The Stratford Murder by Mike Hollow

Author:Mike Hollow [Hollow, Mike]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Allison & Busby
Published: 2020-03-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Jago and Cradock walked back from Rita’s cafe with Dorothy until they reached the police station, where she said goodbye to them and continued on alone to catch the train back into the centre of London. Jago knew it might be embarrassing to wait and watch until she was out of sight rather than go straight into the station with Cradock, but there was a stronger fear in his mind too – a common one these days. The fear that at any moment, any day, a bomb could change a casual goodbye to a final and irreversible parting. So he stayed where he was, standing on the pavement and watching her back as she made her way up the street, despite the fact that Cradock waited beside him. He hoped she might turn round, and she did. They exchanged a brief wave, and Cradock sportingly waved too. Then she was gone.

‘Right, Peter, let’s get down to work,’ said Jago briskly as they returned to the CID office. ‘Any news on those fingerprints?’

‘Yes, sir,’ Cradock replied, mustering his most formal tone to reassure Jago that his waving to Dorothy would be treated as confidential. ‘We’ve got a print confirmed for Evans, the fireman, on the back door handle, but nowhere else. We haven’t found any for the ARP warden, Mrs Parks, but she said she was wearing gloves, so that’s not surprising. By the time the two of them had been all over the back door handle there was nothing else identifiable left, and we’re probably lucky that Evans’s print survived.’

‘So there’s no other prints we can make use of?’

‘That’s right, sir. Oh, and by the way, sir, did you find out anything useful about those other cases – the Soho ones?’

‘Yes, I spoke to Detective Superintendent Oates on C Division, where some of them happened. He said the first victim, Josephine Martin, who was known as French Fifi, was strangled with a silk stocking. The second one was strangled with a silk scarf, the third with a piece of wire, and the fourth with some blind cord. That’s what made the detectives investigating think it was all the work of one man, but they haven’t found a single clue to link them. What’s more, they’d had a different suspect in each case, and one of them was actually in prison when another of the women was murdered, which obviously put him in the clear. They’ve come to the conclusion that even though most of the victims were prostitutes, it wasn’t one man committing all the murders. In fact they think there was probably a different killer in each case, and the murders were actually crimes of imitation. The superintendent said it was possible, of course, that one of them had also been involved in our case, but he reckoned we might as well assume that our killer is a different person altogether.’

‘So it could be anyone?’

‘That’s right. It could be anyone.’

‘But still the kind of person who’s likely to murder a prostitute?’

‘As I said, it could be anyone.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.