She Died Young (26 page)

He resented being dragged back into an ugly past. MI5 were no doubt simply using him in some scheme of their own with Quinault. He didn’t care about their little games. He wanted no part of it.

Yet there was all that money in Quinault’s desk drawer.

Blackstone was waiting for him in the melancholic atmosphere of the pub and for some reason McGovern found his presence soothing. Blackstone was easy-going. He wasn’t judgemental. Perhaps it was down to cynicism, but at least he wasn’t abrasive or demanding.

‘Enjoyed the Ambassadors, did you? It’s a pretty awful place really, but I suppose it’s the way we’re all going. A bit of glitter on poor old England, the old tart.’ Fraid I drank too much. Wasn’t feeling too clever the next day. Same again, thanks,’ he added, as McGovern gestured at his glass.

‘So how d’you get on with Mrs Mallory?’ he asked as McGovern set down the tankards.

‘I didn’t get much out of her. Didn’t handle it too well, I’m afraid.’

‘She’s a tough nut to crack.’

‘She insisted Quinault’s nothing but a client.’

‘I thought you knew about her murky past in Germany. That’s what you told me at the club, after you’d recognised her.’

‘It’s a long time ago. It’s all speculation – her and Quinault.’

‘What about … Argyle Street?’

McGovern shook his head. ‘I did get the idea she was trying to protect her husband. She was very touchy when I mentioned him. Quite defensive.’

Blackstone became more animated. ‘Yeah. I bet Mallory’s involved somehow or other. I wondered if Sonia might be covering up for him. That would explain why she sent me on a wild goose chase after Sonny Marsden in Notting Hill – trying to protect Mallory by sending me off in the wrong direction. But anyway, Rita unearthed a few titbits of gossip at the club. Met a girl she knew when she went round the back. Might get some more information there. I’m meeting up with them tomorrow morning.’

‘She wasn’t cooperative. It maybe was not such a good idea to pay her a visit at all at this stage. Showed my hand a wee bit too early.’

‘Does the spy angle really add up? There’s no sort of evidence she’s been in touch with the East Germans, is there? There’s not much she could tell them if she was, I should have thought.’

‘The link with Quinault is odd, though,’ insisted McGovern.

‘I still think she’s blackmailing him,’ said Blackstone. ‘That’s the only thing that can explain the money. I’m going to poke around a bit and see what else I can find out about her other clients. And you can push the Professor some more, can’t you?’

‘It’s tricky.’ McGovern stared ahead. ‘But I have to go back up to Oxford tomorrow, in any case. One of the refugees is missing.’

chapter
36

M
AISON LYONS WAS BLACKSTONE’S
home from home. He’d long since ceased to notice the surroundings. The waitresses knew him and he didn’t object to starting the day with a bit of flirtation; when, that is, he wasn’t too hung over.

He’d dressed rather more carefully than usual. He hadn’t seen Rita since he’d driven her back to Notting Dale from Mallory’s club, driving cautiously on account of the amount of liquor he’d consumed. Fortunately, they’d arrived safely, although he had been pretty drunk. He had kissed Rita on the cheek with paternal solicitude. It was not the time to take things further, but she’d agreed to meet him here at Maison Lyons today and to bring her friend from the Ambassadors.

He ordered coffee and waited. While he waited he read
The Times
. ‘Top People read
The Times
’ was the newspaper’s new slogan. Top People – who were they, Blackstone wondered. Top People were to be seen at the Ambassadors; Top People visited Sonia; Top People made a mess of Suez; Top People denounced juvenile delinquents and feckless council tenants, yet turned a blind eye to whatever Sonny Marsden and Vince Mallory were up to. Top People had been too stupid to believe that Burgess and Maclean could possibly have been Soviet agents. Top People were the upper crust of a cesspit.

But there were the girls he was waiting for, advancing between the tables like a couple of film stars! Rita was the looker, of course. Her friend was too lanky and anaemic to appeal to Blackstone and wore an unflattering pale pink coat. He stood up, courtly. He liked to treat women with respect.

‘This is my friend, Gerry. Gerry, this is Dawn.’ Good girl. He’d told her not to say anything about his being a crime reporter.

‘Pleased to meet you,’ simpered Dawn.

The waitress hovered, gave him a sly wink.

‘Coffee for the young ladies, please, Beryl. I’ll have another cup myself. Or do you prefer tea?’

The girls chose coffee. It was more sophisticated. They talked about the Ambassadors. It was a marvellous place to work, Dawn told him. She was ever so lucky. She might be able to put in a word for Rita, if Rita was interested.

Blackstone didn’t think that was a good idea at all, but he listened, prepared to spend time putting the girl at ease before he started asking questions. He might not even have to ask questions; what he needed to know might all emerge naturally as she talked about her work and the girls and the boss.

Mr Mallory, Dawn told him, was a very good boss. The dancing was very artistic. He was strict, of course, you had to be on time and work hard at the routines. You could be fined for lateness. That was what happened with Valerie. She met a young man and her time-keeping began to slip. Mr Mallory didn’t want her to leave. He didn’t like the young man, though. Some of the girls thought he was jealous, but that wasn’t it. In the end things got quite bad and he gave her her cards. She was in a state then, her bloke hadn’t any money, there were all sorts of rumours.

Blackstone listened. With Rita sitting next to him he didn’t want to display emotion, but the story disturbed him. ‘What sort of rumours?’

Dawn shook her head.

‘Do you know why the boss was so angry? What was it about?’

Dawn picked at one of her pink nails. After a while she said: ‘People said Val talked too much.’

‘Talked too much? What about?’

Dawn shrugged unhappily. ‘Her boyfriend?’ She didn’t seem convinced. She said hesitantly, ‘He was a bad lot, supposed to be.’

‘Who was her boyfriend?’

‘Archie Le Saux, he was called. They said he was no good. Come from a bad family or something.’

‘Archie Le Saux!’ Blackstone felt sick. The Le Saux clan – a bad family! That was a massive understatement. They were notorious down the East End. His hand shook as he lit another cigarette. Dawn was looking uneasy now.

‘I hope I didn’t say the wrong thing. It weren’t no secret.’

Blackstone couldn’t understand why, if it wasn’t a secret, he hadn’t known about it. He spoke reassuring words, but it was obvious she felt she’d said too much, as if it were a secret after all. She moved around uneasily in her chair. ‘Look – thanks ever so for the coffee, but I’ve got my rehearsal now.’

Blackstone watched her departing figure blankly. He couldn’t believe it. Valerie, mixed up with Maurice Le Saux’s nephew. That just wasn’t possible.

‘Are you all right, Gerry?’ Rita put a hand on his arm.

He finished his fag, stubbed it out and pulled himself together. ‘Yeah, yeah, I’m fine. What about a taxi back to North Ken?’

‘Don’t be daft. What’s the Central Line for? Or I could get a bus.’

Blackstone insisted and in the padded depths of the cab his arm was soon round her soft, plump waist and his mouth seeking hers.

‘I like you, Gerry.’

He loved the way she was so open and natural and straightforward. That was how Valerie had been. Only different. Valerie had been a romantic who lacked confidence, an unpromising combination; Rita by contrast was an optimist, and pragmatic too, for now she pulled back from him.

‘You know Carl only got six months. He’ll be out in four.’

‘Mmm. No, I didn’t know.’ He stroked her hair. ‘Carl’s no good to you, darling.’

‘The trouble is, there’s the old man. Who’s going to look after him, if I … if I’m not there?’

‘A lot can happen in six months. Don’t worry. We’ll sort it all out.’

Yes, Rita was a sweetie. She was a comfort to a man.

But Valerie: Valerie with Archie Le Saux. The boyfriend she was going to marry; the knight in shining armour.

He walked back from Rita’s up to Bayswater and turned into Kensington Gardens. The wind had cleansed the bleached sky; new acid-green grass and even some snowdrops poked through the mud. A flock of birds seemed hurled like a fistful of confetti from the hand of God, whirled into a ball of netting that then unfurled across the sky. But his mood only darkened.

He spent the day looking up background material on Bodkin Adams in the Newspaper Library far out in north London at Colindale, a dismal region of flimsy factories, automobile concessions and dingy housing. He found it impossible to concentrate and eventually gave up and took the tube back to central London. He left the underground at Holborn and walked down Kingsway. The roar of the traffic, news-vendors shouting the evening headlines, the lights spiked out against the darkness of shabby streets – he took it all for granted, and barely noticed the newsreel movie of city life unfurling endlessly day after day. Yes, it was like walking through a newsreel, life as a newsreel. There was always news, the endless traffic rolling off the presses, great waves of it, and he was tossed along in it too, along with all the flotsam and jetsam eaten up by the juggernaut of passing time measured out in the latest scoop, the latest
story
. Events piled up, each new event burying the previous one; what was it Macmillan had said? ‘Events, dear boy, events.’ That’s what got you in the end.

He was in search of a colleague and turned into Ye Old Cock Tavern, where he was most likely to be found. He saw his mates at once, round a crowded table. Sam White, wire spectacles askew, hair falling over his forehead, was at the centre of the conversation. Blackstone fetched a beer and joined them.

Suez. The argument never ended. The
Chronicle
had supported the war from the outset. That didn’t mean the paper’s journalists agreed with the line. Some did, some didn’t. Blackstone personally despised Fleet Street jingoism, but he was fatalistic about world affairs. All he felt certain of was that it would turn out badly, in the short term and in the long term as well. And then there was Hungary.

‘Suez gave them cover. That’s why they went in, when we were all looking the other way.’

‘We have to show the bloody Yanks they don’t rule the world.’

‘Fact is, they do.’

‘Nasser was a fool to block the canal. He had to go.’

‘So Hungarian students are slaughtered.’

‘Don’t be a bleeding pessimist. The Russians have had it in the long run.’

‘For Christ’s sake, man, are you serious? Imre Nagy’s in Moscow. Their army’s enormous. Twice the size of the Yanks’. And communist regimes all over the bloody globe. They’re in charge. Absolutely.’

‘And we’re Airstrip One – basically we’re just a silo full of nuclear bombs.’

Blackstone manoeuvred himself so that he was seated by White. ‘What’s this I hear,’ he muttered, ‘about Stanley Coleman chumming up with Vince Mallory?’

White was the city and financial correspondent. His bent spectacles gave him a slightly squiffy look. ‘Who told you that?’

‘I saw them together at Mallory’s new club.’

‘Stanley Coleman?’ White thought about it. ‘Never. Coleman’s one of the richest men in Britain. He owns more of Britain than the bloody Queen. He’s richer than the Duke of Westminster.’

‘Well, there he was at Mallory’s table.’

White shook his head. ‘Everyone goes to the Ambassadors, it’s the with-it place, isn’t it? Been there myself.’

‘Yes, but not as Mallory’s special guest, I imagine.’ While half listening to the Suez–Hungary argument that circled round and round, never getting anywhere, Blackstone tried to imagine in what circumstances Coleman could be relevant.

Suppose Mallory was hoping for some sort of financing from the property tycoon. Mallory was said to be very rich himself and he certainly had the Rolls and the Aston Martin and the huge pile out in Epping somewhere to prove it. But you never knew. He might be under-capitalised. He had to pay a lot of people.

If that were the case, he wouldn’t want bad publicity about a girl dying in suspicious circumstances. Besides, Stanley Coleman was Jewish. Mallory wouldn’t want unpleasant rumours getting out about his wife’s secret past in Germany, either. McGovern had told him her father had been a Nazi who’d then managed to get on the right side of the communists. That wouldn’t go down well at Coleman’s HQ.

Yet – was it Mallory he should be thinking about? More urgent was to find Archie Le Saux. That’s who he should have been thinking about. Was thinking about. He should have followed it up when he’d first heard word of a boyfriend from Toni at the California Club, but it hadn’t seemed important. No: that was untrue. He’d known it was important, all right. He should have got on to that lead at once, but he hadn’t wanted to. He hadn’t wanted to know about a boyfriend. But now he had to; which meant he had to find Archie Le Saux.

He slipped away. In the smoky darkness of the foggy street the pedestrians passed like wraiths, each going he knew not where on the treadmill of life. He felt desperately tired and so weary, endlessly burdened by the dismal ugliness of it all.

There was an envelope lying on the hall floor. No stamp. Printed on the sheet of paper inside were simply the words: FINAL WARNING.