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

by Rebecca Griffiths

  Unbeknown to anyone – Joy, never speaking of it – the boy would regularly expose himself whenever the two of them were left alone and force her, by threatening harm, if she didn’t touch him the way he instructed her to. Disgusted with herself, her hand weighted down by his, she would stroke the offending part, feeling it stiffen beneath her fingers most alarmingly. What he made her do was alien and repellent, and it was her shame that prevented her from seeking help. Coupled with a fear she wouldn’t be believed, that people would take his side, saying he was a lovely boy and calling her a cheap little salope who must have led him on. One day the boy decided Joy’s touching wasn’t enough, and it was within the cobwebby confines of her father’s woodshed that he yanked up her skirt, tore down her knickers and raped her. Bruising and cutting her little girl frame against the sharp work surface, he jammed himself inside her until purple-faced and eyes popping, he let go of an agonised groan and tossed her aside like a piece of rubbish. Refusing to cry, she had watched him casually return the flaccid member inside his trousers, wipe the spittle from his mouth and disappear down the garden at a sprightly gait while she fell to her knees on the filthy floor and vomited.

  Fearing the reprisals the boy assured her she would get if she breathed a word of what he’d done, she did everything she could to ensure she was never left alone with him again. But unable to guarantee this possibility – her mother had a peculiar way of removing herself whenever the boy was around – she took to carrying a penknife found in the woodshed. Pressing her palm to the sharpness of its blade for reassurance whenever she saw him, she was calmed by the security it gave her. Half of her wished he had given her the excuse to plunge the knife in and then she could have had her revenge by quartering him up in the same way she’d seen her father pare fruit and vegetables.

  But the boy grew up unscathed, didn’t he? Joy recalled the conversation over lunch with her mother in the summer. He became high up in the town council and was rewarded for his repulsive ways. He was part of the reason she could never go home. Why she had left Arras. And the memory of that day, growing septic as it had, was another reason why Buster frightened her. She might not be any good at reading men, but you’d have to be stupid not to be able to read him. It was obvious what he wanted to do to her. And drunk, as he so often was, there wasn’t much to stop him. It was another reason why Joy was glad to be finishing at the Mockin’ Bird. Buster was dangerous and she wasn’t sure how much longer she would be able to fend him off.

  47

  Having spent the day fretting about Queenie, unable to concentrate on anything, as soon as he could get away from work, a rather dishevelled Terrence dashed over to the Mockin’ Bird.

  ‘Boy, am I glad to see you.’ He charged inside the dressing room, panting for breath. ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Hi, Terry. Yes, I’m fine.’ Queenie turned coolly from her reflection. ‘Uncle Fish says you’ve been ringing the club for me. What’s up?’ She frowned. ‘You look done in.’

  ‘Did you go?’ An anxious hand up through his thick sandy hair, making it stand up in tufts. ‘Did you go and see that Christie bloke last night?’

  ‘Yes, I did.’

  ‘You did?’ His jaw dropped open. ‘Are you all right? Wouldn’t you need a couple of days off?’ He winced under the weight of his question.

  ‘I couldn’t go through with it. I went there but it was so horrible… that street, that house.’ He saw how she trembled beneath her gown. ‘I couldn’t even knock on the door.’

  ‘You couldn’t?’

  ‘Don’t be cross, Terry.’ She bunched her lips, looked on the verge of tears. ‘I’m grateful to you for getting me his name and everything, but there was a badness there, it oozed it. I’m not joking, it was evil… Don’t look at me like that, I can’t explain why, it was just—’

  ‘You don’t have to, darling.’ Terrence, anticipating what she was going to say. ‘I felt the same about it too.’ He didn’t say that he’d met Christie and the man had threatened him with the police.

  ‘I didn’t know you’d been there.’

  ‘I went last night, looking for you.’ He dropped into an armchair and rubbed his legs that ached from running.

  ‘How did you know I’d gone?’ Queenie kept her voice low.

  ‘You weren’t at home, so I sort of guessed. You said you couldn’t be putting it off much longer.’ Terrence glanced over at the red curtain, drawn across and partitioning the room, then got up to check the basement corridor was clear before closing the door. ‘But I had to stop you going to him.’ He sat down again. ‘I’d heard these awful things.’

  ‘About Mr Christie?’

  ‘Yes. Dreadful things. He’s not what we thought he was. He’s bloody horrible. Dangerous.’ A flash of Christie’s pitiless stare that had been haunting him.

  ‘Dangerous? What does that mean?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter, not now I know you’re safe.’ He was reluctant to scare her more than she already was.

  ‘Yes, I’m safe.’ A ghost of a smile. ‘But I’m still in trouble.’ Terrence followed the journey of her hand, saw it hover about her midriff. ‘I’m going to be showing soon.’

  ‘The thing is, Queenie, darling. These people…’ He fumbled for the word he couldn’t bring himself to say. ‘They don’t advertise, they have to work below the radar. It’s illegal what they’re doing. It was a fluke I found you Christie’s name.’

  ‘I should’ve let you come with me. Perhaps it would have been all right with you there?’

  ‘No way.’ He flinched. ‘I’d rather you told Joy than go to him.’ His mind, leapfrogging over the images he’d kept of John Christie: his weird waxy sheen, his thin lips, that strange sucking thing he did with his mouth. Terrence never wanted to set eyes on the creep again. ‘But you’re right, you are going to have to do something. Joy’s been asking questions; she knows something’s up. She’s bound to twig soon, and when she does, she’s going to want to know who the father is.’

  ‘You’re right. Oh, God, Terry, what am I going to do?’

  ‘I know I sound like a broken record, but if you let me marry you, bring the baby up as mine, it would save Joy ever finding out it is Charles’s.’

  ‘You don’t sound like a broken record.’ Queenie walked and planted a kiss on his cheek. ‘You’re the kindest friend, but…’

  ‘But what? I’m sorry to have to push you, darling, but you’re running out of options.’

  ‘Then I might just have to come clean.’ She swivelled back to the mirror to check her make-up.

  ‘Tell Joy? Oh no, Queenie, you can’t. She’s built her world around Charles. Oh, God, you can’t, you can’t tell her.’

  ‘Keep your voice down. I know all that.’ She propped her elbows on the dressing table, held her face in her hands. ‘This is such a mess.’

  A knock at the door and it burst open. ‘Come on, you two. Chop-chop, you’re on.’ Uncle Fish filled the threshold, twizzling the ends of his white moustache.

  ‘Are we? Just give me a minute.’ Queenie snapped to it and applied her lipstick.

  ‘Full house again tonight, my dears. So, off you go and do your stuff. And Buster?’ Uncle Fish thrust his voice between them. ‘You still there? You sobered up yet?’

  At this, a rattling of curtain rings, and the red velvet drape was drawn aside.

  ‘Yeah, I’m ’ere.’ Buster appeared from behind it, rubbing his eyes and wearing a large, self-satisfied grin. ‘I’ve been ’ere all the time.’

  48

  Buster was different tonight. Instead of his usual inebriated, morose self, slumped over his beer at the bar, his movements were deliberate, measured. It was as if he was carrying something big: a bowlful of liquid he was fearful of spilling. He was entertaining people with his stories and Joy eyed him warily as he manoeuvred the club inch by careful inch.

  ‘Hi there.’ Buster strode in front of her, blocking her way. ‘You’re lookin’ extra pretty tonight.’

  ‘Thank
you.’ She nodded politely before stepping away to serve a tray of drinks to a nearby table. Despite the obvious improvement in his mood, he still frightened her.

  ‘Aren’t you gonna ask me how I am?’ He stayed close on her heels.

  ‘Excuse me, miss.’ A man at another table beckoned her over.

  ‘Yes, sir? What can I get you?’

  ‘We’ll all have martinis.’

  ‘Very good, sir.’

  Buster was at her elbow when she relayed the order for drinks at the bar.

  ‘Do us a favour, Joy.’ Sammy, with more orders than he could cope with, looked flustered. ‘We’ve run out of olives. Nip down and fetch a couple of cans from the stores, would you?’

  ‘No problem.’ Joy smiled and placed the empty salver on the bar.

  ‘You still ain’t asked me how I am.’ Buster, his bulldog face, close at her side.

  ‘Haven’t I?’ Joy lifted a nervous hand to the diamante clasp fixed to her hair.

  ‘No, you ain’t,’ he shouted above the music.

  ‘I am rather busy.’ She set off at a brisk pace, cutting between the tables in front of the stage. ‘We’ll talk later, yes?’

  She hoped the empty promise would buy her some time and scooted away, aiming for the door at the back of the club that led down to the dressing room and stores. A fleeting look at Queenie: spot-lit and wooing the microphone with her red-painted lips. A shimmering showgirl in her shimmering dress, she owned the stage in the same way she owned the band. Didn’t Queenie say she would have a word with Buster and tell him to stop harassing her? From the way the brute was behaving, it didn’t seem as if she had.

  ‘I look loads better, wouldn’t ya say?’

  Buster was proving difficult to shake off. ‘Well, y-yes, I suppose you do.’ He wasn’t going to follow her down to the storeroom, was he? She scanned around but there was no one to help her; she was going to have to find a way to get rid of him on her own.

  ‘Aren’t you gonna ask me why?’

  ‘Like I’ve said, Buster, I am rather busy. Can we talk later?’

  She reached the back wall of the club and put the flat of her hand against the door that led down to the basement. Hoping he would get the message, she pushed against the door and left him behind. Trotted down the shadowy stairs. A burst of laughter rang out above the music before the door swung shut, the laughter ending in a wheeze.

  ‘Oi, you listen to me. I’m sick of you ignorin’ me.’

  Buster. Close at her back. He had followed her downstairs. The suddenness of him made her jump. She spun to face him.

  ‘I’d like some fuckin’ respect.’

  Joy touched the apple brooch pinned to her dress and threw a desperate glance over his shoulder. The door that led to the safety of the club looked a long way off.

  ‘I think it’s about time I got what I want. What I’ve been waitin’ for since you started workin’ ’ere.’

  She gaped in shocked disbelief at his round, bare face beneath his sparse ginger hair. Having identified the malevolence in the snarl of his lip, in his bulk, she knew she was in big trouble.

  ‘I’ve bin keepin’ an eye on you.’

  ‘Keeping an eye on me? What do you need to do that for?’

  ‘Watchin’ you flirtin’ with Dick and Eddie… with Sammy.’ Buster’s indignation – a cerise sunset – bled up and over his neck and face.

  ‘No, I haven’t.’ Her voice sounded as if it was coming from a long way away.

  ‘You don’t even know you’re doin’ it. Right little tease, ain’t ya?’ Stepping closer: insidious, intimidating. ‘You’re up for it with everyone… everyone but me.’ He blocked her only means of escape.

  ‘Go away, leave me alone.’ Joy, blunted by shock, tried to reason with him; tried harder to keep the terror hammering behind her ribcage out of her voice.

  ‘Go away. Leave me alone,’ he mimicked. ‘No way, it’s my turn now.’

  She couldn’t speak. The basement was suddenly too small to stand up in, too small to think.

  ‘Your turn? It’s not anyone’s turn… I’m engaged to be married. Get away, Buster, I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘Oh, I think you do. And if you don’t give me what I want, then I’m just gonna have to take it, aren’t I?’

  She stared into his face: a face that had been prematurely scored by the war and a lifetime of cigarettes and booze.

  ‘I’ve seen ya, you’re free and easy with everyone else, what’s the matter with me?’

  ‘Please leave me alone, you’re frightening me.’ Joy ducked away. But too quick, too strong, Buster seized her wrists and slammed her against the wall.

  ‘Shut your mouth.’ He shook her. Fierce. The spurt of movement released a puff of stale cigarettes, the reek of unwashed armpits. It fought for room alongside their tall shadows that had bent in half against the wall. ‘You don’t have the first idea what it’s like for me. My life’s been ruined by that fuckin’ war… If it weren’t for the likes of me, you and the rest of them Frogs would be goose-steppin’ round Paris.’ He loosened his grip a fraction, but pinned to the wall by his big, broad body, there was no escaping him, nowhere to go. ‘You’ve a cheek, bloody lookin’ down your nose at me.’

  Charles? Where are you? Hardly daring to breathe, Joy made her voiceless and frantic plea. But Charles hadn’t been to the Mockin’ Bird for weeks. And even when he did, he never came down here.

  ‘I hate my life… I’ve got nuffin. All I want’s a girl, someone who’ll love me. I wanted you to love me. Why can’t ya love me?’ He shook her again.

  Chest tightening, mouth dry, Joy felt a portion of her brain constrict in panic. Buster was too strong. She was trapped. She had been in this situation before, in Arras. Buster wasn’t going to hurt her, was he?

  ‘Please, Buster. Stop. You’re frightening me.’

  ‘Not good enough for ya, am I?’ Impervious to her pleadings, he growled from beneath a set of eyebrows wet with sweat. ‘You’re the same as the rest of ’em, lookin’ down your nose.’ Then he forced his face against hers. ‘All I want is a kiss… one measly kiss.’

  She twisted her head away. ‘Stop it. Stop it. Leave me alone.’

  His eyes narrowed, angled at the floor, measuring what he was going to do next. Then he nodded at the poster of jazz musician Gene Krupa, one of the many the band had fixed to the wall.

  ‘That’s who I shoulda bin.’ Buster was like a bull: raging and angry, hell-bent on destroying everything around him. ‘If it weren’t for the bloody war… I’m as good as ’im on the drums.’ He headbutted the words. ‘You’d ’ave me then, wouldn’t ya? If I was rich and famous. It wouldn’t matter about not talkin’ posh or me ugly face. Bah, you women, you’re all the same. All ya want’s money, a man to look after ya.’

  ‘Why are you doing this? I’ve not done anything to you,’ she cried, wincing under his grip.

  ‘Who the fuck d’you think you are?’ She felt his spittle land on her cheek. ‘You’re gonna be sorry for this.’

  Helpless under the weight of him. He was insane and she knew he was going to strike.

  ‘I’ve got the goods on everyone, I ’ave. And I’ll tell you, you’re gonna be on your own for the rest of your life.’ A cruel laugh. ‘Who’s gonna want that toff’s leftovers?’

  ‘Get off me, leave me alone. I’ve told you, I’m with Charles. We’re getting married.’

  Another cruel laugh. ‘Oh, yeah, Charles.’ He spat out the name. ‘I’ll tell ya somethin’ about Charles. Shall I tell ya somethin’ about Charles?’ Buster cocked his head, ugly in the sickly electric light. ‘Charles and Queenie, oh, yeah, Queenie,’ he responded to the look Joy was giving him, then hurled her aside. ‘You don’t know ’em as well as you think, do ya? You haven’t a clue what’s goin’ on.’

  ‘What do you mean? What are you saying?’ A hand to the wall to steady herself.

  ‘That Queenie, ha! She ain’t no friend of yours. And Charles? Marryin’ ’i
m? Ha! Who are you fuckin’ kiddin’?’

  ‘What are you saying?’ Joy backed away from him, afraid of the truth she hadn’t consciously sought.

  ‘Queenie’s pregnant. Yeah, pregnant. And ’ave a guess who the father is?’ He put a hand to his withered tie then adjusted his jacket over his shoulders. ‘They’ve done the dirty on ya. The pair of ’em.’

  At this, the door at the top of the stairs burst open. Light from the club dripped down into the gloomy passageway. Joy looked up at Terrence and let out a cry. A raw, base, animal sound so full of anguish it made both men recoil in fear.

  49

  Albert’s Cavern continued to perpetuate its twilit mood. The foetid atmosphere, dominated by tassels and drapery, all added to its disreputable feel. The low ceilings pressed down on the busted couches and wingback armchairs, condensing the heat, the reek of stale booze, body odour and tobacco, while lamps glowed dully and candleflames flickered. The kind of place, or so Terrence thought, that had been assembled from people’s cast-offs, leftovers from the last century.

  He pushed his way through the crush of bodies to get to the bar. He could see Malcolm seated with four men at a table to the side of the door. Engrossed in a card game, their glasses full. Terrence would join them in a minute, but first, he needed a drink. Something to steady his nerves. Buster had a screw loose and, as far as Terrence was concerned, his time with the band was up. What he’d done tonight was unforgivable. A flash of his pig-pink face. Terrence should have smacked him one there and then. What right did he have to be so casual with Joy’s feelings? It had frightened him to see her so distraught. He had tried to offer comfort, but there was no consoling her. She had pushed him away, accusing him of keeping Queenie’s filthy secret – which he had – before grabbing her coat and rushing out into the night. He trembled a little at the recent memory, trembled a little more when he thought about having to break the news to Queenie. Something he hadn’t been able to bring himself to do tonight. Cowardly? Maybe. But telling her at the club wouldn’t have been the best idea: she would hate for anyone else to find out what had gone on. Although it was probably only a matter of time, now Buster was in the driving seat.