A Commonplace Killing Read Online Free PDF Page A

ran an appraising hand across his stubble and wondered how bad it would look for a divisional detective inspector to attend a murder scene unshaven; then he made his grudging way to the bathroom, where he took down his razor and shaving mug from the shelf above the sink and inspected his bloated and sagging features in the mirror. He was a little stouter than was ideal and well worn to the point of shabby, but his keen blue eyes could usually be depended upon to give a surprisingly youthful beam to the rest of him. Marjorie had once told him that he looked like the film star Joel McCrea. They’d been to see
Wells Fargo
at the Savoy on Holloway Road. He was trying to remember whether it was the first time they’d been to the pictures together, or the only time. He glanced at his watch and was pleased by what it told him. It had taken, what, fifteen, maybe twenty minutes: usually he was thinking about Marjorie as soon as he opened his eyes of a morning. Perhaps I am finally forgetting her, he thought; then he caught his reflection in the mirror. Who was he trying to kid? He had been miserable as sin every day since she had left him; and he knew damn well he would never forget how happy he had been. For a moment he wondered if he might cry. Come along, old man, he urged: it was a long time ago; almost another world. Before the war; before everything changed for ever. He certainly didn’t look like a film star today. He grimaced at the bleary visage in the mirror. As a matter of fact, he looked even more battered than usual, if such a thing were possible. The youthful eyes were bloodshot and had retreated into the grey puffiness that surrounded them; and somewhere in the course of the previous evening’s roughhousing he had collected a nice shiner on his right cheekbone. He stroked it. Nothing like the glint of a brass knuckleduster coming towards you to keep you in your place. He sighed. It was no more than he deserved.
    He whipped up a meagre, rationed lather in his shaving mug, slapped it over his cheeks and chin and then scraped it off, painfully , ineffectually, resentfully, with a blunt safety razor. He had always held that not shaving on a Sunday was one of the few benefits to be derived from bachelorhood, which is in so many ways a wretched condition for a man to find himself in at forty-four ; but Sundays were no longer any different from any other day. Weekend leave was a thing of the past; nights routinely broken by urgent summonses to derelict buildings, damp canal sides, desolate railway depots and all the other dismal settings which the most dispiriting areas of north London had to offer. Lorry-loads of tea, butter, cigarettes, whisky, even typewriters, were disappearing all over “N” Division, and the streets of Tottenham and Stamford Hill and Holloway were awash with stolen and forged coupons. There were opportunities for crime in every public house, variety hall, café and shopping street the length and breadth of the manor. And it was all, all of it, his problem.
    He’d spent the night just past lying on a flat roof in Tottenham Hale, overlooking an alley reeking with other men’s piss, watching the comings and goings from an “abandoned” warehouse. When he had given the order to his men, they’d come under a hail of bricks, bottles, blackjacks and armoured fists, but no razor-studded spuds. A pity, he thought ruefully; I could have done with a decent shave and a nice baked potato. They’d made two arrests and taken a haul of several thousands of pounds’ worth of black-market sugar, though they had been looking for eggs – people can just about survive without stockings and cigarettes, but they need to eat – and he reckoned this success ought to keep Upstairs out of his hair for a couple of days while he dealt with the blasted sex murder. A couple of days would have to do it: Upstairs had a notoriously short memory. It was barely a fortnight since, after two whole days and nights spent cramped