I kept telling myself Soho was the last place they’d be looking for me. But I had my hat wedged down over my face just the same. It was lunchtime – no time to be entering a whorehouse, though there were a few half-hearted blandishments from girls on corners or their pimps. My big worry was the reception I’d get.
But I was at the end of my strength. I was dizzy with fatigue. If I wasn’t welcome here, I might as well phone Wilson and tell him to come and get me. I turned into Rupert Street and stood leaning against the door jamb and knocked.
Mary opened the door with a smile, then the smile evaporated. “You in big trouble Danny! Your picture in papers. They say you a big time no-good murderer.
I no want trouble here.”
“What? What are you talking about, Mary? Trust me. Please let me in.”
She heard the desperation in my voice and by rights should have slammed the door on this filthy tramp – newspapers or no newspapers. Instead she took a quick look round the street and dragged me into the hall. She pressed me against the wall.
“You stay here. No move.”
I stood shoulders drooping while she scampered into her parlour and came out clutching a Daily Sketch.
“You see. You see. You front page.” She shoved it at me. I took it and slid down the wall till I was sitting on the floor. I gazed at the photo and the screaming front page headlines: RIPPER ON THE LOOSE! The photo was of me. In my sergeant’s uniform. They must have got it from Army files. I looked much younger than the image I’d stared at this morning. But it still looked like me. I looked up in bewilderment. Mary was standing over me, her arms folded and her eyes slitted. I read on:
The Ripper strikes again! But this time police have a lead suspect from evidence found at the scene. A manhunt is underway to find former Sergeant Daniel McRae…”
Police Inspector Herbert Wilson told reporters that “Every murderer finally makes the mistake that catches them out. A gun was found at the scene of this latest vicious crime, covered in the murderer’s finger prints. We believe the weapon – a service revolver – was dropped when the murderer was disturbed.
Thanks to diligent police work, we are able to match the fingerprints from the gun with those of a known criminal, Daniel McRae…”
God hadn’t finished with me yet. Caldwell and Wilson were his avenging angels. I laughed, but was near my wit’s end. This fifth girl had died two nights ago, when I was lying half demented in the shed by the Serpentine. When I woke in a strange place with blood on my hands. As I read and reread the words, my flabby grip on sanity began to slip again. I thought I’d given the gun to Millie. What was it doing by the body?
I looked up at Mary. “I don’t understand. I don’t… I didn’t…” But I hadn’t a clue what I had or hadn’t done. I must have looked pathetic and not much of a threat, for she grabbed the paper from me.
“On feet, Danny. Stop messing my hall. Customers no like.”
I struggled up and she walked off and stood by her parlour door. She pointed in.
I took the hint. I shambled past her into her room. Her dazzling room. Nothing prepares the eye for this much red. Crimson dragons, scarlet cushions, cherry curtains, carmine couch, coral chairs. A room to please a vampire.
“You stink, Danny! Don’t you sit on my best sofa.” She picked up a paper from the huge pile behind the door and spread it out on her couch and then indicated I could take a seat.
I took my coat and hat off and slung them on the floor. I sat down and saw her face crease in pity for me. Was I in such a mess? “Second thoughts. No sit. Stand and take off all clothes. You need bath! I got a business to run and don’ need stinky men about place.”
Her tone brooked no opposition but I wasn’t sure I had the strength to stand up and struggle out of my clothes. Mary had ducked into the hall and was shouting up the stairs.
“Colette, get you lazy fat ass down here! We got smelly customer need bath!”
She turned back to me and saw me struggling. “OK, big baby. You need mama take your clothes off.” She didn’t wait to discuss it, just started in on me with expert fingers. “What you worried ‘bout, big baby? You think I no seen bare man before? Iseen plenty bare man.” She pushed me back on the paper and wrenched my trousers, socks and pants off and threw them in a heap along with suit jacket, shirt and vest.
She left me sitting, too drained to be embarrassed by my nudity, while she rummaged in a cupboard. “Put on.” She flung me a huge dressing gown in ruby-red satin.
“Was he a sumo wrestler, Mary?” The dressing gown reached to the floor when I had it on.
“Just big man, Danny. Very big!” Her little face crinkled and she guffawed at a memory I was glad not to share. “Now, first you have bath and shave, then food, then you talk. What you say?”
I say thank you, thank you, let me light some incense in homage to your gods, Mary, because mine doesn’t listen. Or if he does, he’s a bloody sadist.
Mary and Colette made me sit in the steaming tin bath while they added kettle after kettle of hot water. They fed me rice and sweet chicken and tea. Mary shaved me while Colette soaped me down. Bliss. I felt better than in weeks.
Colette left us and I lay back wanting desperately to sleep and let the world go to hang.
“Now, Danny. You talk.”
She slopped water on my face. I talked. I told her everything and she interrupted for more details of how I turned the tables at Kate’s house and how I got away from the police. Mary kept darting to her feet and bringing out old newspapers from the bundle by the door to check what I was saying against the public comments. The pile of soggy newsprint grew. It was a long and complicated story. I wasn’t sure it made complete sense, or that she was taking it all in. I was wrong.
“You sure you gave gun back?”
“I don’t know. Nothing seems real. Maybe I did keep it and used it to threaten that girl. Then I killed her.”
The jumble in my head could be read any way you like. I tried to think of myself in the witness box defending myself. It wasn’t a pretty thought: I think so, your honour, I’m not sure, your honour, I can’t remember, your honour, and so on until the jury was so convinced I was lying that they’d hardly have time for their first cup of tea before they were back with a guilty verdict.
“I no think that.”
“Why?”
“You no killer. I seen plenty killers. Can tell a man by how he is with girl. My girls say you kind. They want mummy you.”
No rosettes for my tigerish bedroom performance then. But I could have reached out and kissed Mary for that vote of confidence. I splashed water on my face to mask the tears that had sprung up.
She was shaking her head. “But big mistake, big mistake give gun back.”
“I should have wiped it at least.”
She nodded. She knew the trade. I forced my addled brain to think. A strand of excitement floated up from the murk. It grew as I worked through the implications of the newspaper report. This could be the first real mistake by the killer. If I had given the gun back at Kate’s place, it meant that it was planted next to the last girl’s body. Planted either by the murderer himself or by someone who knew him.
“The question is, how did the gun get to the murder site?”
Mary was nodding furiously. She was way ahead of me. “Caldwell he give big fat bastard gun. He plant gun.”
“Possible. But how does Caldwell know Wilson? And then there’s the question of timing. When did the gun get planted? At the time of the murder or after?”
“Could be strange man around. Doing all killing. And big fat bastard want you to swing.”
I fingered my neck. “The coincidences are piling up, Mary. Especially this last one: I ditch a gun with my prints on it the same night a woman is murdered. And the gun is magically whisked from Caldwell’s hands to Wilson’s and into the murder scene? No. I think I’ve already met the killer.”