Dead Beat

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First world edition published 2011

in Great Britain and the USA by

Crème de la Crime, an imprint of

SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD of

9–15 High Street, Sutton, Surrey, England, SM1 1DF.

Copyright © 2011 by Patricia Hall.

All rights reserved.

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Hall, Patricia

Dead beat.

1. Women photographers–England–Liverpool–Fiction.

2. Brothers and sisters–Fiction. 3. Missing persons–

Investigation–England–London–Fiction. 4. Soho

(London, England)–Social conditions–20th century–

Fiction. 5. Liverpool (England)–Social conditions–20th

century–Fiction. 6. Detective and mystery stories.

I. Title

823.9′14-dc22

ISBN-13: 978-1-78010-079-1 (ePub)

ISBN-13: 978-1-78029-004-1 (cased)

ISBN-13: 978-1-78029-504-6 (trade paper)

Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to living persons is purely coincidental.

This ebook produced by

Palimpsest Book Production Limited,

Falkirk, Stirlingshire, Scotland.

ONE

T
he boy scuttled like a rat through the weed-infested bomb site, half crouched, eyes flicking this way and that, careful not to make a sound except when a Circle Line train rumbled past in the steep cutting and stopped, with a hiss and a groan, at Farringdon underground station just yards away. This part of London was still a warren of derelict, bombed-out buildings and he was not the only one who had sheltered there through the recent bitter winter weather, still holding the country in an iron grip long after spring should have begun to provide a little natural warmth. Most of the men there felt safe in the knowledge that even if they lit fires to huddle round they were unlikely to be spotted either from the underground line below or the elevated streets above them. But the boy did not want to join the rest. He preferred to keep himself to himself, even more so since it happened, knowing instinctively that was best. He had not often been driven to sleeping here, wrapped in a couple of blankets which he always stowed carefully away in a rusting metal drum when he woke at dawn. Since he had arrived in London, he had usually been able to find a bed for the night, though he hated the price he paid for it.

But since he had seen what he had seen, he had been much more cautious. The shock was still there, sometimes hidden in the darkness at the back of his mind where he hid so much of his past life, but sometimes worming its way insidiously to the front, making him shudder with nausea all over again. There had been no warning that his encounter two nights ago was in any way out of the ordinary: that clean-shaven young man, nice-looking, blond, well-dressed, as good as it got, he had thought the first time he had gone home with him. He felt pleased to see him again as their eyes met over the heads of the crowd on the steps below Eros and saw the recognition in his eyes. He had nodded quickly, though almost imperceptibly, in answer to the unspoken question and followed as the young man led him up Shaftesbury Avenue and into the narrow, crowded streets of Soho, past the French pub, and towards the narrow alleyway where the boy knew his mark would unlock a door which gave on to a steep staircase which led to living accommodation above a shuttered shop below.

He had fallen behind a little in the thick crowds round Leicester Square and by the time he got to the entrance to the alley he found the young man out of sight. Suddenly cautious, he had stood for a time in a doorway on the opposite side of Greek Street, waiting for a couple of men, muffled up against the cold and clearly in a hurry to move out of the alley before he ventured down the narrow, ill-lit passage himself. He could see that the lights were on upstairs in the flat above the bookshop, as if inviting him into the warmth as he shivered in the freezing night air and eventually he had slipped through the unlocked door.

It was totally silent on the staircase and he felt slightly surprised that his mark had not put a record on. The last time he had been here the room had been filled with music. But the door was ajar, so he knew he was expected, and he pushed it open with more confidence than he had felt on the dimly lit stairway. He found himself in the small entrance hall with several doors leading off, but only the living room door was half open and even as he hesitated on the threshold he could see more than he wanted to see, then or ever. The young man he had followed was lying sprawled across a small spindle-legged coffee table which seemed to have collapsed under his weight, but it was not that which wrenched the boy's gaze and turned his stomach, so that he spun away gasping for air, afraid he would be sick. There was a chair in the tiny hallway, and he sat down on it, his knees suddenly trembling too much to keep him upright. The slashing blow which had clearly killed the man in the other room had almost severed his head, splashing blood in great gouts across the table and the orange and turquoise patterned rug it stood on. The boy knew he could do nothing for him, knew that he had to get away from the carnage quickly, for his own safety, but still he sat there for what felt like hours not minutes, unable to move, unable to think, trying to control his heaving stomach and his paralysed mind.

Eventually he forced himself to his feet, and gently shut the door on the dead man, making no sound, although nothing, he thought, would ever let him forget this. He closed the main door to the flat behind him and crept down the stairs as silently as a shadow, standing in the doorway below for a moment to make sure that the alley was still deserted, before hurrying away to the only place he knew where he could find sanctuary. It had seemed like hours, and he had lost all appetite for trade, twisting and turning through Bloomsbury, past the tall, shuttered terraces, around the squares where the trees sighed in the wind, back to the no-man's-land of derelict sites and bombed-out ruins close to the railway line where he knew he would be safe.

Kate O'Donnell walked down Frith Street with her heart thumping and her portfolio banging awkwardly against her legs as she shimmied between the crowds along the narrow pavement. She scanned the properties on each side of the street for numbers which, more often than not, did not exist. A French bistro jostled up against a bookshop with lurid stock which Kate knew would throw her mother and all her gossiping friends from Saint Teresa's into a frenzy of Hail Marys; she glanced into pubs with gloomy interiors full of men and the fumes of booze and cigarettes wafting that all-too familiar smell in her face – the smell of her father, she thought wryly, having little more than that sour memory of laughing Frankie O'Donnell who had walked out for a pint ten years ago and never come back. Her dad was just one of hundreds of merchant seamen who never came home again after a voyage from Liverpool, missing but probably not dead, just enjoying sunnier climes and new loves halfway across the world. Soho, she thought, had about it more than a whiff of Liverpool when she had been a little kid, a dark, almost threatening bass note overlaid with more exotic aromas. She stopped for a moment to take fascinated stock of the next building, where a narrow doorway boasted six or seven bells marked simply with girls' names.

‘Looking for a job, dear?' a small woman, emaciated, heavily made-up and huddled into a threadbare camel coat, asked kindly as she pushed past her and disappeared up the narrow staircase inside. Kate moved on quickly. She was certainly looking for a job, she thought, but not that one. She glanced around for a moment before continuing her quest, still conscious of the thrill that London had given her as soon as she ventured from her friends' flat west of Paddington station where she had begged to sleep on the sofa until she found work. It was quite possible she would have to slink home again to the Pool in the end, defeated and deflated, if she found nothing. But that was a possibility she pushed firmly to the back of her mind, reluctant even to imagine the ‘I told you so' look in her mam's eyes and the barely concealed pity of her friends and neighbours if she had to go back with nothing to show for herself. She had taken a massive gamble on this trip, a streak of her dad there, she thought, but she was determined she was going to win.

This, Kate thought as she hurried on, was where she wanted to be. The more she saw, the more she was certain of that. The crowds, the noise, the traffic, the cavernous underworld of the Tube with its rattling trains and stale, windy tunnels, nothing put her off. This was where it was all happening. This was where she could break through and become someone. Back home, unless you were a lad with a guitar and a cheeky smile, there was nothing on offer for someone with ideas and energy and ambition, especially if they happened to be female. You ended up like poor Cynthia, a mate from college, who, she had heard, was stuck at home having a baby while her man was having all the fun. That, she thought, was not for her, as she had told Dave Donovan flatly when he had suggested ‘settling down' together, before he too got bored with that idea and headed south. Settling down was not her ambition yet. And the greatest incentive of all to stay was that this was where she might be able to track down her brother Tom, who had taken this road before her.

She gave an little skip of excitement, drawing a curious look from a paunchy man with long hair shuffling past in a miasma of alcohol fumes, and resumed the search for what she hoped might be her opportunity. A block further down, she found the door she was looking for standing wide open and clearly advertising the fact that it was the home of the Ken Fellows Picture Agency. Taking a deep breath, she glanced at her reflection in the window of the Italian grocery store on the ground floor and took a moment to assess her chances: dark hair, cut medium short and sweeping forward in a curve around her face, blue eyes, careful make-up but not too heavy round the eyes like some girls were wearing it now, on-the-knee tweed skirt, artfully pulled up at the waist so as not to show beneath the hem of her fitted coat: not bad, she thought, though she had to admit that she had little idea what criteria Ken Fellows might use to assess a likely young photographer.

She stepped through the open door and climbed the narrow wooden staircase, uncarpeted and dusty, to find herself in a cramped reception area which offered a couple of hard chairs and a cluttered desk with a typewriter and telephone but no sign of a human presence. Behind the desk was a display board covered with black and white photographs beneath the agency banner. A few of the subjects she recognized as she cast a critical eye over them: an actor she could not put a name to though she knew the face, decked out in cloak and sword for what looked like a Shakespeare play, a series of moody views of the Thames, a parade of exotic-looking floats, some sort of a road accident and some rainy street scenes. But her eye was drawn quickly to two or three groups of young musicians she also did not recognize and one she instantly did. She smiled faintly at the sight of the John Lennon she had known in black leather and tight jeans at art college now resplendent in a sharp, mod-looking suit, and a new haircut, and wondered if he would remember her now the band looked as if it might be really going places.