No Human Enemy (Suzie Mountford Mysteries) Read Free Page B

than the façade around the main door, all finished in the same way, big grey blocks of stone now blackened by the soot and dirt of London. You could always smell the soot in London and taste it at the back of your throat. Suzie knew that if she was put down blindfold in a London street she’d know immediately that she was in Britain’s capital. Nowadays you often smelt burning, and when it rained the scent of charred wood usually hung in the air, a legacy of the Blitz of 1940/41. As for the dust, there was plenty in London these days, dust laid in former centuries now unsealed by explosions and again brought to light. Dust that had been laid four or five hundred years ago was now the dust and grit of the 1940s.
    She followed Tommy, going towards Easter Park, walking the length of the boundary wall.
    Another plain-clothes man came moving quickly from the direction of the park with a message for Magnus who excused himself and strode swiftly ahead.
    Tommy dropped back. ‘Magnus?’ he asked.
    ‘One of “Big Toe” Harvey’s chums,’ Suzie supplied.
    Tommy Livermore nodded. A thin grim smile. ‘Knew I’d seen him before. Right little darling as I recall.’
    ‘You had an idea he was the one tipped off Lavender. Made sure she got away in time.’
    He nodded again.
    This was all about Suzie’s first big case, the murder of a BBC female announcer in 1940 and the subsequent trail that led them to the psychotic, terrifying killer, Golly Goldfinch. Tommy Livermore had guided her through this frightening period of her life. Lavender was Goldfinch’s cousin, a West End tart who had motivated Golly, pushing him into his killing sprees.
    *   *   *
    In a way, Suzie thought, it was gratitude that had led her to becoming Tommy Livermore’s lover, though a deeper feeling had come with time.
    Two open lorries with white ARP insignia on the doors and the hopeful word R ESCUE stencilled white along the sides came jolting along the road, overtaking them, the dark blue overalled men in the rear whistling and chaiaik ing at Suzie and Shirley Cox.
    ‘Nice to be fancied,’ Shirley said, echoing many women before and after her.
    Magnus returned, hot and bothered. ‘We’ve had the first reports back from the hospital. Confirms what we’d found.’ Suzie thought he looked liverish. ‘You’ll have to go and take a look. It’s very odd. Just as we thought.’ And Tommy grunted, not committing himself.
    They could now see the road ahead was cordoned off, allowing people to turn right into Easter Road, but denying access to the park. There was the constant sound and clatter of heavy manual work, the noise of bombed property being cleared and made safe.
    Magnus gestured, suggesting they move to the other side of the road, were they passed two old and discoloured office blocks, a handful of shops, greengrocer, butcher and a haberdasher with practically nothing in its windows except a plethora of pink petticoats and armoured corsets. There should be a medal for any man who could get through that lot, Suzie thought, catching a glimpse of herself in the plate glass, amazingly not shattered by the blast of the explosion. Hardly recognised herself. Bloody hell, she thought, seeing her floral-patterned skirt whipped around her knees and thighs and her short hair looking a tangled mess. She felt hot, sweaty, fat and much older than her twenty-six years, but there she was, the same slender figure, the slim waist, straight back, no sloppiness here. But where was it all going, her youth, her life? Whizzing fast as any doodlebug. When she first moved into CID (the Criminal Investigation Department) in 1940 she had been just twenty-two. Now…?… didn’t bear thinking about.
    Near Easter Park they passed a Church of England school, stamped in the same way as all those Victorian schools, carbon copies of each other, red-brick buildings, big arched windows, the little bell tower for the single bell to summon the weary children to their