Bottled Spider Read online

  He loved that voice, the woman’s voice, persuasive, powerful. He also feared it, because if he didn’t do as it commanded he knew that he would be tortured and something terrible would happen. Nobody had told him this, but he knew it. He didn’t have to be told something like that. It just was. Any fool could see that.

  Before, the voice had not been so specific. Just things like: ‘You must take the train to Cambridge. A girl will be there for you to kill.’

  He got up, disturbed about the familiar name — Joe Benton — unable to link the name with a face or body. The person was just out of sight and he wondered why he was being told to kill a man. Before, it had always been a woman. A girl even — well, a couple of times it had been a girl. Like two weeks ago, and afterwards he’d seen her picture in the paper. She looked a pretty little thing, nothing like she’d looked when he left her.

  Golly washed, shaved and dressed, did the usual things, cleared the blankets from the bed, stored them away in the cupboard, opened the window just like Lavender told him. The same as he did every morning. He liked the order she brought to his life. Golly had problems if the routine was changed or altered in any way. Kill Joe Benton, he remembered.

  Lavender was good to him, very good. Yes, she was his cousin, and he did give her protection of a kind, but he thought she was better than anyone. She even gave him a ride now and again. ‘Don’t be sad, Golly,’ she would say. ‘I like to help, and there’s no other woman would open up her honey for you, baby.’

  He brought the carpet sweeper in from the tiny room off the equally tiny kitchen and ran it over the carpet — straight strokes across the room, like the lines of a well-mown lawn. Then he went out and did the hall, then Lavender’s room.

  Golly liked doing Lavender’s room and he took great pains with it. He dusted the brass head of the small bed before he moved the mat so that he could get the sweeper under the bed, then plumped up the big coloured cushions she liked. Nobody else was around, so he sneaked a look in the drawer: held the silky things to his face. He liked the things she wore.

  He dressed with great care, put on his mask and the hat before getting into his coat. A new mask every morning. An oblong of white cloth with strings of cotton at each corner. Doctors used them when they were doing operations, so that they wouldn’t breathe germs on to the patients, or on to the open wounds as they performed the surgery.

  But for Golly this was a mask to hide his lower face from the nose to beneath his chin. It was ideal for him; necessary. People who had known him all his life still preferred him to have his nose and mouth covered and the large-brimmed hat on. They said that they could take seeing him without the mask, but they did not like the reaction of folk who were not used to him.

  Lavender would say that he was better than any guard dog. ‘One look at Golly’s face and they’d beat all records running from the flat. Beat Jesse Owens even,’ she used to say.

  As well as looking after her when she was working, and being her cousin, Golly was Lavender’s friend and he was worried. The girls were leaving earlier and earlier these days to get out of the way of the bombs. There was plenty of trade but it was usually all over by five o’clock.

  Lavender said she didn’t know how she was going to manage if the Germans didn’t stop their bombing. If it wasn’t for her hardy annuals she’d be in Queer Street, she moaned. ‘You’re one of my hardy annuals, aren’t you Golly? You come up real nice.’ And Golly would laugh at that. Sometimes it would be his snorting laugh, on the brink of losing control, so that Lavender had to speak sharply to him. She was never cross with him for long though. She really understood him, knew him inside out.

  When he went out, Golly crossed Brewer Street, under the arch and on into Berwick Street Market, where he helped out some of the stallholders; not serving of course, but humping boxes and crates around, tidying up, getting rid of spoiled stuff, feeding the rabbits they sold — not for pets, but to be nurtured for the table. He liked the rabbits.

  Lavender started at noon: midday. She started at midday and before the war she had often still been in the flat, working at midnight. But that had all changed. Even Edith the Maid liked to leave early. She had to go all the way back to Camford Hill and had two teenagers and a husband who had been at Dunkirk. ‘Lucky to get back in one piece,’ Edith the Maid said. Life was hard for Edith, and Golly was worried because Lavender had a place over in Camford as well, and Edith the Maid said she ought to come over to Camford Hill permanent and work there.

  ‘Safer,’ Edith said and Lavender had told her she’d think about it. ‘You’d get well looked after in Camford,’ Edith told her. ‘You’d be really safe.’

  ‘It’s safe when old Golly’s here,’ Lavender would say. ‘One look at Golly and they think the monsters are around.’ Golly could make anyone wince. You just had to look at that face without the mask, scarf and hat. It made strong men feel cold shivers up the short hairs on the back of their necks.

  Mind, Lavender didn’t sleep in the flat. Her first rule was never to live over the shop. She had a nice little house, buried away in the outlying Borough of Camford. Quiet street where she lived, with plane trees sprouting from the pavement. It was modern and had every possible convenience, and she’d bought it after she left off living bang with Gilbert Carpenter who got sent down for life. Such a nice young man, Lavender’s nan used to say. Always so well dressed and smart. Gilbert Carpenter was in fact a petty criminal. Bit of a gangster really. Golly had been over there, to the house, once and thought it was lovely. You’d never know what Lavender did near Rupert Street if you had only seen her at home. It was so nice, and now she lived with another bloke — Laurence. Laurence Lattimer. Same name as some bishop who was burned to death at the stake, but he only had one T. Lavender said that he was one of Laurence’s forebears, and he ‘chose the steak because he didn’t fancy a chop’. Bit of a wag, Lavender. A bit of good as well with her blonde hair bright as a brass button.

  Golly was glad now that it was winter. In the wintertime he could wear a hat and keep a muffler over the lower part of his face with a comfort that wasn’t possible in summer. Golly was no fool. A little unbalanced, yes. But not a fool.

  About twelve forty-five he was all done and walked back up Berwick Street to the private bar of the Blue Posts, where they knew him. He’d have a beer, then get back to Lavender.

  ‘Ey up, it’s the man in the iron mask.’ Mickey the Mangle leaned against the bar. The ‘public’ was chock-a-block with people, but the usuals were in the ‘private’ — the regulars.

  Mickey, Bruce and Billy Joy-Joy were on their own in the ‘private’. When he was quite young, Golly had asked Mickey why they called him ‘the Mangle’ and he had laughed, ruffled the back of Golly’s hair and said, ‘Don’t you worry your pretty little head about that.’ This had caused much hilarity at the time. Pretty little head. Very droll.

  Bruce the Bubble and Billy Joy-Joy still laughed about it when they’d had a few. ‘Remember the time Mangle told Golly not to worry his pretty little head about it.’ And they would cling on to each other and laugh.

  ‘Usual?’ the Mangle asked Golly.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, distracted, because the wireless was on, turned up loud for the news. After Dunkirk, when everyone said the German parachutists would come any day dressed as nuns and priests, they made the announcers and those who read the news start giving out their names first. Up until then it could have been anyone announcing. Nobody knew. Now it was ‘This is the news and this is Alvar Lidell reading it,’ or Bruce Belferage, ‘or Kumquat,’ Billy would say. They even had ladies reading stuff.

  Golly knew all that.

  He listened now to the lady as she said, ‘It’s one o’clock. This is the news from the Home and Forces Programme, and this is Jo Benton reading it.’

  Oh, that Jo Benton, Golly thought. Now he understood. Yes. Kill Jo Benton. Kill with the wire, he thought. Of course. Jo Benton the announcer. And he knew where she lived because both Lavender and E
dith the Maid said she lived out in Camford Hill. He’d ask Edith the Maid for the address. She’d know.

  Then he’d do it.

  Six

  The noises dissipated: the scuffles, croaks and the retching cries had gone. Now the house was cold and silent except for the thudding of his heart and the sound of his hard breathing. Both seemed to fill his ears, so when the doorbell rang it was like something ripping through him causing him to flatten himself against the wall.

  His head moved to the right, slowly, like a turtle’s head, and he sensed the person on the other side of the front door. In his mind he saw the visitor as a man, huge and looming. Then the doorbell slashed at him again and once more he felt the shadow moving against the blackout material.

  In his head with the rasp of the bell he had a vivid picture of a village green and rooks flapping upwards in a great cawing flock from skeletal trees. He wondered if this was a real memory or something conjured from a dark corner of his mind. He couldn’t remember being in a village with trees like that, and the big sinister rooks flying up, though his mother had told him often of the place where he was born back in 1901: a village in Dorset where she had been sent to have the baby. He thought that this might just be a stored memory, tucked away from one of those first nipple-sated pram rides.

  He stood still as stone, mute as a maggot: terrified. It was terror that gave him the buzz, the best thrill ever. Unforgettable.

  The shape at the door fussed around, moving, getting larger, bending down to rattle at the letterbox, using the knocker. Shave-and-a-haircut-me-next. Then calling through the flap:

  ‘Jo? Jo? It’s me. I know you’re back. I know you’re home.’ A young voice. A girl.

  Then — ‘Maybe you’re in the bathroom. I’ll come back in live or ten minutes.’

  The shape grew, then vanished. Nobody there. Nobody home, he thought, as he tapped at the kitchen door with his gloved knuckles, letting it swing back softly, allowing the sliver of light to stab into the hall. If this was a film it would have been carol singers at the door, so close to Christmas.

  She lay just inside the kitchen door as though she was asleep, hands above her head which lolled sideways, the hands palm out as if she was surrendering; agreeing to her death. Below, her dark skirt fanned over the floor. His shoulders ached from the exertion of killing her and the room still seemed to be full of the violence.

  It was hot and sticky as well because of having the pan of water boiling on the gas hob. She’d known something was wrong as soon as she came in through the back door. ‘Oh,’ she’d squeaked. ‘What on earth? Someone’s left a pan on ... Who ...?’ Then he was on her. Hadn’t expected her to come in the back. Thought she’d come in the front.

  He bent down from the knees, taking a bunch of the material in his hand. Lifted her skirt for the final indignity. God, he thought, I wish she’d close her eyes. He’d do the eyes later. He put his knife on the carpet. Like a bookmark. Remind me where I’m at.

  But the caller would return. There was no time to wander through the house, or sniff out Jo Benton’s secrets. ‘Where the bee sucks, there suck I,’ he sang softly, so nobody could hear.

  In his head he again saw the rooks rising, agitated from the trees, and heard their cacophonous caw.

  *

  Suzie Mountford came down the steps of Camford Hill Police Station with Pip Magnus desperately attempting to match his stride to hers. He found this difficult because while he was a tall man, his legs were short. He reminded Suzie of one of those toys for toddlers: the ones with a wheel of legs below a plywood Goofy or Donald Duck head and body. Small children pushed them along with a stick, and little bells jingled as the legs whirled round. Ben had one in Overchurch but he couldn’t walk with it of course.

  Suzie, on the other hand was blessed, or cursed, with legs that went up for ever making her shoes into fairytale seven-leaguers. The shoes were sensible, a present a year ago from the Major. Clarke’s, she thought. A present from the Major? She thought, strange. What was he after? She’d wondered at the time.

  It was just after eight in the evening. She had been about to leave when Sanders of the River had sent for her. Now God knew when she would get home: probably not tonight. Shirley would offer her a bed at her place but she would probably stay at the nick. She’d try to get home though, she decided. Depended on Jerry really. If he came over tonight or not.

  ‘You want me to drive, Sarge?’ Magnus dangled the keys to the unmarked Wolseley, swinging them like a hypnotist doing the business. She had given up telling them not to call her “Sarge” and it crossed her mind that Magnus was being sarcastic: extracting the urine. Who else would drive?

  She gave him the look and he shook his head saying, ‘I mean Skipper! Sorry, Skip!’

  Her hand came up automatically to tidy an imagined unruly strand of hair. ‘We could walk it in five minutes, Pip, Coram Cross Road.’ As she said it she went resolutely towards the car which had been brought around to the front. It wouldn’t do to arrive at a murder site on foot, and Loamy Lomax had thought it a good idea to have the car out front in case of the reporters. ‘There are reporters up at the house,’ Loamy said. ‘It’s going to be in the papers this one.’

  ‘Drive it in two,’ Magnus opened the car door for her, then went round and got behind the wheel. ‘There was this penguin walked into a pub —’ He turned the key in the ignition.

  ‘I know it.’ She didn’t even smile. ‘The penguin says, “Have you seen my dad?” and the barman says, “I don’t know, what’s he look like?”’

  ‘That’s the one.’ Pulling away into the light traffic, Magnus glanced at her in the mirror and wondered if he was going to have to hold her hand through this? Suddenly it’s all gone and she’s got no confidence, he thought. Tremendous in the Cut the other night when the bombs were falling. Today it’s all gone. Aloud he said, ‘This duck walked into a pub.’

  She sighed.

  ‘Said to the barman, “Can you spare a piece of bread for a hungry duck?’”

  Within herself Suzie was troubled. Here I am, she thought, Detective Sergeant, twenty-two years old; healthy hair and teeth; walking into a nightmare. Even Shirley said it was a nightmare when she spoke on the phone. ‘Sammy Richards has just lost his tea. It’s a hundred times worse than those bodies down the Cut, Skip!’ Shirley said.

  Suzie’d had her hair cut short after what they were now calling the Blitz of Camford Hill, because it had constantly blown across her face and into her eyes when they were bringing people up from the Cut. Now it was sleek and short and heavy, what her mother would have insisted on calling en brosse. She reflected as she worried her bottom against the passenger seat thinking, Bloody hell, did it have to be today? Did this have to happen on one of my bad days?

  The bad days had lived with her since she was a teenager; sudden depressive plunges into total lack of confidence. They seldom lasted more than twenty-four hours, but when they struck, the world went from bad to worse and she felt useless: fat, ugly and totally useless.

  Back in the nick, fifteen minutes ago, Sanders of the River had looked at her with flickering, weak dirty-grey eyes and said, ‘I don’t like it, Suzie, but I don’t have any option. Everyone else is tied up. I’ve been on to the Yard and they can’t spare anybody. I told them this is a relatively “known” victim — an announcer: BBC — but they’ve still said no. Just haven’t got the manpower. Tony Harvey won’t be back until the New Year, as you well know, so I have to put you on it. Suspicious death.’

  ‘You won’t be calling in the Yard?’

  ‘Did you not listen to what I said? The Yard can’t spare anyone. However, once you’ve started the investigation you must telephone Detective Chief Superintendent Livermore of the Reserve Squad at the Yard. Take his lead. Take his advice. If things get very difficult he’ll come down, but that’s a last resort because he’s on three cases up west at the moment. He’ll guide you through things and step in if it’s really necessary. Experienced man. Tommy Live
rmore, but we’re bloody short of bodies. You’ll have to do the best you can. You’re getting on famously, Susan, and I’m always here if you need me.’ He was the only one who called her Susan, though a couple of the uniformed sergeants called her Sue.

  ‘Very good, sir.’ It wasn’t very good but Suzie would have been stupid to point that out. She reckoned Sanders of the River knew it already.

  She had yet to meet the senior officer at Camford Hill, the Chief Superintendent. He was away again on another course. ‘He’s been round more courses than Gordon Richards,’ Catermole observed. Gordon Richards had already been a champion jockey a number of times.

  Wilf Purser came out with it straight and said he thought the Chief Super was bomb happy and had been ever since the Blitz of Camford Hill, when, they were reliably informed, he had locked himself in his office and refused to come out. ‘He’s not on any course,’ Wilf said. ‘He’s on indefinite leave and we’re going to be landed with Sanders of the Weedin’ River as senior station officer, and he’s about as much use as a wet weekend. It’s absolutely porous.’ Nobody had sighted the Chief Super anywhere on the night they bombed the Cut.

  ‘Porous?’ Suzie asked.

  ‘Porous piss,’ Wilf explained.

  That was probably what they thought of her, Suzie imagined. Sergeant Porous Mountford. For WDS Mountford to be put in charge of a murder was about as useful as putting her in charge of a Spitfire. Come to that, putting her in charge of anything in police work more daunting than a typewriter was a long shot. Suzie was suffering from a complete breakdown of confidence. It was something that happened every few weeks.

  Magnus went on with his duck joke. ‘This duck goes into a pub, says to the barman, “Can you spare a piece of bread for a hungry duck?” The barman says, “No, I’ve got no spare pieces of bread. We don’t like your sort in here. Get out.”’

  Today she was convinced that Sanders of the River knew it, and most of her colleagues knew it as well. When she was like this she would wonder why they put up with her at all.