Bright Young Things Page 20

  Then it was Vic’s turn. The slope was steeper than he’d realized and twice he stumbled and rolled but he reached the bottom in one piece. The rest should have been easy. Light the girl’s dress and let the flames destroy any evidence that this was not just an unfortunate accident with fatal results.

  Standing back, out of harm’s way, Vic had watched the fire take hold and for a wonderful, exhilarating moment he had told himself that they were home and dry.

  And then he had heard voices.

  Vic had never moved so fast, uphill, struggling against the brambles and the tree roots, but he made it.

  He could hear the men struggling now to beat out the flames and knew it would be only a matter of time before the police arrived. He ventured to climb back on to the road only when he judged he was about a mile away.

  Vic smiled, remembering. He’d felt euphoric, invincible, but not certain now that the deception would work; not knowing how much evidence the fire had destroyed. Reaching the car he found the girl in the front passenger seat, stunned and confused, a blossoming bruise on her chin.

  ‘She tried to shout when those others came,’ Ben told him. ‘We couldn’t have that, now could we?’

  ‘You could have knocked me down with a feather,’ Vic told himself. He recalled the moment he had realized that no one had questioned the identity of the girl in the car. Mal Everson apparently remembered nothing.

  ‘Never know what you can do until you try,’ Vic told himself. ‘You just never know.’

  NINETEEN

  ‘I’m assuming you found nothing,’ Henry said.

  ‘Then you’d be assuming wrong, though how much, I don’t know.’ Mickey described the box and the lock. ‘It was regularly maintained, and recently used, I would have said.’ He showed Henry the handkerchief. ‘Traces of a light oil,’ he said. ‘And there was this.’ He waved the tiny twist of paper. ‘A scrap of thread and a bead. I would be willing to bet that the dress Faun Moran was wearing on that beach had been in that box and this is a bead from it. But on its own it proves nothing.’

  ‘No, it does not, though I suppose it’s more than we had an hour ago. And I’m more convinced that Caxton is up to his neck in this business, as is Vic Mullins. The proving of it is another matter.’

  When they arrived back in London they were told that Vic Mullins had been asking to see them and had been making a lot of noise about it. Henry decided that he could wait a little longer and went to speak to his superintendent about the possibility of getting a warrant, but it was in more hope than expectation and he was inevitably disappointed. A fragment of thread and one single bead was scant evidence. They might help to build a case, but they were not enough of a basis on which to search a man’s house.

  Henry went back to Central Office and was pleased to see that Mickey was brewing tea.

  ‘No luck?’

  ‘Of course not. Drink tea and then we’ll see what Mr Mullins wants.’ He checked the time. It was four in the afternoon. ‘We will give him an hour, perhaps two, and then we will go home. If he has more to say then he can wait overnight and consider what he’d like to tell us.’

  ‘We are being played, Henry. And the trouble is we don’t know the rules of the game. But I have two more pieces of bad news, just to improve your afternoon. Pat phoned; she does not recognize the handwriting. She thinks the contents of the letters were florid and that Faun would have found them dreadfully romantic, but has nothing more to add.’

  Henry nodded. It had been something of a longshot anyway. ‘And the other piece of bad news?’

  ‘Our eyewitnesses in Bournemouth were shown a picture of Vic Mullins but can’t be sure that it was him. According to the constable I spoke to, he thinks it might be, almost probably is, but they don’t want to say a definite yes and get it wrong. They reminded us that they did not see his face clearly, just a figure on the beach.’

  ‘The head and shoulders mugshot of a man they only saw from a distance is not the best help. It gives you no sense of size or scale. And they did not recognize him from the press photograph we sent earlier, so …’

  ‘And it is quite common for witnesses to become less certain of a thing the more time that passes,’ Mickey added. ‘Perhaps we could arrange for an identity parade.’

  ‘If you can find a half-dozen men the size and shape of Vic Mullins, then I’m very willing to countenance that.’

  Mickey laughed. ‘Yes, that would be a challenge. But I still think it’s something worth trying. I will ask the constables to keep their eyes open for tall and broadly built men and we’ll see what we can do.’

  ‘You are ever the optimist.’

  ‘One of us has to be.’

  ‘True. So let us see what Mr Mullins has to say now.’

  They had Mullins brought into the same room as before, the narrow window high up in the wall letting in very little light and so late in the afternoon it was simply grey outside. The single ball panning from the centre of the room seemed to emphasize the darkness and the shadows and made an already depressing room even more so. Mullins seemed unaffected by that or by the news that the trunk had been empty.

  ‘What trunk?’ he asked.

  ‘What do you mean what trunk. The trunk you told us about yesterday, that was in your ex-employer’s house in which you say contained evidence. Though you never did tell us what evidence.’

  Vic’s face was a picture of innocent disbelief. ‘I don’t know anything about a trunk.’

  ‘I have it in my notes,’ Mickey told him.

  ‘Well, perhaps you wrote it down wrong. I don’t recall telling you anything about a trunk. Why would I? What kind of trunk anyway?’

  Mickey read back through his notes. ‘A sixteenth-century, oak-carved trunk you claimed to be full of women’s clothes. You claimed it to be evidence of crime and insisted that we went to look for it.’

  ‘I think you are wrong. I never insisted on anything. How can I? You are the detectives. I am merely being detained.’

  ‘I suppose you told us nothing about the car crash either,’ Henry said. ‘About how you staged this accident and how you procured the body that you intended to burn so that the world would believe that it was that of Faun Moran.’

  ‘Well, from what I read in the newspaper accounts, the world did believe that it was Miss Moran. In that, of course, they were mistaken, but the world did believe it.’

  ‘So what about this incident you gave evidence of yourself yesterday, about how you’d organized everything, procured the body, set the car ablaze.’

  ‘So you must have spoken to Mr Caxton,’ Vic said.

  ‘We did, and he still tells us you are no longer in his employ and have not been for some time.’

  ‘But did he also tell you that I was up with him in Yorkshire when the crash happened? Ah,’ he said. ‘I see from your faces that he did. So I could not have been at the crash, could I?’

  ‘So why waste our time by telling us that you were?’

  ‘Well, you see, there was this man. Paid me a good price to make up that story, said there would be a second payment in it for me.’

  ‘What man?’

  ‘Just some man in a pub. A gent he was, not a working man like me.’

  ‘What work do you do?’

  ‘Well, I did work for Mr Caxton, didn’t I. Whatever Mr Caxton needed me to do and this man in the pub, he must have known that, because he came up to me and he said, Vic, I’ve got a little job for you, it would do no harm, because I know you weren’t there. Mr Caxton can tell the police you weren’t there, but I want you to tell them you were. See it as a favour, a paid for favour, you understand. Because a man like me, always needs a bit more money. So all I had to do was tell this yarn about the car crash, and about Miss Moran, and about the girl and go to you and tell you. Then all I had to do was endure a night or two in the cells, which is no great hardship. I knew you’d go and see Mr Caxton. I know Mr Caxton, even if we did have a bit of a falling out, I know that he would be honest
enough to say where I was.’

  ‘You expect us to believe that?’

  ‘No matter if you believe it, can you prove it didn’t happen? In my wallet you will find some money, a little bundle of five-pound notes which I will deposit in my bank when I get out of here. And I’m promised another little bundle of five-pound notes for my trouble.’

  ‘And where are you supposed to collect this additional payment from?’ Henry asked heavily.

  ‘The man said he’d find me soon enough, and I believe he will. Perhaps in another pub.’

  Henry had had enough. ‘You’re a liar, Mullins.’

  ‘That might be true, but what am I lying about?’ He asked as a broad grin spread across his face. The sense that this man had been enjoying himself had occurred to Henry right from the beginning, when Mullins had first sauntered into the police station.

  ‘I suppose you weren’t on the beach either,’ Mickey said.

  ‘Indeed I was not so. The same third party that gave me the money to say I was at the crash, gave me the money to say that too.’

  ‘There were witnesses that say otherwise.’

  ‘Then let the witnesses see me and say again that it was me. They were at some distance, gentlemen, I doubt they can be certain. A lawyer might argue that they could definitely not be certain at that distance. A lawyer might argue that if I can prove I was elsewhere then it was certainly not me on that beach.’

  ‘Mr Caxton can’t alibi you for that morning,’ Mickey reminded him, ‘because you were no longer in his employ.’

  ‘Indeed I was not, but neither was I on the beach. I was up in Yorkshire with Mr Caxton when that car crash took place and I was in a boxing gym in Camden Town when that body was dumped on the beach. A bunch of us had been out the night before and were a little worse for wear, so we bunked down at the gym. It’s an easy fact to check, Inspector. You speak to Mr Grady, that runs the gym, and he’ll tell you I help out a lot, with the young fighters and that, and that we were celebrating a win. Four of us it was, we slept there, and woke up with thick heads in the morning. So you see, I have an alibi for that one too. You gentlemen will no doubt check out my alibis and you will then charge me with wasting police time, and I will no doubt go down for a week or two or whatever the magistrate decides, but I will have my little bundle of fivers and then my other little bundle of fivers to help me through the experience.’

  Vic was taken back to his cell. A telegraph was sent to the local police and they sent a messenger to the gymnasium in Camden Town. A couple of hours later they had the confirmation. Yes, Mr Mullins had been there when he said he had been. Yes, they were celebrating a win, and if Detective Chief Inspector Johnstone cared to look at the back pages of the local paper on 5 January, they could read all about it. Mr Mullins was an invaluable help at their gymnasium.

  ‘So that’s that then,’ Henry said. ‘Where do we go from here? We both know he’s now lying and that the alibis are false. That both Vic Mullins and Caxton are playing us for fools, playing games at our expense.’

  ‘We do our best to break the lies they’re telling us,’ Mickey said. ‘There will be gaps somewhere that we can lever open, you can be sure of that.’

  ‘Right now I’m not sure of anything. Let’s go home, Mickey, and sleep on it.’

  ‘What we can do,’ Mickey said, ‘is take a trip round the mortuaries and find out if a young woman did go missing about the time of the car crash.’

  ‘That’s if she was taken from a London mortuary.’

  ‘It’s a place to start, and there are several in London, the numbers are not so great in the provincial towns, and young people go missing here every day of the week and turn up dead in unfortunate circumstances. It will be something to do tomorrow, so I intend to do it.’

  Henry nodded. ‘It’s as good a place to start as any,’ he agreed.

  Vic

  He remembered driving Faun from the scene, and Ben telling her that she was safe now, that no one could find her, that no one knew where she was and seeing the look in her eyes as she realized just how deep in she was, and that the water was closing over her head. That she was drowning.

  ‘Let me go,’ she begged him. ‘Just let me go, just let me out anywhere. I won’t tell what happened. I’ll say that I stumbled away from the crash and didn’t know where I was and that I have no idea about that girl in the car, that maybe we gave her a lift. I’ll make up some kind of story and, no one will know. You can’t do this to me. I know you like me and I can be nice to you.’

  Ben had reached across to the passenger seat and patted her knee. ‘It’s a little late for that,’ he told her. ‘But just let this game play out. I’m told you Bright Young Things like games.’

  He could see that she was appalled and shocked. ‘This isn’t a game. This isn’t a scavenger hunt or a race across town. That girl was dead.’

  ‘Of course she was, I wouldn’t want to put a living girl in the car and then roll it down the hill and set fire to her. Don’t you worry about that – she was dead long before I put her in that car. Dead and forgotten about in some mortuary in east London. No one had come to claim her. Don’t you worry about that.’

  She touched the jaw where he had thumped her, not hard enough to break it, but hard enough to put her out cold for a while. Ben, like Vic, had long since learnt to control the forces of his strike. When to hit an opponent just hard enough that they go down but not out, when to prolong the fight, when to finish it. ‘You’ll be bruised for a while,’ he said, ‘but no damage done. Maybe a loose tooth or two, but leave them alone and they’ll settle down.’

  ‘You’ve never cared about me, have you?’

  ‘I like you just fine.’

  ‘Did you ever care about me? You wrote me all those letters.’ She sounded hopeful.

  ‘I don’t imagine anyone will know that, even if they find them. When my right hand was hurt, I learned to write with my left. I’m now perfectly capable of writing with my right and doing most things with my right, but it’s still useful to use my left on occasions. Such as when I want to disguise my handwriting. Did you never notice that the handwriting on the letters was different from my usual hand? Or were you just so preoccupied by all that adoration and all that flowery language?’

  Vic remembered the look in her eyes, the utter despair, the betrayal and almost, almost he felt sorry for her. Just for an instant he wondered about stopping the car and letting her out, but then the impulse passed. He felt in his pocket for the hip flask and passed it over to her. ‘Here, have a swig of this. It will ease the pain in your poor jaw.’

  She was so eager for even a glimpse of kindness that she took it and took a few sips. It was enough – within minutes she was drifting into unconsciousness. He reached and took the flask back before she dropped it and replaced it in his pocket. They would be driving through more populated areas and they could do without her screaming or shouting out. She would sleep now until they reached the Caxton house, after which she would no longer be a problem.

  TWENTY

  Faun, December

  I have sent my letter. Martha took it from me when she came to say goodbye. She begged to be able to make that one final visit to me, saying that she would miss ‘her lady’ as she has come to call me. I’m going to miss her so much. She was the only kind person left in my world and I’m so afraid that she will be unable to deliver my message. More scared that she merely humoured me and that she will give it to HIM. After all, he is all sweetness and light to her.

  Though I expect I will soon know if that is the case. He will punish me for it. I’m afraid of what he will do. He’s done so much to hurt me already. He tells me that we will still be man and wife, that he’s moulding me ready for the role, that he doesn’t want a wife that answers back.

  I will kill myself first. I have the means. I broke that brittle glass slide of his and if I have to then I will use that but I won’t surrender to him.

  Pat, please come and find me. Please come and fetch
me home. I can’t bear to think that you might not get my letter. I have to try and stay alive until you come. Pat, my darling sister, please come for me.

  Wednesday 22 January into Thursday 23 January

  The call had gone out to all hospital mortuaries, undertakers and anywhere else where a body might conceivably be stored or from which a body might conceivably be lost. Mickey did not have a lot of hope regarding this undertaking but by Wednesday evening they had a handful of possible responses, one of which looked particularly promising.

  On the Thursday morning, almost three weeks after Faun Moran’s body had been discovered on the beach, Mickey went to speak to his contact at St Thomas’s Hospital. A young woman had been brought in, some three days before the car crash in Derbyshire. She had been knocked down by a car, but what had killed her was the fall not the car itself.

  ‘She had an unusually thin skull, just one of those things. She hit the kerbstone at an oblique angle and she was dead.’

  The accident had not happened locally to St Thomas’s, but as they happened to have capacity that was where the body had been sent. Her identity was unknown but a photograph had been taken in the hope that relatives might eventually be reunited with the girl and a list of her belongings had been made.

  ‘The day following her death both she and her possessions disappeared. At first it was thought she had just been moved to a different hospital. That perhaps she had been identified and the family had made other arrangements, but then it was realized that she was nowhere to be found. The man on night duty was questioned and found to have been drunk though he swears that nobody came down to the mortuary while he was there, and swears also he would have heard them. He was dismissed, of course – no one seems to know of his whereabouts now. This is his name and last known address, and any details that could be gleaned about him from other members of staff, but I’m afraid I can’t be much more help.’