“I think too. Sounds like you know three men who might got blood on their hands.” She raised her tiny hand and stuck three fingers in the air.
“Who’s the first Mary?”
“Why, you, Danny.” She pulled down one finger.
“I thought you said…”
“I no think that. But maybe you have a devil inside that come out sometime.”
I stared at her for a while, and believed in devils for a moment. “Maybe, Mary.
Maybe. OK, who’s next?”
She lowered the next finger. “Mr big fat bastard…”
She was right. I’d half-jokingly thought Wilson had all the attributes of a murderer. He was vicious, violent and liked hurting good-time girls who could hardly turn to the police for protection. Was that why he wanted me off the scene? The last thing he’d need was a freelancer blundering around. No one inside the force would ever suspect that the DI in charge of the hunt was the killer. He was a suspect. But not my prime one. The one I could scarcely believe. Rule out nothing, suspect everyone, check everything until you have hard proof. Those were my rules.
“He could be, Mary. Caldwell gives him the gun, Wilson kills another girl and leaves the gun with my prints on it. But if Wilson was the killer, how would Caldwell know that? And why would Wilson risk him knowing that?”
“So it Caldwell.” She dropped the last finger.
“That’s my hunch. Caldwell planted the gun with my prints on it at the site of the last murder. Caldwell is the killer.”
The detective in me – and Val’s and now Mary’s faith in me – made me cling to Wilson or Caldwell being the killer. Maybe in cahoots with each other. Tony Caldwell’s final betrayal of me. Maybe – despite my dream – he’d killed Lili in France; he’d known I was due to see her and set the Gestapo on me. Maybe he’d framed me by planting the incriminating gun on the latest victim.
What was I to believe? And who would other people believe? A CID Inspector and a decorated Army Major, or a man with a hole in his head? I could feel the noose tightening already. My brain seemed to have become paralysed.
“You get dry. Get sleep. We talk later.”
I did as I was told. At least, I lay on the tiny bed she gave me in a spare room and stared at the ceiling. So many fragments swirling around. It reminded me of the time I got so drunk that I had vertigo lying down. Yet in the debris of my life at this moment, a little Chinese woman had given me hope, just by believing in me.
Maybe that slender lifeline opened a channel in my brain, for I began to wake in the morning grasping desperately at the tendrils of a dream. The familiar one, but this time there was more. I squeezed my eyes closed and tried to project it on to my lids. I got a purchase on it and hauled it in, reel by reel, to inspect it with my conscious mind. I lay as still as a corpse. It wasn’t a dream. It was a memory of that night in Avignon. A complete memory.
The clock is striking eight and I’m walking fast down the back lanes towards the safe house. I feel the familiar knot of fear and excitement in my stomach as I choose streets which I hope aren’t being patrolled. I have good papers on me and my French will stand up to simple interrogation from the Germans, though not from a Vichy militia-man.
We have a drop coming in tonight and I need to make sure everything has been set up for it. The last load was blown completely off course and landed in the town.
It was a race across the backyards of the suburbs in the dark; we lost, and twenty Sten guns and ammo ended up in the arsenal of the Gestapo. I am determined not to lose this consignment. We have a better system of flares and I’ve doubled the number of Maquis ready to pounce on the crates.
We’ve mustered nearly thirty bicycles and one truck – Gregor’s. Perhaps more importantly, the weather is with us; a soft spring evening, a gentle breeze and clear skies. Perfect. And it has to be; I’m determined to impress Major Tony Caldwell who was dropped in by Lysander a week ago on an inspection tour of all the agents in the south west.
My boots sound loud on the cobbles and the smell of wood fires salts the air. I feel good, alive, as though every part of me has been freshly oiled and polished. And I’m seeing Lili. On business. As quartermaster for the town’s Resistance forces Lili has no time for romantic liaisons even if she did fancy me. We’re finalising the plans for tonight’s drop. She took her nom de guerre from the song we’re all humming or hearing – Nazis or Allies – on the radio stations. A funny business at times, war.
I cross the last street and head down a little alley. A path leads off it to the right. The path twists and turns at the foot of the back gardens of the neat row of houses. A fence follows the path. About halfway along is the garden door into the safe house. I turn one last corner and am almost at the door when I glimpse a figure moving away from me. The retreating walk seems familiar, a loping stride, but I can’t place it.
I walk fast past the back door; it’s slightly ajar. I quicken my pace to a jog, but when next I have a clear view, the figure has gone. Up ahead I can hear running footsteps heading away from me.
I stop, turn back and go through the gate. It’s a short garden leading to the kitchen door. There don’t seem to be any lights on. Perhaps Lili’s being over-cautious. I get to the door and I’m about to knock when I notice it’s open a fraction. I push and go into the dark kitchen. There’s a smell of soup from a big pot on the range. Lili promised me dinner. I sniff the air and think it’s caught. I turn the gas off.
I let my eyes adjust until I can see where the hall is. I walk on into the hall and there for the first time, call out softly for Lili. There’s no reply. I call again. Nothing.
I find the light switch in the hall. I walk into the tiny sitting room and see a table laid for a meal; fresh bread and two places: me and Lili. I back out of the room feeling something is wrong, very wrong. The floorboards groan as I slowly take the stairs. I call her name again as I round the corner and emerge on the landing.
There are two bedrooms. I try one and find it empty. I enter the next. I can’t see much; the curtains have been drawn and I can’t find the light switch. As my eyes adjust I see the rounded contours of a body on the bed. I walk over, dread filling me. As I get close I see that it is a woman, naked from the waist down.
I lean over and touch her shoulder and say her name.
My hand touches stickiness. I find the bedside light and my shaking hand switches it on. Lili is face down in the pillow. Her hair and the shoulders of her blouse are soaked dark red. The pillow and the bedspread are saturated. My eyes are drawn down. The cleft below her spine is oozing blood. Her white limbs are parted and blooded. Between them, lies the hilt of a bayonet.
I am paralysed with horror and grief. I don’t know what to do. I want to run. I want to hold her, give her succour. She is beyond hurting, but the bayonet goes on desecrating her. I want to remove this filthy intrusion. I lean over and gently take hold of the slippery hilt. I grip it firmly and tug. It gives, and jolts her poor limbs. It releases a fresh gout of blood. There is a foul smell from her ravished body. I pull out the vile weapon. I push her thighs together and flip the corner of the bedspread over her. I walk over to the sink and drop the bayonet in it, and begin running cold water. My bloodied hands are sticky and I have to scrub at them to get them clean.
That’s how they find me. Even as the cries in German echo through the house and their boots rush through the hall and on to the stairs, I know I’ve been set up.
I turn and wait for them.
In the Kirk I wept for me. Here in this whore’s palace, I lay grieving for her.
Eventually I eased myself up and got my feet on the floor. I wiped my face and looked around. It was a little bare room with cheap Chinese prints on the wall and some red satin throws on the bed and over the one chair.