‘Hi there, Raymond,’ he said. ‘How ya doin’?’ The mouth clapped open and shut viciously.
Raymond Carter screamed.
TWENTY-NINE
* * *
The neo-classical white stone façade of Somerset House shone brilliantly in the sharp early morning sunshine. This imposing building sits on the south side of the Strand overlooking the River Thames, just east of Waterloo Bridge. The overnight frost still patterned the stone steps as I made my way towards the north wing, the repository for all births deaths and marriages since … well, a long time ago. I’m no historian.
Its sister, the south wing, had been hit by bombs in 1940 and it would take more than all the king’s horses and all the king’s men to put this lovely structure back together again. The blind, boarded windows, the damaged stonework and rough scaffolding were a blight on this architectural beauty in the heart of London.
However, it was, I hoped, going to reveal to me some information which I reckoned would be vital for the case.
It was Monday morning and I was so early, I was their first customer. A bright ginger-haired, middle-aged woman with wire-rimmed glasses and a friendly efficient manner saw to my needs. And in less than an hour I was progressing down the steps towards the Embankment again with the information I came for, the frost now having surrendered to the gentle coaxing warmth of the late November sun.
I was a little wiser. I had followed the trail of a marriage, a birth and a death. And this, I hoped would lead me to Greta Fielding. I had an address and finding her could unlock a few of the secret compartments in the Raymond Carter mystery. All I had to pray for was that she hadn’t moved house or remarried in twenty years. It was a lot to pray for but I’d been a good boy and you never know, someone up there might be listening. I would have to wait and see.
I made my way up to Piccadilly and popped into the Kardomah for a cup of tea and a cigarette while I played around with the couple of theories that I had constructed out of the bits and pieces of information I had gleaned since this investigation began. Then I attempted to glue them together with some intuition and detective-type hunches. Slowly the mist was clearing and I was beginning to make sense of it. I now felt that the Hawke built theory held water, but it still had to be tested.
The clientele of the Kardomah was mainly made up of business-suited gentlemen in pinstriped trousers who nursed their bowler hats on their knees while they read the financial pages of the Times; at other tables were affluent middle-class women who had nothing better to do on a Monday morning than to come up to Town for tea and cake and a little bit of light shopping. They all gave the impression that they were totally oblivious of the war and its various deprivations, sacrifices and inconveniences. They seemed to demonstrate no awareness that their casual and indolent way of life which they were so determined to preserve was actually in great peril of being destroyed forever. The women were all smartly attired in neat and apparently expensive outfits. There was no sense of make do and mend here. It was still 1938 in those cocooned minds. In a strange way, I hoped they were right in their ‘if we ignore it, it will go away’ attitude. I possessed neither the blinkered courage nor stubborn foolishness to follow that particular route.
I was glad to leave the café and get out into the fresh air again. It was better to face reality head on and cope with it as best you could than live in a delusional version of the past. Anyway, I told myself, it was now time for me to grasp my particular nettle. I checked the address again and hopped on a bus to Islington. As I settled down on the dusty seat, I pulled out the newspaper I’d bought to read en route. Raymond Carter had made the front page – as had Charlie Dokes. A grainy photograph showing the incongruous pairing of murder suspect and his wooden doll was placed beneath the headline DOLLY KILLER AT LARGE. The story was thin, however, some of it dreamed up by a journalist in the absence of hard facts. Apparently, Raymond Carter of ‘radio’s Okey Dokes fame’ had killed his girlfriend after a passionate row in the early hours of Sunday morning and then had gone on the run from the police taking his ‘precious dolly’ with him. Well, now the whole world knew and the whole world would judge Carter as guilty. Whoever had been threatening to kill him needn’t bother now. Raymond Carter was dead anyway.
Henry Street was a narrow thoroughfare not a stone’s throw from the The Old King’s Head on the Essex Road. It was crammed with tall terraced houses that, like the good old city, had seen better days. Peeling paintwork, cracked panes and sagging gutters were the order of the day. There were a couple of youngsters playing hopscotch and an old codger sitting on the steps of one house smoking a pipe and staring plaintively into the middle distance.
It didn’t take me long to find the number I wanted. As I knocked hard on the door, the old pipe smoker glanced in my direction with unabashed curiosity. He kept his eyes trained on me until the door opened. A thin rake of a man in a dingy ill-knitted pullover and thick cord trousers stood on the threshold, a copy of the Daily Mirror in his hand and a roll up cigarette dangling by a hair’s-breadth from his mouth.
‘Yeah?’ he said, a mixture of suspicion and aggression radiating from his weasel eyes.
‘I’m wanting a word with Greta Fielding.’
The man said nothing but continued to stare at me. I could not determine what he was thinking, if he was indeed thinking at all.
‘Greta Fielding,’ I said again as a kind of aide-mémoire.
The man sucked on his roll up.
‘Who are you?’
I knew if I mentioned anything about me being a detective or someone involved in an investigation, I would have the door slammed in my face.
‘Just an old friend of the family …’ I said, somewhat lamely.
The man narrowed his eyes. ‘Greta Fielding, you say.’
‘Yes.’
‘Never heard of her.’ He began to close the door when there came a woman’s voice from the inner recesses of the house.
‘Who is it, Frank?’
‘Some geezer looking for a Greta Fielding.’
‘Greta,’ said the woman, who now appeared at the side of the man, peering out at me as I though I was some mysterious exhibit in a museum. ‘You looking for Greta Fielding?’
I nodded. ‘This was the address I was given.’
The woman, dressed in a pinafore and flowery turban, clasping a faded tea towel in her hands, smiled indulgently.
‘Lord bless you, she hasn’t lived here for years. At least ten I should guess.’
My heart sank.
‘Isn’t that right, Frank?’
‘Don’t ask me. I never heard of her.’
She flapped the tea towel against his arm in gentle remonstrance. ‘’Course you have. She rented the top floor when we first moved in. You remember. Peroxide hair. A bit tarty but a very kind soul.’
Frank gave an indignant shrug. He had lost all interest in this interchange and without a word turned his back and retreated into the house.
The woman gave an indulgent smile. ‘He’s always in a bad mood, Mondays,’ she said as some form of explanation.
‘Have you any idea where Greta Fielding is living now?’
‘Well, she’s still local. She moved out to look after her sister who was bad with her chest. But I think she’s dead now. The sister, I mean. Greta’s still knocking about but I’m not sure of her address. We didn’t really keep in touch after she moved out. In ’33 I think it was. Wait a minute though; I know how you probably can find her.’ Her eyes flashed with inspiration. ‘Of course. She goes for a snifter at the King’s most lunchtimes. That’s The Old Kings Head not far from here.’
‘I know it.’
‘Well, I reckon you’ll catch her in the saloon bar around half past twelve or so. She likes her drink, does Greta. Is she in any kind of trouble?’
‘No, nothing like that. I just want to have a chat with her.’
If Hollywood wanted to create a replica of a typical English pub on the back lot at MGM or Warner Brothers or so
me other large film studio, they would most likely come up with something looking like The Old Kings Head on the Essex Road in Islington. With its substantial façade, dominating the corner on which it stands, and its high ceilings, tarred with cigarette fumes, drinking booths separated by warm mahogany partitions inset with smoky glass etched with curlicue designs, the large curving bar with the bright shiny brass foot rest running along the bottom and a tinkling joanna in the corner being played by some old codger whose foaming pint is resting and rattling on the top as he thumps out a tune, The Old King’s Head is a cliché of a cliché. By the time I wandered in around 12.15, it was already doing a brisk business and the air was developing a fine mist of cigarette smoke. I reckoned that in about an hour or so the bar might well be obscured by fag fog.
I bought myself a half of bitter from a cheery barmaid, her face fresh and shiny, adorned with a vivid scarlet smear of lipstick. As she was passing me my wet change, I offered to buy her a drink.
‘Oh, ta,’ she said brightly. ‘I don’t mind if I do. I could really fancy a port and lemon.’
I smiled and handed over some more money and watched her pour herself a generous measure of port with just a splash of lemon.
‘I’m looking for an old friend of mine,’ I said, gaining her attention again. ‘I gather she’s a regular here. Greta Fielding.’
The girl pursed her lips and shrugged her shoulders. ‘Doesn’t ring a bell, dear. Don’t often get to know the customers’ names.’
‘She’ll be a lady in her sixties. I believe she likes a drop of gin.’
‘Oh, if she’s an old ’un, she’ll most likely be in the snug. It’s quieter in there. Most of the old ’uns find it too noisy in here. Ta for the drink.’
With that she bustled off to serve elsewhere.
Taking my glass of bitter, I wandered round into the snug. By comparison with the main bar, it was sepulchral in here. The lighting was dimmer and there was no brash hum of conversation.
Most of the tables were occupied – groups of men in flat caps with mufflers and grey faces indulging in muttered conversations and the odd elderly married couple staring blankly into space, each nursing their drink as though it were a fragile object. There was one solitary drinker, a woman with a pale aquiline face and a clutch of frizzy grey hair. She was sipping a large gin while reading a newspaper. I reckoned Johnny had found his lady.
I went to the bar and bought another big gin and took it over to her table.
‘Please have a drink on me, Greta,’ I said in as friendly a fashion I could muster without seeming creepy.
The lady looked up at me in surprise and then her eyes narrowed with suspicion.
‘What’s this for? I don’t know you.’
Still retaining my smile, I pulled up a chair and sat by her. ‘I hoped we could have a little chat.’
‘Who are you?’
I passed her one of my cards.
She read it, her face growing sterner all the while. ‘A private investigator. What the devil do you want with me?’
‘Just a chat, that’s all. There’s nothing to worry you.’
‘A chat? What about?’
‘Raymond Carter.’
Here eyes widened and a knowing smile touched her lips. ‘Oh, you’re trying to trace the bastard, are you?’ She gestured to the newspaper.
I nodded.
‘Good luck to you. I hope you find him dead.’
‘I understand your feelings.’
‘I doubt it.’
‘I know that he deserted your daughter and her baby and that as a result she committed suicide.’
She stared at me for some moments, her face an expressionless mask and then slowly she pulled the glass of gin I had bought her to her side. ‘What do you want to know, Mr Investigator?’
‘What happened to the child? It was a boy, wasn’t it?’
Greta Fielding nodded, her eyes moistening slightly. ‘It was a boy, yes. Little Freddie. A little angel.’
‘What happened?’ I prompted gently.
‘After Sally … died. I tried to look after him for a while but in the end I had to give him up, didn’t I? I was an out-of-work widow with a dead daughter. I couldn’t cope with the mite. I had to put him up for adoption. I had to … let him go. My little grandson.’ She was crying now, the tears streaking down her face making little tracks through her face powder. ‘I can tell you something, Mr Investigator, if I had my time over again, I wouldn’t do it. I’d rather cut off my arm instead. I’ve lived with that regret, that guilt for the rest of my life.’
‘Do you know who adopted Freddie?’
She shook her head. ‘No. The agency, the adoption agency, dealt with all that. It was a place recommended by a friend. I reckon they was a bit shady. Well, I know they were but I was in a bit of a spot and I really had no option. Beggars can’t be choosers, y’know. I signed the forms and just handed over the baby and they gave me twenty pounds. Blood money, eh? I heard there was an American couple sniffing around for a kid. Maybe they got him and took him off to Texas or wherever. I just don’t know. Oh, if I could turn back the clock …’ She rooted in her coat pocket for a while before extracting a large handkerchief and then proceeded to blow her nose.
‘So you have no idea where he is now?’
She gave me a weary smile. ‘I don’t and it’s not for the want of trying. Don’t waste your time, mister. He’s been swallowed up. There’s no reaching him. The adoption agency has disappeared. There are no records anywhere. Little Freddie has become the invisible man.’
‘How old would he be now? In his mid-twenties, I guess.’
‘Yes. He’s got a birthday coming up next February. February the tenth. What I’d give to be able to plant a birthday kiss on his cheek.’ To prevent another bout of tears, she took a large gulp of gin.
‘Does his father know anything about Freddie or his whereabouts?’
Greta gave a snort of derision. ‘Does he hell. He wanted to know nothing about the baby as soon as he found out that Sally was pregnant. He thought it would interfere with his career and his bloody philandering. What kind of man is that? When they were schooling first rate bastards, Raymond Carter was top of the class.’ Her finger jabbed the newspaper before her. ‘And it seems he’s still at it. I see he’s murdered his latest girlfriend. Well I hope you catch him and he dangles at the end of a rope. That’s what he deserves. It’ll be good riddance to bad rubbish.’ Her eyes had brightened now and an angry flush had reddened her cheeks. I gazed at her, the shape of her face, the turn of her nose and the attractive hazel colouring of her eyes and got the tingle: the Hawke tingle when I’ve made some sort of breakthrough. Yes I had seen those features before. Quite recently. But they were on a man.
THIRTY
* * *
‘It’s true, I tell you. It’s true.’ Andrew Booth’s eyes nearly popped out of his head as he blurted out the story that he’d heard on the wireless that morning. ‘Raymond Carter has strangled a woman. To death!’
With enthusiasm, he gripped Peter by the throat and in demonstration pretended to strangle him. Much to Andrew’s chagrin, Peter did not respond to this dramatic re-enactment; instead he stood limply as Andrew’s fingers circled his neck.
The two boys were standing in the school playground at morning playtime, surrounded by a seething tide of boisterous schoolboys who took no notice of this apparently murderous attack on one of their fellows, their attentions focused on other raucous activities.
‘Come on,’ said Andrew, in frustration, attempting to shake his friend into action. ‘Scream or something.’
‘Just get off,’ responded Peter sullenly, pulling away.
Andrew obeyed. ‘What’s up?’
‘Are you sure about this? Or are you making it up?’ Peter’s face was dark with concern.
‘What, about Raymond Carter and Charlie Dokes?’ Andrew giggled. ‘’Cos Charlie’s gone on the run too, y’know.’ Andrew did an arthritic impersonation of a ventriloquist’
s doll on the run.
‘It’s not funny, Andy.’
‘’Course I’m telling the truth. I wouldn’t make such stuff up, would I?’
Peter nodded. He knew that to be true. ‘I liked Raymond Carter and Charlie,’ he said simply, trying to explain his dismay. ‘I’ve got all their comics. I saw him on Saturday night. At the Palladium.’
‘Yes, you told me.’
‘I thought he was a nice man. Funny … and … nice.’
‘Well, according to the man on the wireless he strangled his girlfriend, that woman who’s on his radio show.’
‘What? Evelyn Munro?’
Andrew shrugged. ‘Don’t know her name.’
A wave of misery swept over Peter. In his short life he had been let down so often by people whom he had liked and respected. Here again was another shallow deceiver who had misled him. Although he had never met the man Raymond Carter, and had only seen him once from a distance on a brightly coloured stage, he had warmed to him and his cheeky pal Charlie through the radio shows and the comics. Raymond and Charlie had become part of his world, part of his imaginary family. In essence he had become one of Peter’s heroes. Now he had turned out to be someone else, someone who couldn’t be trusted. A bad man. A murderer.
Andrew could see from Peter’s glum expression that he had taken his news rather more to heart than he had expected. He placed a consoling hand on his friend’s shoulder. ‘Never mind,’ he said with forced cheeriness, ‘when the police catch him perhaps they’ll let him do his radio show from the jail.’
‘I don’t think I want to hear him ever again,’ said Peter grimly.
Suddenly the air was rent with three sharp bursts on a whistle: the signal that it was the end of playtime. A plump, stern-looking woman in grey tweeds and wearing her grey hair in a severe bun stood menacingly on the steps of the school. The sound of the whistle and her presence silenced the boys immediately. All frenzied activity came to an abrupt halt, the youngsters frozen in action by the Pavlovian whistle. Without another word, Peter and Andrew slowly and mechanically joined the throng of boys filing reluctantly back into the school.
Requiem for a Dummy Page 20