Mistress Murder (2 page)

He helped her out of a taxi in front of the Nineties at about nine thirty. They walked to the door, sandwiched between a brash amusement arcade and a smart Chinese restaurant.

‘Evening, Mr Golding.'

The doorman, his physique suggesting his real function of bouncer, saluted them smartly. They passed through the narrow doorway under the neon Can-Can sign that flickered over the entrance.

The uninspiring exterior of the place gave way to an imaginative and expensive decor. The club proper was in the basement and they walked down a heavily-carpeted stairway to reach it. The walls were hung with Victorian draperies with many heavily ornamented mirrors. There were framed theatre posters from the last years of the old century, to set the atmosphere that gave the club its name. Even the chucker-out doorman wore a top hat and side whiskers to mimic the ‘good old days'

At the bottom of the stairs was a small cloakroom with an attractive girl to take Paul's coat and Rita's mink cape. Paul wore a dinner jacket and Rita a slinky cocktail dress. She looked very different from the sweater and jeans of the afternoon, but even more alluring.

Jacobs looked at her back with regret as he followed her through the padded swing-doors into the club itself. This was a long room which extended the whole length of the building above. At the further end was a small stage for the band and cabaret, and along the left-hand wall was a long and ornate bar. Paul shepherded his mistress towards it and found a couple of high stools still vacant.

The barman hurried up, his leathery face crinkled in smiles.

‘Mr Golding … Miss Ronalde … nice to see you!'

He sounded as if he really meant it.

‘The usual, Snigger,' replied Golding. ‘Brandy ginger for Rita, gin and French for me.'

The barman bustled off to get the drinks. He had two barmaids and a waiter to assist him, but he dealt with this order himself. He was a little man, who looked like an ex-jockey, mainly because he was an ex-jockey – ex because he had been caught doping his competitor's steeds a few years before.

He came back with the drinks and waved away Paul's offer to pay.

‘First one's on me, as usual, Mr Golding.'

‘Everything all right, Snigger?' asked Paul.

There was more in the casual remark than anyone other than themselves realised.

Snigger winked and gave a thumbs-up sign.

‘Fine … same with you?'

Golding nodded shortly, but the barman recognised the lack of conviction. A barmaid came up to him with some query and he moved away down the bar.

Rita was looking around the room, which was almost full to capacity – a typical Saturday night crowd. She tried to make her inspection look like idle curiosity, but Paul knew that she was hoping to catch a glimpse of someone special – the other voice on the tape.

‘Ready for another?'

His voice jerked her attention back to the bar and she gave him a bright, but mechanical, smile.

‘Mmm, please, same again.'

She finished her drink quickly, gave him another dazzling smile and slid her arm through his.

He smiled back, patted her arm and said, ‘Bitch,' to himself. She prattled on about nothing in particular, making the sweet talk that he had enjoyed, along with her Latin-style lovemaking, for the past eighteen months – since he had picked her up in this very bar, in fact.

But, more sensitive than ever tonight, he noticed that, even as she talked, her eyes kept straying to the big mirrors behind the bar, searching the reflection of the people in the crowded room.

The bar and the rest of the club repeated the late Victorian motif of the entrance. The barman wore the striped shirt, collar, cravat, and armbands of the period, and even had a pair of false side-whiskers and moustache. His attractive barmaids were dressed in bustled full-skirted dresses with alarmingly low necklines. The draperies and bar fitments were all authentic and the huge ornamented mirrors which Rita found so interesting were from a demolished London pub of the eighteen-eighties.

Snigger was still busy down the bar and his assistant, an adenoidal man dressed in a similar outfit, fixed their second drinks. After a few minutes, Paul casually excused himself and strolled in the direction of the toilets, which played such a big part in his double life. As he passed the lower end of the bar, he gave Snigger an almost imperceptible jerk of the head. The barman responded by raising his eyebrows a sixteenth of an inch and after a moment or two, followed him out.

They met in the washroom and waited until another man left. Then they stood washing their hands unnecessarily at adjacent basins while they talked.

‘How's tricks?' asked the ex-jockey.

‘Bloody awful – but don't worry, it's nothing to do with – the racket.'

Snigger allowed his George Robey eyebrows another excursion up his forehead, but said nothing. He knew better than to push his curiosity with Paul Golding.

‘Going over tomorrow?' he asked instead.

‘Yes, Brussels this time. How much do you want?' Snigger, his name an obvious parody on his unfortunate real one of Leonard Gigal, looked cautiously over his shoulder to see if the door was shut. Heroin … as much as you like. That last lot of morphine you dumped on me will take months to get rid of.'

Paul nodded. He straightened his back and pulled the plug out of the basin.

‘Right – can you take five hundred grams?'

The barman whistled.

‘Five hundred! OK, I'll take it. They all seem to be after the hard stuff these days … it may take a few weeks to palm off, mind.'

Paul nodded and went to dry his hands at a roller towel. ‘I'll be back on Thursday … come up Friday night for it, usual place.'

Gigal looked curiously at the other man. Golding was affable, but drew a strict line about the limits of his confidence in people. Snigger tried again, tentatively.

‘How you going this time, Rotterdam routine again?' Paul looked hard at him, his jaw muscles tensing.

‘No, I'm not,' he said harshly. ‘The less you know, the less you can spill when you get picked up.'

Snigger smiled weakly. He accepted the brush-off and the hint that the Metropolitan Police would catch up with him sooner or later. The innuendo that when he was nicked he would do well to keep his mouth shut was not lost on him either. He decided to change the subject.

‘Rita's looking smashing tonight – smartest bird that comes in here.' He grinned ingratiatingly, showing his loose oversize dentures.

‘Shut up – let's get out of here. Folks'll wonder what we're up to.'

Just outside the toilet, Paul stopped in the shadow of a supporting pillar and looked towards the bar. Rita was still on her stool, openly searching the club with her eyes. Paul waited a moment to see if she had any success. The tape recorder had given him the sound of the other man's voice, but it had not been one he recognised. And, infuriatingly, never once had either he or Rita spoken his name, not even the Christian name. Paul remembered the endearments – and worse – that had passed between them.

He felt no jealousy, only annoyance at the enforced break-up of a carnally satisfactory arrangement. But more serious, there was the anxiety about the safety of his identity and his drug smuggling business.

He saw no sign that Rita had recognised anyone and he made his way back to her.

‘Shall we dance?' he said.

They spent the rest of the time until the 11.30 cabaret, clinging together on the tiny floor, swaying to the smooch music of the four-piece band. There was no twisting or shaking here. This was strictly a hideout for the tired and not-so-tired business man who wanted to get to grips with his social life in the shape of a young woman.

There was nothing about the place that would attract the attention of the Yard Vice Squad, but an unaccompanied tired businessman had only to cross Snigger's palm with a fiver for an attractive girl to appear within five minutes, to be his drinking and dancing partner. What she chose to do when the club closed at two thirty was her own business, as far as the club was concerned.

Half an hour before midnight, the already dim lights went down even further and a blue spotlight appeared on the stage. For the first time, the club owner appeared, his shirt front glowing in the eerie light. There was a desultory burst of applause and he held his hands up for silence.

Snigger snorted from behind the bar where he was polishing a glass.

‘Think he was going to conduct Beethoven's
Fiff
in the Albert 'All!' he growled in his broad Cockney. ‘One night I'm going to wrap a bottle round his bleeding 'ead!'

Paul Jacobs' bland face stared hard at the barman. ‘It would cost you some if you did, Snigger,' he said enigmatically. He turned back to the stage. Ray Silver, a plump Eurasian and owner of the club, was giving a build-up patter for the cabaret.

All the acts had changed since Paul's last visit a few weeks before and he listened to the new artistes with interest. The third and last performer riveted his attention even more firmly.

Ray Silver bounced on to announce Fraulein Elsa and amid a roll of drums, a tall blonde drifted on to the stage. The cloud of silver hair was accentuated by the harsh blue light as she sung ‘Lili Marlene' huskily and sensually in the style of the ageless German-American star, Marlene Dietrich. Her voice alone would never have made her fortune, thought Paul as he carefully looked her over, but the meaning she put into the words and the way she moved her long body inside the glittering sheath of her dress more than made up for an indifferent set of vocal cords.

Elsa followed ‘Lili Marlene' with a couple of even more glowing numbers from Eartha Kitt's repertoire. Paul's attention was so rapt that his usually steel-willed caution slipped for a few minutes.

His eyes, focussed on the swaying silver figure, failed to notice Rita making furtive signs to a man who had just come through the swing doors. The man stood, as Jacobs had done, in the shadow of a pillar, staring intently at the pair at the bar.

Behind Paul's back, Rita made a little warning motion with her cigarette, pointing fleetingly at her escort. The stranger, a tall, broad man in his early thirties, gave a slight nod. Then he went to the other end of the bar and completely ignored the other pair for the rest of the night.

Paul watched the Austrian singer intently until the end of her act. Already the germ of an idea as to Rita's successor was taking root in his calculating mind. When she left the stage in a burst of applause Rita left to powder her nose. Paul swung back to the bar and called Snigger for some more drinks.

Gigal leered at him.

‘Nice bit 'o stuff, eh? The “frowline” stunt is on the level too – she really does come from Vienna.'

‘Know anything about her?'

The little cockney shrugged. ‘She's only been here a week. No bloke hanging around her yet, if that's what you mean.'

‘Where's she live?'

Again Snigger shrugged. ‘Search me! I'll put the whisper around, if you like.'

Paul nodded then leant forwards across the bar.

‘Snigger, have you noticed anyone hanging around Rita this last couple of weeks?' He dropped his voice as he spoke.

The ex-jockey's brows went up again.

‘A feller? No, she ain't even bin in here … no, wait a bit, she was once. But on her own, she was. Straight up, that is.'

Paul accepted his word and let the subject drop. He slid off the stool and stubbed his cigarette out.

‘I'm going in to see Silver for a minute. Tell Rita I won't be long.'

The barman, looking incongruous in his whiskers and armbands, nodded. ‘Want me to keep my eyes skinned when you're away?' he offered tentatively.

Paul scowled at him. ‘Don't bother … I'm taking care of it.'

Snigger shied off the delicate ground of Golding's personal affairs. Theirs was a purely business relationship. The ex-jockey was a middleman in the dope business in the West End. He bought the stuff wholesale from Golding, broke it down into smaller packages and sold it at a handsome profit to the dealers.

They had a series of safeguards which made it virtually impossible for the police to trace the supply back to Golding. For eight years now they had carried on this rewarding game without a whisper of trouble. Snigger knew that he was by no means the only distributor for Golding's imports from the Continent. Ray Silver was another, for instance.

He was a big-time middleman and through his interests in a chain of seedy dance halls through London, he got rid of a much larger quantity than Snigger himself. Silver dealt mainly with teenage pep pills and reefers, but had a fair trade in the hard stuff: heroin, morphine, and cocaine. Snigger also knew that Paul's visit now to the office at the back of the stage was to take Silver's order for the next consignment from Brussels.

Golding left the bar just before Rita came back, her curvaceous body sidling between the crowded tables. The barman looked covertly at her as she approached and wondered what had made Golding suspect that she was two-timing him.

‘You're soon going to get your cards and week's money, sweetheart,' he muttered to himself as the dark beauty pirouetted onto her stool.

He leant back against his mirrored shelves and looked around the big room, now thick with cigarette smoke. His two full-bosomed assistants were serving as fast as they could go, and Albert, the waiter, rushed around the tables, his speed in serving varying with the expected size of his tip. He was a small cog in the drug market, being one of Silver's distributors. Under cover of serving drinks, he would pass over packets of dope, the profits largely going to the club owner. Silver had no idea that his barman was a competitor under his own roof. Albert had a shrewd idea how Snigger passed his stuff across, but the barman paid him a regular sub to keep his mouth shut.

Snigger leisurely polished an already gleaming glass as he looked around the big room, now full of chattering voices, the drone of the band and the click of fruit machines from the other corner. He looked up and down the bar – every stool except Golding's being occupied. Amongst the line of tired businessmen, he noticed an M.P., a couple of stage and TV people, and a sprinkling of showgirls and strippers. The Nineties was no club for the mugs and tourists who crowded into Soho – it existed for the hard core of the West End population, a place where business and vice rubbed shoulders with sophisticated pleasure.