by Daisy White
Roger has his head in his hands, groaning, hampering the efforts of the ambulance men. “No! I didn’t know about Tommy until she told me a few weeks ago. But on Friday I got an anonymous phone call, warning me that Rita was also going out with one of the jockeys in their yard. She was so pretty and fun, I just pretended it never happened. But when it all blew up on Friday night, she came over here crying, apologising for seeing Tommy and Joey. She never told me about the baby though. Do you think that was true?”
Johnnie shakes his head. “I have no idea. What a bloody mess.”
“You can say that again, sir. We’ll need to take statements from all of you. I’ll start will you, Miss Baker, while our patients are being cleaned up.” The policeman turns to me, and I frown at him, rubbing my gritty, tired eyes. His face is familiar. DS Little is a beady, bald man, with a fondness for women, as long as they are in the kitchen or a club. He’s not keen on private investigators, but he is basically honest.
He takes my name and address, sighing when he recognises me. His fingernails are long and ingrained with dirt, making me feel slightly sick.
“Where’s Inspector Hammond?” I ask.
“He was promoted last year. He’s got overall charge of Brighton, Lewes and Hastings now, so he’s not working the field as much anymore. I remember you from the Stocker case,” he adds, glancing down at my lacy party dress. “I never forget a pretty girl. I’ve been promoted myself, by the way. I’m a DC now.”
“Congratulations.” I bite my lip and look over at Kenny, who raises an eyebrow, then winces. “Well, this has nothing to do with me. We just came out for a party with friends.”
I pause as the tall girl, Sophie, enters the hall. She glances disdainfully around, but doesn’t seem unduly shocked at the blood spatters, or by the fact that her brother is one of the injured, and badly too.
“Is everyone alright?”
“I suppose it was you who called the police,” Victoria says. “Thank heavens you did. It was just getting really nasty.”
Sophie smiles at Vic, then scowls at her brother. Clearly there is little love lost between them. “What on earth was all that about? One of your love affairs gone wrong again, I suppose.” She stalks towards the stairs, stepping carefully around Johnnie. Without looking at him, she says, “Johnnie, darling, you were supposed to be keeping him out of trouble.” The ice in her voice matches her rigid stance.
“Sophie, darling,” he mimics, “I didn’t know he was in any trouble until now.” She scowls at Johnnie, who continues, “He’s an adult, and perfectly capable of making his own decisions.”
“His actions would suggest otherwise.” She glances down to where her brother is sitting, head in hands.
“Um, Miss? I need to take a statement from you, please.” A young PC is waving his notebook at her.
She glares down at him. “I have been in the library all evening. I could hear the noise from the party, but I saw nobody, and it has nothing to do with me. Good evening.” She stalks off up the stairs.
“I see Sophie’s still a party girl,” Johnnie says to Roger.
His friend forces an uncomfortable laugh. “Well, you know Sophie, always got her head in her books, always the good girl.”
I look at him sharply. There is a whole world of bitterness in his voice. So much has gone on tonight that I have no idea what to think anymore. When I give my statement though, mindful of everyone listening, I do leave out the telephone call earlier today. The smaller boy who tried to help us tonight must be Sammy, and he is in enough trouble as it is. Having heard about Rita’s tangled love life, I simply can’t imagine how disaster hasn’t struck one way or another a long time before this. Three men! I can hardly keep up with one. I glance over at Kenny and he smiles through his bruises.
I can’t even begin to try to process everything that has happened tonight, so I don’t, and sink down next to Kenny, slipping my hand in his, resting my head on his uninjured shoulder. Johnnie looks over and winks at me, wiping blood from his cheek. “Not a great end to the evening, but I’ve had worse.”
But I’m wondering why on earth Rita’s brother called me at the salon, and also seemed to recognise me when they came in. Joanna’s whispered words come back to me, “She didn’t kill herself.”
I haven’t told anyone yet, and I’m assuming she hasn’t told James or he would have been all over it. Here, with the blood and the sweat, and the blue lights flashing, I let my thoughts run loose. If it’s possible that Rita didn’t kill herself, and it wasn’t an accident, that leaves murder. My stomach twists, and a chill spreads across my shoulders, raising the hairs down my arms. Could one of her lovers have actually killed her?
Chapter Eight
I’m struggling up the hill from the Co-op, my heavy string shopping bags cutting into my palms, when I feel a hand on my shoulder. Spinning round, ready to fight, even though it’s broad daylight and there are lots of people in the road, I confront him.
“Get off . . . Oh it’s you.” I study his pockmarked face for a moment. I’m hardly likely to forget him after that party. “You’re Sammy, aren’t you? You called me at the salon and then you and your brothers went to beat up Roger.”
Sammy nods. “Here, let me help you,” His eyes are darting around, and his forehead is wet with sweat. It’s definitely Rita’s brother. Luckily minus any obvious weapons.
“I thought you’d be locked up at the police station by now,” I tell him, letting him take my bags, flexing my sore fingers. I should tell him to push off, but I’m intrigued by Rita Stonehill. There is something else, I can feel it. Her brothers are angry, the racing lot seem to be amused, and Roger is . . . what? Heartbroken, I suppose.
“Is there somewhere we can talk? Please, Ruby. I’m sorry about what happened the other night. My brothers, well, all of us are devastated by what happened to Rita, but they want revenge. They want to find out who is responsible for her death. All these men winding her up, they want to know who caused her to . . . to do what she did.”
His expression is furious, and his voice is bitter. I glance down at his clenched fists, and move slightly away from him, taking comfort in the bustling normality of the road. “I imagine that the police are thinking along the same lines. Do you want revenge too?”
He shrugs. His black eyes track a cat walking across the road, tail held high. It vanishes between the buildings, and he looks at his feet. He’s smaller than me, and looks harmless enough without his leather jacket and belt.
“Okay. Look, the salon’s shut now, but we can sit outside.” I don’t think he means to hurt me, but I’m not taking a chance and inviting him up to the flat.
We sit awkwardly, facing each other, in the late golden sunshine. He dumps my bags onto the cobbles under the table.
“You run an investigation bureau. Gran told me about the Stocker case. She said you saved those two girls,” he says eventually.
“Sometimes, I do a bit of investigating. I’m not a miracle worker, and I only take on cases I think I can help with. Was that what you were going to ask me when you telephoned the salon? To find out why Rita killed herself?”
He props his elbows onto the table, frowning at me, not answering directly. “Joanna told me about you. Her aunt has her hair done at Johnnie’s, and she knows about you too. Then, when Joanna met you properly at the Black Jug, she said you stuck up for Rita, even though you never knew her, and in front of all those racing brats. She said you were alright, and we could trust you. I want to find out what happened before Rita died, so you’re kind of right.” He pauses, and looks down at the polished tabletop. “You see, Ruby, I don’t think she killed herself, and I don’t think it was an accident.”
It’s a shock, even though I’ve been expecting something like this ever since Joanna said her piece. I study him. He does look like someone grieving for their much-loved sister. His eyes are red-rimmed, his face shows a few days’ stubble, and his hair is greasy. “Why don’t you think she killed herself?”
“She just wouldn’t. I know she went with a lot of men. She used to talk to me — not to Derek and Josh, but just me.” His mouth lifts in a sad smile. “Rita was so much fun, and of course she was so pretty. It wasn’t her fault men fancied her. That’s what she said, anyway. She . . . she said she felt bad saying no, and if she wanted to have a good time, at least she was living her life. She would have these big rows with my parents and yell that times were changing and she didn’t want to be left behind, stuck in the kitchen with a boring husband.”
It’s an interesting slant on Rita’s character, and I can sort of empathise. Sammy’s stare is a bit intense when he isn’t looking down at his shoes, so I drop my eyes, drawing patterns on the tabletop with my fingertip while I think. “Do you think one of the men she was involved with pushed her out onto the racecourse? Because the police will have already interviewed everyone she knew, and I’m sure they will have checked out their alibis. Do you really think Rita was murdered?”
He winces at my deliberate attempt to jolt him, but this time his eyes don’t drop from mine. “Yes, I suppose that’s what I am saying. It was such a big crowd that it would have been easy to shove someone onto the course without it being obvious. I was there, and I couldn’t tell who was behind me, or even next to me. She was right next to the rails as the runners came up to the finish. It would have been possible. There’s a gap, isn’t there, between the last furlong marker and the gate?”
“And everyone is concentrating on the horses,” I say thoughtfully.
“Exactly. Look, I can pay you for this.”
Surprised, because with his ragged, slightly grubby appearance, he doesn’t look like a person with money to throw around, I shake my head. “I don’t do it for money, but thanks for the offer.”
“Well then . . . Will you do it?”
“What if I ask around and it just muddies Rita’s name even more? I’m not saying it will, but what if I uncover something that shows her in an unfavourable light? I don’t want your brothers coming after me with bicycle chains.”
He looks directly at me. “I don’t think it can get any worse. My sister was a tart, I know that. But she was also a romantic and a good-time girl, and damn clever too. Not many people know that, but she really cared about stuff. Being a tart doesn’t mean she deserved to die. I want to know what happened. And before you tell me to go to the police, that DC Little said they’re still making enquiries. They’re not stupid, the coppers. If they’ve got no leads, they won’t waste their time and they’ll write her off as killing herself. At the moment, with all the stuff that happened on Friday before the race, it seems like the obvious conclusion. Her lovers found out about each other, she was pregnant and didn’t know who the father was . . . It’s enough to make anyone crazy enough to take their own life.”
“Sorry to ask, but how do you know she was pregnant? Did the police tell you?”
He shakes his head. “No, she did. She came home late Friday night, when we’d just got back from the pub. My dad had a bit of a go about what she’d been up to, and she was obviously upset. Anyway, once Dad had gone to bed, she told us about the baby. She also told us someone was out to make trouble.”
“What do you mean?”
“Tommy’s wife found out because someone told her, and the same week someone telephones old Roger and tells him tales about his girlfriend? It doesn’t make sense that it should all suddenly go wrong.”
I’m thinking to myself that if you are juggling three lovers, it is certain to go horribly wrong at some point, but I don’t say this to Sammy. “Okay, I’ll ask around. I’m not promising anything. Can I just ask if you know any of her friends from the protests she went on? This doesn’t have to be about an ex-boyfriend. It could be that she stirred up the wrong person.”
He sighs. “Not really. She went down to Portsmouth this spring, and did the Aldermaston march a couple of years ago. She was really into banning the bomb, and she painted this sign that said ‘Better to lose face than the human race!’ My dad went mad when he found out what she was doing. He slapped her across the face.”
“Would your dad talk to me? Or would anyone else from your family?”
“No chance. They think she did kill herself. I’m the only one who thinks she . . .” This time he falters, gulps a bit but manages to continue, his fists clenched on the tabletop between us, “. . . she was murdered. My mum talked to that reporter boyfriend of yours. She said she wanted to set the record straight, and she reads the Brighton Herald, so she felt that was alright. My dad didn’t like that. A policewoman came round with DC Little, and my dad let him in but she had to stay in the kitchen with mum while they talked.”
This goes a long way towards building up a picture of Rita’s character, and that of her dad, who seems to ‘go mad’ at pretty much everything. If she was trying to escape the constraints of her home life, perhaps she just went too far? With her dad trying to tie her to the kitchen sink, and her brothers being all overprotective, it must have been claustrophobic to say the least. Perhaps she and I had more in common than just looks.
“What about Joanna? Would she speak to me again?”
“Yeah. She lives with her mum and dad two doors down from us on the White Oak Estate. They’re not on the telephone, so you’ll have to just tell me where and when. It’s number sixty-two, and we’re at sixty-four. She agrees with me, and she wants to help.”
“And, Bev? Joanna said she was Rita’s best friend.” I’m trying to recall the rest of my conversation with Joanna at the Black Jug. She did mention she didn’t think Rita would kill herself, but she also said she hadn’t seen her for ages.
He frowns, chewing his lip. “She’s a right crazy cow that one. She went out with Derek a few times but it didn’t last. Bev lives down in Moulsecomb, in Colbourne Avenue, I think. There are couple of other girls sharing the house, it belongs to one of the big families down there. Joanna will know. But Joanna says Bev reckons she did kill herself.”
“Oh.” Her best friend, and one of the people who must have known her really well, disagrees with Sammy’s theory. Interesting, if not problematic. “Have you got a telephone number I can contact you on?”
“Yeah. My dad’s house. I’ve written it down for you.” Sammy drags out a battered slip of paper, and pencils a few numbers on it. “But for God’s sake, don’t say that you’re doing any investigating, will you? Just pretend you’re my girlfriend.” His bumpy cheeks flush an unbecoming scarlet. “Sorry. I just don’t want anyone to know. Derek and Josh wouldn’t understand, and my mum would be upset. I’ll only tell them if you find out who killed Rita.”
“If anyone did kill Rita,” I say, gently though, because he has that haunted look behind his eyes, and occasionally when he says her name his lips tremble with the effort of staying in control.
“The sooner we know what really happened, the sooner we can let her rest in peace. I wouldn’t even ask you if the police took me seriously, but like I said, for them it’s an open and shut case.” His eyes are very bright suddenly, and he sniffs, wiping his nose on the back of his hand. In the soft glow of the evening sun, he looks like a grubby child. “She didn’t kill herself, Ruby. I know it, and I’m going to bloody prove it.”
Promising to ring him with any news, I leave him to walk down the hill, and lug the heavy shopping up the stairs to tell Mary about the new case for Ruby Baker’s Investigation Bureau.
As I expected, she is slightly dubious. “Did you say that Sammy was the one who tried to help you get away at the party?”
“Yes. He says nobody else thinks Rita might have been murdered, and I agree with him that if the police have nothing to go on apart from all the evidence that she killed herself, they won’t investigate further. I mean, they’ve got enough going on with the fights on the beach every Saturday, haven’t they?”
“Why did Sammy and his brothers go and attack Roger if they think she committed suicide?”
“I didn’t ask him, but I reckon they were just
lashing out at the person who they think pushed her over the edge. It makes sense. But Johnnie says there is no chance Roger would have tipped off the other chaps. He said he’s a hopeless romantic and he fell hard for Rita. Do you want fried egg and beans for dinner?”
“Mmm . . . ‘A hopeless romantic,’ eh? Johnnie does make me laugh. He should write books.” She passes me the cutlery and starts washing our three plates and four cups. “Summer can have some scrambled egg. Maybe it was an accident? It would have taken some nerve to commit a murder like that in such a public place. I’m still not sure that she didn’t just kill herself. Imagine, her world had literally tumbled down around her, and she had just found out she was having a baby. God knows what sort of state she was in.”
My mum is back in my head, sitting helplessly, hopelessly, on the grubby lino, her fingers skittering over the knife, her round, pregnant belly rising grotesquely between us. I shove her away. “I know. Sammy thinks that someone was out to get her though, and it wasn’t just unlucky that Tommy’s wife found out, and then Roger got a call. I expect Joey also got some kind of note to tell him what was going on. Perhaps someone was setting the scene to make it look like she killed herself. Trouble is, the list of suspects is huge. I mean, her dad and her brothers might have got fed up with her antics, any of her lovers, or former lovers. Hell, even Tommy’s wife might have done it.”
Mary sips a cup of tea, fiddling with a thread on her dress, and I wait, unpacking the rest of the food, hunting for the saucepan. I really, really want Mary to be happy with this, although I’m not sure why. It just seems to matter somehow.
Eventually she looks up, smiling. “I think it’s a good idea, Rubes. You should do it, but only as long as you’ve got time to help me plan my wedding as well.”
“Of course! When are you going to tell everyone about that?” The eggs start to sizzle in the pan, and I open a can of beans.