The Girl at My Door: An utterly gripping mystery thriller based on a true crime

by Rebecca Griffiths

  Queenie had seen the way Buster looked at Joy and knew he was smitten. But was there any contest? Major Charles Gilchrist, with his looks and charm; everything Buster wasn’t. Unlike Charles and Terrence – achieving officer status in the army and elevated in civilian life as they would have been on the patrol ground – men like Buster still had something to prove. Wasting their youth fighting in France, all they wanted was to settle down to a good life, to marry and have children.

  ‘It ain’t fair. I love ’er. I bloody love ’er.’

  ‘Oh, pull yourself together.’

  ‘Terry, stop it,’ Queenie warned him. ‘I’m sorry for you, Buster, I am. But I’m sure Joy let you down gently.’

  ‘What difference does that make?’ He spat out his anger. ‘She still let me down.’

  ‘Yes, but it’s hardly her fault.’ Queenie was at a loss to know what to say.

  A grunt from their drummer before he glugged what remained of his beer, belched without apology.

  ‘Look at him, he isn’t up for playing.’ Terrence talked about him as if he wasn’t there. ‘What are we going to do?’

  ‘You shut your gob.’ Buster had heard him. ‘You’re as bad as that Gilchrist bastard. Bloody officers, you dunno nuffin. I’d say you’re worse than ’im. Least ’e comes from officer class – you, you’re a bloody turncoat.’ He twirled his drumsticks through the air then smacked them against his cymbals and seemed pleased with the crashing discord. ‘You were just a squaddie like me, but you think you’re better,’ he shouted over it. ‘You just jumped ship, pretendin’ to be better than what you are.’

  ‘Do I care what you think?’ Terrence scoffed. ‘And if I didn’t think myself better than you, I wouldn’t be fit for the gutter.’

  ‘You bastard.’ Buster staggered to his feet and lunged for Terrence, arms flailing like a windmill.

  Terrence twisted around and bopped him one easily on the chin, putting Buster on his backside.

  ‘Hey, come on, you two.’ Queenie, from the sidelines. ‘Hasn’t there been enough fighting in the world?’

  ‘I’ll fuckin’ ’ave you.’ Buster, snarling, scrabbling to get up, jabbed a finger at Terrence. ‘You ain’t what everyone thinks you are. I’ve bin watchin’ ya. I’ve seen what you do. I’ll ’ave ya for this, I know you want rid of me.’

  ‘Are you surprised? You can barely stand,’ Terrence bit back.

  ‘What’s going on here?’ Dick had joined them, pulling up a chair and arranging his music. ‘Who’s trying to get rid of you?’

  Buster didn’t answer. He had flopped against the wall and closed his eyes. Dick took his saxophone out of its case and, moistening the reed, secured it to the mouthpiece.

  ‘Give us an A, Terry,’ he asked, blowing into it, adjusting and readjusting the neck cork. ‘We’re going to have to do something about him.’ Dick wiped his lips with the back of his hand.

  ‘I’ve heard there’s this great drummer on the circuit,’ Terrence murmured. ‘He’s working at the Blue Note Bar in Soho.’

  ‘I’ve heard good things about that place.’ Dick looked interested.

  ‘We should go check him out. Poach him, if he’s any good.’

  ‘I heard that.’ Buster opened one eye, then closed it again. Dropped a drumstick with a clatter and tipped sideways off his stool to pick it up.

  ‘Come on, you lot,’ Queenie intervened with a clap of her hands. ‘We’re opening in less than an hour.’

  ‘Hi there, pretty lady. You look happy.’ Eddie, waltzing with his double bass, lumbered on stage. He took up his position on Queenie’s left.

  Queenie thought he was winking at her, but he wasn’t. The wink was for Joy, who, appearing out of nowhere, collected Buster’s empty pint glass from the stage. Not another one, she thought, sighing, and briefly adjusting the seams on her stockings, she stepped boldly up to the mic. Communicating, without the need to say, just who the important one was around here.

  ‘I am happy.’ Joy, bright-eyed. ‘Charles is taking me to Dorset for the weekend.’

  ‘Why Dorset?’ Queenie saw Joy fling a concerned glance at Buster. As aware of his volatile, drink-addled hostility as she was.

  ‘Because it’s Thomas Hardy country.’ She looked at her as if she was stupid. ‘You know how much I love Thomas Hardy.’

  ‘It’s lovely there this time of year.’ Terrence gave Queenie a reproachful look. ‘My parents used to take me and my brother and sisters to Swanage when we were little.’

  Queenie couldn’t trust herself not to say something spiteful so took out her compact and set about reapplying her lipstick. Offered some to Joy.

  ‘No, thank you.’ A giggle and a flap of her hand. ‘Charles says I’m beautiful just as I am.’

  At this moment, there was a sudden and violent hammering at the club’s main door. All six heads turned to it.

  Bang. Bang. Bang.

  ‘Is someone going to answer that?’ Queenie, faintly alarmed.

  Bang. Bang. Bang.

  ‘I think you’d better go, Sammy,’ she shouted to the barman. ‘Before they smash the door down.’

  Sammy, in his long white barman’s apron, slipped from behind the beer pumps and unlocked the door. Threw it wide to the early evening street that had been made prematurely dark by the unexpected rain.

  ‘Is Terry here?’ a West Indian man hollered from the threshold.

  Terrence leapt to his feet. ‘What is it?’ A hand fluttering at his mouth.

  ‘Terry! Terry! You’ve gotta come quick, man. ’Tis bad… Malcolm. Rozzers got him… Der was a fight. Dey took him in.’

  ‘Go. Go.’ Seeing Terrence’s face drain of blood, Queenie shooed him away. ‘Don’t worry about us. Eddie can play the piano tonight.’

  13

  Terrence dashed out into the warm evening rain and ran the length of Mayfair’s Curzon Street, down into Piccadilly. A double-decker bus, heading for Charing Cross, slid past. Slow enough for him to seize the metal pole and jump on board. With his ticket from the conductor in his hand, he climbed to the top deck. Sat down with the spent breath and cigarette smoke of his fellow travellers. He usually liked riding the top of buses, but not tonight. Too nervous, his mind churning, the fibres of the seat cover prickling his legs through the damp material of his trousers. He realised he was sweating. That the shirt beneath his waistcoat was wet under the arms. This was what they called sailing too close to the wind. Men like him should steer clear of the law. But he couldn’t leave Malcolm to rot in there; he needed to get him out.

  The light dispensed by the fluorescent tubes hurt his eyes and gave a corpse-like tinge to the brightest complexions. A pretty woman clambered up the stairwell. Terrence saw the men with their expectant glances as she took up a seat beside him. He stole a look at his accidental travelling companion. Smoking her cigarette, her blonde hair secured beneath a scarf, she was lost in thought. He looked past her, out through the windows, at what he could see of the giant glass and steel structures that had been flung up amid the bombed-out wreckage after the war. Like false teeth in a ruined mouth, they were only supposed to be temporary, but now they were homes and places of work; people had grown dependent on them. The city was fast dissolving into the night, but recognising the Strand, then the Savoy hotel, he remembered Winston saying the police station wasn’t far from there and tugged the bell pull. The bus responded by slowing to a stop.

  * * *

  The wide stone steps of Charing Cross Police Station were cornered by soaring Corinthian columns set high above the traffic. Intimidating enough, they threatened to crumble his resolve. Could he go through with this? On the verge of turning back, he took a deep breath and climbed the steps. He was doing this for Malcolm, he told himself, going through a huge set of storm doors and into a tiled vestibule. Noisy under his shoes, it announced his arrival before he was ready.

  ‘Good evening.’ Terrence sniffed the unpleasant combination of French polish and fish glue. ‘I believe you’re holding someone. A man
called Malcolm Taylor.’ Avoiding eye contact, he spoke to the desk sergeant’s pencil that was twitching in readiness of crime.

  ‘Can I ask your name, sir?’

  Terrence gave it. Watched as it was written down.

  The man whose complexion was as wobbly as a plate of chitterlings eyed him warily. ‘Now, perhaps we could start again, sir. How can we be of assistance?’

  ‘I understand the police broke up a fight earlier tonight. Somewhere around Soho… and the thing is…’ Terrence looked out from beneath the brim of his homburg. ‘It was Mr Taylor who was set on, not the other way around.’

  ‘Is that so? And what’s this Mr Taylor to you, may I ask, sir?’

  ‘He’s my friend.’

  ‘Like the Blacks, do you, sir?’

  ‘Er, no, not especially.’ Terrence felt his pulse quicken and his breathing change. ‘I’m just here to tell you there’s been some kind of mistake.’ His expression fixed; he didn’t want to give this one any reason to apprehend him.

  ‘A mistake, eh?’

  ‘That’s right.’ Terrence, with his cultured, expressive voice, fingered the buttons on his waistcoat. ‘I know you think Malcolm… I mean, Mr Taylor, started the fight, but I can tell you categorically—’

  ‘Are you married, sir?’

  ‘Married? I’m sorry, what’s that got to do with anything?’

  ‘Touched a nerve, have I, sir?’

  Terrence, declining to answer, felt a fresh wave of sweat break out between his shoulder blades.

  ‘What is it you do, Mr Banks?’

  ‘Sorry, what was that?’ His mind a whirl, his heart racing; he hadn’t heard correctly.

  ‘I asked you what you do for a living.’ The look was menacing.

  ‘Oh, I… erm, I…’ Best not say he played in a band. ‘I work in Fleet Street.’

  ‘A muckraker, eh?’

  ‘No, I’m not a reporter… I work in a bank.’

  ‘Mr Banks works in a bank.’ A scornful snigger.

  Great. That was all he needed, a policeman with a chip on his shoulder who thought he was a comedian.

  ‘That’s right.’ Terrence didn’t rise to it. ‘I’m a departmental manager at F. Lambert & Co. It’s one of the top banks in London.’

  ‘Is that supposed to impress me, sir?’

  ‘I don’t know? It impresses my mother.’

  ‘You some sort of ponce, or what?’

  ‘Sorry, officer, but does my enquiry really warrant such hostility?’ Terrence’s stomach flipped over. Did this policeman know what he was? What Malcolm was? He was in trouble; he knew it had been risky to come here. He’d heard the stories about these zealous officers of the law who, wanting easy convictions, would pick you up for something as harmless as smiling at a man in the park. Don’t provoke him. Don’t even blink. His forehead bloomed with fresh sweat and he prayed his hat hid him well enough.

  ‘I was just asking a question, sir.’ The voice perforated his contemplations.

  ‘And what an extraordinary question it is.’ Terrence tipped his hat lower, down over his eyebrows, and worked hard to keep the quiver out of his voice.

  The desk sergeant twisted the lid off a tin of fruit drops. Put one in his mouth. Not once moving his eyes from Terrence. This was agony. A bead of sweat rolled down his face, bypassing his eye. It took everything he had not to dab it away.

  The desk sergeant swapped the fruit drop to the other side of his mouth. ‘Fight for your country during the war, did you, sir?’ he said, crunching down.

  ‘I did, yes.’ Terrence, close enough to smell the orangey breath. ‘I was a warrant officer in the army.’

  He stood back and crossed his arms over his chest. Watched the sergeant’s expression change. He hoped he hadn’t misread the situation and that this man, like Buster, didn’t despise him because he’d swapped sides. Because Terrence had swapped sides: he’d joined the officer classes to be safer – he’d never been safe as a squaddie.

  ‘Take a seat, sir.’ The policeman continued to stare and Terrence feared he could see right down to the guilty core of him.

  He moved away from the desk. Too nervous to sit, he ignored the benches set out against the shiny walls and wandered over the squeaky floor on his equally squeaky soles. It couldn’t be a less welcoming space. The pegs heaped with black police capes dripping rainwater onto the floor tiles. The peeling paintwork. The posters warning of ‘Danger hours for electricity cuts’ and ‘The National Service still expects you to do your duty’. Funny to think it was acceptable for him to have risked his life serving King and country during the war, but to live as he truly was, openly and without fear, was impossible. That if it was ever discovered he loved a man, he would be branded a criminal and a disgrace to society. It was a strain having to act all the time. He thought of the white lies he told his colleagues at the bank when they asked about his plans for the evening or the weekend. He took the unfairness of it to the window that looked out over the back of the building. Outside, darkness ruled. The area beyond the night-blackened yard was a wasteland. A dead zone of featureless tarmac and a forest of spindly gas lamps. He stared out at the rain that was coming in sideways. Millions of silvery lines brought in on the gusts of wind and clarified by the amber hue of gaslight and vehicle headlamps circling the city.

  * * *

  The wall clock struck ten. Terrence turned when he heard a door wheeze open behind the main desk. There was Malcolm. Steered out into the lobby by another uniformed officer. The sight of his bloodied shirt was bad enough, but those raw-looking stitches tacked in a hurried hand along his cheekbone made his knees buckle. He looked like he’d gone ten rounds with Rocky Marciano. Who had dared to hurt him? The tears in Malcolm’s eyes and his little-lost-boy look stirred something primeval and vital in Terrence’s heart. He gulped the emotion in the back of his throat and resisted the urge to run and comfort him. They were being watched, the pair of them. This was a test. A test they could not afford to fail.

  14

  He exchanged the dusky interior of Albert’s Cavern for the equally tenebrous narrow alleyway, buttoning his raincoat and positioning his trilby as he went. Softly, in his rubber-soled shoes, he moved along the abandoned night-time streets, smiling his secret smile. He was at home among the seedy back alleys and run-down parts of Soho, and it satisfied him to move around unseen, unheard… watching. Yes, he had a certain façade to maintain, and this was why he pretended this part of town was beneath him, but the truth was, Soho was his favourite hunting ground.

  He would have liked a cigarette but realised he’d smoked his last and didn’t have the money to buy more. He’d handed over all he had to Albert.

  ‘Thieving gypsy,’ he grumbled. ‘That bastard would steal your eyes and come back for sockets.’

  With nothing else to do with his hands, he shoved them inside his coat pockets and let his mind circle back to the evening he’d just spent in the company of Doreen, one of Albert’s classier prostitutes. Not that the woman had been able to satiate him; he could still identify the gnawing need that drove him there, time and again. But what did he expect? He should know by now that paying for it didn’t make the doing of it any easier. The reality was, he could never perform with a woman unless she was unconscious… or better still, dead. A shiver of excitement pulsed through him as he thought of this, and he luxuriated in his recollections of how it felt to look down on the motionless body of a woman, reduced as she was to nothing more threatening than an innocent little girl.

  Returning to his recent memory of Doreen and her nubile, young body, he lifted his fingers to his nose for what remained of her smell. He still had that, for the time being at least. The smell of them was probably more thrilling than the sex, in the same way the activity of prowling the streets unobserved was. Because he’d never been any good at it, the business of pleasuring women had always eluded him.

  ‘Reggie No Dick.’

  He replayed the hurtful taunt that had plagued his youth. It was a
name they’d stuck on him after a calamitous encounter with a more experienced girl with whom he’d failed to perform. The humiliation still dogged him all these years on and was at the root of his hatred of women.

  ‘Oi, mister!’

  A sudden shout rang out in the empty street. Enough to make him stop and turn, to listen to the unwelcome echo of it reverberate against the wet-bricked buildings that were bathed in gaslight. It was that scantily clad girl from a few nights ago. Not one of Albert’s, but one of the whores who plied her trade from the disused doorways he liked to lurk within. Like a child who had raided the dressing-up box, she tottered after him in her ill-fitting heels.

  ‘Oi, mister.’ Her voice shrill, grating his nerves. ‘You owe me money.’ She caught up with him, panting at his elbow. ‘And you tore my blouse.’

  He stared at her. At the flimsy piece of clothing that was ripped at the throat and barely concealing the undeveloped and malnourished body beneath. His cold gaze wandering over her sunken cheeks, her lank hair.

  It wouldn’t take much to finish her; his plans, lethal, while his hand, a mind of its own, sought out the silk stocking he kept in his pocket for occasions such as this.

  ‘So, you gonna pay me what you owe, or what?’ she whined, leaning into his space.

  He could laugh at the way she puffed out her pathetic little chest as if she stood a chance against him.

  ‘Aye, lass.’ He let go a sigh, his fingers continuing to coil around the stocking. ‘But if you’ll remember,’ his voice gentle, reeling her in, making sure to string out the words to give him time to debate whether or not to kill the bitch, here and now, ‘I didn’t actually have anything off you, did I?’ A quivering of his eyebrows beneath the brim of his hat.

  ‘Not my fault you can’t do what a proper man can,’ she bit back, surprisingly feisty.