by Graham Ison
‘What d’you mean by that?’ Fox eased himself into a comfortable armchair and stretched out his legs. Gilroy looked around before sinking into a bean-bag.
‘I met her for the first time at the Crawleys’ dinner party, as did John.’
Fox sighed inwardly. He detested going through the same routine every time he opened an interview. ‘But you saw her again?’
‘Oh, yes. I saw her again all right.’
‘Miss Thompson, I don’t have a great deal of time,’ said Fox patiently. ‘Could you just explain.’
Sheila surveyed Fox thoughtfully. ‘I don’t know how much John told you,’ she said, ‘but he and Dawn Mitchell had a brief fling. Lasted about six weeks, I suppose.’
‘Yes, I know.’
Sheila raised her eyebrows. ‘Oh, he told you that, did he?’
‘Yes, but he seemed to think that you didn’t know about it, and he didn’t say why it ended.’
Sheila smiled. ‘No,’ she said, ‘I don’t suppose he did. Well, it was me who ended it.’
‘Really?’
‘John and I have had a permanent arrangement for about five years now.’ Sheila saw Fox’s look of doubt. ‘Oh, we don’t live together. He’s got his place and I’ve got mine. We prefer it that way. To be frank, we’d drive each other mad if we shared. We’ve both got terrible tempers.’
‘I understand that you’re a model, Miss Thompson,’ said Fox. Constance Crawley had told him that, but the description could cover a variety of occupations.
‘That’s right. A clothes-horse.’ Sheila smiled. ‘And it’s not the romantic sort of job that Dawn Mitchell seemed to think it was. It’s bloody hard work, and I don’t really know way any girl wants to do it.’ She shrugged and crossed one leg over the other. ‘But it pays well,’ she added. ‘Once you’ve got on the circuit.’
‘And you have, I take it?’
Sheila nodded. ‘Yes, I suppose you could say that. And I can thank John Wheeler for it. He’s a superb photographer and he’s got contacts. He was the one who got me launched.’
‘And that was about five years ago, I suppose?’
Sheila pursed her lips and then laughed. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘But then Dawn Mitchell tried to muscle in. She used all her feminine wiles and talked John into bed. I imagine she thought that he could do the same for her as he did for me.’ She gave an impish grin. ‘Professionally speaking, of course.’
‘Of course,’ murmured Fox and laughed.
‘But John realised early on that she hadn’t got what it takes. I can’t tell you exactly what it does take because it’s not easily quantified, but there is some indefinable quality that tells a photographer — and a couturier, I suppose — whether a girl will make a model.’
‘And Dawn Mitchell was not a model?’
‘No. It’s a funny thing. She had all the right measurements and she walked well, but …’ And with an expressive shrug, Sheila left the rest of the sentence unspoken.
‘So why did you end their affair? You’d presumably known about it for sometime.’
‘Oh sure. She wasn’t the first, and his little affairs were usually quite harmless. I never took much notice. He always came back eventually. You see, John is like most men. Got a good business head on him and you’d have to get up very early in the morning to catch him out. But along comes a pretty girl and flutters her eyelashes at him — or in her case, wiggles her backside — and he falls apart. Men will do the most stupid things when it comes to women.’
‘So I’ve heard,’ said Gilroy.
Sheila glanced across the room as if noticing the detective inspector for the first time, and gave him a sexy pout. ‘But Dawn Mitchell had ideas for expanding the business,’ she continued, looking back at Fox.
‘How?’
‘Porn.’ Sheila spoke in a matter-of-fact way. ‘I turned up at the studio one afternoon, unexpectedly. John thought I was doing a photo session, but it had finished early, and there was La Mitchell spread out across a marble-topped table, naked.’ She grinned. ‘It wasn’t really marble-topped,’ she said. ‘It was marbled Formica, but it looks the part when the prints come out.’
‘But lots of photographers do nudes, surely,’ said Fox.
‘Oh sure. We’ve all seen the Pirelli calendar, but this little cameo was slightly different. Actually it was very different. Explicit is the word, I think.’
‘So what happened?’
‘I told madam to put her bloody clothes on and get the hell out of it.’
‘And what did Mr Wheeler say?’
‘He didn’t get a chance to say anything,’ said Sheila. ‘I told him that the one way to wreck his professional reputation was to go down that road. Then I offered him the choice.’
‘Of what?’
‘Dawn Mitchell or me. I told him that I wasn’t playing second fiddle to some whore who wanted to be lusted over by the dirty mackintosh brigade.’
‘What did he say to that?’ asked Fox.
Sheila Thompson glanced across the room at a vase of gladioli and half smiled before realigning her gaze on Fox. ‘He understood the situation,’ she said.
‘You know, of course, that her real name was Lady Dawn Sims?’
‘Yes, so I heard.’
‘And it doesn’t surprise you that she would want to get involved in that sort of thing?’
‘Darling,’ said Sheila with a mock upper-class drawl, ‘have you never been to a thrash in Mayfair? They’re all tarts, deep down.’
*
‘Puts a slightly different slant on the apple of Earl Sims’s eye, doesn’t it, guv?’ said Gilroy on the way back to the Yard.
Fox leaned forward to pick up the handset of his radio as his call-sign came out over the air. ‘Comes as no surprise,’ he said.
‘Commander Willow is here at the factory waiting to interview you, guv,’ said the operator in the Flying Squad office at Scotland Yard.
‘Sorry,’ said Fox, ‘your transmission is breaking up. Can’t read you.’
*
Harry Dawes, convinced that his complaint of harassment had resulted in the withdrawal of the police observation on his house, walked down Oxford Road to the underground station. Nevertheless, he took precautions. When the train got to Parsons Green, he alighted. For a moment or two he stared up and down the platform, satisfying himself that all the other passengers who had got off were making for the exit. Then he jumped back on the same train. Harry Dawes was very nimble, despite his age. But it was all to no avail. The surveillance had been lifted temporarily, in accordance with Fox’s instructions.
At Gloucester Road, Dawes left the station and walked slowly towards Old Brompton Road. Every so often, he stopped to look in a shop window, using the opportunity to see if he was being followed. Once he went into a newsagent’s, bought a paper, then walked back towards Gloucester Road. At the junction, he turned again and retraced his footsteps. Finally, after going down a few side streets and doubling back on himself, he rang the bell marked ‘Wilkins’ at a large house that had been converted into bed-sitting rooms.
‘Well then, Kev,’ said Dawes. He kept his overcoat on and stood warming his hands in front of the meagre gas fire which was Kevin Wilkins’s only form of heating. ‘What’s new?’
‘The lads done them jobs at Kingston and Catford, Harry,’ said Wilkins.
‘Yeah, I saw.’ Dawes touched the newspaper in his overcoat pocket.
‘But they was wondering when they was going to get paid, like.’
‘Yeah, well things is a bit difficult at the moment, Kev. I’ve got the filth breathing down my neck.’
‘I s’pose that was because of the body what they found in the lock-up, Harry.’
‘You know about that then?’
‘Well couldn’t hardly be off knowing it, Harry. It’s been all over the papers and on the telly.’ Wilkins nodded towards a small portable television set that stood on a chest of drawers surrounded by dirty cups and glasses.
‘You really ought
to clear this place up, Kev,’ said Dawes. ‘It’s a bleeding tip.’
‘You know she was the daughter of a lord, Harry, don’t you?’
‘Course I do. Don’t bleeding remind me. You know what happens when one of them gets topped. There’s all hell let loose. It’s the influence, see, Kev.’
‘The influence?’
‘Yeah, course. Probably find her old man went to school with the Prime Minister.’
‘I thought he went to school down Brixton, Harry. That’s what it said when he got the job. Like he was an ordinary sort of geezer. He’s always banging on about a classless society.’
‘I don’t give a toss what they said, Kev.’
‘But he never went to no college, Harry, not like all them other toffs.’
‘Oh, for Christ’s sake stop going on about the bloody Prime Minister, Kev. We’ve got problems. More problems than what he has. Some bastard has grassed. If I’d known the bloody Sweeney was going to stake the place out, I’d never have put the bloody body there in the first place, would I?’
*
‘Ah, at last.’ Commander Willow had camped out in Fox’s office awaiting his return. ‘You’re a very difficult man to get hold of, Mr Fox,’ he said.
‘I’m investigating a murder, Mr Willow,’ said Fox tersely, affording Willow only the minimum of deference to his rank.
‘So I understand,’ said Willow, ‘and that is one of the things I want to talk to you about. I’ve had a complaint, another complaint, about your harassment of a Mr Harold Dawes of Oxford Road, Putney.’
‘Mr Harold Dawes, as you so politely call him, guv, is a dyed-in-the-wool villain,’ said Fox. ‘One of the best fences south of the river, as a matter of fact, and when I’ve got enough evidence to screw the little bastard, he’ll go down. With any luck, he’ll be slopping out his piss-pot in Parkhurst for the next ten years. Alongside your Mr Stedman.’
Willow wrinkled his nose at Fox’s coarseness. ‘I would remind you, Chief Superintendent,’ he said, ‘that Mr Dawes has no previous convictions and he cannot see why his every movement should be dogged by teams of Flying Squad officers … and nor, for that matter, can I.’ He paused. ‘Those officers are acting upon your specific directions, are they not, Mr Fox?’
‘Yes, they are,’ said Fox. He sat down behind his desk and took out his cigarette case. ‘Smoke, guv?’
‘I don’t, thank you.’ Willow leaned forward, a look of earnestness on his face. ‘I don’t think you quite understand the seriousness of your position, Mr Fox,’ he said.
‘Oh, but I do,’ said Fox. ‘I’ve got the murder of an earl’s daughter on my plate, and if I don’t get a result soon, there are going to be some very nasty questions asked of the Commissioner. In the House of Lords, very likely. Therefore, sir,’ he continued, blowing a column of smoke into the air, ‘I shall continue to conduct that enquiry as I think fit until one of two things happens.’
‘Two?’ queried Willow lamely.
‘Yes, sir. Until the Commissioner personally tells me to stop, or until I am removed from the enquiry. Sliding Dawes is the man who keeps the lock-up where the body was found. And if he didn’t have something to do with the topping of Dawn Mitchell, then I shall undoubtedly get made commander on the next promotion board.’
‘I see,’ said Willow, and spent the next thirty seconds trying to work out if he had just been insulted.
TEN
WHEN FOX ARRIVED AT LADY Jane Sims’s flat in Knightsbridge, she was wearing black leggings, high-heeled shoes and a thigh-length sloppy sweater. ‘Hallo,’ she said, ‘come in.’
Fox surveyed the girl with an amused expression. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘I seem to have arrived before you had time to put your skirt on.’
Jane smiled at him. ‘In case you haven’t noticed,’ she said, ‘it’s the latest fashion.’
‘Good heavens,’ said Fox as Jane led him into her sitting room.
‘Scotch, Thomas?’Jane stood by the cocktail cabinet and waited to see if she would be rebuked for her familiarity, despite having asked Fox, on his last visit, to dispense with her title.
‘Thank you.’ Fox was secretly pleased that she had used his first name.
‘Where is your inspector, incidentally?’ Jane handed Fox a glass and sat down on the settee facing him, tucking her feet under her.
‘I gave him the evening off,’ said Fox. ‘More than he deserves, but he’s got a wife, so I’ve heard.’
‘Are they all as hard as you in the police force?’
‘Good heavens, I’m not hard,’ said Fox. ‘You should meet some of the others.’ He took a sip of whisky. ‘And the Commissioner says we’ve got to call it a service now. The Metropolitan Police Service.’ He screwed his face into a sour expression.
‘Something wrong with your Scotch?’ For a moment or two, Jane regarded him with a half-smile. ‘I think it’s all a big act,’ she said. ‘I don’t think you’re nearly as tough as you’d like people to think. Deep down, I’m sure there’s a warm, caring personality struggling to get out.’
Fox laughed. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘that’s much the view they hold in Wormwood Scrubs, so they tell me. However, I wanted to talk to you about your sister.’
Jane inclined her head. ‘What about her?’ She knew that it wasn’t a social visit and felt a twinge of regret.
‘I’ve been hearing some conflicting accounts of Lady Dawn.’
‘Oh? In what way conflicting?’ Jane looked a little apprehensive.
‘You’ll appreciate that what I’m saying to you is in confidence, Jane.’
‘Of course.’ A slight frown crossed the girl’s face as though Fox had suggested that she just couldn’t wait to ring up all her friends and tell them.
‘Last time I was here, I mentioned Jason Hope-Smith, the chap who was asked by the Crawleys to partner Dawn at dinner, back in August …’
‘And I said I didn’t know him.’
‘Yes, I remember,’ said Fox, ‘however, when I interviewed him — and I didn’t tell you this last time — he said that he had tried to get in touch with Dawn on several occasions after the dinner but failed. He eventually gave up and went back to Kuwait — so he said.’
‘I don’t imagine that there’s anything unusual about that. It is possible for a girl not to fancy a man, you know.’
‘Then I saw John Wheeler, a society and fashion photographer —’
‘You’ll have to forgive me, Thomas, but I haven’t heard of any of these people. As I said before, Dawn rarely mentioned her friends to me.’
‘Yes, I know,’ said Fox, ‘but Wheeler claimed to have had an affair with Dawn that lasted about six weeks. Sheila Thompson, Wheeler’s girlfriend, said she broke it up. Her story is that she went to Wheeler’s studio one day and found him taking pornographic photographs of your sister.’
Jane Sims finished her drink and taking Fox’s empty glass walked across the room and poured out more whisky. ‘Am I supposed to be surprised?’ she asked over her shoulder.
‘Well, aren’t you?’
Jane gave Fox his glass back and sat down again. ‘Not really, no. She had a good body.’
‘You don’t see any harm in it, then?’
‘No. I’m sorry if that shocks you —’
‘It doesn’t.’
Jane smiled. ‘No, I suppose it wouldn’t in your profession. It’s not something I’d do myself, but I wouldn’t object to posing for one of those tasteful calendars.’
Fox promptly put that distracting thought out of his mind. ‘But the other thing that puzzled me was that Dawn asked Wheeler to do some straight fashion plates for her so that she could push them around the agencies in the hope of getting a job.’
‘Lots of girls do that, Thomas,’ said Jane, ‘if they want to be models. I’m told that actresses do the same sort of thing.’
‘But Dawn said that she couldn’t afford to pay him because she hadn’t got any money. The inference I drew from Wheeler, however, was that she was prepar
ed to pay by going to bed with him. And did.’ Fox took out his cigarette case. ‘D’you mind?’
Jane shook her head. ‘No, go ahead,’ she said, and fetched an ashtray. She put it down on the table next to Fox and stood looking down at him, holding her whisky. ‘D’you think I could have one of those?’
‘I thought you didn’t smoke.’
‘I don’t make a habit of it, but once in a while I enjoy one.’ Jane leaned forward and waited while Fox held the flame of his lighter to her cigarette. ‘I haven’t been strictly open with you,’ she said as she sat down again. ‘But I didn’t think it would matter. To be honest, I’d been worried about her.’
‘In what way?’
‘Daddy cut off her allowance some three months ago.’
‘That would explain why she hadn’t got any money then. But why did he do that? I got the impression that he thought the world of her.’
‘He does, but you don’t know him as well as I do. He can be a cantankerous old devil at times, and a bit eccentric, but he did it with the best of motives. He thought that by stopping her money, she would be forced to return home to Yorkshire.’
‘I can’t imagine that working,’ said Fox.
‘It didn’t. Dawn was thirty, as you know, and you can’t treat a woman of that age as though she’s still a child. She said that she wasn’t going back and that was that.’ Jane looked momentarily sad. ‘She hated Yorkshire.’
‘What was your father’s reaction to her refusal to go home?’
‘He couldn’t believe that she wanted to stay in London. He had convinced himself that it was a terrible place for a young woman and that she was likely to get raped, sooner rather than later. But then he couldn’t have coped with present-day London. Dawn and I, of course, never knew it any other way and we accept it as it is. But, as I said when you came to Yorkshire, he hasn’t been to London for years and it’s not really as bad as he thinks it is. He was in the army during the war and that, I suppose, is where his memories stop, as a young officer living it up in the fleshpots whenever he was home on leave. He met my mother there, you know.’ She smiled at some secret recollection. ‘In the best traditions of the peerage, he married a chorus girl. Bit of a ladies’ man in his youth was my father.’