The Kill Fee

by Fiona Veitch Smith

  When the guests of the White Russian Art Exhibition were released from the Crystal Palace between two and three on Sunday morning, The Globe staff present at the sensational armed robbery had gone straight to Fleet Street to make sure their articles would get to press in time for the Monday edition.

  But Rollo shocked them all by announcing they were going to print up a special short edition to be released Sunday lunchtime: a simple four-pager, produced on a skeleton staff. The bulk of the copy would be made up of pre-written personality profiles taken from the Jazz Files (the name given to archive material of celebrity gossip and background information) of three of the main players: Princess Selena and the Yusopovs. The rest would be made up of first-hand accounts of the robbery by Rollo and Ike. Poppy was to provide an overview of the art on display, including Selena’s Fabergé egg, and there was to be a medical report on the guard who was shot.

  Rollo planned to typeset the edition personally and print off ten thousand copies – only a tenth of the usual print run. “Better than nothing,” he exuded as he jumped around like a leprechaun, directing the only print operator he could rouse in the wee hours of Sunday morning.

  Poppy knew that Rollo was hoping to convince advertisers that The Globe could get the top stories ahead of its competitors – and hence attract more readers. The Globe was fair to middling in the readership stakes – on a par with The Courier but way behind The Times and The Express. Bringing out a Sunday morning edition would increase circulation, but it would be hard to lure readers away from the traditional broadsheets that normally caught their splodges of butter and marmalade over breakfast.

  It was chicken and egg: The Globe needed additional staff to cover a weekend shift and extra money to pay the staff. Without more advertising it would be nigh on impossible to underwrite the payroll, but advertising would not increase until a Sunday edition became a feature and circulation grew. Poppy knew that Rollo had been looking at “alternative sources” of raising capital to tide the paper over, and she feared some of them involved gambling. Rollo had won the paper in a poker game; she hoped to high heaven he wouldn’t lose it the same way.

  As Poppy flopped into a chair in the newsroom, Ike Garfield handed her a welcome mug of coffee. She thanked him and sighed as the warm ceramic soothed her fingertips, which throbbed from hitting the typewriter keys for four hours straight. Typing was new to her and she had not yet mastered the touch typing technique that she envied in some of the older journalists, their fingers flying over the keys. Poppy was more of a search, point and thwack girl. But she was getting better, and she was relieved that the twelve-hundred word feature had not taken her longer.

  “Are you done?” asked Ike, wedging his large frame into the chair next to Poppy.

  “I think so. I’ve covered everything in the official exhibition catalogue, supplemented a bit with some background from my aunt’s book on world art, and added a bit of hearsay at the bottom about the Romanov ‘treasure-keepers’.”

  “Hearsay? Couldn’t you corroborate it?”

  “Not yet. I need access to the archives and some contacts in the Jazz Files, but Ivan isn’t in.”

  Ike rubbed his temples as if trying to relax his overstretched brain. “He doesn’t work Sundays. But I thought he would have been at the exhibition last night.”

  Poppy took a sip of her coffee, then shook her head. “No, I wasn’t surprised he didn’t come. Too many painful associations. I assume you’ve heard about his family…”

  Ike nodded. “Of course. Completely understandable. Doesn’t help with your article though, does it? But I suppose it can wait until tomorrow… I’m sure Rollo will ask you to do a follow-up.”

  “’Spect so. How’s your piece coming on?”

  “Nearly done. Just waiting for some comment from Scotland Yard.” He looked over at the candlestick telephone on his desk. “I left a message with their press office asking them to ring back, but I doubt they will on a Sunday. I was also hoping to get a comment from Vasili Safin – what with all his grandstanding at the embassy about getting the Romanov art back for the Russian people. But no one answered when I called. I’ll mosey over there myself after the ed meeting. Unless Rollo wants to go ahead without it.”

  The red-haired editor, wearing the same tuxedo he wore to the exhibition, with the bow-tie hanging loose and the sleeves rolled up, bounded into the room. He quickly pinned four flat-plans to the board, then wiped his black-inked hands down the sides of his silk shirt.

  “Right, it’s –” he pulled a fob-watch from his trouser pocket “– eight o’clock. We need to get the press rolling by nine-thirty at the latest. I’ve set the personality profiles of Selena and the Yusopovs and the short piece on the guard. Danny Boy phoned something in to me from the hospital after he went to see the fella. Doing all right. Thank God. How’s your piece coming on, Poppy?”

  “Done,” said Poppy with satisfaction, and slapped two pages of close typescript into Rollo’s outstretched hands.

  Rollo scanned it quickly and grunted his approval. “Well done, Miz Denby. Ike?”

  “Still waiting on Scotland Yard and the Russian embassy.”

  “Forget it. Give me what you’ve got and we’ll do a follow-up in the morning. I’ll be seeing Martin anyway.” He grimaced. “He’s trying to subpoena Danny’s film.”

  “Can he do that?” asked Poppy.

  “He can with a court order. But he’s struggling to get one on a Sunday. So –” he grinned, and Poppy noticed a bit of raisin from a Chelsea Bun he’d been eating stuck in his teeth “– we’re just going ahead and printing what we’ve got. Which is another reason I wanted to do this Sunday special.”

  Not just about money then, thought Poppy with approval.

  Rollo took his pointer and poked at the page flat-plans. “So as you can see, just Danny’s front-page pic is missing. He’s given me archive stuff of some of the high and mighties and a nice shot of the missing egg; now he’s going through his film to see if we’ve got something medias res – in the action,” he added, unnecessarily, for Poppy’s benefit. “Actually, Poppy, can you pop down and get him to shake a leg? Ike, you can help me with the typesetting if you’ve finished your piece.”

  “Yes, boss,” said Poppy and Ike in unison.

  Daniel’s darkroom was on the second floor at the back of the art and photography department. As expected, the door was shut. Poppy knocked. “You in there, Daniel? Rollo wants some snaps – snap-snap!” Poppy groaned at her own tired pun.

  “Two ticks, I’ll let you in.”

  Poppy heard the clattering of metal trays and some indeterminate shuffling, then the door opened a crack and one of Daniel’s scarred hands – burned during a fire in the trenches when he’d hauled some men to safety – pulled her into a black-curtained atrium. The little tent – smaller than a changing room in a cheap department store – brought Poppy and Daniel chest to chest. He smelled of chemicals – acetates, nitrates, bromides. Poppy had heard him talk about them so many times. They all seemed the same to her: acrid. But underneath it she could smell him: the familiar, warm, manly scent of Daniel. She sighed and laid her cheek on his chest. He held her close for a minute and then kissed her head. She longed to tilt her chin up to him so he could kiss her properly, but she knew Rollo was waiting for them.

  “Do you have anything for the front page yet?”

  “Yes, but in some cases I’m not sure what I’m looking at. Care to have a gander?”

  “You bet!” said Poppy, wondering exactly what Daniel had managed to capture with his Kodak Brownie.

  He pushed back the curtain and ushered her into the red-bathed light of the darkroom. On a bench there were three trays of chemical baths with emulsified paper floating in them. “They’re still developing. But look at these.”

  He indicated a washing line with nine black and white photographs hanging from it. “I took two rolls with twelve exposures on each over the course of the evening. The first lot were of the exhibits – I took th
em before the guests arrived. I’ve given them to Rollo already. I think he’s using the one of the missing egg.”

  Poppy said that he was. “But he wants a medias res shot now. Have you got anything?”

  “You tell me.”

  Poppy examined the pictures from left to right. The first picture was a posed shot of Queen Alexandra and her sister Maria Federovna in front of the Da Vinci. “I think Rollo might want that one on the inside spread. They’re the most important people there.”

  Daniel made a note and took the pic down.

  The second, third, fourth and fifth photographs featured various socialites milling around the exhibits. Some were posed, some were frank “caught in the moment” shots. Shot number six caught Poppy’s interest – it was of the Yusopovs, Felix and Irina, in close conversation with Vasili Safin, the Commissar for Foreign Trade from the Russian embassy.

  “I didn’t know he was there. Did you?”

  “Who is he?” asked Daniel.

  Poppy told him. “Thing is, I don’t recall him being there when Martin interviewed us all, although Marjorie had mentioned that he and Nogovski would be part of the investigation. Did you see him anywhere?”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “When was this taken?”

  Daniel thought a moment and counted backwards and forwards along the line. “I have to change bulbs between each snap and have to wait around two to three minutes for the bulbs to cool before I can take them out. So on average, about five minutes between each pic. This was the reel I took in the run-up to the blackout. This one was halfway through, so I’d say half an hour before the robbery.”

  Poppy absorbed the information and did some calculations of her own. “Hmmm, so he must have left sometime before the robbery…”

  “Or immediately after…”

  “Or immediately after,” agreed Poppy. Could Safin have stolen the egg back “for the Russian people”? He certainly had motive and quite clearly the opportunity, but did he have the means? Did he, somewhere under that dark suit, have a revolver closeted away? And what was he talking to the Yusopovs about? Their body language wasn’t antagonistic, as you would expect from people on opposing sides of the political divide. But it was difficult to tell with just that one split second frozen in time. Oh, what she would have done to have photographs on either side of this.

  Photograph number seven made them both laugh – Rollo being slapped in the face by an outraged Princess Selena Romanova Yusopova.

  “Wonder what he said to her?” mused Poppy.

  “Knowing Rollo, it would have been something wildly inappropriate. I’ll ask him,” Daniel chuckled.

  They turned their attention to photograph eight. It appeared to be a dud shot – just the backs of some men, dressed in black tuxedos, standing at the bar. There was very little to distinguish them one from another. However, Poppy knew one of them – Adam Lane, his fair hair standing out from the rest – and he was talking to the barman. Nothing remarkable there. She was just about to move on to the next picture, when something caught her attention. She pointed to the barman. “I know him. The barman Adam’s talking to.”

  “Adam?”

  “Yes, that’s Adam there. I’m sure it is. Look at the hair…”

  “You’re right; it’s him. But how do you know the barman? Have you been frequenting drinking establishments without me, Miss Denby?”

  Poppy laughed. “Hardly. Just Oscar’s. But I think that’s one of the barmen from there. I noticed him the other night when I was out with Adam and Delilah.”

  “Noticing barmen now, are we? Well, he is a good looking chap, I suppose…”

  Poppy poked him in the ribs. “Jealous?”

  “Should I be?” he asked, his voice suddenly serious.

  Poppy turned to him and looked up into his grey eyes that seemed almost green in the red light. “Of course not. Where’s this coming from, Daniel?”

  He turned away and busied himself straightening some bottles of chemicals. “Nowhere. Forget it.”

  Poppy couldn’t forget it. But neither did she have time to pursue it, so she shelved it away to be talked about when they both had some time off – together.

  She cleared her throat. “Well actually, the reason I noticed him was that that night at Oscar’s – last Wednesday – our Comrade Andrei Nogovski, the fella who tried to take over the investigation from Martin last night…”

  Daniel nodded that he was following her.

  “… made a big show of forcing his way into Oscar’s.”

  “Forcing his way in?”

  “Flashing credentials and all that. I’m not sure what he was after, but I saw him and Oscar talking and then Oscar took him downstairs.”

  “What’s downstairs?”

  “Oscar’s office and the wine cellar.”

  “How do you know all this?”

  Poppy chuckled and put on an American accent, mimicking Rollo. “I don’t have the instincts of a first-class newshound for nothing, Danny Boy.”

  “Or the nose,” said Daniel and bent down and kissed it lightly. Poppy relaxed. Whatever was bothering Daniel had been forgotten.

  She giggled. “Or the nose.”

  “So what else did the nose sniff out?”

  “Well, that’s where the barman comes in. Nogovski – who’s in charge of security at the Russian embassy, remember – came up the stairs from the cellar to the bar and was talking to this barman.” She pointed to him on the photograph. “And then later the big cheese – that Safin chap – joined them. And now the same man – the barman – is at the Crystal Palace.”

  “Nothing surprising in that, though, is there? Oscar was probably asked to handle the catering for the exhibition.”

  Poppy nodded her agreement. “Probably. I’ll ask him. But I also want to ask him why Nogovski – and Safin – were at the club. Oscar looked scared.”

  “Scared? That doesn’t sound like our Oscar.”

  “Exactly. But that will have to wait for another day. We need a pic for Rollo – pronto!” Again she put on an American accent and drew an appreciative chuckle from Daniel.

  “Well, the last one’s not much to look at,” he said, and Poppy agreed. It was just a wide shot of the crowd, taken from a slightly elevated level.

  “Where were you when you took this?”

  “On a chair in the corner. That’s when I saw you and Aunt Dot.”

  “So the next one,” said Poppy as she turned to the developing trays, “must be the one you took just after the lights went out. I remember a flash – just before the first gunshot.”

  “I took it just as the lights went out.” Daniel’s voice raised a decibel. “I was ready to take one of your aunt and her friends, but when everything went black, I pressed the shutter – by accident, I think – but I still managed to capture something.”

  He took some tongs and stirred the picture in the first tray, floating it around in the chemical bath. He nodded to the other two trays as he did so. “Those two were taken in the interview hall. One is of the Selena/Irina fight, and the other of DCI Martin. But now look at this…”

  Daniel flipped over the picture and laid it out on a white towel alongside the tray. Poppy leaned in, but was desperately disappointed by what she saw. It was a blur. She couldn’t figure out what was going on. “There’s nothing there!”

  “Ah, but there is. That blur is from the flash going off at the same time as the lights going out and the contrast being all wrong and losing focus. But look closer: there’s a bit in the top right corner that you can just make out…”

  Poppy looked, and gasped. Reaching into the frame was a bare forearm and, at the end of the forearm, a hand holding something that looked very much like a silver revolver. “Is that what I think it is?”

  “It is,” agreed Daniel, his voice tight with excitement. “And do you notice anything about the arm?”

  “The arm…” Poppy gasped again. “Of course! It’s a woman’s. A woman shot the guard!”

>   CHAPTER 10

  “Well done, Danny Boy!” Rollo clutched the blurred photograph like a child with a present on Christmas Day. “Do you think The Courier or The Times got anything?”

  Daniel was equally excited, but far more worn out than the hyperactive American. He yawned. “I don’t think so. There was only one flash – mine.”

  “And I heard Lionel and his photographer having a tiff.”

  Daniel, Rollo and Ike turned to look at Poppy, still in her blood stained evening gown. She was just finishing her fourth cup of coffee of the morning.

  “What about?” asked Rollo.

  Poppy downed the rest of the coffee and winced at the bitter dregs. She put down her cup, stretched her neck to left and right, then answered her editor. “Lionel spent most of his time propping up the bar instead of interviewing guests. The camera chappie was having kittens. I heard him tell Lionel that if he wasn’t going to bother doing his job properly, why should he? And then he stormed off. Left Lionel with a face like a slapped kipper.”

  The journalists chuckled. Lionel Saunders used to work at The Globe but had left in disgrace. Since getting hired by The Globe’s rival, he had gone out of his way to undermine every story Poppy worked on.

  “Looks like you’ve scooped him on this one, Poppy,” said Ike.

  “Perhaps,” said Poppy thoughtfully, “or perhaps not. He’s not a complete fool. He was talking to the barman from Oscar’s… and like I said, I think there might be something going on there with him and the fellas from the Russian embassy. What if Lionel’s thinking the same thing?”

  “Talk to Oscar and see what you can get out of him, Poppy, and I’ll talk to the barman,” ordered Rollo, then he pinned the photograph to the flat-plan on the board. “Pity it’s so blurred. Won’t print well, but it’s too big a scoop to leave out…”