Billy nodded sagely. ‘I was thinking the same thing, sir.’
‘Oh, you were, were you?’ Sinclair eyed him with suspicion. ‘You’ll be telling me next you’ve got someone in mind.’
‘Well, yes, sir — as a matter of fact I have.’
Billy grinned. He didn’t know if he could get away with this, but he was going to try.
‘It’s a uniformed officer stationed at Bow Street. Could be just the person we need.’
9
‘We know his name now, sir. It’s Alfie Meeks. But so far we haven’t been able to lay hands on him.’
‘And why is that?’ Bennett snapped. He was in a testy mood.
‘Because we don’t know where he’s living. Not at this moment. He’s been moving about in the past couple of months. Renting rooms here and there for a week or two.’
The assistant commissioner had been away — off sick with a dose of flu — and Sinclair was devoting a good part of their initial meeting to bringing his superior up to date on the inquiry into the murder of Florrie Desmoulins.
‘But for some days now he hasn’t been seen in his usual haunts.’
‘Which are?’
‘An open-air market in Southwark, for one. He’s got a stall there, but hasn’t appeared lately. The same applies to the cafe where he usually eats.’
‘Are we sure he’s still in London?’ The assistant commissioner looked sour. ‘Come to that, do we know he isn’t dead?’
‘Yes to both questions, sir. He’s been spotted, glimpsed, I should say, but not by a copper, as yet. One of our snouts saw him coming out of the tube station at Chancery Lane yesterday, but by the time Bow Street was alerted Meeks had disappeared. The snout said he seemed to be on his way somewhere; he was in a hurry. By the look of it he’s up to something and as soon as we get hold of him we’ll find out what it is. And who he’s working for.’
‘Ah-?’ Bennett showed a flicker of interest at last.
‘That’s only an assumption, but a reasonable one. It’s just not conceivable that a character like Meeks could be behaving this way on his own account.’
The chief inspector was giving voice to a judgement made by Billy Styles and Cook after they had learned the identity of the man who, it was clear from the enquiries Bow Street had pressed, had been looking for Florrie Desmoulins and no other.
‘He talked to several girls in Soho and described Florrie to them,’ Billy had reported. ‘He asked first for her address. They wouldn’t give it — they never do, to a stranger — but they told him where her pitch was, in Soho Square. That would have been enough. Whoever killed her could have followed her home. It wasn’t far, just a short walk down Dean Street.’
Meeks’s name had come from another source.
‘He was spotted talking to one of the girls by a character called Clive, who has a business supplying them with cosmetics. He’s been in trouble with us in the past for black-market dealing and so has Alfie Meeks, and Clive thought he was trying to move in on the trade. Told him to shove off, apparently. Anyway, that’s how we got his name.’
Sinclair had already passed on this information to the assistant commissioner, together with a photograph retrieved from police records. It showed a thin, lined face with narrow eyes topped by a receding hairline. According to the details on his arrest form, Meeks was in his mid-forties.
‘He’s an habitual criminal with a record as long as your arm. But it’s all small stuff, petty thieving. He was sent to a borstal for breaking and entering when he was a boy and has been inside four times since then. Twice for receiving stolen goods, once for fraud and once for forging petrol coupons. That was his last stretch: he did two years in the Scrubs and only came out three months ago. What’s interesting from our point of view is that he’s never engaged in violence. Though that’s odd.’
‘Why odd?’ Bennett’s tone remained terse.
‘I was thinking of his family background,’ Sinclair had replied, pretending not to notice his superior’s grumpy mood, whose cause he’d already guessed. ‘His father was Jonah Meeks. Deceased, I’m happy to say. There’s no reason you should remember him — it’s all of thirty years ago now — but he was one of the worst we had to deal with then. A thug with a taste for violence that scared even his own kind: the terror of Bethnal Green in his day. We put him inside twice for assault with intent to do grievous bodily harm, and it was only by the grace of God they weren’t murder charges. Alfie’s the fruit of his loins, but hardly his father’s son — not in that respect at any rate. To judge by his record he hasn’t the nerve, which makes his present behaviour all the more peculiar.’
‘So you think he’s acting for someone else?’ Bennett asked now.
‘That’s what it looks like.’
‘Someone who wanted to know the whereabouts of this French girl?’
‘And who wasn’t prepared to go wandering about Soho inspecting tarts till he found her. A man who apparently doesn’t want his face seen and remembered. The same might explain whatever it is Meeks is up to now. He could be running other errands for him. Chancery Lane’s a long way from his usual stamping ground. He’s an East Ender.’
Bennett remained silent. He’d been sitting half-turned in his chair, staring out of the window at the sky, which that morning was unseasonably blue.
‘Well, this is interesting as far as it goes, I suppose,’ he said, after a few moments. ‘But what’s it got to do with the other girl who was killed? Rosa Nowak? What’s your justification for linking these two cases?’
The question was a delicate one and the chief inspector paused to consider his reply.
‘I wish I had a better answer, sir. But all I can tell you is I thought long and hard before deciding. It’s virtually certain that the man who killed Rosa is the same one Florrie Desmoulins had words with. Now she’s dead, and we don’t know why: unless we assume that their encounter had something to do with it. We can’t prove there’s a connection between the two crimes. But the possibility’s too strong to be ignored.’
‘All right. I’ll accept that for now.’
Sinclair barely had time to get over his surprise at the mildness of his superior’s response before Bennett had swung round in his chair to face him.
‘But I can’t say the same for this other step you’ve taken — and without consulting me, either.’
‘I’m not sure I follow you, sir …’
‘Did it have to be a woman?’ Bennett glared at him. ‘Were you being deliberately provocative?’
‘Good lord, no.’ The chief inspector contrived to look shocked.
‘I ask, because there are a good many people in this building who won’t see it that way.’ The assistant commissioner shook a warning finger. ‘Why on earth is a WPC being dragged into this? That’s what they’ll say. And they’ll have a point.’ He shook his head. ‘I’m aware of your feelings about women in the force, Angus. As a matter of fact, I share them. But this is a question that won’t be tackled properly until the war is over, if then. For the present it’s understood that their role is to handle domestic disputes in the main and to deal with prostitutes. Apart from traffic duties, that is. I hate to say it, but they’ve no place in an investigation of this kind.’
‘I’m aware of that, sir. But it’s a special case.’
‘Is it?’ Bennett’s tone was disbelieving. ‘You say you need this young woman to go through the records. Is that really so important? So urgent?’
‘I believe it is.’ Sinclair spoke firmly. He was not surprised to find his decision challenged and had come prepared to defend it. Even though we think this man we’re seeking is implicated in both murders, we’ve absolutely no idea who he is, or even what kind of a criminal he might be. Neither of these assaults was sexual in nature. So what was his motive? This applies particularly to Rosa Nowak’s killing. One place we can look for an answer is the records. But it won’t be obvious, otherwise we’d be aware of it already. It’ll take fine combing, and that means giving someone the sole job of going through files, possibly stretching back years.’