CHAPTER 23

The first face Jago saw on entering West Ham police station was that of Station Sergeant Tompkins.

“Not you again, Frank?” he said. “Haven’t they got anyone else to do this job? You were here yesterday too. I thought I was the only one who never went home.”

“Don’t fret, sir,” said Tompkins. “I had Saturday off. I thought I’d put my feet up with a nice bottle of ale to revive the soul and enjoy the last of the sunshine in the back yard.”

“And did it?”

“Did it what?”

“Revive your soul.”

“Not exactly. In fact I never got the cap off the bottle. It turned out the missus had a few plans of her own for me. Some little jobs that needed doing round the house, like. I came in yesterday to recover. How did you get on with that RAF mate of yours?”

“We had a very pleasant evening, thanks.”

“Reviving your souls?”

“Yes, at the Royal Oak – they’ve got a nice saloon bar there. I always enjoy catching up with an old friend.”

The side of Tompkins’ mouth twitched into a hint of a grin.

“Well, in that case I’ve got a nice surprise for you. Another old friend of yours has just dropped in to see you.”

Jago opened the door and saw the back of a seated man. He was wearing an old jacket that strained tight against his substantial form. The man rose from his chair and turned to face him, clutching a cloth cap in both hands.

“Well, I never,” said Jago. “This must be a first for you, mustn’t it? Something I thought I’d never see – Harry Parker enters a police station voluntarily.”

“Come off it, Mr Jago,” said Harry. “Don’t get started. That’s exactly what I’ve done. I’ve come here off my own bat, to support the police in their noble fight to keep crime off the streets.”

“And off the bomb-sites?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean I’m still wondering whether that dead body was the only fishy thing on that site in Tinto Road.”

“Well, that’s where you’re wrong, see. I’ve come in because I think I’ve got something to help you with that.”

Harry put his cap down on the desk and reached into his jacket. He pulled out an object about a foot long in a brown paper bag.

“I’ve just come off shift with the rescue party and thought I ought to pop in here with this before I go home for a kip.”

He handed the package to Jago.

“I found it, like,” he added.

Jago opened the paper bag and took out a woman’s handbag. It was made of black leather and was dirty, dusty, and battered-looking.

“Where did you get this, Harry?” he said.

“I told you – I found it.”

“Where?”

“In Tinto Road. On that site where we were working after the bombs dropped.”

“When did you find it?”

“On Friday, when we were clearing up there.”

“But it’s Monday now. Why the delay in reporting it? We’re investigating a suspected murder, and I’d like to know why you seem to have withheld a potentially important piece of evidence.”

Parker took a step backwards and bumped into the chair. He reached out to steady it with his hand.

“Now look, Mr Jago, I’ve got nothing to do with no murder. I wouldn’t be here if I did, would I? Don’t forget, I’m the one that reported the body. I just thought this was a bit of lost property, and I was going to hand it in, only I forgot about it. Then I was thinking yesterday about that dead girl and I suddenly thought the bag might be hers. So here I am – to help you.”

“All right, Harry, no need to get agitated. Just tell me exactly where you found it.”

“It was on that pile of rubble where we found the woman. Not close to her, though – it was over towards the side near the first house that was still standing, about five or six yards away. I took it home for safe keeping, like.”

Jago put the handbag back into its brown paper bag and looked him in the eye.

“I hope that’s true, Harry. I’d hate to think you might have been meaning to keep it. That would be stealing, and that’s a very serious matter nowadays, especially for someone in your position who’s supposed to be helping people who’ve been bombed out. There’s men who’ve got twelve months’ hard labour for less. And if the court decided it was looting, you could be shot. I wouldn’t like to lose an old pal like you just because he still couldn’t keep his hands off other people’s property.”

“No, no,” said Harry, “you’ve got it all wrong. It’s not like that at all. Honest, Mr Jago, I’m not like that any more.”

“I shall give you the benefit of the doubt again, Harry,” said Jago. “Just don’t give me any reason to regret that.”

As soon as he’d sent Harry Parker on his way Jago took the handbag to the CID office, where he found Cradock reading the Daily Mirror.

“Morning, Peter,” he said. “You got nothing better to do than read the paper?”

“Sorry, guv’nor,” said Cradock. “I was trying to educate myself, keep up with what’s happening in the world.”

“Well, I suppose you’ve got to start somewhere. I’m not sure the Mirror is your best guide to world affairs, though. It’s not that long ago it was telling us we all ought to join the Blackshirts.”

“Doesn’t say that now, though, sir, as far as I can see.”

“No, well it would be a bit daft of them if they did, wouldn’t it? But I’m probably being unfair – it must be five or six years ago they said that, and I’m sure they’ve changed their minds since. Back then they reckoned what the Nazis were doing in Germany was just ‘patriotic enthusiasm’, but I think we can all see where patriotic enthusiasm can get you now.”

“It’s not wrong to be patriotic, though, is it?”

“Of course not. But you can be patriotic without being stupid and vicious, that’s all.”

Jago put his brown paper package on the desk and pulled out his chair. He sat down and leaned back with his hands behind his head.

“So, how did you get on at Mary’s flat?”

“No luck, guv’nor,” said Cradock. “She kept it very tidy. No clutter anywhere – which was a mercy, I suppose, but I didn’t find any wedding pictures. Perhaps she wasn’t a wedding kind of person.”

“Perhaps.”

“In actual fact, I didn’t find any photos at all – well, just one, to be precise. I thought with her being a spinster there might be family pictures or something, but no.”

“Except one, you said.”

“Yes, but I don’t think that was important. It was a photo of an actor – one of those publicity shots, I suppose. It was signed – ‘Sincerely yours, Hadleigh Crane’. That sounds like an actor’s kind of name, doesn’t it? He’s probably resting, these days, what with the theatres being shut down. That’s what they call it, isn’t it? Resting – when they’re out of work?”

“Yes. He’ll be more than resting, though. He’s very likely locked up in Brixton prison or Wormwood Scrubs or somewhere like that with Mosley and his Blackshirt mob by now – he was quite pally with them, I believe.”

“I’m surprised you’ve heard of him, sir,” said Cradock. “He’s the sort they call a matinée idol – not quite up your street, I would’ve thought.”

“I keep my finger on the pulse,” said Jago.

He leaned forward in his chair and pulled the brown paper bag towards him across the desk.

“Now I’ve got something to show you. Nothing to do with matinée idols, not by a long chalk. This has just been handed in by Harry Parker, former local window cleaner and now public hero, if we’re to believe him.”

He took the handbag from the bag and set it on the desk.

“I see,” said Cradock. “You still don’t think he’s as straight as he says, then, sir?”

“Maybe he is, maybe he isn’t. I just remember the days when he used to tell his window-cleaning customers he’d keep an eye on their place while they were away, and then when they came back they’d discover it’d been turned over and all their valuables had mysteriously disappeared.”

“So there was a connection, yes?”

“Too right there was, and the connection was Harry’s light fingers. But be that as it may, he brought this in this morning. Says he found it on the bomb-site where Mary’s body was and meant to hand it in but forgot.”

“Fits the description that Miss Hornby woman at Everson’s gave us,” said Cradock. “Do you believe Harry?”

“I believe he found it, but as for the rest – well, let’s just say I’ll keep an open mind on the subject.”

“A leopard can’t change its stripes, eh, sir?”

“Spots, Cradock. A leopard can’t change its spots. Have you never seen a leopard?”

“No, sir.”

“Not likely to, I suppose, round here. But they don’t have stripes. You’re thinking of zebras.”

“Yes, sir.”

Jago opened the handbag and emptied the contents on the table. He picked up a pencil and began to poke through the items.

“Let’s see,” he said. “An identity card in the name of Mary Watkins, which suggests it’s her bag. A bunch of keys – could these be the ones Miss Hornby mentioned? And this. That’s the one we’ve been looking for. What do you make of that?”

He used the pencil to push a photograph across the desk. Cradock took a clean white handkerchief from his pocket and used it to pick up the photo. He looked at it and felt an immediate sense of disappointment. It was a small black-and-white print, just two inches square, and it looked as though it had been taken either with a very cheap camera or by a very poor photographer, or both. It had a soapy look to it, and although it clearly showed a bride and groom in their wedding clothes, the faces were too small and unfocused to recognize.

“Not the sort of picture you’d put in the Police Gazette for a missing person or a suspect,” said Cradock.

“No,” said Jago. “I wouldn’t be able to say who either of those people are. But if this is what upset Mary, she must have known the man well enough to recognize him.”

“So we need to try and find out who that man is,” said Cradock.

“I think so, yes,” said Jago. “And there’s another thing. Angela said she was away from the table dancing when Celia showed the photo to Mary, but Celia says she thought Angela was still sitting at the table with her and Mary when she got the photo out.”

“Could that be significant?”

“It may or may not be significant, but it’s certainly inconsistent. They can’t both be right.”