Dead Beat (3 page)

‘Evie,' he murmured, giving her a cursory kiss on the cheek. ‘You're up early, sweetie.'

‘Had to go to the quack,' the woman said in little more than a whisper. ‘Had a bit of a scare. Thought I was up the bloody spout.'

‘Not mine, I hope,' Barnard said quickly.

‘Shouldn't think so,' Evie said. ‘You're one of the careful ones. Anyway, it was a false alarm.'

‘That's good,' he said, although he knew she was likely being economical with the truth and that, like most of the women on the game, she would have sought out one of the doctors who was quietly and illegally willing to help out if the fee was generous enough.

‘Are you coming up?' Evie asked, gesturing to one of the doors with the multiple bells close by. Barnard made the effort to pull a regretful face, although he did not feel very interested in her hospitality in her present state.

‘Not today, sweetie,' he said. ‘We've got a nasty murder round the corner. Nancy-boy got his throat cut. Anyway, you look as if you should go back to bed.'

‘Yeah, maybe,' she agreed and gave him a peck on the cheek. ‘See you soon then?'

‘Yeah,' he echoed, though the ‘maybe' was held under his breath. Suddenly Evie did not appear quite so attractive any more.

Barnard was not bothering with any of his regular calls this morning. He glanced at the plate-glass windows of the Wardour Street film companies, with their glossy photographs of stars and exotic locations, without much interest. He was not a man much given to imagination. Real life provided him with all the excitement he needed, he thought, and epic battles between good and evil, black and white, justice and its opposite, struck him as essentially unrealistic. The big picture was much murkier than that, a question of mucky white and inky black at the edges and a sludgy ocean of greys in the middle. He cut through into Soho Square, a green oasis amongst the narrow, crowded streets, much used by lunching workers from the shops and offices of Oxford Street by day and vagrants by night, and finally into Greek Street where ABC Books – the object of DCI Venables' interest – lurked in a narrow side-alley, only yards long, and ending in a blank brick wall.

There was still a uniformed constable standing in the doorway which led to the flat above, and Barnard saluted him cheerily, getting only a surly nod in return. CID and the uniformed branch were seldom on speaking terms.

‘Nancy-boys?'

‘Looks like it,' the constable muttered.

‘I'll see what my old mate Pete Marelli's got to say about it,' Barnard said, pushing against the shop door and finding it unexpectedly locked. ‘Is he in there?' he asked his colleague.

The constable shrugged. ‘He was there earlier, when one of Mr Venables' lads dropped in. Not that he was very welcome, I heard.'

‘We'll see about that,' Barnard said, banging on the door with his fist, and then calling Marelli's name through the letterbox at the base of the blacked-out glass. Somewhere inside, a dog began to bark hysterically.

‘Come on, Pete, you old bugger,' Barnard shouted. ‘I know you're in there. It's Harry Barnard. Let me in.' Eventually the two officers heard bolts being withdrawn, and Pete Marelli peered out of a two-inch crack between the door and the jamb, above a heavy security chain.

‘What do you want now?' The voice had a whine in it. ‘I don't know nothing about the flat upstairs. I just went to take a look because the door was open. I shouldn't have bothered if it cause me all this trouble. Ask the landlord about it. I've told you lot where to find him.'

Harry Barnard wedged his foot in the opening, narrow as it was, and put his face close to Marelli's. ‘Let me in, Pedro, or there will be trouble, believe me. And keep that blasted animal of yours out of my way. I hate dogs, and especially that dog.' Eventually the man on the other side of the door complied, and Barnard slipped into the shop while Marelli locked and barred the door again behind him. Barnard gave barely a glance at the lurid books crammed on to open shelves. He knew that there was nothing illegal here on open display and Marelli's boss paid him enough not to investigate any further.

‘Where's that blasted hound?' Barnard asked, glancing round, and identifying a furious snuffling from the back door.

‘The door closed. Hector can't get in,' Marelli said.

‘He'd better not, or I'll have the RSPCA on you. You shouldn't be keeping a big brute like that in this tiny place. So – tell me what's been going on upstairs, Pedro. And don't muck me about or I'll have your place searched every day for a bloody month. That'll keep the punters away.'

‘I know nothing,' Marelli said. ‘I don't know even who live up there.'

‘And I don't bloody believe you,' Barnard said, giving Marelli a shove which knocked him back against one of his display shelves overloaded with books and magazines which teetered alarmingly above Marelli's head. ‘And you know just how interested I might get in your back room if you don't help me out when I need helping out, don't you?'

Marelli was a small, overweight man dressed in a crumpled suit and white shirt which looked as if it had long missed out on laundry. His paunch overhung his thick leather belt, and several chins overlapped his greasy collar. He wheezed slightly in response to Barnard's shove and seemed to have difficulty in regaining his balance. His eyes shifted uneasily around the dimly lit shop as if looking for an escape route but eventually he shrugged.

‘You have to ask the landlord for names,' he said. ‘I never spoke to them. They never spoke to me. Two young men is all I know.'

‘Descriptions?' Barnard snapped.

‘One light hair, blond, long, very English, you know?'

‘He's the one who's dead,' Barnard said, turning the photographs he had seen over in his mind quickly. ‘So the other one? What did he look like?'

‘More dark,' Marelli said. ‘Also, hair not cut short. Not tall. In dark trousers and a suede jacket, brown, light brown, most times I saw him. I thought they were musicians, actors maybe. I saw them just through the window sometimes, coming and going. The way people do. They were nothing to do with me, Mr Barnard. Nothing. They are going straight to hell.'
And not the only
ones
, Barnard thought with a slight smile.

‘Did you see them yesterday?' he asked.

‘The blond one, yes, I saw him go out as I was closing up. About seven o'clock. It was dark already, and the light out there's not good, but I recognized him. But I haven't seen the other one. Not for a few days.'

‘Did they make any noise up there? Did they have visitors? Did they go in and out to work? You must have known what they got up to.'

Marelli screwed up his face in distaste. ‘I know nothing about what they got up to,' he said. ‘They were queer boys, you know? I told you, they were like that. Mother of God, I want nothing to do with that sort. I know nothing about what they got up to. I'm a good Catholic.'

‘And the Pope's a good Protestant,' Barnard said with a grin. ‘You don't do books for queer boys then?'

‘No,' Marelli said flatly. ‘Never. Other shops do that.'

Barnard cast his mind back to the last time he had searched Marelli's back room, before he'd been persuaded not to bother again, and realized that the Maltese was probably telling the truth. The explicit pornography he stocked, most of it imported from abroad, broke the law in almost every respect but that.

He laughed. ‘You should have told us about your neighbours then,' he said. ‘We could have paid them a visit. My boss would have liked that. He thinks they should all be locked up.'

Marelli shrugged. ‘Not my business,' he muttered.

‘OK, but they must have had visitors, these queer boys,' Barnard said. ‘Did they have parties, people going up there for fun and games? A couple of beefy guardsmen, maybe? Anyone else you can tell me about?'

‘No, no one else,' Marelli said. ‘There were just the two. They were quiet upstairs. Some music on the gramophone sometimes, but not too loud. Quiet boys. No trouble. Ask landlord about them, not me. Here, I give you name. I gave it already to other officer, but have it again, please.'

He took a piece of paper and wrote down a name and address and phone number.

‘That is landlord,' he said. ‘Talk to him. I just work here.'

Barnard glanced at the scrawled name and smiled faintly. It was one he recognized. Someone else who owed him a favour.

TWO

K
ate O'Donnell's elation at landing a job did not last long. As she lugged her portfolio back up Frith Street towards Tottenham Court Road tube station, her other major preoccupation took the shine from her eyes. She glanced round and realized that at least there was someone she knew to talk to within walking distance. Her friend, Marie Best, schoolmate, aspiring actress and owner of the sofa that Kate was temporarily sleeping on, had given her a rough map of Soho and Kate could see that the coffee bar she worked at was just round the corner.

The atmosphere in The Blue Grotto was steamy when Kate opened the door but the clientele sparse at this time of day, apart from a couple of teenaged lads in Mod suits and narrow ties, their parkas flung over the chairs behind them, which explained the two Lambrettas parked on the pavement outside. Marie was behind the counter looking bored and served her a frothy coffee in a glass cup and saucer without complaint before joining her at a bright blue Formica-topped table close to the bar.

‘You got it?' she said, when Kate told her about the job. ‘That's fantastic. I'm really pleased for you.'

‘Only a two month trial,' Kate said, playing nervously with the sugar shaker. ‘But it's a start.'

‘I wish I could get a part for two days, never mind two months,' Marie said, running a hand through her red hair distractedly. ‘There's been no call back from the last three auditions I went to. They're all very sweet and encouraging, “darling this” and “darling that”. But then nothing. And this job's only temporary while someone's on holiday. You'll have to pay me rent for the sofa if this carries on. I'll have to sign on the dole when this job finishes. I've pretty well used up all my savings.'

‘Of course I'll pay rent,' Kate said, guilty that her friend's depression could not totally deflate her. But as she sipped her coffee she fell silent, flinching slightly from the bright blue walls painted with crude representations of Capri which would have got you flung out of her art college in a week. She listened idly to the music the two boys sitting behind them had put on the massive chrome and red jukebox.

‘Hey, that's the Beatles' song,' she said suddenly, turning round in her chair to catch the eye of the Mods behind. ‘
Love Me Do.
That was their first record, you know? Do you like them? I knew them in Liverpool.'

‘They're OK,' one of the boys conceded grudgingly. ‘I reckon their new one's better though, going up the hit parade that is. But I like Gerry and the Pacemakers better.'

Kate smiled and shrugged. Maybe Dave Donovan, her former boyfriend, was right when he called John Lennon's rival band, which had managed to get a record released before he did, just a flash in the pan. And she had put that down to wishful thinking.

‘Do you remember them at the Cavern?' she asked Marie, recalling sweaty, deafening evenings crammed into a small space with hundreds of other overexcited teenagers. Down here, she thought, hardly anyone seemed to have heard of the Liverpool bands.

Marie nodded. ‘My brother had a skiffle group but it all fizzled out.'

‘Everybody's brother had a skiffle group,' Kate said, laughing. ‘Even Tom played one of those washboard things for a bit.' But her face fell again as the thought plunged her back into the anxiety which dogged her now day and night.

‘What are we going to do about Tom, then,' Marie asked, sensing her friend's mood. ‘You said you'd give me a picture of him so I can ask around.'

‘I will do,' Kate said. ‘Two months will give me a bit of breathing space to try to find him.' Kate knew she was trying to convince herself as much as her friend, and aware she had absolutely no idea where one single individual, who clearly did not want to be found, might be discovered in this teeming city.

‘Why do you think he might be in Soho?' Marie asked. ‘London's a huge place, la.'

Kate shrugged. ‘Just a hunch,' she said. ‘When we used to talk about what we wanted to do, I'd go on about coming down here to take pictures and he always said he wanted to run a clothes shop on Oxford Street. It was just one of those dreams people have. I never thought either of us would make it, to be honest. And if I'd got the job on the
Echo
, I wouldn't have done. I'd have stayed at home and married some nice Catholic boy to please my mam. I don't know where Tom is, but just up there is Oxford Street and here I am, so it's worth a look. He sent us a couple of postcards. No address of course, but a W1 postmark, so that's central, too. It's as good a place to start as any.'

‘If he's that interested in fashion, there's lots of garment places up by Oxford Circus. And some small shops, in the side streets behind the big department stores. You're right, it's not such a bad place to start,' Marie said, getting up and moving behind the bar again as two young women came in for coffee and peered at the cakes under glass domes at the end of the counter.

Kate watched the sugar she'd put in her coffee slowly deflate the bubbles. She adored Tom, her older brother by two years. He had been the one who had encouraged her to stay on at school and go to college, as they had grown up in the crowded house where their mother struggled to keep four children in a neighbourhood which still regarded mothers on their own with disdain if not outright contempt. But as they all grew up, she had watched as the relationship between Tom and her mother had disintegrated until the tension in the house became unbearable and she had never been able to put her finger on what exactly came between them.