War Damage by Elizabeth Wilson Page A

high-ups, well-known people, not that the Milners and their pals are really well known, not most of them anyway.’
    It was the second time Plumer had said that. It was odd. Plumer was not the deferential type. And normally neither was the superintendent. ‘The dancer’s famous,’ he said, stating the obvious.
    â€˜Yes, yes, I know that. Covent Garden, part of the war effort, got a gong. But we’ve got to go carefully. He’s like a cat on a hot tin roof over this one. Look – there’s a crime wave on, haven’t you noticed. And this blighter was shot. Superintendent Blatchford wants it solved double quick, but he doesn’t want a lot of scandal about queers and pansies. Member of the underworld, criminal fraternity, that’s what we’re looking for.’
    â€˜We’ve done what we could in that direction. And the shooting was so amateurish.’
    â€˜It’s early days, whatever Blatchford says. We’ll have to go back and try again. Apply more pressure. And as for amateurish – whoever shot the pansy probably did time in the war, not square bashing. A lot of these young hoodlums have no idea, they are bloody amateurs.’ Plumer looked at his companion. ‘I know what’s on your mind: Rita Hayworth. I’m right, aren’t I. And I’ve nothing against you going and seeing her again. You might get her talking when her husband’s not around. See if you can get anything out of her – romance her a bit, if you like. Never hurts to turn on the charm. And she probably knows as much about the dead man as anyone – and what her husband was up to, if anything. Worth a try, you never know. Don’t get carried away, mind. Go easy. Always remember these sort of people have a different moral code from ours. We need to talk to the lawyer too. I suppose theoretically he is still an executor.’
    â€˜The guest list – shall I follow them up as well?’
    The chief inspector dropped Murray at Archway underground station before turning north-east towards his home and his meekly understanding wife in faraway Chingford.
    Murray bought an evening paper and tried to read it in the tube going home, but he hadn’t got over his astonishment at his boss’s words. Romancing Mrs Milner! That Plumer, a model of moral rectitude, should have suggested flirting with a married woman had deeply shocked him. And he couldn’t help wondering how Plumer behaved when ‘turning on the charm’ – if he ever had, which was hard to imagine.
    Yet perhaps the older man had more intuition than Murray gave him credit for, because as the train rumbled southwards, Paul Murray could not let go of the mental images of her : the white skin against the smooth black material of her dress, the curve of her backside as she’d risen so gracefully from her chair. His eyes wandered over the sports pages, but he was seeing the way her hands scrunched into her curls and feeling the warmth of her smile and the ingenuous gaze of those wonderful green eyes.
    When he came out of Clapham North station the air seemed grimier and the streets dingier. As he walked towards the terraced house he rented with his mother – one in a long, long road of identical Edwardian houses, each façade top-heavy with crude plaster ornamentation – he sank into a mood of glum fatigue, and when he reached home, he found the house shabby and the furnishings sparse after Downshire Hill.
    â€˜How the other half lives, Mother,’ he said as she set a plate of cottage pie and cabbage in front of him. She did her best with the rations, but what depressed him about their life at home was the acceptance of drabness. The Milners’ house had been so bright and colourful, but for him and his mother austerity had little to do with temporary shortages, it was rather the fabric of life itself; austerity was their lot , and always had been.
    Paul Murray’s father had died