there. He moved on to the living room where a half-drunk bottle of London gin lay open next to two smudged glasses. The wireless had been pulled out from its place against the wall. They’d been drinking and dancing the night before. It looked perfectly normal – not dissimilar to his own house.
Then, crossing the hallway and opening the bedroom door, he started when he came across her body. The room smelled bad – though only faintly. Still, a dry retch rose in Billy’s gullet. Then his training kicked in. He checked, hoping for a pulse, though he knew it was too late. Helen Quinn seemed too peaceful for what had happened to her. Her dark hair was curled in a loose bun and her hand was splayed awkwardly, like a child’s in sleep. The spill of blood was a shock. She’d been knifed, he reckoned. It must have been violent and it would have taken a while for her to bleed out. When you got hit in the stomach it was agonising. You could last for half an hour before finally slipping away. It was the acid that killed you. Once the stomach was pierced, it leached out and dissolved your organs. It was a horrible way to go. Mystified, he stared at Helen Quinn’s corpse as he consciously took in the scene. He knew he’d have to describe it later. Then he turned. The Penroses at number five had a telephone. Their house was closer than the public telephone box, which was four blocks away. He’d rouse them and call the police.
Outside, old Mrs Ambrose had waddled across the road and was attending to Phil Quinn. She cast an accusatory stare at Billy that clearly said, I might have known. She had never given anyone an inch in her life, and she wasn’t starting now. It was Mrs Ambrose who had told Billy’s wife she thought Hitler had got away. ‘I don’t trust that one,’ she had said, ‘not even to die.’
Billy didn’t give anything away about what lay inside number fifteen. The old woman, after all, never thought a good thing when she could think a bad one. Still, however it looked, Phil was a nice bloke. Even with his fingers covered in blood, Billy didn’t want to believe Phil Quinn had killed his wife. Not Helen who always had a smile for everyone. Not Phil who kicked a football around in the street with the Harrison kids.
‘I’ll fetch the police. You stay here. Don’t disturb things.’
Mrs Ambrose shrugged and her housecoat shifted across her ample frame. She was a busty old woman and her clothes never seemed to fit. At the bottom of the path the latest addition to Billy’s household, a tabby cat he’d brought home, sat and watched with its head cocked to one side.
‘I don’t understand how it happened,’ Phil Quinn said again. ‘I was asleep.’
Billy wondered momentarily if he was leaving the old woman with a murderer, and if that was wise. But someone had to call in Helen’s body. He eyed his friend who, frankly, didn’t seem in any state to shoo the moggy at the bottom of his path, let alone hurt anyone.
‘I’ll come right back,’ Billy said sternly.
He headed down the pavement with only a glance behind him. It was too beautiful a morning for something so horrible to have happened. Cherry blossom spilled over the privet hedge at number ten and another cat, a ginger one, with its tail twitching, pawed at the flickering petals. Everything seemed too normal. Billy had encountered death before, but not like this. Nothing so domestic. Passing his own house, he noted the curtains upstairs were still closed. He’d raise his wife later. He didn’t like to scare her. Not in her condition.