Coburg and Lampson found Bert Marsh’s notebooks in the drawer of the sideboard in his front room. There were four of them, three full and one half-filled.

  ‘He’s been helpful,’ commented Coburg, flicking through the most recent one. ‘He’s put rings round certain names. All of them women. There are notes after each one: brother dead. Merchant navy. Convoy struck, with a date after it. Addresses.’

  ‘This one’s got the same,’ said Lampson, looking through one of the other notebooks.

  ‘So, we make a list of the women whose names he ringed and see which of them were offended by him trying it on,’ said Coburg. ‘Offended enough for them to tell their male relatives.’

  ‘Or take action themselves,’ observed Lampson. He gave a groan. ‘We’ll have a list of these women and their relatives, then that list of Lady Za Za’s clients. It’ll take for ever to talk to them all.’

  ‘You never know, we might get lucky early on,’ said Coburg.

  They locked Marsh’s house up and made for their parked car. They’d just got in when the radio crackled into life: ‘Control to Echo Seven. Do you read? Over.’

  ‘Echo Seven to Control. Receiving you. Over.’

  ‘Echo Seven. Message for DCI Coburg. His wife has been attacked by a female wielding a knife. Mrs Coburg is unharmed. The assailant is under restraint at Paddington St John Ambulance station.’

  ‘Received, Control. Echo Seven out,’ said Coburg. He turned to Lampson, who’d already started the engine. ‘Let’s go, Ted. Put the bells on.’

  Rosa was in the yard at the ambulance station, watching out for them as the police car pulled in. Coburg leapt out of the car and hugged her to him.

  ‘Are you alright?’ he asked.

  ‘Thanks to Doris,’ said Rosa. ‘She overpowered her.’

  ‘Where is she? I assume it was Bella Wilson?’

  ‘It was. She’s in the storeroom, tied to a chair. Mr Warren and Doris are keeping an eye on her.’

  Bella Wilson was indeed tied to a chair, her ankles fixed to the legs, her wrists tied to the wooden struts of the back of the chair. She was also gagged and glared venomously at Coburg and Rosa as they walked in.

  ‘I gagged her because her language was so foul,’ explained Warren. He pointed to a knife on a nearby packing case. ‘That’s what she tried to stab Rosa with.’

  Coburg took a bag from his pocket and dropped the knife into it. He then removed the gag from Wilson’s mouth and said, ‘Bella Wilson, I am arresting you on a charge of attempted murder,’ he said. He then read her her rights about staying silent, but anything she did say would be taken down and might be used against her. ‘I’m taking you to Scotland Yard. I can either have you untied and put in a police car, or we can unload you tied to the chair as you are into the back of a van. That depends on you. If we untie you from the chair, will you co-operate?’

  Wilson scowled, but nodded.

  ‘If you’d untie her ankles,’ said Coburg to Warren. ‘And untie her wrists from the back of the chair and I’ll put handcuffs on her.”

  ‘She might cause problems in the car,’ said Doris. ‘I’ll go with you if you like.’

  Coburg became aware she was clutching a heavy metal starting handle.

  ‘Thanks,’ said Coburg. ‘But I think we have to make this official personnel only.’ He smiled at Doris. ‘Thanks for what you did, Doris.’

  ‘Bitch!’ Wilson spat venomously at Doris.

  ‘Watch your mouth,’ Doris snapped at her, and waved the starting handle menacingly towards her. Wilson shut up.

  Warren had untied the ropes and Coburg put handcuffs on Wilson’s wrists.

  ‘Do you want a hand to take her to your car?’ asked Warren.

  ‘It might be a good idea,’ said Coburg. ‘Thank you.’

  Coburg and Warren each took hold of one of Wilson’s arms and lifted her up, then walked her out of the storeroom and towards where Lampson was waiting in the car. The sergeant got out of the car as he saw them approaching and helped Coburg put Wilson in the back, Coburg getting in beside the prisoner.

  ‘I’ll see you at home later,’ Coburg said to Rosa. He gave last thanks to Warren and Doris, then pulled the door shut and Lampson put the car into gear and they moved off.

  Coburg half-expected Wilson to try something in the car, lash out with her feet or try and headbutt the back of Lampson’s head, but the journey was without incident.

  They took Wilson to an interview room, where Coburg once again read Wilson her rights, before asking, ‘Why did you try to kill Rosa?’

  ‘Who said I tried to kill her?’ demanded Wilson.

  She sat, looking venomously at Coburg. Now he could study her properly for the first time, Coburg took in the small spider’s web, complete with spider, tattooed on the right-hand side of her face, half hidden by her hair. He was also aware of the decorative rings she wore on the fingers of her left hand, one with a small skull set in it, others with occult carvings on them. Together they made a useful knuckleduster, Coburg reflected.

  ‘The witnesses, and the knife you were carrying,’ replied Coburg. ‘Plus the threatening letter you sent saying you were going to kill her if she appeared on the Henry Hall show.’

  ‘You can’t prove I wrote that.’

  ‘I don’t need to prove it; the main thing is the evidence of eyewitnesses and the knife you dropped. The letter is just evidence to back the charge.’

  Wilson glared at him. ‘Your wife assaulted me. She smashed my head against that ambulance.’

  ‘Actually, I believe it was her co-driver who did that after you attacked Rosa with a knife, intending to kill her. As I say, attempted murder.’

  ‘She did it to me!’ burst out Wilson angrily.

  ‘Attempted to kill you?’ said Coburg, intrigued.

  ‘She killed my career. Every time I did a gig, everyone kept on going about how ‘Rosa Weeks was here last week. She was fabulous’. You think I like that? And then this Henry Hall gig. That was mine and she stole it from me!’

  ‘And so you tried to kill her.’

  ‘I’m saying nothing,’ snapped Wilson defiantly.

  ‘Book her and put her on remand,’ said Coburg to Lampson.

  ‘I have to have a solicitor!’ shouted Wilson.

  ‘And you will,’ Coburg told her. ‘We’ll arrange for one to see you at Holloway.’

  She stared at him, shocked. ‘You’re putting me in jail?!’

  ‘That’s what we normally do with people accused of attempted murder,’ said Coburg. ‘And they stay there until they come to trial.’

  She leapt to her feet and made as if to rush at him, but the table between them stopped her.

  ‘I can’t go to prison!’ she said. ‘It was just a joke, that’s all.’

  ‘Which I’m sure you’ll tell your solicitor when he comes to see you,’ said Coburg. ‘Take her away.’

  As Lampson moved towards her, she suddenly lashed out at him with her feet, but Lampson dodged nimbly aside and pushed her so that she fell back down on the chair. The duty constable in the room with them took hold of her shoulders to stop her getting up. She twisted in his grasp.

  ‘This is police brutality!’ she screamed.

  As Lampson joined the constable in restraining the struggling Wilson, Coburg made for the door, saying, ‘I’ll get some WPCs. They can take care of her. And I’ll arrange for a van to take her to Holloway; the cells in them are nicely secure.’

  As he left the room, he heard her shouting obscenities, along with: ‘I’ll get you, you bastard! And that bitch wife of yours! This isn’t over.’

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Thursday 2nd January 1941

  Steve Blewer looked up at the knock on his office door and it opening, and his secretary, Emma, looked in.

  ‘Excuse me, Mr Blewer, but there’s a woman to see you?’

  ‘A woman?’ He frowned. ‘I don’t think I’ve got any appointments booked.’

  ‘No, Mr Blewer. This is a Mrs Rostov, who wants to talk to you about Bert Marsh.’

  Oh no, groaned Blewer inwardly. Another widow come to complain that he’s tried to get off with her.

  ‘Shall I tell her to make an appointment?’ asked Emma.

  No, thought Blewer firmly. If we send her away she’s likely to go to another paper and tell them the story, about Marsh trying it on. That’s the last thing we need.

  ‘No, you can bring her in,’ said Blewer, forcing a smile. One he didn’t feel. He hoped she wasn’t too angry, like some of the previous women had been. ‘But would you ask security to send someone to stand outside my office, in case I need them?’

  Emma nodded and disappeared, closing the door after her. Blewer got to his feet and went to the mirror hanging on his wall and began to practise looking sincere and sympathetic; he didn’t want to make this woman any more upset than she already was.

  The door opened and Emma ushered in a young woman in her early twenties.

  ‘Mrs Rostov,’ she announced, and then withdrew.

  Blewer approached her, looking sympathetic, his hand held out.

  ‘Mrs Rostov,’ he said. ‘I’m so sorry for your loss.’

  ‘I’m here about Mr Marsh,’ she said, her face grim.

  Blewer gave her an apologetic look. ‘If you have a complaint about him—’ he began, but she cut him off, surprise on her face.

  ‘Complaint?’ she echoed. ‘Why would I have a complaint?’

  ‘The thing is, Mrs Rostov, tragically, Bert Marsh died yesterday …’

  ‘Yes, I know, that’s why I’m here.’

  Blewer looked at her, bewildered. Her attitude wasn’t what he’d been anticipating. He gestured her to the chair on the other side of his desk, and sat down in his as she settled down.

  ‘I saw it in the paper that he’d been killed,’ she said. ‘I’ve come to tell you who killed him.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘The Russians.’

  ‘The Russians?’

  She nodded. ‘I told Mr Marsh when he came to see me the other day, after my husband was murdered.’ She then went on to tell him everything she’d told Marsh: Stalin’s assassination squads, the execution of her husband’s father in Russia, the identical way that Grigor and his sister had been killed. ‘Mr Marsh wrote about it in your paper, about the Russians, and the fact that my husband told that detective chief inspector about it, warning him, but he did nothing to save him. And now my husband is dead, and your reporter who wrote about it is dead. It’s the Russians shutting people up by killing them. They’re here and killing people, British people, and no one’s doing anything about stopping them.’

  Coburg and Lampson sat in the office compiling a list of the women named in Marsh’s notebooks. Ethel Walters was there, along with details of her late husband, Wally, who’d died serving on a merchant navy ship that had been torpedoed by a German U-boat. Various other women were in the book, some with a ring round their name.

  ‘Why the ring?’ asked Lampson.

  ‘Possibly to mark a sexual conquest,’ mused Coburg. ‘There isn’t one around Ethel Walters’s name, and we know he had no success there. But it could mean anything.’

  ‘There are fourteen women named in his notebooks,’ said Lampson. ‘With those and the forty cards we got from Svetlana’s stash, that’s fifty-four people to talk to.’

  ‘Let’s narrow it down, at least for starters,’ said Coburg. ‘Like you, I think we’re dealing with two separate murderers here. The same person killed both Svetlana and her brother, but someone else killed Bert Marsh. Let’s take a guess that whatever happened to cause two different people to commit murder is likely to be something that happened recently.’

  ‘Not necessarily,’ cautioned Lampson. ‘Sometimes people are killed because of something that happened ages ago. Either the person who did it has only just found out about something that happened, or they’ve been dwelling on it, sometimes for years.’

  ‘True.’ Coburg nodded. ‘And that may turn out to be the case here, but we have to do this in stages. I think we start by concentrating on things that might have happened in, say, the last four months. So we talk to the women Marsh mentions who he talked to since the start of September.’

  ‘That brings it down to five,’ said Lampson after checking the dates in the notebooks.

  ‘I assume the prices written on the backs of the cards are what they paid. It’s interesting how they vary. Most of them are for ten shillings, but there’s one for a pound, and one for five pounds.’

  ‘Remember Alphonse told us she charged by what she thought people could afford,’ said Coburg.

  ‘In which case there’s one here, a Captain Bradley, who paid nothing,’ said Lampson.

  ‘Worth looking into that one, I think,’ said Coburg.

  They’d decided that Ethel Walters would be the first one Lampson would talk to as her brother had had the violent confrontation with Marsh that Blewer had reported to them. Ethel Walters lived in a flat in Southwark in a dull grey concrete block not dissimilar to the small block of flats where Lampson’s parents lived in Somers Town. When Lampson called, she was wearing an apron and holding a wiping-up towel and she regarded him suspiciously as if she suspected he was a hawker selling worthless tat, as so many people seemed to be doing lately.

  ‘Good morning, Mrs Walters,’ he greeted her. ‘I’m Detective Sergeant Lampson from Scotland Yard.’ And he held out his warrant card for her to look at.

  ‘Scotland Yard?’ she repeated, bewildered. ‘What do Scotland Yard want with me?’

  ‘We understand you had a problem with a Mr Bert Marsh, a reporter with the Daily Globe.’

  ‘That filthy man!’ she said, her face showing her distaste. ‘He came round to see me to ask me about my husband who’d been killed. Said he wanted to write about him in the paper. Something they were doing called Heroes of the Nation, so I invited him in. At first he was all politeness, asking about Wally and writing it down, but then – when it was time for him to go – he tried to cuddle me. And worse! He put his hand on my bum and started squeezing it!’

  ‘Disgusting,’ said Lampson sympathetically. ‘May I come in?’

  ‘No,’ said Walters firmly. ‘After what happened with that pig, I don’t allow men I don’t know in, even if they’ve got a warrant card or whatever.’

  ‘Made you suspicious.’ Lampson nodded sympathetically.

  ‘Worse than that,’ said Walters indignantly. ‘Disgusting it certainly was. Me, just widowed! Well, I pushed him away and let him have a right hander round his ugly face. He fell over on my settee and sat there looking up at me in shock. “I was only being sympathetic,” he said. “I know what you were doing, you filthy pig,” I answered him. “Now get out of my house before I call the police on you.”’

  ‘And did he go?’

  ‘He did, because he knew what he’d get if he tried it on again.’ She looked enquiringly at Lampson. ‘But what’s this about? Has he put in a complaint against me? Because if he has …’

  ‘No, no,’ said Lampson. ‘Mr Marsh was killed either early yesterday morning or some time the night before.’

  ‘Killed? How?’

  ‘He was beaten to death in his house.’

  She stared at him, shocked. ‘Who by?’

  ‘That’s what we’re looking into. I’m here because we understand your brother went to the offices of the Daily Globe and sought out Mr Marsh to get retribution for what Mr Marsh did to you?’

  She stared at him, stunned, then her expression turned to righteous anger as she said, ‘Jim did nothing to him. He went there to warn him off from doing anything like that again.’

  ‘Nevertheless, we understand that security had to be called to protect Mr Marsh from your brother.’

  ‘Jim was angry, that’s all. He never actually touched him. If you think that Jim beat that pig to death …’

  ‘No, we’re just looking into it as one possibility.’

  ‘Well, you can look elsewhere. Try the families of some of the other women I bet he tried it on with.’

  ‘We will, but we still need to talk to your brother.’

  Ethel Walters studied the sergeant, then said, ‘Early yesterday or the night before, you say.’

  ‘That’s what the medical people have told us.’

  ‘Then it can’t have been Jim. He’s been with his regiment at Catterick camp this last week.’

  ‘We’ll still need to talk to him. What’s his name?’

  ‘Adams. Jim Adams. He’s in the Engineers. And he’s a decent man.’

  Captain Bradley was a man in his sixties, living in a small terraced house in King’s Cross not far from the railway station. He was short but with a rigid straight back, which suggested either a military background to go with his title, or a man who suffered from severe back pain.

  ‘Captain Bradley?’ enquired Coburg, and he held out his warrant card to the man. ‘Detective Chief Inspector Saxe-Coburg from Scotland Yard.’

  ‘Saxe-Coburg?’ Bradley frowned. ‘That was the royal family’s name before they changed it to Windsor. Are you related to them? To Their Majesties?’

  ‘I’m afraid not,’ said Coburg. ‘Their name was Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. Our family are one hyphen away.’

  ‘Close, though,’ said Bradley.

  ‘Indeed,’ said Coburg. ‘May I come in?’

  ‘Why?’ asked Bradley.

  ‘We’re investigating a rather difficult case and your name has come up.’

  ‘My name?’

  ‘Along with many other names. We’re talking to everyone.’

  ‘Yes, well, I suppose so,’ said Bradley.

  He stepped aside to let Coburg in, then led him through to a small sitting room, which was decorated in late Victorian style, with dark wallpaper and ornate furniture. Coburg noticed a photograph of a younger Bradley in the uniform of the Scots Guards on a dresser. There were no photographs of any women on display, so no Mrs Bradley, Coburg assumed.

  Bradley gestured for Coburg to take a seat, then settled himself down in an armchair.

  ‘So,’ he asked, ‘what’s this about?’

  ‘We understand you consulted a fortune-teller called Lady Za Za,’ said Coburg.

 

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