The Polka Dot Girl

by Darragh McManus

  She waved a hand. “Put your money away, Genie. You don’t need to bribe me. I’ll tell you whatever I can. Fuck, that kid was younger than me, you know? I want to help.”

  “Alright. Thank you.”

  “And anyway, that vicious fuck who did it. You’re gonna get her, right? Lock the bitch up for life. So it’s in my own best interests anyway. Can’t have someone like that prowling ’round these parts at night. And I got Tilda to think of too.”

  “I’m gonna get her, Chrissy. Hopefully you can help me with that.”

  She took a long slug of vodka, her pale throat contracting as she swallowed, like a small animal wriggling under water. Chrissy wiped her mouth and said, “Get the old gray matter revving, you know? Okay, shoot.”

  “Were you here the night Madeleine Greenhill died?” “Yes and no. We were here… Huh?”

  Tilda was mumbling something to her. Chrissy listened then said, “Right. She says she wasn’t working that night and do I remember because she had her period. So that’s correct, I do remember that. Which makes me—I was here on the night. But only for part of it. Until about 11, maybe.”

  “Did you see anyone suspicious-looking? Anyone unusual?” “Well I saw a few people I’d never seen before, if that’s what you mean. Sorta comes with the job, though, you know?” She laughed. “Nah, I know what you mean. I’m just kidding. Did I spot anyone shifty? Mmm…no. Not that I can think of. Just the usual perverts and scumbags come down here for a quick fix.” “You left at 11? I have that right?”

  “’Bout that, yeah. I don’t have a watch, so…”

  “Any reason why? You don’t have to be specific, I’m not inter- ested in your activities. I’m just trying to work this out.”

  “That’s okay, Genie. I get it. Yeah, uh, where was I? Okay, yeah, we all left at about 11.”

  “All? What do you mean?”

  “I mean every last working gal down here split for home when that posh broad paid us to.”

  “What? Who? Chrissy, tell me what happened.”

  “This woman. Pulled up in a fancy car, fucking beautiful thing. I think could have been a Jaguar or something? Dark- green, maybe black. Hard to tell. Anyhow she rolls the window down, beckons us come towards the car. The hand up for ‘stop’ when we got to within, like, five yards. We were all intrigued, thought maybe she wanted some kind of weird gang-bang type scenario, but whatever, it’s all work. But that wasn’t it. The woman, she says, ‘I’ll give each of you two nights’ pay to go home right now.’ Uh, what? I mean, what the fuck? Genie, that’s an offer you don’t hear too often. We said are you serious, she said sure. Told us clear off straight away and she’d give us our money then and there. We didn’t even need to discuss it. The dame asked me what we’d make on a good night. I told her and added on ten per cent on the top. Then she did a quick head-count, there were eight or ten of us there. Counted off a shitload of money, wrapped it in a big rubber band and threw it out the window to me. Said, ‘You hand it out. Then get out of here.’ I divvied up the cash between me and my pals and, yeah, we fucked off home. Easiest money I ever made.”

  It explained why nobody saw what happened that night, why Poison Rose was the first to see the body, all the other girls gone by the time she got to Whinlatter after her little rendezvous with Erika Baton. Madeleine’s killer coming from the docks, post- murder, the sicko blowing off some of that sick sexual tension. But who paid? Who was the woman in the flash car?

  I said, “Did you see her, Chrissy? This woman, did you see her face?”

  “Nuh-uh. She kept in the dark. Wouldn’t let us get up near to the car.”

  “You didn’t get the plate, I presume?”

  “Nah. Didn’t even look at it… She had a cap on, you know one of those peaked things?”

  “Why didn’t you report any of this? When you heard about Madeleine Greenhill’s murder, why didn’t you come forward?” “Never put the pieces together until just now. That’s the truth.

  Genie, I’ve been drinking and whoring a long time. My mind doesn’t work so good as it used to. I’m dumb as shit now. It didn’t even occur to me. …Shit, I’m real sorry. I mean, if I hadda known what was gonna come down… I’d still have taken her money, to be honest. But I’d have run to the nearest phone and called you guys right away.”

  “I know you would, Chrissy. It’s alright. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

  “Nah. But I feel like I did.”

  “Yeah. I know the feeling sometimes.”

  Not much else for us to say now. I asked her again if she wanted money, maybe needed it. Chrissy said sure, she needed it but couldn’t take it under these circumstances. I shoved a 50 into Tilda’s pocket and told both of them, “It’s there if you need it, okay? Consider it a loan if you like. And thanks.”

  Chrissy nodded, Tilda nodded off. I walked back to my car, rain sneaking in the top of my collar, wetting my neck, making me shiver as I thought: Queneau. It had to have been her. She could have made it over from the thing at the museum, the exhibition dinner. She could have excused herself and slipped over and done her dirty deed in 40 minutes, an hour tops. I visualized Queneau pulling up at the docks in some expensive car, that elegant hand reaching out the window, holding her blood money; the sneer of disdain across her aristocratic features, making that handsome face ugly. It was her. LaVey wouldn’t have risked coming down here herself; she’d send the attack dog. Harder, tougher, better able to handle herself among the low, crawling things in the dangerous undergrowth of Hera City.

  I reached my car, mind still churning, speculating: Erika must have somehow tricked or forced Madeleine to the docks— probably the latter—she kills her with that thing, that terrible weapon, ties one leg to a concrete block and hurls her over the side. Nobody watching, no hookers as witnesses, no security guards nearby. Erika stays around for a little while, not too long because that’s risky but long enough to make sure the body doesn’t float back up. She leaves just a few minutes too early—it couldn’t have been any more, going on the chronology—but she leaves, thinking her job is done, and about three-and-a-half minutes later the rope comes loose and Madeleine starts to float free from her murky, sodden tomb. Erika the stone cold killer is strolling home, meets Poison Rose, feels in the mood for fun. They skip into an alleyway and get down to it. Rose continues on to the docks, where poor dead Madeleine is waiting to greet her.

  What an awful image, a horror show in my head. So vivid I was afraid I’d still see it when I went to bed that night, beamed onto the inside of my eyelids as though a projector was rolling inside my head. I was afraid I’d start to dream it.

  Poison Rose lived in the fag-end of the east side sprawl, and if you’d ever been to the sprawl, you’d know what that signified; just how low a life had fallen. The sprawl had grown organically, if you could use such a term about a disjointed collection of buildings, streets, electric wires, sewers, people running like rats around and beneath and on top of one another. Like crazy, juiced- up rats. I hated the sprawl. It was depressing and overwhelming; it was neglect and chaos made real in chipped concrete, given shape in the sad leaning lampposts and broken asphalt. It made sense that Rose would live there. The sprawl was the end of the line in Hera, bottom of the barrel, the pathetic last stand of a failed life.

  Her apartment was depression squared. A tiny, one-roomed shack on the seventh floor of a building that looked in violation of every fire and safety regulation the city possessed, and a few we hadn’t signed into law yet—the city mothers usually waited for someone to die before acting on these matters. The walls were smeared with the creeping black marks of damp, the carpet was filthy where it wasn’t worn clean through; a smell of alcohol and sewerage wafted through the place like the warning of a chemical spill. I needed to make this quick and felt bad about needing it.

  I’d found Rose and her grim abode surprisingly easily: Dispatch had a last known address only two blocks away, and the current resident—a jumpy pill-popper who said she’d bee
n bedridden for the last three months—told me where Rose had moved to. Some problem with the landlady, apparently. Everybody had a problem with somebody down here. Rose was asleep when I knocked on her door, or maybe she was passed out inside; whatever, I’d smoked half a Dark Nine by the time she dragged her bare feet across the timeworn carpet and opened up. No chain on the door; probably no lock on the inside. And besides, anyone, even a titch like me, could easily kick the door off the hinges. Rusted metal and rotting wood slowly drifting apart, saying their regretful farewells. She didn’t act like she recognized me when she saw me but stood aside to let me in anyway. I didn’t move; I felt she deserved the dignity of formality.

  I held up my badge and said, “Detective Auf der Maur. We met at Whinlatter Docks. Do you remember? The night you found that girl’s dead body. May I come in?”

  She nodded and muttered, “Sure”, and beckoned me to enter. I doubted if she did remember. I pocketed the shield and stepped inside. Rose set the door ajar and shuffled over to an armchair. As she sat down she started coughing: it sounded like death getting warmed up inside her chest. Jesus, she looked dreadful. Her face was alternately corpse-white and arterial-red, eyes popping out of their sockets as she hacked and heaved, a cycle of labored breath and painful expulsion. I turned away so she could gather mucus and spit it into the corner. Something for the rats, a diseased delicacy.

  Eventually she spoke, so quietly I had to strain to hear: “Sorry. Bad chest.”

  I waved a hand, don’t worry about it, and said softly, “Do you remember me, Rose? Talking to me? At the docks, and down the station next day.”

  She squinted at me, through the gloom, through the fog of her memories, the ruination of her drink-soaked brain-cells. I thought I saw the tiniest glint of recognition, of awareness. I caught my breath and held it, waiting.

  “Yeah. I remember you,” Rose said. “You were alright.” “You’re sure.”

  “Sure I’m sure. The pretty little miss with all the big questions.” She smiled slyly. “You fell. Toppled over on your heel, leaving Whinlatter. Did it hurt?”

  I smiled too. “I’m surprised you remember that. Nah, it didn’t hurt. Ruined a good pair of shoes, though.”

  “Want something to drink? I think there’s gin lying around somewhere, or some Scotch… There might be coffee in that cupboard.”

  She wasn’t pointing at a cupboard—actually I couldn’t see any cupboards—so I declined the offer of coffee. Instead I sat on a wobbly kitchen chair opposite her, stubbing my cigarette out on the ashtray she’d balanced on her lap.

  I said, “Rose, I think I know the woman who killed the girl that night.”

  “Madeleine Greenhill.”

  “That’s right. I think I know who killed her.” “Well, good for you, little miss. Good for you.”

  “Is there anything you remember about that night? Anything at all that you mightn’t have told us.”

  Her face creased into a ghastly smile, a rictus of degradation and undoing. “Shit! I can’t even recall what I told you before!” She paused. “Who is she? The bitch killed that little girl.”

  “I can’t tell you that, but I know her name. And we’re closing in. I…I think you met her, Rose. On your way to Whinlatter. Your trick, do you remember? The big woman, with the cropped hair. She called you ‘buttercup.’”

  Rose nodded. She was pretty lucid now—horrendously hungover, it was obvious, but thinking straight enough. “Yeah.

  ‘Buttercup.’ That’s what she said. So she was the one, huh? The one who done it.”

  “I’m almost certain.” “Hm. Ain’t that weird?”

  “What direction was she coming from when you met her, Rose? I’m just joining the dots here. Was the woman coming from the docks?”

  She nodded once more. I said, “Listen, think, please. Think really hard. Can you remember anything else? About that night, or her. Anything. Did she tell you anything about herself, where she lived maybe, where she hung out.”

  Rose laughed bitterly. “Sweetheart, she said ‘lift ’em and spread ’em.’ That’s all any of ’em say.”

  I lit another cigarette. The sense of despair was toxic, it dragged you down and siphoned off all your energy. I’m sorry, Rose, I can’t stay for long. Just a few more quick questions: “How did you recognize her? Madeleine. Her face had been… How did you know it was her?”

  She looked at me, snapping out of some torpid daydream. “Huh? I, uh—recognized the tattoo. Up here.” Rose patted her chest. “I knew it right away. It’s a rose, y’see? A pretty red rose, just like me.”

  That smile again, the demented leer that made me want to smack her face and embrace her in a bear-hug at the same time. Rose continued, “I’d seen her around the scene, you know? I knew who she was. Knew she was the daughter of Misericordiae Greenhill. So when I saw it, the tattoo I mean… Sure, I knew who she was. Fuckin’ shame, ain’t it?”

  “Fuckin’ shame is right, Rose.”

  “Fuckin’-A it’s a shame. Ain’t right to do that to some young girl. Leaving a mother bereft like that. Mothers never forget, do they? They never forget and they never let go.”

  I took a long drag and set myself mentally and then asked it right out: “You said ‘the scene’—what do you mean by that? You mean prostitution?”

  “Wha-? The Greenhill girl? Fuck, no. Leastways not that I

  knew of. Nah, I mean the scene, little miss. You know, the drinking scene. The bad end of it. The real sleazy joints. That kid could knock ’em back with the best. And she didn’t give a shit whose company she kept, neither. She was alright. She wasn’t no snob like some of them.”

  “Did you often drink with Madeleine?”

  “Coupla times. She bought me booze now and then. She’d come sit by me, tell me to eat more, get some rest, all that crap. I’d tell her, honey I’ll rest when I’m dead or rich. Ha ha! Rich like you, Maddy. Nah, she was okay. I’m just fooling. I got on fine with her. Felt…what was it? Comfortable around her. Yeah. I liked her. What a godawful tragedy, huh?”

  I’d reached my limit, all I could take. It was funny: I didn’t really have a problem being around dead bodies or blood- spattered crime scenes or violent, surly, terrifying women, but I couldn’t handle this. This place, with its sour odors and low atmosphere, filling like a blocked-up water-tank with regrets and decay. Maybe she made me think of my mother, and other elderly women I’d known, though Rose was actually much younger in calendar terms. But she seemed so old, so worn-out and used-up; the train was easing to a halt, last stop, everybody out. End of the line for Poison Rose.

  I couldn’t even bring myself to say goodbye. I stood and stretched out my hand—she took it and shook, surprisingly heartily.

  I was walking away when she said, “I hope you get her, little miss. The one who did it.”

  I turned back. “Yeah. Me too.”

  Rose smiled, smaller this time, wistful and clear-headed. “Yeah. Get her for old Rose, huh? For that poor little girl. Just fucking get her. Get all of ’em.”

  Chapter 23

  Virginia

  BY now I’d been awake since six in the morning and I was really feeling it, my head slumping forward onto my chest as I drove home from the east side slums. I had that feeling inside my skull, the one where your brain seems to be actually tipping downwards, like it’s too tired to stay awake and stay functioning. It’s a horrible feeling, queasy and unsettling. I badly needed sleep. But I wasn’t about to get it.

  My apartment door was open a crack when I stepped onto my landing. A sliver of light peeked out into the darkness of the hallway. Aw no, I thought, not more shit. Not tonight, please. I’m exhausted. I’m done. I pulled my weapon, quietly, placed a hand on the door and then pushed it in hard, stepped into the room and swung the gun around, ready to fire. As ready as anybody can be when their brain has passed the tipping point.

  Virginia Newman stood in my kitchenette, wearing a full- length wool coat with military-style belt and epaulettes, fix
ing a coffee. I realized how sluggish my senses were, batteries run way down low: I should have picked up the smell of it 20 feet away. I holstered the weapon, feeling vaguely foolish, and said: “You’re lucky I didn’t blow your beautiful head off. What the hell are you doing here?”

  She turned to me, holding a cup of steaming coffee under her face, arms crossed over her chest. No glasses but her eyes were their natural brown under the contact lenses. She said, “I’m sorry, I need to talk to you.”

  “How did you get into my apartment, Virginia?”

  “The building manager let me in. I told her we were old college pals, I hadn’t seen you in ages and how awful it would be to miss you, lah-dee-dah. Standard sob story.”

  “How easily it comes to you.”

  I’d hoped she would wince—she didn’t. “Alright. I probably deserved that. But we still need to talk.”

  “Yeah? About what? There a second cup in that?”

  She nodded and poured one out for me. I walked to the kitch- enette and took the cup from where she’d left it on the worktop. Virginia said, “About what do you think? Madeleine, of course.”

  I took a sip and said, “Mm. That’s good coffee. You know how to make a brew, I’ll give you that.”

  “Okay. Great. Now can we talk?”

  “What? And no chit-chat? But we’re old friends, Virginia. Surely some chit-chat is in order.”

  Virginia shrugged and sat on one of my armchairs. She lit a long, thin menthol cigarette, wafted the match through the air until it quenched. “Fine, Genie. Whatever you like.”

  I sat opposite her, leaving my coat on, placed my cup on the ground and lit a Dark Nine. I took a pull and dropped my head over the back of the chair: my standard thinking position, I was starting to believe. Without looking back at her I said, “Of course you’d know where my place is even if you hadn’t spent the night here, right? I’m sure Ms LaVey would be able to point you in the right direction.”