Free No Human Enemy (Suzie Mountford Mysteries) by John Gardner Page A

Road, number 65, Suzie had done the door to door with Dennis Free and Shirley Cox, turning up a file full of rumours, hints and innuendoes: ‘No better than she ought to have been,’ was the common thread. ‘Had a number of men friends – mind you I’m not accusing her of anything wrong,’ cropped up a lot, and everyone said they, ‘didn’t really know her, Doris. Not really. Kept herself to herself.’ She never went down the Star and Garter, the pub at the end of Bluefields Road where the Butlers had lived since their marriage in ’38: the fields almost devoid of grass, wasted, like a burnt piece of desert, blackened and ravaged by the railway that passed by on its way to London, and on some days slick with the smoke from the steel works.
    Even the next-door neighbour, Phyllis Carter, said she hardly ever saw Doris, but she had once successfully borrowed two chairs from her, the night her husband, Martin – a wopag with the Fleet Air Arm, currently in HMS Formidable – had been home on leave and they’d had a bit of a knees-up. ‘I arsked her to come and join us, but she never took no notice.’ When Suzie had looked puzzled she told her that a wopag (pronounced Wop. A.G.) was a Wireless Operator Air Gunner. ‘Brave buggers them wopags.’
    Tommy, in room thirty-six of The Royal Victoria Hotel, glanced in the mirror, straightened his tie and put on what Suzie called his charming face. He was ready to go out to work in the interrogation rooms down the nick. Charm he considered was half the battle. Charm beat badgering, hectoring and brutality hands down. Mind you, Tommy believed that in every charming man there was an intransigent bastard crying to get out. No wonder the newspapers of Fleet Street called him Dandy Tom.
    Yet all in all, at that moment, tired and about to face a possible killer, Tommy would have given a great deal to be with Suzie Mountford, though he’d never let her know.
    *   *   *
    In the nick, Pete Hill was what they called medium height, late thirties, running to fat with a sulky face and shifty eyes. Ron and Laura Cotter were already with him in an interview room reeking of uneasy silence. Big elegant Ron Worrall with his Roman coin cufflinks and the highly polished brogues which he wore like a badge of office, and little Laura, perfectly built with a penchant for the poems of A E Housman, her thoughts shaped to Housman’s thoughts –
    Mine were of trouble,
    And mine were steady,
    So I was ready
    When trouble came.
    *   *   *
    ‘Hallo, Pete.’ Tommy smiled at him. ‘Sorry to have bothered you, but we think you may be able to help us.’ The direct approach, using Pete’s Christian name like an old friend. People didn’t do that on first meeting, even in a holding cell or, as in this case, an interrogation room, and it threw Pete a couple of degrees.
    ‘Aye.’ A shade to the left of taciturn.
    For the first twenty minutes or so it felt almost like a casual conversation in a bar: Tommy relaxed and pleasant: Pete anxious to assist. Starting off with the whens and wheres.
    ‘We’re inquiring into the death of Doris Butler.’
    ‘Aye. Tha wants me to help wi’ inquiries. Sarn’t said,’ nodding towards Ron Worrall.
    ‘Good.’ Tommy sat himself down facing Pete. ‘You were, I believe acquainted with Doris Butler?’
    ‘Aye, ’course I knew her. She were—’
    ‘A close friend?’ Tommy cut him off.
    ‘My younger brother was at school wi’ her. That’s how I met her. I were two classes ahead of her.’
    ‘Then you were at school with her as well.’
    ‘Aye, a’were.’
    ‘When did you last see her?’
    ‘Wha’, our Doris?’
    ‘When did you last see Doris, yes.’
    ‘Saturday night the end of week before D-Day. Before invasion.’ He really said, t’invasion, but the t’ was silent.
    ‘And where would that have been?’
    ‘St Giles’ Hall. Dance. Dance there most Saturdays. I said to Alf Binns that there weren’t so many military people about.