Death in the Air by Kate Winkler Dawson

Author:Kate Winkler Dawson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hachette Books
Published: 2017-10-17T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Nine

Squeezed

The day, in the highest and brightest quarters of the town, was damp, dark, cold and gloomy. In that low and marshy spot, the fog filled every nook and corner with a thick dense cloud. Every object was obscured at one or two yards’ distance. The warning lights and fires upon the river were powerless beneath this pall…

—Charles Dickens,

The Old Curiosity Shop, 1841

It was January 1953 when he eyed the man from across the road, strolling toward the bakery. The store sat on St Mark’s Road just off Ladbroke Grove in Notting Hill. Len Trevallion watched him. The Met sergeant enjoyed tracking criminals, even the pickpockets who worked so deftly near the Underground entrances. The suspicious man slipped inside the bakery too hurriedly to be a paying customer. Within seconds, the door flung open and he dashed out, carrying a tin of biscuits under his arm.

Len sprinted after the thief, pumping his arms—he was patrolling alone, in plainclothes, with no partner, no gun, and no radio. It didn’t matter. The crook turned the corner and scurried into a nasty building on the left, at the end of a cul-de-sac. The sign read Rillington Place. Len knew the block—he was the head of Notting Hill station’s vice squad. The thirty-eight-year-old led a unit of five plainclothes policemen who targeted illegal drinking club owners, abortionists, bookmakers, and brothel-keepers. Len and his investigators arrested quite a lot of prostitutes. There were loads on that particular street.

Len ran through the open door of the tenement labeled “10” and scrambled upstairs, into a flat; he found his suspect cowering under a bed. Len cuffed him, walked him down the stairs and out the door toward Notting Hill station. Once he had jailed the thief, he returned to 10 Rillington Place. Len walked inside the building and rapped on the door of the ground-floor apartment. A balding, middle-aged man answered. Len recognized John Reginald Christie—after all, he had been the Crown’s star witness in the murder trial of Timothy Evans. It was difficult to forget Christie—the former War Reserve policeman with a weak voice, the one who had sobbed when the verdict was read.

Len himself had played a small role in that murder case, too. He was the sergeant assigned to observe Timothy Evans in his jail cell, the one who had heard the Welshman say, “Well, it was the constant crying of the baby that got on my nerves. I just had to strangle it, I just had to put an end to it, I just couldn’t put up with its crying.”

Christie looked at Len and invited him into the front parlor—he didn’t seem at all nervous. Most Notting Hill residents weren’t eager to allow an officer inside their flats; they were always hiding things, like drugs, weapons—perhaps bodies. He introduced himself as Reg, and they chatted about the just-arrested man, one of Reg’s upstairs neighbors who caused him such aggravation. Len paused. There was a strong smell in the room. It was awful. He thought he could ignore the stench, but the noxious odor pervaded everything.

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