Without the Moon Read Online Free PDF Page A

Baker Street, York Street, Seymour Place and here.” Stokesby waved a notebook earnestly.
    â€œRight,” Greenaway opened his own again, licked the end of his pencil, “and what did you see here, constable?”
    â€œNothing,” the reservist replied. “Well, nothing suspicious, any rate. I passed by here first at 11.30 and I always take a look inside. I did last night. I shined my light up and down, but didn’t see anyone in the shelters at all. Well, there weren’t any call for it, was there? I think if anyone had been lying on the floor round about then, I would have noticed them.”
    Greenaway watched the darting little eyes behind the magnifying lenses. The reservists were usually retired policemen, but he wondered how much worse things could get for a force strained by the departure of so many younger men to the war, if myopic volunteers were all that were left to do this kind of legwork. “Did you hear anything, then, any sounds of a quarrel, a fight?”
    â€œNothing unusual, sir,” Stokesby scratched his head. “It was a very quiet night, last night, not many people about. No moon neither. It was very dark out here. But … what people there was about were soldiers. Four or five times I got asked where the Church Army Hostel was, so I directed them to Seymour Place.” He flapped his arm for emphasis. “Got called over to Baker Street just before midnight, reports of some shady types coming in and out of a doorway. Well, they must have pushed off before I got there, no sign of any breaking and entering on the premises. Took me lunch from 1.15 to 2.15, and I must have passed by here two or three more times during the night.” Stokesby shrugged. “Still didn’t see anything out of the ordinary.”
    â€œNo vehicles parked up here?” Greenaway suggested. “Or any driving away?”
    â€œNone that I recall. I didn’t see a sentry on duty either,” Stokesby looked as if he had surprised himself with this last remark. “Well, like I say, sir, it was very dark.”
    Greenaway closed his notebook. “Thank you, constable,” he said. “That was very helpful. Give my regards to your gaffer, won’t you?”
    The throbbing in Greenaway’s head was more insistent now. He rubbed his temples, hoping for it to clear. Watching Stokesby shambling away in the direction of his station, he felt acutely aware of his own years. Greenaway was a veteran of the last war, who’d taken his skills as a radiographer from the Navy to the Met and risen swiftly up the ranks, thanks to his luck on the racecourses. Swaffer had been right about his ambiguous feelings towards this new role on the Murder Squad.
    The men that worked the rackets he could understand. He had grown up with them, after all, knew exactly how their calculating, chancy minds worked and therefore how to deal with them. Takes one to know one, maybe. But this pointless death, this brutal, ugly end of a woman who had managed to survive Christ knows how many air raids before she ended up dead in a shelter on a night when there were no bombs, how could he get into the mind of a man who did things like that?
    â€œExcuse me, Chief Inspector,” the younger PC broke into his thoughts. “We’ve located the lady’s handbag, sir. It was just round the corner, on Wyndham Street.”
    Greenaway looked down at the constable’s gloved hands which held the remains of a black handbag treated much the same way as its owner – left wet, torn and empty.
    â€œFred,” he called to Cherrill. “Something else for you here.”
    Cherrill, only a few years Greenaway’s junior himself, stooped his way out of the shelter. He appraised the sorry artefact with a frown.
    â€œDoesn’t look like I’ll be able to get much out of that,” he said. “But we’ll see what comes up when it’s dried and dusted. I’ve done all