by Laura Wilson
Stratton doubted if Iris had ever conducted any business in this room. As far as he knew, she’d always worked outside. There was nothing high-class about her: ten bob for a wank; fifteen for a plate; thirty for the lot. Stratton knew her from way back. They all did. She’d been living and working on their patch since she’d absconded from reform school in 1938 or thereabouts, and no matter how many times they’d taken her back, she’d always returned. Now she was missing and had been for five days, and there was nothing amongst her belongings to indicate why, or where, she’d gone. Her sister, who’d decided to look her up after a separation of five-odd years, had reported it.
Missing tarts were not exactly top of the station’s list of priorities at any time but at the moment, with yet another spate of car thefts – there’d been a steep increase in the three years since petrol had come off ration – and Lamb’s obsession with the preparations for the Coronation in June, they were very low indeed. Stratton himself had not taken the news of Iris’s disappearance too seriously, his initial reaction being that she’d got behind with her rent and scarpered, but now he was beginning to wonder. If she had done a midnight flit, she’d surely have taken such clothes as she owned with her, but the presence of a battered valise on top of the wardrobe and several frocks inside it suggested otherwise. Bugger the Coronation, he thought: I should have got here sooner.
A loud thump and several shouts from the stairwell suggested that Policewoman Harris was not having an easy time with the house’s other occupants. Stratton clattered downstairs and found a slovenly creature in a soiled dressing gown barring the way to the kitchen. ‘You know your trouble,’ she was shouting at Harris, ‘you’ve never had it!’ Seeing Stratton, she added, ‘Why don’t you have a bash at her, take that expression off her face?’
‘That’s enough, Bessie,’ said Stratton mildly, recognising her as a tom who’d been hawking herself around Soho for nearly as long as Iris.
‘It’s not my turn,’ whined Bessie. ‘You done me last week and I paid the fine. And you have to nick me on the street or it don’t count. I know the law.’
‘We’re not here to take you in,’ said Stratton.
Bessie stuck her chin out aggressively. ‘Well, what you poking around for, then?’
‘Iris is missing, and we need to have a look round.’
Bessie, who didn’t seem at all bothered by this news, sighed and moved away from the door. ‘Oh, go on then.’
The kitchen was in an even dirtier state than Iris’s bedroom. Stratton, shifting his feet on the sticky lino, tried not to recoil as he caught sight of mouse tracks in the congealed fat of a frying pan. He could tell by the stiffness of Policewoman Harris’s back and shoulders as she looked in the cupboards that she was doing the same. Bessie pushed the remains of a meal to one side, and, perching on one end of the newspaper-covered table, began examining the soles of her bare feet. They were, Stratton noted, hard and yellow, with deep splits in the heels that made him think of cheese left in the air for too long.
‘When did you last see Iris?’ he asked her.
‘I told her,’ Bessie let go of her foot long enough to jerk a dismissive thumb at Policewoman Harris. ‘’Bout a week ago.’
‘Where did you see her?’
‘Here. She was on her way out.’
‘Did she say where she was going?’
Bessie shrugged. ‘I don’t know, do I?’
‘Do you think she was going to work?’
‘’Spose so.’
‘Do you remember what she was wearing?’
‘Well, she’d have had her coat on, but apart from that …’ Bessie shook her head.
‘Where did she go when she was working?’
‘All over.’
‘Didn’t she have a regular patch?’
‘Not any more. Got taken over, didn’t it? She hangs round the cafés and pubs, mostly.’
‘Which ones?’
‘The Panda Café, mostly. And she goes into a lot of the pubs round here, but the Champion’s her favourite.’
‘Does Iris have a current man friend – someone who looks after her?’
Bessie shook her head. ‘He’s long gone – six months or more. Gave up on her and found himself something better, didn’t he? She was always saying how skint she was. Even tried to borrow some money off me. I told her, I’m not that stupid.’
‘You thought she wouldn’t pay you back?’
‘Iris? Not likely.’ Clearly feeling that there was no more to be said on the subject, Bessie pulled a grip from her hair and began poking at the grime beneath her toenails. Averting his eyes, Stratton spotted an advert, torn from a magazine, tacked to the opposite wall: a drawing of a model draped in tulle and lounging on a sofa surrounded by eager suitors, accompanied by the legend ‘Charm and Beauty Course – Change your life for just 50 guineas’. A clip round the ear and a bar of carbolic soap would be a better bet, thought Stratton. Feeling that they were on a hiding to nothing, he coughed a discreet inquiry to Policewoman Harris and, receiving a shake of the head in return, thanked Bessie for her trouble and left.
The elderly proprietor of the Panda Café had a ravaged look, as though he were in the grip of some ferocious and terminal illness. His cheeks had collapsed and his teeth – which to Stratton’s surprise were clearly his own – seemed to have grown as his gums shrank so that his mouth was always slightly open, sticky white saliva clogging its corners.
His customers didn’t look much better. Such rays of sunlight as had managed to penetrate the dirt and steam on the windows and the fug inside illuminated dandruff on shoulders, ingrained dirt on necks and clumps of bristles on imperfectly shaved chins. In one corner, an old woman was muttering to herself from behind a copy of the Daily Mail. Peering across at the masthead, Stratton saw that the newspaper was over three months old.
The proprietor studied the photograph Stratton had produced. Swollen-eyed and truculent, Iris Manning glared back at him. ‘I know her,’ he confirmed, ‘but I haven’t seen her for a good bit.’
‘How long, would you say?’
‘Week, ten days … Something like that. She comes in quite a lot. I’ve had to speak to her about trying to pick up men in here.’
‘Did you have any conversation with her the last time you saw her?’
‘If I did I can’t remember. Nothing out of the ordinary, at any rate. What’s happened to her, then?’
‘That,’ said Stratton, ‘is what we’re trying to find out.’
They got the same story in the Champion, and the rest of the pubs yielded no further information, except for the fact that she’d been barred from both the Red Lion and the Dover Castle for drunken and abusive behaviour. The man on the desk at the Pontefract Hotel, a flyblown and seedy establishment that rented rooms by the hour, gazed at them with watery, disillusioned eyes and told them he hadn’t seen Iris in a fortnight and didn’t care if he never saw her again because she was nothing but trouble.
‘You don’t think she could have gone off with a customer for a few days, sir?’
They’d come in a full circle and were now standing once more at the top of the street where Iris Manning lived. Stratton stared down the row of soot-blackened terraced houses, their windowsills crusted with pigeon dung, towards Tottenham Court Road. A black cat which had been sniffing around a jumble of rusty dustbins on the pavement shot him a filthy look and slunk away to merge with the shadows in a nearby alley.
‘She’s not the type for that,’ he said. ‘Not nowadays, anyway. Strictly short-time. If she’d left a note in her room I’d have seen it. Don’t suppose you gleaned anything, did you?’
Policewoman Harris shook her head. ‘The other girls were just as unhelpful as Bessie. Couldn’t remember when they’d last seen her, and didn’t care. One of them said good riddance because Iris had borrowed ten bob off her last month and still hadn’t paid it back.’
‘Both parents are dead, according to the sister, and there aren’t any other relatives,’ sai
d Stratton, ‘so that’s out. Let’s get back to the station.’
As they arrived, Sergeant Ballard was escorting a slight, fair girl of about eighteen out of the door. ‘Be right with you, sir,’ he murmured as they passed. The girl detained him for a moment, talking earnestly, a look of anxious entreaty on her face, before he caught up with them. ‘Any luck, sir?’
‘Not a dicky bird. I don’t suppose that she,’ Stratton waved a hand in the direction of the departed girl, ‘had any information, did she?’
‘Not about Iris Manning, sir. She came in to report another missing girl. Brought this with her.’ Ballard produced a small photograph of the head and shoulders of a woman who was both younger than Iris Manning, and, with her big almond-shaped eyes and full lips, considerably more attractive. ‘Kathleen McKinnon. Gone missing, according to her chum. Brown hair and eyes, about five foot three.’
‘Tom, is she?’ asked Stratton. Ballard nodded. ‘Can’t say I recognise her,’ said Stratton, and Harris’s shake of the head told him that she didn’t, either. ‘Must be new.’
‘She is, sir. Only been here a few weeks.’
‘Well, she’s obviously got a friend, which is more than you can say for poor Iris.’
‘They often work together, sir. That’s why she came in. I asked if she could be sure McKinnon hadn’t gone off for a holiday or to visit relatives – got a kiddie up in Scotland, apparently, her mother looks after it – but she said no, they’d had an appointment with some chap who wanted to photograph them together, and she never turned up. That was three days ago, and she’s not seen her since. Told me they usually meet up for a drink before they start, but she didn’t appear, and she hadn’t said anything about going away.’
‘Let’s just hope there’s not a spate of them,’ said Stratton gloomily. ‘Lamb’ll go spare.’ With the Coronation procession passing so near their manor, the DCI was determined to eradicate all vestiges of crime and vice from the streets surrounding Piccadilly Circus, so that the huge influx of people expected could enjoy their day’s outing without being propositioned or having their pockets picked. Stratton, who, like most of the station, viewed Piccadilly Circus as the centre of an Inferno-like series of concentric circles, each with a denser and more dangerous concentration of corruption, vice and crime, had remarked after the pep-talk that he hoped it would keep fine for him.
‘Wouldn’t be the first time we’ve had someone killing tarts, sir,’ said Ballard.
‘That’s true. Did you ask this …’
‘Joan Carter, sir.’
‘Did you ask her if she knew Iris?’
‘Said she’d never heard of her. Sorry, sir.’
‘And the chap with the camera?’
‘Told her his name was Charlie, but she didn’t have an address. They met him in the Red Lion, and they’d made an arrangement to see him there again. She said he was going to take them off somewhere to do the pictures.’
‘Try asking in the pub. Perhaps McKinnon met him on her own.’
‘Yes, sir. This is Miss Carter’s address, and that’s McKinnon’s – round the corner from each other.’
Glancing at them, Stratton recognised the streets. More sagging rows of houses chopped up into dismal single rooms, with a pervasive atmosphere of damp, mould and rot. If failure had a smell, Stratton thought, that was it: ambitions and desires unfulfilled and, in the case of these girls, lives spoiled and broken before they’d got properly started. All of them somebody’s daughter … He thought of Monica – lively, happy, sensible – and shuddered inwardly. ‘Come on,’ he said to Policewoman Harris. ‘Let’s take a look.’
Chapter Thirty-Nine
They’d moved twice in the past few months, each time to cheaper and poorer accommodation, and this flat was … A refuge, anyway, thought Diana. A shabby, threadbare cocoon where she could hide away until she could think straight about what to do next. But not now. In order to save money, she’d walked from Victoria station, over a mile, and she was exhausted, too tired even to scratch up a meal from whatever remained in the cupboard. All she wanted was to lie down. Dragging herself up the stairs, she didn’t think she’d ever been so glad to be home.
There was a note pinned to the door. Diana’s heart sank as she recognised her landlady’s handwriting. Dear Mrs Carleton, I have taken your belongings in place of the rent which you have not paid for seven weeks …
Grimacing, she crumpled up the paper and pushed her key into the lock. She’d find the money somehow, and redeem their things, but, right at the moment, she just wanted to get inside, away from everything. She turned the key, and jiggled it, but the door remained firmly closed. After a couple of minutes’ desperate pushing and rattling, she gave up and, leaning against the wall, closed her eyes. This isn’t how it’s supposed to be, she thought. Random images from the past flickered behind her eyelids: the morning of her wedding to Guy, bright-faced with anticipation in the mirror while the maid dressed her hair; lying in Claude’s arms on the mattress beneath the improvised shelter in his flat during an air-raid; her mother-in-law’s venomous face; the despoiled desolation of her childhood home; running through Green Park with James. Shaking her head in a sort of hopeless wonder at her situation, she remembered James’s words about walking into the sea. I could go down to the river now, she thought; it isn’t far. What difference would it make?
Wearily, clutching the banister, she went back downstairs and out into the street. There was no point trying to talk Mrs Pritchard into letting her back in, and anyway, she couldn’t face it. She walked down the road to the corner. It was twilight, and she stood, swaying slightly on her feet, just outside the spill of light from the open door of the pub. From inside she could hear laughter and the clink of glasses as the evening’s business got under way. All down the street, people coming home from work were turning in to their front doors. Lights were being turned on and curtains drawn against the gloom. They’ll soon be having supper, Diana thought, settling down for the evening. Hats and coats will be removed, slippers will replace shoes. The wireless and the paper. The children, the cat, the dog. Life carrying on.
Was that what she wanted, life to carry on? If you wanted something badly enough, you were supposed to get it, weren’t you? Perhaps she hadn’t wanted James to stop drinking badly enough. Perhaps he hadn’t wanted it himself. Or perhaps it didn’t work like that after all.
The river was to her left. Only a short walk … She’d be able to manage it. If she turned right instead, she would eventually, after several miles – provided she didn’t get lost on the way – arrive at Lally and Jock’s house. Overwhelmed by the thought of the distance, all the streets, squares, road-crossings, turnings off, the sheer effort of placing one foot in front of another, she took a few, faltering steps to her left. As she did so, a man emerged from the shadows by the wall of the pub, fumbling at his fly buttons, and grinned at her. For a moment, their eyes met. Then, with an impetus born of pure disgust, both with him and with herself, she turned right and began the long walk to Albemarle Street.
Chapter Forty
By the time she reached Piccadilly, Diana, though light-headed with tiredness, felt a new clarity of purpose. She’d decided not to die, hadn’t she? Now, with the cold rationality of a chess player, she must calculate her next move. One step at a time. The first was to smarten herself up a bit. Bad enough to present herself on Lally’s doorstep without warning, which, without even the tuppence needed for a telephone call, was what she’d have to do. She did, however, have one penny left, and that could be spent smartening herself up in the Ladies’ at Piccadilly Circus. Clutching it, she marched down the stairs to the Underground.
The attendant, an elderly crone with a long nose and a flat chest, was chatting, mop in hand, to a couple of heavily made-up women, their conversation punctuated by the sound of dripping. Diana walked to the furthest basin and stared at herself in the mirror above it. The harsh electric light and white tiled walls gave her face a pallid, sickly look, and she must h
ave been crying without being aware of it, because her eyes were pink-rimmed and there were the tracks of tears down her cheeks. Her hair, which she hadn’t touched since her walk on the beach, was dishevelled. I look like a madwoman, she thought.
She was rummaging in her bag for a comb to repair the damage when a rasping Cockney voice said, ‘Hello, dear.’ Turning, she saw that the attendant, footsteps muffled by carpet slippers, had come over and was smiling encouragingly. ‘New here, are you?’
‘New?’
The two women eyed her from across the room. They didn’t look half as friendly as the attendant, and it took her a moment to realise why. Her stomach contracted in fear, and she heard herself give a jittery little laugh as she turned back to the basin.
‘You going to be sick?’ asked the attendant, not so welcoming now. ‘’Cos if you are, you can go outside and do it.’
‘No …’ Diana found her comb and held it up. ‘Just tidying my hair.’
‘Been to a party, have you?’ asked one of the women. The tone was menacing.
Feverishly, Diana began to smooth her hair. Both women were advancing towards her now. Unable to bolt, she carried on combing mechanically, not paying attention to what she was doing, staring into the mirror and seeing only the two hard slabs of their faces and the red gashes of their mouths, one on either side of her own.
‘Somewhere nice, was it?’
‘I haven’t been to a party.’
The woman looked her up and down. ‘Going to one, are you?’
‘No …’
‘You’ve torn your stocking,’ said the other.
Had she? ‘Oh … I didn’t know.’