She Died Young (8 page)

She stared ahead. She wasn’t quite sure Charles had got the message. Did he understand her urgency? She
had
to know about Quinault. She suspected it had something to do with the war or MI5, something Rodney was not telling her, something that might threaten their relationship, and nothing must be allowed to do that. There was also Quinault’s relationship to Drownes’, of course, but that was of less importance.

The whole thing was a minefield. She sighed and twisted her emerald engagement ring. Charles looked down at it, but said nothing.

Then he squeezed her arm and she knew he had after all got the message when he said: ‘I’ll spy for you, Reggie. You can rely on me. In fact, it might be quite amusing to dig up some dirt on old Quinault.’ But his tone of voice was laden with irony. Did he really mean it? Of course, he always sounded like that – as if nothing in this world really mattered.

At least she now knew Rodney was telling the truth about Oxford. She gathered herself together to rise in her magnificent coat. ‘It’s a little cold, don’t you think? I’ll stand you a sherry at the Mitre. If you have time, that is.’

‘That would be awfully nice,’ he said, and she had no idea whether his reply was just good manners or genuine enthusiasm.

‘But we haven’t talked about you.’ If he’d been a normal young man she’d have joked about romance, asked if he had a girl, but you couldn’t do that with Charles.

Perhaps, however, he intuited the unasked question, for he replied: ‘The most exciting thing that’s happened to me since the summer is some frightful old pervert at All Souls compared me to the
Mona Lisa
.’

‘The
Mona Lisa
? What an insult! She’s so frumpy and unattractive. I’ve never understood all the fuss.’

‘There’s a famous essay by some Victorian aesthete who really preferred boys.’

‘Oh?’ she said vaguely, still pondering the mystery of Rodney’s association with Quinault.

‘He seemed to think quoting great chunks of it at me was the best way to get me into his scrofulous little bed. Passages so purple they’d make your coat pale by comparison. “The eyelids are a little weary … like the vampire, she has been dead many times.” Like her, I have an unfathomable, sinister smile, it appears. I nearly died of embarrassment.’

It was the closest he’d come to animation all afternoon.

‘Darling, how horrid. Are all Oxford dons that peculiar?’

Privately she thought that his eyelids
did
look a little weary. And – she tried to suppress the giggle that unexpectedly bubbled up – there
was
something ever so slightly vampiric about him.

‘Why are you laughing? It was ghastly.’

‘Hardly the best seduction line, I can see that. But I suppose they’re all in love with you.’

‘Unfortunately, I’m not in love with them.’

chapter
9

O
N HIS RETURN FROM
Eastbourne, Blackstone had the evening to spare, so he treated himself to oysters at Wheeler’s in Old Compton Street. Afterwards he thought he might as well look in at Johnnie Hay’s Premier Club in Little Compton Street nearby.

At first glance this was a drinking club like any other in Soho. The basement room was uninspiring. The walls had been painted pink a long time ago and the bar with its zigzag wood veneer must date from well before the Festival of Britain. A jukebox had recently been installed, but no-one played it. The tables and chairs had been assembled from junk shops. Yet perhaps that was the point: that it looked so ordinary, so shabby and unimportant, when in fact it had established itself as information exchange extraordinary for all the villains, bent coppers, bookies, hangers-on and newshounds of central London. This was largely due to Johnnie Hay himself.

From behind the bar in the corner he kept a benevolent eye on his guests. His spotted bow tie, hunting green waistcoat and the pork pie hat he wore indoors vaguely referenced the racing fraternity and at the same time made a shaky claim to dandy status, but his manner belied the image, for his was a motherly presence, quiet and unobtrusive, an invitation to confidences. He had a reputation as a keeper of secrets. However, Blackstone had discovered that it was often useful to get him into conversation.

Blackstone chatted with him for a bit, gradually working his way round to the subject of Valerie.

Johnnie Hay already knew about the accident in the hotel. ‘Nice girl, tragic, an accident like that. Absolutely tragic.’

‘You knew her! How come?’

‘Last I heard of her she was looked after by Sonia.’

Blackstone leaned across the bar towards Johnnie. ‘That was a while ago. Not any more. I heard she’d been knocking around with Sonny Marsden.’

Hay puffed on his cheroot, pup – pup – pup. He shook his head. ‘She wasn’t Sonny Marsden’s type.’

‘Does he have a type? I thought all women were grist to his mill … so to speak.’ It wasn’t the happiest metaphor.

Johnnie Hay repeated firmly: ‘Not Sonny’s type. Not his scene.’

‘She wasn’t just an ordinary tart,’ agreed Blackstone, but as soon as he’d spoken, the nostalgic note he’d struck embarrassed him. It was probably meaningless, a sentimental falsity. He hadn’t cared for her, hadn’t even really known her, he was just casting a romantic glow in retrospect on what had been a squalid little one-night stand.

‘Sweet on her, were you? Well, you weren’t the only one.’

Blackstone savoured the pure, stinging bite of his whisky. It went down very smoothly, but then there came the fieriness in the throat. ‘Same again, Johnnie. And have one on me.’

‘Thanks, old cock.’

‘Sweet on her – no … just ships that pass in the night. Who else, though?’

But Johnnie Hay wouldn’t be drawn. ‘I’m just speaking generally.’ Girls like that, he philosophised – well, it was true, a girl like that was not ‘just’ or not exactly a prostitute. And ruminatively Hay implied she inhabited that uncertain moral area between a straightforward tart and the sort of ‘kept’ woman who lived off men, rather than them living off her, and retained at least a degree of independence. Or seeming independence. Of course it was all based on looks and sex appeal. The future would be uncertain, once the allure faded, if some permanent arrangement hadn’t been achieved by then.

‘You seem to know a lot about her.’ Blackstone felt frustrated and irritated now.

‘I know a lot about
them
,’ corrected Johnnie Hay. ‘Women with the God-given gift of a beautiful body.’

‘But …’ Blackstone had been going to say that Valerie’s charm for him had been precisely that she seemed not to be a woman of the world, to be on the contrary a waif shipwrecked on an uncertain sea. That was probably an illusion too. ‘There was a doctor at the scene. Name of Swann. It rang a bell. Couldn’t remember why, though.’

Johnnie Hay relit his cheroot, squinting down at the tip. Tiny bursts of smoke came popping out. ‘Wasn’t that the doctor Vince Mallory used to use? He’d got struck off, of course, but that didn’t worry Mallory. On the contrary.’

Vince Mallory! Blackstone had first heard of Mallory as a small-time boxing promoter in the East End. Boxing was a grey area where the perfectly legal strayed into criminal activity. Nothing wrong with it. In fact, you could argue that the sport was a good way of keeping lads off the street and away from crime. It also sometimes led to fame and fortune, even if by the end of it the pugilist’s brains had turned to pulp – and as for that Labour MP, Edith Summerskill, who wanted to ban the sport, wasn’t that just simple proof that she understood nothing –
nothing
– about the working class she claimed to represent? When had she last been to the East End?

Those were the arguments Blackstone had heard many times in the early days when he’d worked around Bethnal Green. That was where the name of Vince Mallory used to crop up. He hadn’t started out as a boxing promoter and the question always was what he’d been doing before that. It was known he organised illegal fights, bare-knuckle contests. He’d been at the murky, rough end of things at the very least. And there were rumours about what else he was up to. Prostitution rackets were a good way, in some respects a relatively easy way, of raising funds to finance other kinds of crime. Or it could have been the black market. Or possibly both. Mallory could never quite be described as a gangster, but he’d certainly been a spiv; and something about the man – whether it was the uncertainty surrounding his activities and where he got his money from, or the rumours about his sexual tastes, or simply his intimidating physical presence – generated a wary respect that bordered on fear.

‘I don’t think Mallory needs the doctor any more,’ mused Hay. ‘Gone legit, ain’t he, gone up in the world a long time ago. You know he opened that poncey club in Soho last year? Well, of course you do. The Vice Squad don’t like it at all, I’ve heard. West End Central isn’t best pleased. And now he’s trying to get into the property racket, ain’t he? There are rumours, at any rate.’ Hay’s smile was sadder than ever. ‘The doctor on the other hand – I believe he’s fallen on hard times. Of course there’s still abortion, and villains wanting their faces altered a bit, but they say the doctor’s lost his touch, hands a bit trembly these days.’

‘He’s not working for Mallory any more, then?’

‘In the old days if one of Mallory’s boxers got injured in a fight in some back-alley venue, derelict factory, you name it, he didn’t want them ending up in hospital, did he? All sorts of questions asked. But it isn’t like that any more. You know that.’

‘So nothing to do with Mallory?’

Johnnie Hay lifted his shoulders to indicate how little he knew, how mysterious it all was. ‘Who knows? Shouldn’t think so, though.’ He swilled his whisky round in its glass. ‘As regards poor Valerie’s accident, though, I’m a bit surprised the doctor was involved. Sounds fishy to me.’

‘D’you have an address?’

‘I might have.’ Johnnie Hay looked vaguely round. ‘Might have it somewhere. Come in the back a minute.’ He stood up, cheroot still in play. Blackstone followed him into his tiny back office. There, Hay approached the battered filing cabinet in the corner. He rattled a drawer open and looked through the files it contained.

Blackstone slid a note from his wallet. Hay still had his back to the journalist, but whether he heard a faint rustle or whether he simply sensed the appearance of the money, he said: ‘I’ve remembered it. Somewhere off Gray’s Inn Road … Cubitt Street, number ten. Basement. Henry Swann.’

‘Thanks. I’ll look him up.’ He tried to speak casually, but the information excited him – in an unpleasant way. He felt nervous, tense, sweaty.

‘You’re taking a special interest in the case.’

Blackstone shook his head. ‘I hardly knew her. It’s just that it doesn’t add up.’

Hay finally let his cheroot die. ‘Talking of doctors,’ he said, ‘what’s the latest on Bodkin Adams? Are they finally going to nail him? After all, there’ve been rumours for years …’

chapter
10

T
HE NEXT DAY BLACKSTONE
made a detour on his way to Eastbourne for a second time. He deposited his suitcase in the left luggage at Victoria station and then doubled back to King’s Cross to visit Dr Swann.

The doctor’s residence was approached down a flight of steps to the basement area of a terraced house. It was similar to so many others in this part of King’s Cross – not unlike the hotel in which Valerie had come to a sticky end. A clean net curtain veiled the window onto the basement ‘area’.

Blackstone paused before ringing the bell. He wasn’t too sure of his story. He might get the door shut in his face. Perhaps he cared too much. Adrenalin was speeding his pulse rate. He took a deep breath and pressed the bell.

The man who opened the door must be, Blackstone thought, well over seventy. Sprucely dressed: a cardigan, neatly pressed trousers, a spotted bow tie. Blue eyes sparkled behind glasses and beneath flaring white eyebrows. He had a good head of white hair, too.

‘Yes?’ The look was enquiring, benign, in no way suspicious.

‘Dr Swann? I – I’ve come to see you about a friend of mine. In need of a bit of help.’ He hoped this was vague, yet suggestive enough to get him through the door.

The elderly gentleman gazed at Blackstone with benign speculation. ‘Ah – yes – and what makes you think I’m your man?’

‘D’you mind if I come in? It’s rather personal.’

‘And I hope
you
won’t mind if I ask you who recommended me?’

Blackstone hesitated, then: ‘Johnnie Hay.’ He wasn’t sure that was the right answer, but it did the trick, for Dr Swann stepped aside with an: ‘Ah, yes. Johnnie Hay. I haven’t seen him for some time.’

The corridor passed the front room and appeared to lead to gloomy regions at the back; but Dr Swann ushered the journalist into the parlour, a room that seemed to Blackstone like a cross between a consulting room and a waiting room, with shabby leather chairs, a desk, a calendar and reproductions of hunting prints on the darkly papered walls, together with old advertisement posters for various medical remedies. The desk was almost excessively furnished with penholders, letter racks, a blotter and in and out trays, suggestive of a busy practice. There was also a lamp with an oblong green glass shade. In a way, Blackstone thought, the room was a parody.

Blackstone sat on one of the leather chairs, noticing as he did so a copy of the
Chronicle
on the floor beside it. Rather to his surprise, the doctor seated himself on the adjacent one, which stood at a receptive, confidential angle, rather than behind his desk. As if to still the tremor of his papery hands, he gripped the chair’s arms.

Blackstone decided to plunge in straight away. He didn’t want to miss too many trains to Eastbourne. ‘There’s a hotel near here,’ he began. ‘A girl had an accident. They say she fell down the stairs.’

‘Yes?’

‘A doctor was called. Certified her dead. Made all the arrangements.’ Blackstone pulled out his cigarettes and lit one.

‘If you don’t mind my saying, old chap, those things are turning out to be a bit lethal.’

Blackstone took a deep pull. ‘Scaremongering, if you ask me.’ He wasn’t to be deflected. ‘I wondered … were you by any chance the doctor …?’

The doctor sat up. Now he looked alert. Blackstone was finding the room oppressively hot, but it wasn’t clear where the warmth was coming from. He looked round, but there was no sign of a fire. Central heating seemed unlikely.

‘Why is this of interest to you, if I may ask?’

‘I was – she was my girl, you see. I was away at the time.’

‘Ah …’ The doctor gazed sharply at Blackstone with his twinkling blue eyes.

‘You were the doctor they called? It’s important to me, you see, to know just what happened.’

‘I’m not sure how I may be of help to you.’ The doctor spoke blandly, but Blackstone knew he would be very much on his guard.

‘You were present when she died – or were you called to the scene afterwards?’

The doctor crossed and then recrossed his legs. Eventually he said: ‘I signed the death certificate.’

‘There was an inquest. The verdict was accidental death. But there seemed to be some doubts about it. You must know what actually happened.’

The doctor gazed speculatively at Blackstone. ‘She was your sweetheart, was she? And yet you’ve only just got interested.’

‘I told you. I’ve been away.’

‘You said you hoped I could help a friend of yours. I don’t quite see what this line of questioning has to do with any friend.’

Blackstone thought he might have blown it. Impatience had been his downfall. ‘I meant the girl. I meant Valerie.’

‘She’s beyond anyone’s help, old chap.’

Blackstone decided he might as well take a risk, shock the old crook. ‘You see, I wondered if she really did fall down the stairs.’

The doctor stood up. Blackstone thought he was about to be shown the door, so he added: ‘I thought you might like to know the police have got interested.’

Swann said: ‘If you’ll just excuse me for a moment …’ and left the room.

He was gone for rather a long time. When he returned, he took his seat again. His eyes had darkened a little; his mottled hands no longer trembled like moths. ‘I signed the death certificate, always ready to do a favour for an old friend. Could cause me some trouble, but then …’ He didn’t finish the sentence, but looked dreamily away into the corner.

‘Are you implying – was there a reason you shouldn’t have signed the certificate?’ Well, of course there was. He’d been struck off. But was that what the old man was hinting at? ‘Did she really fall down the stairs? You can’t help wondering … an accident like that …’ The doctor didn’t lose his composure. If anything, he looked slightly glazed. Blackstone remembered: drugs. That’s what had got him knocked off the register. All those years ago. Where did he get the stuff, these days, that kept him going? That was a question for later, for another day.

‘Implying? You’re the one implying, it seems to me. Implications – implications – there are always implications, don’t you agree?’ He spoke with dreamy composure. ‘In my reduced circumstances, I can’t afford to be choosy.’

Blackstone took out his wallet, an act not lost on the doctor, even if he now seemed becalmed on a drug-induced dead sea.

‘I trust the boys in blue aren’t going to get involved,’ said the doctor. But he no longer seemed at all worried about it. His papery hand slid the banknotes into an inner pocket.

‘I don’t think it was an accident, was it?’

The doctor smiled dreamily. ‘Dead on arrival, poor girl.’

‘At the hospital?’

‘At the hotel. A foregone conclusion. Her fate was sealed. I didn’t go with her to the hospital, my dear. That would never have done. With my reputation!’ He laughed gently.

‘On arrival. At the hotel. Are you saying that—’

‘Reputation – reputation’s gone. Othello, y’know.’ The doctor stood up. ‘I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to leave now. I’m feeling rather tired … Will you see yourself out?’

‘She was already dead when she got to the hotel?’

But the doctor was on his feet and with a protective arm steered Blackstone very firmly towards the front door. On the doorstep Blackstone turned. ‘What does that mean – dead on arrival?’

But the doctor only winked and patted his finger against his nose.

Blackstone walked slowly away down the quiet street. God, these streets were small and crabbed and dark. They were like another kind of indoors. That’s what London is really like, he thought, an enormous indoors without end, a labyrinth of endless passages.

From a public telephone at King’s Cross station he made a call to DS Jarrell.