Bad Penny Blues

by Cathi Unsworth

  I'm standing on the corner of this long, wide Avenue next to a tube station that's all shut up for the night. For some reason I can't read the lettering over the door, can only make out an Art Noveau swirl of letters, but I feel like I know this place, I have been here at this time of night many times before. The station stares back at me through blank, empty windows. Squat and silent, it sits back on the pavement, detached, like whatever else is going on round here is surely none of its business.

  I stroll past it, hearing the clack of my feet and the strange music, that distorted organ motif and the crackles of radiowaves, a sound like bubbles being blown under water. I turn around the corner, drawn towards it, and realise the music is coming from the building diagonally across the road from me. A high tower like a castle's keep made out of red brick, little tiny windows all the way up it but just one light on, one yellow light, right at the top. The spook symphony is coming from the window, getting louder and louder.

  I suddenly think of a lighthouse, sweeping its beam across a dark and choppy sea. And the vision fills me with fear, like I have suddenly seen my death coming towards me, the light across the water, luring me to the rocks…

  I turn away, catching my breath, clutching my handbag tighter. I realise that whatever plans I have made for this night are all going to fall through, that the boy I am expecting to meet here is not going to come. He was just using me like everyone else, I think, laughing at me, at how stupid I am, how easy.

  I hurry away from the tower, back towards the tube and onto the Avenue. I want to block the music from my head but it swims around me, laps at the corners of my brain and I can't think straight. The man in the Morris Ten, was he supposed to be coming back for me or was I just spinning him a line? I don't remember but I can't wait here, I don't want to be in this part of town, with another me waiting under every tree, yet I can't go home either, bad things lurk there too, more beatings, more fuckings, more petty humiliations. All the things I wanted to be flash through my mind: a mother, a wife, a spotless kitchen in a nice house, an embroidery in a frame hanging over the fire saying Home Sweet Home, a memory of my childhood and my sister Pat. All the things I will never be and never have and everything I tried not to think about, all coming down fast to the refrain of a ghostly keyboard requiem.

  Then suddenly, all the sounds disappear. Headlights are coming towards me up the Avenue, a long dark car gliding slowly along, crawling beneath the trees, as if in slow motion. This is it, I realise and somehow the knowledge sets me free of my anguished thoughts, fills me instead with the numbness of acceptance. This is the beam from the lighthouse, the lights across the water calling me home. I pat my hair, which is short and neat and recently cut, in the style of an actress I had admired. I smooth down the front of my blue and white summer dress. This is how I look on my last night on earth and I step forwards towards my fate, lean into the window as it slowly winds itself down.

  There are two people in there, but their faces are lost in the shadows.

  I know that the nearest one is speaking to me but all I can hear is the hiss of radio interference. The music is starting up again but it no longer disturbs me, I'm numb and I know where I am going. My thoughts and my body are no longer mine. My hair and my dress are no longer mine. I get into the back of the car and it pulls away, in a U-turn across the Avenue, picking up speed as it heads west, towards the lonely shore. A woman's voice says softly, sadly: “Bobby…”

  And I woke up, lurching forwards into a sitting position, drenched with cold sweat. I put my hands up to my head, feeling the fringe of my long blonde hair plastered to my forehead, desperate to make sure it was my hair and not hers. For a moment, between two worlds, I couldn't make out where she ended and I began, her thoughts and her memories had been so strong that they seemed as if they were my own. But they were so terrible, so alien, so shocking. Images of brutal couplings in the back seats of cars, underneath trees, in shabby rooms with other people watching, faces of old and ugly men, faces of black men, the certainty that I had a sister called Pat and most of all, that overwhelming sense of fear…

  Fear and pain. God, she had hurt. I put my hand up to my shoulder where the worst of it had been. It wasn't tender at all. I hadn't slept on it badly, triggering the sensation. That had all been part of the dream too. Where had she come from, this woman with the short hair and the striped dress?

  I was so disorientated that it took a few seconds to realise that the music, that weird music that had soundtracked this nightmare, hadn't disappeared with it.

  It was coming through the wall from next door. Those ghostly keyboards and that radio tuning in and out of stations, it was actually real. The fear this phantom woman had felt coursed through my veins like quicksilver and I grabbed hold of Toby's arm, shaking him awake, gabbling: “What's that noise, that horrible noise?”

  He stumbled out of his own slumbers with a low groan, rolling towards me and propping himself up onto his elbow.

  “That noise, Toby, what is it?” My voice was shrill with panic.

  “Uhhh,” he grunted, putting an arm around me, patting me gently on the leg as if to calm me down. He was never very good at waking up. “That?” he said. “Uhhh, sorry, I should have warned you about that. It's the boys next door. They say they're musicians and that, my dear, is what their music sounds like. Bloody horror show.”

  He rolled across me and turned on the bedside light, his face suddenly illuminated by a comforting orange glow as a tired smile spread across his crumpled features. He looked so handsome with his hair all falling forwards in his eyes that I immediately calmed down. “Come here,” he said, pulling me back down beside him. The night had been so hot we had kicked most of the covers off the bed, but like the woman in the dream, I suddenly felt cold.

  “It's a horror show all right,” I said, nestling into the warmth of him. “It gave me such a nightmare.”

  “Oh Stella,” he said. “I'm sorry. I really should have warned you, but I suppose I just got used to them and their odd little ways while I was still a gay bachelor myself.”

  His words made me giggle. We had been married for only one week, spending what would have been our honeymoon if we'd had the money ostensibly redecorating, but not really getting very much further than where we were now. It didn't matter. We still had the rest of the summer to turn the basement of 22 Arundel Gardens from Toby's bachelor pad into the marital home of Mr and Mrs Reade.

  “What time is it anyway?” he asked, looking over at the alarm clock. “Ten past one! Horror show hours and all.”

  It gave me a shudder, that did. Now I was awake and safe, the nightmare was beginning to fracture and dissolve, recede into the shadows. But one thing I could clearly remember was that I — or rather she — knew exactly what the time was.

  Toby must have felt it because he cuddled me closer, found the edge of a blanket and covered me over with it.

  “You cold?” he asked, and I let it go at that, not wanting to tell him what it really was in case he thought I'd gone a bit strange, mad even. It had been a horribly vivid dream, an insight into a world I didn't want to see again. And whatever had caused it — the music, the newness of my surroundings or just too much cheese before bedtime — I wanted to forget about it quickly. I resolved to banish the woman in the blue and white dress from my thoughts.

  It was because of our honeymoon that I managed to do so; we were so engrossed in our own little world that we didn't bother to buy the papers in the week that followed, otherwise I might have read about the body of a woman that had been found by the river in Duke's Meadows, Chiswick, wearing a blue and white striped dress. It was a mercy, really, that I didn't. It would have shattered the idyll of the summer of 1959, the end of our first year at the Royal College of Art and the beginning of our marriage. There were so many things that we didn't know about each other then and ignorance was bliss.

  Toby's kisses were warm on my eyelids as I finally fell asleep, the sound of a new world coming through the wall.<
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  PART ONE

  WITH THIS KISS

  1959

  1 ROULETTE

  Dawn crept stealthily over the Thames, the first shafts of sunlight stealing through the mist that clung to the grass, collected in the hollows at the base of the poplars, chestnuts and weeping willows that lined the banks of the river. Police Constable Pete Bradley watched golden beams glitter on the surface of the water and wound down his window to breathe in the new morning. At this time and this place, it didn't feel like he was in London at all.

  The Thames Road between Hammersmith and Chiswick Bridges could almost remind him of home sometimes, and this was one of those occasions. The houses that backed onto the road here had long gardens full of honeysuckle and roses. There were piers for fisherman and wharves for sailing boats, little old pubs and ancient churches, almost like a perfect village green that had somehow managed to escape the pounding that the Lüftwaffe had meted on the rest of the capital. The river wound its course around to his left, fringed on the other side by trees, not a building to be seen. The only other traffic on the road at this time of day was the milk carts and delivery vans, bringing today's headlines about the Mau Mau in Kenya and Liberace's libel victory into the newsagents, fresh bread and groceries to the shops.

  For a second, Pete transposed the image of the Thames with that of the River Wharfe, saw in his mind the rolling limestone hills of his childhood and remembered the feeling of excitement that such a dawn would have inspired in his ten-year-old self. Fishing net and sandwiches wrapped in wax paper, his hand safe inside Dad's huge, rough paw, both of them singing ‘Willow, Weep For Me’ or ‘Listen To The Mocking Bird’, one of those old Twenties songs he couldn't listen to now without an ache in his heart.

  A loud snore from the backseat interrupted his reverie. Acting Sergeant Alf Brown lolled back on the seat, his head back and his mouth open, revealing a gob full of fillings and a fat, greying tongue. Never a one for these night patrols, Alf was always conking out on the job. He lay in a slovenly repose, his waistline straining against the blue serge of his uniform, the sweet smell of whisky emanating every time he exhaled. Pete exchanged glances with Alan Corbishall, another young PC like him, who had drawn the short straw for the driving while Pete operated the radio. Alan rolled his eyes.

  “At it again,” he said, “the old soak.”

  Pete shook his head. He'd not been in the force long, less than a year since he'd passed out from Hendon and he wasn't finding it exactly as he'd imagined. There were too many ‘superiors’ like Alf who seemed to have grown rotten with age, careless perhaps, or maybe just too jaded. They'd had their heyday in the fiery chaos of the Blitz and now, in these days of peace and austerity, they were burnt out from lack of drama and the sly profits of the black market. To hear them talk you wouldn't think that tons of bombs raining down on the city night after night was any kind of hardship or terror; on the contrary, living on the edge like that had given them a purpose that the dull 1950s singularly lacked. It had made them all into Dan Dare. Now, it seemed, they could only reclaim that spirit of derring-do from the bottom of a bottle.

  Pete had applied to become an aid to CID, the first step towards becoming a detective, wanting something to stretch his mind more than the plodding routine of the beat bobby would allow. He knew he had to start at the beginning, with the drunks and the domestics and the petty thieves, but even so, he wanted to be doing something of real use. He knew he had it in him. He'd got this far after all.

  The young copper stuck his head out of the window, inhaled the smells of river and dew and divined the start of another hot day. It was ten past five by his wristwatch and they were approaching Barnes Railway Bridge, where the landscape subtly altered: the rather grand houses of Mortlake sat stoutly on the other side of the river, while on this side, buildings had given way to the green expanse of Duke's Meadows.

  Or “Gobbler's Gulch” as Alf referred to it. A piece of common ground where, under cover of darkness, illicit trysts took place in the back seats of motorcars — frustrated young lovers, cheating spouses, brasses and their johns getting sweaty under the shady trees. Alf never tired of delving into his stock of dirty jokes about it when he was actually compos mentis. But in the first light of dawn it was empty and its rolling banks looked pretty inviting, a good place to stretch out and enjoy a picnic.

  “Willow, weep for me…” Pete could hear the words of that song in his head again, as he caught sight of one such sturdy old specimen. As his eyes travelled slowly down its gnarly branches to the trunk, the smile left his face.

  Something was there. An odd shape. Something not right.

  “Slow down a minute,” he said to Alan. “What d’you reckon that is over there?”

  At first it looked like a collection of bags had been dumped under the tree, blue and white bags. But not quite…

  Alan put his foot on the brake and peered over.

  “I can't quite make it out, Pete. D’you want to take a look?”

  “Aye.” Pete opened his door. “It's probably nowt, but just in case.”

  It was the strangest sensation, as if an unseen force was propelling him out of his seat and towards the riverbank, out through that fresh new morning that had only seconds of its stillness and innocence left to give him. The hairs prickled on the back of his neck. A flash of Dad walking in front of him, fishing rod over his shoulder; the feelings of a ten-year-old boy on a bright summer day; knowing with the certainty of a ticking clock that those feelings were about to run out, would be lost forever the instant he got close enough to those blue and white bags to work out what they were.

  What she was.

  It was a woman, a tiny woman. In a blue and white dress that had been torn savagely open, ripped right down to her waist, exposing her breasts. She was lying with her feet towards the river, her head turned towards the right, with her legs slightly crossed and her left arm extended as if it had been trying to grasp out for something. Pete pulled up short for a second and the world stilled, the twittering of birds and distant hum of the city all blanked out, as if he were standing in the middle of an invisible cocoon. He knew for certain she was dead and more than that, she'd been murdered.

  This is it then, he thought. This was the reason he had joined the force, to do something better with his life than toil and die down pit. But even as he thought it, he had another realisation and it was one that would never leave him:

  But I've got here too late. I can't help her now.

  Carefully, he knelt down on the grass beside her. Poor little lass looked like a broken doll. The skin on her face was waxy white and devoid of any make up, her short dark hair wet with dew, her brown eyes wide open, staring into infinity. He tried to read the expression, remembering the books he'd read about Victorian detectives and their conviction that you could catch the image of the murderer in the lens of the victim's eye. Bloody rubbish that were, he thought, but still, he wanted to have some kind of communion with her, some kind of insight into what it was that she saw, who it was that had done this to her. But there was no expression left. Her eyes were glazed. Her mouth was open too, but not slack. Her jaw was set hard, she had been gasping for her last breath. Looking down, he saw the scratches on her neck and her collarbone. Of course, he thought, she's been strangled.

  Her skirts were bunched up around her waist, revealing a white slip. Pete looked down her bare legs to her dirty, shoeless feet. He fought the urge to close her eyes for her and stood up stiffly instead, remembering his duty not to touch a thing but to recall all the details, to look for anything that didn't make sense. Well, the shoes being gone for a start. And a handbag? He cast his eyes around the grass. If she'd had one, it wasn't here now.

  “Clever bugger, eh?” he said aloud.

  He heard a shout and looked back towards the car. Crumpled, bleary Alf was hurrying towards him, his eyes as red as his face, eager to reassert his authority.

  “Get on the radio,” Pete called. “We've got a dead body
here.”

  Of course, as soon as they had called the station it was no longer their case. Top brass from the Criminal Investigation Department were dispatched and while they waited for them all to arrive, Alf and Alan stood guard of the scene, making Pete stay in the car, on the radio. He watched as a series of cars and vans pulled up, disgorging a posse of sergeants and aides who hurried to take charge of the situation, set up a tarpaulin across the scene for the pathologist to do his work away from prying eyes.

  A tall, stern-looking man in a tan gabardine mac and a trilby emerged from a black Rover and walked briskly towards Alf, taking a notebook out of his pocket. His seniority was made plain by the way Alf contorted himself, puffing out his chest but wiping a nervous hand across his forehead as he talked, shifting his weight from foot to foot. After a few moments, the man in the mac closed his notebook, gave a brief nod and began walking in Pete's direction.

  He had a clipped moustache and grey-green eyes, not without a trace of humour in them, Pete thought, despite the severity of his face. All the same, he got out of the car sharpish and stood with his back ramrod straight.

  “PC Bradley?” The man had the voice of an officer as well as the bearing. “DI Bell, CID. I gather you were the one who found the body?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “So what can you tell me?”

  “Well.” Pete felt a bead of sweat trickle down his forehead. It wasn't just that the day was hot again already, but that this was a man who wouldn't suffer fools like Alf, who would demand that the facts were relayed to him clear and precise.