Dead Beat

by Patricia Hall

  A Selection of Recent Titles by Patricia Hall

  The Ackroyd and Thackeray Series

  SINS OF THE FATHERS

  DEATH IN A FAR COUNTRY

  BY DEATH DIVIDED

  DEVIL’S GAME

  DEAD BEAT

  Patricia Hall

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author's and publisher's rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  First world edition published 2011

  in Great Britain and the USA by

  Crème de la Crime, an imprint of

  SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD of

  9–15 High Street, Sutton, Surrey, England, SM1 1DF.

  Copyright © 2011 by Patricia Hall.

  All rights reserved.

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

  Hall, Patricia

  Dead beat.

  1. Women photographers–England–Liverpool–Fiction.

  2. Brothers and sisters–Fiction. 3. Missing persons–

  Investigation–England–London–Fiction. 4. Soho

  (London, England)–Social conditions–20th century–

  Fiction. 5. Liverpool (England)–Social conditions–20th

  century–Fiction. 6. Detective and mystery stories.

  I. Title

  823.9′14-dc22

  ISBN-13: 978-1-78010-079-1 (ePub)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-78029-004-1 (cased)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-78029-504-6 (trade paper)

  Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to living persons is purely coincidental.

  This ebook produced by

  Palimpsest Book Production Limited,

  Falkirk, Stirlingshire, Scotland.

  ONE

  The boy scuttled like a rat through the weed-infested bomb site, half crouched, eyes flicking this way and that, careful not to make a sound except when a Circle Line train rumbled past in the steep cutting and stopped, with a hiss and a groan, at Farringdon underground station just yards away. This part of London was still a warren of derelict, bombed-out buildings and he was not the only one who had sheltered there through the recent bitter winter weather, still holding the country in an iron grip long after spring should have begun to provide a little natural warmth. Most of the men there felt safe in the knowledge that even if they lit fires to huddle round they were unlikely to be spotted either from the underground line below or the elevated streets above them. But the boy did not want to join the rest. He preferred to keep himself to himself, even more so since it happened, knowing instinctively that was best. He had not often been driven to sleeping here, wrapped in a couple of blankets which he always stowed carefully away in a rusting metal drum when he woke at dawn. Since he had arrived in London, he had usually been able to find a bed for the night, though he hated the price he paid for it.

  But since he had seen what he had seen, he had been much more cautious. The shock was still there, sometimes hidden in the darkness at the back of his mind where he hid so much of his past life, but sometimes worming its way insidiously to the front, making him shudder with nausea all over again. There had been no warning that his encounter two nights ago was in any way out of the ordinary: that clean-shaven young man, nice-looking, blond, well-dressed, as good as it got, he had thought the first time he had gone home with him. He felt pleased to see him again as their eyes met over the heads of the crowd on the steps below Eros and saw the recognition in his eyes. He had nodded quickly, though almost imperceptibly, in answer to the unspoken question and followed as the young man led him up Shaftesbury Avenue and into the narrow, crowded streets of Soho, past the French pub, and towards the narrow alleyway where the boy knew his mark would unlock a door which gave on to a steep staircase which led to living accommodation above a shuttered shop below.

  He had fallen behind a little in the thick crowds round Leicester Square and by the time he got to the entrance to the alley he found the young man out of sight. Suddenly cautious, he had stood for a time in a doorway on the opposite side of Greek Street, waiting for a couple of men, muffled up against the cold and clearly in a hurry to move out of the alley before he ventured down the narrow, ill-lit passage himself. He could see that the lights were on upstairs in the flat above the bookshop, as if inviting him into the warmth as he shivered in the freezing night air and eventually he had slipped through the unlocked door.

  It was totally silent on the staircase and he felt slightly surprised that his mark had not put a record on. The last time he had been here the room had been filled with music. But the door was ajar, so he knew he was expected, and he pushed it open with more confidence than he had felt on the dimly lit stairway. He found himself in the small entrance hall with several doors leading off, but only the living room door was half open and even as he hesitated on the threshold he could see more than he wanted to see, then or ever. The young man he had followed was lying sprawled across a small spindle-legged coffee table which seemed to have collapsed under his weight, but it was not that which wrenched the boy’s gaze and turned his stomach, so that he spun away gasping for air, afraid he would be sick. There was a chair in the tiny hallway, and he sat down on it, his knees suddenly trembling too much to keep him upright. The slashing blow which had clearly killed the man in the other room had almost severed his head, splashing blood in great gouts across the table and the orange and turquoise patterned rug it stood on. The boy knew he could do nothing for him, knew that he had to get away from the carnage quickly, for his own safety, but still he sat there for what felt like hours not minutes, unable to move, unable to think, trying to control his heaving stomach and his paralysed mind.

  Eventually he forced himself to his feet, and gently shut the door on the dead man, making no sound, although nothing, he thought, would ever let him forget this. He closed the main door to the flat behind him and crept down the stairs as silently as a shadow, standing in the doorway below for a moment to make sure that the alley was still deserted, before hurrying away to the only place he knew where he could find sanctuary. It had seemed like hours, and he had lost all appetite for trade, twisting and turning through Bloomsbury, past the tall, shuttered terraces, around the squares where the trees sighed in the wind, back to the no-man’s-land of derelict sites and bombed-out ruins close to the railway line where he knew he would be safe.

  Kate O’Donnell walked down Frith Street with her heart thumping and her portfolio banging awkwardly against her legs as she shimmied between the crowds along the narrow pavement. She scanned the properties on each side of the street for numbers which, more often than not, did not exist. A French bistro jostled up against a bookshop with lurid stock which Kate knew would throw her mother and all her gossiping friends from Saint Teresa’s into a frenzy of Hail Marys; she glanced into pubs with gloomy interiors full of men and the fumes of booze and cigarettes wafting that all-too familiar smell in her face – the smell of her father, she thought wryly, having little more than that sour memory of laughing Frankie O’Donnell who had walked out for a pint ten years ago and never come back. Her dad was just one of hundreds of merchant seamen who never came home again after a voyage from Liverpool, missing but probably not dead, just enjoying sunnier climes and new loves halfway across the world. Soho, she thought, had abou
t it more than a whiff of Liverpool when she had been a little kid, a dark, almost threatening bass note overlaid with more exotic aromas. She stopped for a moment to take fascinated stock of the next building, where a narrow doorway boasted six or seven bells marked simply with girls’ names.

  ‘Looking for a job, dear?’ a small woman, emaciated, heavily made-up and huddled into a threadbare camel coat, asked kindly as she pushed past her and disappeared up the narrow staircase inside. Kate moved on quickly. She was certainly looking for a job, she thought, but not that one. She glanced around for a moment before continuing her quest, still conscious of the thrill that London had given her as soon as she ventured from her friends’ flat west of Paddington station where she had begged to sleep on the sofa until she found work. It was quite possible she would have to slink home again to the Pool in the end, defeated and deflated, if she found nothing. But that was a possibility she pushed firmly to the back of her mind, reluctant even to imagine the ‘I told you so’ look in her mam’s eyes and the barely concealed pity of her friends and neighbours if she had to go back with nothing to show for herself. She had taken a massive gamble on this trip, a streak of her dad there, she thought, but she was determined she was going to win.

  This, Kate thought as she hurried on, was where she wanted to be. The more she saw, the more she was certain of that. The crowds, the noise, the traffic, the cavernous underworld of the Tube with its rattling trains and stale, windy tunnels, nothing put her off. This was where it was all happening. This was where she could break through and become someone. Back home, unless you were a lad with a guitar and a cheeky smile, there was nothing on offer for someone with ideas and energy and ambition, especially if they happened to be female. You ended up like poor Cynthia, a mate from college, who, she had heard, was stuck at home having a baby while her man was having all the fun. That, she thought, was not for her, as she had told Dave Donovan flatly when he had suggested ‘settling down’ together, before he too got bored with that idea and headed south. Settling down was not her ambition yet. And the greatest incentive of all to stay was that this was where she might be able to track down her brother Tom, who had taken this road before her.

  She gave an little skip of excitement, drawing a curious look from a paunchy man with long hair shuffling past in a miasma of alcohol fumes, and resumed the search for what she hoped might be her opportunity. A block further down, she found the door she was looking for standing wide open and clearly advertising the fact that it was the home of the Ken Fellows Picture Agency. Taking a deep breath, she glanced at her reflection in the window of the Italian grocery store on the ground floor and took a moment to assess her chances: dark hair, cut medium short and sweeping forward in a curve around her face, blue eyes, careful make-up but not too heavy round the eyes like some girls were wearing it now, on-the-knee tweed skirt, artfully pulled up at the waist so as not to show beneath the hem of her fitted coat: not bad, she thought, though she had to admit that she had little idea what criteria Ken Fellows might use to assess a likely young photographer.

  She stepped through the open door and climbed the narrow wooden staircase, uncarpeted and dusty, to find herself in a cramped reception area which offered a couple of hard chairs and a cluttered desk with a typewriter and telephone but no sign of a human presence. Behind the desk was a display board covered with black and white photographs beneath the agency banner. A few of the subjects she recognized as she cast a critical eye over them: an actor she could not put a name to though she knew the face, decked out in cloak and sword for what looked like a Shakespeare play, a series of moody views of the Thames, a parade of exotic-looking floats, some sort of a road accident and some rainy street scenes. But her eye was drawn quickly to two or three groups of young musicians she also did not recognize and one she instantly did. She smiled faintly at the sight of the John Lennon she had known in black leather and tight jeans at art college now resplendent in a sharp, mod-looking suit, and a new haircut, and wondered if he would remember her now the band looked as if it might be really going places.

  Her reminiscences were interrupted by the appearance of a young woman who poked her head round the single door leading off the lobby with an interrogatory: ‘Yeah?’

  ‘I’ve got an appointment to see Ken Fellows,’ Kate said.

  ‘Oh, yeah. You’re the girl who wants to take pictures.’ The sharp eyes, heavily lined in black, looked her up and down critically. ‘That’d be a first,’ she said, scepticism oozing from every pore. ‘He’s waiting for you.’

  Kate followed her through the door and found herself in a large, cluttered space where every flat surface seemed to be covered with cameras and equipment and all the paraphernalia of a photographer’s life, mixed up with overflowing ashtrays, piles of newspapers and magazines and coffee cups in various stages of mouldy senescence. There were tables and chairs, but no one was sitting at them. In fact, the room was empty, although there was a red light showing over one of several doors at the far end, and the sharp smell of photographic chemicals filled the air. The receptionist waved Kate over to another exit without the tell-tale light over it and the boss’s name inscribed on the half-glazed door. She opened it and waved her inside.

  Ken Fellows did no more than glance up briefly at Kate and wave her into the single rickety chair which faced his desk. He then returned to his study of sheets of contact prints which he held up to a bright desk light, grunting now and again with a sound that Kate found hard to interpret as either satisfaction or dissatisfaction, though occasionally he marked a print with what she assumed was his sign of approval. His inattention gave her the chance to look around his spartan office, a much tidier space than the photographers’ room outside, and with a single board displaying some fashion shots which she guessed had been taken for a glossy magazine.

  Fellows was a rangy figure, his white shirt open at the neck and the sleeves rolled up. His hair was grey and untidily long and curled, touching his collar at the back, and the lines around the eyes, she thought, could have been caused by looking too long and hard through a lens, or into the sun. When he finally looked up and his eyes met her own, she was startled by how blue they were, and how chilly.

  ‘So you’re the girl who wants to be a photographer?’ he said, his voice as unfriendly as his expression. ‘It’s not a job for a woman.’

  ‘So people keep telling me,’ Kate said, her mouth dry. ‘I brought my portfolio, any road. I came top of my class at college.’

  ‘Liverpool School of Art?’ Fellows said without enthusiasm. ‘So who’ve they trained that I’d know about? Wedding and passport snappers? Bar mitzvah and Rotary Club lunches a speciality? This is London, girl, and I intend this to be the best agency in the business. I need speed and flair and a bit of aggression. You don’t get first class pics in high heels and a tight skirt.’ He glanced contemptuously at the outfit she had spent ages agonizing over that morning.

  ‘For one of my projects at college I went down a coal mine in Wigan,’ Kate snapped back, stung by his contempt. ‘I know what the job takes. If you look at my work . . .’ She pushed the portfolio across the desk towards him.

  ‘What did you use? What cameras?’

  ‘Whatever was appropriate. It was a good department. But more and more thirty-five millimetre. I’ve got my own Voigtlander. I sold some pics to the Liverpool Echo and bought it out of the proceeds. I was trying to get a job there but they didn’t want to know. No vacancies, they said.’

  Fellows raised an eyebrow. ‘Not a bad little machine,’ he said. ‘The thirty-five millimetre’s the future for news. No doubt about that. The old plate cameras are out-of-date.’

  ‘I notice you’re doing a lot of show business pictures, bands and groups and that. There was a group in every street back home. Liverpool’s going mad for rock bands. I took a lot of pics of them – just for practice. If you look here . . .’

  She flicked through her collection and paused at a couple of black and white glossy publicity shots. �
��This is Dave Donovan – he reckons his band is going to do well – and this is John Lennon. You’ve got one of him up outside. Both lads are down here in London now trying to get a break. I was at art college with John and his girlfriend, but he didn’t stick at it. Spent much more time on his music than his art. Though he’s not bad, his drawing’s very good in black and white . . .’

  ‘Are they really going to be a big thing, these groups? They’re not going to fizzle out like skiffle did?’ Fellows asked, suddenly interested. ‘More than a flash in the pan?’

  ‘The kids in Liverpool certainly think so. The girls were going hysterical about the Beatles at the Cavern Club. They’re quite dishy, especially Paul. He’s my favourite . . .’ She stopped, realizing she was being too enthusiastic about people Fellows did not seem to know much about.

  ‘Yeah, I was told they were getting noticed a bit down here, too. We did a few publicity shots for one or two bands. But there’s been almost no interest from the papers and magazines really.’

  ‘I saw your pix of the Beatles on the way in,’ Kate said. ‘Mine are better.’

  Fellows looked at her sharply, with a ghost of a smile creasing his thin face. ‘Are they now?’ he said. He glanced at the pictures she indicated and then leaned back in his chair and folded his hands behind his head, watching her speculatively for a moment.

  ‘OK,’ he said, at length. ‘I’m short-handed as it happens. I’ve just sent one of my best lads to France on a commission for a magazine. I’ll give you a two month trial. What you make of it’s up to you. Get rid of the high heels for a start. You’ll fall over in the scrum if you don’t. Use your own camera. See how you get on. Start on Monday.’

  ‘How much will you pay me?’ Kate asked. Fellows sighed and looked at the ceiling in mock despair.

  ‘She wants money, too,’ he sighed. ‘OK, twelve quid a week, for two months. No more. If I keep you on, we’ll see. And a bonus if you come up with something really special.’