Robin Hood Yard

“Yaxley. William Yaxley.”

“How long has Walter Chittleborough been your tenant?”

“I’ve been through all this already. I’m not a bleeding parrot.”

“So I hear. Your mimicry would be a lot better. Start squawking. If one of my rivals turns up you can kiss goodbye to any chance of remuneration.” Johnny offered him one of his own Woodbines.

“Ta muchly. Wally moved in about a year ago. Before that he’d been in digs in Whitechapel.”

“Hardly worth the effort.” The Ripper’s hunting grounds were only a few streets away. “Previous address?”

“If I did know I’ve forgotten.”

“Did he have a girl?”

“I’m sure he did – but rarely more than once. He wasn’t courting, if that’s what you mean.”

“What sort of chap was he?”

“An ordinary chap. He worked hard, liked a pint and was mad about football. Never missed a Hammers match. Spent more time at Upton Park than here.”

Soccer bored Johnny. One-on-one contests – battles of body and mind – were more exciting than team sports. The glory to be achieved was greater too.

“How would you describe his personality?”

“We weren’t close. We didn’t socialize.”

“Moved in different circles did he? Try.” So far Humpty Dumpty was not getting a penny.

“Unassuming, undemonstrative – unless he was stinko …”

“How d’you know if you didn’t socialize?”

“We bumped into each other on the doorstep a few times. You hear everything down here.” He glanced at the ceiling. “The more beer he’d had, the heavier his tread.”

“Very well. What was the other adjective you were going to use before I so rudely interrupted?”

His interviewee watched him waiting, pencil poised.

“Unintelligent.” He smirked. “A bathetic climax. Sorry.”

“So am I. Nice oxymoron though.” Humpty was playing with him, trying to distract him. What was he hiding?

The kettle lid rattled as the water reached boiling point. Johnny’s blood was not far behind.

“And the other tenants? Did Wally socialize with them?”

“Not so far as I know. The Sproats on the ground-floor have a six-month-old baby. The wailing never stops.”

“Seems pretty quiet now.”

“He works at the Royal Mint. She’s a cleaner. Leaves the brat with her mother in Shoreditch during the day.”

“Do the people above them complain about the noise as well?”

“Mr Tull is deaf as a post. Lucky old sod. You won’t get anything out of him.” He blew a stream of smoke towards the range. “The tea won’t make itself, you know.”

“So who completes this happy household?”

“Rebecca. Beautiful Becky Taylor.” He sighed. “She knows what Wally was like – inside and out, if you get my drift. She’s some sort of secretary at Grocers’ Hall. Talk to her.”

“I will.” Johnny slipped his notebook into a pocket. “Thanks for your time. Shouldn’t you be at work as well?”

“I am.” He hauled himself to his feet. “Looking after this place is an endless job. There’s no clocking off here.”

He rinsed out the teapot and spooned in four heaps of Lipton’s. It seemed there was no clocking on either.

“Who owns the house?”

“I do.”

Johnny, while Yaxley’s back was turned, slipped out of the kitchen. He was halfway up the stairs before the landlord noticed.

“Oi! Steadman! What about the money?”

“Send me an invoice.”

Even if the sluggard were to submit one he would see that it was never paid. Instinct told him Yaxley had concealed more than he’d revealed.

TWO (#ulink_c843c114-f6c5-53dd-aea0-6e557367460f)

The first body had been found on Monday in Gun Square, actually a gloomy triangle off Houndsditch. Jimmy Bromet, nineteen, was a waiter at the Three Nuns Hotel next door to Aldgate Station. He, too, had been tied to his bed and emasculated, but not castrated. No one in the lodging house had a heard a sound.

On his way back to the office Johnny made the cabbie take a detour. Although entirely surrounded by banks, Grocers’ Hall, off Prince’s Street, had its own courtyard. Two covered entrances allowed vehicles to drive in and out without the irksome task of reversing. A polite but obdurate doorkeeper informed him that Miss Taylor had arrived late for work. Consequently she would not be available until this evening. And livery companies were supposed to be charitable institutions.

“Undemonstrative? Fifteen letters.” Tanfield, a junior reporter, had a strange knack of determining the length of a word no matter how long.

“We’ll never know how long Chittleborough was though, will we?” said Dimeo. The deputy sports editor was obsessed with physical attributes. “What d’you think the killer does with the trophies?”

“I loathe to think,” said Johnny.

“Yet you must find out, Steadman, post haste. It is what you are paid to do.”

Gustav Patsel’s wire-rimmed spectacles glinted in the milky midday sun. Tanfield and Dimeo returned to their desks. “Pencil”, as the news editor was ironically known, had never been popular but, since the invasion of Czechoslovakia, anti-German feeling was at an all-time high. The ever-hungry Hun’s waist had its own policy of expansionism.

“Perhaps they’re turned into sausages,” said Johnny. “You’d know more about that than me. Frankfurters, bratwurst, knackwurst …” Dimeo disguised a cackle with a cough.

“I want a thousand words on the two murders by four o’clock,” said Patsel. “They are obviously the work of the same degenerate.” He was about to say more when Quarles, his long-suffering deputy, handed him a sheet of yellow paper. The bulletin did not contain good news.