Dead Again

by Jennie Melville

  ‘You are doing it,’ said Charmian gently, ‘ to help find the killer of a young girl.’

  Baby looked her in the eyes. ‘I notice you don’t say: an innocent young girl.’

  ‘I don’t know how innocent she was, but she was not much more than fourteen so she hadn’t had much time to be very sinful.’

  ‘You think?’ said Baby. ‘I’ve met some!’

  ‘Let’s give her the benefit of the doubt.’

  Charmian was easing Baby towards the entrance to the mortuary where a member of the uniformed branch, alerted by Charmian, stood awaiting them. There was just one pair of big double doors at the end of a long corridor.

  Sergeant Derby acknowledged Charmian, Rewley and Baby. He knew Beryl Andrea Barker, she had a reputation. He did not follow them in; he had seen the kid’s face once and that was enough. He did not know her.

  ‘Soon in, soon over,’ Charmian said to Baby.

  Rewley went in behind them, the white-coated attendant slid open the drawer, then drew the covering from the face.

  Baby closed her eyes. Charmian patted her arm. ‘Come on.’ Thus encouraged. Baby opened her eyes and looked. A longer look than might have been expected, then she shook her head and backed away.

  She put her head down and walked fast, almost galloping down the corridor.

  All the time, that snatch of conversation overheard last night at the party which seemed in no way connected with what she had just seen slid in and out of her mind. It had been the one name which she had never thought to hear. Diana.

  She concentrated on the dead face she had just seen, hoping to exorcise Diana.

  When they were in the car, Charmian said, ‘ So it’s no, is it? You don’t know her, never saw her before?’

  ‘Drive me back,’ muttered Baby, her voice thick. ‘Drive me home. I want to say something.’

  When they got to the salon, she led them, through her own private entrance, straight to her office.

  ‘Show me those drawings again.’

  Rewley produced them, holding them out for her inspection. She stared at them, taking three deep breaths.

  ‘I wasn’t quite straight with you,’ she said, looking up. ‘I do know the faces. Both of them. Both girls came in here to have their hair done. Dyed red. They liked red.’

  ‘Names, please,’ said Charmian. They had an identity for the dead girl at last. After a name, surely an address and a family would be found?

  ‘I must look at the appointments book,’ muttered Baby. ‘ It’s in the salon.’

  The salon was emptying: it was a quiet day. Bobby had gone but Rachel and Dawn were still working. Rachel was combing out a client’s hair, preparatory to cutting it, while Dawn was preparing the tint for a lady with greying hair who wanted to stay blonde. Several juniors hovered around holding brushes and lotions.

  Baby turned over the pages of the appointment book looking at the names. ‘Here she is: Wilhelmina Winkle. Don’t suppose it’s her real name for a minute. She was a jokey character. It was a joke about being my daughter. She always paid cash, had it too, so no credit cards or cheques. She wasn’t a cheque person.’ The words were galloping out of Baby as she was turning back the pages. ‘Here’s the other one, but you know her name.’

  ‘Did she use the name Harrie?’

  ‘Yes. She was a different character from Willy Winkle.’

  What’s the connection, Charmian was asking herself, when Baby answered the unspoken question. ‘ They were friends, at the same school. I heard them talking.’

  ‘Which school? Did they say?’

  ‘Not so much a school as a college, sixth form college. That was it. They talked about computer studies. It’d be that place Priorsgate.’

  And I bet the Greenham girl goes there, too, thought Charmian, so she can answer some questions. Gradually an identity, a background, although not yet a name and a family, was being built up for the dead girl.

  Something else came into her mind: didn’t Joan Dingham’s son teach in Priorsgate College? He might have taught those girls. This was a thought to dwell on.

  Rewley had one pertinent question to ask. ‘Did you do their hair yourself?’

  Baby answered at once, her face far from childish at that moment. ‘Yes, I am the tinting expert.’

  ‘So you knew the girls better than most.’

  ‘I didn’t know them at all really. They hardly spoke to me.’

  Rewley showed his surprise. ‘Did they come in together then?’

  ‘Not always, but often. Sometimes one would come to have her hair done and the other would talk and watch.’

  ‘Strange kids,’ he said to Charmian, as they left.

  ‘Yes, and it’s possible they were both taught by Pip Dingham. Check on that, will you?’

  Left behind. Baby checked the bookings for tomorrow, and prepared to go up to her own apartment.

  One of the junior assistants caught up with her to say that a lady had called to see her.

  ‘Did she did leave a name?’

  ‘No, but she said she’d be back.’

  This girl is a moron, Baby thought, pretty but vacant. She ought to have got the name.

  ‘I said you would be around.’

  Baby nodded. ‘I’ll listen for the bell.’

  She went upstairs and deliberately forgot all about it. She had had enough of the female sex these last thirty-six hours. She washed the thoughts away from her in a hot shower, during which she also washed her hair. Not all her hair, which was pretty, was her own, she had a small hairpiece which she washed and dried too. One of the good things about being a hairdresser was that you knew how to look after your hair.

  Once all this was accomplished, she felt better. Cleaner and happier. After all, these terrible deaths were nothing to do with her. So she knew the victims? So what?

  I’ve been a victim myself, she thought, more than once, and no one cried for me. And I didn’t cry for myself, either. I like this Daniels woman, but she’s a toughie.

  In spite of her efforts to forget it, the whole conversation she had overheard last night came back to her. She knew the voices although she had been careful not to look at the speakers. It was loud and clear in her mind, but in fact it had been a whisper from behind the curtains. ‘I didn’t like her, and if there was a murder and I heard she was around, I’d think: she did it.’

  ‘Is she that bad?’

  ‘Manipulative. Wicked.’

  ‘I’ve never heard you talk like this.’

  ‘I hated Diana.’

  In Baby’s life, there had only been one Diana.

  I knew the voices, she told herself, I believe I know who was speaking, but I can’t be sure.

  There weren’t so many people at the party that I can’t make a good guess. Lou was there, looking brassily attractive, as ever. Very like Joan in looks, but thinner and younger. She knew from her own experience that prison was both ageing and fattening. The food, she thought, and the lack of proper exercise.

  Pip, Joan’s son, had been there. A nice young man, polite and friendly. He didn’t drink much. He hardly knew his mother – he’d only been a little boy when she’d gone inside. Creepy for him really to think of his mother as a murderer. Did he wonder sometimes why she hadn’t killed him? But Joan was said to have changed, her actions had been explained as being due to mental illness, the result of the sudden death of her husband, from which she had now recovered. She certainly seemed intent on getting some education.

  If there was anything in heredity, then Pip could be the local killer. But they said upbringing counted for more, and Lou had brought Pip up during his mother’s enforced absence. She could hear Joan’s voice at that party – she’d picked up a weird accent in prison, a touch of Birmingham mixed with a touch of Scots – ‘Thank you for being such a good mother to my Pip. He’s a good boy.’

  Yes. Baby said to herself, and a good boy who has been the teacher of two murdered girls. Coincidence?

  When you thought of girls
that age being murdered, you also thought of sex and drugs, at least, I do, Baby thought, and I bet Charmian Daniels does. It’s the sort of thing she’d be on to, and that Rewley.

  Someone should tell Charmian about Pip and the two girls, but I don’t think it’s going to be me. Joan would kill me. Let Charmian find out for herself.

  Baby wasn’t hungry but she knew she must eat or tomorrow would bring not a simple headache but a full blown migraine. She got bread, cheese and butter out of the refrigerator and put some sandwiches together which she carried into her sitting room.

  She was just about to open her mouth to start eating when she remembered the salon was not locked up. The doors would be closed and the blinds drawn, but the door would not be locked because that was a duty she reserved for herself. Groaning with self-pity, she went downstairs.

  She locked the front door before going to lock the inner door of the salon. She had cleared the day’s takings earlier.

  Then she remembered the woman who was going to call.

  There she was, sitting in one of the big chairs meant for decoration and not for sitting in.

  ‘Oh my God, I forgot.’ She could see the back of the woman’s head.

  Apologizing, she walked towards her. As she did so, the woman’s head fell forward.

  Baby stepped forward quickly. ‘Here, are you all right?’ There was a steady drip of blood on the floor. Baby began to shake. ‘I don’t know you, say I don’t know you.’

  But the woman was past speaking. It was Diana, and her throat had been cut.

  Chapter Five

  ‘God, you gave me a turn,’ said Baby from the kitchen where she was making a sandwich and pouring out coffee. Her hands were still shaking.

  ‘Just a joke.’

  ‘A joke?’ She came in with the sandwich and coffee to where Diana sat, with the flesh-coloured scarf with its very convincing looking wound. ‘Is that what you call it?’

  ‘A bloody awful joke,’ volunteered Diana.

  And then they both laughed.

  ‘Why and how did you get such a thing?’

  ‘Bought it in a shop off First Avenue in New York. They do such things very well over there. I got it for my nephew, little Freddy, but when I got home I found out he was six feet tall and studying computer science and logic at a local college here … Priory – something.’

  ‘I know the place. Heard of it.’ Baby watched Diana bite into a sandwich, and thought how thin she looked. Then she got back to her grievance.

  ‘But why me?’

  ‘I thought it would make you laugh,’ complained Diana. ‘It would have done once.’

  ‘I’ve changed.’ And so have you. Baby thought to herself. I used to think you were a beauty and so you were, Diana. But look at you now. She studied Diana’s face: eyes rimmed heavily with deep black eyeliner, the lashes loaded with mascara and grey shadow on her eyelids. Her cheeks were red, too red.

  Then she thought, but perhaps you’d look worse without it. A sobering thought.

  Hair wasn’t bad, it was probably a hairpiece.

  She took a quick look at herself in the mirror on the wall. I’ve kept myself in better shape, she decided.

  ‘And guess who is teaching Freddy?’ Diana bit into the sandwich. ‘Pip, Phillip, son of Joan Dingham. He’s a teacher there, lecturer. I guess they call them all lecturers these days. I saw him, tall, well dressed, nice-looking, he didn’t know me, of course, and I didn’t introduce myself. Didn’t say: I am an old friend of your mother’s, we knew each other in the nick, and knew each other long before that, too. Didn’t seem wise to say all that. I don’t know if Joan wants to know me any more. I’ve been in touch, by post. Not much response. Didn’t ask me to her coming out party. Yes. I know you had one.’

  And that wasn’t a total surprise, Baby decided. I know you better than you might think, you always did good intelligence work.

  ‘What was that red stuff that I had to wipe up?’ she asked.

  ‘Some pretend blood, theatrical stuff. Guaranteed not to stain.’

  ‘It had better not.’ Although she had noticed it seemed to disappear as she mopped at it, she intended to check later. ‘But don’t give me another surprise like that one, will you?’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘I might not laugh next time.’

  ‘You didn’t laugh too much this time.’ Diana took a swig of coffee into which she had poured some whisky. Without asking permission her hostess observed.

  ‘I remember the time when we were both at school and you told me someone had set fire to my cat… I ran home, fast as I could, and Tibs was asleep in the sun. I was six and you were seven and splitting your sides with laughter. So no one knows better than me what your sense of humour is like.’

  Diana nodded her acceptance. ‘ I’m a louse.’

  ‘But when my cat really did die, run over, left in the gutter, you were the one who helped me bury it.’

  ‘I didn’t mind doing that.’

  Somehow she could believe that burial was acceptable to Diana, it wasn’t a joke, you didn’t laugh, but it didn’t worry you either. It was there for everyone, you had to accept it. Yes, even as a child there had been some strange sides to Diana’s character.

  ‘You’re very thin,’ Baby said, studying her old friend. If that was indeed their relationship.

  Diana looked down at herself. ‘True, so I am.’

  ‘What were you doing in New York?’ Baby asked.

  ‘Working, of course. Running a bar.’

  ‘I’d have thought you needed American citizenship to do that.’ And no jail record. How did Diana do it? Lies, no doubt.

  ‘Ha, ha,’ said Diana. ‘Is that your idea of a joke? Well, as it happens an English accent goes down well there.’

  Oh, so that’s what’s happened to your voice, not Birmingham at all. How unkind of me to blame Birmingham.

  ‘I liked working behind a bar,’ went on Diana, ‘nice people, and it paid well. I was out of prison on remission. But I had no money, alas.’

  ‘So why have you come back?’

  Diana allowed herself a pause before speaking. ‘I’m dying.’

  ‘Oh but …’ began Baby.

  ‘Yes, I know I died once, looked death in the face and it went away again, but it came back and this time it’s here to stay.’ She had had a brush with cancer once, as Baby knew, but now it had obviously returned.

  For a minute, neither of them spoke, then Diana said, ‘You’ve gone quite white. I can’t join you, my colour is brushed on and fixed.’

  ‘It was a shock. I’m sorry. I thought you looked ill, yes, and yes, I noticed the red on your cheeks, overdone I thought. Now I understand why.’

  ‘Saw you looking. Nearly told you then.’

  ‘Are you sure that it’s as bad as all that? Nothing to be done?’

  ‘Nothing more,’ said Diana coolly. ‘It’s what they call pain control now.’ She looked a her watch. ‘Nearly time for my next dose.’ Baby drew in her breath in a gasp, attracting Diana’s attention. ‘You all right yourself? You don’t look it.’

  ‘It was the party last night … Bee and Lou and all the Dingham lot. Celebrating, I suppose you could call it, although no one spoke to me much. Didn’t say thank you as far as I remember, except for Lou. They don’t like you, Di, I don’t know if that worries you.’

  Diana shrugged. ‘Not a lot, not any longer. Is that why you look the way you do, kind of deathly, because of a hangover?’

  ‘No.’ Baby looked down at her feet. ‘There’s been a lot of talk about death for me today. I had to go and see if I could identify a dead girl.’

  ‘And did you?’

  ‘Yes. She’d been murdered. One of two girls … Both killed.’

  ‘They shouldn’t have let Joanie out,’ said Diana.

  ‘She didn’t do it. She was still inside.’

  ‘Sure? There was a chap in the States who used his time out of prison to visit his sick mother to put away a victim or two. I think
he did seven like that.’

  ‘I’ll tell Charmian Daniels,’ said Baby when she could speak. ‘Her case, it is. She took me to the hospital.’

  ‘We might have met then, I had to pop in this morning for a quickie appointment. The dead and the dying, poor old you. So, Daniels is still around, is she?’

  ‘More important than ever.’

  ‘She would be. I remember her; in a way, I liked her.’

  ‘It’s better to be on her good side,’ said Baby dolefully. ‘One thing I haven’t told you is that both the girls went to the college where Pip Dingham teaches, in fact he taught them.’

  Diana frowned as she finished her coffee. ‘If I was your friend Charmian I would give Pip a good look over.’

  ‘You can’t inherit a taste for murder or catch it like a disease, can you?’

  ‘You don’t think so?’ Diana laughed. ‘Stick around, Baby.’

  Her hostess sighed. ‘Talking of staying, where are you staying?’

  ‘Here, if you’ll have me.’

  ‘All right. For tonight anyway.’ She knew it would be longer than a night: she had noticed the big black bag by the door.

  They had a drink to celebrate the renewal of their friendship, even if it looked like being a short one, as Diana pointed out.

  ‘Let’s have one last little caper … Rob a bank or something.’

  ‘There’s a jewellery shop in Upper Line Street I’ve had my eye on.’ Baby joined in her mood, more to adjust to the thought of Diana dying, again. ‘Some lovely pearls there.’

  ‘You have the pearls and I’ll have the diamonds.’

  ‘We ought to pass on most of the stuff,’ said Baby severely. ‘Can’t wear it. Or not where it would be recognized. One row of pearls, yes, maybe.’

  ‘Right. We’ll share the profits, you can have most of it because I won’t be around to spend it.’

  ‘OK.’ Now she knew for sure that Diana was ill: she never shared anything.

  After she had seen Diana to bed. Baby went down to tidy up the salon.

  Yes, Diana had been right, the fake blood had left no stain. Magic – a bit like Diana’s life, thought Baby, and mine too, off we’ll go and not a sign left.