The Blitz Detective by Mike Hollow

Author:Mike Hollow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Allison & Busby
Published: 2020-05-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

‘I remind you that you are still under caution.’

Jago contemplated the expression of the woman sitting before him in the interview room at West Ham police station. In the car she had maintained that she knew nothing about Cooper and declined to explain why she had been on his premises, but as soon as she’d crossed the threshold of the station her air of confidence had evaporated. He’d kept her waiting until Cradock returned and told him the police surgeon’s verdict: estimated time of death between 4 and 5 p.m. Now she was slumped on the chair, her face despondent. She looked as if she were fighting back tears.

‘I’m a law-abiding citizen,’ she said. ‘My husband is a civil servant.’

‘That’s as may be, Mrs Hodgson, but I want to know this: did you kill Frederick Cooper?’

‘No, I’ve never met him. Why on earth would I want to kill someone I don’t know?’

‘Why would you want to go creeping around his property after dark, either? That’s not everyone’s idea of law-abiding. Now look, Mrs Hodgson, it’s late and I’m tired. I’ve got a dead body, and the only other people on the scene are you and that young man. You can either tell me what happened or we can spend the rest of the night here until you do.’

She sighed, then sat up straighter on her chair and looked at him.

‘All right. It’s true that I’ve never met Cooper, but I’ve seen him and I know who he is. Who he was, rather. It’s my husband who knows him, although he wishes their paths had never crossed. Sidney works for the Ministry of Labour and National Service, at the Labour Exchange.’

She paused. It seemed to Jago that she thought he would take these words as primary evidence of her husband’s probity.

‘He’s a good man, Inspector, but he’s not very strong, and somehow he got tangled up with Cooper. I think it was something to do with money. Sidney doesn’t earn as much as he’d like to, and I think he’s felt for a long time that he’s letting me down. Perhaps that’s why he let himself be bullied into doing it.’

‘Doing what, Mrs Hodgson? He wasn’t stealing national identity cards, was he?’

She looked puzzled.

‘No, I don’t think so.’

‘Then what was it?’

‘It was something to do with call-up papers. Cooper would give my husband certain names, and when their call-up papers came through, Sidney had to lose them.’

‘Lose them?’

‘Make sure they were never delivered to the person in question, so they wouldn’t get called up for the forces. I believe all sorts of papers get lost in the civil service, and no one ever does anything about it. I assume people were paying Cooper to ensure they or their loved ones could avoid conscription. He paid Sidney a small sum to see to it that the papers disappeared. That was Sidney’s big mistake, of course. Once he’d taken the money, Cooper could blackmail him, and so he had to do whatever he was told.

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