Playing with Fire

by Patricia Hall

  The post-mortem, on the other hand, turned out to be predictable and straightforward. Barnard watched from a decent distance as the cause of death for the young girl on the slab was only too evident from the shattered state of her body and particularly her head and face.

  ‘It was a high floor window, a serious height,’ he said to the pathologist. ‘They’re tall, those old houses. And she looks as though she went out with some force.’

  ‘Depends what she was doing when she fell, or jumped maybe, though I think that’s less likely,’ the doctor said. ‘Or if she was pushed. There’s no definitive way of telling. But the head and facial injuries are very severe, as you can see.’

  ‘But you think that’s possible, looking at the injuries? I mean, could she have been pushed?’ Barnard asked.

  ‘I’ve no idea, Sergeant. Talking to witnesses is your job. All I can tell you is that apart from other injuries, mainly broken bones, she suffered a blow across the face and forehead which undoubtedly killed her. When the test results come back I can tell you whether she was drunk or, what do they call it? Stoned? Or if she had taken anything even stronger. Heroin, perhaps, though it must have been inhaled. I can’t see any obvious signs of injection. And to be honest I don’t know much about this LSD some of the youngsters are experimenting with, but I believe it can have a very powerful effect on some susceptible people. Nightmares, hallucinations, you name it. I heard from a colleague who had dealt with a young man who had tried to jump off a bridge – reckoned he could fly. Dangerous stuff apparently. It seems it’s difficult to detect but the effects can last a long time. It works its way out of the body quickly, though, so it doesn’t often show up in tests. Anyway, I’ll let you know as soon as I have results.’

  ‘I’m going back to the club now to pin the manager down,’ Barnard said. ‘But whether we’ll ever identify everyone who was there last night, I’m not sure. People are supposed to sign in but there doesn’t seem to be any guarantee that guests’ names are taken. And this kid can hardly be a member. Did you find anything to identify her when she was brought in? Anything in her pockets?’

  ‘A purse with a couple of pound notes in it. That’s all. Nothing convenient with a name and address on. It’s over there in that dish.’

  ‘It’s not much to fund a night in a club like that. She must have been with someone. I’ll take it anyway and see if the manager has found anything else she might have left behind – coat or a bag maybe. It’s very odd if that’s all she had on her. And if no one has come forward because they were with her it may be quite hard to find out who she is.’ He put the relics into an evidence bag and put it in his pocket. It was not much to show for a life so prematurely snuffed out, he thought.

  He glanced at the pale face from which the blood had been partly cleaned, the lips with a gash across them, the front teeth smashed, the nose crushed as much as broken, the eyes blackened and closed and the untidy blonde hair matted with blood and dirt, and he tried to take in just how young she must have been. Somewhere, he thought, a family would very likely be wondering where their daughter was and he knew he would have to go through the missing persons reports that had come in either late last night or this morning to see if he could identify her that way. The family might not even have realized yet that she had not come home last night and reported her missing. He hoped that the unlucky female PC sent to break the news of her death did not arrive before her parents had even realized she had gone. And if she was not identifiable from those overnight reports then they would have to work backwards, knowing that it was possible that she had been missing for weeks or months, adrift in a city where young girls were often regarded simply as prey. It was never easy and the longer news was delayed the more those waiting would be distraught as hope was slowly snuffed out by the lack of official answers and the passage of time.

  ‘Do you have any colleagues who could help us reconstruct her face?’ he asked.

  The doctor looked at him across the table. ‘I’ll ask around,’ he said. ‘I know there have been some experiments in that sort of area. I read something somewhere about a Russian who reckoned he had recreated the face of Ivan the Terrible. But it’s all experimental. I don’t think anyone’s taking it very seriously and I guess Scotland Yard would just laugh at you. I’ll look in the literature, though. Keep me in touch.’

  THREE

  On his way back to the Late Supper Club, Barnard put his head round the door of Ken Fellows’ photographic agency, but Kate O’Donnell’s desk was empty.

  ‘Is she out on a job?’ he asked a photographer who was busy loading his camera.

  ‘I’m not sure where she’s gone,’ he said with not much sign of interest. ‘She asked Ken for a couple of hours off and just went. It’s all right for those with a pretty face, isn’t it?’

  Barnard closed the door behind him with rather more force than necessary and made his way back into the street, looping round to Greek Street where he caught his quarry, Hugh Mercer, striding up the stairs of his club holding a bacon sandwich in a greasy paper bag held well away from his suit in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other. He did not look pleased to see DS Barnard.

  ‘There’s no catering staff on till later,’ he said, swallowing hard and panting slightly. ‘A man’s got to eat.’

  ‘You’ve got an appetite, have you?’ Barnard said. ‘A kid out of the window’s all in a night’s work?’

  ‘I told you last night. I’ve no idea who she is – or was. Or who brought her in. Is she really dead?’

  ‘Dead on arrival,’ Barnard said. ‘And pretty much unrecognizable. So now you and me are going to sit down and go through your paperwork to see exactly who she might be. And who brought her here. You’re not telling me that a kid of that age made it to a private Soho club all on her own.’

  ‘If you say so,’ Mercer agreed with ill grace.

  For a moment, Barnard saw red and pushed the man, who with a rugby player’s physique must have weighed twice as much as he did himself, against the bannister and held him there with his spine pressed hard against the wood.

  ‘Have you made any progress since I saw you earlier?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes, yes, Sergeant,’ Mercer said, flushing slightly and obviously fighting the instinct to hit out, his hands balling ominously.

  Just give me a reason to arrest you, Barnard thought, recognizing a man who was not used to being treated with anything less than respect by police officers.

  ‘I’ve sorted out some stuff for you,’ Mercer said. ‘But I’ve still no idea who this kid is. Not a clue. People who came in as members may not have signed everyone in properly. I told you, it was very busy last night. The door staff may not have done a very good job. You know how it is.’

  ‘No, I don’t know how it is,’ Barnard snapped, easing away from him slightly. ‘I’ve never been a manager of a club, but I do know the rules. This girl was very young, most likely underage, and she died. I want to know who she is, who she came with, whether she drank anything she shouldn’t have, or smoked something, and how and why she went out of that window. And if you can’t provide some answers, I promise you I’ll have this place closed down.’

  ‘A few of your colleagues wouldn’t be very pleased about that,’ Mercer snapped back unexpectedly. ‘We pay enough insurance and not just to friends of yours.’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ Barnard replied quickly, although he was not as surprised as he pretended to be.

  ‘Never mind,’ Mercer said, and Barnard guessed that he had already said more than he had intended. The manager led the way into his office and pointed to a number of papers and ledgers on his desk.

  ‘Membership lists, registers people sign in with, going back six months, staff names and addresses – what more will you want?’

  ‘This will do to be going on with,’ the sergeant said, taking Mercer’s chair at the desk and waving him away. ‘Don’t go anywhere until I’ve finished – I may need to check details with you. This girl ob
viously didn’t get in here all on her own. I need to find out who brought her here and left her dead on the pavement without a word of explanation as to how that happened. I need to talk to that man – and I guess it’s a man – very much indeed. And anyone who might have been a witness. It may all take some considerable time.’

  ‘I’ll get on with my breakfast then,’ Mercer said, but he caught the hostility in Barnard’s eyes clearly enough. ‘If there’s anything I can do to help …’ he added quickly. ‘Anything at all.’

  ‘I’ll let you know if I need you,’ Barnard said dismissively, but by the time he had gone through the books thoroughly he had found no trace of the girl who had died or any indication who might have brought her to the club. Frustrated, he closed up the manager’s records, left his desk and went into the main club room, where he found Mercer sitting in the bar area with a large Scotch in front of him. He sat down across the table from him.

  ‘She wasn’t signed in, as far as I can see from what you’ve given me,’ he said. ‘And you say there’s no sign of a bag or a coat which might belong to her. Isn’t that very odd?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Mercer said. ‘I don’t know much about what these hysterical kids who chase pop stars get up to. She may have left her stuff outside and followed someone she recognized through the doors.’

  ‘Possible, I suppose,’ Barnard said sceptically. ‘That’s the other thing I wondered about. You said you were pulling in some big names, but I don’t see any serious stars on your list for that night. Did they not turn up? Or are you trying to keep them out of the limelight, because I should warn you that if that’s what you are doing my boss will not be best pleased. I’m going to be talking to as many people as I can track down that I know were here that night and I guess that if they saw the likes of a Beatle or a Rolling Stone or one of this new group – what are they called? The Rainmen? – they are going to be full of it. It’s a secret they won’t keep to themselves.’

  Mercer took a swig of his drink, then a deep breath, and Barnard could see the fury behind his bland facade.

  ‘I’ll check it out,’ he said. ‘I’ll get back to you. Sometimes some of the stars ask to be kept off the register to avoid fans like this stupid girl who fell out of the window …’

  ‘You’ll do that and you’ll do it quickly,’ Barnard said. ‘Or I’ll have you – and whoever you think you can keep out of the limelight – for perverting the course of justice. And you won’t like that.’ But he did not think that Mercer seemed to be as bothered by his threat as he had expected, and he thought that that in itself was worrying.

  After spending most of the day between the Late Supper Club and the nick without feeling as if he had made anything like progress, Barnard decided to see if he could check one of those niggling loose ends which had been bothering him since long before the anonymous young girl had plunged from the Soho club window. More than one of his contacts had suggested obliquely that someone – no one was ever very specific, eyes swivelled away when Barnard tried to pin down details – had recently seen Ray Robertson around his old haunts. And there had been a time a couple of weeks ago that he had himself seen someone he thought was Ray but the figure had vanished among the Oxford Street crowds before he could catch up with him. Not that he imagined that Ray would greet his old schoolfriend with anything like enthusiasm. They had parted on bad terms, with Barnard blaming Robertson for endangering Kate’s life in the pursuit of his financial advantage and Robertson furious that Barnard had later admitted that if he had to choose between his job and his former friend he would not hesitate to arrest him.

  There had been a time when they were sent away from their East End school as evacuees to a farm in the country when they’d been close. As the oldest of the three boys, Ray had protected Harry from his younger brother Georgie, who had been a bully even before he had left primary school and who could indulge in vicious violence if provoked. Years later, when Ray had set up as a boxing promoter and he was confident that Barnard could make it in the ring, he had done his best to make sure he did. But the relationship did not survive Barnard’s decision to join the police, which the Robertson boys, as members of one of the most notorious criminal families in the East End, regarded as a betrayal too far.

  Before setting off for home, the sergeant parked his car close to the rear doors of the Delilah Club with a sigh and decided that tonight, as the timing would probably see at least some of the management on the premises, might be the time to try to pin the rumours about Ray down. If nothing else, Barnard thought, a definite answer to the question whether or not Robertson was back in Soho might keep the powers that be at the Yard at bay for a while and DCI Jackson off his back at the nick.

  He had already checked out that the Delilah still belonged to Robertson, which did not surprise him. It had been the scene of some of his greatest publicity triumphs in the days when he and his brother Georgie were minor celebrities who entertained the great and the good at boxing galas which, it was claimed, raised substantial amounts of money for sporting charities, although Barnard had often wondered how much the brothers creamed off for themselves. But once they had been exposed as more on the wrong side of the law than the right, their influence quickly evaporated like morning mist and Ray had effectively disappeared after his last encounter with the sergeant, as much to keep out of Harry’s way after putting his girlfriend at risk as to avoid the crooks whose ill-gotten gains he had apparently appropriated that night. But somehow he still appeared to be in charge of the Delilah, which had once been his pride and joy, and when Barnard raised the subject of his boss with Derek Baker, the harassed-looking stand-in manager of the club, he shrugged with obvious anxiety.

  ‘Dunno, mate,’ he said with a hunted look. ‘I get instructions from some lawyer down Holborn way. I never see anything of Mr Robertson. In fact, I’ve never set eyes on him as it goes.’

  ‘Can you give me the name of this contact, the lawyer?’ Barnard asked but Baker looked dubious and sucked in his cheeks like a plumber facing an untraceable leak.

  ‘Don’t think so, mate,’ he said. ‘You’d need some paperwork for something like that, something legal, wouldn’t you? Really couldn’t do anything like that off my own bat. I’d be out of a job, wouldn’t I? Not a very patient man, is he, Mr Robertson, by the sound of it? Likes loyalty.’

  ‘Fair enough,’ Barnard said equably, not wanting warning signals to go out too firmly on what was only a hunch that if there were upheavals going on in Soho’s underworld it was a fair guess that Ray was in some way likely to be involved, even at a distance, even possibly from abroad. ‘Don’t worry your head about it. It wasn’t anything important.’

  ‘Right,’ Baker said. ‘I’ll get on with my job then.’

  ‘I did hear, though, that some of the businesses around here are being pestered by some new protection racket. A bit of serious harassing, maybe? Broken windows at least, threats and intimidation on top. Have you come across anything like that at all?’

  Derek Baker shrugged. ‘Can’t say that’s a problem I’ve had,’ he said. ‘I can’t imagine Mr Robertson would put up with anything like that, can you?’

  ‘Maybe not,’ Barnard conceded. ‘But if you have any trouble, let us know, won’t you? It’s something that easily gets out of hand and we’ve been free of it for a while. So keep in touch.’

  Baker nodded without enthusiasm as Barnard decided to leave him to make what he would of this renewed interest from the law. Baker knew very well that his absent boss knew all there was to know about protection in the tightly knit square mile of Soho and that Ray would in all likelihood also find out very quickly about the sergeant’s long-delayed visit to the club. To be on the safe side, Baker went into the office, picked up the phone and dialled the solicitor’s number. Better to keep the boss up to date, he thought, as let him find out from less friendly sources.

  For his part, Barnard also knew very well that Robertson would want to know exactly what Harry was up to if it involve
d the club and that Baker would inevitably tell him. Robertson had, unlike his younger brother Georgie, stayed out of jail for so long by keeping at least one step ahead of the opposition on both sides of the law.

  A chance encounter outside the still-closed doors of the club only confirmed Barnard’s suspicions. Vincent Beaufort was never hard to spot. At a time when the Metropolitan Police blew hot and cold on Soho’s homosexual men as they waited with ill grace for the new, more liberal law to be enacted, Beaufort never disguised for a moment his still illegal tastes and specialized in the sort of flamboyant outfits which would seriously challenge any passing bobby to stop him if they felt in the mood. This evening he was evidently intent on an evening out on the town in a purple check suit, a mustard cravat and his signature floppy broad-brimmed felt hat. Barnard put an arm across the pavement to stop him in his tracks, though not with any great force.

  ‘Vincent,’ he said, surveying the outfit with mock outrage. ‘Where the hell do you think you are going dressed like that? I should stay well away from the nick if I was you, or you’ll be hauled in for gross provocation.’

  ‘Flash Harry,’ Beaufort said weakly. ‘Nice to see you too.’