Sure and Certain Death by Barbara Nadel Page A

work again . . .’
    ‘I repeat, Mr H, why now?’
    ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘Maybe he’s got worse in health as he’s got older? Maybe he’s been told he’ll die soon? Sergeant Hill, it’s a connection I found because my sister told me about it. She and I have passed it on.’
    ‘As you should,’ Sergeant Hill said as he took a drag on his fag and then breathed out slowly. ‘But you know, Mr H, the big problem we have in all this, apart from the fact that we’re still being bombed by the Jerries, albeit not all the time now, is that no one has seen anything.’
    ‘I heard,’ I said, ‘that the father of that Jewish lady up Plashet was in the house when she died, or so it’s thought.’
    ‘Yes, he was,’ Sergeant Hill said. ‘But that’s for the boys up East Ham, Mr H, and no concern to us down here.’
    The trouble is that the coppers work for their own manors. Someone was killing, skinning and eviscerating women across several different police divisions, but each of them was only dealing with whatever happened on their local patch. Can’t blame them for that, it’s the way they are required to work and the coppers are very overworked these days. But I was looking at a bigger picture that at the time I wasn’t sure was right or not. All I knew then was that several of the dead women had been to school together but all of them, so far, had been White Feather girls. And underneath my fury at her, I was worried about my sister.
    ‘Of course, as your Nancy said, Mr H,’ Sergeant Hill continued, ‘a lot of people didn’t like what her and the other girls did when they roamed the streets to look for ununiformed blokes. To my way of thinking, well, like you, Mr H, I never approved of such women, but . . . Quite a lot of people thought they did a good job. See them as heroines some people do, even now.’
    He wasn’t lying. Some people I know still think the White Feather movement was a good thing and wish it was still in operation now. But I think they’re the minority. Now that war has come to us, as it were, most people want as little as possible to do with dying and killing. Most people can at least appreciate why someone might not want to fight even if they can’t actually approve of it.
    Sergeant Hill leaned across his table and beckoned me in towards him. I too leaned over the desk. ‘Between you and me,’ he whispered, ‘Marie Abrahams’s old man says the night she died, only a woman come to their house.’
    ‘A woman?’
    ‘Didn’t stay, so the old man said,’ Sergeant Hill continued. ‘Left well before what he said was Marie’s bedtime. But then what’s he know? Barmy, so East Ham say. Marie had been looking after him for years while he had conversations with the wall, so it’s said. So whether he saw a woman, a bloke or a dog is probably open to all sorts of questioning.’ He sat up again and raised his voice above a whisper. ‘Took him up Claybury, poor old bugger.’
    Although I didn’t exactly shudder, I did feel as if someone had just walked over my grave. Claybury is a lunatic asylum in Woodford and is a place I’ve often imagined I’ll end my days. Once confined, the mad never come back, or if they do, they aren’t themselves or anyone else for that matter.
    ‘People have this barmy idea that Jack the Ripper has somehow come back to life,’ Sergeant Hill said.
    ‘Yes, but that’s ridiculous.’
    He shrugged. ‘You know it, I know it . . . But the fact remains, Mr H, that no one – no one sensible at least – has seen anything or anyone around and about the places where these women was murdered.’
    ‘There were those flowers with those horrible messages left on Violet Dickens’s grave,’ I said.
    ‘Violet was a drinker . . .’
    ‘Yes, I know, but . . .’
    ‘Look, Mr H,’ Sergeant Hill said, ‘I’ll keep what you and your sister have told us about the White Feather girls in mind. I’ll let me opposite number at East Ham know. These