Bad Penny Blues

by Cathi Unsworth

  Fitzgerald had already sent his estranged wife a suicide note. Pete picked up on that before he replied.

  “It says here his wife left him,” he said, thinking, “and no wonder,” remembering Fitzgerald's hand on the showgirl's arse, Bream's account of his extra-curricular activities.

  Joan raised her eyebrows. “Well,” she said, “that's no reason. He had children.”

  Pete put the paper down and looked across at her. She was furious.

  “I must admit,” he told her, “I didn't like the look of him when I met him. Thought there was something wrong with him.”

  Pete made a bonfire and Joan put the autograph on it, took her Fitzgerald records to the church for jumble. Having spent all her working life trying to save people from illness she couldn't tolerate the idea of suicide. Pete tried not to dwell on it, was as happy as she was to reduce Fitzgerald's memory to ash.

  But the autumn chill was settling in. Three days after Guy Fawkes’ night, Pete got an unexpected call from Dai Jones.

  “Something that might interest you,” he said. “Just over the river from where you found Roberta Clarke, they've just dug up another one. Found her in a field where they'd been having a bonfire, ground they were clearing for a building site.”

  “I beg your pardon?” Pete heard Dai but for a moment he couldn't make sense of what he was saying.

  “Another dead girl,” said Dai, “over in Mortlake, just behind The Ship. Not a stitch on her but her stockings. Reckon she's been down there a few months. Made me think of that old case of yours and a few others have been thinking that way too. They got an expert pathologist in to examine her, not much to go on but bones, you see, but they managed to get a match off a fragment of skin to the fingerprint of a missing person and it's another good-time girl. Not that she had much of one in the end.”

  “So they got a name?” Pete felt the chills coming.

  “Four names actually, any of these mean anything to you? Brownyn Evans, Bronwyn Jones, Gladys Small, Lena Smart – must be a Valleys girl and she was a little one as well, just like the last one, only five foot of her…”

  “Gladys Small,” said Pete, remembering that showdown in Teddy's car park, dreading what his words to Sampson Marks had led to. Thinking but not daring to say it… And I killed her.

  20 IN DREAMS

  The record was still on the turntable when I came down that November morning, still whirling around under the uplifted arm, where Toby had forgotten to switch it off. Cold and hungover, I shivered as I lifted it up and put it back in its sleeve, a Technicolor depiction of the singer in a costume he'd first worn as the ringmaster of an art exhibition, but was now accessorised with an ugly-looking cut-throat razor.

  If I didn't know Dave, I would be afraid of him, leering at the camera like that, bright red fake blood splattered all over him. It was James's idea, Dave had explained to us the night before, when he'd turned up at the final-night party of Toby's latest show, at Pat's place in Duke Street. James was still doing his séances apparently, and though Dave had never actually taken part in one, he had joined his producer on some mad late night rambles into churchyards and ruined houses that were supposed to be haunted.

  Lenny had drifted away at the point in the conversation when Dave had started to describe a talking cat they'd encountered in a graveyard in Essex, while Toby had long since been distracted by one of his patrons. For a moment I had found myself alone in Pat's kitchen with pop's answer to Sweeney Todd, and it was then his demeanour suddenly changed.

  “Stella,” he said, lowering his voice. “Have you seen Jenny?”

  I hadn't seen her in months. She had called me the day after the party, to apologise for the way she'd stormed out, hoping that it hadn't caused us any problems. Put it down to the pressures she'd been under that week, Baring's horrible story had just made her snap. I'd told her what I'd said to Jackie, that I thought he had got exactly what he deserved and I was proud of her for doing it. Though there had been some mention of a fracas in one of the gossip columns that wrote up our opening day, it only served to bring more curious customers through our door.

  Jenny had done me a favour – Baring's behaviour seemed to have got him barred from my world. Pat was furious with him and Toby was aghast when I told him about that flying fist.

  Since then, as far as I knew, Jenny had been back in Italy. The last time I'd heard from her she'd called me from Rome to say she'd landed herself a role in a British production that was shooting out there, with a director she seemed fairly enamoured of, though I'd never heard of him. That was in August, after Giles’ case had been dropped and the papers had been full of the rogue Detective Sergeant Wesker and his pieces of brick.

  “I was hoping she'd be here, tell you the truth, that's why I crashed the party,” Dave said, drumming his fingers on the table. “D’you know if she's OK?”

  I told him about the movie she was making, how well she had seemed. But Dave shook his head, dragging hard on his fat cigarette, the smell of hashish filling the air.

  “Thing is,” he said, “I've been out on the road for months. I only just seen Chris yesterday, found out what happened with that liability of a brother of hers.”

  That gave me a jolt. “What, you mean Giles?” I said. “He really is her brother?”

  Dave winced and his eyes darted around the room. “Yeah,” he said. “Only keep that shtum, she don't like anyone to know, it's one of her family's many dirty secrets. That's why I'm worried about her.”

  “But I thought Chris had sorted that all out? The case was dropped…”

  “Yeah,” Dave whispered, “but it don't end there with her old man. That's why she ran off in the first place, thought she could get away from him that way. And that's how he gets his revenge, hanging Giles out to dry, Jenny's Achilles heel that bleedin’ moron is.” He crushed the joint in an ashtray, pulled a strand of hair out of his eyes.

  “Chris done a good job for him,” he said, “but believe me, Minton won't leave it at that. You know the copper what did him got shipped off to the funny farm? That's their way of protecting their own. Minton's got the Old Bill in his back pocket, they'll do anything he wants, whenever he wants. If it didn't work with Giles, fuck knows what he'll do to her next.”

  He shook his curly head. “Rome, eh?”

  I nodded dumbly, wondering how much of this could be true, whether Dave's grief over losing Jenny had unhinged him, or if it was that stuff he was smoking making him paranoid.

  “It ain't far enough,” he said.

  “Oi Del, there you are.” A big Teddy boy came barrelling up to us, holding a bottle of Champagne by the neck. “Class gaff, this. Shame we can't stay, only we got that gig in Wardour Street to get to, ain't we, mate? Mind you,” he looked me up and down, gave me a lascivious grin. “I can see why you got distracted…”

  “Yeah, all right Fredo.” Dave snapped back into his usual persona. “Keep your filthy thoughts to yourself, this is an old friend of mine and she's married,” he swiped hold of the bottle, “to the bloke what's responsible for all this hospitality you're enjoying.”

  Fredo belched. “Whoops,” he said, “sorry love. Didn't mean no offence.”

  “Come on then.” Dave handed me the bottle and pushed his friend towards the door. “Let's split.”

  He leaned down and kissed my cheek, whispered in my ear: “I know she makes out she don't want to know no more, but please, Stella, next time you talk to Jenny, just tell her I'm still here. I ain't going anywhere. Tell her that, won't you, love?”

  I could still see the pain in his eyes. Whether it was true or not about Jenny's dad, he obviously believed it.

  Dave must have given Toby the copy of his latest single that he'd started waving about in the taxi home. I'd wondered whether to tell him about our mad conversation, but Toby had reached that jolly stage of drunkeness that meant nothing would have gone in anyway, and I didn't really want to spoil his night.

  When we'd got in, he'd insisted on spi
nning the disc. It began with a woman's scream and a man's laugh, went into a weird kind of carnival organ with a stomping backbeat, Dave cackling murderously over the top of it.

  “Oh please,” I said, a dark memory tapping at the corner of my mind. “Turn it off.”

  Toby had laughed but when he'd seen my face he'd lifted the needle up. We'd gone straight to bed then, but however close I had cuddled up to my husband, I couldn't seem to shake the chills that record had put in my bones. At least I'd managed to drop off before I remembered where I'd heard it before.

  All I knew now was that I needed something in my stomach, and a strong cup of coffee to wash it down. Pulling my dressing gown tighter around me, I stepped out of the living room and into the hall. Saw the newspaper lying on the mat, picked it up and tucked it under my arm, dropped it down on the table while I put the kettle on.

  When I had made my plate of scrambled eggs and the coffee had brewed, I sat down and tucked in. After a while, I started to feel better, started to wonder again about Dave.

  What was it that Jenny had said, the day of Giles’ arrest?

  “Daddy dearest does have a certain amount of influence in high places… The trouble is, since I went to Italy, I haven't had any contact with my parents at all… I just can't go back to them now. I've come too far…’

  Jenny's father had been in the news recently. As well as putting up the new council estate across the train tracks in Westbourne Park, he had just won a contract to build a new flyover, along the side of those tracks, joining the suburbs of West London to a new motorway.

  I flashed back to the expression on her face when Baring had been boasting to Pat about the bizarre party he had been to. That look of blankness, like the very first time I met her, when I caught her in our bedroom, rifling through my things.

  I heard a woman's scream and a man's laugh, the beginning of Dave's single starting up again in my head. Picked up the paper to distract myself, unfolded it on the table in front of me, looked down and felt my heart drop through the floor.

  Two faces stared back at me in grim black and white, under a headline that screamed: “MORTLAKE MURDER LINK TO ’59 CALL GIRL CRIME?”

  Two faces I had seen before, been before, in my dreams.

  My eyes dragged downwards, into the newsprint.

  “Brownyn Evans was also known by the names of Bronwyn Jones, Gladys Small and Lena Smart,” I read. “She had a string of convictions for prostitution dating back to 1958, when she first arrived in London from her native Barry in South Glamorgan, Wales…”

  I knew who she was. She was the girl in the mustard-coloured dress.

  “Roberta ‘Bobby’ Clarke, aged 21, was last seen on the night of 17 June 1959 by handyman Harvey Webb, who dropped her off by a coffee stand on Holland Park at 1.10am. Despite a nationwide appeal, her killer was never apprehended. However, a police spokesman told The Courier that there were sufficient similarities between the circumstances of her death for links to be made to Evans. Detective Inspector Reginald Bell said…”

  The girl in the blue-and-white striped dress.

  My hands shook as I turned the page. All the details of their lives dovetailed with the knowledge couched in my somnambulant mind. Somehow I had known that Bronwyn Evans was from Barry, known that Roberta Clarke had a boyfriend called Baby and a sister named Pat. I had known they had both been prostitutes because I had felt what they had been through, seen grotesque shades of their memories, everything they were trying to escape from, Bronwyn down a bottle and Bobby with a man who never came.

  I had seen the black car that took them away but not the two men in the front seat.

  Why had I seen it, how had I seen it?

  “You're one of us, dear,” a memory of a voice came to me. “You have the gift.”

  Feeling a scream welling up in my throat, I picked the paper up and hurled it across the room. Stuck my hand over my mouth as I ran from the room and into the downstairs toilet, a wave of nausea so intense I felt as if I'd been poisoned.

  Dave's single jarred through my mind as I said goodbye to breakfast and all of last night's wine. I couldn't seem to blank it out now that I knew where it had come from: the dream about Bronwyn Evans. She had heard it, coming through the walls of the club, coming through the car radio…

  I sat panting on the cold tiled floor, waiting for the world to come back into focus. Then gingerly, I got to my feet and wobbled back into the kitchen, stared at the paper lying on the floor. Four dead eyes stared back at me.

  I picked them back up, smoothed them out on the table. Toby would want to read this later and I would have to act normally when he did, I couldn't bring myself to tell him. How would he ever believe me?

  I poured myself a glass of water, sipped it slowly, wondering what I was going to do. For the first time in years, I was filled with an intense longing to see my ma. But I couldn't just call her out of the blue; there would be too many recriminations to get through before I could ask her advice about this. The one thing she would know how to deal with.

  It had happened to me only once before. When I was a little girl, we had been bombed out and were staying at my grandparents’ house. There had been an air raid that night, a plane came down in a ball of flames and I had woken to find a man standing at the bottom of my cot, a parachute silk trailing from him, soot and blood all over his face, smoke rising up off his uniform, looking at me with wild eyes and saying: “Wo bin ich? Wo bin ich?”

  Ma had said it was because I was so young, children were much more Sensitive than adults, and with all the madness and death screaming around us, the veil was much thinner in a time of war. The pilot I had seen, she explained, had gone so quickly he didn't even know he had passed.

  For years, I had been terrified of what my family called ‘the gift’, but nothing like that had ever happened again. Not until James and his bloody ouija board, James and that record he had made with Dave. Somehow he had started all this…

  “You're one of us, dear…”

  Then it came to me, a face to the memory of that voice.

  I found it in the wardrobe in the spare bedroom, down amongst the old portfolios and other forgotten things, inside my college satchel, under a wedge of creased postcards and dog-eared notebooks. Where I had always known it would be.

  Mya's card.

  PART THREE

  JACK THE RIPPER

  1964-65

  21 NEEDLES & PINS

  The girl stood beside the late night coffee stand on the Bayswater Road, under the orange glow of the streetlight. Bleached blonde hair and an upturned nose, something about her that was slightly different from the other toms. The cut of her dogtooth coat more stylish, the nails that held the Styrofoam cup polished and neatly manicured. Maybe that was why the other girls that passed were giving her daggers.

  Or maybe it was because she was talking to Pete at all.

  But there was something else coming off her that was at odds with her veneer. The smell of fear, the chink of vulnerability in her eyes as she motioned him away from the main drag and into a sidestreet, out of the lights and the wandering eyes.

  “Yeah,” she said, reaching into her white leather bag for her cigarettes. “I know Geordie Sue… I mean, I knew… Oh shit.” She dropped her lighter.

  Pete stooped to pick it up, lit the cigarette for her, cupping his hand around the flame. Waited for her to calm down and tell him about the girl who had come drifting down the Thames, three months after Brownyn Evans had been lifted from the earth.

  The body had come to rest on a floating pontoon on the Upper Mall, just north of Duke's Meadows, outside the London Corinthian Sailing Club, at the beginning of another bright, sunny day. Another tiny slip of a girl, only five foot two with shoulder-length brown hair. Naked but for the stockings wrapped around her ankles and the remains of her torn brown knickers stuffed halfway down her throat.

  The post mortem revealed that she had died by drowning… but not necessarily before she landed in the Thames
. There were no bruises, cuts or abrasions on her to suggest she had been assaulted or forced into the river, but there was no logical reason to assume she was a suicide, not with that gag in her mouth. Not with the stockings round her ankles, just like Brownyn Evans’ had been.

  They got her name when her death mask, photographed with eyes propped open, was beamed out on the early evening news, nearly giving her father a heart attack. The former miner from Newcastle identified his errant daughter as Susannah Houghton, aged 30, who he hadn't seen in twelve years, not since she skipped off from her job at the chicken factory one morning and never came home again.

  She had made a new name for herself in London, several new names, in fact. The nighthawks who frequented the coffee stand at Charing Cross called her Sybil Smith. The loiterers of King's Cross had her down as Margie Mitchell. In West Norwood, where she had lived for a while in a rented room, she was both Suzy Houghton and Susannah Lee. But ask the streets around Pembridge Villas, Notting Hill, where she had shared her last address with her common-law husband Gary Vine and their young daughter Cheryl, and she came back as just Geordie Sue.

  “She was a good mate, was Sue,” the girl said. “We met on the stand there, way back when. Looked out for each other the last time a girl got killed, remember that one from Holland Park?”

  Pete nodded, wondering if he had talked to her then too.

  “I used to babysit for her when she got together with Gary, lovely little girl she's got… I mean…. Cheryl, she called her. Pretty little thing…”

  She inhaled deeply, shutting her eyes.

  “You're all right, love.” Pete tried his best to sound soothing, praying that she wouldn't just crack and give up, that she would know something he could use this time.

  For he had been powerless to do anything about Bronwyn Evans except pass on what he knew about her former activities in Soho to Dai, leads that got lost in the tangled web the little Welsh girl had woven around her short, unhappy life.