A Great Deliverance (3 page)

Webberly pushed himself away from his desk and played about with the window, grunting and straining with the latch before finally forcing it open. “Sorry, David. I always forget.” He sat back down at his desk, surveyed its litter with a melancholy gaze, and said, “What I didn’t need was this right now.” He ran one hand back through his sparse hair. Ginger once, it was now mostly grey.

“Trouble at home?” Hillier asked carefully, eyes fixed on his gold signet ring. It was a difficult question for both of them since he and Webberly were married to sisters, a fact that most of the Yard knew nothing about, one of which the two men themselves rarely spoke.

Their relationship was one of those quirks of fate in which two men find themselves locked together in a number of ways which are generally better not discussed between them. Hillier’s career had mirrored his marriage. Both were successful, deeply satisfying. His wife was perfection: a rock of devotion, an intellectual companion, a loving mother, a sexual delight. He admitted that she was the very centre of his existence, that his three children were merely tangential objects, pleasant and diverting, but nothing at all of real importance compared to Laura. He turned to her—his first thought in the morning, his last thought at night—for virtually every need in his life. And she met each one.

For Webberly it was different: a career that was, like the man, plodding along, one not brilliant but cautious, filled with countless successes for which he rarely took credit, for Webberly simply was not the political animal he needed to be to succeed at the Yard. Thus, no knighthood loomed seductively on his professional horizon, and this was what had put the enormous strain upon the Webberly marriage.

Knowing that her younger sister was
Lady
Hillier clawed at the fabric of Frances Webberly’s life. It had turned her from a shy but complacent middle-class housewife to a social climber of the pushiest kind. Dinner parties, cocktail parties, dreary buffets which they could ill afford were given for people in whom they had no interest, all of them part of what Frances perceived as her husband’s climb to the top. And to them all the Hilliers faithfully went, Laura out of sad loyalty to a sister with whom she no longer lovingly communicated and Hillier himself to protect Webberly as best he could from the piercingly cruel comments Frances often made publicly about her husband’s lacklustre career. Lady Macbeth incarnate, Hillier thought with a shudder.

“No, not there,” Webberly was responding. “It’s merely that I thought I’d got Nies and Kerridge sorted out years ago. To have a confrontation crop up again between them is disconcerting.”

How typical of Malcolm to take responsibility for the foibles of others, Hillier thought. “Refresh my memory on their last fray,” he said. “It was a Yorkshire situation, wasn’t it? Gypsies involved in a murder?”

Webberly nodded. “Nies heads up the Richmond police.” He sighed heavily, forgetting for a moment to blow the smoke from his cigar towards the open window. Hillier strained not to cough. Webberly loosened his necktie a fraction and absently fingered the frayed collar of his white shirt. “An old gypsy woman was killed up there three years ago. Nies runs a tight CID. His men are meticulous, accurate to the last detail. They conducted an investigation and arrested the old crone’s son-in-law. It was an apparent dispute over the ownership of a garnet necklace.”

“Garnets? Were they stolen?”

Webberly shook his head, tapping his cigar against a dented tin ashtray on his desk. The action dislodged debris from previous cigars, which drifted like dust to mingle with papers and manila folders. “No. The necklace had been given to them by Edmund HanstonSmith.”

Hillier sat forward in his chair. “Hanston-Smith?”

“Yes, you’re remembering it now, aren’t you? But that case was after all this. The man arrested for the old woman’s murder—Romaniv, I think his name was—had a wife. About twenty-five years old and beautiful in the way only those women can be: dark, olive-skinned, exotic.”

“More than a bit enticing to a man like Hanston-Smith?”

“In truth. She got him to believe that Romaniv was innocent. It took a few weeks—Romaniv hadn’t come up before the assizes yet. She convinced HanstonSmith that the case needed to be reopened. She swore that they were only being persecuted because of their gypsy blood, that Romaniv had been with her the entire night in question.”

“I imagine her charms made that easy to believe.”

Webberly’s mouth quirked. He stubbed out the tip of his cigar in the ashtray and clasped his freckled hands over his stomach. They effectively hid the stain on his waistcoat. “From the later testimony of Hanston-Smith’s valet, the good Mrs. Romaniv had no trouble keeping even a man of sixty-two more than busy for one entire night. You’ll recall that Hanston-Smith was a man of some considerable political influence and wealth. It was no difficult matter for him to convince the Yorkshire constabulary to become involved. So Reuben Kerridge—he’s still Yorkshire’s chief constable in spite of all that happened—ordered Nies’s investigation reopened. And to make matters worse, he ordered Romaniv released.”

“How did Nies react?”

“Kerridge is his superior officer, after all. What could he do? Nies was wild with anger, but he released Romaniv and ordered his men to begin again.”

“It would seem that releasing Romaniv, while making his wife happy, would bring a premature end to Hanston-Smith’s joy,” Hillier noted.

“Well, of course Mrs. Romaniv felt duty-bound to thank Hanston-Smith in the manner to which he’d become so accustomed. She slept with him one last time—wore the poor bloke out until the wee hours of the morning, if I have the story straight—and then let Romaniv into the house.” Webberly looked up at a sharp knock on the door. “The rest, as they say, is a bit of bloody history. The pair murdered Hanston-Smith, took everything they could carry, got to Scarborough, and were out of the country before dawn.”

“And Nies’s reaction?”

“Demanded Kerridge’s immediate resignation.” The knock sounded again. Webberly ignored it. “He didn’t get it, however. But Nies’s mouth has been watering like the devil for it ever since.”

“And here we are back with them again, you say.”

A third knock, much more insistent. Webberly called entrance to Bertie Edwards, the Met’s head of forensics, who entered the room in his usual brisk manner, scribbling on his clipboard and speaking to it at the same time. To Edwards, the clipboard was as human as most men’s secretaries.

“Severe contusion on the right temple,” he was announcing happily, “followed by the main laceration to the carotid artery. No identification, no money, stripped down to the underclothes. It’s the Railway Ripper, all right.” He finished writing with a flourish.

Hillier surveyed the little man with profound distaste. “Christ, these Fleet Street appellations. We’re going to be haunted by Whitechapel till the end of time.”

“Is this the Waterloo corpse?” Webberly asked.

Edwards glanced at Hillier, his face an open book in which he considered whether he should argue the merits of nameless killers being dubbed something—anything—for the sake of public awareness. He apparently rejected that line of communication, for he wiped at his forehead with the sleeve of his lab coat and turned to his immediate superior.

“Waterloo.” He nodded. “Number eleven. We’ve not quite finished Vauxhall yet. Both are typical of the Ripper victims we’ve seen. Transient types. Broken nails. Dirty. Badly cut hair. Body lice as well. King’s Cross is still the only one out of sync, and that’s the bloody devil after all these weeks. No ID. No missing-person’s call on him yet. I can’t make it out.” He scratched his head with the end of his pen. “Want the Waterloo snap? I’ve brought it.”

Webberly waved towards the wall on which were already posted the photographs of the twelve recent murder victims, all of them killed in an identical manner in or near London train stations. Thirteen murders now in just over five weeks. The papers were screaming for an arrest. As if he were oblivious to this, Edwards whistled airily between his teeth and rooted on Webberly’s desk for a drawing pin. He carried the latest victim to the wall.

“Not a bad shot.” He stepped back to admire his work. “Sewed him up quite nice.”

“Jesus!” Hillier exploded. “You’re a ghoul, man! At least have the decency to remove that filthy coat when you come here! Have you no sense at all? We’ve women on these floors!”

Edwards wore the guise of patient attention, but his eyes flicked over the chief superintendent and lingered longest on the fleshy neck that hung over his collar and on the thick hair that Hillier liked to have called leonine. Edwards shrugged at Webberly in mutual understanding. “Quite the gent, he is,” he commented before leaving the room.

“Sack him!” Hillier shouted as the door shut behind the pathologist.

Webberly laughed. “Have a sherry, David,” he said. “It’s in the cabinet behind you. We none of us ought to be here on a Saturday.”

Two sherries considerably palliated Hillier’s irritation with the pathologist. He was standing before Webberly’s display wall, staring morosely at the thirteen photographs.

“This is one hell of a mess,” he noted sourly. “Victoria, King’s Cross, Waterloo, Liverpool, Blackfriars, Paddington. God
damn
it, man, why can’t he at least be alphabetical!”

“Maniacs often lack that little organisational touch,” Webberly responded placidly.

“Five of these victims don’t even have
names
, for God’s sake,” Hillier complained.

“ID is always removed, so are money and clothes. If there’s no missing-person report filed, we start with prints. You know how long something like that takes, David. We’re doing our best.”

Hillier turned around. The one thing he knew for a certainty was that Malcolm would always do his absolute best and would quietly remain in the background when the kudos were given. “Sorry. Was I frothing?”

“A bit.”

“As usual. So this new Nies-Kerridge squabble? What’s it all about?”

Webberly glanced at his watch. “Another Yorkshire murder being disputed, no less. They’re sending someone down with the data. A priest.”

“A
priest?
Christ—what kind of case is this?”

Webberly shrugged. “Evidently he’s the only third party that Nies and Kerridge could agree upon to bring us the information.”

“Why’s that?”

“Seems he found the body.”

Hillier walked to the office window. Afternoon sunlight shafted across his face, detailing lines that spoke of too many late nights, highlighting puffy pink flesh that spoke of too much rich food and port. “By God, this is irregular. Has Kerridge gone quite mad?”

“Nies has certainly been claiming that for years.”

“But to have the first person on the scene … and not even a member of the force! What can the man be thinking?”

“That a priest is the only person they both can trust.” Webberly glanced at his watch again. “He should be here within the hour, in fact. That’s why I asked you to come down.”

“To hear this priest’s story? That’s certainly not your style.”

Webberly shook his head slowly. He had come to the tricky part. “Not to hear the story. Actually, to hear the plan.”

“I’m intrigued.” Hillier went to pour himself another sherry and held the bottle towards his friend, who shook his head. He returned to his seat and crossed one leg over the other, careful not to destroy the razor crease in his beautifully tailored trousers. “The plan?” he prompted.

Webberly poked at a stack of files on his desk, “I’d like Lynley on this.”

Hillier cocked an eyebrow. “Lynley and Nies for a second go-round? Haven’t we had trouble enough in that quarter, Malcolm? Besides, Lynley’s not on rota this weekend.”

“That can be dealt with.” Webberly hesitated. He watched the other man. “You’re letting me hang here, David,” he said at last.

Hillier smiled. “Forgive me. I was waiting to see how you were going to ask for her.”

“Damn you,” Webberly cursed softly. “You know me too well by half.”

“Let’s say I know you’re too fair for your own good. Let me advise you on this, Malcolm. Leave Havers where you put her.”

Webberly winced and swiped at a nonexistent fly. “It grates on my conscience.”

“Don’t be a bloody fool. Don’t be worse than that—don’t be a sentimental fool. Barbara Havers proved herself incapable of getting along with a single DI for her entire tenure in CID. She’s been back in uniform these past eight months and doing a better job there. Leave her.”

“I didn’t try her with Lynley.”

“You didn’t try her with the Prince of Wales either! It’s not your responsibility to keep moving detective sergeants around until they find a little niche in which they can grow old happily. It’s your responsibility to see that the flaming job gets done. And
no
job got done with Havers on it. Admit it!”

“I think she’s learned from the experience.”

“Learned what? That being a truculent pigheaded little bitch is not likely to advance her up the ranks?”

Webberly let Hillier’s words scathe the air between them. “Well,” he said finally, “that was always the problem, wasn’t it?”

Hillier recognised the sound of defeat in his friend’s voice. That was indeed the problem: advancing through the ranks. God, what an ignorant thing to say. “Forgive me, Malcolm.” He quickly finished his sherry, an act that gave him something to do other than look at his brother-in-law’s face. “You deserve my job. We both know it, don’t we?”

“Don’t be absurd.”

But Hillier stood. “I’ll put a call out for Havers.”

Detective Sergeant Barbara Havers tugged the door of the super’s office shut, walked stiffly past his secretary, and made her way into the corridor. She was white with rage.

God! God, how dare they! She pushed her way past a clerk, not bothering to stop when the folders he was carryiing slipped from his grasp and scattered. She marched right through them. Who did they think they were dealing with? Did they think she was so stupid she couldn’t see the ploy? God damn them! God
damn
them!