Mark Mills - The Information Officer

Freddie seemed genuinely shocked by the speed of developments, and not nearly as skeptical as Max had been about Elliott’s hypothesis that the murders might be the work of someone looking to frame the British for the crimes, some spy within their own ranks, or a Maltese fifth columnist.

“It’s possible, I suppose. I can see it. He could have planted the shoulder tab in her hand.”

“Or they. That was another of Elliott’s suggestions.”

“Why’s he being so helpful?”

“I don’t know.”

“Did you tell him about this detective …?”

“Busuttil? No, and I don’t plan to until we know which side of the fence Elliott’s really sitting on.”

Not for the first time that day, Josef Busuttil found himself running for shelter. As if the running weren’t bad enough already—a stark reminder of just how rapidly his body was betraying him with age—all that the finish line had to offer was some gloomy ill-ventilated tunnel hacked out of the rock. He hated confined spaces. He hated them more when you had to share them with a swarming mass of humanity.

Fortunately, this shelter was considerably larger than most. At least he wouldn’t have to spend the next hour or so upright, pressed tight with a bunch of strangers, like anchovies in a tin. The tunnel was wide, and judging from the run of paraffin lamps suspended from the vaulted ceiling, it stretched far beneath Valetta. The walls on either side of the central gangway bristled with iron bedsteads and wooden bunks. Here and there, niches had been hollowed out of the walls, some small, some large enough to accommodate a whole tribe of relations. Wherever possible, curtains had been rigged up to offer some degree of privacy.

The smell, as always, hit Josef with the force of a blow, clutching at his throat—a fetid cocktail of paraffin fumes, garlic, sweat, and other human excretions.

For those who had been bombed out of their homes, this was now their permanent residence. They were easy to spot; they were the ones already in place, staring at the plug of newcomers crowding the entrance. Some waved them deeper into the tunnel, welcoming them. Others were more mistrustful, or simply too weary to care. Outside, the bombs started to fall. The noise was met by a low murmur of prayers.

Josef made his way to the far end of the tunnel, closing his mind to the musty pressure of the walls, challenging the fear he had always carried in him. Small children darted about, lost in their games. Old women, beads in hand, said the rosary before ramshackle shrines to the Virgin. Mothers poked at pans on sputtering Primus stoves. This is what we have become, he thought. This is what they have turned us into: a race of cowering cave dwellers.

He found himself staring at a pretty and petite young woman perched on a bed, reading from a book to her two children. The girl was curled up on the lean mattress, head in her mother’s lap. The boy was seated on the hard floor, looking bored, eager to be elsewhere. Josef wondered what their story was, wondered if they would all live to tell it. The woman caught his eye and gestured him over, into their world. He hesitated. What kind of woman would make such an overture to a stranger when her husband was absent? A woman who had lost her husband, it occurred to him. But she was gesturing at the other bed now, and the prospect of taking the weight off his feet won through.

“You look tired.”

“I am tired.”

“Then rest.”

The boy glowered up at him mistrustfully.

“Thank you.”

He removed his shoes and lay down on the bed. There was nothing more he could achieve outside while the raid was on. Why not rest awhile? Besides, things had moved fast that morning and it was an opportunity to stop and take stock of the situation.

His first port of call had been the Blue Parrot. It had a reputation as one of the more upmarket dance halls, although in the harsh light of day it was hard to imagine why. The place looked tired and cramped and dirty, its owner not much better. The owner’s startled reaction to a visit by an inspector from the CID suggested that he was guilty, though not necessarily of murder. Most places were running on black market booze by now.

The man had clearly been suspicious of the questions put to him about Carmela, but he’d known better than to say so. Her tragic death had shocked them all. She had been a great girl, a little on the quiet side at first, but bright and eager to learn. Her earnings had improved steadily in the five months she’d worked there, and she’d twice pocketed half a crown in commission for persuading clients to buy bottles of champagne.

Josef didn’t push it. He knew he’d be back later, after nightfall, when the place came to life. The real questions could wait till then, till the other hostesses were at work. They were the ones he needed to speak to, because his instinct told him that the killer had targeted Carmela right there in the dance hall, which meant that someone had seen him. Before leaving, Josef asked if the “officers only” door policy was strictly enforced. It was.

Major Chadwick had been able to provide him only with the names of the other two girls who had died suspiciously, but within the narrow world of the Gut, it didn’t take Josef long to find out where the girls had worked. Dirty Dick’s and the John Bull were both down at the far end of the Gut, where the narrow street fell away sharply toward the nether regions of Valetta. Their location was significant. It marked them out for what they were: low-grade establishments that catered to “other rankers.” According to the wooden sign nailed to its barred and padlocked doors, Dirty Dick’s was Closed for Renovation—an amusing understatement; the top three floors of the building were missing, reduced to a tumble of rock and rubble and splintered beams.

The John Bull, almost directly opposite, had been spared. It was a cellar bar, with steps leading down from the street to a recessed door set in a carved stone gateway. From here, more steps descended into the gloom. The place was far larger than it appeared from the street, a vaulted labyrinth of passageways and deep alcoves that incorporated the cellars of the two flanking buildings. The bar and the dance floor were at the back, where even at this hour of the day the only light came from a handful of paraffin lamps scattered about the place.

It took Josef’s eye a few moments to adjust to the spectacle. The barman was busying himself with some glasses, feigning disinterest in the couple seated at the counter. The girls huddled at a nearby table were making no such pretence. They watched and whispered among themselves.

The man at the counter was a British serviceman. He sat slumped on his stool, head bowed, sobbing quietly. His companion, a Maltese girl with bleached blond hair, had an arm around his shoulder. She was whispering to him, sweet words of comfort, but every so often she rolled her eyes with boredom for the amusement of her colleagues gathered at the table. They, in turn, struggled to stifle their giggles.

Josef’s instinct was to take the soldier by the arm and lead him out of this den of harpies, but that didn’t fit with his mission. The table of girls eyed him with undisguised indifference as he wandered over to them. Even the lowliest British serviceman had twenty or so shillings a week to spend, which was far more than the average Maltese could muster.

They perked up a little when he asked, “Thirsty?”

He knew better than to order the drinks himself; their commission was what mattered to them. The youngest was dispatched to bring the refreshments, and Josef found a chair pulled up for him. He immediately turned his attention to the oldest, a baggy-eyed specimen in a grubby white frock. Win over the mother hen, and the others would follow.

“What’s the story?” he asked her, nodding at the sobbing man.

“He misses his wife.”

It was a voice coarsened by drink and cigarettes.

“You don’t say? Me too.”

“So why aren’t you crying?”

“You haven’t seen my wife.”

He knew he had them when they laughed.

“Where’s your wedding band?” asked mother hen, more practiced at such matters.

“Sold, so that the poor orphan boys of Saint Joseph’s might eat.”

This set them off again, although they sobered up fast when he raised the subject of Mary Farrugia. A few of them crossed themselves at the mention of their dead colleague. Josef made his play. He said he was Mary’s uncle, and he was there on a sensitive matter. It involved a pair of silver earrings, a gift to Mary from one of her customers just before her death. The family felt that the earrings should be returned to the British serviceman in question, the only trouble being that they had no idea who he was.

This triggered a flurry of speculation around the table. Judging from the number of names bandied about, Mary Farrugia had been a popular girl with the clientele of the John Bull.

“I think he might have been a submariner,” offered Josef, which was met with shrugs and blank faces. “Possibly an officer, unless she was lying.”

“Well, they’re not supposed to come here, but they do.”

“They dress down on purpose.”

“They know where to come for a good time.”

“A much better time.”

“We can show you, if you like,” said one of the younger girls, a frail-looking creature who must once have been pretty.

They were teasing him now, losing interest in his quest. He made one last effort to draw a name from them. When this failed, he made his excuses and left them to their drinks.

Mother hen caught up with him near the entrance.

“Tell me something—if you’re Mary’s uncle, then why weren’t you at her funeral?”

She had him cold.

“Are you a cop?”

“Yes.”

“What’s this about?”

“Nothing that concerns you.”

“It might.”

“You know something?”

“I know I have a nephew in prison.”

Oh, so that was it.

“What’s he in for?”

“Looting.”

Josef despised looters.

“Some would say prison’s the right place for a looter to be.”

“Some would say it’s no place for an eighteen-year-old boy who fell in with the wrong crowd and who’s learned his lesson.”

Josef let the silence linger awhile. “It depends on what you’ve got.”

“Will a name do?”

“Maybe,” he said, trying to contain himself.

She gave a quick glance over her shoulder. “There was a man. I never met him. That lot don’t even know. Mary asked me not to tell. Her ‘special friend,’ that’s what she called him. She also said he was an officer with the submarines.”

Josef could feel his pulse quickening. “Go on.”

“That’s it.”

“His name?”

“Ken.”

“Ken?”

“That’s what she said.”

“No surname?”

“Just Ken.”

It was possible she was lying. At the table he had asked for the name of a submarine officer, and now she had just given him one. He stared into her bloodshot eyes. He prided himself on his ability to ferret out a fiction from a person’s eyes. Bombarding the person with rapid-fire questions also helped.

“She never described him to you?”

“Only that he was tall and handsome.”

“If they didn’t meet here, where did they meet?”

“In the street, I think, out and about.”

“What sort of relationship did they have?”

“What sort …?”

“You know what I mean. Did it demand privacy? Did they go somewhere?”

“She mentioned a flat. She didn’t say where. Gzira maybe, or Sliema.”

“Which? Gzira or Sliema?”

“I can’t remember.”

“Was it his flat?”

“She didn’t say.”

She was growing agitated now, regretting her decision to speak to him.

“Okay,” he said, more gently. “Thanks.”

“And my nephew?”

“If it checks out, I’ll come back and see you.”

“He’s a baby. He shouldn’t be in that place.”

“No, he should be. But that doesn’t mean I can’t help.”

When Lilian had come to his house in Naxxar and told him her tale of dead girls and cover-ups, Josef had agreed to meet Major Chadwick only out of courtesy to her and their mutual acquaintances. As he had seen it, the whole thing was either too preposterous for words or too hot to touch. The major had made Josef see things differently. It wasn’t what he had said so much as how he had carried himself. The quiet conviction of the man had touched Josef. If anyone was playing with fire, it was Major Chadwick. That an officer of his standing was prepared to throw everything away on a point of principle was more than just intriguing; it obliged you to take a long hard look at yourself.

He had decided to help on an impulse, not believing he’d make any real progress in a few short days. And yet, he already had a name: Ken. He ran it over and over in his head, testing it to see if it rang true. Was it too much to ask that the killer had given his real name to Mary Farrugia? Probably. Best to remain skeptical, he told himself, as he lay there on the mattress, the mother reading aloud to her two children the story of Little Red Riding Hood. She read well, fluently and with feeling….

He woke with a start, seizing the hand on his shoulder. The woman didn’t struggle or recoil, allowing him to orientate himself in the half-light, his filmy eyes slowly focusing.

“I’m sorry,” said Josef, releasing her wrist.

He saw that his jacket had fallen open while he was asleep, revealing the gun at his hip.

“I hope it didn’t scare them off.”

He meant her children, who were no longer there.

“Why do you have a gun?”

“I’m a policeman.”

“Where’s your uniform?”

“A detective.”

He swung his legs off the bed and pulled on his shoes. “How long have I been asleep?”

“Two hours, maybe a bit more. It’s easy to lose track of time down here. The all clear’s only just sounded.”

“Some life,” he said.

“It won’t last forever. There are more Spitfires coming.”

She had large, knowing eyes and a level stare.

“Can you keep a secret?” he asked.

“Most of the time,” she replied with a ghost of a grin.

“They’ll be here the day after tomorrow. More than the last time, more than sixty this time.”

Her teeth showed, white and even, when she smiled. “I don’t believe you.”

Josef extended his hand. “I’ll bet you a shilling.”

“I don’t have a shilling.”

“Then I’ll allow you to pay your debt in installments.”

“Okay,” she said after a moment, “but I can’t promise to offer you such generous terms.”

She took his hand, sealing the bet, providing them with the excuse to see each other again.

As he was leaving, she said, “You should put some baking soda on that thing. It’ll bring it to a head.”

She was referring to the carbuncle on his neck.

“Baking soda? I didn’t know that.”

“Well, now you do.”

“Where can I find baking soda?”