Charlie (66 page)

‘I wish I’d been brave enough to go to the police when it happened,’ Rita whispered, her small face clouding over. ‘If I had, you probably wouldn’t be standing on this tube with me now. You’d be off at university, with two proud parents sitting at home.’

‘Maybe,’ Charlie said softly. ‘But then I’d still be a spoiled brat who couldn’t boil an egg. I wouldn’t have Andrew, you, Beryl or Ivor behind me.’

Rita said nothing more until they got out at Tottenham Court Road. But as they rode up on the escalator she turned back to Charlie. ‘I thank the day I met you,’ she whispered, putting her hand on Charlie’s shoulder. ‘You’ve given me back more than you could ever know. So stop worrying about me, or how I’ll hold up under cross-examination. I’ll be fine.’

By Wednesday, once the prosecution and defence had laid out their cases, all the national newspapers had picked up that the Dexter trial was going to be a sensational one. That morning as Charlie was rushing into work she had spotted a billboard on a newspaper man’s stand which said ‘Dexters in the Dock’. It was so busy at Haagman’s she had no time to buy a paper, much less read it, so it hadn’t been until she finished work, with an hour to kill before her evening class, that she got her chance.

Charlie was astonished to find the list of charges against the Dexters ran into almost two columns. Apart from their crimes against Jin, Sylvia, Rita and Andrew, there were three other women who had been maimed, a bank manager who had been blackmailed, an estate agent who’d been hospitalized, several ex-tenants who had been victims of a terror campaign, and the hit-and-run murder of Ralph Peterson. This last one was a total surprise. Hughes had told her very little about any of the charges, but he hadn’t mentioned this one at all.

It was just on nine in the evening before Charlie got home, bursting with this new development, but Rita was glued to the news on television. Without turning her head she waved a greeting. ‘I missed the six o’clock news,’ she said. ‘I’m just waiting for them to go through all the charges. Sit down and watch it with me.’

Charlie was shocked into utter silence as the main news began with a report on the Dexter trial. Somehow the calm, measured tones of the television reporter listing the charges against the accused made them seem even more brutal than the sensationalized report she’d read earlier in the press.

There were pictures shown too of the Wapping warehouse where Jin died, of ’Windways’ and its garden, The Manse and Ralph Peterson’s Mayfair apartment, of the various clubs Daphne had owned, including the Lotus, and then of the many properties she’d bought up. With each picture came a little background information about its connection with one of the victims.

Rita leaped up to switch off the television as the newscaster moved on to a story about the new Value Added Tax which had replaced purchase tax as from 1 April. She stood there for a moment, her back to Charlie, and her shoulders were heaving.

Charlie was surprised at such a reaction. ‘It wasn’t so bad,’ she said, getting up and putting her arms round her friend to comfort her. ‘They didn’t say anything more about you than your name.’

‘It’s not that.’ Rita sobbed. ‘I didn’t know until I saw that that she’d killed Ralph too.’

‘You didn’t either?’ Charlie explained how she’d read it. ‘I thought Hughes would have told you.’

Rita shook her head. ‘I knew of course that he was killed in a hit-and-run accident, I read it in the paper a couple of years after she tortured me. I laughed at the time Charlie,
laughed
. I thought it served him right for not sticking by me. I never thought the Dexters had anything to do with it, not an important man like him.’

‘Well, at least they struck across all social classes,’ Charlie said dryly. ‘From poor immigrants to nobs.’

Rita gave a sort of giggling sniff. ‘I don’t quite understand why it upset me,’ she said.

‘I do,’ Charlie said, taking her friend by the shoulders and drawing her to her. ‘You had all the big dreams about him. And you didn’t just use him, I know that. You really cared for him, didn’t you?’

An affirmative sniff came from her shoulder. ‘I thought as much,’ Charlie said. Rita was a great one for playing down her real feelings. Having been rejected by her parents at an early age she’d learned to cope with all hurts and disappointments by pretending nothing touched her. ‘Well, as I see it, he probably truly cared for you too. That’s exactly why Daphne had to knock you out of the running. Now, that’s something to comfort yourself with on a cold night, isn’t it?’

Rita stood up straight, wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and smiled. ‘You’ve got more sense at nineteen than I’ve got in my mid-thirties,’ she said. ‘You know something else?’

‘No, what?’ Charlie giggled.

Rita’s eyes suddenly came to life, sparking with glimpses of the young Suzie Charlie had seen when she talked about that era. ‘I got a message earlier that I’m being called on Friday. But I’m not going to do it looking like a Sunday school teacher. I don’t give a shit, whether it weakens my testimony, I’m going in there hair done, face on and all flags flying. I’ll bloody well make that bitch wish she never picked on me.’

Charlie was surprised at Rita being called quite so soon. She was also uncertain if the prosecution would appreciate her turning up looking anything other than drab and beaten down. Yet if it made Rita feel more confident, she thought she ought to encourage her.

‘Well have a dress rehearsal right now then,’ Charlie said. ‘Come on, let’s look in your wardrobe.’

Ironically, it wasn’t in Rita’s wardrobe that they found the right outfit. Everything Rita owned was either too dreary, sleazy or out of date. But amongst Charlie’s clothes was a classic Chanel cream dress and jacket that had belonged to Sylvia. It was one of the things like the blue velvet jacket she thought she might sell one day. It fitted Rita as if it was made for her. The dress reached just beneath her knees, and with her brown high-heeled shoes she looked perfect.

‘And you don’t look like a tart in it, before you ask. Just beautiful and stylish,’ Charlie remarked as Rita swirled around in front of the mirror. ‘I think Mum and Dad will watch over you wearing it. The reason I kept it was because Dad loved Mum in it.’

A sudden vivid flashback shot into Charlie’s mind, one the dress and jacket had never evoked before. She was fourteen, her parents were in their bedroom getting ready to go out, and she’d gone in there to ask them something. Sylvia was wearing just the dress, her blonde hair piled up on top of her head, and she looked sensational. Jin was fastening a string of beads around her neck and just as Charlie looked in, he kissed her neck and said he loved her.

Sylvia turned to him, held his face in her two hands and kissed his nose.

‘All the best moments in my life have been spent with you,’ she said.

It was strange that she should only remember it now, but then as Beryl had said at Sylvia’s funeral, it took a while for all the memories to surface. She hoped that in time many more good, happy ones like that would replace the sad ones. She told Rita about it, and her friend wiped an emotional tear from her eye.

‘Hair loose or up?’ she asked after a minute or two, piling it on top of her head.

‘Loose, it’s too beautiful to hide,’ Charlie said bossily. ‘Get it trimmed and set tomorrow evening. But now we’ve got to try the makeup.’

Rita did her face with her old makeup, the way she used to eight years earlier. She suddenly looked like a streetwalker.

‘No.’ Charlie snatched the bottle of foundation and eyeliner from her. ‘They are too heavy. Tomorrow we’ll get a light foundation and a soft eyeshadow. And lie down on the bed so I can pluck your eyebrows, they’re a mess.’

A couple of hours later when they were about to go to bed, Rita caught hold of Charlie’s arm. ‘If I go to court like that, how can I go back to being like this again?’

‘You can’t,’ Charlie smiled. ‘And you won’t want to. This is going to be the new Rita, for good.’

The following evening Charlie came out of Haagman’s to find Andrew sitting astride his scooter waiting for her. Her face lit up with pleasure and she ran to kiss him. ‘What brought you up here?’ she asked.

‘That witness who saw your father killed was cross-examined today. I thought I’d whiz you home so we could watch it on the news together.’

Charlie would have been delighted to see Andrew, whatever the reason, but his sensitivity and his urge to protect her were moving. He didn’t know she was already aware of everything the man had to say, he was just afraid she might watch it alone and become upset. She hoped he would understand when she finally did tell him about her secret relationship with Dave. It was so sad that Andrew might never get an opportunity to know him as well as she did.

As Andrew wound his way through the evening traffic in Oxford Street, Charlie clung on to him and wondered if Dave’s ordeal was now over. The last time she’d seen him had been ten days ago. His weight had dropped to beneath ten stone, his diet was liquids only, and he was in constant pain. She didn’t think he could hold on much longer. But he had to get through until the verdict. And until his daughter got here.

Charlie knew it wasn’t really her place to interfere, but two weeks earlier she’d been so worried about him she’d taken the matter into her own hands and written to Wendy, telling her everything. She’d asked her not to phone her father, because this might distress him, but just to come. Wendy had telephoned her the minute she got the letter, and crying over the phone she’d said she couldn’t come immediately, however much she wanted to, as her husband was working away from home and she had no one to leave her son Grant with, but she’d get here as soon as she could. Charlie just had to hope that wouldn’t be too late.

They got back and switched on the TV just in time to hear Big Ben striking six. Dave Kent’s appearance in the witness box was mentioned first in the summary of the news; they had to wait some time before the newscaster came back to the subject.

Charlie was a little disappointed. All the newscaster reported was the bare bones of the story, how David Kent, the owner of the warehouse, was tied up and left in a storeroom where he witnessed Daphne Dexter shoot Jin Weish and subsequently saw the Dexter twins row a small boat out into deep water in the Thames and drop the body in. Under cross-examination by the defence it was brought up that he had a criminal record himself, and it was suggested that on a dark, stormy night, tied up in an upper storeroom, he couldn’t have seen all he said he did. They also asked why he later sold the lease of his warehouse to the Dexters, if they had done all he’d stated.

It was only as he was filmed leaving the Old Bailey, pale, drawn, so thin and all alone, refusing stoutly to pass any comment to any of the reporters milling there other than to say he had told the truth, that Charlie felt her heart breaking and forgot herself.

‘The jury must believe him. Don’t they know he’s got nothing to gain by lying? He’s dying, for God’s sake,’ she sobbed.

Andrew looked at her in surprise. She had told him back in Salcombe that Hughes had said this witness was very sick. But that outburst sounded very much as if she knew much more than she’d told him. ’Have you been holding out on me?’ he asked indignantly.

Charlie had planned to wait until the end of the trial before she told him. But now, afraid that the defence had twisted Dave’s story so that he sounded like the villain, she couldn’t hold it back any longer. Sobbing, she told him what she knew.

Andrew rocked her in his arms as he listened. He understood she felt compelled to keep her promise to Hughes and not tell him, he was also touched by her compassion for this sick man, yet it still hurt to think she had kept so much from him for so long.

‘I’ve grown very fond of him,’ she said finally, sniffing and drying her eyes. ‘I just hope he makes it till his daughter comes back and until after the trial so you can meet him too.’

‘You mustn’t go anywhere near him again, not until then,’ Andrew warned her. ‘You can bet your life reporters are camping on his doorstep right now. If they spotted you, it could turn the case upside down.’

‘I don’t see why. I didn’t know him when it happened. Besides, Rita is a witness too, and we aren’t banned from speaking to her.’

‘Well, that couldn’t be helped,’ Andrew said. ‘You worked with Rita and came to live with her, before all this started. As for me, my whole object of getting involved was because of you.’

‘It doesn’t seem very logical to me, we are on the same side after all,’ Charlie said with a pout. ‘I wonder if it came out in court that he was protecting his daughter, and how ill he is?’

‘I’m sure it did,’ Andrew replied. ‘No doubt they’ll print every word in the papers tomorrow. You’ll have to wait till then!’

The following morning Rita came swirling into the kitchen as Charlie and Andrew were finishing their cornflakes. ‘How do I look?’

‘Wow!’ Andrew exclaimed. ‘You look sensational.’

‘That’s not quite how I wanted to appear,’ she said, her voice suddenly cracking with nerves.

‘He’s not strong on subtlety,’ Charlie said quickly. ‘What he means is, you look wonderful. And you do. Classy and very feminine.’

In fact Charlie could hardly believe her eyes, Rita was simply stunning. She had been to a late-night hairdresser’s the previous evening. They’d cut a few inches off her hair, and now it shimmered under the kitchen light, a cascade of loose, coppery waves. The expensive dress and jacket looked as good on her as it had on Sylvia, the new delicate makeup enhanced her naturally pale skin giving it a pink glow.

Charlie could see now that Rita was right to go looking like this. The defence lawyers might try to discredit her by bringing up that she was a night-club hostess, but every member of the jury would look at those photographs of her scarred body, then at her sweet face and lovely hair, and despair that such a pretty woman had missed out on happiness, love and marriage.

‘I wish I could come with you, to hold your hand,’ Charlie sighed. ‘But you’ll be in my thoughts all day.’

‘And mine,’ Andrew said, getting up to plant a kiss on Rita’s cheek. ‘Now would you like a lift on my scooter?’