Bad Penny Blues

by Cathi Unsworth

  “You know this Marks fella then?” Coulter asked as they took their leave of the Scrubs. “I've heard of him before, in connection with all this, just trying to remember where…”

  “He's what they call a bit of a Soho character.” Pete knew he had to chose his words carefully, had to hide how he'd come about this knowledge. But it was difficult; he wanted to share what he knew so much that only the thought of Bell stopped him. “I used to go to Teddy's club with Joan when we were courting, he was a bit of a boyhood hero of mine and she liked the shows. I got to know a few things, like you do. Marks is Teddy's silent partner. They call him The Chopper because he likes to use an axe on his enemies. Funny thing is, he looks like one too.”

  Coulter frowned. “Well there've not been any axe marks on any of our girls,” he pointed out. “So how does that fit into the picture?”

  “He's a procurer,” said Pete. “He's into girls, pornography, mixing it with highlife and the lowlife. And if supplying Jack isn't tantamount to killing them himself, then I don't know what is.”

  Coulter stared at him. “You're right,” he said. “What should we do next? Pass it on to the gaffer?”

  Pete nodded. “Get him to get one of his pals in West End Central to run The Chopper in. I'm sure Marks doesn't know about that photograph either and I'd love to know what effect it has on him. I wonder what he could tell us about our missing friend Ernie…”

  “Well,” said Coulter, “this should put the smile back on his face.”

  But when they walked into CID, the room was in uproar. DI Fielder was surrounded by detectives all talking and shouting. His hair had turned another shade greyer, the sheet of paper in his hand said why.

  Dick Willcox was standing closest to the door as they entered. “You've missed the main event,” he informed them. “There's been another one. Found at 5.30 this morning outside a garage forecourt in Acton. A garage, yeah – but not the garage we were looking for. Bastard's taunting us, you ask me.”

  “The body has been taken for tests,” Fielder was saying, “to ascertain whether traces of paint residue are a match for those found on the Bressant corpse…”

  Coulter looked at Pete, both thinking the same thing, the older man saying it out loud: “We've not been fast enough.”

  36 I JUST DON’T KNOW WHAT TO DO WITH MYSELF

  I woke up on Sunday morning with only one thought in my head. I had to go and see Mya, had to tell Stanley what I had seen. My head was full of Mavis's visions, faces looming out at me from her memory. Only, as I stood beneath the shower trying to get myself together, it came back to me that I already had a commitment that day.

  I had promised Jenny I would go to her house and help her choose some designs for the nursery. Sunday was the only day she didn't have to be on set, the only time I didn't have to be at work. Bob liked to spend his Sunday morning playing football and then going to the pub, so we'd have some time to ourselves.

  I could go and see Mya first, I reasoned, slowly getting into my clothes and styling my hair in the mirror. Only what state would I be in after that? I hardly wanted a repeat of the night of Mathilde and Toby. There was nothing for it, I realised, I would just have to see her first, have to try and push everything else to the back of my mind. At least she didn't live very far away from the Spiritualists.

  I tried my best to look composed as I arrived on her doorstep, but straightaway something happened to throw me, something I hadn't expected. She wasn't alone.

  “Stella,” she said, leading me through to the kitchen, “there's someone I want you to meet. He's not staying long, only when I told him you were coming he wanted to just say thank you for the huge favour you did him last summer.”

  As we walked into the room, he was leaning against the kitchen sink, a shy smile on his face and cup of coffee in his hand. Quite a handsome man from a distance, with blond hair cut into a mod style, a Jermyn Street shirt and narrow-fitting trousers. It was only when you got closer that you noticed the broken nose and the scar that curved in a semi-circle around his top lip.

  It was the scar that did it, that jogged the memory out into the open.

  “This is Giles,” said Jenny as he offered me his hand.

  “So pleased to meet you,” he said, smiling with eyes identical to Jenny's. “You really saved my bacon,” he gave a little laugh, “from those filthy pigs.”

  As our hands touched I felt a crackle of static electricity running through me. I was back in the Holland Park Lawn Tennis Club with Margaret Rose Stephenson, Ronald McSweeney, Bernard Baring and him…

  Giles Somerset. Jenny's brother. He was the other man playing poker that night.

  I dropped my hand as quickly as I could, muttered a vague greeting as I tried to blink the vision away from my eyes. It was no good. The room started to go out of focus.

  “Oh,” I said, grabbing hold of a chair. “I'm sorry, I seem to have come over all faint.”

  Jenny gave a little snort of amusement. “You always have this effect on girls, don't you Giles?” But when she saw my face, her expression turned serious.

  She pulled out the chair for me, sat me down. “Oh, you do look pale,” she said. “Do you want a glass of water?”

  I nodded, looking up at Giles the way Margaret Rose had from her knees, feeling the damp grass underneath me, my hand snaking into his pocket…

  “I say,” said Giles, “you're not up the duff as well, are you? Must be contagious.”

  “Giles.” Jenny elbowed him in the ribs. “Don't be so rude. Stella's just had a bit of a time of it recently, haven't you darling? You still not feeling yourself?”

  She put the water down on the table in front of me, concern in her eyes, her identical eyes. Dave had been telling the truth about those two, when you saw them together there was no denying it.

  Another face loomed out at me, seemed to hang in the air between them. I knew who he was all right, I had seen his face enough times in the paper. He was their father, in a black robe, still wearing his socks as he put his hands on Mavis…

  “Are you sleeping all right?” she asked.

  She thought I was upset about Toby, I realised, which was probably half the reason she had wanted me to come here today. We had talked briefly about it on the phone, but it was obvious she wanted to hear more, know all the details. At that moment, it seemed like a blessing – it was a good enough reason, after all, and the only way I could plausibly explain my behaviour.

  I took a sip of the drink and closed my eyes for a minute, silently praying for an end to this transmission.

  “Not really,” I said, glad that the room was back in focus when I opened them again. “It's been so hard getting used to it all.”

  “I know,” she nodded understandingly, put her hand on my shoulder and gave it a little squeeze. “I'm sorry, I should have realised.”

  Giles cleared his throat. “Well I'd better leave you ladies to it,” he said, putting his cup down in the sink.

  “Yes,” said Jenny, “you can see yourself out, can't you?”

  “Hope to see you again sometime,” he said, “when you're feeling better.”

  I smiled as best I could, seeing the vulnerability in his face, the childishness that made Jenny want to protect him, her words coming back to me from the moment she found out about his arrest. “Giles has a tendency to… Get involved with people he shouldn't…”

  Too right he did.

  “Me too,” I lied. “Sorry about this, it's so embarrassing. I'm sure I'll be all right in a minute.”

  “Oh Stella…” Jenny sat herself down on the chair opposite me. “Has it been really awful for you? I mean, of course it has. I can't believe it myself, not you and Toby. You were always such a good advert for love, before…” she stopped herself mid-sentence.

  “Before Toby had his head turned?” I pre-empted her. “By the devil Pat Innes? That's what everybody keeps telling me.”

  I hadn't really wanted to talk about this, but now, in the strange half-state tha
t Giles had unwittingly engendered in me, I found that I couldn't stop.

  “Was I so blind that I couldn't see what was happening right under my nose?” I said. “It's funny, you know. When I think back, I was actually having my doubts about those two on the day of our opening party. Only I stopped myself from thinking about it.”

  “Really?” said Jenny. “I never would have guessed.”

  “It was that suit he was wearing,” I said. “For so long he had been dressing like a slob, doing his painting in his old school shirts and the same filthy pair of jeans. It didn't matter how much money he made. I thought it was quite sweet, really, that he was just reverting to his upper class type, you know, the way country squires always seem to go around with their trousers held up by bale twine and straw in their hair. But when he met Pat, he started paying more attention. He looked so beautiful that day, in that blue suit, I really thought he'd made the effort for me. Only now I can see it. He even told me that Pat picked it out for him. Oh God.” I felt myself on the verge of tears again, another realisation hitting home. “And to think I made those suits for us that look almost exactly the same…”

  “Oh Stella, sweetheart.” Jenny took hold of my hand as I raised it to brush the tear away.

  “Those suits were my idea, remember? But that was a funny old day, wasn't it?” Her eyes clouded as her mind reeled back. “I said that Toby should choose his friends more carefully, didn't I?”

  “I thought you meant Baring,” I dared myself to say.

  “I did mean him,” she said, her eyes fixed on some far horizon. “Bloody little bastard. He went to school with Giles, you know, he was always going on about Artistic Baring, the scholarship social climber. I dreaded ever having to meet him, and when I did I knew he was another one of the many people I had to keep him away from.”

  Yes, I thought, I can see why.

  “But he was always so transfixed by those kind of people. Spiders. He can never realise what they're really after. Not his friendship, just his money, his title, his father's influence. He's such an easy mark. And Pat Innes is just the same, if not worse.”

  Her grip on my hand tightened and I flinched.

  “Oh God,” she said, letting go. “I'm sorry. I'm supposed to be comforting you, but here I am, banging on about myself again. Maybe I should have said more at the time, but I never thought that Toby was the sort that would get taken in, honestly I didn't. I thought he had more guts. More sense.”

  “So did I,” I said. “But it's interesting to find out these things, at least it gives me some sort of reason for it, that it wasn't anything I did wrong.”

  “How could it have been?” she said. “You were the one who did everything for him.”

  “Well,” I said, “me and Chris and Dave. They got him his first show, all the commissions from Lady Maybury. And how did he repay them? We hardly ever saw them once he'd had a taste of success. He was embarrassed by they way he treated them too. He couldn't look them in the eye. He knew Baring was ripping them off and making a fortune out of it. I always thought he was the worst of my enemies,” I admitted. “I knew he hated me and he was always putting down everything I did, belittling all my work.”

  “He hates women full stop,” said Jenny.

  “I thought Pat was doing me a favour that day, throwing him out,” I said. “But he was only getting him out of the way so he could move in himself.”

  Jenny shook her head, stood up and put the kettle back on.

  “I always thought I was a pretty good judge of character,” she said, staring out of the window. “But Toby had us all fooled, didn't he? You're right, though, about him reverting to upper class type.” There was a slight tremor in her voice. “They're all a bunch of heartless bastards and they always get what they bloody well want, whatever the cost.”

  Her hand went up to her stomach.

  Dave hadn't made any of it up, I realised. He was right about everything. Those faces I had seen in Mavis McGruder's mind, that procession of lords and policemen, aldermen and politicians all lining up beside a blasphemous altar to take her, one by one. They were all part of it, part of the reason why Mavis and Mathilde, Margaret Rose and Susannah, Bronwyn and Bobby all had to die.

  I suddenly couldn't stay with her any longer. I had to go and see Mya. Revelations were unfolding in my mind like a line of dominoes falling and I couldn't control it much longer.

  “Listen, Jenny,” I said, getting to my feet. “Do you mind if we do this another day? Only I think I'm getting a migraine, I'd like to go home and lie down.”

  “Oh dear,” she said, but relief was written over her features. She had said things she didn't mean to as well. “Do you want me to call you a taxi?”

  “No,” I said, “it's not far. Maybe the fresh air will do me good, get the blood circulating again. I'm really sorry I've been such a washout.”

  “Don't be,” she said. “I'm really sorry that you've had to go through all this. You helped me so much getting Chris to sort out Giles, I should have done something for you in return. Are you sure you'll be all right?”

  “Positive,” I lied.

  I managed to make it up the hill to Mya's, to fall into her parlour and tell her.

  “I've got to see Stanley. There's been another one, a woman called Mavis, last night. And she started to show me who it was, how it all connects, where he takes them.”

  “My dear girl.” Mya's face went white as she put her hand over my forehead.

  “She knew him, the driver,” I said, going into a trance, “he was Sexy Ron, the real Sexy Ron…”

  37 JUST ONE LOOK

  When Pete and Coulter told their story to Fielding, he couldn't get to the West End fast enough. Virtually stood over them as they filled in all their paperwork, Steadman's statement typed up, Ernie's pictorial evidence to go with it. Then, when he'd snatched it up and fled, the two men caught up with the details of the latest body.

  She'd been discovered in a quiet cul-de-sac in a residential neighbourhood of Acton. A chauffeur living across the street had heard a car driving off quickly at 2.30am and had thought no more about, it until he got up three hours later and looked out of the window to see what he thought was a tailor's dummy, lying on the garage forecourt opposite.

  Her parents had christened her Maureen Easton, but the name on her National Assistance card and Family Allowance book was Patricia Fleming, aged 31, resident of Lancaster Road W11. To most of the Notting Hill bobbies, however, she was Mavis McGruder, a loudmouthed old hand who liked telling tall stories about being the mistress of lords.

  Seemed her fantasy world extended to the flatmate who had made the formal ID. Rita Hayworth, she called herself. For the past four days she'd continued to babysit Mavis's children, Gloria, four, and Johnny, six, until the knock came on her door this morning. It wasn't certain what would happen to the children, they would probably be taken into care. Their father had been a squaddie, but he had long since vanished. Rita had never known him at all.

  Her statement was chilling.

  “I heard her walking home,” she had told the investigating officers. “I knew it was her as she was wearing those sling-backs, make a hell of a noise on the steps. She must have got halfway to the front door when I heard her stop, come back down and walk on up the road. All I can think of is that she must have seen someone she knew, someone she trusted. She always said The Stripper would never get her and she carried this knife in her handbag she'd taken off some fella who tried to use it on her. Mavis was no pushover, believe you me. But this is just terrifying — he was waiting for her right outside our front door. I don't know how I'm ever going to get over it…”

  Pete tried to take it all in, add the new information to the reams of notes in his book. Day turned into night, a return visit to the Scrubs postponed for the morning, he and Coulter instead attempting to work out a strategy for Steadman. How could they get him to confess to a court, when he was clearly so terrified? Without his testimony, they would have nothing c
oncrete on Marks, it was imperative to make sure he stuck to the story.

  Pete couldn't help but think that Steadman's fear was a mirror of McSweeney's fear, a mirror of Ernie's sweaty distress.

  Something worse than prison.

  The exhilaration he'd felt at the start of the day had long turned into exhaustion by the time Pete rounded the corner of Oxford Gardens that night, the folder of photographs in his briefcase now, still weighing up whether to share them with Coulter or not.

  Something outside his gate that startled him back into wakefulness.

  The black Rover.

  Detective Chief Inspector Bell sat in the backseat, a briefcase on his knee, the shadow of a smile flickering underneath his moustache. “I always thought you had initiative, Bradley,” he said. “But I must say, you have surpassed even my own expectations.”

  “Thank you, sir,” said Pete, feeling himself colour uncomfortably with the praise. “But I was only following your lead. I have to say, it was something of a relief to make sense of it all,” he stopped himself, not wanting to gabble in front of his senior officer. “So,” he said. “Sampson Marks. Have you spoken to him, sir? What's he told you?”

  Bell's shrewd eyes ran across his face as he spoke, as if he was weighing up every word. “Let's take a little drive,” he said, “and I'll tell you about it. Here…” He fished into his inside jacket pocket and produced two cigars in long, silver tubes. “In the meantime, I think you've earned this.”

  They drove down Ladbroke Grove, past the ever-increasing construction of the new flyover, down Holland Park Avenue and along to Shepherd's Bush. Pete thought that they would be heading for the station there, but Bell's driver didn't stop, instead he turned down Brook Green towards Hammersmith. The DCI must have seen Pete frown.

  “Nothing to worry about, Bradley. We need to have a chat somewhere private before we proceed, a bit of a de-briefing, so to speak. As you will appreciate, now that these two cases of ours have dovetailed somewhat, there are still some sensitive matters pertaining to the Wesker affair that are best left off the record.”