by Ray Connolly
If Charlie had wanted any confirmation that he wouldn’t be coming back that was it. Yet somehow he didn’t feel frightened any more. The pain in his chest was easing now but it hurt whenever he bent forward. He guessed that he might have cracked a rib-bone.
Kate tidied the bed and straightened a rug which had become rucked in the tussle.
‘Very nice … you’d make some lucky man a lovely wife, do you know that?’ said Daley, and then laughed at his own joke. Clearly the idea of Kate ever being anyone’s wife was quite preposterous to him. ‘So … off we go … and remember, laughing boy, one silly move from you and we’ll blow her face all over the front of your house.’
Charlie nodded again and moved, at Daley’s indication, towards the door. Keith was watching him. Both Daley and Keith now had their right hands in their jacket pockets. With one look towards Kate Charlie turned and walked out of the bedroom. Keith followed a pace behind.
Outside his house Charlie climbed the basement steps to the pavement. He wondered if Florence were watching and wondering who all his guests were, but immediately dismissed the thought from his mind. She would be at work, and although he had lived in the street for ten years, the other neighbours were all strangers to him. The anonymity of London city life was almost total.
Once inside the car he was quickly joined by Kate and Daley. In the front Big Willie glowered towards him. As the car started and swung away down the road he wondered how long it would be before he was missed. There were going to be a few cross faces at the Mystery Train that evening, he thought. And then he wondered whether Wild Strawberries would become a posthumous hit for him.
Chapter Twenty-Five
By the time the car reached the river it was raining again. This was a new part of London to Kate, a shadowy place of wharfs, derelict warehouses, long shadows, and empty cobbled streets. It was a place which had once been busy with commerce, but which had now become a deserted wasteland left to the rats since the ships took to container cargoes and tied up in the bigger, newer docks miles away down the river.
There was more than a feeling of crumbling neglect, thought Kate as she looked out from the car on to the damp shining streets. It was as though everyone who had once lived there was dead. She tried to force away such gloomy thoughts, but the notion persisted. It wasn’t even a poor area of London: it was simply a place of boarded-up buildings and silent streets, and always the certainty that just a few feet away the Thames lapped coldly at the rotting timbers and bricks of the eighteenth century.
Kate had often wondered where Sarah lived. Her offices were in a tiny fashionable white cottage just off the Fulham Road, where Kate had originally trooped with her portfolio to be put in the files alongside all the other models on Sarah’s books. But Sarah’s home address had always been kept very private.
The car slid down a narrow alleyway alongside the river. High empty buildings hung in the air above them. Without warning the car stopped. For a moment Kate wondered if they were going to be silenced there and then by being thrown into the Thames, but looking out she saw that the door to one of the warehouses was newly painted and boasted a handsome and elaborate copper knocker.
Keith turned off the engine, jumped out and opened the back door of the car for Daley. Watching his captives all the time Daley stepped out, took a quick glance up and down the alleyway and then jerked his head to one side: ‘Outside,’ he said. ‘Quickly.’ In the front of the car Big Willie was moaning quietly to himself about his crippled hands. ‘And you keep quiet,’ ordered Daley. Big Willie went silent.
Kate climbed out, closely followed by Charlie. During the drive his wrists had been Sellotaped together behind his back. Momentarily they exchanged glances. Kate looked up at the building again. It was a large, long terrace which had once been a row of riverside warehouses with doors which opened directly on to the street. In between the score of derelict houses was a scattering of three of four where major renovations had been carried out.
Suddenly her inspection of the other houses was interrupted by the sound of the door opening. She looked around and found herself staring into the face of Sarah.
‘Welcome to Limehouse, Kate,’ said Sarah. Her voice was flat and forbidding. Sarah looked towards Charlie who was being policed by Daley. ‘Take him downstairs,’ she said, ‘and someone stay with him.’ Then walking back inside the house she waited for her reluctant guests to follow her.
To Kate, entering Sarah’s house was an experience not dissimilar to that of Alice on stepping through the looking-glass. From the damp paving flags of an urban wasteland she and Charlie found themselves stepping into an extravagant place of outstanding, creative modernity. The old walls of the warehouse were all that remained of the original building. Into this huge empty brick shell had been built a series of wooden frames and boxes, four storeys in height, so that it was possible to stand in the front hall of the house and look up through the open staircase through the rest of the lattice-screened home. It was, thought Kate, a carpenter’s masterwork or folly, depending upon whether it suited your taste.
Looking at Charlie she saw that he was as astonished as she was.
‘Are you all right?’ he asked.
She nodded: ‘And you?’
Charlie grinned, a wide putty smile. At that moment Daley put a hand on his arm, and jerked him in the direction of some steps which led, presumably, to the basement.
Charlie tried a joke: turning to Daley he said: ‘Do you love me, or are you just extending goodwill?’
Daley could not have been a Dylan fan. With a smirk he kicked Charlie in the back and sent him toppling helplessly down the flight of stairs.
‘You bastard,’ screamed Kate, and tore at Daley’s face with her fingers, but the lithesome figure of Keith moved quickly between them.
‘Subtlety isn’t Daley’s strong point, Kate,’ said Sarah, intervening in the mêlée. She glowered at Daley. He looked uncomfortable.
‘He’s insane,’ said Kate.
Sarah shook her head: ‘No. Over-enthusiastic, perhaps. That’s all. Now come with me.’ And leaving Daley to look after Charlie she led Kate up the wide open wooden steps of her home.
The house was by any standards a magnificent salon of art deco, a place where on every inch of wall hung paintings by the most expensive and exclusive of contemporary artists, where giant ochre chessmen stood a foot high in the middle of a floor, their game in a seemingly suspended situation, where a Victorian rocking horse watched motionlessly and an ivory unicorn reared elegantly. And everywhere shone the deep rich colours of the wood.
At last after passing through a series of frames, boxes and galleries they reached the top of the house. To her surprise Kate found that they were standing right above the dull waters of the Thames.
Sarah noticed her surprise. ‘Half of the house is built on stilts, you see,’ she explained. ‘There used to be an old jetty here where the boats tied up, but I had the house extended outwards so that I could always have the water beneath me when I slept. It was hell getting planning permission, but you’d be amazed to know how comforting and lulling the sound of water can be. Look, we’re virtually in the middle of a curve in the river. Up there you can just make out Tower Bridge, while the other way goes down to Greenwich. It’s the light, you see, Kate, that’s what I like so much. And the seclusion. Do you know we’re totally cut off here? Even the neighbours … a couple of artists, I think, and a writer … they’re all away for the summer. Hard to believe, isn’t it, that you can be so alone in the middle of London?’
Kate didn’t say anything. Sarah had made her point. There was only one way into the house and that was the way they had come. She looked down at the dirty swirling waters of the river. A piece of driftwood was being thrown around like a cork in the force of the tide and the current. She shuddered. Water terrified her.
‘Do you like my house, Kate?’ asked Sarah, her expression almost bantering.
‘Why should I?’ asked Kate.
�
�Well, darling, you helped to pay for it all, didn’t you?’
Kate had had enough of looking at the river. Moving away from the window she sat down on a wide settee. Sarah stood facing her.
‘Why have you brought us here?’ asked Kate.
‘I thought it was time we had a little talk.’
Kate didn’t answer. She wondered what was happening to Charlie in the basement.
I’d like to know who you’ve been talking to and what you’ve been saying.’
‘What are they doing to Charlie?’
Sarah shook her head: ‘For the time being nothing at all. Later on … well, that depends upon you.’
‘I haven’t told anyone anything,’ said Kate.
‘Why were you at Barbara’s house?’
‘She invited me. It was her birthday.’
‘Were you involved in the Harrigan deal?’
‘No.’
‘But Barbara did try to recruit you, didn’t she?’
‘She asked me if I’d like to join her.’
‘Why didn’t you?’
‘There was no reason to. Anyhow, she thought I was losing interest in it all.’
‘But she did get to some of the other girls. Who were they?’
‘I’ve no idea.’
Sarah didn’t speak for a moment. It was so clear that Kate was telling the truth that she was thrown out of her stride.
Kate saw her opportunity: ‘Why was she killed?’
‘It was suicide.’ Sarah repeated the lie that Daley had told her, the lie the police were eager to believe.
‘She wasn’t the type … and anyway, we both know that I saw Daley and his boys there.’
Sarah lit a cigarette, carefully putting out the match in a copper ash-tray. ‘If and I stress the word If Barbara was murdered I imagine there are any number of people who would have had a motive,’ she said. ‘She may have been blackmailing one of the friends she thought I knew nothing about … perhaps someone like the film producer from Paramount who went off to Rumania. Or she may have taken the wrong kind of person back to her flat. A girl like Barbara was always in danger of doing that. Or perhaps when Harrigan finally got her to join him and leave me, the person who had invested so much time and trouble into making her a success, perhaps he had a change of mind and decided that she was too old for him anyway. And perhaps he decided that rather than leave her to go blabbing her mouth off to me he would have to get rid of her.
‘Or it’s just possible that she may have seen herself in my shoes, perhaps with the backing of some common little thug like Harrigan to help her. I’m not saying that was what happened, but I’m sure you can understand, Kate, that had Barbara set herself up in opposition to me, taking all the names and addresses of my best girls and clients with her, then she would have been a very great nuisance.’
Kate didn’t say anything. She had warned Barbara that Sarah’s reactions might be violent.
‘You see, Kate, in this business, as, I believe, in all others, it is important that you don’t appear weak. The minute you show yourself to be without resolve is the moment you become powerless. We could no more have let Harrigan take Barbara than we could have sat back and let him take over the running of the whole operation. If we had killed her, and of course I’m only saying if, then it was because we had no alternative. We can’t be weak, Kate.’
‘If you killed her it was very spectacular,’ said Kate, mimicking the tempo of Sarah’s voice.
‘It would have to be, wouldn’t it?’ said Sarah. ‘We would have to give our friends and our enemies a warning.’
‘There was no reason to kill her.’
‘But we didn’t, Kate. The police are quite convinced that poor Barbara committed suicide.’
‘Daley is cleverer than I thought he was.’
Sarah stared at her fingernails: ‘He’s clever at some things.’
‘And what about us?’ asked Kate. It was a question to which she already knew the answer.
‘That depends on my partners,’ said Sarah. Partners … the word had suddenly acquired a connotation of menace.
‘Tell me about your partners,’ said Kate. ‘Do I know them?’
Sarah laughed: ‘I believe you’ve been on quite intimate terms with some of them from time to time,’ she said. ‘We have to have ways of vetting our girls. We have to know how good they are.’
‘Who were they?’ asked Kate.
Sarah shook her head. ‘Let’s just say gentlemen of power and influence. The only way an organization like ours can be run properly is by total secrecy. I’m the only person who knows everyone involved. But there would have been no way we could have been so successful without the help of men in the highest places of industry and diplomacy. Like any business we have a groups of directors who come from all the walks of life in which we operate. The only difference is that for obvious reasons you won’t find their names in the company records. They provided the initial finance and continue to provide entrées into the right kind of siciety. And I run the shop. So you see when Barbara was thinking of leaving me, she was actually taking on much more than Daley and his boys. She was taking on a very organized and wealthy group of respectable businessmen. As I’m sure you know, there is nothing in this world quite so ruthless as a good businessman.
‘And now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go to a meeting. Daley will look after you until I get back. Try not to worry. You never know I might have some good news for you tonight.’
With a flippancy which made nonsense of the situation Sarah retreated down the open wooden stairs to make her rendezvous with the invisible men of influence.
Kate sat and stared towards the river. She was frightened.
‘You know your trouble?’ Daley had climbed silently up the stairs and was watching her, his head and shoulders poking up from the top step. ‘You’ve always been ashamed of yourself. Brass like you can’t afford to be ashamed, but you are. The other night any ordinary tart would have run straight to the nearest police station and put the law on us. But, like I told Willie and Keith, you aren’t that sort. That’s one of the reasons Sarah chooses girls like you, nice solid respectable girls … because she knows that you’re stupid enough to care what people might think. Ain’t that right? You make good hookers, though. I’ll give you that. You’re better at conning the wogs that you’re only doing it because you like it than most of the other girls. But then that’s probably because you’re conning yourself most of the time.’
‘What have you done with Charlie?’ asked Kate at last, as she considered what he had said.
‘Nothing,’ said Daley. ‘He’s all right. He’s probably singing Keith and Big Willie a lullaby, isn’t he?’ He burst into laughter as he enjoyed his turn of wit.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Colin found Marty, but it wasn’t until mid-afternoon. All morning he had been trying to phone him to ask if there was any chance of a further advance on a new set of lyrics, and finally frustrated by the broken phone in Marty’s office he had decided to go over there in person.
Since Marty had not had a permanent secretary for some time Colin was not surprised to find the door locked, and had just been about to turn away and head for the nearest pub, when he had heard a sad gurgling sound coming from inside the office.
‘Marty … are you in there?’
‘Bloody right I am,’ came the low nasal reply. ‘I’m bloody locked in. And bleeding to death.’
This was actually an exaggeration since Marty had stopped bleeding some hours ago. If he hadn’t he would have been dead. But Marty was in no state to care about strict accuracies.
‘How do I get in then?’ shouted Colin through the door.
‘Break the bloody thing down,’ shouted Marty back.
And that was just what Colin did, with the help of an axe bought at a corner shop and a couple of policemen who watched, notebooks out, ready to charge him with malicious damage, and breaking and entering.
At last the door swung open as the
lock gave way. Colin stepped into the room. Marty was still sitting strapped to his chair, his face, shirt and desk covered in blood.
‘Jesus Christ, Marty!’ Colin stopped in amazement. The two policemen swore in shock and then hurried to release the little agent.
‘What happened? You look as though you’ve gone punk or something. Been sticking safety pins through your nose again?’
Despite the pain in his now swollen nose and the cramp in his arms and legs Marty was forced to smile. It wasn’t supposed to be a callous joke, just a funny way of showing concern.
‘If I’ve gone punk … then old Charlie’s probably well on his way to being a dead star that never was,’ replied Marty. And while the two policemen cut the tape away from his wrists and ankles he told them all about Daley and his assistants and their interest in Charlie. He even mentioned this girl called Kate, since the matters seemed clearly related. Never once did he think about Daley’s threat to him if he talked. After all he never had liked the Tremeloes, even when they were top of the charts.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
As it happened Charlie wasn’t singing. He was telling jokes, although he would have appreciated a more responsive audience.
The fall down the steps into the basement had done his injured rib no good at all, but by now he was determined that whatever his fate should be he was going to go out either laughing or fighting. At first he had been left alone in the basement and had found time to examine it in some detail. It was a dank place of a wooden boarded floor and white distempered walls. Propping himself up in a corner he had faced the only door. Beneath the floor he could hear the river splashing on the stilts.
Eventually Keith had joined him, followed a little later by Big Willie, whose hands, he now saw, were bandaged. At one point he had thought of suggesting that Willie should have his fingers X-rayed, but had decided it better not to remind the big man of his misfortune since it was he who was responsible.