Bottled Spider Read online

  There was no engine noise.

  There were shouts and calls as they started to run towards the Yard.

  Corunna and Oporto Streets emptied into Boundary Road, the most obviously named thoroughfare in the whole of Camford, marking the edge of the long stretch of railway lines running the two-and-a-half-mile perimeter of the Marshalling Yard. A panorama of destruction waited for them: a terrible inferno that made them pull up and, for a second, clutch at each other in horror.

  Fires blazed from destroyed loading bays and long snakes of flame streamed from wooden trucks on the tracks. The ammunition train close to Number Three Bay had been hit by a line of incendiaries; the goods vans and trucks engulfed from the moment the first bombs had fallen. Now, in spite of the constant spraying of water, the ammunition — mortar bombs, hand grenades and boxes of small arms rounds — had finally detonated in that last violent explosion they had taken to be another bomb.

  The railway tracks close to this last conflagration were now twisted and turned upwards, tangled around the scattered bodies of firemen and ARP people who had been caught in the blast.

  The two women headed along the scorchingly hot, jagged metal of the walkways that stretched out over the railtracks, sheds and loading bays. Smaller detonations surrounded them — hand grenades and small arms ammunition still exploded from the heart of the flames, throwing up flashes and thuds in a variety of colours — deep red, orange, blue-white; thick belching smoke rose from shattered trucks that contained aircraft tyres.

  At the edge of the walkway, where cast-iron steps descended into a turmoil of what had once been an orderly collection of rail tracks, turntables, platforms, cranes and loading ramps, a four-man team of firemen stood braced against each other, trying to direct water on to ruined wagons from which a different, thinner, kind of smoke rose almost languidly — one that smelled strongly sweet.

  ‘That’s tea, isn’t it?’ Suzie asked, sniffing.

  ‘Yes, love,’ one of the firemen laughed. ‘All wrong innit, spraying it with cold water?’

  They began to make their way across the splintered, wrenched, twisted rail tracks and were met by Pip Magnus and Dougie Catermole carrying a stretcher on which an unconscious fireman lay, his head bandaged and his uniform jacket ripped and bloodstained down one side.

  Both Magnus and Catermole looked dirty and wide-eyed. ‘Sarge, we need you.’ Magnus said. ‘There’s about a ton of dead and wounded down there.’ He nodded his head back towards where the ammunition train had blown. ‘Maybe more than a hundred. We’re trying to get them out to ambulances and crews up on Boundary Road. We’ve got to lift these people out.’

  ‘We got anyone in charge?’

  ‘They say the Chief Super’s up on the road, but I can’t find him. And I don’t believe it anyway. He’s about as much use as a wet weekend, Sarge.’

  ‘Right, and don’t call me “Sarge”.’

  ‘Sanders of the River’s down there though. He particularly asked me to get you. I told him you were around.’

  Hallo, she thought, what’s old Sanders of the River asking for me for?

  As though reading her mind, Magnus called back and said that Sanders had said she was more use than a dozen uniformed sergeants.

  ‘Praise indeed.’ Shirley said, raising her eyebrows.

  So that was one of the ways the night became a landmark for Suzie Mountford. She worked, with Shirley Cox, the other DCs and some of the uniformed men from Camford nick, until around two in the morning, helping to lift, comfort and calm the casualties from the Yard, getting them into ambulances and off to St Mary Mother’s. They had been working for a further hour or so when news came that Big Toe Harvey had been injured in a bad fall as he was helping to move a critically wounded man from a pile of metal half-a-mile or so down the tracks. He had been taken to hospital, and Magnus said he was sorry for the nurses who’d have to look after him. ‘He had a bad bronchial infection last winter.’ He grinned. ‘Chrissie — Mrs Harvey — had one hell of a time. Not the best patient in the world, our Toe.’

  Around half-past six in the morning they began to wander back to the nick, calling in at the Martha Revelton Hall to rest, have a cigarette, or get tea and a sandwich from the Women’s Voluntary Service people on duty.

  Tired, shaken and deeply troubled, Suzie saw a pile of odds and ends in a corner: bundles of clothing, a couple of suitcases, and an umbrella. Among them she spied a teddy bear dressed in a little navy-blue coat with brass buttons.

  ‘What’s this then?’ she asked one of the women, recognizing the bear dragged along by the girl who’d been on her own, tagging on to Jack’s little group of children.

  ‘Oh, don’t.’ The WVS woman pursed her lips and tears started in her eyes. ‘Children,’ she said blankly. ‘Five kids. Terrible accident. They were up on the corner of Queen’s Walk when a fire engine ploughed into them. It was so dark and the driver didn’t see ... Terrible. Driver’s in hospital: shock. Apparently he knew one of the kids.’

  ‘So did I,’ Suzie muttered, pushing herself towards the door as though she was about to vomit. Outside, she leaned against the wall and lit a cigarette, the flame from the match waving around like a piece of corn in a breeze. She pulled on the cigarette, taking in a great drag of smoke and letting it settle in her lungs until she felt it had done its job, calming her nerves. She took another drag and held the smoke in until she began to get over the immediate emotion. Her hand still trembled so much that she thought she would drop the cigarette, and she realized her face was wet with the tears running down her cheeks.

  At least Jack West would be with his mum again. She mopped at the tears. They’d be together at the mortuary and wherever the dead went on that extraordinary journey someone had once called the adventure of eternity.

  Depressed, she went back to Shirley’s digs to have a bath, and the landlady, Mrs Gibson, gave them both breakfasts, bustling around and bringing curses down on Hitler. Suzie wondered where she’d got the extra bacon and sausages from, though Shirley did say of them that she didn’t know whether to put marmalade or mustard on the sausages because the main content seemed to be bread.

  After they’d eaten and bathed Shirley offered Suzie a change of underclothes and for the first time in her life Susannah Mountford found herself wearing black silk. Until then she had retained what her mother called ‘sensible unmentionables’, which meant some of her blue serge schoolgirl underwear. Vaguely she believed only tarts wore stuff like Shirley had produced, but she found it quite a pleasant sensation. How odd, her mother had always said that nice girls only wore white cotton — ‘And you should never ever wear black.’

  ‘Parachute silk,’ Shirley said. ‘I can get some for you if you like, Sergeant. I have a source in the RAF.’

  ‘And the elastic?’

  ‘Well, that’s a bit more difficult. I can do you some lace, but miracles take a bit longer as they say. We do a nice line in mother-of-pearl buttons though, like the ones on those.’

  Back at the nick, Sanders sent for Suzie. ‘DCI Harvey’s not going to be back with us until at least early January, Sergeant. And what with the shortage of manpower and the rest I’m not going to be able to get anyone else in to take his place. Can you manage?’

  ‘As long as we don’t get too many nights like last night; and as long as there isn’t a sudden crime wave.’ To herself, she wondered if she could perhaps get something on the Balvak brothers before Big Toe came back.

  She had actually seen the Balvaks only a few hours ago. She had been with Shirley, heading back into the Yard after delivering yet another shattered body to an ambulance. They stood behind the vehicle and shared a cigarette, taking a short break before going back into the debris, dodging the fires and occasional explosions. A group of men — civilians — had come to gawp at the scene and Shirley nudged her and whispered, ‘The Balvaks.’

  ‘Where?’

  Shirley nodded towards two men, smart but a little racy in camel-hair coats and snap-brimmed tr
ilby hats, standing close together with three older men, big, broad, heavy-set bully boys with roving eyes, constantly looking over their shoulders.

  As Suzie edged closer to the group she heard one of the heavies murmur something about, ‘... the filth!’

  ‘Look at all that damage and destruction, Connie.’ one of the camel-haired commented, raising his voice.

  ‘Charlie, look at all them flames. A lot of people’re going to need help after this. Some won’t be able to meet their debts.’

  ‘The flames, Connie.’

  ‘All the colours of the rectum, Charlie.’ And they both laughed again: Connie had a soft wheezing chuckle while Charlie’s laugh was deep and barking.

  Suzie moved away with Shirley Cox at her elbow. ‘I expected something a little more fearsome,’ Suzie said as they negotiated their way back towards what had once been Loading Bay Three. ‘They’re little men. Short, vulgar little men.’

  Shirley agreed. ‘Chunky and Plush,’ she laughed. ‘But make no mistake about it, Sarge, they may be vulgar little men but they’re dangerous little men. I’ve seen some of their handiwork.’

  ‘Don’t call me “Sarge”,’ Suzie said, still very interested in the two Balvak brothers because, at the time she expected to have a lot of dealings with those two men. Other things would get in their way. ‘And what d’you mean, “Plush and Chunky”?’

  Shirley just smirked and muttered something inaudible.

  But other things lurked in the wings for Suzie Mountford. Things far worse than the Balvaks. Five days further on, unknown people were ready to enter her life and make it a waking nightmare. Some of them were here, not five minutes from Camford Hill nick. Others lived up West and around Soho.

  One of them was David Slaughter ...

  Five

  David Slaughter sits at his desk in the offices of Jewell, Baccus & Dance, on the second floor of a Regency house near Albemarle Street: a street that empties into Piccadilly some way up from the Circus that is London’s hub. It used to be said that if you stood on any corner of Piccadilly Circus for long enough you would eventually see everyone you knew.

  Jewell, Baccus & Dance are property management: an old established firm that has much to win and lose in wartime London now the bombs are falling.

  It is night and David Slaughter sits at his desk with only the green student lamp washing across the leather inlay and his large radio — the one with the fretted sunburst on the speaker — playing softly. Everyone else has gone home long ago; the two secretaries, Miss Burrage and Miss Holroyd, left hours before. Miss Holroyd only began work in September and she had scuttled off, heading back to Hammersmith at five. Miss Burrage is older and has worked for Jewell, Baccus & Dance since 1934. She thinks Miss Holroyd will soon leave because Miss Holroyd has been talking about joining the WRNS — the Women’s Royal Naval Service. ‘Personally I think it’s the uniform that’s the attraction,’ she told Mr Slaughter. ‘These girls think the uniform will get them a man. Not that Miss Holroyd has cause to worry. She could make herself very attractive, don’t you agree, Mr Dance?’ That’s what they knew him as: Joshua Dance.

  Mr Slaughter is alone. Among other things, he has listened to Carol Gibbons and the Savoy Orpheans broadcast live from the Savoy, and tonight the bombs have fallen steadily all evening, from around eight o’clock. It is now one in the morning and he has tuned to a foreign station. Listening to jazz and the scholarly commentary that goes with it.

  From childhood David Slaughter had sensed that he’d inherited the right name; knew he was an infinitely more sinister member of that group comprising dentists called Fang or Rinse, doctors named Bones or Body, and a verger he’d known long ago called Jim Tombs. Once he had also been on nodding terms with an undertaker called William Coffin. These were amusing names, but David Slaughter — who had long since changed his by deed poll — had little sense of fun or humour.

  ‘There are ten or twenty Slaughters in the London telephone directory,’ he occasionally says to himself, ‘and I’m not one of them.’

  On this night in mid-winter he senses that maybe life is about to take on a new clarity for him. But is life that important? We’re all on the same train, he tells himself, the express to Death Junction with its first, second and steerage classes. He has already been face to face with the old Grim Reaper, and there was really nothing to it. He knew that and smiled.

  The radio station still plays its late-night jazz as Slaughter smokes a cigarette and sips brandy.

  O love, O love, O careless love.

  You fly into my head like wine.

  You wrecked the lives of many a poor girl

  And you nearly wrecked this life of mine.

  He did not recognize the recording.

  Slaughter looks at his watch and thinks that maybe tonight he’ll have to wait a little longer. He wonders if the time will come when he’ll never have to concern himself with careless love ever again.

  Soon maybe he’ll have to leave: go out and play old Jack Nasty again. And then? Well —

  Jack shall have Jill

  Naught shall go ill.

  The man shall have his mare again.

  And all shall be well.

  Oh yes.

  As he waits, Emily Baccus comes into the room. This perks him up.

  She was not surprised to see him because she was aware that he often came back into the office to finish paperwork late at night. After all, he lived on the premises. She gave him her usual distant smile, then turned her back to him, adjusting her stockings. He suspected that she was teasing him when she went through this little ritual. With her back towards him she would lift the skirt of her severe dark suit and do something with the tops of her stockings. First one leg and then the other. Running her hands up and down her long thighs, making sure the stockings were just so, straightening the seams so that they ran true: like pathways from heel, up calf and disappearing under the skirt, true as a bullet. He could rarely see anything — sometimes a flash, an occasional hint of silk and lace. He could imagine it, though. Oh, he could imagine it all, for Emily Baccus was striking; tall, slender, long legs: with a wide mouth, a serious mouth, negroid lips also, large brown eyes, button nose and neat chin. Very dark hair, sleek, black, dark and deep as the woods at night. Emily Baccus wore her hair long, her eyebrows pencil thin and her fine, long lashes curled upwards. Slaughter was always one to fantasize and could spend entire nights dreaming that he was with Emily Baccus, fondling her, running his tongue over her juicy breasts, stroking her velvet thighs. If she had been that way inclined, David Slaughter would have wasted weeks serving Miss Baccus, getting into her body.

  Tonight he should have anticipated her arrival back at the office, because it was the second Wednesday in the month and she always worked late, going out and physically claiming her rent from the two Soho properties she personally owned: the two buildings close to Rupert Street which were divided into small apartments — one-or two-room affairs right for only one thing.

  ‘You’re going to collect your rents then, Emily?’ Slaughter asked.

  ‘You know me, Josh. Always collect them in person.’ That’s how Emily spoke, with a lisp. Slaughter likes her lisp. The lisp is a special shade in her voice. Very attractive, that lisp.

  ‘On the nose,’ she said. ‘Hit them late on the second Wednesday in the month: don’t mess around, then we all know where we are.’

  That is what Jewell, Baccus & Dance did. They managed properties, renting them out to businesses and individuals. Properties, large and small. They dealt with keeping up the fabric: settling small dramas; improvements; renovations; legal matters, and the cashflow from the tenant to them and from them to the owner.

  ‘Like me to come with you, Emily?’ he asked, and she gave him a supercilious smile, eyes going sideways, not looking at him directly.

  ‘Want to frighten the girls off, Josh?’ At the door she paused, turned back. Josh she called him, didn’t know him by any other name.

  He undres
sed her with his eyes and made a quick appraisal as she shrugged herself into the long coat with its big fur collar. Her suit, blouse and shoes had to be worth a few hundred at least — say two — while the little diamond pin she wore in her left lapel added a further two. The coat he had seen advertised as an exclusive from Fenwicks for a hundred and fifty. Six hundred and fifty quid or more on legs, he thought. Plus the items he couldn’t see. Add another fifty or so. And she had the guts to walk into the territory of whores.

  Slaughter’s admiration for Emily Baccus bordered on the obsessional, and she knew it. She was thinking about it as she made her way into the black, early morning streets of London, still smelling of the bombs and the anti-aircraft fire. A van being used as a makeshift ambulance clattered past, its tiny pinpricks of masked headlights hardly reaching down to the road.

  Far away there was a crump that shook the pavement and the buildings she walked past. She crossed Regent Street and took a short cut up Brewer Street. She wondered if she would see Golly tonight. She hoped so. Emily liked Golly.

  *

  Golly Goldfinch remembered the dream that had hustled him into the cold day lurking outside his window. The clouds were dark pewter and the air froze the skin even as he lay for a moment in the cramped bed.

  He remembered that it wasn’t a dream, knew it was a nightmare that had wakened him shivering and troubled; stomach churning and the rivers running down from his hairline even in the chill room. And he remembered what had wakened him. The voices were back. There had been bombs again last night. He wasn’t afraid of the bombs. It was the voices that scared him. Particularly the lady who gave him orders.

  Golly didn’t like to think of the cold night sweats and the terrors that regularly held him captive and came with the voices. Kill Joe Benton, the dominant voice had commanded with its distinctive and chilling throatiness. Kill with the wire, and it worried Golly because he didn’t know who Joe Benton was, though he remembered the name and knew what he had to do.