Nine

There was no answer when he knocked on Eva's door at the hotel. She hadn't been in the bar or in the dining room either when he had looked in there. Surely she couldn't still be taking photographs in the dark, at seven forty-five? He felt a prickling of concern, sincerely hoping she hadn't stumbled into the harbour or that her leg had become so bad she was lying injured somewhere.

He freshened up and decided to have a drink in the bar, warm up by the fire and wait for Eva's return. If she wasn't back within the hour then he would fetch a constable and go and look for her.

The bar was busy, it being Saturday and approaching Christmas. Faded pink, green and orange paperchains had been strung up crisscrossing the ceiling, culminating in paper bells in the corners of the room. Both the chains and bells had seen better days. They looked to be a legacy from before the war. There was some holly in a vase on the mantelpiece above the fire and a small nativity scene, but it was a little too early for a Christmas tree, if the hotel could get one. They too were still in short supply, along with timber, bricks and building material.

He ordered a beer and thought of Sonia in The Quarryman's Arms in Portland. It caused him an ache in the pit of his stomach as he remembered those dark, troubled eyes. Had her husband Sam Shepard tried to approach her? Ryga had left instructions with the local police to be notified if he did but Shepard could easily have slipped under their radar. He hoped she was all right. Maybe he could visit her over Christmas and take something for her son, Steven.

The door opened. There was a slight hush in the bar but conversation quickly resumed. Ryga was mightily relieved to see Eva striding, or to be more accurate limping, towards him. She looked tired. He tried not to show his concern, knowing it would irritate her.

'It's freezing out there and even colder in that perishing dark room.'

'Miss Green's, the chemist, in the High Street. That's where I've been for what seems like a lifetime developing the pictures I took this morning.'

'Whisky, a large one.'

He ordered it and she tossed most of it back in one go. 'That's better.'

'Please. Any progress your end?' she eagerly asked.

'Shall we discuss it over dinner?'

'Good idea. I'm famished. I'll just take these up to my room.' She indicated a large envelope and her camera. 'I'll freshen up and be down in a jiffy. Take my drink in and order for me. Anything will do just as long as it's hot, or nearly hot.'

He did so, noting that aside from them there was only one other couple in the dining room, who were in their sixties. The two men at breakfast had either already eaten or left the hotel. The restaurant closed at nine. There was no sign of the censorious Ivy. He ordered oxtail soup and steak and kidney pudding with vegetables from a man who looked as though he should have been picking up his pension years ago and waited for Eva. She wasn't long. She'd discarded the disreputable donkey jacket.

'It'll probably be all suet and very little meat,' she said when he told her what he'd ordered, 'but anything's welcome.'

'Didn't you stop for lunch?'

'I forgot. Don't look at me like that.' But she smiled at his frown.

'Lucky you. I haven't got much to tell you except that PC Swinley wasn't bad as policemen go and he fell in the harbour. I took photographs on Denton Island, at North Quay and then went on to Railway Quay and got some of where the body was found.'

Ryga hadn't seen her but that wasn't surprising. He had probably been there ahead of her.

'Did you talk to the boys?'

'Yes. I found Tom and Colin where I expected them to be on a Saturday morning, on the shore on Denton Island, repairing their raft. I'm amazed it hasn't sunk and that they haven't been drowned – it's so flimsy and tied together with bits of old rope. When they discovered that I took pictures for the newspapers and asked me what was wrong with my leg and I told them, they were putty in my hands.'

Ryga could well imagine.

'I got some lovely shots of them before they were aware I was there. The ones I took after that won't be half as good, because they couldn't resist posing. I haven't developed all of them yet. I thought my fingers might fall off if I stayed in Miss Green's dark room any longer. They are two highly inquisitive boys and a little cheeky, but I like that. You've got to have some spirit while you're young, Ryga, before life knocks it out of you.'

'Doesn't seem to have done that with you.'

'Very nearly,' she said solemnly. Their soup arrived. They ate in silence for a moment before she continued, 'They told me their mothers had banned them from ever using their raft again, but as you can imagine that's had the opposite effect – they're more determined than ever to set sail in the harbour or up the river, to see how many more bodies they can discover.'

'Not upset by their gruesome find then,' Ryga quipped, smiling.

'Not the least. They were eager to tell me their story with all the gory details and more added. Have you read the reports yet?'

'Well, see if it checks out with what they said. They told me that they'd decided to take their raft out into the harbour, despite being ordered by their mothers to stay on the west side of the River Ouse – the Old Arm as they call it because the boats no longer use that. That side of the river was apparently cut off to shipping when the North Cut was made. Being adventurous, inquisitive and rebellious, and not fond of being told where to go and where not to go, their plan was to paddle the raft out with the tide and see how far they could get before the harbour master came yelling at them to get out of the harbour. They'd done it before and said he had to come over and fetch them in his boat and tow them back to the shore. Then he fetched them a clip round the ear.' She'd finished her soup. Ryga had too. There hadn't been much of it.

'They got under the swing bridge, but the tide was playing dirty tricks on them, according to Colin. It was sweeping them out as they had intended but it was also sweeping them over to the gridiron at Railway Quay. I think that maybe they weren't as clever as they thought they were. Tom said they weren't worried because they could easily get themselves off them old gridirons, but his paddle caught on something and stuck and when they looked it was old PC Swinley. Not that they could recognize his features – I got a vivid description of them with the poor man's flesh all eaten away – but they recognized the uniform, minus the helmet.'

Back to that missing helmet. 'I find it strange his helmet was missing. Myra never mentioned it and neither did it come up at the inquest.'

'They probably assumed it had fallen off when he went in the water.'

Ryga considered this as the aged waiter cleared their plates. Ryga almost felt like helping him. He looked as though he'd stumble and smash the crockery before reaching the kitchen. They now had the dining room to themselves.

'Maybe.' But Ryga wasn't convinced.

'It's probably at the bottom of the harbour. That's what the boys think. According to them PC Swinley was always trying to get them into trouble with their parents. Colin said his dad didn't like the police constable. I think because Colin senior might have had a few run-ins with Swinley. He works at the docks, when he can get work.'

'If it's theft then the docks falls under the British Transport Commission Police.'

'It sounded more like being drunk and disorderly. Whenever the boys saw PC Swinley approaching they usually ran away, but sometimes Swinley would creep up on them and give them a clip round the ear for nothing.'

Ryga laughed. 'I seem to have heard that one before.'

'After they found the body, Tom stayed in the raft with the paddle holding on to the corpse while Colin shinned up the iron girders and ran along the quayside until he could find a railway policeman who, as it happened, was talking to some men by the cranes who were waiting to unload a boat. At first the police constable didn't believe him, then he could see it was the truth, probably by Colin's agitated state. He asked a couple of the dock workers to accompany him to the body. They hauled it out and managed to get it on the quayside. The constable told the men to stay by it while he ran to fetch the sergeant with the scarred face who got shot down in the war.'

'Injured on the airfield in August 1940.'

'Well he sent the boys home, much to their disgust––'

'And they didn't do as they were told,' Ryga interjected.

'Of course not. They crossed to the other side of the harbour, goodness knows how in that raft, and watched the activities from there, but, according to Colin – he's the spokesman for the pair – not much happened. An ambulance arrived and carted the body off and that was it. Aside from that I talked to the men working the swing bridge and a couple at North Quay while I took photographs and at Railway Quay. From what I can gather Swinley was generally liked. There wasn't any gossip about him. Some said he had a good war by that I deemed they respected him. So what have you discovered?'

She was as good a listener as Sergeant Jacobs and had a sharp mind and eye, but he had barely got started when their meal arrived. After the waiter had shambled away, and in between mouthfuls, Ryga told her about George's missing boat, his visit to the vicarage, and the fact that Swinley had caught the train to Seaford on the Saturday before he went missing and Myra had called a Seaford number on the day before she had come to the Yard.

'They might have friends there.'

'At the newsagent's?'

'Well, I'll soon find out. I'm paying Mr Collier a visit tomorrow morning, and yes, you can come,' he quickly added, seeing her glance.

'Good.' She tucked into her steak and kidney pudding.

Ryga thought Eva had been correct in her analysis of the meal. There was hardly any meat in the pie, but the flavour was appetizing.

'Did you discover anything interesting in Myra's house?' she asked.

'There was no sign of her handbag, or the coat and hat she wore to London. The bedroom curtains weren't pulled across the window and it would have been dark when she arrived home.'

'So she didn't go upstairs to change before getting some tea. Unusual that, wouldn't you say?' 'Maybe she was too hungry or too thirsty to bother.'

'It was tea and not the remains of breakfast things on the table?'

'From the condition of the house, which is spotless, I'd say yes. Myra is not the type of woman not to clear away immediately after a meal.'

'There was a faint smell of perfume on her raincoat on the hall stand. I don't remember that in my chief's office, but Street does puff away on his pipe all day and it's hard to smell anything but that.'

'And?' she prompted when he paused.

'Something's nagging at me but I don't know what. The house was cold as though—'

'She'd gone for ever.'

'Yes.' He pushed away his empty plate. But there was more. It was something that he had seen but not registered, or rather not realized the implications of.

Eva finished her meal and sat back. 'Did you search the house?'

'Not thoroughly, but from what I managed to see there was nothing to give any indication of what might have happened. No life insurance policy and no wills. PC Swinley has a sister living in Canada, and if she does inherit, I can't see her popping over to kill her brother and abduct his wife. George's clothes are still in the house, and his shaving tackle is in the bathroom. Myra obviously can't bear to part with anything of her late husband's yet.'

'Find any sleeping pills or nerve tonic?'

'No. Should I have done?'

'According to Miss Green, the pharmacist with the dark room, yes. She was reluctant to tell me anything at first, that kind of information being confidential, but when I told her that Myra was missing she said that she regularly made up prescriptions for Myra for sleeping tablets and for something to calm her nerves. Myra has been on nerve tonic for about five years.'

'She didn't strike me as being a nervous person.'

'The tonic obviously works then,' Eva said slightly sarcastically.

Ryga thought he deserved that. 'She must have been prescribed both not long after her husband got injured at Cassino. He returned to his former job here in 1946. I wonder why she was still on them.'

'Perhaps she found it difficult to adjust to her husband being home again. He could have changed a lot from the man she had known and married.'

Ryga knew it happened. He too had changed. Sometimes he wondered how the men he'd been imprisoned with, and their wives, were coping after four years spent in a POW camp. Some men might have returned to find their marriage was over.

Eva said, 'Or perhaps the headaches turned George into a different man, made him moody maybe even violent. Maybe she kept her nerve tonic and sleeping pills in her handbag. Or went upstairs to fetch them to take them out with her. Miss Green says that a large cocktail of the tonic and tablets would be enough to put her to sleep permanently. Myra anticipated Scotland Yard's response to her request to look into her husband's death. She might have seen from your expressions, or heard in your voices, that it was hopeless, and the more she thought about it as she headed home on the train the more convinced she became that you wouldn't take her seriously. She tried to shake it off, made herself a cup of tea and a sandwich, intending to settle down and wait for the telephone call but the house became more and more oppressive, her anxiety grew as she waited for the phone to ring, her thoughts became more suicidal until she couldn't stand it any longer and she took off.'

Ryga mulled this over. It was possible. As he'd said, Myra hadn't struck him as someone suffering from nerves, but people could be awfully adept at disguising their real emotions when necessary. He'd seen several strong-minded men collapse under the nervous strain of an incarceration without a sentence, not knowing what the future held, if anything. He'd also seen men at sea go to pieces in the silence and solitude. But Myra hadn't been alone. She'd had a husband. And he too had medical problems. Perhaps headaches weren't all he suffered. There might have been flashbacks, tremors, nightmares, but he had been too frightened to confide in a doctor. Perhaps he thought it would make him appear weak and he wouldn't have wanted his colleagues to know of it. Had Myra been giving her nerve tonic to her husband?

He said as much, adding, 'George Swinley took too much, he become dazed, disorientated and fell into the harbour. Myra came to Scotland Yard claiming her husband had been killed because her conscience wouldn't allow her to accept she might inadvertently have caused his death.'

'That doesn't explain the missing notebook or why he'd buttoned up his tunic without replacing it.'

'He could have heard something, removed the notebook to jot down the time and what he'd heard. The tonic he'd taken made him confused, he thought he'd put the notebook away and automatically did up his tunic before falling in.'

The ancient waiter shuffled over to remove their plates and asked if they'd like anything further in a tone that indicated he sincerely hoped not. They humoured him and plumped for coffee in the lounge. The wireless was playing softly. The rain was lashing against the windows. They had the room to themselves. Eva picked up where they had left off.

'Miss Green said that she had dispensed strong painkillers containing morphine for George.'

'For his headaches?'

'Yes. But she hadn't made any up for about two years.'

'Which bears out what the doctor said at the inquest. He hadn't seen George for two years.'

'So maybe the headaches had stopped, or he was getting drugs from elsewhere.'

'I don't like the sound of that. And why should he obtain them illegally when he could get them on the National Health Service? He'd have to pay for them from other sources.'

'Maybe not in monetary terms.'

'You mean he'd turn a blind eye to a crime that was being committed.' Ryga liked that even less.

'Perhaps he became addicted to these drugs because they were the only ones which could stop the headaches, but he couldn't get more of them under prescription, or the quantity he needed, so he looked elsewhere.'

Ryga had come across such a situation before with men who had served in Burma. On account of their terrible experiences they'd become addicted to morphine to try and obliterate what they had seen, or at the least eradicate the pain of the memories, and sadly some had died of an overdose, sometimes deliberately, other times accidentally. Their coffee arrived. Eva popped up to her room to fetch the photographs she'd taken and developed. On her return she spread those of the boys and of the gridiron at Railway Quays on the table in front of them.

Ryga's breath caught in his throat as he viewed the pictures of the boys she had taken before they had been aware of her presence. Their rapt expressions as they repaired their makeshift raft tore at his heart. Their too-tight jackets over short trousers with socks rolled down and their shoes caked in mud. Their thin bodies tending their pride and joy. He thought of Sonia's son, Steven, and remembered his intense, delighted expression when he had shown him the contents of his murder case. Ryga ached to see that same joyous expression again, and hoped that if, and when, they found his father, and Steven learned of the truth about him, it wouldn't spoil life for the boy.

These children had little of material value in their lives and here they were finding joy in something so basic yet so precious to them. This raft was all these boys had and they had made it themselves from old bits of wood and rope found along the shore. Eva had captured that raw joy and pride with her camera so well that it brought a lump to his throat as he thought of all the children lost during the war. He sniffed and pulled himself together. Maybe Eva sensed his sorrow and his emotions because she said nothing. He liked her even more for it.

The waiter coughed noisily and glared at them with a rheumy eye. Eva shuffled up the pictures. 'I think we've outstayed our welcome.'

Ryga consulted his watch. The bar would be closed by now; besides, he didn't want another drink and Eva looked as though she was ready for her bed, not that he would say as much. It had been a long day. Rising, he said, 'Let's catch the newsagent before he can rub the sleep from his eyes. Always the best time to interrogate a suspect, not that Terence Collier is one.' But then who could tell?