I could see I’d get nothing else from him and finally had to be rude to get away from him. Lonely old bugger. I walked back towards the river and struck north towards Parliament, and to Soho beyond. I was thinking about those poor lasses that had been killed there, the last just four days ago. The trade of the victims, and the way they’d been butchered drew a pattern, but I couldn’t read it yet.
Because of their precarious line of business the first murder had barely been given a mention among all the other news. Though for my own quaint reasons I had picked up on it and began my cuttings collection. But the second jolted the city, and the third began to set up a clamour. Now it was front page with headlines talking gleefully of the new Soho Ripper and “Jack’s back!”
It was as though something wicked had followed me from the camp. I had a sense of their deaths, as though I’d known them or shared their terror. Maybe it was this that drew me towards their killing ground. Or my copper’s training. One day it would kill me.
I walked straight up Whitehall, still marvelling at how so many of those grand buildings had survived. Parliament had taken a stick or two but they’d just moved to another part of Westminster Palace. Funny, the bombs couldn’t silence old Winston but we, the grateful voters, did. It wasn’t personal, he was just leading the wrong party. But it must have hurt.
Nelson was still on his column. And pigeons had never left Trafalgar Square except to take a breather from the incendiaries. There was a lot of rubbish around. It had been a good night for some. The dustbin men were getting stuck in. I pressed on up by the Windmill with its signs claiming they never closed during the Blitz. They were promising a New Year’s Day special: half price for the first twenty customers. I slowed to take in the photos of the girls, splendid with their feathers and smiles and impossible legs.
I walked along Rupert Street. It looked different to the other times I’d come here; daylight versus dark anonymity. I entered the little hallway and knocked on Mary’s door. Silence, but it was still only late morning: time for rest, especially if there had been some new year celebrations. I knocked again, harder.
“Wat you want?! We no open, yet. Come back later!” Mary’s high thin voice cut through the door like a dentist drill.
“Mary, it’s me, Danny. It’s business.”
I heard nothing for a minute then grumbling and catches being taken off and bolts sliding. Mary’s little round face showed round the crack of the door. She wasn’t wearing make-up. She had no eyebrows. It was a shock to see how old she was. Blessed night-time.
“Wat you want, Danny? Girls not up. They need beauty sleep. Like me.”
She did.
“It’s about these murders, Mary. I need some information.” I was calling in a favour I’d done her a couple of months back. There had been a spate of stealing from the girls’ rooms. Mary thought one of them was the culprit but didn’t want the boys in blue rampaging through her house. I caught the thief on the fire escape round the back; he was the neighbour’s kid. Justice was meted out according to local custom: the kid was given a good hiding and cash changed hands in reparation. The problem stopped.
She opened the door a little wider. She was in a blue silk dressing gown that fell to her tiny feet. Her hair was tightly held in a net. She looked even shorter today, shrunken. I thought of my mother. “Why you interested, Danny? You private dick, not real Bobby.”
I smiled at Mary’s sing-song cackle; we suffered the same degree of incomprehension by the English at times.
“Call it professional curiosity, Mary. Can I come in for a minute.”
Her eyes narrowed even further, then she stood back and let me in. She glanced outside to see who might have spotted me – the neighbours, and hence the police, didn’t like callers much at any time, far less during the day.
The familiar smell of incense and cheap perfume hit me like a shovel. I would catch a whiff on my clothes for days after one of my visits. I didn’t come here often, and when I first knocked on Mary’s door it wasn’t so much about the act itself as proving something to myself. They beat the shit out of me in the camp;
I wondered what else they might have knocked out.
Mary was a psychologist. She’d give Doc Thompson a run for his money. She took my measure that first time like a chef inspecting fruit at Covent Garden. She gave me green tea and talked to me, drew out a little of the story, a little of the need. Then she introduced me to Colette, a lippy dyed blonde with a happy heart. A natural at her profession. She told Colette to take her time, no rush.
I guess it worked as I’ve come back a couple of times since. Mary runs a clean house and it’s only for a wee while, till I can face up to the rejections on the dance floor.
Besides, I’d also dropped in on Mary on business, my business. I’m new to London, and it’s important in my line to know who the bad guys are and what they’re up to. You don’t want to be crossing anyone important when you’re on the scent. I learned that the hard way when I got mixed up in the affairs of a certain Annie MacGuire whose old man turned out to be making hay with the lady wife of a rival mob leader in the East End.
Annie was a brazen-haired, big-breasted girl who laughed a lot and wore more jewellery than Hatton Garden. She stormed into my office, bangles clashing like cymbals, demanding that I tail Mr Stanley MacGuire. Stanley seemed to be spending too many nights at the office. Which was tricky; Stanley’s line of work – putting the arm on late payers of the loan shark he worked for – placed his office in the back seat of a big Humber Hawk.
So I spent a couple of weeks and a lot of shoe leather finding out that Stanley was not so much putting the arm on people as putting it round a certain Laura Dayton, who had the edge on Annie by about ten years and twenty pounds. I didn’t know Miss Dayton was a Mrs and also fooling around. Or that Mr Dayton was well known for his trademark habit of breaking people’s shins with the iron bar he kept up his very big sleeve. It was an effective deterrent to folk who thought they might like a cut of his fag and booze racket.
I made my report, Annie threw a fit, but instead of – or maybe as well as; I never heard – taking it out on Stanley, she tracked down Laura Dayton to the Brickie’s Arms in the Old Kent Road and took a slice out of her rival’s younger face with Stanley’s clasp razor. Poetic justice, she must have thought. Gang war broke out, two pubs got wrecked, five people ended up in hospital, some with bits missing that would never grow again. And I began vetting my clients a little more carefully.
Mary’s ears were tuned to the jungle drums and she was happy to gossip except when it came to clients, for whom she would undergo torture to avoid naming or shaming. I followed her through to her tiny living room, and remembered to duck as we came in through the door to avoid the huge wind chimes that dangled from the ceiling. As ever, I was mildly shocked at the amount of junk on every flat surface and every wall. And, apart from the enormous pile of old newspapers in one corner, the overwhelming preference for red junk. I think the colour of my hair was the other factor in her being helpful to me.
I pushed aside an avalanche of red satin cushions and perched on the edge of her couch. Tea appeared to lubricate the conversation. “You sure you no wanna girl?
Can get one up, lazy cows sleep all day and night too if can.”
I grinned and shook my head. “What’s the story on the streets, Mary, about these killings?”
She turned her mouth down. “Very bad, very bad. Bad for girls bad for business.
Men stay away ’cos they scared of bobbies.”
I bet. “Does anyone know anything though? Anyone see anything?”
“Dead girls all work for one man. Big time pimp. No like my place. You safe here. I kill anyone who hurt my girls!” She raised her little arm and dropped it in a swift chopping motion. It was a threat not to be dismissed lightly. I doubted if Mary herself had the strength to squash a bug but she had good connections in China Town where the Tongs held sway. I also knew that Mary’s concern for the half dozen girls w
ho worked here was more than just business or posturing; the girls themselves talked of her kindness to them. Mama Mary they called her.
“Do you know the name of the man? This pimp?”
“I know, I know all right. He Jonny Crane. Hard man. Don’t you cross him, Danny.
He chop you into chow mein. Eat you up for dinner!”
I stored the name away. “What else? Any sightings? Any disturbance?”
She shook her head. “Only bobbies. Big chief, big fat bastard. He come round, throw everything up in air. Make questions. Scare customers. Scare girls.”
A thought struck me. “What’s his name?”
“Wislen. Somet’ing like that.”
“Wilson? You mean, Inspector Wilson?”
“That him.” She nodded hard. “Stinky bad man. Always round here. He like girls, but no pay for them.”
“Wait, wait, Mary. Are you saying that Wilson comes round here and uses the girls? And that he doesn’t pay for it?”
“That right. He pig! But not here. Other houses. He know not come China Town house. Chop, chop!” She stabbed the air. “They say he hit girls and make ’em do bad stuff.” She shrugged. “That OK if girls say OK and he pay. But not for no money.”
A businesswoman to the roots of her dyed-black hair. I thought of Wilson and shuddered at what he might demand of a girl. Fat bastard indeed. I remember the first time I met Detective Inspector Herbert Wilson of the Yard. I’d been going for about six weeks and was starting to make some headway; a few clients, enough to pay the rent anyway.
Did I mention the cat? There’s a thin moggy with half a tail that comes by most days. It creeps up the stairs, pauses at the second top step and checks out the lie of the land. If it sees me at my desk and I don’t make shooing noises it comes up on to the landing and rubs itself against my door. It meows as it rubs.
I’ve taken to leaving a saucer of Carnation milk for it. That seems to work. It doesn’t come near me, doesn’t demand stroking or – god forbid – a lap, just recognition and milk, then it goes on its way, its stumpy tail the last thing I see as it glides off down the stairs.
Wilson scared the cat the day he paid me a visit. Its thin head shot up, its ears twitched, and it was away before I’d even heard the first steps. I heard his big feet clumping up the stairs. They even sounded like copper’s feet, relentless, heavy, full of their own importance. A hat sailed into view, then the shoulders of a big coat. The man wearing them was sucking for air. He held the top rail for a second or two till he got his breath. Then he came in through my open door. No knock. He just stood there wheezing, eyeing me and my place. I waited.
“McRae?” His chest still heaved.
“That’s me. Sorry, the lift’s out.”
He ignored my humour. “You a so-called private dick, then?” He made it sound sinful.
I still didn’t know he was police, but he had that look. In his first five seconds he’d itemised my office, memorised my face, and noticed the door to my bedroom.
“At your service. Can I help? Need a debt collected? Lost a wife?”
I watched his mouth twist. “I’m Inspector Wilson. Detective Inspector, CID.
You’re on my patch. Wanted to see you, what you were up to. I don’t like what you do.”
What the hell was a DI doing making house calls? “I’m honoured, Inspector, and it’s really nice to be made welcome. But I’m a bit puzzled; we haven’t met, and yet already you’re pissed off with me. Isn’t that a wee bit unfair? And before we continue this nice chat, can I see your warrant card, please? Can’t be too careful these days.”
I could see his jaw muscles tighten. We were getting on famously. He hated me and I loathed him. I’d seen too many of his kind; they’d been in the force too long, got too used to throwing their weight around. Wilson let his fell gaze roast me for the obligatory five seconds, then he reached into his great overcoat and pulled out a card. He strode over to my desk and rammed it under my nose. DI Herbert Wilson. I wondered if he’d let me call him Bertie? “Satisfied?”
“Thank you, Inspector. Now, shall we start again? What can I do for you?”
“You can tell me who you are, where you come from, and what you’re doing here.”
“I thought we’d established who I was and what I’m doing? And my accent’s a bit of a clue, is it no? I needed a job after getting demobbed. This – palace – is it.”
“You could have got your old job back. What was it?” He settled his great bulk into my chair. He seemed to take up the whole view from my desk. I sighed. He wasn’t going to let this go until he found out.
“I was in the force. In Glasgow. Thought I’d try the private sector. More money.” Potentially, I thought, potentially. I thought it smart not to tell him I’d been a detective sergeant.
He didn’t look surprised, which was surprising. He chewed on the end of his moustache for a bit, then wiped it dry with a big paw.
“Ok, McRae. Here’s my warning. I don’t like private investigators. Especially don’t like former coppers doing private investigations. Only one who investigates around these parts is me. I can’t stop you. Not until you do something illegal or get in my way.” He leaned over my desk, and his bloodshot eyes held mine. “Just – don’t – get – in – my – fucking – way.” His breath would have stripped paint.
I didn’t blink. I’d been through worse sessions with real bullies. Much worse.
They hadn’t made threats, just carried them out.
“I’m sure there’s room for both of us on these gold-paved streets, Inspector.
And I’m prepared to give you a big discount if you ever need help looking for Mrs Wilson.”
I thought my poor visitor’s chair would explode under the pressure. Wilson wrenched himself clear and lowered over the desk at me, leaning on his knuckles.
He singed my eyebrows with his blast.
“I also don’t like a smart arse, McRae! You’re on my list, boy. I’m looking out for you. You hear me? One foot wrong and you’re visiting my nice nick. The lads will enjoy you. They don’t like smart arses either.”
I decided I’d done enough goading and kept my mouth shut – about five minutes too late – until he’d stomped off down the stairs. A little later the cat’s head appeared round the corner. She meowed angrily. She hadn’t been impressed by Wilson either.
“Just one more question, Mary. Did you know the name of the last girl who was killed? Know where she worked?”
“Name was Jasmine. Round corner. Marsh Street. 43. Only single girls work there.
They all gone now.” Her brows knitted as though she worried what became of that flock of flushed birds.
“Thanks, Mary. And thanks for the tea.” I stood to go.
“You sure, Danny? Wake Colette? She like you.”
Ah, Colette; real name Betty; aspiring actress and Windmill girl, but her curvy legs were too short. It was tempting, so tempting to take some comfort from skin on skin, but I declined. Not while I was working. Even in my dirty line of business I try to have some professional standards. Mary closed the door on me with a last admonishment. “You come round soon, you hear. And keep your head away from Jonny Crane and big fat bastard!”
I should have listened harder to Mama Mary.
FIVE
Marsh Street paraded its usual collection of street artists. A man in a doorway sleeping it off, his empty bottle by his side. A publican with his braces round his knees and a fag stuck to his lip opening up to let out the fetid air. A pair of spivs with darting eyes, oiling each other’s business with cash and information. And a couple of big women tottering along in party frocks and last night’s make-up, clinging to each other for dear life. If one fell, they’d both go, and would probably die there on their backs, limbs flailing uselessly like upturned turtles.
I looked for number 43. It was three stories high and had a block of six bells each with a name on it, except for the top one. There was just a blank where I guess Jasmine’s nom-de-guerr
e had been. I walked in and began to climb the stairs. I had no idea what I would do at the top. I had no idea what I was doing here in the first place. The stairs had a rough carpet for the first three flights and then bare boards the rest of the way. They creaked and groaned as I made my way.
It had been four days since they’d found her. Jasmine. Probably christened Jean.
Wee Jeanie. Jeanie with the light brown hair. Somebody’s daughter. The door was closed. I knocked and got no answer. I turned the handle and it opened. I stepped inside. There was a short hall. A bathroom to the left and ahead a bedsit area. They’d cleared everything, bedding, carpet – I could see the tidemark of dirt where it had lain – and all the drawers were hanging open, empty. A mattress stood against the wall. There were two huge brown stains on it, one where a head might lie and the other in the middle.
I’d seen a few murders in Glasgow. Though each was different in detail and context, I’d begun to find a dreadful familiarity. Same here. On the surface this was just a sad, empty room with dirty windows and red net curtains.
Jasmine/Jean had left no mark on the world except the headlines in the papers for a few days. But as I stood there, absorbing impressions, picturing where he stood and where she lay, my imagination detected a spoor, an afterimage hanging in the air. An aura of violence and death.
They share a cigarette while she tells him how much it costs. He puts the money on the dresser. He takes off his coat and then his jacket. It’s going to be warm work; warmer than she knows. She stubs her fag.
She sheds her floral dressing gown and her pants and bra. She lays herself back on the bed and offers herself. He unzips and tells her to turn over on to her stomach. She smiles and tells him he’s naughty. Maybe he smacks her bum a little, to see the flesh colour and tremble under his stinging hand. She is being paid to be used so there are no screams at first, just the thought that the client is being a bit rough, something he’d have to pay more for.
There’s a pause and she hears him move to his coat. She turns her head and sees the knife and knows this is way beyond naughtiness. He shoves her face into the mattress to stifle her screams. He squats on her back, feeling for the spot on her neck where the skull starts, and drives the weapon up and into her brain. He mounts her as her body spasms. He…
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