‘I think we should use it, sir.’ Having had time to think about what he was going to say, Billy replied at once. Even if he’s changed, there must be some resemblance. We’ll show it to Mrs Fairweather and to Ash’s fire-watching team and at his place of work and see what they say. Grace could get cracking on that right away.’
‘Do it then.’ With a glance at Bennett, Sinclair had given his consent.
The assistant commissioner had wanted to know what else had been discovered in the course of the day, and Billy had responded with a brief summary of all they had learned.
‘Basically, it’s what we expected, sir. He was a lone wolf. Didn’t mix with others. No friends. Mrs Fairweather told me he never had visitors. She lived on the ground floor, below his flat. He’d come and go pretty well to a fixed pattern. Off to work in the mornings and then back at night. Not always at the same time. It would depend on where his work had taken him during the day. We know from the office manager at Beddoes and Watson, a bloke called Badham, that his routes were all in an area south of London. In Kent and Sussex and Surrey. He’d visit customers they had or hoped to get in various towns, taking samples with him. Pens, pencils, paper clips, what have you. That’s what he would have had in his sample case, the one Florrie Desmoulins said he was carrying. The day Rosa Nowak was murdered he was visiting a firm down in Guildford. Badham checked it for us. The train Rosa caught would have stopped there. Ash spotted her either on the train, or later when they got to Waterloo.’
‘He’d obviously decided to lie low during the war and he’d found a job that suited him.’ Sinclair had let his younger colleague speak uninterrupted before offering his own view. ‘ was on his own all day. He didn’t have to mix with others. He’s not at ease in company. That seems to be the lesson of his years in Amsterdam and it was no different here. I wonder what he did about women, though. You might put out a query, Inspector. Ask the various divisions to check with the ladies on their books, particularly the ones who cater to deviant tastes. We know what his are and one or more of them may be able to help us with a lead.’
Billy had also been able to tell them about a further avenue of information that was being pursued. Earlier that day he had telephoned the War Office with a request for information about Raymond Ash’s military career, and been told by an official in the records department that a man of that name had served with the West Kent Regiment from March 1916 until the end of the Great War.
‘I got Lofty to ring the regimental headquarters for more information and we struck lucky,’ he told his two superiors. ‘ of the officers at the depot, a major, actually remembers Ash. He was his commanding officer for a short spell in 1917 before he got wounded and sent home.’
‘And he can remember one soldier in particular after all these years?’ Sinclair had been impressed.
‘He remembers Ash all right.’ Billy had looked grim. ‘According to Lofty he reacted to the name at once. Asked what had become of him, “What’s he been up to now?” were his actual words, and when Lofty asked him why he had put it like that, he said Ash had been a bad lot. “A cold-hearted devil” was how he described him. He said he knew almost for a fact that he’d murdered three German prisoners.’
‘He what-?’ Bennett had been shocked into silence.
‘He said although it happened after he’d been invalided home, he’d got the details later from the bloke who succeeded him as Ash’s company commander. It was near the end of the war and the Allied side had made an advance and captured some German trenches. Ash was detailed to take these three prisoners back to his own lines, but when he got there he reported they’d tried to escape and he’d had to shoot them. His commanding officer didn’t believe him and he tried to have him court-martialled. But they couldn’t get the evidence they needed. While he was supposed to be bringing the fellows back, the Jerry artillery got going again, and what with the shelling no one could say for sure what happened. Lofty asked why he thought Ash had done it, killed those men, and this major said he’d put the same question to the officer who told him the story, and this bloke had said most likely for convenience’s sake.’
‘Convenience …?’ Bennett had found it difficult to comprehend what he was hearing.
‘He reckoned Ash couldn’t be bothered bringing the men back through the shellfire. It was easier to shoot them.’
Billy had closed his file.
‘One last thing, sir. Cook asked what sort of soldier Ash had been, and this major said he was the sort you didn’t want in your company. Not a troublemaker, but someone the other men didn’t like. A cat who walked by himself, was how he put it, but there was one thing he was good for; something he even seemed to enjoy.’
‘And that was …?’
Billy had shrugged.
‘Seems he was always ready to volunteer whenever there was a night raid into no-man’s-land. A party would slip out of the trench and crawl across to the German lines. The idea was to spy out their positions and take a prisoner if they could. Sometimes they had to deal with sentries, and that’s where Ash came in. It was his speciality; he could do it quicker and quieter than anyone else. And he always did it the same way.’
Billy saw the question in Bennett’s eyes.
‘Yes, always with a garrotte.’
Recalling now the look of distaste that had appeared on his superior’s face at that moment, Sinclair prepared to rise.
‘So here’s where we stand, sir, if the commissioner should ask. We’re still checking hotels and boarding houses in the capital and the same process will be extended to the rest of the country shortly.’
‘You’re looking for a “Raymond Ash”, are you?’
‘That’s correct.’
‘And if he’s changed his name? Got himself a new identity card?’
‘Then there’s still this photograph of him which will appear in the national press tomorrow morning. Some of the people we’ve shown it to say there is a resemblance to Ash as he is now. But only a resemblance. Whether anyone else could pick him out from it only time will tell. We must just hope someone spots him.’
The chief inspector got slowly to his feet. His earlier, halfjocular remark to the effect that he was getting too old for the demands that a major police investigation made both in time and energy were starting to sound hollow in his own ears.
‘But if it would help to pacify the commissioner, you might explain to him some of the difficulties we’re facing. Normally a criminal like Ash would be tracked down through his associates. But it seems he has none. He’s a cat who walks by himself, as that army officer so picturesquely put it, and all places are alike to him. He’ll adapt to his new circumstances. Change his name; change his appearance. He’s done it before. That’s why he’s never been caught. But he’s still in a trap and as long as the war goes on he can’t escape it — he can’t leave the country — and there are all sorts of tripwires that exist now, thanks to the emergency regulations.’
‘So you believe that we’ll get him.’ Bennett looked keenly at his colleague. ‘I can tell the commissioner that.’
‘Indeed you can, sir.’ Sinclair nodded to Billy, who had also risen to his feet. ‘But what I can’t say is when.’
21
‘So all in all you’re the hero of the hour! I’m surprised they haven’t given you a medal. Or something to hang round your neck.’
Helen directed a fond smile over her shoulder at her husband, who was lying in bed in his pyjamas, propped up by pillows piled against the bedstead. She had not yet joined him and was sitting at her dressing table brushing her thick, still golden hair.
‘Angus was grinding his teeth when I told him. He said he ought to have thought of it himself. That it was time he was put out to pasture. I tried to tell him I wasn’t claiming any credit for what he called my stroke of intuition. That it was only when you mentioned Occam’s Razor that the idea occurred to me.’