Wycliffe and Death in Stanley Street

by W.J. Burley

Genres: Mystery; Cozy Mystery; Hard-Boiled; Police Procedurals; Traditional Mysteries; Crime Fiction

Synopsis

A young girl is found dead in a house on Stanley Street... but it's just the start of a complex puzzle which Wycliffe must unravel. A dubious cul-de-sac just off the busy main road in a sprawling West Country port, Stanley Street is definitely not a salubrious place. And the victim, found naked and strangled in her bed is, appropriately enough, a prostitute. The local inspector believes it is just another sex crime, but Chief Superintendent Wycliffe is not convinced. For the victim, Lily Painter, is the kind of girl who likes Beethoven and has lots of 'O' and 'A' levels to her name - not the usual sort of prostitute at all. And when Wycliffe goes digging into her background, he comes up with plenty of surprises, not least a shadowy connection with property speculators and drug smugglers. But it takes a dangerous arson attack and a second murder before the solution to this complex and fast-moving puzzle can be found... Why readers love W.J. Burley: 'First-class, old-time, hyper-ingenious whodunit.' Observer 'You can always count on Wycliffe ... he inevitably guarantees a good story, convincing characters and appealing landscape ' Financial Times 'Wycliffe teases out the truth with delicate skill that leaves the reader intrigued and convinced.' Mail on Sunday 'Gripping.' The Times Fans of Ruth Rendell, Val McDermid and Peter Robinson will love W.J. Burley: 1. Wycliffe and the Three-Toed Pussy 2. Wycliffe and How to Kill a Cat 3. Wycliffe and the Guilt Edged Alibi 4. Wycliffe and Death in a Salubrious Place 5. Wycliffe and Death in Stanley Street 6. Wycliffe and the Pea-Green Boat 7. Wycliffe and the School Bullies 8. Wycliffe and the Scapegoat 9. Wycliffe in Paul's Court 10. Wycliffe's Wild Goose Chase 11. Wycliffe and the Beales 12. Wycliffe and the Four Jacks 13. Wycliffe and the Quiet Virgin 14. Wycliffe and the Winsor Blue 15. Wycliffe and the Tangled Web 16. Wycliffe and the Cycle of Death 17. Wycliffe and the Dead Flautist 18. Wycliffe and the Last Rites 19. Wycliffe and the Dunes Mystery 20. Wycliffe and the House of Fear 21. Wycliffe and the Redhead 22. Wycliffe and the Guild of Nine * Each Inspector Wycliffe novel can be read as part of a series or as a standalone*

Release date: December 16, 2010

Publisher: Orion

Print pages: 228

Sample

Stanley Street is a cul-de-sac, blocked at the far end by iron railings which separate it from the railway embankment. The houses are cheap because of the trains but they are convenient for the shops. Prince’s Street, the main thoroughfare between the docks and the city centre, is only a block away and the muffled roar of its traffic fills the gaps between the trains so that there is little risk of silence except at odd times in the small hours and on Sunday mornings.

Most of the shops in Prince’s Street are real shops, not department stores or supermarkets, and most of them spill over on to the pavements. There are bakers who bake crusty bread, butchers who sell undyed meat (not in plastic bags), grocers, greengrocers, delicatessens, wine shops, tobacconists, stationers and ironmongers. And there is at least one pub every two hundred yards.

There are twenty-two houses in Stanley Street, most of them are dilapidated, but three or four have been converted into flats: two flats to each house with a shared front door. The flats are occupied by single girls who spend most of their days in bed and start work after the shops in Prince’s Street have closed. A base in Stanley Street is convenient for pick-ups who dislike having to walk far. Most nights there are plenty of pick-ups: seamen from the docks, a few students sampling life in the raw and several middle-aged husbands and fathers from the suburbs. Each girl has her beat which includes at least one pub.

‘Hullo, darling!’

Brenda was standing in the side entrance to a newsagent’s. The barman at The Joiners had warned her off because the cops were taking an interest in the place. It was a nuisance but it would pass, it always did. The police were not interested in her, they were after pushers and somebody had tipped them off about The Joiners. Good luck to them, she didn’t like pushers either but she couldn’t afford to stick her neck out.

‘Hullo, darling, want to come home?’

It was drizzling rain, not many people about, just cars and the occasional lorry swishing through. Four days to Christmas and business was always bad at holiday time, especially Christmas. She was on the point of turning it in for the night, she was cold and the damp seemed to penetrate right through her. She walked a little way down the pavement to stand under the shelter of the railway bridge.

‘Hullo, darling.’

A little fellow, his mackintosh buttoned to the neck; in his fifties or older. He stopped to look at her with hungry, timorous eyes.

‘I’ll give you a nice time. Number 9 Stanley Street, just round the corner. Go in and right up the stairs.’

The patter came automatically then she turned and walked off, leaving him standing. She didn’t care a damn whether he followed her or not, she’d had enough. She turned the corner into Wellington Road, fifty yards along then another corner into Stanley Street. The houses were on one side only, facing the wall of a wholesale grocery warehouse. Most of the houses retained their little pocket-handkerchief gardens with hedges of jaded privet. The door of number nine was unlocked and there was a light in the hall. Another girl, Lily Painter, occupied the ground floor flat. The door of her front room was shut which meant that she was at home and engaged with a client. Probably ‘Daddy’, Brenda thought vaguely, it was his night.

She called, ‘It’s me, Lily,’ and went on up the stairs.

They got on well together. Lily was twenty-six, five years younger. She was vivacious, pretty too, with a figure which took years off the old men and she was so popular that her clients came by appointment. Brenda felt no jealousy, you had to be realistic and it was a question of supply and demand. All the same, she sometimes wondered.

At the top of the stairs, two rooms with a tiny kitchen and an even tinier bathroom and loo. One of the rooms was her bedroom, the other a sitting-room which she kept private; no client was ever admitted. To make sure, it was always locked. She hung her wet mackintosh on a hanger and put it to drip over the bath. In the bedroom she turned up the gas fire, kicked off her shoes and unzipped her dress. For a moment she stood, in briefs and brassière, looking at herself in the dressing-table mirror. She was painfully thin, her ribs showed under her small breasts; her skin was white, bleached looking. She knew that most of her customers were disappointed when they saw her naked. She was thirty-two and she had no need of a clairvoyant to tell her that it would not be long before she began to look haggard. Her mother had lost what looks she ever had while she was in her thirties. Brenda put on her red dressing-gown of brushed nylon. She liked red, it seemed to go with her jet black hair and it made her thin, pale face look interesting.

In the kitchen she took a bottle of brandy from a cupboard and poured herself a tot. She drank it off and it warmed her, she felt better. She had forgotten about the man until she heard his slow footsteps on the stairs. She met him on the landing and took his wet coat. He came into the bedroom in a daze. She noticed that he was lame, trailing his left foot.

‘I’ll take it now, love – the money.’

He fumbled in his wallet and produced a couple of notes; she smiled and slipped them into a drawer of the bedside table.

‘Aren’t you going to take your clothes off?’

She lay on top of the bed and opened her dressing gown. He tried to kiss her but she told him not to, which put him off.

‘I’m sorry.’

‘No need to apologize, dear, but we got to be careful else we’d catch everything that was going.’

‘Yes of course, I didn’t think.’

She felt sorry for this sad little man and tried to help him. ‘You married?’

‘Sort of.’

It was soon over.

‘The bathroom is at the top of the stairs.’

He went off, carrying his jacket and trousers. A few minutes later he put his head round the door, ‘Thank you’. She helped him on with his wet coat and heard him clip-clop down the stairs, making heavy weather of it with his game leg.

A few minutes in the bathroom. Half past nine, too early to go to bed. She unlocked the door of her sitting-room. A cosy little room, suburban, with a three-piece suite, a fitted carpet, television and a picture of elephants trumpeting through African dust over the mantelpiece. She switched on the fire and the telly. No cigarettes. She went to the top of the stairs to see if Lily was still engaged. Daddy must have left for Lily’s door was slightly ajar; she would be tidying up. A three-and-a-half litre Rover or a Mercedes parked two or three streets away and in a few minutes Daddy would be back in his detached residence in Edgington or Farley and Mrs Daddy would say that he looked tired and offer him dry sherry.

She flip-flopped downstairs in her slippers and as she reached the hall the telephone rang. ‘70862. This is Bren— OK. See you next week then. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t.’

One of her few regulars calling off for the week.

She dropped the receiver back on its rest and went into Lily’s sitting-room. It was very different from hers, more elegant and part of the business. There was a glass fronted cabinet with drinks for the clients, before, after or in between. Your feet sank into coffee coloured pile and there were erotic pictures on the wall: a series depicting sculptural reliefs from the temple of Khajuraho. Unassailable as works of art but effective as a mild stimulant for the jaded client without the implied insult of merely dirty pictures.

To Brenda’s surprise the room was only lit by light coming through the open door of the bedroom.

‘Lily, are you there?’ For some reason she was nervous and her voice cracked.

Apart from being attractive Lily was educated and this went down well with a certain type of client. Intelligent conversation added a redeeming gloss to what might otherwise appear a sordid encounter. Of course, they paid for it.

‘Lily?’

From the bedroom a door opened into a well-appointed bathroom all in shades of pink. Lily’s bed was pink too and frilly, surrounded by wall mirrors. Lily was lying on the bed, on her back, her feet just touching the carpet, and she was naked, her small, girlish breasts wide apart. She was dead, her face contorted and frightful. Her reflection in the wall mirrors added another dimension in the grotesque.

Brenda did not scream or panic but she felt a sudden constriction in her stomach which made her want to vomit. She fought it down.

999 – She dialled.

‘Which service do you require?’

‘Police.’

A click. ‘Police.’

She began incoherently.

‘Please state your name, where you are speaking from and the number of your telephone.’

She managed it.

‘Have you called a doctor?’

‘She’s dead! I keep telling you.’

‘All the same . . . Please wait where you are and touch nothing. One of our cars will be with you in a few minutes.’

They seemed to take it as though it were an everyday event – so bloody calm. But for her it was Lily, one of the few people she could call a friend. For three years they had lived in the same house.

She opened the front door and stood on the step, she could not bear it inside. It was raining hard now. She heard the siren of a police car coming down Prince’s Street. It turned into Wellington Road and the tyres screeched on the streaming tarmac as it made a second sharp turn into Stanley Street. The siren wailed to silence and two young coppers got out.

‘Where is she, love?’

One of them went in to see while the other stayed with her. He was gentle. ‘Brenda, isn’t it?’ She remembered him. He was fair haired and red faced, a regular country boy. He had booked her once for too blatantly soliciting, she had been going through a bad patch. ‘Is there somewhere we can talk?’

The other came out of Lily’s flat, grim faced, nodded to his mate and went out to the car. ‘I’ll report back.’

Upstairs in the kitchen, a policeman’s cap on the plastic-topped table, his notebook open beside it. She could hear voices downstairs, probably the doctor had arrived.

‘Lily Painter,’ the young man wrote in his book. ‘Any relatives you know of?’

‘She never mentioned anybody. She told me once that her parents were both dead.’ It was true, although they were friendly Lily said very little about herself or her family.

‘You found her?’

‘I went down to cadge a cigarette.’

‘And just found her lying there – is that it?’ He was looking at her with earnest blue eyes, trying to do his job without upsetting her.

Suddenly her heart seemed to stop. ‘It must have been him!’

‘Who, love?’

‘The man who killed her – Daddy she calls him, he’s one of her regulars and tonight was his night.’

‘Who is he?’

She looked at him blankly. ‘I’ve no idea, but it must have been him mustn’t it? I mean, he must have been with her when I came in.’ She shivered at the thought.

‘Have you ever seen him?’

‘Not to say seen him, just glimpsed him, coming in or going out.’

‘Can you describe him?’

‘Not really, he’s oldish.’

‘How old?’

She shrugged. ‘Fifty? I don’t know, do I? I only set eyes on him two or three times and that was in the hall where there isn’t much light. Besides, they don’t like being stared at.’

Another siren, getting nearer.

‘The Brass.’

‘He’s been coming regular for a long time, she used to laugh about him—’

‘Try to remember.’

She frowned. ‘He was not very tall – on the small side. I think he was dark but I’m not sure. Perhaps he was grey – oh! and he wore a grey, herring-bone tweed overcoat, I remember that.’

‘No hat?’

‘No.’

‘A bit posh?’

‘I suppose he was – he would need to be to go to Lily.’

‘Did you ever speak to him?’

She shook her head.

‘Never mind, make yourself a cup of tea, love, you’ll have visitors in a minute.’

She could hear them downstairs, and yet another siren. The telephone rang in the hall.

‘Don’t bother, they’ll answer it.’

Detective Chief Inspector Gill was very tall, very thin, he stooped as a matter of habit. A large face with rubbery features and a permanent five-o’clock shadow. She had had customers like him, they left you sore inside and bruised out. He had a girl with him, a female dick in a turtle-necked sweater and a mini-skirt. Brenda had had dealings with her sort, too. They were supposed to comfort you and catch you off balance at the same time.

The young constable handed his notebook to the big man who glanced at it, snapped it shut and tucked it into the constable’s tunic pocket.

‘Give it to Sergeant Scales downstairs and tell him to have the description put out. As for you, lad, back on watch!’ His eyes came round to Brenda. ‘What’s this then? Making tea? Sue can do that, it’s one of her few talents. Where are we?’ He was opening doors off the landing. ‘This’ll do, in here.’

She followed him into her sitting-room where the gas fire seemed welcoming and the television was on showing the inevitable football match.

‘Sit down.’ He stood over the television set, watching. ‘Christ! You’d think some of ’em had two left feet and creeping bloody paralysis.’ He switched the set off and turned to her. ‘Not working tonight?’

She did not answer and he grinned. He sat in the easy chair opposite her and lit a long, black cheroot. ‘Now tell uncle all about it.’

She did and he questioned her minutely.

‘This chap she called Daddy; what did she tell you about him?’

‘Nothing much, just that he was kinky and she used to laugh at him. A lot of the old ones have kinky tricks.’

‘What sort of tricks did he have?’

‘He likes doing himself up in leather straps and he brings pictures.’

‘Pictures?’

‘To look at. Some of them are really past it.’

‘Is that all?’

She shrugged. ‘All she told me.’

From time to time trains passed at the end of the road, the house shook and the windows rattled.

‘Now, what about this description, you can do better than that.’

The policewoman brought in tea but Brenda’s went cold before she could drink it.

‘You haven’t got a ponce have you?’

‘No.’

‘Did she?’

A faint smile. ‘I can’t see any man getting money out of Lily.’

He clicked his tongue. ‘Greedy, both of you. You need somebody to look after you in this game.’ He flicked ash into the gas fire. ‘No maid?’

‘No.’

‘You two in the house alone?’

‘Yes.’

‘Bloody asking for it.’ He stood up and glanced round the little room. ‘Nice if you can keep it. Anyway, I’m off. You can start telling Sue all about it.’

‘But I’ve told you.’

He grinned, his greasy rubbery grin which showed all his teeth. ‘You haven’t started to tell anything yet, girlie.’ At the door he turned, ‘And Sue, get her to give you a description of that chap she had with her—’

‘He doesn’t know anything.’

‘Let him tell it.’ He went out, closing the door.

‘His bark is worse than his bite, don’t let it get you down.’

S. . .