‘Who d’yer reckon it is, the sodding Prince o’ Wales? Now get this door open.’
There was the sound of urgent whispering and then a sudden thump as if something heavy had hit the ground.
‘What’s going on in there?’ Turner demanded.
‘Nothing, Bill. Nothing.’
‘Are you gonna open this door, Eileen,’ Turner’s voice had dropped to a low, menacing growl, ‘or do I have to open it for yer?’
The door opened just a crack. Eileen, her face caked with the remains of last night’s make-up and her hair a wild, matted halo of unnaturally ferocious red, peered out at him.
‘I didn’t know he was still here, Bill,’ she mouthed. ‘Honest.’
‘Who yer talking about?’
‘One of me friends,’ she said with a bleak shrug. ‘He must have fell asleep last night. I woke up when yer knocked just now, and there he was.’
Turner shoved the door open, sending Eileen stumbling backwards into the room. As he strode in after her, he made no attempt to help or to steady her.
Bernie, despite his anger at Turner, was suddenly on the alert. From years of practice in assessing such situations, Bernie could sniff the scent of impending trouble as readily as a bloodhound tracking an escaped convict. He squared up his shoulders and stood there on the landing, blocking the escape route down the grimy stairway.
‘Oi! You!’ Turner barked through gritted teeth. He stabbed a finger at a wide-eyed man, who was in the compromising and powerless position of trying to pull up his trousers whilst lying prostrate on the filthy bedside rug. ‘Out!’
The man tried to rise to his feet, but he wasn’t quick enough for Turner’s liking. He landed a kick in the man’s back and sent him rolling across the narrow stretch of floor towards the door. He came to a halt at Bernie’s feet.
‘Now!’ Turner hollered.
Bernie reached down with one of his great beefy hands and dragged the man to his feet.
‘Do as the gentleman says, eh?’ Bernie suggested with a broad, sarcastic wink. ‘And it wouldn’t be a bad idea to pull yer strides up neither, moosh.’
The man stared up at Bernie; his mind working overtime wondering what the hell was going on, as he hitched up his trousers. Neither of the two men – both of whom looked as though they would kill him as soon as say good-morning to him – could have been the brass’s husband. They were too prosperous-looking for that. She might have been in their league a few years back, but, from the state of her now, she definitely wasn’t any more. Maybe they were her pimps? Maybe they’d found out she’d been working a foreigner on the pair of them and was keeping the extra takings, and they’d come round to put the frighteners on her. But whatever and whoever they were, he knew he didn’t like the look of either of them. It came to something when a man couldn’t come off the ships and do an honest, straightforward bit of business with a tart without getting himself a kicking.
He did up his final button and took a tentative step towards the door that Bernie was still guarding like a dog ready to break its leash. Bemie stepped aside to let him pass, but the man stopped and turned round. Bernie immediately returned to blocking the doorway.
‘Er, can I get me jacket, mate?’ he asked Turner nervously, pointing at the armchair piled high with clothes and taking care to avoid any eye contact with Eileen, who had firmly stated her allegiance by positioning herself next to Turner.
Turner slowly took off his trilby, placed it just so on the bed and then turned his attention to the armchair. With a delicately poised finger and thumb he lifted a dark blue seaman’s reefer-jacket from the heap. ‘This it?’ he asked, holding it out to the man as though it were covered in something very unpleasant.
He nodded. ‘Yeah. That’s it.’
Turner, still staring at the man, patted the pockets until he found what he was looking for — a roll of money. ‘Just home from a trip are yer?’
‘That’s right.’
‘I thought so. Yer face is all brown from the sea air. It’s good for yer, yer know, the sea air.’ He flung the now empty-pocketed coat at the man’s feet. ‘And it’s a good, keeping healthy. Yer wanna bear that in mind when yer go spending the night with birds what yer don’t know.’
Turner let the roll of money drop from his fingers to the floor as though it was so much rubbish, and then, without shifting his gaze from the now sweating man, he grabbed Eileen by the top of her arm, his huge fingers digging into her skinny flesh. ‘Say goodbye to the sailor boy, Eileen,’ he commanded her. ‘And let him know if yer wanna see him again.’
‘Goodbye,’ Eileen gasped – her arm was really hurting. ‘Yer’ve gotta go now and I don’t wanna see yer round here no more. Right?’
The sailor desperately wanted to do as she asked, but no one seemed to notice that he couldn’t get past the man blocking the doorway. Why on earth hadn’t he stuck with the sorts down Chinatown like he usually did? He’d kill that bloke he’d met in the pub who’d told him he could get this bird on the cheap. What was the idiot’s name again? Reg Dunn, that was it. He’d find the bastard before he had to go back on board. And he’d have him. The silly bleeder had wound up costing him the whole of his wages and, by the feel of it, a cracked rib for good measure. Some cheap night this had turned out to be.
‘I liked how yer said that, Eileen,’ said Turner, grinning with pleasure. ‘Cos I appreciate a bit o’ respect from a woman. A bit of loyalty. I was saying that to Bernie here, just a minute or so ago, wasn’t I, Bern?’
Bemie nodded his agreement.
‘I mean,’ Turner continued, ‘what more could a man want than a woman what wants to please him?’ He let go of her arm and clapped his hands together with a loud crack. ‘Tell yer what, you get yerself all dollied up, girl, and I’ll take yer out to celebrate. Now, how’d yer like that?’
‘That’s a smashing idea!’ Eileen was glowing with pleasure and excitement; she’d been right, Bill did still love her.
Bernie, on the other hand, wasn’t nearly so impressed with the idea of another outing. He’d just about had his bellyful of driving Turner round the streets. And Turner hadn’t mentioned where he wanted to go on this particular little jaunt. But from Bernie’s experience it probably wasn’t going to involve a trip over to the boating lake in Vicky Park for a bit of a row around, or even an early matinee at the Poplar Hippodrome. If Turner’s usual form was anything to go on, it would probably mean that they were going to spend the rest of the day in one of the twenty-four hour drinking dives that catered for the big-time gamblers.
Bernie closed his eyes. He could just see it coming. They’d be in for the bloody duration.
‘Guv,’ Bernie began, as gently as he could, shoving the sailor to one side as though he were a parcel. ‘All right if I nip off home? Cos Queenie, you know…’
Turner reached out to Bernie who, half expecting a slap for even suggesting such a thing, flinched and stuck up his guard to protect his face. But Turner, his mood having returned to one of sentimental camaraderie, was only interested in being best pals.
‘You get yerself off home, Bern,’ he said magnanimously. ‘And here—’ he stooped down and picked up the seaman’s roll of notes ‘—you take this for yer trouble. Leave the motor for me, get yerself a cab, and something nice for the old woman. Cos I like to see the ladies kept happy, don’t you, Bern?’
Bernie took the wad gratefully. Not so much for the money, although by the weight of it, he guessed there was a good forty or so quid there, but for the chance, at last, to escape.
His mind was made up this time, he would not be working for Big Bill Turner’s firm very much longer, not if he had anything to do with it.
He turned on his heel, grabbed the sailor by the shoulder and started to steer him towards the grimy narrow stairway. His nose twitched at the stench. His Queenie was definitely not the proudest of housekeepers but this place smelt like a rat-hole.
‘Bernie!’
He froze. Turner was on his case again. Wh
at was the matter with the man? Bernie slowly turned round to face him.
‘Yes, guv?’
‘I’ve changed me mind. I’m feeling a bit tired, you’d better drive us.’ He chucked Eileen roughly under the chin. ‘Then me and you can have a little cuddle in the back seat, eh, babe?’
Eileen beamed back at him in a state of near ecstasy.
‘Now,’ he went on, ‘you take jolly Jack Tar here downstairs and explain to him, nice and clear mind, how he ain’t welcome round here no more, and we’ll be down in a couple o’ minutes.’ He leered lecherously at Eileen. ‘As soon as madam here’s said hello nicely to me.’
Bernie nodded. Now he really had the hump. He was gonna be sitting downstairs like a little kid waiting outside the public bar for his old man to drink away his wages, while Turner was up here shtupping Eileen. Great. Just what he wanted.
Yanking the hapless merchant seaman out on to the landing and pinning him against the rickety washstand, Bemie pulled the door to and left Turner and Eileen to it. That was a sight that he definitely would not like to see.
But while those two were getting on with their bit of fun, Bemie intended having a bit of his own. He’d take Eileen’s ‘friend’ down the side alley and explain to him – nice and clear, just as Turner wanted – not to stray on to another feller’s pitch. Because not only was Bernie now in a very bad mood indeed, but he’d never liked sailors.
Their stupid trousers got on his nerves.
* * *
‘You got any booze in here?’ Turner swept all the clothes off the armchair with a single swipe of his arm and settled down to wait for Eileen to get ready.
‘Under the bed,’ Eileen’s reflection answered him from the little mirror on the chest that doubled as a dressing- table. ‘The sailor boy fetched me a couple of bottles.’
It was only because she was leaning forward to examine her face in the mirror – in an effort to decide whether to scrape off last night’s make-up and begin again or to try to plaster over the cracks – that Eileen didn’t notice Turner looming up behind her.
‘Good was he?’ Turner hissed into her ear.
She twisted round, her hands clasping her throat.
‘Blimey, Bill, yer frightened the life out o’ me, creeping up on me like that.’
‘Did I?’ He was standing right over her, breathing very hard. ‘D’you like being frightened?’
‘What?’
‘I do.’
‘Bill?’ Eileen swallowed hard. ‘Don’t talk like that. Yer know I—’
‘Not all the time.’ He had closed his eyes, and tipped back his head. He began gently smoothing her hair. ‘But sometimes…’
Suddenly he grabbed a handful of her hair and dragged her on to the filthy carpet.
‘My Moe’d be interested in hearing all about you and your sailor boy,’ he said, straddling her now shaking body. ‘What was he like?’
‘Look, Bill, yer know I don’t like it when yer want me to—’ Eileen began nervously.
Turner nodded, deep in thought, and continued as though he hadn’t heard her. ‘She likes me to tell her stories. About what I’ve been up to. And about—’
‘Look, Bill, I really don’t—’
Turner raised his hand, slapped Eileen hard across the face and then smiled down at her. ‘Get yer things off, Eileen.’
* * *
As he buttoned up his trousers, Turner looked around the room as though seeing it for the first time.
‘How comes you wound up living like this?’
Eileen, still naked, stared up at him from the mound of covers on the unmade bed. She propped herself up on one elbow and half-heartedly pulled the stained and torn sheet over herself to cover the booze-aged and sagging body that she knew was no longer the great asset it had once been. ‘It was when you said I had to leave the flat,’ she said quietly. ‘I didn’t have nowhere else to go, did I?’
‘Bernie’s old woman’s as bad. And she’s a piece o’ shit like you and all. It proper suits the pair o’ yer living in dosshouses like this.’
As he tucked his shirt tails in and looped his braces on to his shoulders, Eileen climbed unsteadily off the bed and went over to him. ‘Yer can’t mean that, Bill,’ she whined. ‘Not after what we’ve just done.’
‘After what we’ve just done? Do me a favour. Don’t remind me, or yer’ll have me fetching me breakfast up again.’ He curled his lip at her in disgust. ‘I’m gonna have to go down the baths and get meself cleaned up before I go home as it is. My Moe’d never let me in the house if I tried going in with this stink on me.’
She shook her head. ‘You don’t mean that. You don’t.’
‘Don’t I?’ Turner started laughing at her and then bent over to tie his laces.
Eileen backed slowly away from him towards the door, keeping her eye on his every move.
She opened the door, slipped, still naked, on to the landing and snatched the long-bladed bread knife from the side of the grease-encrusted stove.
* * *
Bernie was just about fed up with waiting. ‘A couple o’ minutes’ Turner had reckoned. Well, that must have been a good half-hour ago. Bernie wasn’t taking any more of it. He got out of the car, slung the keys on to the driver’s seat, and slammed the door.
He paused to flash a just-about-interested glance along the alley towards the slumped heap of clothes that was the unconscious seaman, then began to walk off in search of a cab, when he heard a gurgling scream coming from the top window.
His instinct for bother immediately aroused, Bernie was up the stairs and had put his boot to Eileen’s already half-rotten door before he had stopped even to think about what he was doing. As the door crashed off its single hinge, he was through the doorway and barging into the room like a train at full steam.
He pulled up as quickly as if he’d hit a brick wall.
The room looked as though someone had gone mad with a can of red paint. There was blood everywhere.
Turner was sitting astride Eileen on the big, unmade bed. He was fully clothed but Eileen was naked. Her eyes stared sightlessly up at him as her head lolled over the edge of the mattress, her frizzy red hair tumbling down on to the filth-and-blood-darkened bedside rug. Her throat had been slit, and the blood was still pumping from the wound like a fountain, gushing in rhythmic spurts.
A long-bladed knife glinted up at Bernie from the floor. It took him a very short time to decide what to do.
* * *
Cissie hauled on the brake and closed her eyes. She had decided. Once she had got out of the truck and had started walking along the street, then that would be that – she would go and give Sammy his answer.
She covered her face with her hands and groaned. She had put it off for as long as she could. She hadn’t even driven straight back from her parents’ house, but had cruised around the streets, stretching out the time, taking every moment to consider what she should do. But now the time had come.
She rubbed her eyes, and then dragged her fingertips hard down her cheeks. So much had happened to her in the seven months since Davy had died – no, not since Davy had died, since Davy had been murdered by that bastard Turner – that she should have been craving the safety and stability that Sammy Clarke could offer her. But were safety and stability what she really wanted?
She leant her arms on the steering wheel and peered over them at the corner shop at the far end of the street.
The wife of a pink-faced grocer.
It certainly wasn’t how she had ever seen herself.
* * *
‘Hello, Sam,’ she greeted him, immediately lifting her hand to silence Lena, Myrtle and Ethel, who were standing by the counter like a set of Toby-jugs. ‘It’s all right, you three, I ain’t gonna try and push in. I just come in to ask Sammy something.’
‘Hhhhmmmph!’ snorted Ethel for the three of them.
‘What is it, Cis?’ Sammy asked with his usual eager affability.
‘Can we have a word when yer’ve go
t a minute?’
‘Course we can.’
‘A word eh?’ Myrtle said, her chins quivering with hostility. ‘Wouldn’t have nothing to do with them terrible goings-on in Whitechapel, I don’t suppose?’
‘As usual, I ain’t got a clue what yer going on about, Myrtle,’ Cissie responded wearily.
‘D’you mean you ain’t heard?’ Lena asked, delighted as always whenever she found herself with the opportunity to be the bearer of bad news.
‘How can I tell yer if I have, if I dunno what yer talking about?’
‘Cis,’ Sammy said, with a warning flash of his eyes, ‘it ain’t a very nice—’
‘Big Bill Turner’s been stabbed to death,’ Lena interrupted him. ‘Found with the old whore what did it. She killed him, then slit her own throat. Blood-bath it was.’
‘Whitechapel?’ Cissie breathed. She blinked rapidly. Eileen…
It couldn’t be.
‘Queenie Denham, you know, that moneylender from over Bow Common,’ Ethel chipped in, ‘her old man found ’em. He said he heard the screams as he was just passing by and went up to help. But if yer believe that, yer’ll believe anything. Bloody load of old toffee. I reckon he’d gone round to do a bit o’ business with the old brass, if the truth was known, and he come across that little lot instead.’ She grinned nastily at her daughter. ‘I bet that put him off his stroke, eh, Lena?’
Lena sniggered back at her mother. ‘It will do when that Queenie has his balls off him for going with a tom!’
Cissie stared incredulously at Lena. ‘You must feel the same about your Reg then, Lena,’ she snapped. ‘Cos he favours working girls, don’t he?’
Lena’s eyes glinted with fury; she’d never liked that side of things since they’d first got married and was only all too pleased when Reg did his business elsewhere and didn’t bother her with it, but she hated the thought that a stuck-up bitch like Cissie Flowers knew about it. She’d have her, the cocky cow.
The Flower Girl Page 30