Comes the Dark Read online

  I waited until Beulah had finished singing before ordering a drink. By the time I’d been served she was on her next number, an up-tempo version of ‘S Wonderful’. It was as if she had pulled a switch: the audience relaxed once more and the hum of conversation had returned. For them the moment of introspection had gone, but it had touched me deeply. The song had reminded me of how alone I was in the world. I had no one to care for me, to be concerned about and equally there was no one to worry about my safety, to hold me tight in the darkness while the bombs were falling. Although a grown man, I was still an orphan.

  Suddenly the whisky tasted sour and I wanted no more of it. I wanted my bed. I wanted to pull the covers over my head and escape from my own reality.

  22

  Detective Inspector David Llewellyn gazed down at the dead girl, his eyes focused on the red smudge of lipstick on her forehead, marking out the number three.

  ‘He leaves us in no doubt it’s the same man, doesn’t he?’ he said, almost to himself.

  Sergeant Sunderland, who was rummaging through a chest of drawers, searching for clues, did not reply. He realised that he could add nothing constructive to his superior’s observation.

  ‘He’s been bolder this time,’ continued Llewellyn, still airing his thoughts to himself. ‘Coming indoors with the girl, risking being seen.’

  Sunderland gave a non-committal grunt and dropped to his hands and knees to search the floor. Surely a man could not come into a room, murder a girl and leave nothing behind. There must be some trace of him here, something, however small. He would have appreciated a little help in his search for that something but his boss remained resolutely rooted to the spot mumbling to himself.

  Llewellyn was gazing around the dingy room, bathed in a garish pink light, a sense of angry despair starting to grip him. The killer had struck again and there appeared to be no more clues to his identity than there had been with the other two murders. The bastard was laughing at them.

  Outside on the landing the old codger who’d found the body was being interviewed by a constable, but Llewellyn knew instinctively that he would not be able to add anything fresh to what they already knew, which was, in the inspector’s estimation, close to bugger-all. At this rate the murderer could go on killing for years with impunity. He could litter London with the corpses of strangled girls.

  He snatched up the girl’s bag from the chair and examined it again. There was not much in there: some lipstick and other make-up, a pack of johnnies—tools of the trade—and quite a bit of cash.

  ‘That’s all he does it for. The kicks he gets from killing. Money doesn’t interest him.’

  ‘Got something here, sir,’ cried Sunderland excitedly, extracting a small object from the bottom of the girl’s wardrobe. He thrust a leather wallet at his boss. ‘What do you make of that?’

  The two men exchanged serious glances.

  Llewellyn took the wallet and examined the contents. He grinned. ‘Yes, I think we do have something here: ID card and the address of a guest-house. Paddington area. A virtual treasure-trove. Someone up there has been listening to my prayers.’

  ‘D’you think it’s possible that our man dropped it?’

  ‘Oh, oh, boyo, we can only hope so. We can only hope. The wallet’s empty but the girl’s purse is full of cash. Too much of a coincidence, I’d say. Seems like she pulled a fast one before he did the poor cow in. We’d better act quickly on this and get over to The Mount guest house in Paddington right away. We don’t want our man to do a bunk. PC Anderson can take charge here until the pathologist turns up.’

  ‘Right ho, sir.’

  Llewellyn afforded himself a little smile as he slipped the wallet into his pocket.

  *

  A lady in a blue candlewick dressing-gown and her grey hair in curlers eventually answered the persistent ringing of the doorbell at The Mount guesthouse.

  ‘What on earth do you want? Can’t you see the sign in the window: we’re full up.’

  Llewellyn held up his badge. ‘Police.’

  ‘Lord above!’ cried the woman. ‘What d’you want? This is a respectable house.’

  ‘I’ve no doubt, but we need to speak to one of your guests.’ Her face dropped.

  ‘I suppose you’d better come in then.’

  The soldier was vaguely aware of a sudden bright light and strangers in his room. He tried to rouse himself from his drink-fuelled slumbers but his mind desperately sought the comfort of sleep. Someone shook his shoulder and called out his name. He nodded vaguely and his head thundered when he moved it. It was like a surreal dream. Strange shadows crept up the wall as two dark shapes crowded his blurred vision. He tried to speak but his mouth was dry and his tongue felt like a piece of old carpet.

  His recent past came floating back to him. He really had drunk far more than he should have. After leaving Mary he had headed for the nearest public house and started drinking. Strangely, despite having spent time lovemaking with a pretty girl, he had felt more dispirited than he had done before. It really had been an empty experience and had brought no joy to him. Neither did the alcohol but it did act as a kind of anaesthetic. When he left the pub to return to The Mount guest house he was well and truly drunk. He knew he was too far gone to attempt flagging down a taxi so it took him an hour to stagger through the darkened streets to the Paddington address. On reaching his room, he had flung his coat off and flopped, fully clothed, on to the bed and immediately fallen into a drunken coma.

  Now he was being roused from it. He heard his name being called again and then suddenly one of the dark shapes was shaking him violently in an attempt to bring him into the land of the living. His brain swished around on a sea of stale alcohol and nothing seemed to make any kind of sense anymore.

  He licked his lips, running his tongue along the cracked, dry skin and tried to speak but his mouth had ceased to work properly and his words came out in an indistinct and slurred fashion. ‘Whaddya wan’ wi’ me? Who are yuh?’ he heard himself say.

  ‘Police. We are arresting you on suspicion of murder.’

  ‘Murther? What yuh talking ‘bout?’

  ‘We’ve got to get this bastard back to the Yard and sobered up before we can get any sense out of him,’ said one of the dark shapes.

  The soldier didn’t hear the end of this sentence. He had slipped back into inebriate slumber.

  23

  Eunice leaned over and gave me a full-blown kiss directly on the lips. It was a sensuous, pleasurable experience but it couldn’t eradicate the worry I felt about the coronation. Sir Howard McLean stepped forward with the crown of Ruritania ready to place it on my head. I tried to look as regal as possible but as he approached I could see that his eyes grew suspicious. Oh, my God, I thought, he’s seen through my deception. I would be denounced as an impostor.

  And then there came the almighty screech, an insistent, high-pitched irregular screech which pierced my brain and shattered the dream like a broken mirror. Bright shards of light splintered my mind. I sat up with a start in the darkness. The cathedral, my regal robes and Princess Eunice had all vanished and like little Dorothy I was back home again. Back home in my poky bedroom in my lumpy bed with the telephone ringing fit to bust.

  I clicked on the bedside lamp and shook off the fragments of sleep and the unsettling dream. ‘John Hawke,’ I muttered into the receiver. My brain wasn’t really sharp enough yet to have formulated any thought as to who this caller could be, but I hoped that whoever it was they had a damn good reason for interrupting my coronation at three in the morning.

  ‘Good morning, boyo. Rise and shine,’ came a voice crackling out of the receiver.

  It was Llewellyn, sounding as bright as a button.

  ‘David? What the hell do you want?’

  ‘Sorry to interrupt your beauty sleep, I know how desperately you need it.’

  ‘David, you’ve heard of the point. I would be obliged if you’d get to it,’ I growled with some irritation.

  ‘T
here’s been a development in the blackout strangling case.’

  ‘I’m pleased for you.’

  ‘I think we’ve got our man.’

  ‘At last we can all sleep safely in our beds. Good-night.’

  ‘Hang on, Johnny. I’m not just ringing to tell you that. There’s something more.’

  Suddenly his voice sounded serious, apprehensive. The joviality was replaced by a kind of dark awkwardness which was unsettling. The little antennae in my brain which usually pick up danger signals started receiving messages.

  ‘What is it?’ I said warily.

  ‘Look…this isn’t something to discuss over the phone. I’d like you to come down to the Yard.’

  ‘You mean now?’

  ‘Yeah. It would be best.’

  I glanced at my watch. ‘At 3 a.m.?’

  ‘I wouldn’t be asking you if it wasn’t important.’

  I ran my fingers through my hair and sighed. ‘Now I’ll never know if I was crowned or not.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Nothing, I’m just rambling. I’ll be there within half an hour.’

  ‘Thanks Johnny. See you then.’

  The line went dead.

  What on earth was that all about? I wondered as I dragged myself out of bed. Whatever it was, the phone call left me feeling very uneasy. I was sure that it must be serious and urgent for old Llewellyn to want me to go down at the Yard in the early hours of the morning. What increased my feeling of disquiet was David’s tone of voice. I knew him well enough to sense that he was very uncomfortable about something—something that involved yours truly. Like a terrier, this thought worried at my nerves as I scrambled into my clothes.

  Ten minutes later I was out on the dark silent streets. It seemed, apart from a couple of cats rehearsing for an evening at Covent Garden, that I had the city to myself—for a while at least. I hurried as fast as I could on to Tottenham Court Road where I hoped I might spy a taxi. I was out of luck. All self-respecting Londoners were curled up in their beds at this time of day, or were down in the underground stations on makeshift mattresses and, so I reckoned, were all the taxi-drivers too. I hurried down Charing Cross Road as far as Cambridge Circus, where I spotted the lone cab, the desperate cabbie searching for fares in a deserted city. I had no trouble in flagging him down.

  The policeman on duty at the entrance to Scotland Yard directed me to a little office just beyond the gates of the great building. Here a grizzled old sergeant, who seemed to be expecting me, rang through to ‘Inspector Llewellyn’ and then told me to take a seat. I did so and waited in a nervous feet-shuffling mode for about five minutes until a young dark-haired man came for me. I recognised him as David’s sergeant. I’d met him briefly once before.

  We exchanged nods and brief tight smiles of recognition, then he took me off along a maze of dimly lighted corridors and up several flights of stairs until we arrived at David’s office.

  My old friend shook my hand gravely. ‘Glad you could make it,’ he said without a trace of his old trademark bonhomie.

  ‘I hope I’ll be glad too, after you’ve told me what this is all about,’ I said, plonking myself down on a chair opposite his desk.

  ‘As I said on the phone, I think we’ve got the blackout strangler…’

  ‘Yes, yes…and?’

  ‘Another girl was murdered tonight. Another prostitute. The killer changed his tactics somewhat. No doorway, this time. He carried out the deed at her own place. They’d gone back for sex and he strangled her on the bed.’

  ‘How did you catch him?’

  David pursed his lips and thought for a moment. ‘It was as though he wanted to be caught. After he’d done the girl in, he left the door of her room wide open so the body would be discovered pretty quickly. And she was. An old bloke who lives in the same house found her. We were there within a couple of hours of her death.’

  ‘Then we got lucky,’ intervened the sergeant. ‘We found the wallet.’

  ‘The wallet?’

  David picked up a small brown wallet from the desk. ‘This. It belongs to our man. It contains all the details we needed to pick up the owner. We found it in the dead girl’s wardrobe’.

  ‘Her wardrobe?’

  ‘We think that she took the wallet from his jacket before...’

  ‘Surely he would have noticed.’

  David shrugged. ‘Not necessarily. But maybe. Yes. Maybe.’ He leaned forward over the desk. ‘Maybe he wanted to be caught.’

  This was fanciful. Claptrap, in other words. What murderer wants to be caught? I wasn’t convinced at all. It was more wishful thinking than sound psychology. It was rare for a killer on a winning streak to feel the need to give the game up. However, I could be wrong. I let it pass for the moment.

  ‘So you caught him,’ I said, with a touch of sarcasm.

  David nodded. ‘We caught him. We’ve got him under lock and key.’

  ‘And you all lived happily ever after! Now where the hell do I come in? Why have you dragged me down here in the middle of the night?’

  Llewellyn grimaced and looked away. ‘Sort of out of courtesy, I suppose.’

  ‘What the hell are you talking about?’ Whatever the game was, I wanted it to be over.

  ‘I think it would be best if you see for yourself,’ said David, pushing back his chair and standing. ‘Come down to the cells and have a look.’

  Without any further conversation I followed the two policemen along another set of corridors and down different flights of stairs until we were in the land of the choky, the lockup. Outside cell three a burly constable was standing guard. He saluted at David as we approached.

  ‘Constable,’ said David wearily. ‘I just want have a gander at our likely lad.’

  ‘Yes sir,’ came the muted reply.

  David pulled back the metal plate of the spy-hole and stared into the cell. He muttered something to himself and then turned to me. ‘Have a look for yourself, Johnny. Feast your eyes on our murderer.’

  I looked through the spy-hole and saw a man sitting on a low camp-bed. He was staring ahead of him with an expression that I can only describe as bewildered despair. But it wasn’t his expression that made my blood run cold. It was the man’s face. It was one I knew well. It belonged to my brother.

  24

  As the sky lightened the rain came. Heavy, slashing, cleansing rain. He awoke to the sound of it beating against his window. As always it took him a while to remember the pain, to remember his fate. In those few precious waking moments before his consciousness kicked in he was his old self, his old unsullied relatively carefree self once more. The clock had been turned back. He was an innocent again. The future was his to grasp and mould into whatever shape he wished. It was like a small miracle.

  And then the miracle faded. His mind and his body brought the truth back into focus. The ache made itself known again. It too had woken and, it seemed, had renewed its vigour. Nevertheless, he would cope with it. He had to cope with it. It was part of him now.

  For a while he lay on his back listening to the rain, the insistent rhythmic thrash against the glass; then gradually his thoughts drifted back to the events of the previous night. Images, almost like faded photographs, slipped into his mind: the garish pink room, the pattern of the girl’s hair spread wildly on the pillow like tendrils of some exotic underwater creature, the way she had struggled, her body undulating, almost like the sex act itself; and her wax dummy stare of terror after he had killed her. He had never seen these things in such detail before. The first two murders had been hurried affairs carried out in darkened doorways. Last night he had had the luxury of observing the process clearly and having the time afterwards to view the scene and appreciate things. He smiled at his use of the word ‘luxury’. It seemed so ridiculously incongruous and yet so apt.

  He couldn’t go back now. No more doorways. He would kill the next one on her own bed too. It would be so satisfying.

  The sharp sudden pain in his groin wiped the glee
from his features and he grimaced. He waited for the ache to subside and then he got out of bed, padded into the little kitchen to make himself a cup of tea. He swilled down a number of the pills that the doctor had given him, along with some aspirins, hoping that they would ease the pain. Then, he sat down and lit a cigarette.

  The rain still beat against the windows.

  After a time he washed himself and shaved. He stared at the gaunt, tired features in the shaving mirror. The illness was taking its toll. His face was beginning to melt. For a moment a wave of futility swept over him. What was the point of anything really? Why bother? Why struggle on? It would be so much easier to have done with it all, to retreat for ever into that great unwaking sleep. He gripped the razor tightly pressing it gently against the jugular vein. Should he? He stared hard at his reflection, daring himself. And then his hand began to shake.

  He closed his eyes and the moment passed.

  Despite the rain and the ache, the day was calling. He had commitments to fulfil. He had to appear normal to the outside world—a little longer at least.

  He finished shaving quickly before any more unsettling thoughts could come to him, dried his face and returned the bedroom. Glancing at the clock on the bedside table he saw that it was later than he’d thought. He’d better get a move on. He didn’t want to be reprimanded for being late. He must not do anything which would draw attention to himself.

  He opened the wardrobe and reached for his uniform.

  25

  I was in some kind of daze. Seeing my brother in London was 1 surprise enough when I thought that he was serving overseas somewhere, but to find him banged up in a police cell on a murder charge just twisted up the notches on my emotional dial into shock mode. It was as though I was taking part in a play where everyone else knew the plot but me. As I gazed through the spy-hole, I shook my head in disbelief, not able to come up with anything coherent to say, so I just swore.