Bad Penny Blues

by Cathi Unsworth

  Pete felt tears pricking at the back of his eyes, staring at this man who reminded him so much of his father.

  “I've been such a fool,” he said.

  Coulter shook his head, started to say something reassuring, but Pete cut him off.

  “I had the evidence, Stan, more than enough to incriminate Marks and all his well-connected friends. I was left an envelope in my locker, the night we arrested Ferrier. If I'd only opened it a few minutes earlier, before you left, you would have seen it too. A key to a locker in Paddington Station, where there was another envelope. Full of all the other photographs Ernie took that night in Teddy's club. I couldn't even begin to tell you who was on them, Stan, I wouldn't want you to know, it could kill you.”

  He rubbed his forehead with his good hand. “No one saw that envelope delivered, it was Dugdale on shift that night and he was round the back, having a fag, when it miraculously appeared. There was no postmark on it, no stamp. It were that slick I assumed it must have been sent from on high.”

  Waves of despair and rage washed over him as he admitted it.

  “So I gave them back to the person I thought had left them for me. And now I know he's the one we'll never get past, the reason we'll never be able to bring in Jack, however much we want to. The next day, Steadman was dead and Fielding came back with all that crap about Marks being under the Sweeney's watch. Sent us to look round garages all summer long and gave all the evidence we had, every damn bit of it, to the very people who are going to bury it all. Bury me, too.”

  Pete was close to breaking down, the thought of Joan a widow and Little Jim an orphan…

  But Coulter didn't turn a hair. “Photos,” he said, raising his eyebrows. “They wouldn't happen to have featured a couple of fellows named Minton and Somerset by any chance, would they?”

  “How do you know?” asked Pete, astonished.

  “Remember the night you brought Gypsy George in?” the older man said. “Well I was one of the privileged CID who actually got to see some of the contents of his envelopes. And there was more than just one set of prints in there, a lot more. So tell me, was it just the photographs that were left for you in the locker? No negatives or anything?”

  Pete shook his head.

  “And it was back in July that you handed them over to this fellow from on high?”

  “That's right.”

  “Well then, in that case, I would say that you're safe. They've left you alone nearly four months haven't they? Can only mean one thing – they haven't got the negatives either. And they still haven't worked out how you got the prints in the first place.”

  Coulter was like a magician Pete thought, pulling another rabbit out of his hat each time it seemed that all was lost. He felt a smile twitching at the corner of his mouth.

  “They think I think they gave them to me,” he realised. “My ignorance has been keeping me safe all along.”

  Coulter nodded. “So long as you never find out and give the game away,” he said, “then I doubt anyone will touch either you or your mystery benefactor.”

  He leant forwards, patted Pete on the shoulder.

  “Sleep easy, Pete,” he said. “That's what I reckon you should do now. Have a good night's kip and then, when you're up to it, just give some thought to what we've been discussing. If you're willing, we can resume our own private investigations tomorrow. Starting with the landlord of the Princess Alexandra.”

  40 WALK AWAY

  “Would you look at this?” Lenny dropped yesterday's paper down disgustedly on my desk. It was open at the arts and entertainments page, just where I anticipated it would be. He had seen it too.

  A doe-eyed Beatle and a sharp-faced Stone standing either side of them, Toby was pictured clinking Champagne glasses with Pat on the opening night of his latest show at Duke Street. But it was the man standing between them that had nearly made me drop my own edition on the tube floor when I'd first seen it. “Club owner and entrepreneur Sampson Marks” the caption had referred to him. But I knew him as someone else, had seen his true profession through the eyes of a murdered girl:

  The Chopper.

  “Those two bastards,” said Lenny, jabbing his fingers down to cover the faces of the pop stars, “are responsible for sending poor James round the bend. And this one,” he lifted them up again, pointed his index finger down onto the hatchet face, “is the reason I moved halfway across London to hide myself in a bank.”

  “Really?” I said. I was surprised enough at him mentioning James to me, let alone having prior knowledge of Marks.

  “Oh yes,” said Lenny, “I used to be a bit of a wild one in my youth, but not half as much as him. He used to come round all the clubs, all the pool halls in Bethnal Green, getting his protection money with a bloody great cutlass. Slashed a friend of mine from ear to ear with it. Then he took a shine to me, and that's when I had to get out of the East End.” Lenny shuddered at the memory. “I didn't want to end up being one of his boys, wearing a Glasgow smile if I said the wrong thing one day. And now they're saying he's got a nightclub in the West End?”

  “Doesn't say what kind of nightclub, does it?” I pointed out.

  “Not hard to guess, though.” Lenny took his finger off The Chopper's face. “My godfathers,” he said, “didn't I tell you that Pat was mixing with the worst kind?”

  “What's all the commotion?” Jackie came through the door. She was uncharacteristically late and as I turned my head to greet her, I couldn't help but notice she was looking a bit ruffled, her hair not in its usual immaculate style, her eyes a trifle bleary.

  “It's Toby,” said Lenny. “He's hanging out with gangsters now.”

  “You what?” Jackie deposited her bag on the desk and came over, rubbing her brow.

  Lenny showed her the offending newspaper item. “I know him,” he informed her. “He was the terror of Bethnal Green. Ought to be locked up, by rights. Like I said to Stella, it's all going to come to a bad end for Toby, he gets himself mixed up with this lot.”

  “And what were you saying about that other pair?” I wanted to know, tapping my fingers down on the picture. “About them sending James around the bend?”

  “Oh,” Lenny's face went bright red, “I probably shouldn't have mentioned that. It's not their fault really,” he sat down, “it's all them pills he's been taking for so long. He thinks the Beatles, the Stones and Phil Spector are spying on his studio and stealing all his ideas. Smashed up half his equipment looking for bugs.”

  “Is that where you were last night?” asked Jackie. “When you were supposed to be down the Gates with me?”

  Lenny nodded, shamefaced.

  “Don't worry, pet, turns out you did me a favour, standing me up.” There was a definite twinkle in her eye. “Who'd like to make me a cup of tea and I might just tell you why?”

  “I'll do it.” Lenny shot out of his seat.

  I raised an eyebrow at Jackie. “Well, well,” I started to say, but the ringing phone cut me off.

  By the time I had finished the call, there was a cup of steaming tea in front of me and two pairs of eyes watching me impatiently, eager for Jackie to get on with her story.

  “I'm sorry,” I said, still trying to puzzle out what I had just heard, “but that was Jenny. For some reason she's been taken into the Royal Marsden Hospital in Chelsea and she wants me to come and visit her, bring her some books, this evening. She said it was just the results of a blood test or something she had to have for the baby, just routine. But isn't the Royal Marsden…”

  “The cancer hospital,” said Jackie.

  Propped up in her bed on crisp white pillows, her skin glowing clear and her hair fanned around her like a halo, Jenny didn't look like someone who could possibly have a life-threatening disease. It was only when I got close that I saw the lines furrowing her forehead as her eyes worked down the front page of the newspaper she was holding.

  It wasn't yesterday's paper that was keeping her captive. Jenny was reading the West End Final edit
ion of the Evening Post that proclaimed the discovery of another dead nude with the blunt headline: JACK IS BACK.

  “Oh here you are.” She looked up sharply as I closed the door to her private room. “Did you bring them? Emile Zola and Jean-Paul Sartre? At last I'll be able to catch up with all those great minds you were reading years ago. Make a nice change from this.” She tossed the paper onto the bedside table.

  “All present and correct,” I said, emptying the contents of my bag out for her. I piled the books next to her flowers and fruitbowl and as I did, I couldn't help but glance at the paper.

  They didn't have a name for her yet, nor even a photograph. The picture instead showed a man standing by a pile of branches, a dustbin lid in his hand. “Not another one,” I said.

  “I'm afraid so.” The cheer drained out of Jenny's voice.

  “What is this?” I picked up the paper, looked closer at the picture. “Is this where they found her?”

  She nodded. “In Kensington, this time. By one of the vile buildings Daddy made. The very one I once made a protest against, in fact.”

  I looked across at her, over the now very large and perfectly formed bump in her stomach. “Jenny,” the cheery façade I'd been determined to plaster across my face crumbled at the sight of it, “what's going on? Why are you here?”

  She raised her eyebrows. “It's nothing,” she said, “honestly. I had one dodgy blood test in my ante-natal, which is why I've got to stay in overnight, they want to double check it. I'm sure when the next results come back it'll all have been for nothing.” She moved her hands up to encircle her neck. “It's a touch of glandular fever, that's all. Nothing so bad as…”

  She bit her lip. Glanced towards the door and then back at me.

  “What time do you make it?” she asked.

  “It's just after seven,” I said, checking my watch.

  “Good, then we have a while,” she said, indicating the chair by the side of her bed, “before Bob gets here.”

  I sat down, moved closer to her as she lowered her voice.

  “Stella,” she said. “You know you helped me once when I had no one else to turn to?”

  I nodded, holding my breath, wondering whether what she was about to come out with was the same thing that had been haunting my every waking moment.

  “Well, I think I'm going to need to ask you for another favour. And it won't be an easy one either.” Her eyes were as heavy as stormclouds.

  “Go on,” I said.

  She swallowed. “I need to go and see my mother,” she said, “and get back something from that house. She's been trying to offer me an olive branch for years,” her eyes flicked down to the counterpane, where she began picking at a loose thread, “but she's not going to get it,” her gaze flashed back up, “unless she gives me what I want. I've got a feeling I can make her do it too. I've got a feeling things haven't been going so well for mother lately. Only I need to speak to her, make sure I can get her on her own. And that's where you come in.”

  A prickle of fear moistened my palms but I tried not to let it show. Instead I nodded and smiled, encouraging her to continue while I battened it down.

  “If I can get to see her, would you come with me?” she asked. “It's not just because I'm so fat I have to lean on you, it's the moral support I need more. It'll be hard for me to go back to that house, you see.” She dropped her gaze again, resumed tugging at the thread. “I didn't have a happy childhood, Stella. Money doesn't buy you that. Quite the opposite, in fact.”

  “I think I understand,” I said, not wanting to break any confidences, but not wanting her to have to say it out loud. “It's why Dave was so worried about you, you know, when I saw him that time…”

  She gave a brief smile that could have been a grimace. “Dil,” she said, “dear old Dil. The only man who never judged. That's why I could talk to him. How much did he tell you?”

  “That your father is a dangerous man,” I said, trying not to blink, trying not to give in to the fear that coiled around my guts.

  She nodded. “He is. But Stella,” she left the thread, put her hand over mine, reading my obvious discomfort, “don't think I'm going to let him anywhere near you. If we do go back to my parents’ house it will only be on the condition that he isn't there, that no one else sees us. I think mother will agree to it, it's the only chance she's going to get of seeing her granddaughter, after all. It's just that you might have to see a few things that are,” she paused, her fingers clenching against my hand, “pretty bloody vile. Do you know anything about sado-masochism, Stella?”

  I nodded, trying to pluck courage from thin air.

  “I do,” I said. “I've seen some pretty bloody vile things myself.”

  She nodded, as if I was verifying something she had thought all along.

  “I knew I could trust you,” she said. She leant back on her pillow, her eyelids fluttering. “Thank you, Stella.” She squeezed my hand and let it go, closed her eyes.

  Silence welled around us as I stared at her, forcing back the tears. Heard somebody turn the handle of the door and looked round to see Robert Mannings, his arms full of flowers.

  “Gosh,” Jenny came back round, “I nearly drifted off then. You don't realise what having a baby does to you, how much they knock you out. Oh Bob,” she looked over my shoulder and smiled, “here you are, darling.”

  “I should go,” I said, standing up. “Let you two have some time together.”

  “Thanks, Stella.” Jenny smiled dreamily.

  Mannings nodded, grunting his assent. The dark rings around his eyes and the way he could barely force a smile told me that he was taking this way worse than Jenny was. Either that, or she was only telling me half the story with her glandular fever line. I could hardly bear to look at him either. All I could see was Jenny standing there, in my dream, glowing, wearing her long white dress.

  I hadn't realised it meant her as well.

  But everything else had come true.

  41 BABY LET ME TAKE YOU HOME

  The blonde girl sat at a table in the far corner of the Warwick Castle, downing her second glass of whisky as she went over her story again. It was three weeks since her friend had gone missing, three weeks’ worth of whisky but still nothing had blurred the memory of that night.

  “We went to Oxford Street, shopping, you know,” she said. “Ended up buying the same outfit, a turquoise two-piece with fur trim, still got mine in the closet at home, I can show it you if you want. I haven't worn it since.” She shivered, took another gulp of her drink. “It was Jeanie's idea of a joke, if we wore the same outfit Jack the Stripper wouldn't know which one of us was which. ’Cos the rumour had been going round that when he took Mavis, he was really after Jeanie. They both came from Glasgow and they both used the same name, Patsy Fleming, a little scam they cooked up to fool you lot.” Her kohl-rimmed eyes looked up for an instant at Coulter's, then back down at her empty glass.

  “Why would he be after Jeanie, Vera?” Coulter asked.

  She picked the glass up, rolled it round in her fingers.

  “Because of the doctor,” she said, eyes following the motion. “Dr Ward. We both testified for him last year. Twice. Marylebone and the Bailey. I'm sure you've got it all on record. We tried to prove he weren't poncing us, he was just our gentleman friend, which he was. But you know what happened.” Her eyelashes flicked upwards and she stared at Coulter. “Look, d’you mind if I have another one in here?” She lifted up the glass. “Only it gives me the willies to keep going back over all this.”

  “I'll go.” Pete didn't want to break Coulter's concentration, nor the thread of the blonde girl's story. For according to Vera, the body discovered yesterday morning, Wednesday the 25th of November, on a patch of wasteland behind the car park on Hornton Street, Kensington, was her missing friend Jeanette White. Nobody else had been able to come up with a name for her so far, only the description of a decomposed naked body of a five-foot-one-inch woman with short black hair, a tattoo on he
r right arm of a bunch of flowers with Jeanette written on top of it and Mum and Dad in a scroll underneath. She had been dead about a month.

  But Coulter had sprung into action as soon as the news came through. Headed straight to the Warwick Castle looking for this Vera as if he already knew she would have all the answers for him. Maybe he did. So much of Coulter's information seemed to come from the girls themselves, Pete was sure this must have come from one of the other Portobello toms who'd seen them drinking together in this pub, on the night of October 23rd.

  That night, Jeanette and Vera had staggered out of here with thirteen whiskies each under their belts and been picked up by a couple of men on the corner of Portobello Road and Elgin Avenue. Each man had his own car and they were supposed to be travelling in convoy to Chiswick, where the girls had been told the business would take place.

  “This for Vera?” asked the landlord, raising his bushy, salt-and-pepper eyebrows at Pete. “On the house.”

  All that money in the pot, Vera was the only one to claim it back alive.

  “Jeanie's one was definitely local,” the blonde was telling Coulter as Pete came back with her drink, “I could tell by his accent. My one said he was from out of town, which was why we were supposed to be following Jeanie's car, but he sounded pretty London to me. Anyway, Jeanie's john must have done a shortcut, we lost him round the Bush somewhere. Funny, ain't it?” She snatched up the glass Pete had placed in front of her and took a hefty slug. “It was a flash motor he was driving, a Zephyr I think, one of them ones with the big grilles at the front. How could you lose one of them? I was going to take the number plates down,” she said and grimaced, “but my john made me sit in the backseat and I couldn't get a good enough look at them from there.”