The Year of the Gun Read online

  That was where he needed to be. He might not know it, might not want to be stuck in his office, but he needed to assess every statement that was taken, to find the little strands and connections worth following. Someone had to be in charge of the big picture, and rank meant it was him.

  ‘Go out along Chapeltown Road,’ he ordered as she moved along Briggate, past the bricked-up front of Marks & Spencer. With the war, their new shop hadn’t opened; the Ministry of Works was using it.

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Park here,’ McMillan told her eventually. She glanced at him in the mirror. Years before, back when she was a WPC and he seemed to give her a lift home so often, he’d drop her off at this parade of shops. Did he remember? Without a word he disappeared into the grocer’s. Wilson’s; still the same name. The business looked run down, but they all did now, with so little stock. Just a few faded packets and boxes on display in the window.

  She was lost in the past when he returned with a paper bag. ‘Potternewton Park,’ he announced.

  At the entrance he showed his warrant card to a council worker. After that Lottie could drive where she liked along the path. Eventually she halted under some old, bare oaks.

  ‘My God, is that real ham?’ she asked as he passed her a sandwich. ‘And white bread?’ She hadn’t seen that in a long time.

  ‘Wilson owed me a couple of favours.’

  Only one slice of meat, and margarine, not butter, but it was still heaven. Like eating the memory of how things had been before ’39. They sat in silence, never minding the cold, listening to the birds calling as they ate.

  McMillan swallowed the last of the bread, crumpled the paper and wiped his hands clean. He lit a cigarette and said, ‘I suppose we’d better get to work.’

  Lottie raised her eyebrows. ‘Do I get a chance to finish my food first?’

  He grinned. ‘If you hurry up. Can’t spend all day dawdling.’

  On the way back into town he was more genial. The mood had passed and he was back to his usual self. A sheaf of reports waited on his desk. Lottie opened her notebook and sat with a pencil as he went through them.

  ‘Here we are,’ he said, drawing one from the pile. ‘Birmingham. Pamela Dixon’s parents are both alive and well. Hadn’t heard from their daughter since Christmas… not close… didn’t know anything about her personal life since she joined the Wrens.’

  It didn’t matter if they were close or not. She couldn’t begin to imagine what they must be feeling now. The numbness, the loss. Nothing but memories to sift through and years of emptiness ahead. Worse still that Pamela had been murdered. You could make some jumbled sense of natural causes; she knew that from her own experience. You could even find a kind of redemption from a death in battle. But a killing like this left nothing at all. Nothing but bleakness.

  ‘None of her friends on base seemed to know she was meeting anyone.’ He was reading from another piece of paper. ‘That’s what they claim, anyway. The DS who did the interviews isn’t certain he believes them. As far as Dixon told them, her parents had died and she was going to the funeral and to sort through the house. She was cagey.’

  ‘Had she been up this way before? Did anyone ask?’

  He skimmed the rest of the document. ‘Not mentioned.’

  ‘She met the man somewhere. If it wasn’t down there, we need to look at where she’s been. Had she been in Leeds before?’

  ‘Good point.’ He jotted something on his blotter. ‘I’ll have CID down there dig a bit deeper. But none of her friends mentioned a regular boyfriend.’

  ‘Married man,’ Lottie said suddenly. ‘She’d keep that quiet, wouldn’t she?’

  ‘True,’ he agreed with a slow nod. ‘Married man, someone who knows Leeds and is familiar with Cohen’s business. Possibly in the service, an officer with access to Americans or the black market. Has money, too,’ he added. ‘The Queens isn’t a cheap place to stay.’

  ‘That definitely narrows it down.’

  ‘If we’re right,’ McMillan warned. ‘I can’t afford to stake everything on one idea.’

  ‘It’s still worth pursuing.’

  ‘We will, don’t worry about that.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘I have a meeting with the chief constable at two; you hold the fort. Anything really urgent, ring through to the Civic Hall and disturb me.’

  She read through the reports as she added them to the file. There was nothing he hadn’t already noted, just reams of the background that made up every murder case.

  Lottie settled down with Graham Greene, but she’d only managed five pages when the telephone began to ring. Helen on the switchboard.

  ‘Is he in? He’s not answering.’

  ‘He’s out talking to the chief.’

  ‘I’ve got a woman on the line who says her daughter went out last night and still hasn’t come home.’ She paused for a fraction of a second. ‘The girl’s in the Land Army, home on leave. I thought…’ The other deaths. Everyone knew, just not officially.

  ‘Put her through.’

  Mrs Kemp lived out towards West Park, not far from the POW camp. Her daughter Lily was twenty-three, had joined the Land Army four years before. Stationed in Wales. She was home on a three-day pass. The evening before she’d gone into town, meeting some friends at the pictures, then probably on dancing.

  ‘She didn’t come back last night,’ the woman said, trying to push the fear out of her voice. ‘I thought, well, she’s young. I remember what I was like. And there’s a war on. But when she didn’t show up this morning, I started to worry.’ Her voice faltered. ‘And she’s due back in Wales tonight. Her dad’s at work.’ Her voice cracked. ‘There’s only me here and I don’t know what to do.’

  ‘Give me your address again, Mrs Kemp. We’ll be there in a little while.’ She tried to sound soothing. ‘Look, there’s probably a rational explanation. There usually is, you know.’

  She had to persuade an officious switchboard operator to put her through to the chief constable’s office. McMillan listened, then said, ‘Pick me up. Soon as you can.’

  Just a few telephone calls before she left: the infirmary, St James’s Hospital, the mortuary, even central records to be certain the girl hadn’t been arrested. But she wasn’t in any of those places.

  She followed Queenwood Drive out from Headingley, turning along Spen Lane until she found the house. In the distance the tall barbed wire fence and towers of the POW camp stood against the horizon on Butcher Hill. This one held Germans; that was what she’d heard.

  The front door of the house opened even before they’d reached the drive. Mrs Kemp, drab, ordinary, hands moving around each other, the skin on her face taut with worry.

  She didn’t have much to add to the story. The names and workplaces of the two girls Lily was supposed to meet in town and a photograph in uniform taken the summer before. Nothing memorable about her face. A pleasant smile, slightly timorous.

  ‘We’ll look after this,’ Lottie said. ‘I promise. Do you know where Lily was planning to go with her friends?’

  ‘She never said. Just the pictures and dancing, that’s all.’ Mrs Kemp bit her lip. ‘She’s always been a good girl, always come home before. Something’s happened to her, hasn’t it?’

  ‘You don’t know that,’ Lottie said. She took hold of the woman’s hand and looked her in the eye. A calm voice and a uniform could reassure people. ‘We’re going to look for her. What was she wearing when she went out?’

  A floral dress, stockings, black shoes with a court heel. All things she kept at home for her visits. A heavy wool coat in dark blue. No hat.

  ‘Not in uniform,’ McMillan said as he settled on the back seat of the Humber.

  ‘I know. But maybe he’s spreading his net wider.’

  ‘Maybe,’ he said doubtfully. ‘I don’t see why he’d suddenly change. There’s no shortage of women in uniform in town.’ He sighed. ‘Let’s go and talk to the friends she was meeting.’

  But they both told the same stor
y. They’d been waiting together outside the Odeon on Briggate by quarter past seven, in ample time for the next showing of the film at half past. Lily never arrived. Finally, with a minute to spare, they’d bought their tickets and gone in. Afterwards to a club on Vicar Lane and the last bus home. They hadn’t seen her at all.

  Late in the day, dusk growing, but he still ordered officers out to search the grounds at Kirkstall Abbey until it was dark.

  ‘There’s nothing more we can do,’ Lottie said. She gazed at the photograph on her desk. ‘How many hundreds of young women were out in Leeds last night?’

  ‘Get copies of that picture made. I want every man on the beat to have it. Details – height, weight, everything. Missing.’

  ‘The papers will get hold of it.’

  He nodded. ‘I’m going to give it to them. Lily Kemp was in civvies. We don’t know what’s happened to her. I’m not going to mention the other three, and nor will any reporter if they know which side their bread’s buttered. The fact she wasn’t in uniform gives us something we can use.’

  ‘She’s dead, isn’t she?’ Lottie said.

  McMillan let out a sigh. ‘Probably. Number four. Too many. Far too many.’ He lit a cigarette. ‘Get that picture out and give our American friend a ring. See if he’s come up with anything yet.’

  An American voice said Ellison wasn’t in his office but he’d ring back later. She typed Lily Kemp’s details on a piece of paper, glanced at the photograph again and took them to Olivia, one of the young WAPC clerks. At the change of shift all the men on the beat would have the information.

  Nothing to do now but wait. They had nowhere to turn, no one they could question. No one would remember her in the pubs or clubs. Just another face to be served and forgotten.

  Something had happened between the time she left home and when she was due to meet her friends. Not something – someone. A man.

  Had they met on the bus? Possibly, she decided, but that felt unlikely. This was a killer who drove. It had to be in town. Could she have been early and stopped somewhere for a drink before meeting her friends?

  Plenty of places between the bus station and the cinema, and there was nothing too strange about a woman going into a pub alone these days. If he’d found her, if it was the same man, it had all been by chance. Doubtless he’d been prowling, keeping his eye open for a victim, but finding the right woman depended completely on luck.

  ‘It’s worth checking,’ McMillan said when she suggested talking to pub barmen in the area. ‘Right now I’m willing to try anything.’ He gave a snort. ‘I don’t suppose you know any mediums?’

  An hour passed. McMillan’s door was closed but she could hear his voice on the telephone, a long, involved conversation. Lottie sat in her office, trying to read The Power and the Glory. But her mind kept drifting. By half past six Ellison hadn’t rung and she felt weary. No more word on Lily Kemp. Each hour that passed made it more certain that her name could be added to the roll call of the dead.

  Finally the superintendent told her to go home.

  ‘We’re not likely to learn anything more tonight. And if we do it probably won’t be good.’

  Outside the bus window the world was black. She’d learned to judge where they were by the length and steepness of the hills then the flat stretches of road. As the bus pulled away from the stop and started up a small gradient, she stood.

  She felt weary. All the killings, seeing the poor, sad corpses left her drained, all her emotions at rock bottom. Upstairs at home she changed into an old dress, taking off the scratchy black uniform stockings and rubbing her calves. The house was chilly, the fire just lit, but the air felt good on her legs.

  Lottie had just started down the stairs when the knock came on the door. With the blackout curtain in place there it was impossible to see who was there. And at the front door, too. That was formal; neighbours would come to the back.

  ‘Who is it?’

  ‘Cliff Ellison.’

  Lottie froze for a moment. She’d never told him where she lived. She hadn’t invited him round. How..?

  ‘Wait a minute.’

  The elaborate routine of switching off the lights before drawing back the curtain and unlocking the door. Then he was inside, a faint, masculine scent that seemed to fill the hall.

  ‘Come through,’ she told him when they could see each other. ‘In there.’

  She settled him in one of the armchairs by the fire, where Geoff used to sit. It was strange to see another man there. Not wrong, just… different.

  ‘Would you like some tea? I haven’t eaten, I could make some supper.’ Hush, she told herself. You’re wittering.

  ‘Tea would be good,’ he said with a soft smile. ‘I guess you don’t have coffee.’

  ‘No.’

  In the kitchen she busied herself with the kettle and teapot. Yesterday’s leaves, but they’d have to do. She felt nervous with him in the house. Whether that was in a good or a bad way, she wasn’t certain yet. When she reappeared, resting the tray on a battered old pouffe, he had stood up and was glancing through the titles on the bookcase.

  ‘You don’t look the type to be interested in engines and radio.’

  ‘My husband was. Usually he was rebuilding something on the table.’ She glanced across to it, on the other side of the room. ‘How did you get my address?’ She stared at him. ‘And why?’

  He sat down, stretching out long legs towards the fire.

  ‘I got a message that you’d called. But when I tried your number they said you and your boss had both left for the day. I persuaded the girl on the switchboard to give me your address by saying it was important.’

  Helen, she thought. They might have a few words about that.

  ‘I see.’ Lottie raised an eyebrow. ‘And is it?’

  ‘No,’ he admitted, a sheepish smile on his face. ‘Unless you count the fact that I’d like to take you out for a drink as important.’

  ‘We are drinking,’ she reminded him sharply. ‘Tea.’

  ‘I know. But… never mind.’ He shook his head and raised the cup. ‘Cheers.’

  ‘Have you found out anything more about the guns?’

  ‘Not yet. I’m getting closer.’ He brought out a packet of Lucky Strikes. ‘Do you mind if I smoke?’

  ‘Go ahead.’ She brought an ashtray from the sideboard and placed it on the arm of the chair.

  ‘I’ve got to keep things very quiet right now so I can arrest my guy and make the charge stick.’ His voice became intent. ‘Nothing a lawyer can wriggle them out of. Years in the stockade.’

  ‘I rang to tell you there’s another missing girl.’

  ‘ANOTHER?’ He sounded as if he couldn’t believe it.

  He listened carefully as she gave him the facts about Lily Kemp, nodding his head at times, his features soft in the firelight.

  ‘I don’t see what else you can do,’ he said when she’d finished. ‘It’s a waiting game now. Hope she turns up alive.’

  ‘I don’t think she will,’ Lottie’s voice was bleak. She picked up the poker and pushed it into the coals. The flames jumped.

  ‘I’m sure John’s doing all he can,’ Ellison told her quietly. He reached out and put his hand on top of hers. She drew back quickly. He meant it kindly, but it wasn’t what she needed now. Not what she wanted, either.

  ‘He is, but… I feel helpless.’

  ‘I had a few times like that when I was a cop. A missing kid is the worst. Your heart feels like it’s going to stop. I was lucky, I always found the ones I was looking for. But there are always going to be some who never come home again. You can’t go beating up on yourself and thinking “what if?”. An old patrolman told me that when I was a rookie. He was right.’

  ‘I don’t want to talk about this any more tonight,’ Lottie said. If he was going to sit in her living room, he was going to cheer her up. ‘Tell me about Seattle.’

  ‘That might take another cup of tea.’ He gave her a wry smile.

  �
�There’s probably one more in the pot.’

  He made America more real than it was in films. Not as perfect, perhaps, but Seattle still sounded like paradise.

  ‘There’s this long bridge, the Aurora bridge. On a clear day, when you drive over it you can look off to your right and see the Cascade mountains. Turn your head to the left and there’s Puget Sound, all blue water. Past that, over on the peninsula, it’s all the Olympic mountains.’

  ‘It sounds beautiful.’

  ‘It is,’ he agreed with a wistful smile. ‘I’ve never gotten tired of it yet and I see it pretty much every day. Saw,’ he corrected himself.

  ‘You’ll be back there again soon. It’ll all be over.’

  ‘Yeah.’ He sighed. ‘It does kind of seem like we’re starting the last chapter, doesn’t it? But there’s Hirohito and the Japs after that. We had a lot of them round Seattle. All in internment camps now.’

  ‘All?’ That seemed impossible. A whole population?

  ‘Every single one,’ he told her. ‘Happened a couple of years ago, moved everyone from the West Coast to inland states. Built these camps for them. I was in the service by then, but it was all over the news. The feeling was pretty strong after Pearl Harbour.’

  ‘I can imagine.’

  He stayed another half hour, sliding out into the darkness with just a quiet goodnight.

  ‘Let me know what happens tomorrow, will you?’ he asked as he started the Jeep.

  She arrived at Millgarth early, before it was light. Bad dreams about Lily Kemp and the other women kept waking her. Finally, a little after five, she was up, pottering around and killing time until she could reasonably leave for work.

  McMillan was already at his desk. Shaved, wearing a clean shirt, but he hardly looked rested.

  ‘Anything?’ she asked.

  He shook his head. ‘We’ll have more people out looking today. I kept a patrol out by Kirkstall Abbey all night, just in case, but nothing. You don’t fancy getting a couple of teas from the canteen, do you? I’m parched.’

  Helen was down there, with a Cheshire cat grin on her face.