Dead Beat

by Patricia Hall

  He clambered up the slope towards the main road, and stood for a moment in a clump of desiccated fireweed almost as tall as he was as he tried to decide which way to go. Fireweed, they called it, Hamish had told him in a coherent interlude, or bombweed, because of the speed at which it had sprung up on these derelict sites after Hitler’s fires had died away, replacing flames with its tall magenta flowers. It was dying away itself now, he thought, as the calender said spring was coming, although the weather was no warmer than it had been at Christmas. Soon the bomb sites would briefly be more open to prying eyes, another reason why he knew he had to move on, and quickly. He had earned nothing since he had found the bloody body in the flat in Soho, so there was no chance of buying anything. But today he must eat.

  He hesitated at the top of the slope beneath the retaining wall and listened to the traffic passing by on Farringdon Road. A left turn would take him towards Clerkenwell and Smithfield Market where he could perhaps beg something from one of the cafes frequented by the market porters who had started work before dawn unloading cargoes of meat from the farms and the docks for the wholesale stalls which sold it on to the butchers clogging the roads with their vans. Londoners liked their meat, and had been half-starved of it during the years of rationing, and the place would be heaving with activity all morning. But heading south meant exposing himself on more main roads and that might be too dangerous, he thought.

  Instead he turned north, flitting from one derelict site to another, forced back on to the road at the point where Exmouth Market crossed the underground railway, overground here and snaking away to King’s Cross. Here the laden stalls and crowds of shoppers would conceal him and there was food in abundance to be begged or pilfered as he slipped quickly through the crowds, keeping close to the walls and shop fronts, head down, coat collar turned up, only half-confident that no one from Soho or Oxford Street would come this far east. He was determined to take no chances.

  By the time he had begged a couple of stale bread rolls from a kindly-looking assistant in a baker’s shop, he realized his head was swimming, and he took refuge in an alley where he crouched down behind a row of stinking dustbins to eat his bread and rest until his mind cleared. The food eventually made him feel less groggy, and he continued his forage through the market, picking up a couple of apples while a stallholder was distracted but taking to his heels when a second red-faced stallholder noticed his hand sliding towards a banana. He was soon lost in the crowds again and began to work his way back towards his refuge on the railway embankment when he suddenly froze. A glimpse of a man with dark hair on the other side of the street, deep in conversation with a woman, made his heart thump uncontrollably. He dodged behind a crowd of burly men standing round a stall selling hot food, the smell making him salivate, and looked again. He had already convinced himself that someone must be looking for him and fear turned uncertainty to panic and he ran, soon in streets he did not know and with increasingly little idea how to get back to his base.

  The people here were better dressed than those he knew around the markets, men in dark suits or overcoats and hats, carrying small leather cases, women, and there did not seem to be many of them, with faces as glossily painted as masks, in tight skirts and jackets and high heels, almost as sombre as the men. A few glanced curiously at the boy in his thick jacket and threadbare trousers, but most ignored him and each other, hurrying along with abstracted expressions, making for tall new buildings with high windows and the long names of companies and banks the boy had never heard of, buildings interspersed with the gaping holes the bombs had left and which were only gradually being filled with scaffolding. When the boy saw a uniformed policeman in the distance he spun on his heel and turned down another street much the same as the one he had left. There were no shops and few pubs, and not even an underground station to give him any sort of idea where he was or where he was heading.

  Eventually he came to a major crossroads, and to his surprise a sign which told him that this was the A1, a road he knew led north, which was the one direction he was utterly convinced he never wanted to take. North lay his home, which he could only vaguely remember, and The Home, which he could recall only too clearly, with all its nightmares. The A1 was a route he did not want to contemplate now or ever, and he spun suddenly on his heel and dodged into the traffic, oblivious to the approach of a car, which hit him a glancing blow, flinging him back on to the pavement from which he had blindly stepped. His head hit the edge of the kerb, and his emaciated body fell, limp and unconscious, at the feet of the passers-by like a piece of rubbish blown there by the wind. One of the apples he had stolen rolled away to be crushed to pulp by a bus.

  FOUR

  The only phone in the house where Kate was staying with her friends was tucked away in a dark corner under the stairs in the musty ground floor hallway, an old push-button affair that the landlord had not bothered to update. There was no chance of anyone in the top flat hearing it if it rang, and calls were often missed if no one on the lower floors was at home, or if they did not feel like climbing the three flights of ill-lit stairs, choosing to leave the receiver dangling while a voice at the other end begged impotently for help. That evening, though, one of their neighbours had made the effort and Kate found herself to her surprise suddenly linked to a familiar voice she had not heard for months.

  ‘How did you get this number?’ was all she could think of to say to Dave Donovan, the boyfriend who had marched out of her life, all tight jeans and leather jacket and attitude, apparently without a backward glance or a trace of regret for fumbling his way to her virginity with vague promises of marriage, before taking off to seek his fortune with his band in the south.

  ‘From your mam, of course,’ Dave said, as if tracking her down was the most normal thing in the world after such a long silence. ‘She told me you were still taking snaps and had moved down here. How’s it going, la? Have you got a job?’

  ‘I have actually,’ Kate said, hackles rising. ‘Have you got a record contract yet?’

  The question was obviously one Donovan did not want to answer and there was a long pause. Kate could imagine the scowl on his round, freckled face beneath unruly carrot-coloured hair.

  ‘Would you take some snaps of the Ants?’ Donovan asked eventually. ‘We need some to put around the record companies and promoters.’

  Kate laughed at the sheer cheek of it. ‘I’m sure you do, but can you afford me?’ she asked. She had no idea how much the agency charged for publicity shots but she guessed it was more than the band could pay if they still lacked a recording contract. And in any case she remembered now just why she had been happy enough to see Dave Donovan walk away. His plans for his unexceptional group of musicians were always put ahead of her own modest ambitions. If he wanted ‘snaps’, she thought, he could use his own Box Brownie and whistle for anything more classy.

  ‘Dunno,’ Donovan said. ‘You wouldn’t charge me, would you?’

  ‘Ha,’ Kate said dismissively. ‘Haven’t you got a manager to organize this stuff for you? John Lennon’s never looked back since he signed up with that feller from the record shop in Whitechapel. Taking pictures costs money, you know.’

  ‘They’ve got another record out,’ Donovan said gloomily. ‘That’s the second now, and going up the hit parade. Could be number one at this rate.’

  ‘They’re good, though, you know that?’ Kate said. ‘Different. Not just another variation on the Shadows. You know how the girls at home were wild for them. I was surprised hardly anyone had heard of them when I got down here. I used to take pictures of them at the Cavern, you know, when they used to play at lunchtimes. We used to take our dinner in from college and they’d be eating sandwiches too, up on the stage between songs. It was like some crazy musical picnic. And it was so hot. I used to go back to class soaking wet. Didn’t you come a few times?’

  ‘I can’t remember,’ Donovan said, and Kate could hear the sulkiness in his voice, no doubt because his group had a distinct soun
d and look of the Shadows, the end of the last decade’s big thing.

  ‘I had a trip up last week but I didn’t have time to go to the Cavern. Your pictures’ll be worth something if they really make it big, la,’ Donovan said at last, grudgingly. ‘I wonder if Brian Epstein would take us on. I should have thought of that while I was back home. You’re right, he’s done great for the Beatles.’

  ‘All except Pete Best,’ Kate said. ‘You wouldn’t want anyone booted out the way he was, would you? And from what I heard, Brian Epstein was up to his neck in that.’

  ‘They’re better off with Ringo,’ Donovan said.

  ‘Not many of Pete’s fans would agree with that,’ Kate said. ‘I heard George Harrison just didn’t get on with him, but he was popular with a lot of the girls I knew. Maybe that’s why some of the others didn’t like him.’

  ‘Flipping hysterical, some of them girls,’ Donovan said.

  ‘You wouldn’t object if it was you they were getting hysterical about,’ Kate said, with no sympathy in her voice. ‘What are you doing for money anyway if you’re not doing so well with the band?’

  ‘I’ve got a job in a bar, Stevo and Miffy are working in some warehouse near King’s Cross. To be honest, I reckon we’ll have to go back up north if we don’t get a break soon. It’s too expensive down here. We’re paying three quid a week for a crummy place in Archway. Each.’

  ‘Archway?’ Kate asked.

  ‘Somewhere on the Northern Line,’ Donovan said. ‘You rattle up through Camden and Kentish Town. You don’t want to know about it. It’s not nice.’

  ‘I’ve got to find somewhere myself,’ Kate said. ‘I’m sleeping on Marie and Tess’s settee at the moment.’

  ‘Where’s that?’

  ‘Notting Hill,’ Kate said.

  ‘That’s all right. It’s quite pretty down there, trees and parks and things. A bit of life. Archway’s a dump.’

  ‘No, it’s not all right,’ Kate said vehemently. ‘It’s all right up by the underground station but not where I am. The house we’re in feels as if it might fall down any time. It’s like Toxteth, but with even more black people.’

  ‘They had those riots there, Teddy boys and Jamaicans or something, didn’t they?’ Donovan said thoughtfully. ‘But there should be some good music around down there. P’raps I’ll come and see you girls some time, take you to a club maybe? Would that suit?’

  ‘Not really, Dave,’ Kate said. ‘I think I’ve been to all the clubs I want to go to with you. But there is one thing. Have you seen Tom at all? My mum’s desperate because she hasn’t heard from him for months and I wondered if anyone from home had bumped into him.’

  ‘I’ll ask around,’ Donovan said. ‘He’ll be working in the rag trade somewhere. You know Tom, always the latest gear – winkle-pickers before the winkles had washed up at New Brighton. I’ll ask Miffy. He’s always mooching around Oxford Street and Soho. He’s got no money to spend but he hangs around with people who have.’

  ‘If you do hear anything, give me a ring,’ Kate said, grateful for extra pairs of eyes. ‘You can get me at work. This phone’s useless. It never gets answered half the time.’ She gave him the agency’s number, hoping Ken would have no objection to private calls coming into the office. ‘I really need to find him,’ she said quietly, reluctant to beg but knowing she would have to grow a thick skin if she was to continue her search.

  ‘I’ll put the word out,’ Donovan said. ‘Scousers stand out around here like Mancs at the Pier Head. They look at you as if you’ve dropped in from the moon. Someone may have bumped into Tom. Don’t worry, la, Dave’s on the case. And I’m sure you’ll think that’s worth a few snaps, won’t you? See you later.’

  ‘In a while,’ Kate said numbly, knowing how easily she had fallen into Donovan’s trap. Maybe it would be a small price to pay, if he or his friends really traced Tom on the Liverpool grapevine which she was sure must exist in this fragmented city which seemed to suck people in from all over the world, but she did not have high hopes. Knowing what she knew, she guessed Tom was lying low, quite determined not to be found. It would need more than the dubious detective skills of the Mersey mafia to track him down.

  Detective Sergeant Harry Barnard sat in a corner of the lounge bar of the George on Dean Street toying with a double Scotch and a dried up ham sandwich and feeling considerably disgruntled. He had spent the morning trudging round the pubs of Soho as one by one they had opened their doors to let the chilly air clear the fug of cigarette smoke and alcohol fumes from the night before. In his breast pocket was a photograph of Jonathon Mason which the police had found in the dead man’s flat, one of a number of glossy black and white publicity shots showing a good-looking young man with floppy fair hair unfashionably long, and the stamp of a theatrical agency stamped on the back.

  Strictly speaking he was stepping beyond his brief, but the more he was thwarted the more he was determined to pin down some information on the dead man which DCI Venables had so far failed to elicit from anyone else after five days of trying. One of the advantages of swapping Ted Venables for Keith Jackson as a boss was that Jackson left his detectives much to their own devices. So long as a reasonable number of charges made the books, and everyone knew he was especially keen on gross indecency, he left the stew of Soho and his detectives to bubble undisturbed.

  Barnard had no difficulty following up Venables’ line of inquiry as well as his other cases. Mason was on the books of a theatrical agency, which had taken the photographs, and had told Venables that they had represented him for six months and had a record of auditions he had attended and one small non-speaking role he had taken in a comedy at Wyndham’s which had proved so unfunny that it had folded ten days after it opened. But the only address the agency had for Mason was the flat where he had been found dead, and they knew absolutely nothing about his origins or background. He had walked in off the street one day, claiming some acting experience at school and at Cambridge, and had been put on the books as a result. The photograph had already been sent to the Cambridge police with a request to show it to the colleges to see if any firmer identification could be made that way, but Venables obviously did not have high hopes of a result from the ancient seat of learning.

  ‘D’you know how many bloody colleges there are in Cambridge?’ he had asked Barnard, stubbing out his cigarette viciously in the overflowing ashtray on his desk and lighting another after flicking through the sheaf of photographs. ‘What do they all do there, for God’s sake? If they send a DC round all of them it’ll take him a week, at least. And that’s if they can be bloody bothered.’

  ‘That’s not a face they’ll forget, though, is it?’ Barnard said, glancing again at the smoothly handsome features and surprisingly dark eyes and long lashes under the softly falling fair hair. ‘He must have had every nancy-boy in the place panting for a bit. You know what these men’s colleges are like and he’s the original pretty boy. Must keep the vice squad up there busy.’

  ‘I shouldn’t think they bother,’ Venables had said. ‘They lock the college gates at night, don’t they? That must keep it off the streets.’

  ‘But there are no college walls to hide behind round here,’ Barnard said.

  ‘His picture’s going in the Standard and the News this afternoon. Someone’ll recognize him.’

  Someone might, Barnard pondered as he peered thoughtfully at the shrivelled ham in his sandwich before pushing it away. But in the circumstances whoever did recognize Mason might not be someone who would want to rush to their local nick to identify themselves as a friend of the dead man. There were some kinds of friendship which could land you in gaol. He had wasted more hours than he cared to count in his early days with Vice lurking in men’s public lavatories, at then mere Inspector Jackson’s behest, waiting for someone to make a pass at him and sometimes making the pass himself. He ended up feeling sorry for the poor sods, he recalled, rather than wanting to haul them to the nick full of righteous indignation and with the law on
his side. But he knew that was not a sentiment which was widely shared in the Job and he kept it, and his personal reasons for feeling that way, strictly to himself.

  ‘I’ll keep asking around,’ Barnard had said to Venables, helping himself to one of the photographs. ‘If he was known on the street, I’ll suss him out.’

  But on the day that had not proved so easy, he thought, as he relented and took an unenthusiastic bite of his sandwich, wondering how much longer Ray Robertson, the man he had arranged to meet at the George, would be. His first ports of call had been the known haunts of homosexual men, the pubs which would fill up later in the day with a wholly male clientele, hot, sweaty, posing and on edge. Every now and again, Keith Jackson in person, and his officers, raided them and hauled off any couples who were engaged in overt sexual activity, usually in the lavatories, but most of the time they left them alone, preferring to tolerate that kind of activity in one or two places they knew about and leave the rest of the warren of narrow streets to the heterosexual trade which flourished in the pubs and clubs, brothels and clip joints and porn shops from which most of the squad made a comfortable second income.

  But neither landlords nor barmen in the ‘queer’ pubs had recognized the photograph Barnard had waved under their noses, and the handful of customers who glanced anxiously at each other when the DS walked in had been similarly unhelpful.

  ‘Lovely boy, though, isn’t he?’ one of the more confident young men had commented enthusiastically, and had looked crestfallen only when Barnard told him in explicit detail how Mason had died.