Playing with Fire

by Patricia Hall

  ‘Not a lot,’ he said. ‘A difference of opinion with a contact who was very annoyed and considerably bigger than me.’

  ‘Did you arrest him?’

  ‘Not much chance of that,’ Barnard said. ‘I was on my own and ended up on the floor. I’m all right, Kate. It looks worse than it is. Promise.’

  ‘And the Standard says there’s been another murder. Is that the one you mentioned last night?’

  ‘’Fraid so. One of the street girls. We knew she was missing. We’d been looking for her, though not very energetically. They don’t come high on the list of priorities with the brass, the so-called ladies of the night. But this time it went completely pear-shaped. We found her dead. But it will be a one-day wonder. They’ll forget about her tomorrow.’

  ‘How well did you know her?’ Kate asked, picking up on the fresh tension in Barnard’s voice.

  ‘I’ll tell you about her tonight. I haven’t got much time now. DCI Jackson wants me back at the nick to explain how I got thumped and who by. I haven’t quite worked out the answer to that question myself yet. I don’t know how he found out.’

  Kate looked at him sharply. There were times, she thought, when there did not seem to be much to choose between the hunted and the hunters and an image of Ray Robertson flashed across her mind’s eye.

  ‘I’m going to be working on some pictures in Soho myself if all goes well,’ Kate said, but Barnard looked more worried than impressed.

  ‘Are you sure you want to do that just now?’ he said. ‘Soho’s out of control. It’s not a good time or place to be making yourself noticeable with a camera. It could be dangerous. Anyway, tell me about it this evening.’

  ‘I might know if it’s a runner by then,’ she said. ‘Sounds as if we’ve got a lot to talk about tonight. But this idea of mine is only an idea at the moment. It will take some organizing. And then some time.’ Barnard stood up abruptly, shrugged his coat on and pulled his trilby low over his eyes to cast a shadow over the bruises.

  ‘I’ll see you later,’ he said. ‘But I don’t reckon I’ll be home early. Sorry.’ Kate wondered what exactly the apology was for.

  She went to the counter and ordered herself a sandwich and a black coffee. She still felt hungover, her head ached and her memory of what had happened at the club the previous night seemed curiously patchy now. Almost as soon as Barnard had moved out of sight and she had barely started her lunch, she saw the door open and the man she knew only as Bob came into the cafe.

  ‘I thought I might find you here,’ he said, taking the chair beside her without asking permission.

  ‘Soho’s a small world,’ she said. ‘I saw you at the Late Supper Club last night. Did you enjoy it?’

  ‘I wasn’t really there for fun,’ he said. ‘I work in security and was trying to sell him something to keep the place safe. He doesn’t seem to have been bothered by these attacks yet but I’m sure he’s in someone’s sights. But like a lot of these ex-army types he seems to think he can look after himself.’

  ‘Right,’ Kate said, thinking that there had been an unusual level of heat in Bob’s conversation with Mercer and that she did not quite believe him.

  ‘Did you enjoy your night out with the musicians?’ Bob asked. ‘You need to watch out for them. In films you get a part via the casting couch, don’t you? In the music world I’m sure there’s an equivalent. Maybe it’s just sleeping with your agent if you want to get on.’

  ‘Or the leader of the band,’ Kate said with a laugh. ‘I’m not even in the music business but I reckon I’m going to have to watch out for Jason Destry if I go to his party at the weekend.’

  ‘He’s having a party, is he?’ Bob asked.

  ‘At his new house in the country.’ Kate finished her sandwich and pulled on her coat.

  ‘Is he that dangerous?’ Bob asked.

  ‘Not really, I don’t think,’ Kate said. ‘He just likes to think he is.’ She grinned. ‘Don’t you all?’ she asked.

  ‘Some of us are as innocent as the driven snow,’ Bob said, but Kate knew that he was not that.

  ‘Must go,’ she said. ‘I’ve got a lot to get through this afternoon.’

  ‘I’ll see you around no doubt,’ Bob said, and Kate wondered if she was imagining a note of anticipation in his voice.

  ‘The boss is looking for you,’ one of Barnard’s colleagues relayed to him as soon as he had set foot in the CID office.

  ‘Right,’ Barnard said. ‘I need to report back anyway.’

  ‘And DI Watson wants you at the Grenadier. Must be nice to be so popular, Sarge.’

  That was not exactly how Barnard would have described his current status and he knocked on the DCI’s door with some trepidation and was not surprised when his boss looked shocked at the state he was in.

  ‘What happened to you, Sergeant?’ Jackson snapped.

  ‘Just a stupid accident yesterday, guv,’ Barnard said. ‘I missed my footing on stairs and nearly knocked myself out. It had been a very bad day.’

  ‘Well,’ Jackson said. ‘Did you get anything out of Ray Robertson’s solicitor?’

  ‘He’s agreed to contact him,’ Barnard said. ‘He obviously has some knowledge of where he is and will get back to us today.’

  ‘Give him until three this afternoon. If we haven’t made any progress by then I’ll talk to the Yard and see what they want to do next. Do you gather Robertson is still in the country?’

  ‘I think so, guv,’ Barnard said carefully. ‘I took the time to go back to the East End to talk to his mother again but I was too late for that. She’s apparently in hospital, possibly dying, and his old gym and his mother’s house are due to be demolished imminently, which is no doubt why he’s suddenly back in circulation, but there was no one around who would even know who I was looking for. The war started the demolition and the local councils are finishing it off.’

  ‘Not before time,’ Jackson said sourly. ‘But it seems highly likely that someone who has run a protection racket in Soho in the past might try to start it up again and there are two deaths now probably linked to the campaign of violence which is going on. I’ve decided to put DI Watson in charge of both inquiries as it seems they may well be linked. And as you know more about Robertson and the area than anyone else, you can work with him on a continuing basis. We’ll have the press breathing down our necks if we don’t make some progress. The Evening Standard is already screaming blue murder about people being at risk in Soho and the others won’t be far behind. The pubs and clubs and legitimate activities are already in turmoil and now the less acceptable trades will start to panic too given this new murder of the tart. Scotland Yard is not happy, as you can imagine. Make getting Ray Robertson into an interview room your priority and keep me in touch. We can’t go on like this.’

  ‘Sir,’ Barnard said.

  ‘Let me know as soon as you hear back from Robertson’s solicitor, please. He’s had long enough under the radar. We need to ask him where he’s been and what he’s been doing and whether or not he’s working with anybody else to relaunch himself in Soho. If it takes a warrant to bring him in I’m sure the Yard will go along with it.’

  ‘Is he a murder suspect?’

  ‘He is if I say he is,’ Jackson snapped.

  ‘Right, guv,’ Barnard said with what he hoped was enthusiasm, although he was relieved that the DCI’s obsession with Robertson might prevent anyone inquiring too closely about Evie Renton’s relationship with him. As far as he knew no one had remembered that and he devoutly hoped it would stay that way.

  ‘And while you’re about it you can ask the manager at the Delilah to let us know the next time he hears anything from his boss,’ Jackson said. ‘It must be possible that we can track his boss down through the club instead of his lawyer. I refuse to believe that with all that’s going on Robertson won’t put in a personal appearance sometime soon.’

  ‘I’ll get down to the Grenadier and talk to DI Watson,’ Barnard said.

  ‘Report back t
o me at the end of the day,’ DCI Jackson said. ‘I’ll have discussed the cases with the Yard by then. They are looking for a quick result on this now. There’s been enough mayhem on the streets. It’s got to stop.’

  Kate ventured cautiously into the dimly lit Delilah Club halfway through the afternoon and found it empty apart from three men in shirtsleeves sitting round a table close to the bar with drinks in front of them. Her memory of the place was fading slightly, but from the night of the gala she had attended, she recalled it as full of light and life and animated conversation, easily enough to impress a young woman not long out of college in the provinces and with little idea of how the upper reaches of London society lived. She had been blown away by the unexpected attentions of tall men in full evening dress, stunned by the elegance of the women in silks and satins and the glitter of jewellery, which she realized was highly likely to be genuine, and by the sheer volume of noise generated by wealthy Londoners at play. The pictures that she had browsed through in the agency’s files from that evening had reminded her of the occasion, but they were in black and white and so the colour and sparkle of the event were missing; so too was the sheer intensity of the social atmosphere that had preceded the boxing match with its lavish overconsumption going on around her as soon as she had stepped through the glass doors.

  She stood just inside the door of the club now taking in how dark and dingy and rundown the place looked when it was almost empty with the lights out in the middle of the day. If this had really been Ray Robertson’s pride and joy when he had been riding high, it had certainly fallen out of favour. The men by the bar took no notice of her for a while, but eventually one man got up and crossed the floor towards her.

  ‘Are you looking for someone, petal?’ he asked, putting a hand on her arm. ‘Is it a job you’re after? Waitress, is it? They like the prettiest girls on the tables.’

  ‘No, thanks,’ she said. ‘I’m looking for the manager.’

  ‘Well, he’s in his office,’ the man said. ‘What’s it about then? I’ll tell him if you like.’

  ‘I’m a photographer and my boss wants me to take some pictures of the club. Publicity for this place and some of the other clubs in Soho, looking at how they’ve changed over the years, their history and all the well-known people who’ve used them. And this place has got more history than most.’

  The man looked at her, she thought, as if she had turned into some sort of an alien species. If she had come in to ask about a job as a waitress or a cleaner he might have been able to handle it, but he was completely thrown by the fact that she might be capable of doing anything different.

  ‘You only have to press a button to take a picture,’ she explained, as if to a five-year-old. ‘I actually did it a couple of years ago at one of the Robertson’s boxing galas.’

  ‘And they came out all right, did they?’ he asked, still dubious.

  Kate sighed in frustration. ‘They did actually,’ she said. ‘Can I talk to the manager? I’m sure I can’t do anything without his OK. I can show him some of the photographs I took back then at the gala. They appeared in several magazines and the Daily Mail when the Robertsons were all over the newspapers. I’ve brought some of them with me.’

  ‘Well, I’ll ask him if he’s got time to talk to you. But I don’t think he’ll want to be bothered.’ The man turned away and disappeared through a narrow door beside a low stage, leaving Kate standing close to the doors for so long that she eventually sat down at one of the tables until two men finally emerged. One was dressed mainly in black and Kate thought she vaguely recognized him – he headed quickly to the main door and left. The other man was in shirtsleeves, headed in her direction and took a seat opposite her.

  ‘So what’s all this about photographs?’ he asked. ‘I’m Derek Baker, the manager. I expect we do need some up-to-date publicity pictures, as it goes. The ones we’ve got are beginning to look a bit old fashioned. Is that what you want to do?’

  ‘Not exactly,’ Kate said. ‘It’s more a sort of picture history of the Soho clubs, going back to before the war when a lot of them got started and ending up with new ones like the Late Supper Club. They’ve always pulled in more than their fair share of famous people: writers, artists, actors and now rock stars … And some of the clubs themselves, like the Delilah and Ronnie Scott’s, were famous themselves. I expect if you wanted to buy some pictures from my agency to use yourself that would be OK once they’d been used in a magazine or a newspaper. It would all be good publicity for you anyway.’

  ‘I could only do this if Mr Robertson approved,’ Barker said.

  Kate took a sharp breath and realized that there was a flaw in her plan if Ray Robertson was not as far out of the picture as Harry Barnard seemed to believe. She was relieved that she had not told the manager her name.

  ‘Right,’ Kate said carefully. She took an agency business card out of her handbag and handed it to him. ‘This is the agency I work for,’ she said. ‘Maybe you can talk to my boss there, Ken Fellows, if you want to know any more detail. He can explain better than I can, especially about how you could get hold of some of the pictures once they’ve been published. Now I’d best get on. I’ve got to work my way round quite a lot of places this afternoon. You don’t have to join in. There are plenty of places to choose from.’

  ‘I’ll talk to your boss,’ Barker said, and Kate recognized the frequent reluctance she met when men were faced with talking business with a woman.

  ‘Yes, that will be fine,’ she said, feeling relieved as she pulled her coat back on and got to her feet. ‘Let Ken know what you decide.’

  That, she thought as she pushed the doors open, was very nearly a disaster, and she determined that there was no way she would come back to take photographs here. In fact, she wondered if she could even risk telling Harry what she had done. He would not be pleased. But, she thought, he should have told her if Ray was back in London. She really did not want to meet him unexpectedly round some street corner.

  She decided to go to the Late Supper Club next but as she walked towards Greek Street she noticed that the dark-haired man in a black coat who had left the Delilah not long before she did was heading in the same direction a few yards in front of her. She had been aware that she had seen him somewhere before and suddenly it came back to her. He had been in the Late Supper Club the night Dave Donovan had got himself thrown out, looking relaxed over dinner alone and apparently exchanging pleasantries with the manager, Hugh Mercer. Whoever he was, he seemed to be heading back to Mercer’s new enterprise, and Kate decided that it might be sensible to postpone her visit until tomorrow and choose somewhere else to direct her inquiries this afternoon. In the meantime, she would take a quick shot of him to see if she could identify who he was. Barnard might know. Dodging into a shop doorway to disguise what she was doing, she waited for him to half turn in her direction, then spun on her heel and headed for Ronnie Scott’s as an alternative and less contentious option. And there was another jazz club called the Marquee, which she had not been to before. The Late Supper Club could wait.

  FOURTEEN

  By the time Kate got back to Harry Barnard’s flat that evening she was beginning to feel distinctly uneasy. She had reported back to Ken Fellows on the clubs she had visited but she had to admit that her reception had been at best lukewarm. She had heard nothing back from the Delilah’s manager and the other three where she had outlined her project had not given the idea much of a welcome. She got the distinct impression that the problems in Soho caused by the increased criminal activity had already caused the managers sleepless nights and they did not much feel like drawing attention to themselves.

  ‘I think we’ll pass on that then,’ the manager at a club in Wardour Street that she had never heard of said. ‘In a couple of months maybe, when the police have got on top of what’s going on. But not now. It would be a wasted effort. People are scared, which is exactly what these thugs intend.’

  ‘I think he’s right,’ Ken Fellows said.
‘It’s a good idea but maybe not the right time. The fact that there’s been another murder isn’t good news. We’ll keep it in mind and see how things stand after Christmas. OK?’

  ‘I’d never heard of the Marquee Club,’ Kate said. ‘But they’ve had the Rolling Stones there and the Who and a lot of other rising stars, according to the manager.’

  ‘He started off just promoting jazz at a place in Oxford Street,’ Ken said. ‘I used to go there in the fifties when they still had a lot of jazz bands around. Then he moved round the corner and seems to be going from strength to strength. It would be a good one to include if we do get this idea off the ground.’

  ‘I didn’t know you were a jazz fan.’

  ‘I don’t bother so much these days now rock and roll has taken over but the Marquee had all the trad jazz bands for a while – Chris Barber, Lonnie Donegan and Skiffle, even a few Americans as well when they managed to sort the musicians’ unions out, and now he’s moved on to the big rock and roll groups and the hit parade lads. It’s a big place and pulls in big crowds.’

  ‘Right,’ Kate had said reluctantly, and put her pictures of the Delilah in its pomp back into the files. ‘We’ll have to wait for the clubs then.’ It was up to Harry Barnard, she thought, to make the Soho clubs a safer proposition.

  ‘Meanwhile, see what you can set up with these people,’ Ken said, handing her some publicity about a new chain of fashion boutiques which were about to launch themselves from a base in Carnaby Street into shopping centres in other large cities. ‘It’s not urgent. You can leave it until after the weekend. But they’re aiming at young men as well as the girls. Might be quite fun. A change from the mods and rockers.’

  She set off for home early, knowing that Harry Barnard seldom had the time to pick her up after work with the current state of tension in Soho. She was happy enough to have some time to herself to cook a meal that she hoped he would be home in time to eat. She was annoyed to be approached by her persistent follower Bob as she left the office and even more irritated when he fell into step beside her as she headed for the Tube station at Tottenham Court Road.