The Chelsea Murders Read Online Free Page A

biggest was how a young prick like this constable on the door had ever got into the force.
    ‘What’s your name, son?’ he said.
    ‘Nutter,’ the constable said, reddening.
    ‘Yes.’ The chief inspector let it hang in the air. Well, I don’t want to be hard on you, lad, were the words that sprang to mind but he left them unuttered. With a name like that a lifetime of problems lay ahead, anyway. ‘And you thought she was what?’ he said.
    ‘Well, a nun, something like that.’
    ‘In jeans?’ ( On a bike? Mrs ?)
    ‘ Something like that. A missionary, or a welfare worker, something religious. They expected her here. I thought they did, sir. She told them that,’ he said aggrievedly.
    This seemed to be the case. The help said she’d thought the landlord had phoned her. The landlord said he’d thought someone had sent her. They were all standing in the beery little porch looking at each other. The landlord didn’t seem to know his arse from his elbow; for which, the chief inspector thought, there might be good reasons. He had a recent piece of information which he wished to pursue, so he said, ‘Let’s get on, then. You lead the way, landlord. Take over here, Mason,’ he added with a significant look at Nutter.
    Detective Constable Mason took poor Nutter outside.
    ‘Never mind him,’ he said. ‘We all make mistakes.’
    ‘Yes, don’t we?’ Nutter said, his colour still high. He didn’t like references to his name. ‘And some go on making them,’ he added.
    Mason understood the allusion; common lately. But all he said was, ‘That’s what makes him irritable.’
    ‘Well, people in glass houses,’ madly persisted Nutter.
    Yeah, okay, Nutter. You toddle off then, Nutter. You’ll be all right, Nutter, old son , was what Mason passionately wanted to urge the fool. But again he held off, only nodding as Nutter strode proudly away. With a name like that, the plain-clothes man thought, strategy was needed, and Nutter didn’t seem to have any.
    Mason had plenty himself. He was a very controlled young man, a promising detective. He had an idea something promising was doing here.
    Logan’s sagging behind was meanwhile once more making the dolorous ascent to Germaine’s bower; and within about five minutes he was crying again. There was no opening time at The Gold Key that morning, though a growing band of customers – augmented by thirty ladies and gentlemen of the Press – impatiently awaited it.
    *
    The girl had been murdered; the third murder in a fortnight, and the third within a mile.
    The man stuck with this bad news sat sourly in his room, one of a suite he’d taken over at Chelsea police station as his Murder HQ, and realized he was in the deep end again.
    (He didn’t yet know how deep. The girl without the head still had it that morning; she had some time to go with it.)
    His name was Warton and he was a detective chief superintendent , a powerful roly-poly figure who seemed below medium height because of his enormous barrel chest and hunched shoulders. He had very little neck and a round baldish head which protruded outwards into an immensely long snout. It gave him the appearance of a wart-hog.
    By nature and training Warton was an unpleasant man; suspicious , close-grained, unfriendly. He was very senior in his job, which for a long time now had been striking him as a ridiculous one; it seemed high time he was out of it and into something more solid and administrative with set hours and respectable anonymity. There was something raffish and unsavoury in this skittering about, setting up headquarters and solving mysteries.
    However, he was better than competent at it, which was why he was here.
    When the first murder had occurred the newly appointed Crime Commissioner (C.C.) at the Yard had immediately sent for one of his commanders and said, ‘Get someone reliable on this right away, someone like Ted Warton. We can’t have a nonsense here.’
    There’d been too many nonsenses. There had