She Died Young (6 page)

chapter
7

A
RGYLE STREET LED AWAY
from King’s Cross towards a neglected region of narrow back streets still scarred from the war. Explosions had shaken the terraces and left them cracked and fragile. The forbidding Victorian tenements had withstood the Blitz better, Blackstone thought, but their dark inner courtyards were like prisons.

Halfway along Argyle Street two houses had been combined into a hotel. A notice propped against the window advertised ‘Vacancies’. The flimsy glass front door was unlocked.

Blackstone stepped cautiously across the threshold into the narrow passage. There was no reception desk. He was about to call out when a middle-aged woman appeared from the back regions. She looked at him with troubled dark eyes, as if she saw an intruder rather than a potential guest.

‘I wondered if you had a room. A single room. For one night.’

‘You want room?’ She seemed to find this a surprising, even a suspicious request. She pushed back her black curls.

‘It says you have vacancies – on the door.’ He smiled encouragingly.

‘Yes. We have room. This way.’ She gestured towards a door to the right and led the way into a reception room with a counter, a sofa and some chairs. The furnishings were plain and shabby, but not obviously dirty. On the wall hung a reproduction of an Impressionist landscape Blackstone vaguely recognised: Monet? Manet?

The dark-eyed woman slipped behind the counter and reached for a key from the pigeon-holes behind her.

Blackstone leaned on the counter. ‘Nice place you’ve got here.’

She looked at him doubtfully.

‘Good position. Near the stations. Matter of fact, a friend recommended it.’

‘Yes?’ She looked a little less wary, but her smile was hesitant, reluctant, as if she expected the worst, as if she suspected some nasty twist behind his words. ‘You see the room?’

‘Please. The name’s Hunt,’ he said. ‘I travel quite a bit myself. Haven’t seen many hotels as smart as this.’

She nodded uneasily.

‘I’m a travelling salesman, you see.’ He somehow had to gain her confidence and in order to do so embarked on a rambling story of mishaps and misunderstandings at other hotels he’d stayed in. He wanted her to think of him as harmless. At first she fidgeted, but quite soon he’d lulled her into a state of passive acquiescence. He smiled winningly as he told her about his wandering life and after a while he felt it safe to move on to personal territory.

‘I come from up north, myself. Yorkshire – they say we’re the salt of the earth, y’know. Don’t know about that. Ever been to Yorkshire? It’s a great place. Cold, though. I bet you come from the south, the sunny Mediterranean, the glorious Med. With those lovely eyes you must be Italian, right?’

‘Malta.’

‘Malta! Lovely place, I believe. Never been there myself. Romantic, I should imagine. I expect your name’s just as romantic. Ariadne? Dolores?’

‘Maria – Maria Camenzuli.’ She had definitely relaxed a bit.

‘Manage this place on your own?’

She shook her head. ‘My husband …’

The very mention of her husband seemed to revive her anxiety.

‘Mmm. That’s nice,’ he said soothingly. ‘You meet some interesting people, I dare say.’

She shrugged, cagey again now.

‘It must be hard work, though, looking after this place … guests not always as tidy as they might be … leaving things behind …’

‘They are like pigs sometimes.’ She spoke with sudden venom.

‘Maria – if I may – a lovely woman like you – doesn’t seem right you should be clearing up after people who haven’t the decency—’

‘Is very hard life.’ With a look of self-pity she warmed to the subject. ‘Cleaners – they don’t stay. I am working all day – my husband has other work, is not here – people come. Are sometimes rude …’

‘Not the best type of guest sometimes … I imagine – you must get all sorts so near to the stations …’

‘Riff-raff! Girls …’ and she made a sweeping, ambiguous gesture with her hand.

‘And you such a lovely woman. It doesn’t seem right. I tell you what, Maria – this weary traveller is badly in need of a drink and I don’t suppose you could see your way … the pubs are all shut at this hour of the afternoon, but a hotel … something a little stronger than tea, you know … we’ve so much to talk about – I want to hear all about you – you must see all sorts here.’

She hesitated. Then, having weighed up the proposition, she nodded and left the room. She was quickly back with a bottle and two glasses on a tray. ‘Is special Maltese liqueur.’

It tasted like slivovitz, the horrible stuff he’d drunk in Yugoslavia in the war, but it had a strong after-kick.

‘So tell me about running a hotel? It must be worrying at times. Strangers day after day … and you on your own? Husband out all day, is he?’

‘Yes – of course. He never help. And people are rude. Argue about money, not want to pay.’ Then for the first time came a genuine smile. ‘And then there are nice ones like you.’

He raised his glass to her and smiled. He complimented her some more. He sympathised expansively. ‘Shocking. They don’t appreciate all your hard work …’ and after a while he said carelessly: ‘Things can go wrong too, I suppose. I mean, I read something in the local paper about an accident in one of these hotels.’

She stared. ‘Accident?’ She put her hand up to her mouth. At the very mention of the word she seemed to unravel before his eyes, her hair more obviously uncombed, her blouse sagging open to reveal a sliver of bra.

‘Oh – I’ve upset you. Forgive me. It wasn’t in this hotel, was it?’ He sounded convincingly shocked and concerned. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you. So very upsetting,’ he murmured.

She was actually shaking. She clasped her hands together. ‘Was awful. Horrible.’

‘A lady fell down the stairs or something? Something like that? A young woman …? It must have been terrible. A terrible shock.’

Maria Camenzuli nodded speechlessly. Now she seemed mesmerised.

‘I suppose you had to call the police—’

‘No police. Accident, just doctor—’

‘Mmm …’ He nodded and leaned forward to pat her hand. ‘You called a doctor?’

‘My husband. He call doctor. Doctor friend. Dr Swann. Very nice doctor.’

‘Dr
Swann
?’ Amazing! She’d given him a name! What luck! He was on the qui vive now, all right, but he must try not to show too much interest.

‘Why you ask?’ She’d caught the excitement in his voice and seemed to withdraw into her earlier mute suspicion. She stood up. ‘You want room? I show you room. Very nice room.’

He followed her upstairs, annoyed to have given the game away. Yet perhaps he’d got as much as he’d needed. No point, really, in asking more questions, about the police, the doctor, the girl. Too many questions and she’d clam up completely.

She flung the door open onto the first-floor front room. ‘Best room,’ she said, with something closer to defiance than pride. If it was the best room he hated to think what the others were like.

He thanked her and turned away to the window. He pulled aside the lace curtain. It was slightly greasy to the touch with the invisible grime of London. He looked out at the quiet street, catching a glimpse of King’s Cross station at its end.

‘I’ll take it,’ he said.

She still loitered in the doorway.

‘If you don’t mind – I need to rest – lie down for a while. I’ll come down shortly – I expect you’ll want me to pay in advance. Just give me a few moments.’

As soon as he judged her safely downstairs he made a quick search of the room. He didn’t know what he was looking for, though. He left the room and looked around the landing and the corridor leading off it. He tried to imagine the scene. If she fell down the stairs … he knelt down and examined the landing carpet. The staircase was typical for a nineteenth-century house of this type, narrow with a twist at the top onto the first-floor landing. The carpet was thin and at the very top there was a bit of loose weave. Blackstone pulled at the torn threads. They were not frayed. They looked as though they’d been deliberately cut, perhaps to make the story that she’d tripped more plausible. He also wondered whether the girl would have fallen all the way down from the top step, or whether she would have just landed up against the wall at the bend.

He stepped back into the shadowy depths of the landing and its corridor. He tried another door, but it was locked. Then he heard a man’s angry voice. At the head of the stairs he stared down to the hallway. The individual who now stood behind Mrs Camenzuli was smaller than she, but there was something that would make you think twice before taking him on: the furrowed face, the small, angry black eyes, perhaps, or the way he stood alert, behind his wife, like a dog ever ready for the signal to attack.

‘Who are you? What you doing?’

The woman said something in an unfamiliar language.

‘I’ve just booked one of your delightful rooms.’

‘Why you were moving about up there?’

Blackstone ignored this. As he descended the stairs, as casually as he could, he glanced at the banisters, but they showed no signs of damage such as a body ricocheting past them might have caused.

The man snarled something in their language at his wife. She shrank away from him a little. Blackstone edged towards the door. Camenzuli stared at him. You wouldn’t want to meet him on a dark night in the back streets.

‘I have to go out for a while,’ murmured Blackstone, as he placed his hat on his head and made for the front door. ‘Thank you. I’ll be back shortly.’

Outside he stood still for a moment and looked up and down the street. From within the hotel he heard Camenzuli shouting. He looked back through the glass door, but there was nothing to see. He wondered if he should go to the woman’s aid, but he was not a physically brave man and Camenzuli would be the sort to have a knife.

A cold wind had got up. He wasn’t wearing a coat, so he made for the station. There were telephone kiosks there and a tea room. He needed a cuppa. After that, there’d be another taxi.

Two days later, on the Friday, he met McGovern in the same pub as before. The policeman looked lined and older in the sallow light of the saloon bar with its grimed windows and its ceiling treacly from the smoke of a thousand cigarettes.

McGovern had brought with him a pallid carrot-head, a loose-limbed young man, whose over-large raincoat drooped from his shoulders.

‘Detective Sergeant Jarrell,’ said McGovern and then: ‘Can we make this brief? I’m off to Oxford on Monday and I have to get ready. I spoke to Moules, he agreed to have a look at the case you mentioned – the girl in the hotel. I’ve brought Jarrell along because he’ll be dealing with it.’

Blackstone didn’t want to let on quite how pleased he was, but gratitude was certainly in order. ‘Thanks. I’m glad you persuaded him. I think you’ll find it’s worth a look. I went round to the hotel. Just to have a dekko. Maltese chap, the manager. Shifty bastard. Very cagey.
And
he’s got form.’

Blackstone had done his homework. He’d trawled through his exhaustive archive of newspapers, police reports and notes collected over a decade.

‘He was a hanger-on to one of the Maltese gangs. Got a couple of convictions, but recently he’s been clean. You could find out more about him at your end, I’m sure. I sweet-talked his wife a bit. And she told me something I found interesting – the name of the doctor at the scene. Swann. I vaguely remember the name. Rang a bell. I haven’t had time to follow it up. But I think you should. And there was something else. I looked at the carpet at the top of the stairs. It had been tampered with. Cut to make it look as if she could have tripped, you see. Camenzuli caught me at it, nosing around. He was very suspicious. Didn’t like it at all.’

The Scot stood up. ‘I’m not surprised,’ he said drily. ‘Moules has said he will have it followed up. But there’s no guarantee he’ll make it a priority or consider reopening the case. At this stage he just wants Jarrell to have a look at it. He has other things on his mind. If we don’t turn up something quickly, it may get forgotten again.’ He added rather coldly: ‘So I hope you’re right in thinking there’s something worth the investigation.’