She Died Young (2 page)

That McGovern was involved in the attempt to clean up the force was just a hunch, based on rumours he’d gleaned from Johnnie Hay. Johnnie had told him some disgruntled copper or other had come into his club one evening and had been grumbling about the new man, Moules, cracking down on all the methods that made police work possible and talking about how McGovern was the blue-eyed boy again. Could have all been spite and jealousy, but Blackstone sensed there must be something in it.

More important than all that, though, and very personal, was – he had to know how Valerie had died.

The saloon was almost empty. He made a phone call from the booth in the corridor that led to the lavatories and then took a taxi to Bayswater. He’d chalk it up to expenses, as he always did. He took a lot of taxis. The editor – the Little Man as they called him, but he terrified them all – never objected. Blackstone was tired (he was always tired) and he felt he deserved the ride.

chapter
2

‘T
A, MATE.’ THE TAXI DRIVER
rang up the little ‘for hire’ flag and drove away. Blackstone surveyed the neo-Georgian mansion block he was facing: Balmoral Mansions. It was situated in a dull, conservative district near Marble Arch. He took the lift to the second floor, avoiding the sight of himself in its mirrors.

The maid opened the door. ‘We haven’t seen you for a while, Mr Blackstone.’

He held his cigarette between two nicotine-stained fingers. ‘You’re looking well, Mrs Smith.’ He wondered fleetingly about her past. She reminded him disturbingly of his former nanny; similar grey bun and air of homely efficiency.

He waited for Sonia in her drawing room, seated cautiously on the Louis XVI gilded sofa. It was fake, of course, and the peach velvet curtains and pale Chinese carpet were all very Hollywood, as was the radiogram that doubled as a cocktail cabinet. Still, it was classy enough for what it was – although exactly
what
it was would have been hard to define. You couldn’t call it a brothel. He supposed it might have been described as a place where you came to have a good time.

‘Gerry! How nice to see you.’

Sonia wore a close-fitting grey dress and high-heeled black court shoes. Since he’d last seen her she’d had her dark hair cut short in a sleek gamine style. He didn’t like short hair on any woman and it made Sonia look more untouchable than ever. But when she sat down, her legs were something else, slung sideways in the smooth perfection of her nylons.

‘Madge will bring us something in a minute.’ She raised her winged eyebrows slightly, friendly and a little mocking, but it was as if all men were the object of her mockery, Blackstone being merely the current representative.

He didn’t mind. He took people as they came and she came in useful from time to time, as much for the information she slyly passed on as for the girls she provided.

‘You didn’t want an introduction today, Gerry? If you’d given me a bit of notice – there’s a new girl, lovely young thing, definitely your type, up from the country …’

Blackstone shook his head. ‘Just thought I’d look in and say hello.’

The maid brought drinks on a tray: whisky for Blackstone and tea for his hostess.

‘Don’t you ever drink, Sonia?’

Sonia poured two fingers of whisky for her guest. ‘You know I don’t.’

Blackstone edged himself further up the sloping sofa. ‘All work and no play, you know, makes Jill a dull girl.’

‘I like being dull, darling. It’s much more profitable. Let other girls have the fun.’ She dropped a slice of lemon into the cup of pale tea. Its steam wafted the tarry scent of Lapsang Souchong.

‘Things going well?’ he asked and they chatted for a while until he felt it looked natural enough to say: ‘I wondered if you’d heard about that girl in a King’s Cross hotel, broke her neck falling down the stairs. Apparently.’

Sonia lifted the lid off the lacquer box that contained cigarettes, delicately picked one out, pushed the box in his direction and lit up with a gold lighter, which she then set down carefully, so that it made no noise against the glass table top. Every gesture was careful and precise. There was nothing unpremeditated about Sonia.

‘Really? Poor girl. No – I hadn’t heard. Should I have? Was it in the papers?’

‘She wasn’t just some scrubber hanging round the stations. The thing is – it gave me a shock, I can tell you – I knew her. In fact, you introduced us. I met her through you. Just the once. She was nice. Quiet, quite well bred. And a looker. We were meant to meet up again, but somehow we didn’t … it was a while ago.’

‘You could have asked me at the time if you’d wanted to see her again. If you’d lost touch with her.’

‘It wasn’t a big thing. You know how it is. I meant to follow it up, anyway, that’s not the point. It was just … I got to wondering what had happened … I thought you might know something about where she went to – not
now
, but … I suppose it was about eighteen months … maybe two years ago. Yes, couple of years, must be. Valerie … that was the name …’

‘You going soft, Gerry? Not like you to be sentimental.’ She stared quizzically at the reporter and shook her head. ‘I don’t recall … I’ve known quite a few Valeries,’ she said vaguely.

Gerry shifted about on the slippery sofa, impatient. ‘Blonde, with lovely big brown eyes.’ The lids had been closed over them, of course.

‘They don’t work for me, Gerry. You know better than that. I’m just a go-between, I put people in touch.’

‘You know what I mean.’ He leaned forward. ‘Lovely body. Voluptuous. Bit like Marilyn Monroe. And yet she was quite shy and … naive I suppose. Didn’t seem to realise she was God’s gift to man.’

Sonia frowned. ‘Oh,
that
Valerie. Yes … I do vaguely remember. Came from the south coast somewhere … Portsmouth, I think …? You’re a shrewd one, aren’t you? You’re right. She had no idea.’ She took a drag, inhaled deeply and blew out a plume of smoke. ‘Of what could be achieved with a body like hers. So … she fell down the stairs, you said. But that’s terrible,’ said Sonia, with a solemn expression in recognition of the awful reality that anyone, however young and beautiful, could die at any time. ‘And yet I suppose in a way I’m not altogether surprised that …’ Her voice faded away. Then: ‘I hadn’t heard anything of her for a long while.’

‘How long?’

‘Oh … I really can’t remember. I mean, they come and go, you know. I’m not a jailer, the silly bitches do what they want and often it’s something stupid.’ She shrugged, but then leaned forward and smiled in a change of mood. ‘But I might have known you weren’t here just to pass the time of day. You’re very naughty, Gerry, always out for information, never off duty, are you – talk about me being all work and no play, but look at you. Always got your nose to the ground, always on the lookout for a story!’

It was more than a story to him, but ‘You know me,’ he said with a shrug and a guilty grin. ‘Thing is, looks like the Bill might take an interest. Falling down stairs – always seems a bit fishy, don’t it. There’s a new man … one of those “I’m going to clean up the Met” types, y’know, he’s interested so …’ He wasn’t interested yet, of course, but Blackstone hoped McGovern would pass on the message and that something would come of it; although it was already late in the day, weeks since the accident.

‘It all sounds rather sordid, darling. Sad, of course, but so many of those girls, they don’t seem to know how to look after themselves. I try to warn them, but … most of them are too flighty or too stupid to listen, I’m afraid.’

Her shrug told Blackstone she’d said all she was going to say. He had to contain his frustration; and he didn’t like the way she dismissed the girls with a sneer. She was a cold bitch, but that was part of what made her useful. They chatted for a while – about whether Princess Margaret had got over not marrying Peter Townsend. It was an old story and bored Blackstone rigid. He was sorry for the princess in a way, but she was just an over-privileged rich tart, after all, with nothing to worry about, compared to Valerie.

‘All those stuffy old archbishops and their cant about Christian marriage,’ Sonia smiled. ‘And then they come here and want a good time with my girls.’

For a moment Blackstone thought this might be something big. ‘Not the Archbishop of Canterbury?’

Sonia laughed out loud – a rare event. ‘Good God, no, Gerry. And d’you think I’d tell you if—’

‘No – course not. You’re the soul of discretion. We all know that.’

‘I just meant priests in general. They’re human like everyone else, I suppose.’

‘Are they? What sort of human things do they get up to then?’

Sonia leaned forward slightly. ‘Well, I mustn’t be indiscreet, darling, but there’s one old gentleman … an archdeacon, I think that’s what he calls himself …’

It was quite amusing, as gossip, but it wasn’t big enough to interest him. He knew he wouldn’t get the information he’d hoped for about Valerie, so as soon as he decently could, he heaved himself to his feet, and said: ‘I must be off. Thanks for the whisky, Sonia.’

‘So soon? It’s lovely to see you. And you haven’t been to one of my little parties for ever such a long time. I’m having another one soon – I’ll let you know.’

‘Oh, I’m just an old square, Sonia, too old for that sort of thing.’

‘Nonsense, darling, everyone needs a bit of fun every once in a while. Do you good. You’re looking tired.’

She saw him into the corridor and then, just as he turned to say goodbye, she said: ‘You know, I think I do remember – I think … Valerie, that
was
her name, wasn’t it, I think she went off to live with someone in Paddington somewhere, some West Indian, I believe.’

That was a bit of a shock. Gerry prided himself on being open-minded and he had useful contacts in that community, but the way some of them treated white girls …

Sonia continued: ‘It was only a rumour. But why don’t you ask Sonny Marsden or someone you know down there?’

‘Sonny Marsden?’

‘Of course it was a while ago, quite a long while, actually.’

‘Thanks, Sonia. I’ll think about it. Good idea.’

They didn’t kiss or even shake hands as they parted. She never touched him.

chapter
3

T
HE PORTOBELLO ROAD MEANDERED
downhill away from Notting Hill Gate past the ramshackle antiques rooms and junk stalls and the fruit and vegetable market. Only twenty minutes away from Balmoral Mansions, this was a different London. The further you went the more West Indians passed along the pavements. On this dingy November afternoon their faces looked pinched and grey. Gerry Blackstone thought if you came from a Caribbean island you’d never get used to the cold. He walked on – he spent a lot of his time walking, when he wasn’t in taxis – until he reached Golborne Road and turned right. He found the house he was looking for in a cul-de-sac, cut off by a wall that plunged cliff-like to the railway line far below.

A train rattled past. He stared up at the sooty façade in the twilight. The terrace was slowly dying. A stringy buddleia had seeded itself in the pediment above the windows. Weeds pushed up between cracks in the pavement and around the area railings.

It was hard to believe that this whole area had once been fields, so completely had the land been buried by bricks and paving and mortar and streets, streets, nothing but streets. Yet as stone decayed, nature returned, crept up from the railway sidings and bomb sites, its fingers unsettling the foundations, dislodging the pointing between crumbling bricks and sending spidery cracks up the flaking stucco.

Near here, John Christie had hidden the decaying corpses of women he’d strangled under the floorboards of his kitchen, and the seedy necrophile still seemed to haunt the solitude. Blackstone had a lot to thank Christie for. The case had made his name.

He approached the end house, squeezed up against the railway wall. The scumble stain on the door was worn away in places. There was neither knocker nor bell and only a raw slit where a letter box had once been. He banged on the panel. Getting no response, he banged again, though with diminishing expectations, but he heard footsteps inside and the door was opened.

A tall West Indian stared at him. The look wasn’t so much suspicious as simply blank, closed off, as if the man had long since ceased to expect favours from anyone.

‘Sonny Marsden at home?’

‘Who want him?’ The accent was Jamaican.

Blackstone produced a card from his inner pocket. The Jamaican looked at it. Then he shook his head. ‘Ain’t here.’

‘Know where I can find him?’

The taller man stared at Blackstone as if seeing him from some far-distant location or down the wrong end of a telescope, as if Blackstone were a minute speck of dust in the gritty air.

‘I’m a friend of his,’ ventured Blackstone.

‘At his club. Powis Square. You find him there most likely,’ said the stranger. Blackstone found his deadpan manner strange and oppressive. Dressed in a suit too loose for his gaunt frame, the negro wore a royal blue tie and a clean white shirt, as if ready to go out himself, but spoke as if he came from another planet, and also as if some nameless mental burden afflicted him.

‘Thanks mate. I’ll try there.’

Blackstone had been to the club – more like a shebeen – at 6 Powis Square before, but then he had been escorted by Sonny Marsden himself. ‘Tell him I called, anyway, will you? Give him my card. He knows me.’

He turned to walk away.

‘Wait, I’m goin’ that way myself.’ And now the Jamaican spoke with more animation. He strode along so that Blackstone had difficulty keeping up with him.

‘Any special reason you wanting to see him?’

‘I’m looking for someone – a girl. Valerie. Name ring a bell?’

The man from Jamaica made a strangled coughing sound, which Blackstone realised stood in for a laugh; it was meant to convey that there were many girls around the area, that quite a few of them might well be called Valerie, and that he couldn’t be expected to remember them or even distinguish one from another.

The near-darkness veiled the dereliction of Powis Square. Blackstone followed his companion down the shaky metal stairs to Sonny Marsden’s basement club.

A West Indian opened the door, but not the whole way. ‘Who’s that with you, man?’

‘Says he a friend of Sonny’s.’

‘Gerry Blackstone.’ Blackstone spoke with confidence.

The man disappeared into the darkness. They waited. When he returned he gestured silently for them to follow him.

Sonny Marsden was as short as Blackstone’s companion was tall.

‘Gerry, man! Good to see you. You met Alfie, then.’

The proprietor escorted the arrivals along a dark passage. He pushed aside the curtain at the end and opened a door onto a large, ill-lit room. The smell of ganja hit Blackstone at once and indeed the air was thick with smoke. Blackstone made out a pool table in the middle of the room. Two black men and a white man were using it to play cards. He also glimpsed through the fog a black man and a white woman seated, smoking, on a sagging Victorian sofa against the wall to his left. The atmosphere was relaxed.

Beers were brought. Something a good deal stronger was Sonny’s forte, but Blackstone had to get back to the office in a while.

‘There was this girl …’ he began and retold the Argyle Street story. ‘I heard she’d moved down this way a year or more ago. And you know everyone, Sonny, you know what’s going on round here …’

‘This a while ago, though, I ain’t remember every damn bird come down this way, Jeez, there’s so many …’ and Sonny Marsden started to laugh, but it was an angry laugh. ‘I ain’t never heard nor seen of this Valerie, man.’

And indeed, the more Blackstone thought about it, the less likely it seemed that Sonny would remember Valerie. She might or might not have drifted down to Paddington, but there was no reason Marsden would have remembered her among all the others; except for her looks, that is. Or unless she’d been one of his girls. Had that been what Sonia had been hinting? ‘Lovely girl,’ he said, ‘looked like Marilyn Monroe.’

‘What she doing then got to do with what happened to her now?’

‘Just background stuff.’

Yes – she might well have passed through Notting Dale, but few would remember her now and if Marsden remembered he’d as like as not keep quiet about it. Blackstone decided to let the matter drop for the time being, just pump Sonny a bit generally to see if there was any other useful information in the offing.

He never smoked ganja himself, but the air was so thickly laden with the smoke that he began to feel its effects. It wasn’t difficult to get Marsden talking and soon Blackstone was hearing lurid tales of life in Paddington. There was a tasty story about a gambling den in Blenheim Crescent, on Church Commissioners’ premises too, but Blackstone didn’t think he could use it. The Little Man had the greatest respect for the Church. Unlike other established institutions, the C of E was safe from the
Chronicle
. Yet he might try to follow it up, or get someone else to.

On the other hand when Sonny boasted about all the society folk and film stars who’d come to Powis Square, you had to take it with a pinch of salt. ‘A man come in here the other night, looks the boys up and down, pick one out. You know for why? His wife want a bit of rough. Looking for a stud. And that’s not the first time. These rich white women, they got the money, but their husbands, they don’t give them no satisfaction.’

That was also not the sort of thing that could go in a family paper – if for no other reason than that it would be an insult to the white male readership. It could only inflame prejudice and increase the resentment, because it was already a powerful myth, that the newcomers took all the white women thanks to their possession of some magical and mysterious sexual power.

‘Film stars! In here, eh!’ Blackstone looked round the shabby room. ‘Give us some names, Sonny.’

Sonny just grinned.

‘And what does your brother think of all this?’

‘He telling me to get a job. Make like it’s a good job, London Transport, but …’ Sonny shrugged. ‘Don’t sound like a lot of money to me. And he get lip from passengers, lotta lip. All the time.’

‘I’d like to meet your brother. I’d like to hear his story.’ Two lives, two brothers, the contrast between the two: that wouldn’t do for the
Chronicle
either, but he might get it placed in a magazine …
Picture Post
, even, they’d done sympathetic stuff on West Indians from time to time, but
Picture Post
had gone downhill.

‘He don’t bother me and I don’t bother him. Ain’t seen him for a while anyway. Last I heard he was in Warwick Road. Number 81, if you’re interested.’

It was gone seven by the time Blackstone roused himself. He had to get back to the paper to file a report on the Soho stabbing. Not that there was anything to say about it.

Sonny accompanied him along the passage. By the door he suddenly and unexpectedly gripped Blackstone’s arm. ‘What’s it all about, man, you coming down here with this story about the girl? Who told you come and see me? Ain’t got nothing to do with me, man.’ Suddenly he was angry and suspicious.

Blackstone did not point out that his host was more or less a pimp, nor that his reputation was not exactly for treating women with kid gloves. ‘Just a general enquiry, old cock,’ he murmured soothingly.

‘It better be. And don’t you go putting stuff about me in your paper. I sued the
Graphic
and won. Remember that.’ His eyes glittered in the darkness of the corridor.

‘Who could forget that, Sonny?’ Indeed, it was a miracle. You had to tip your hat to a West Indian who’d taken on the might of the great British press and come out on top. No wonder the press now treated Sonny Marsden with kid gloves.

The smell hit him before he reached the glass-partitioned rooms: printer’s ink and cigarette smoke, metallic as the tannin in the dark brown tea they drank.

Four of his colleagues, shirtsleeves rolled up, sat deep in page proofs. The floor was littered with torn-up sheets of paper and the spikes were piled high. Orders were shouted at the messengers.

‘You’re bloody late, Gerry. Where the hell – the Little Man’s on the warpath.’

Against the cacophony of clattering typewriters, telephones ringing, shouts for tea and general curses, he wrote fast and well. It was basically an anti-police story, but he toned it down a bit as he wanted to keep on the right side of McGovern. His fingers pressed eagerly down on the keys – he loved the feel of it as you touched the keys like buttons, it was a sensual, almost sexual sensation, like pressing a woman’s nipples. He shifted the article towards more of a mood piece, less about mobsters outwitting Sergeant Plod and more about Soho, that colourful community of exotic workers, with Italian waiters as the chorus in a romance of bohemian entrepreneurs, battling to save their unique way of life from the porn shops that were threatening to move in. He wanted them to put a splash on his piece, but there was still too much stuff on the fallout from Suez and Hungary.

He was hoping against hope to avoid the Little Man. But his nemesis caught up with him. ‘This doctor in Eastbourne. You’d better get down there. Find out what’s going on.’ The proprietor’s hoarse voice was the sort to give bronchitis a bad name, and it always suggested menace. ‘You should have been on to it weeks ago. Rumours been swilling around since … if it hadn’t been for Suez …’

The genteel south coast resort was rocked with the speculation engulfing Dr John Bodkin Adams, a benevolent general practitioner suspected of hastening the end of the many elderly ladies who’d left him large sums in their wills. It was shaping up to be a huge scandal. Blackstone knew he’d have to get down there. But it didn’t interest him. He could think about nothing but the girl in the hotel, and after he had finished his Soho piece he made sure Valerie’s death finally made it to NIBS. Normally the short pieces in News in Brief were written by stringers trying to get a toe-hold, but he had a feeling about the girl and wrote it himself. And the mini-headline: ‘
HIGH HEELS ARE DANGEROUS
’. That had the ring of the American writers he admired – Dashiell Hammett, Micky Spillane, Jim Thompson and Raymond Chandler. Chandler was originally English, of course. He’d even been to the same school as Blackstone: Dulwich College.