3

Bird Life and Back Numbers

 

Unaware that his character was under discussion, Petrella was making his way by bus to the neighbouring suburb of Hounds Green to interview an authority called the resident supply engineer of the Metropolitan Water Board. There he tracked down Mr Lundgren, whom he found in a pleasant office, seated under a picture of one of the bearded heroes who had constructed the New River two centuries before, thus assuring London of the best water supply of any capital in the world.

“What’s all this?” he said. “A body, on the bank, eh? Get plenty of them in the river, poor souls. The gratesmen are always pulling them out. But I’m not surprised, all the same. They’re isolated places, those reservoirs.”

“I’ve walked past this one a dozen times,” agreed Petrella, “without having any idea it was there. The railway embankment hides it altogether on one side.”

“You ought to run up to Cheshunt sometime,” said Mr Lundgren. “Go along the New Cambridge arterial road with a map and see if you can spot the South Reservoir. A perfect piece of natural camouflage. I doubt if anyone, except a few anglers or bird watchers, sets foot in it from year to year.”

“I saw a lot of birds on this reservoir,” said Petrella. “There was a swan which sounded as if it had got whooping cough.”

“Quite right. That’s a whooper. When I retire I’m going to write a book. Bird Life on Our London Reservoirs. They’re not only water birds either. Woodpeckers of all sorts, and golden orioles. Three years ago” – Mr Lundgren tried vainly to keep the pride out of his voice – “we had a northern diver. One of three confirmed appearances so far south of the Wash. As a matter of fact, I spotted him myself.”

“Goodness!” said Petrella.

“I mustn’t waste your time. What can I do for you?”

“Could you tell whoever’s in charge on the spot what we’re up to?”

“The reservoir foreman. Yes, I’ll tell him. It doesn’t look as if he’s spotted you yet or I should have heard about it.”

“There’s no reason he should,” said Petrella. “We’re in the trees and bushes, on the west bank. And we got in by the running track. There’s a gate there, by the way, needs mending. Looks as if it’s been broken for some time.”

Mr Lundgren made a note.

“We shall want to bring an ambulance in by the main gate. We can get it as far as the cottage. Then we’ll do the rest of the trip with a stretcher. There’s no one living in the cottage, is there?”

“That’s right. It belongs to the intake attendant. He’s what you might call the resident caretaker of the reservoir. The cottage goes with the job.”

“Of course!” said Petrella, deeply relieved. “Oh, I’m sorry. It’s only that I just remembered something that’s been bothering me. You know how you think of a thing. And then you can’t remember what it was. Haven’t you been advertising for a new – what do you call it – intake attendant?”

“That’s right. For about two months. In The Times and in the North London Press.”

“I wouldn’t have thought you’d have much difficulty, with a cottage thrown in. To say nothing of all those birds.”

“Time was,” said Lundgren, “we didn’t need to advertise. We’d got a waiting list. In the present state of the labour market – well, you can see for yourself. It’s taken two months to get three suitable candidates. We have to be a bit fussy on our side too. It’s not a difficult job, but it needs a conscientious sort of bloke. And there’s the health angle.”

“What happened to the last one?”

“Ricketts. He walked out on us. Said it was too quiet at night. He’s gone to Blackpool.”

“I expect it was the whooper swan got him down in the end,” said Petrella.

He gobbled some lunch on the way back to Crown Road. In the CID room he found Inspector Gover waiting for him and learned that he had got a new boss. Nothing could have pleased him more. Gover looked like a sales manager. He had served a long apprenticeship in the Company Fraud Department and it was not until he had gone out on an emergency call with the Flying Squad and had himself arrested and held an armed warehouse breaker that it had occurred to his superiors that he was anything more than a conscientious clerk. Petrella had worked under him many times and knew him for a quiet, determined, even-tempered person.

When Gover had heard Petrella out, he said, “You’d better get back and have a look round. See what you can pick up. Contact the men working at the reservoir. They may have some ideas. I’ll let you know just as soon as we get Summerson’s report. We’re all really waiting on that.”

As Petrella was going, he added, “And take a padlock and chain with you for that broken gate. Then we needn’t keep a man up there. Now that the body’s gone, he’s probably attracting more attention than he’s doing good.”

Petrella found a bored constable sitting on his cape. The running track had not been used, and no one had come near him from the public side. One of the Water Board men had started to come up through the bushes, but he had shouted to him to keep clear.

“Funny old place, isn’t it?” said the constable. “You wouldn’t hardly know it was there.”

“That’s right,” said Petrella. “The forgotten continent.” He snapped the padlock home, and started to climb down the slope through the bushes. “If I’m not back by the end of the month, send a search party.”

The constable grinned, and Petrella, not looking where he was going, slid the last ten feet and landed on his bottom on the path. The water lay like quicksilver under the quiet afternoon sun.

On the far bank two men were working with rakes. He made his way slowly round toward them, stopping again to look at the little cottage at the southern end. He pictured it in the depths of winter, with the rain beating down and the wind whistling round its chimneys. Or in a fog. Perhaps there was something to be said for Blackpool after all.

At the foot of the overgrown patch of vegetable garden was a small landing stage and on the left of the landing stage a boat shed. It was just a canopy on piles, open on three sides and big enough to shelter a dinghy. There was no sign of any boat.

Now the two men were walking toward him. Petrella went to meet them. They introduced themselves as the foreman and one of the walks-men. He found himself learning something about the little kingdom of the reservoir.

The foreman was the boss. Under him he had two watermen, who cleared grates and cut weeds and looked after the sluices; and two walks-men, who, in turns, walked sentry along the banks of the New River and saw that nothing occurred to pollute or disturb the main sources of London water. All four men lived in cottages outside the main-road gate.

“We oughter have one more,” said the foreman.

“An intake attendant,” said Petrella proudly. “It’s all right. That’s not a fluke. I’ve been talking to your Mr Lundgren.”

“Ah!” said the foreman. “An intake attendant. There’s not much to the job. But it’s handy to have someone on the spot at nights.”

“A nice steady job?”

“That’s right. Ricketts – now, he was here more than two years. Nearer three, wasn’t it?”

The walks-man said he thought Ricketts had been there three years, but time went by so fast it was hard to tell.

“Then, suddenly, one day, out he goes. That’s the way it always happens.”

Petrella asked the foreman if he was much troubled by trespassers. The foreman had never known such a thing. Nor had the walks-man. “We got railway on one side,” he said. “Main line to the North. Scotsman’s just about due, isn’t she? And it’s not just the railway line. There’s a long row of engine sheds, you see, and maintenance workshops the other side. You couldn’t get through that way without you did a lot of climbing.”

“What about the sports ground?”

“Them?” said the foreman. “They’re so busy running four-minute miles they don’t know we’re here, do they, Sam? Here she comes!”

They stood and watched the great green-and-gold monster hurl itself along the embanked line and disappear with a scream into Hounds Green high-level tunnel.

“Well, keep your eyes open,” said Petrella. “And if you see anything–” He gave them his name and telephone number.

Then he walked back to the path and climbed carefully up alongside it. The passage of time, and the work of removing the body, had made it highly unlikely that anything useful could be picked up. But he searched all the same, patiently and carefully. What a detective really needed was a telescopic neck; or eyes on stalks, like a crab.

His only find of the slightest interest was a folded copy of the Evening Standard under a bush, beside where the body had lain. The date was Saturday, September 22nd, which tied in well enough with Summerson’s guess. Near enough seven weeks. He folded it carefully and put it in his raincoat pocket.

A voice was calling him from the top. It was Detective Constable Mote.

“Could you come, quickly?” he said. “I’ve got the car down by the pavilion.”

“What’s up?” said Petrella.

“Inspector Gover wants you,” said Mote. “He’s got the report.”

“What’s in it?”

“Search me,” said Mote, “but since he told me to get you back as fast as I bloody well could I don’t imagine it’s natural causes.”

Dr Summerson’s report was brief and to the point.

“This woman,” it concluded, “was shot, probably at very close quarters, possibly with the muzzle of the gun pressed up against her body. The bullet lodged high up in the spinal cord. Death would have been instantaneous. It is suggested that unless the gun comes to light within a few feet of the body any question of suicide can be ruled out. Further, some of the leaves, leaf deposit, and mold which was covering the body appears, on further examination, to be several years old at least. If it proves, on re-examination, to be so, it is clear that the body was covered after death. I have submitted these vegetation samples and shoes and clothing to the Forensic Science Laboratory for detailed examination. The woman was three months pregnant. So far there are no indications of identity. A more detailed report will follow.”

“Identity,” said Gover. Identity, the first and sometimes the only problem. Who was she? How had someone, some living, breathing, talking person, with friends and relations, with lawyer and doctor, with landlord, greengrocer, and milkman, dropped quietly out, like a cockroach through a crack in the floorboards and no voices raised to protest the disappearance? What sort of human unit was it that its departure left no gap at all in the pattern?

“Missing persons lists,” said Gover. “Try them first. Get the main list from Central. She may not be a local woman. Description for circulation. It won’t be a good one, but it’s better than nothing. And we’ll take a chance on it, and say that she died on – what was the date on that paper? – September 22nd. That’s the sort of thing people do remember. Next, clothes. We’ll have to wait for that. If you tell the laboratory that something’s urgent, they start talking about ‘Science can’t be rushed’ and take twice as long. Still, one good laundry mark might solve all our problems.”

“Summerson did say that there was a shop label in the dress and that it ought to be legible. I didn’t build on it, much, because according to his secretary it’s a sort of wholesale model – not an exclusive little number run up for madame only.”

“Let’s wait and see,” said Gover. “Shoes the same. Now what about teeth?” He turned back to the beginning of the report. “She seems to have looked after them pretty well – dash her. No plate, no dentures, not even a gold cap. A few stoppings. That’s not going to help until we know who she is, and then we probably shan’t need them.”

“Fingerprints.”

“Have a word with Blinder. It’s probably not too late to get decent prints. They’re quite clever at that sort of thing now. But unless she’s got a record they’re not going to be much use at this stage. Anything else?”

“Someone had better look after my routine stuff for a day or two,” said Petrella diffidently. “And can I have one man to help? I’d like Mote. He’s handy with a camera.”

“All right,” said Gover. “That’s reasonable. I’ll square it with the superintendent. You get on down to Central.”

Detective Sergeant Blinder was a large, sad, dedicated man who worked in the Fingerprint Section at New Scotland Yard. The Fingerprint Section is, in theory, an annexe to the Criminal Record Office, but as the fingerprint records pour in, thousand upon thousand from all parts of the country and from almost every part of the world, so has the annexe grown until, like the cuckoo, it threatens to oust its co-tenants. Sergeant Blinder sometimes foresaw, with gloomy satisfaction, the time when the rest of Scotland Yard would be a mere annexe to the Fingerprint Section.

Petrella found him studying a ten-magnification enlargement of a thumbprint, and put his problems to him.

“Six weeks? Certainly, we’ll get a nice set of prints. Unless the rats–”

Petrella said that he hadn’t seen any sign of rats.

“Why, the other day,” said Sergeant Blinder, “they brought us a girl, been nine weeks in the water. In the water, I’m telling you.”

Petrella nodded. Fragments of Sergeant Blinder’s discourse reached him. “Skin nearly detached – paraffin wax injection – made a mold – lovely job.” He was wondering, not for the first time, in just what curious vacuums of their own creation the scientific branches of the CID existed. Did their minds ever relate the detached fragments of skin and bone, of tissue and adipocere, to the living creatures of which they had once formed part, creatures with desires and fears and Schedule A tax? Was it lack of sensibility or was it merely the protective armament of habit?

“Two inverted arches and a characteristic delta,” concluded the sergeant triumphantly.

“You’d be able to tell me if you had a record of this girl?”

“Give me four clear prints off one hand and I’ll tell you in a couple of minutes. Single prints – well, that’s more difficult.”

“You shall have both hands,” said Petrella, and made his escape.

There were other things to do. There were the missing persons lists to check, not very hopefully. He had a few details of height and supposed weight and age, but not really enough. “Give us a mole on the chin or a squint in the left eye, and maybe we can help you,” said the clerkly Inspector East, who presided over these mysteries. “When relatives report a missing person they don’t say, ‘She was five foot six and a half inches high and approximately nine stone in weight’ – they say, ‘She’d got a cleft palate, Inspector, and Lord, didn’t she spit when she talked.’”

Petrella laughed. “We may be able to do better later on,” he said. “If you could keep a general eye open for any woman who went missing in the last fortnight of September.”

Inspector East promised that he would do what he could.

The mention of the last fortnight in September put Petrella in mind of something else. He felt in his pocket and pulled out the carefully folded copy of the Evening Standard. There was something he had meant to check.

“Bit out of date, aren’t you?” said the inspector, looking over his shoulder. “I’ve got a midday edition if you’d care to borrow it.”

“This is something I picked up near the body,” said Petrella. “I thought so – you see? The middle sheet is missing. It goes straight from page ten to page fifteen. I wonder what was on it.”

“Short of seeing the missing page, I don’t know how you’re going to find out.”

“I might do that, too,” said Petrella.

Outside it was dark and a thin drizzle of rain was falling. He took a bus along the Embankment and walked the short distance up Farringdon Road, pushing into the tide of home-going office workers, heads down, umbrellas up, individually insignificant, potent in mass as a lemming migration.

The Standard, being an evening paper, observes rational hours, but Petrella found the back numbers department still open, and introduced himself.

“Do what we can,” said the man. “Any particular edition?”

“This one calls itself a late night final.”

“On the streets about three o’clock. Hold on a minute.”

The man disappeared. Petrella waited. A boy of the type bred only by London newspaper offices wandered in, whistling; kicked the wainscoting three or four times as if he was getting his own back on life, and wandered out again. Then the man reappeared.

“Bit short on that edition,” he said, “but I found one for you.”

Petrella spread it out on the table. The middle sheet was made up of pictures and news items. The passage of six weeks had given most of them a curiously dated look. “Test cricketer in car smash.” In September a test cricketer was still news. By November he could kill himself and the papers would take no notice.

What he wanted was tucked away in the bottom corner of the page.

 

POLICE SEARCH FOR JAIL BREAKER

“Chris (‘Monk’) Ritchie escaped yesterday in transit from Wormwood Scrubs, where he had been serving the first weeks of a five-year sentence, to a permanent prison at Parkhurst. He slipped the handcuff attaching him to the warder, Seldon, who was conducting him, knocked down another warder, ran the length of the coach, and jumped from the moving train. London gangster Ritchie received his sentence for breaking and entering and violence. He is five foot nine, heavily built, with dark hair and face, and has a scar running from the corner of his right eye to the corner of his mouth. Police are watching his known haunts, including his flat where his wife Rosa still lives.”

 

(Petrella smiled at this careful indiscretion.)

 

“Note for those interested. ‘Monk’ is thought to be short for ‘monkey’. Ritchie once performed as part of a two-man trapeze act in a circus. He certainly showed some of his old skill when he exited from that train yesterday!”

 

Petrella folded the paper carefully, thanked the man, and went outside. It had stopped raining. He thought he would walk some of the way home. He found that his mind worked better if he kept moving. And here was something to think about.

For the first time in this tangle of loose ends, in this case which was not yet a case, an outline had appeared; a tiny, but identifiable outline which had shown itself for a moment before dislimning and fading back into the surrounding obscurity.

For Petrella had given evidence at Monk Ritchie’s trial; and Monk’s wife, Rosa, had been there and been pointed out to him.

A pleasant, dark-haired woman of about thirty-five. He had remembered feeling sorry for her.