Death's Doorway

by Crin Claxton

  Deirdre looked thoughtful. “Frankie’s getting on my nerves. She’s like a short, frowny raincloud following me around. She needs to pass over. She won’t do that till you convince her girlfriend to let her go.”

  “We’re working on it,” Tony said. “But I’d be surprised if it’s that easy. Rose must have loved Frankie very much to keep the campaign going all these years. What makes you think she’ll stop now?”

  Deirdre looked thoughtful. “Someone needs to tell her. It’s cruel to let her keep wasting her time on that campaign. Who knows what she could have done with her life if she hadn’t have been running around with a placard.”

  “I don’t think it was that kind of campaign,” Tony muttered. “I don’t know, though, maybe they did go on marches.”

  Deirdre wasn’t listening. “She could have been anybody, done anything. She could have been prime minister. Or a female wrestler.”

  Tony rubbed her eyes. There was no point in trying to make sense of Deirdre’s tangents.

  “Or the first female Mountie.”

  Tony frowned. “Wouldn’t she have had to go to Canada?”

  “Exactly! She could have gone to Canada. Instead she spent five decades of her life spearheading a doomed campaign. Only a lesbian would hang on to an ex for five decades, by the way.”

  Tony decided to ignore that. “You’re saying that Frankie’s annoying you and someone should tell Rose she’s wrong about her ex?”

  “See, that’s why they call you the Supernatural Detective,” Deirdre said sweetly. “Forge the letter saying that Frankie made it up about being in danger. Take it to the girlfriend. No doubt she’ll be relieved to be able to let go. And voilà, you can go back to kissing and canoodling.”

  Tony glanced at Maya. She had resumed work on the letter. Tony wanted to talk more with Deirdre about Frankie. Something didn’t sit right about the case. But it wasn’t fair to Maya to carry on a conversation she couldn’t be part of. Tony pushed the thought away.

  *

  The photographer’s studio was a loft room in Stoke Newington. Skylights in the sloping roof flooded the space with natural light. It bounced softly off cream walls onto blond wood floorboards. Jade had taken the plunge of getting new headshots done. She was perched on a stool, trying to compose her face into an expression that would make her stand out to casting agents—casting agents who scanned hundreds of actors’ pictures every time they looked to fill a role.

  Ambient trance music was playing at a low volume. Jade thought it was probably whale song. It wasn’t to her taste, but it was innocuous enough. The photographer was a laid-back white guy. He had a neat brown beard and short wavy hair. He was stocky, rather than tall, dressed in jeans and a sky blue casual shirt, open at the neck. Jade felt comfortable with him but not completely relaxed. He didn’t speak much, and when he did, he spoke to her through the camera lens. He was fiddling about with a big, round silver reflector that was reluctant to leave its case. Eventually, he got it out and clipped it to a stand.

  Jade checked herself in the mirror set up behind the camera. She practiced an unsmiling, “Hire me, I’m fantastic, I can play any part,” pose.

  The photographer stepped back into position and started clicking away.

  Jade tried looking fantastic and hirable in left profile and right profile. Then she was unsure if she looked good in profile at all. Jade hated trying to guess what casting agents were looking for. She needed to look attractive but not too much like a model. Some actors said you should look neutral, but then you ended up looking bland. This is why I hate having my headshots done.

  “Excuse me; you’re gritting your teeth. It’s making you look severe. You might want to relax a little,” the photographer said, bent over the camera.

  Jade moistened her lips and leaned her head back, trying to relax her shoulders. The trance music had become annoying. There was a wailing sound that was getting on her nerves. Jade took a deep breath. Head back, face to camera. That’s always a good look for me. She tried to project radiance.

  The plinkety music faded into the background as shrieking sounds swelled. Jade tensed. How is anybody supposed to look gorgeous with that god-awful noise in their ear?

  “Can ya turn the music down? Or better still, off,” Jade said, trying to keep the irritation out of her voice.

  “Music?” The photographer looked up from the camera. He cocked his ear, listening. “What music?”

  Jade stared. How could he not hear it?

  She took a breath.

  A loud banging came out of nowhere.

  The wailing swelled until she could hardly hear anything else. The photographer was looking at her strangely.

  Suddenly, the silver reflector whipped off its stand and clattered to the floor.

  “What’s wrong with that thing?” he mumbled.

  Halfway to retrieve the reflector, he stopped. “Hey, are you okay?” He looked at Jade with a worried expression.

  Jade barely registered his concern. The banging noises and plinking music had stopped. All she could hear was the loud and terrible crying from her dreams.

  Chapter Three

  Frankie’s old girlfriend, Rose, buzzed Tony into her flat after only a minute of conversation through the intercom. Tony pondered on that as she mounted the stairs. Rose should be more careful. First, Jade had got into the flat on the strength of selling household products. Now, Tony had got through just by mentioning Frankie’s name.

  At the top of a dark hallway, a flimsy front door was ajar. Tony edged it open and called round, “Hello! It’s the woman with the letter!”

  “Come through, first door on the right.” Rose had one of those female voices that Tony loved—confident and gravelly. She had a strong, white, working-class London accent.

  Tony walked along a hallway covered in wood chip wallpaper, painted magnolia. It was a look popular in the 1980s. She passed clip frames full of photos of lesbians, mostly butches and femmes. There were shots of pride marches and feminist demonstrations, as well as groups posed at a party and on a day out at the beach.

  In the sitting room, Rose was laid out on an Edwardian chaise longue with an iPad propped up on perched knees. She smiled, and Tony’s heart skipped a beat. Rose’s skin was etched with fine lines. She wore her silver hair long and tied back with a diamante clip. She had full lips, a long, straight nose, well-defined eyebrows, a haughty, determined chin, and startling eyes whose color was somewhere between green and light hazel. She was petite and elegant. Tony guessed that Rose must be in her eighties. She was beautiful.

  “Are you going to stand there all day, love?” Rose’s deliciously deep voice broke into Tony’s thoughts.

  “You shouldn’t just let people in!” Tony blurted out.

  Rose stared at her for a moment. “So people keep telling me. But didn’t you say you had a letter? Why don’t you sit down?”

  Rose’s chaise longue was spread out under a big sash window. Sunlight filtered into the room through net curtains. A floor-to-ceiling bookcase took up most of the wall opposite the door. It was filled with feminist books, lesbian novels, poetry, and classical English literature. Magazines were piled up by the chaise. A Victorian armchair sat next to a beautifully renovated fireplace with a black grate and pale mantelpiece. Photographs and posters covered the walls. Most of the photos were of Frankie.

  The framed posters caught Tony’s eye. They advertised fundraising club nights for the Justice For Frankie White campaign. From the lettering and entry prices, and the names of the singers and bands appearing, it was obvious the posters spanned several decades.

  “I’ve heard of that campaign,” Tony said. She had been reading up about it online, but, looking at one of the posters, she dimly recalled going to a fundraiser in the nineties.

  Rose followed Tony’s glance to the posters. “Justice for Frankie,” she read aloud. “Well, love, we’re still trying to get justice for her. We hadn’t had a fundraiser for a long time, but funny enough we’ve deci
ded to have a small event in the autumn. It’s more of a get-together for all the supporters. I’m looking forward to it.” Her eyes twinkled. “To be honest, it’s a good excuse to catch up, and to keep Frankie’s name out there. We’ll make some noise about other prisoners’ campaigns as well. I don’t suppose we’ll make a lot of money for ours. We rely on online donations these days. It’s enough to keep us going. I still write my letters to the home office. They politely ignore me as always. But I’ll carry on as long as the man that killed Frankie is alive.”

  With Rose in front of her, Tony wanted to hear her side of the story. “Do you mind telling me more about Frankie’s case?” she asked.

  “I don’t mind at all. But only if you sit down. You’re making the place untidy standing there.” Rose tipped her head toward the armchair.

  Tony settled into it.

  “She died on the twenty-seventh of August, 1967, in Holloway prison. She was murdered by a prison guard, Ron Somers. The official line was that she hit her head fighting with another prisoner and bled out in the night, but I’m convinced that Somers was the one that hit her. He was always beating her up. The last time I saw Frankie she had two black eyes. She showed me her ribs too. Black and blue. She told me Somers was always on her back, and if he got the chance, he’d rough her up. He was a homophobe and he took a particular dislike to Frankie. It had to be serious for Frankie to tell me about it. She was tough, my Frankie.” Rose swallowed.

  “Even if, by some remote chance, they were right and she did get a brain injury from fighting a prisoner, then he was still to blame for her death. He was the guard on duty, and I know for a fact she never saw a doctor. He locked her up in her cell that night, and she was dead in the morning. They sent me a letter. That’s how I found out that my girl had gone.”

  Tony shifted. “They didn’t send anyone to see you?”

  Rose shook her head. “No, love. They didn’t come to see me, but I tried to see them. They wouldn’t meet me because they didn’t count me as a relative. I had so many questions I needed answering. I didn’t even get her belongings. I would have liked that. She put me down as next of kin, but they didn’t honor it.

  “I went to the inquest, though. Frankie was fitted up, and nobody seemed to give a damn about a young, butch prisoner. That would have been the end of it for a lot of people. It’s really hard taking on the system. But I’ve always been a fighter. I got my friends involved. At first it was just the queers: the butches, the femmes, and the queens. The feminists didn’t want to know because Frankie was a butch and we admitted she’d been fighting, but they changed their minds and got on board later. It grew and grew. To be honest, the campaign kept me going in those awful first months after I lost her.” Rose smiled softly at Tony. “I’ve met some wonderful people over the years, and we’ve had some triumphs. Because of us making a fuss about Frankie they started looking in on prisoners through the night. We’re very involved with prisoners’ rights groups, especially ones that look into deaths in prisons. But, oh goodness, listen to me rattling on. Didn’t you have a letter for me?”

  Tony smiled. “Yes.” She got up. “It sounds like you’ve done a lot of good.”

  “Well, we’re not going to stop anytime soon. I have a feeling in my bones, we’ll get justice for Frankie one day.” Rose’s voice had a quiet determination in it.

  Tony handed the letter to Rose and then returned to the armchair.

  Rose stared at the envelope. “You haven’t opened this?”

  Tony shook her head. She truthfully hadn’t.

  “Oh. I wasn’t expecting…I haven’t seen that writing in a long time,” Rose said. She pulled open a drawer in the small table next to the chaise. She took out a silver letter opener and used it to slice open the envelope. There was a tremor in her fingers as Rose pulled the letter out. Rose picked up a pair of glasses from the table.

  Rose unfolded the letter and read it through. Tony knew what Maya had written: a description of how Frankie had been passing the time in prison, and some words of endearment, both copied exactly from the letter Maya had taken from Rose’s desk. Then a short paragraph saying that Frankie had been lying about the prison guard harassing her.

  Rose’s mouth dropped open as she got to the bottom of the second page. Her breathing quickened. She read both sides of the letter and then turned it over and read the second side again.

  Eventually, she laid the letter in her lap. She lifted the glasses from her nose and placed them beside her.

  “Where did you find this?” she asked. The blood had drained from her face.

  Tony took a breath. Jade and Maya had taken care to find a genuine 1960s stamp for the letter. Tony had carefully aged the paper and envelope by soaking in tea. “My uncle has just died, and we’re clearing out his house.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” Rose murmured.

  “Thank you,” Tony said. “The letter was in a handbag that must have belonged to my aunt. She’s also dead, unfortunately,” Tony said.

  “I see. What was her name?”

  “Martha Jones.”

  Rose shook her head. “I don’t think I knew her.”

  Tony was absolutely certain Rose hadn’t known her, as Tony had made her up.

  “Did she work in the prison service?” Rose asked.

  “No. She worked for the Royal Mail, in a sorting office. The letter was stuck to a paperback that was in her handbag. I can only guess that she was reading at work and accidentally picked up your letter. She would have been mortified to know she’d been responsible for a letter not getting delivered. She died a long time ago, 1967.”

  “The same year Frankie died.” Rose’s voice was flat.

  “Yes.”

  Rose’s eyes dropped to the letter, still in her hand. “So, this letter has been sitting in a dead woman’s handbag all these years.” She glanced up at Tony. “I don’t mean to be callous, dear.”

  “That’s okay. You look like you’ve had a shock.” Tony didn’t know what to do. This wasn’t the scene she’d imagined.

  “Sorry, love. This letter’s from Frankie.” Rose ran a finger over the words on the page tenderly. “But it looks like I’ve wasted a lot of people’s time. Frankie wasn’t the woman I thought she was.”

  Rose sank back onto the chaise. Her shoulders drooped.

  Tony followed Rose’s eyes to a silver-framed, black-and-white photo of Frankie on a Triumph motorbike. She was wearing the jeans and leather jacket Tony had seen her in. Her arms were folded and she smiled rakishly at the camera.

  Tony coughed.

  Rose blinked. “I’m feeling tired, dear. Can you let yourself out?”

  As Tony stood, Rose looked up and mouthed, “Thanks.” Her eyes didn’t say thank you at all. Her eyes were filled with despair.

  *

  Jade reached for her mobile as it sang the first bars of “Indian Gyal.” She didn’t know the number, but as soon as he started to speak, she recognized the photographer’s voice.

  “Ms. Rogers, I’m very sorry to say that something has corrupted your jpeg files.”

  Jade hoped that wasn’t as unpleasant as it sounded.

  “I’m afraid we’ll have to arrange another shoot.”

  Jade sighed.

  “Obviously, at no cost to you,” the photographer rushed on. He sounded stressed. “I’ve sent you the thumbnail files anyway, even though some weird double exposure thing’s happened. That isn’t possible with digital images so I can’t begin to understand it. Anyway, there are a few great shots of you, at least they would be great without the distortion. So have a look, and if you like them we can re-create, hmm?”

  “Okay.” Jade stretched, willing a knot of tension to melt away. She didn’t like photo shoots at the best of times, and now it looked like she would have to do that one again.

  “Let me know what you think, and email me some times and dates you can come back to the studio.”

  “Sure. Bye.” Jade booted up her tablet, hit the email icon, and scann
ed the bold subject titles. “Thumbnails, Jade Rogers” caught her eye. She opened the compressed folder and extracted the contents.

  The first three images were fine. Unfortunately, they were awful of Jade. The next few images had a distorted area next to Jade’s right shoulder. It was impossible to make out what it was. It looked like a stain or like an image that had been magnified to the point of just seeing pixilation.

  As Jade clicked through the images one by one, the bleary area began to form a shape. First the dark mass near Jade’s head resolved into a shock of natural African hair. Then the obscure area by Jade’s shoulder began to look like a face.

  Jade clicked quickly from image to image with fear growing in her belly.

  She froze as she stared at the twentieth image. On the right-hand side of the photo was an attractive, dark-skinned, young black woman in a tight red T-shirt. Her mouth was wide open, and the tendons of her neck taut and prominent, as she screamed, in profile, her lips inches away from Jade’s face.

  *

  Between two appointments, Maya made up some repeat prescriptions. When people came to see her, she prepared their scripts at the end of their consultation so that they could take the herbal medicine away with them. However, there were always postal prescriptions for regular patients between visits that needed to be mixed.

  Maya had moved most of her herbal tinctures and supplies to the alternative health center when she had rented a consulting room there, six months previously. The room suited her fine. It had three chairs and a examination couch. She didn’t feel safe seeing clients at home anymore. Maya had practiced at home for seven years, ever since she had qualified as a medical herbalist. Unfortunately, it had only taken one bad experience to change that. Maya tensed as she remembered Sheila, the client who had attacked her in her own garden, and then followed her to attack her again. Sheila was in prison, but that hadn’t helped Maya feel safe, certainly not safe enough to see patients in her house.

  Maya buttoned up the white coat the health practice insisted she wore. Maya wasn’t sure if her values suited the clinic’s. She hated the white coat for a start. But, she had to admit, it did give her more distance, and considering how nervous Maya now felt around her clients, that was a good thing.