Without a Trace (21 page)

When she had first got here, people had delighted in telling her lurid tales about Soho. It was supposed to be a dangerous haunt of prostitutes and gangsters. But from what Molly had read in newspapers and travel guides, it also had the best night clubs and restaurants in London. She and Dilys had loved walking through it and, though they certainly sensed an element of menace in some parts, perhaps because of the neglected old buildings and unsavoury smells, their overall impression was that Soho was just a melting pot of people from all walks of life and of many different nationalities. They had observed elegant, aristocratic women in evening dress with their equally elegant male escorts sharing the grubby pavements with vagrants, snotty-nosed urchins and the kind of rough-looking women in aprons and scarves, fastened turban-style, that her mother had always called ‘fishwives’. If there were prostitutes working here, then they weren’t out on the streets wearing the kind of tight skirts and clingy sweaters Molly imagined such women wore. Dilys had always joked that maybe streetwalkers were like vampires, and they had to wait for the midnight hour to come out.

Molly was really hungry now; she hadn’t eaten anything except a bun since noon. Her feet hurt, she thought a blister was coming up on her heel, her arms throbbed with carrying her case and she was icy cold. She could have stood it if she had been on the way to a warm place with a bed for the night but, knowing that the reality was a bench on the Embankment, she began to cry.

Wiping her eyes on her coat sleeve, she tried to sniff back the tears, but it was no good; she was too desolate to control her emotions, and she put her suitcase down, turned towards a shop window with a display of old books and let the tears fall.

‘Is that bookshop so tragic it makes you cry?’

Molly’s head jerked round on hearing the man’s voice. Its owner was about thirty, stocky, with a round, very pink face, a receding hairline. He was wearing a camel coat with a velvet collar and looked concerned for her.

‘What on earth could make you cry that hard?’ he asked.

‘I’m tired, hungry and cold,’ she blurted out. ‘And I’ve got nowhere to go.’

‘Is that so?’ he said, looking at her hard for a moment or two as if weighing up whether she was conning him. Then he smiled. ‘Well, suppose we sort a couple of those things out by getting something to eat in a warm café, and then you can tell me why you’ve got nowhere to go.’

Her mother had told her a hundred times not to talk to strangers, but as she had found out today that people who know you well can be treacherous, too, her mother’s advice seemed superfluous. ‘That’s very kind of you,’ she said in a small voice, and dabbed at her eyes with an already damp hanky.

‘I’m Seb,’ he said. ‘That’s short for Sebastian, but no one but my granny calls me that. What’s your name?’

‘Molly,’ she said, giving him a watery smile. ‘Molly Heywood.’

‘Well, Molly Heywood,’ he said, bending to pick up her case, ‘they do a good fish and chips just down here, and you can tell me your troubles while you eat.’

Five minutes later, sitting in a wooden booth at the back of a fish-and-chip shop, Molly felt more hopeful. It was very warm in the café, the fish and chips would be in front of her in just a few minutes and her cup of tea was just as she liked it: strong and very sweet. She liked Seb, too; he had a forthright manner, a lovely speaking voice and he was kind and a good listener. ‘So why did they sack you?’ he asked.

As Molly explained the reason and how humiliated she felt, she began to cry again. ‘As God is my judge, I didn’t let anyone have anything without paying. I don’t know anyone in London aside from the other staff at Bourne & Hollingsworth, so who would I give stuff to?’

‘That is really appalling,’ he said, and took her two hands in his and squeezed them. ‘But I have a friend who works in Personnel. I could contact them for you tomorrow and find out the legal position. I’m sure you have to catch staff red-handed to be able to dismiss them. You might be entitled to compensation, or at least your job back.’

He sounded so confident and knowledgeable that Molly’s spirits soared. The fish and chips were brought to them then, and she ate hungrily.

‘Can you recommend a cheap guest house for a few nights?’ she asked him, explaining how she’d called the Braemar already and it had been full.

‘I can do better than that,’ he said. ‘I know some girls living
in a flat just down the road from here. They’re all around your age and they’ll be happy to put you up for a while. They might be able to help you get a new job, too, if you can’t go back to the shop.’

‘Really! You’d do that for me?’ she gasped.

He smiled and patted her hand. ‘I never could resist a damsel in distress. And you’ve been treated very badly.’

As Molly polished off the last of her fish and chips she felt reassured that everything would work out fine. If she could get a job right after Christmas, and was able to pay rent, maybe these friends of Seb’s would let her stay on with them permanently.

Although the street lighting in Greek Street was poor, Molly’s first thought when Seb pointed out the flat, which was above a barber’s shop, was that if the girls let her stay, her first job would be to clean the windows. Even in the dark she could see they were filthy.

A door beside the barber’s was open, revealing a litter-strewn, bare wood staircase and peeling distemper on the walls.

‘I know it looks a bit rough,’ Seb said, ‘but the landlord is too mean to get it smartened up. He claims the rent is too low to make it worth his while.’

‘All of London is a bit rundown after the war,’ she said. ‘I’m quite used to it now.’

He led her up two flights of stairs, past three or four closed doors, and then knocked on one very battered one to the front of the building. It was opened by a dark-haired woman of perhaps forty. She was wearing a grubby pink dressing gown and had curlers in her hair.

‘Hullo, Seb. What brings you round? If I’d known you were coming, I’d’ve baked a bleedin’ cake,’ she said. Her accent was pure cockney and her smile was bright.

‘I found this young lady crying in the street; she’s lost her job and has nowhere to go,’ he said, half turning towards Molly. ‘This is my friend Dora, and, knowing how kind she is, I was certain she’d give you a bed for a few nights.’

‘Oh, you poor love!’ Dora exclaimed, taking a couple of steps nearer to Molly, her dark eyes soft with concern. ‘You come on in and we’ll get you sorted. I got a spare bed up top as it happens, ’cos Jackie went home for Christmas.’

‘I don’t want to impose,’ Molly said. She had a lump in her throat at this unexpected kindness. ‘I could give you a bit of money.’

‘I wouldn’t hear of it,’ Dora said. ‘Now, come on in. The place is a mess, but it’s warm and homely.’

Dora poured Molly a glass of sherry, saying it would warm her up and make her sleep well. Molly didn’t really like sherry, but she was too polite to say so. As she sipped it, she surveyed the room.

Dora had been right in saying it was a mess. It was like Paddy’s market, with clothes, make-up and unwashed dishes all over the place. The double bed wasn’t even made but, clearly, Dora felt embarrassed by it and quickly pulled up the covers and smoothed out the pink satin bedspread.

‘Some days, you just can’t seem to get into a routine,’ she said with a chuckle. ‘I bet you’re a real tidy person, Molly?’

‘Not at all,’ Molly said diplomatically, though in fact she was. She’d had to be: clutter and slovenliness were things her father had ranted about.

The warmth from the gas fire was making Molly feel sleepy.
Dora and Seb were talking about noise from a club nearby; they said the music went on till four in the morning.

‘You, my girl, are ready for bed,’ Dora said, touching Molly’s shoulder to rouse her. ‘I’ll show you up there now. Sleep’s a great healer. Nothing will look so bad tomorrow.’

CHAPTER TEN

‘She was so sleepy she didn’t even take her clothes off, just lay down on the bed and zonked out,’ Dora said when she returned from showing Molly the way upstairs.

‘So the knock-out drops worked?’ Seb grinned. ‘I saw her grimace when you gave her the sherry. I didn’t think she’d drink it.’

‘Well-brought-up girls with nowhere to sleep will always down a drink, however nasty, out of sheer gratitude,’ Dora sniggered. ‘Thanks for bringing her my way, Seb. With her milkmaid complexion, good figure and lovely eyes, she’s perfect for my more discerning customers. I don’t have to ask if she’s a virgin, it bloody well shines out of her; and I don’t think she’s got any fight in her either.’

‘She told me she couldn’t go home because of her father. My guess is he knocked her about.’

‘Well, if she plays ball with me, she won’t get no slaps from me or the johns,’ Dora said. ‘I’m going to phone Randall now to tell him I’ve got a Christmas present for him.’

‘You’re going to let him break her in tonight?’ Seb was alarmed at this. He had procured many girls for Dora in the last couple of years, but they had all been hard little bitches. Molly was different.

He understood why Dora had a heart like stone. Her own mother had allowed a male friend to rape her when she was only seven. From that day till she finally ran away at the age
of fourteen she’d been passed around from man to man like a toy. She had told Seb she’d decided then and there that, in future, she would make men pay dearly for what they wanted.

It was said she had a fine big house out Epping way, that it was beautifully decorated and furnished. But she was hardly ever in it; most of the time she slept here in Greek Street, in the same squalor as her ‘tenants’, as she liked to call them. She didn’t turn tricks any longer – she didn’t need to, as she took half of what each ‘tenant’ made, and none of them could cheat her because she knew every angle.

‘That’s why I gave her the drops.’ Dora shrugged. ‘If it ain’t done tonight she’ll realize what this place is tomorrow and she’ll run. That’d be such a waste.’

‘You’re all heart, Dora,’ Seb responded. Dora always gave him a good wedge for finding girls and, normally, he didn’t have the slightest qualm about it. He took the line that, if he hadn’t picked them up, someone else would. But, just this once, he felt bad.

‘She’ll hardly know what’s happening with the dose I gave her. Get the first time out the way and she’ll be fine.’

Seb wasn’t so sure. In the short while he’d been with Molly she’d struck him as a bright girl with a great deal of natural dignity. He couldn’t ever see her taking on some ten or so men a night, like the rest of Dora’s girls did. But he’d brought her here for the money, and it was too late now to back away. The best thing he could do was get home to his wife and sons.

‘If I can have my cut now, I’ll be off.’ He got to his feet and buttoned up his overcoat. ‘I told the missus I’d be home by ten tonight, and it’s well past that now.’

Dora unlocked a small door in her sideboard and drew out a cashbox. She handed him twenty pounds. ‘If she’s got what
it takes, I’ll give you the same again in the New Year,’ she said. ‘And a merry Christmas to you, Seb.’

Molly woke with a start when the light was switched on. A man was standing in the doorway looking at her. He was perhaps fifty, a fat man with a high colour and thinning grey hair. He was wearing a navy overcoat, and the expression on his face made her feel alarmed.

‘What do you want?’ she asked.

‘You, sweetheart,’ he said, coming right into the room and closing the door behind him.

She was still half asleep, but in a flash of intuition she sensed what he was about, and also, to her horror, how the other girls in the house must make their living. She didn’t know why it hadn’t occurred to her when Seb had first brought her here.

‘I’m not that kind of girl, so get out now!’ she hissed at him. ‘Or I’ll scream and wake the whole place up.’

‘I like it when girls fight me off,’ he said, leering at her and reaching out to pull the blankets off her. ‘Dora said you were likely to be a little hellcat.’

Molly was very woozy and her limbs felt like lead, but she knew she had to pull herself together and deal with this man. ‘You lay one finger on me and you’ll regret it,’ she warned him.

‘What are you going to do, sweetheart?’ he said in a honeyed voice, one hand grabbing hold of her breast and the other pushing aside the blankets to get under her skirt. ‘Screaming’s not going to stop me – they’re used to that in this place.’

It was something about the way he said ‘screaming’ that made her think of her father hitting her. He had never cared if she screamed either.

She’d learned to stand up to him, and she’d got away from him, and she wasn’t about to allow some nasty stranger to do vile things to her without putting up the fight of her life.

She thrashed out at him and clawed his face, drawing blood. But he didn’t even wince, just drew his arm back and slapped her hard, shoving her back down on to the mattress.

The slap stung, and she was really scared, but she didn’t even put her hand to her cheek, much less cry out, as she didn’t want him to see her weaken. She thought fast. She needed some kind of weapon, and she scanned the room looking for something she could use. There was nothing but a stout pole in the corner of the room, which she guessed was used to open the skylight. It was a bit unwieldy but, in the absence of anything better, it would have to do. She couldn’t move, anyway, as he was holding her by the shoulders with both hands and pushing her down on the bed. She would have to wait for the right opportunity.