The chilly draughts that blew into the Riley Lynx on all sides reminded Detective Inspector John Jago that winter was not his favourite season. He’d always wondered what it might be like to live in a warmer climate than London could offer, but his time in France in the army during the Great War had all been spent in the north, where it wasn’t much different to home. The only other time in his life that he’d travelled outside Britain was in 1936, when he’d been seconded to Special Branch for six months. Civil war had broken out in Spain, and the Branch had sent him to liaise with the French police over cross-border arms smuggling, using the language he’d learnt from his French mother. That had taken him to the South of France, but he’d been disappointed to find that even down near the Spanish border at this time of year temperatures could drop to freezing point and below. Now, people here in London were saying that the current winter was the coldest in sixty years.

He and Detective Constable Peter Cradock were driving up Charing Cross Road towards Soho. The London Metropolitan Police was responsible for some seven hundred square miles of the capital city and its surrounds, so Jago made no claim to familiarity with every inch of it. There were parts he knew like the back of his hand, but Soho wasn’t one of them. He’d spent time there, however, in the line of duty: long enough to reckon he could find his way about it reasonably well, and long enough to know it was the kind of place where even the most experienced police officer had to be wary.

The uniformed constable standing outside the front door of 37 Peter Street looked as though he too was feeling the cold. He was stamping his feet when the two detectives pulled up and got out of the car, but when Jago gave his name, he drew himself up to attention.

‘Morning, sir,’ he said.

‘Good morning to you,’ Jago replied. ‘And you are …?’

‘Purdew, sir. From West End Central – they got the call about the body and told me to come straight over and make sure nobody interfered with the scene of crime.’

‘And has anyone?’

‘Not since I got here, no, sir. The photographer from Scotland Yard’s taking photos of the body, and I’ve got the man who found it waiting for you in the living room. He’s the landlord, apparently, and he says it’s Mr Samuel Bellamy, a bookseller, and this is where he lives.’

‘Very good. What’s this landlord’s name?’

‘Thompson, sir – Eric Thompson.’

‘And what time did he find the body?’

‘He said he found it at about eleven – he called 999 at five past. Oh, and by the way, sir, I took the liberty of calling the exchange, and they confirmed that they’d received a 999 call from this number at five past eleven.’

‘Thank you – well done. Right, you stay here now, and we’ll take a look around. Tell the landlord we want to speak to him, and we’ll be with him as soon as possible.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Has Dr Gibson arrived yet – the pathologist?’

‘No, sir.’

‘Well, send him up as soon as he does. What floor’s the body on?’

‘First floor, sir. Up the stairs and turn left at the top – there’s a door there to Mr Bellamy’s office, and that’s where he is.’

‘Thank you.’

Jago and Cradock followed his directions, found the door in question and went in. As they stepped into the office, Cradock’s eyes widened. ‘Blimey,’ he said. ‘He was a bit of a reader, then.’

Jago took in the scene without comment. All four walls of the room were packed from floor to ceiling with shelves – not the elegant fitted type one might expect to find in a rich man’s study, but a hotch-potch of bookcases of various hues and sizes cobbled together unevenly to fill the maximum possible space. Every shelf was stuffed with books, most of them old-looking and leather-bound, but some with a more modern appearance. A dark wooden spiral step ladder with the air of a library relic salvaged from a junk shop offered the only visible means of reaching those on the higher shelves, and there were smaller stacks of books dotted around the floor. His nostrils caught a smell of pipe tobacco and old leather in the stale air.

The room was about ten feet by fifteen, and in keeping with the chaotic shelving was furnished in a variety of styles. A voluminous upholstered armchair of a contemporary style filled one corner, attended by a couple of Victorian caned chairs and a nondescript occasional table with ring stains on its once-polished surface, and in the centre of the room stood a cluttered and battered mahogany desk that looked as though it belonged in a much larger space. A couple of feet away, pushed back and turned to one side as if its occupant had just left the desk, was an old-fashioned captain’s swivel chair with splits in its worn leather seat. Jago wondered idly whether its owner had been a seafarer, or perhaps had just fancied himself as the captain of this room. Whatever he’d been or done, he was now lying dead on the floor.

Nisbet, the photographer, was at work on the far side of the desk. He paused to greet them. ‘Morning – I’m nearly done. Just got a few close-ups to do.’ He adjusted his camera on its tripod so that it was pointing downwards and completed his work. ‘There,’ he said, ‘all done. He’s all yours now. Looks like he’s been shot in the chest.’

Jago knelt down beside the body. ‘Indeed it does,’ he said, noting, but not touching, the small hole an inch or so to the left of the buttons on his shirt which appeared to mark the site of the entry wound. ‘And no sign of a gun, as far as I can see.’

‘So not suicide, then?’ said Cradock.

‘That depends – someone else could’ve removed the weapon, couldn’t they?’

‘Oh, yes – of course.’

‘We’ll see what the doctor has to say when he gets here. In the meantime, see what you can come up with in terms of prints.’

‘Righto, guv’nor.’ Cradock got the fingerprinting equipment out of its bag and began to explore the room, dusting for fingerprints with Nisbet accompanying him to photograph them.

Jago stayed with the body. He slipped his hand into the dead man’s inside jacket pocket and brought out a leather wallet that contained an identity card and a couple of pound notes. ‘Here we are, Peter,’ he said, showing the card to Cradock. ‘He had one of those new green ones, with a photo.’

Cradock looked up from his fingerprinting to examine it. ‘They’re the ones people have to get if they want to travel into protected areas, aren’t they? Could that be significant?’

‘Possibly – we’ll need to check that. But in the meantime, it’s in his name, Samuel Bellamy, see, and the address is 37 Peter Street, so that tallies with what the landlord says. The photo’s him too, so I think we can safely say we’ve identified him. And here – date of birth. Eighteenth of June, 1897, so that makes him forty-three.’

Jago checked the dead man’s other pockets: they yielded a handkerchief, a comb, a pair of Yale keys and a few shillings’ worth of coins. Jago put all these personal items into a buff envelope, and his attention shifted to a scattering of leather-bound books that lay open on the floor as if they had fallen. ‘What do you make of that, Peter?’ he said, pointing to them. ‘Signs of a struggle, perhaps?’

‘Could be, yes,’ Cradock replied after a quick glance. ‘I don’t suppose a bookseller would go chucking books around for no reason. Maybe he got into a fight and someone shot him. They have gangsters in Soho, don’t they?’

‘So I believe, yes, but we’ll need to check whether Mr Bellamy had a gun himself.’

‘For protection, you mean?’

‘For any reason.’

The sound of a door banging came from the floor below, followed by that of footsteps bounding up the staircase. The door opened, and in came Gibson, the pathologist.

‘Sorry I’m late,’ he said, getting his breath back. ‘We had a busy night at St George’s – the hospital was taking in casualties from that terrible fire in the City. It was a case of all hands to the pump, and even I was called in to help out. I expect you heard about it.’

‘The big air raid? Yes, I heard a bit about it this morning – it sounded dreadful.’

‘It was – but now I’d better get started on this poor fellow, if that’s all right.’

‘Yes, please – it looks as though he was shot.’

Dr Gibson examined the wound on...