Bottled Spider Read online

  Now in the early hours of this day in the autumn of 1940 she had been dragged back by war to that sad, awful time and so, next morning, on her way to work she felt low and depressed.

  The walk from her flat, off Upper St Martin’s Lane, to New Scotland Yard usually took twenty-five minutes — give or take a minute. Today it took one minute less than three-quarters of an hour door to door.

  Her shift at the Criminal Records Office began at eight o’clock, so her morning routine was carefully crafted to get her to the Yard on time. You could set your watch by her. She was like that, and a note in her annual report said, ‘Pays great attention to detail.’

  Her Woolworths alarm clock, brass-coloured, strident, with two bells, faultlessly accurate, had gone off on time, but uncharacteristically she had sauntered back into a light sleep, then wakened in a panic. Even after the late start she had been vain enough to linger at the long mirror just inside the door as she straightened the high-crowned, wide-brimmed uniform hat. She looked at herself straight on, face to reflected face, turning to left, then right. She had done this for as long as she could remember, certainly as a schoolgirl in blazer and pleated skirt at St Helen’s.

  Her elder sister, Charlotte, just under a year older, said Suzie had done the mirror business when she was at kindergarten long before the not-so-gallant Galloping Major appeared and unaccountably ensnared their mother’s heart and, possibly, her body also though they didn’t like to think about that. There is a time for all children to believe they were conceived by some arcane method unknown to the medical profession.

  In the shadowlands of her mind, Suzie had thought that the face and figure she presented in the mirror were both quite fetching. She was tall, slender, got her looks and golden brown hair from her mother, and the huge, steady green eyes from her father. Also she looked good in the police uniform, collar and tie, the long military jacket with silver buttons and the calf-length skirt. Suzie reckoned she would make a good jailer for some nice man’s heart one day, only he would have to hurry up and come along soon otherwise the bloom would be off her.

  Outside, the detritus of the raid lay across the road and on the pavements, making walking a bit of a hazard, even in her no-nonsense regulation shoes. As she’d walked down to Charing Cross Station the air itself felt as though it was singed.

  But there was a suspected UXB — unexploded bomb — in the station forecourt, close to the cross itself, now swathed in sandbags. Now, this morning, even the great railway station was closed. This meant a diversion, back up the Strand through a sidestreet, picking her way down to the Embankment, the water sparkling in the autumn sunshine as she crunched through the gravel of glass. Above her the silver barrage balloons swayed and swam in the blue sea of sky, beautiful things with their snub noses and stubby tails, protecting the city just by being there.

  At one point she had to step around where a flight of incendiaries had dropped and been extinguished right there in the road. The asphalt was scarred with pools of black and white scorch marks, where the ARP people had used their stirrup pumps to smother the things; so Suzie played a kind of hopscotch, dodging between the little tail fins and what was left of the melted tubular casings and the burned-out thermite.

  Even though the sun shone it was a chilly morning, so, already tired from the bomb-creased night, she pulled her raincoat around her, hitched the strap of her gas mask and tin hat, which were bouncing heavily against her hip, high on her shoulder, and tried to increase her stride.

  The soundtrack in her head played ‘A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square’. In her mind starlight speckled the streets, and the angels dining at the Ritz sipped Potage St-Germain. The last time she was home her mother had a copy of the sheet music on the piano and she had been a shade bewildered because in brackets after the words Berkeley Square, they had the pronunciation as Bar-klee Square. Someone, she thought, would have to be pretty dense not to know how to say Berkeley Square.

  The people she passed in the street all looked tired and some had the worm of fear in their eyes. It wasn’t fun being bombed night after night: knowing the people you saw in the morning, young and alive, could be dead by midnight. She could be dead by midnight.

  It was the last week in November, she thought: it wasn’t going to feel a bit like Christmas, even though some of the West End shops said they would decorate their windows with holly and paper chains.

  Before the Blitz, the scent of London was one of soot and burning coal. Now you woke to new smells: cordite, gun cotton or whatever explosives the Luftwaffe used, mixed with smoke and a different kind of grimy dust from the fragments of bricks and mortar floating in the air. As she passed through the gates of New Scotland Yard she glanced up at the red and white ornate brick building as though she expected it to have been blown away, and was surprised to see it still stood intact, just as the architect, Norman Shaw, had designed it in its Victorian Gothic glory.

  ‘You’re late. Mountford!’ Sergeant Fulbright, the CRO Sergeant, ramrod-backed with a short, bristling moustache that made Suzie think of walruses.

  ‘The raid, Sarge,’ she grinned, taking off her raincoat and hat, letting her hair spring out as she hung gas mask and tin hat on the peg over her coat.

  ‘Sarge nothing. Miss Mountford. Raid nothing as well. Enemy action’s no excuse for being late unless you was killed; and you weren’t killed, was you?’ His voice rose to a small screech at the end of the sentence, demanding an answer.

  ‘No, Sarge.’

  ‘Don’t call me “Sarge”. I was in the raid as well, young lady. Am I late?’ He squeaked again: more like a seal now. He’ll have a heart attack, or maybe start playing ‘God Save the King’ on a row of motor horns.

  ‘No, Sergeant.’

  ‘Right. Learn from that. You are to report to the A4 superintendent immediately. Understand?’

  ‘Yes, Sarge ... Sergeant. What for, Sergeant?’

  ‘I am not privy to the A4 super’s intimate thoughts or whims. Nor do I know what you’ve been up to, Miss Mountford. Make sure your conscience is clear.’

  Lawks! she thought, wondering if she had broken some sacred rule.

  You didn’t hang around when the A4 office called on you, so she all but ran to the lift — running was not tolerated inside the building — and up the corridor to the superintendent’s anteroom. Her hand came up automatically to tidy an imagined unruly strand of hair.

  ‘Sit down, WPC Mountford.’ A4 Branch was the Women’s Police Branch and the superintendent was an angular lady, sharp-featured with a neat eye that flicked between Suzie and an open file on her desk. On the wall behind her, King George VI and Queen Elizabeth stared benignly into the office.

  The superintendent coughed, moving her hand across the file. Suzie saw she wore no rings and that the hand was brown and leathery — like a kipper, she considered — reflecting the outdoor life which the super was reported to lead. ‘You’ve been in CRO for about a year, yes?’ She had an amazing drawl, throttling vowels and spitting them out like invisible chewing tobacco.

  ‘Yes, ma’am.’

  ‘About a year, yes?’ she repeated, pushing the file away and raising her head to look at Suzie, the eyes without warmth, full of reserve and suspicion. She gave a second little cough. ‘You have good office skills and use your common sense, yes?’

  ‘Ma’am.’ That simply meant that WPC Mountford got on with her work and didn’t have to be told to file A under the As and B under the Bs.

  ‘Well you seem to be the right type.’ The Women’s Branch was under instructions to recruit ‘the right type’, meaning lower middle-class, reasonably educated girls, not vinegary spinsterish women.

  ‘Your last report from CRO says that you need a challenge. Mmm? Need stretchin’, what?’ Down went another G. She lost Gs like some people lose silver threepenny bits.

  Never explain, never complain, never volunteer.

  ‘You’d enjoy a challenge, Mountford? Enjoy bein’ stretched?’ She did not wait for an answ
er. ‘We’re in need of young women to take the place of men bein’ called to the armed forces. Our more experienced officers’re classified in reserved occupations, but we’re losin’ younger men to the services. We particularly need people to work in CID. You think you could do that, yes?’

  ‘I know I can do it, ma’am, yes.’ The Criminal Investigation Department would be the apogee. For a brief moment she saw herself at the sharp end — catching the villains, snooping around the scenes of serious crimes, interrogating suspects until late into the night; feeling the collars of murderers, jewel thieves, bank robbers, all mad, bad and dangerous, they ought to be locked up, given a taste of the cat, which, like hanging, was still an option.

  ‘Should really send you to Regency Street to do the detective course, but time is of the essence and we’re short on the ground. You’ll be made up to actin’ temporary Woman Detective Sergeant and report to Detective Chief Inspector Harvey at Camford Hill Police Station.’ She kept her eyes buttoned on to Suzie’s face as she explained the fine print. In her spare time she would have to study for the Sergeant’s Exam. She’d be assessed in six months and eligible to sit the exam next year.

  ‘You’ll learn a great deal from DCI Harvey, so you should sail through the detective course as well. Everything clear? No questions?’

  ‘Yes. ma’am. No ma’am.’ Then, in her head, Three bags full, ma’am.

  ‘Right, Sergeant Mountford. Get yourself organized, report to DCI Harvey by two o’clock this afternoon. Good luck. Don’t let us down.’

  It was like an end of term interview with the headmistress. The worst thing you could do was let down your colleagues and friends.

  Camford Hill was in West London, almost out in the sticks. Way beyond Knightsbridge and Kensington, it was ten or eleven square miles of London policed from Camford Hill Police Station, which was really in Camford High Street and well known for its tradition of solid reliability. If she had to be posted out of the centre, out of the West End and Westminster, this would be the best place to go.

  I’m putting all my eggs in one basket, she sang in her head as she went down the main staircase at the Yard, and considered logistics — I’m betting everything I’ve got on you.

  Camford Hill was a good three-quarters of an hour by tube from Leicester Square, so she’d have to be up earlier than ever in the mornings. And she’d probably be home later as well. In CID you worked excessively long hours.

  Collecting her coat, hat and gas mask, she told Sergeant Rex Fulbright about her promotion — ‘Don’t get too big for your boots, mind, young lady’ — then went home and put a trunk call through to her mother to give her the news: thank heaven she was on more friendly terms with her mother now. Not as it had been when she told them, twenty months after the accident.

  She was going to be Mrs Gordon Lowe, her mother had said. Going to be wife to Major Ross Gordon Lowe (who made it sound like a double-barrelled name by putting a non-existent Ross before the Gordon). He had the DSO and Bar, a retired Great War officer, now agent for the local Conservative Party Member of Parliament. To them, the marriage was almost a greater shock than their father’s accident.

  It was the first time they could recall being really at odds with their mother. They were numbed by it, hurt deeply like a blow to the head, mainly because they hadn’t finished grieving for their father. In particular, Suzie remembered a furious, terrible, stand-up scene with her mother, when they were told that their young brother James had agreed to give his mother away. The girls flatly refused to be part of it, and on the day itself, Charlotte went around quoting bits of Hamlet, loudly and within earshot: the part about the funeral baked meats providing the wedding breakfast.

  Now, in the flat as she changed into her grey twin set and the heather mixture skirt she dragged her mind from the past unpleasantness; checked her stocking seams, then her hair and face in the mirror and went out: walking up to Coventry Street and the Lyons Corner House where she got two poached eggs on toast and a pot of tea.

  ‘You’re lucky today,’ the ‘nippy’ told her. ‘Didn’t have any eggs yesterday. These came fresh up from the country this morning. We’ll be sold out by one o’clock.’

  After lunch, Suzie took the Tube from Leicester Square out to Camford, and realized that her timing was well out. She had one change and it took her almost an hour and a half, including the walk from Camford Hill Underground station to the nick. There would be more trains during the rush hour, but the journey was still going to take at least an hour, even on a good day.

  She had bought a copy of the Evening News and she flicked through it on the train, wishing they would make newspapers smaller. She always had difficulty managing the big double pages — especially in public. It was all war news apart from a story on page four, headed MISSING GIRL HOUND STRANGLED. A fourteen-year-old girl — Barbara ‘Bubbles’ Bachelor — had been missing from her home in Acton for twenty-four hours. Now she had been found, back in her home again, strangled with piano wire. ‘Some of her clothing is missing,’ the report stated with sinister connotations. Suzie shivered.

  Camford Hill nick — the police station in Camford High Street — was a block-like square concrete building (c. 1920) recessed between three shops and Camford Post Office.

  Inside, at the front counter, she had the impression that officers seemed to be moving about with purpose, and a duty sergeant greeted her with a courteous, ‘Yes, madam, and what can we do for you?’

  She was expected, but the Chief Superintendent was away, attending a meeting at the Yard, so a shy, sandy-haired, smiling uniformed superintendent welcomed her to Camford Hill, enquired about where she was living, sucked his teeth on hearing the length of her daily journey, then took her down to the Criminal Investigation Department’s office — a large, long, narrow room in the basement, not unlike the CRO at the Yard. A heavy upright Underwood typewriter sat on a desk near the door; next to it was a pile of blank paper, one sheet already positioned in the rollers, like a museum exhibit of an Edwardian office.

  There were two telephones that she could see, with a third just visible in a partitioned office at the far end; a bright glare of strong electric bulbs was reflected off the green washed walls. There was no natural light. A map of London took up most of one wall, the various Metropolitan Police Divisions marked out in a wheel of colours, each with its designated letter of the alphabet. Camford Hill was O Division, and next to the London map there was a large-scale street map of the Camford Hill area.

  Near the door, coat hooks were screwed to a wooden batten: just like school, only as well as the hats and coats — no man would be seen without a hat — there were the gas-mask cases and tin helmets. The smell was also a memory of school: a touch of boiled cabbage from the canteen up the corridor, damp serge, and a hint of chalk. A blackboard was pushed into a corner, presumably for briefings, and at the far end of the room a glass partition separated the DCI’s office from the peasants. The DCI wasn’t home.

  Three men worked at the desks, while another, ginger-haired and improbably young, talked guardedly into the telephone. He finally put down the instrument and called to a fifth person, a young woman, who was gathering papers together in the far office.

  ‘Shirley!’ he called. ‘Super’s here with a young lady.’

  ‘Hardly a young lady,’ the shy superintendent said with a hint of a smile. Bashful, Suzie thought. Bashful in Snow White. ‘Your new sergeant. Sergeant Mountford.’ Then, realizing what he had said, the super made a hopeless gesture, rolled his eyes and muttered something about of course the sergeant was a young lady. ‘Let you get on with it, then.’ He did an exaggerated shrug, mumbled that he should be going, made an indecipherable gesture using both arms and awkwardly left. Bashful and Dopey, she decided; both, she thought. Snow White and the Five Dwarfs. Nice, but ...

  The girl who came out of the office obviously modelled herself on the film star Hedy Lamar — the sultry look; a dangerous figure and hair that shone black smooth, short and sil
ky. She wore a knitted dress, pale blue, tight enough to show in relief where her suspenders lay on her thighs. ‘We knew you were coming, Skipper, but we didn’t know you were a lady, if you see what I mean.’

  ‘According to the super, I’m no lady.’

  Their chuckles were unconvincing, and the ginger-haired young man took a pace towards her holding out his hand. ‘DC Catermole,’ he introduced himself. ‘Dougie Catermole. “Ginger” Catermole. Socializing isn’t old Sanders of the River’s strong point.’

  ‘Sanders of —?’

  ‘Superintendent Sanders, Skip. Assistant Station Commander. Not very good with people. He’s better moving bumf around.’

  The other detectives drifted over and introduced themselves. Mortimer; Pinchbeck; Richards. All friendly enough but with a sense of holding back, as if their new sergeant was not yet really one of them.

  ‘So, you’re Shirley,’ Suzie said when finally left alone with the WDC.

  ‘Yes,’ she nodded. ‘Shirley Cox. You can imagine how Big Toe plays around with that.’

  ‘Big Toe?’ Suzie queried, ignoring the crudity that embarrassed her.

  ‘DCI Harvey. Tony Harvey. Big Toe. The Guv’nor.’

  ‘Ah.’ The senior officer was always ‘the Guv’nor’ and the sergeant was ‘Skipper’.

  ‘And he’s where?’ she asked.

  ‘With DC Magnus and DC Thomas, Skip. Coming to grips with a nasty bit of GBH.’

  ‘Domestic GBH?’

  Shirley Cox shook her head. ‘Not domestic. Very serious. A couple of bits of brass from down the Cut got themselves done over.’

  ‘You’re going to have to explain the geography to me, Shirley. The Cut?’

  ‘Not for me to do that, Skipper. The Guv’nor likes to take new arrivals on a conducted tour.’