Dead Beat

by Patricia Hall

  ‘But he could have known someone in the music business maybe?’ Barnard persisted. ‘Someone else who’s come down from Liverpool, just like you and your brother?’

  ‘I suppose so,’ Kate said doubtfully. ‘Though I never heard him mention anyone in a band. But every other lad was playing in some group or other the last few years, so it’s quite possible some of his mates did.’

  ‘So we need to talk to his mates in Liverpool, see what they can remember? See if they might have any idea where he could have gone? Or even if he’s been in touch.’

  Kate nodded gloomily. ‘I suppose so. We asked around when he went but no one seemed to know anything. And what about the family? Will you have to talk to my mam?’

  ‘We already have,’ Barnard said. ‘We asked the Liverpool police to call round as soon as you told us who our missing flatmate was. Then they’ll chase up any friends they can trace.’

  Kate felt sick and numb. She should have expected that, she thought, but she still could not get her head round the idea of Tom on the run, living hand to mouth maybe, afraid of his own shadow. In spite of being the younger, she had always tended to look out for Tom, protect him, even at times from their father, whose explosive temper had frightened all his children.

  She looked at the man on the other side of the table, well-dressed, good-looking but with a bleakness in his eyes which she supposed came with the job, seeking a hint of sympathy which was not there. Her mouth felt dry, the room was airless and she desperately wanted to leave, but she needed the answer to one last question.

  ‘Do you really suspect him of killing this man in the flat? What’s his name?’

  ‘Jonathon Mason,’ Barnard said.

  ‘How . . . ? How did he die?’

  ‘His throat was cut,’ Barnard said bluntly, knowing the answer would shake her.

  Kate went pale and swallowed hard. ‘Tom couldn’t have done that,’ she whispered.

  ‘In my experience, people involved in sex can do pretty well anything,’ Barnard said flatly, leaving no space for contradiction.

  Kate sighed. ‘I don’t see how I can help you,’ she said, struggling to hold back tears.

  ‘You can’t, unless he gets in touch,’ Barnard said. ‘If he does, I want to know about it. No excuses, no family loyalty, no messing me about at all. I want you to phone me. And if I hear nothing from you, believe me, I’ll be in touch with you myself. If he knows you’re in London, you’re the obvious person he’ll get in contact with. Do you understand, Miss O’Donnell?’

  ‘Yes,’ Kate said. ‘I understand.’ But she knew with absolute certainty that if Tom got in touch, she would do no such thing.

  Hamish and the boy walked slowly up Farringdon Road, turned left into Rosebery Avenue and then, just beyond the sorting office, alive with postmen and delivery vans, dodged into a warren of derelict bombed sites and the vestiges of former streets until they came out into Gray’s Inn Road.

  ‘Are ye sure ye know where ye’re going?’ Hamish asked anxiously as he stood on the edge of the pavement opposite a pub, waiting for a gap in the traffic speeding towards King’s Cross.

  ‘There’s flats over there.’ The boy waved vaguely towards Bloomsbury.

  ‘Big houses,’ Hamish said. ‘I ken them.’

  ‘Flats,’ the boy said, his face obstinate. ‘I know where he lives.’

  They dodged through the traffic as the boy led the way north again and then into side streets lined with nineteenth century terraces, grey and decrepit in the bright morning sunshine. They could see the gothic brick bulk of St Pancras now at the end of the grid of streets, like some dilapidated medieval castle looming over the neighbourhood. Still within sight of the station, the boy stopped at the doors of a neglected-looking six-storey mansion block, its brickwork chipped and its windows grubby.

  ‘This is it,’ he said. ‘I’ll be all right now.’ He glanced down at himself with some satisfaction. ‘Good old Sally Ann,’ he said. He ran his hand down the green duffel coat he was wearing over a warm wool shirt and dark slacks which were only slightly too big – nothing that could not be disguised by turning over the waistband to stop them flapping too obviously round his ankles, and the nurse’s warm boots he had insisted on keeping. His new outfit was topped off with a tweed cap which covered the dressing he still wore on his head.

  ‘He won’t know me in this clobber.’ And nor will anyone else, he thought, with some satisfaction. In the end he had given Hamish a sketchy version of the murder scene he had stumbled into, but had not admitted that his accident had been the result of panic at the thought of being recognized in the street. His fear now was that the old Scot would abandon him if he thought he was at risk of violence. Best, he thought, to keep that to himself.

  ‘I picked the smallest things I could find,’ Hamish said. ‘I told them you’d just come out of hospital, which was true enough.’ He was wearing a thick duffle coat himself, which he had also acquired that morning, and he had tucked his matted grey beard and hair into the collar, but his boots were split where the soles joined the uppers, revealing a couple of filthy toenails like claws on his left foot. While the boy, in his new clothes, could pass for normal, in spite of his thin features and the fear in his eyes, Hamish had failed to disguise what he was.

  The boy looked at him warily. ‘You can’t come up with me,’ he said.

  ‘Aye, I know that, laddie,’ Hamish said, but still seemed reluctant to turn away. ‘I wish . . .’ He did not finish the sentence.

  ‘It’s all right,’ the boy said. ‘This bloke’s all right. He won’t hurt me.’

  ‘And he’ll give ye money?’

  ‘He will.’

  ‘Aye, well, if ye say so. I’ll wait for ye over there.’ Hamish waved at a small patch of grass with a couple of wooden benches overshadowed by the tall brick blocks all round. ‘Naebody’ll bother me there.’

  The boy watched as his friend crossed the street, settled himself on a bench and pulled a bottle from his pocket. Then he turned and walked up the steps to the heavy doors which swung open with a push to let him in and made his way up the stairs with more confidence than he felt.

  Barnard leaned back lazily in his chair and smiled at the man across the beer-stained table between them. But there was no warmth in the smile, more the anticipation of a shark circling in murky water knowing that sooner or later a swimmer’s leg would conveniently appear above his head. The man opposite wriggled uncomfortably and took a sip of his half pint. Barnard’s companion was small and dark-haired, with a thin, almost wizened face, calculating eyes and an ingratiating smile which he was offering Barnard now, between sips.

  ‘I haven’t heard a whisper, Mr Barnard, and that’s the truth.’

  But Barnard did not believe him. ‘Come on, Joe. You know that’s not good enough. We’ve known each other a long time, haven’t we? You’ve done very well out of it, too. You could have been deported after that last little episode and you got away with six months. But I need something back. You must have heard something.’

  Joseph Inglott shrugged helplessly. ‘Nothing,’ he said.

  ‘What I don’t understand is why?’ Barnard said, barely able to contain his frustration. ‘Here’s a couple of queer boys, an actor and some sort of a minor player in the rag trade, both apparently working, quite legit, no police records, low profile, and some beggar cuts one boy’s throat and the other’s disappeared. Maybe he did it, or maybe he’s lying dead somewhere too, with his throat cut, for all I know. And no one, and I mean no one, not a soul, has heard a whisper.’

  ‘The boy who ran away cut his friend’s throat,’ Inglott said. ‘Is obvious. It happens all the time with these queer boys.’

  ‘Sure, it happens,’ Barnard said. ‘After a quarrel, a lover’s tiff, jealousy, all that, but there was no sign of that. The place was neat and tidy, no sign of a fight, no jealous frenzy, just a dead body and a lot of blood. Nothing smashed, nothing broken, except the table he fell against. It doesn’t look right
. There’s more to it. Must be.’

  ‘The Man has nothing to do with queer boys,’ Inglott said. ‘You know that.’

  Barnard nodded. It was true that the man Inglott was referring to, another Maltese, Frankie Falzon, who controlled much of the prostitution and pornography in Soho, had apparently steered well clear of the homosexual scene, perhaps from religious scruple, as hangers-on like Joe Inglott piously claimed. Barnard thought it more likely it was simply because Falzon had not yet succeeded in ousting someone else who was controlling that segment of the business in Soho.

  Whoever ran the trade, homosexual pornography was increasingly getting on to the streets and Barnard was sure that not all of it was any longer being smuggled in from abroad. Some of what he had seen recently had a distinctly home-grown look. And while his bosses tolerated, and in many cases connived with, most of what went on in Soho, the head of the Vice Squad, Keith Jackson, disliked queer porn with a particularly visceral hatred. Jackson wanted to stamp out the trade in what he called ‘queer filth’. It was a vain hope, Barnard thought, but he was wise enough not to share that view at the nick.

  He sighed regretfully in the face of Joseph Inglott’s ingratiating look. ‘It’s a pity, Joe,’ he said. ‘And you’re the poorer for it. I’m not going to shell out when you’ve got nothing to offer.’

  Inglott nodded enthusiastically. ‘Of course not, Mr Barnard,’ he said. ‘I wouldn’t expect—’

  ‘And I may not be able to hold my bosses off on that other matter for much longer. You and I both know you were involved in smashing up the coffee bar on Wardour Street. The manager’s still in hospital.’

  Inglott’s face paled and he licked his dry lips but he did not deny the charge. ‘I’ll keep my ears open, Mr Barnard,’ he said. ‘I’ll ask around. I promise I’ll do my best for you.’

  Barnard got to his feet lazily and put a hand on Inglott’s bony shoulder as he squeezed past him, with a lot more pressure than was strictly necessary. Inglott winced.

  ‘I’m sure you will, Joseph, I’m sure you will. So let’s not be strangers, eh? I’ll hear from you soon?’

  ‘You can bank on it,’ Inglott said in a whisper, missing entirely Barnard’s satisfied smile as he made his way out of the bar. Inglott remained slumped over his half-finished half pint, until the tremor in his hands subsided sufficiently to let him pick it up again. He was a very small fish in a very large and dirty pool and he was beginning to think, in the light of events he had heard whispered and that the police had not even come across yet, that he might be better off in jail.

  Barnard continued his slow perambulation around his manor, feeling frustrated by his lack of progress. It was a matter of pride that if Venables asked for his help, he could come up with something more than his former boss could uncover for himself. Inglott was just one of a stable of informants whose palms he greased regularly for information, or whose own misdemeanours he downplayed or ignored in the interests of keeping the facts flowing. He wondered if it was his imagination or whether his contacts were really thin on the ground this morning.

  Coming full circle he found himself back in Greek Street outside the queer pub where he found Vincent Beaufort staggering out of the door, looking very much the worse for wear in spite of the relatively early hour. Barnard took Beaufort’s elbow and drew him into a doorway with six separate doorbells, each labelled with a separate woman’s first name.

  ‘Vinnie, you old poofter,’ Barnard said, leaning heavily against him to thwart his feeble arm-flapping attempts to move away. ‘I don’t think you lot are being entirely open and honest about this boy who got his throat cut. What do you think?’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean,’ Beaufort said, subsiding slightly and leaning against the door, which creaked under his weight.

  ‘Oh, I think you do,’ Barnard insisted. ‘Are you telling me those two lads never came down here to the pub? That can’t be right, can it?’

  ‘Not when I was in here,’ Beaufort said. ‘Believe me, dear, I’d have noticed those two through the wrong end of a telescope.’

  ‘You’re a dirty old queen, Vincent. But I’ll let you off if you do me a favour. There’s no point me or those two girls asking questions in there. You know as well as I do that all we’ll hit on is a bloody brick wall and a cascade of that bloody secret lingo you talk. So I want you to ask the questions for me. All right? I’ll give you a couple of days and then you call me at the nick. That’s fair enough, isn’t it? A good deal for a twisted old pervert like you?’

  Beaufort slumped against the door. ‘And if I don’t, or can’t?’ he whispered, although he knew the answer from long experience.

  ‘Then you’ll all be getting a visit from DCI Jackson’s heavy brigade, and I can’t guarantee what’ll happen to any of you girls after that, can I?’ Barnard gave Beaufort a grimace which might pass for a smile in a poor light, and took his weight off the other man’s shoulder. ‘See what you can do,’ he said and spun away to make his way towards Soho Square and fresher air. He fancied a pint himself but he made a point of not drinking in the crowded pubs of Soho itself. He reckoned you never knew what undesirables you might bump into.

  ‘What do you think of the new clobber, la?’ Dave Donovan asked Kate O’Donnell, spinning on his axis, with his guitar at arm’s length. ‘Dig this? Cool or what?’

  The last time Kate had seen the band they had been wearing tight black jeans and leather jackets so the shiny new suits in a slightly electric blue came as something of a shock.

  ‘OK, I suppose,’ she said non-committally. ‘But won’t they say you’re copying the Beatles?’

  ‘Nah,’ Donovan said. ‘They don’t make the fashion, do they, la? This is the latest gear, a bit Mod, you know? Not so rock and roll? But we really need some good pictures. Everything we’ve got is so Fifties now, antwacky, really out-of-date. It’s all happening down here, you know. Up-to-the-minute stuff.’

  ‘Did you try to get a better manager?’ Kate asked. ‘You said you would.’

  ‘Brian Epstein didn’t want to know us. I sent him a demo tape. Didn’t even bother to reply.’ Donovan scowled, looking slightly ill at ease in his new suit which looked a bit tight around the shoulders. ‘And you know? He took on that Judy, what’s her name, Cilla something. And she’s just a flipping typist who reckons she can sing. So will you do us some glossies? It’s really important to have something good to take to booking agents, all that stuff. We’ll never get anywhere without.’

  ‘All right,’ Kate agreed reluctantly, looking round the bleak and very chilly rehearsal room near Tufnell Park which she had found with some difficulty after rattling up the overcrowded Northern Line from King’s Cross at the end of the working day with her precious Voigtlander in her bag clutched tightly to her chest. She slipped off her coat and hung it on the row of wall hooks by the door and glanced around to try to find some angle from which to shoot which would not expose the grubby walls and stained wooden floor in all their glaring inadequacy.

  ‘We need a better background,’ she said uncertainly. ‘What’s outside there?’ She waved at an emergency exit on the opposite side of the room.

  ‘Nowt much,’ Donovan said. ‘Just a yard and a fire escape coming down from upstairs.’

  Kate pushed past Dave and his three fellow musicians and through the fire door, searching around for some sort of background against which the band could maybe look just a bit original. Donovan watched her anxiously until she finally nodded her head.

  ‘Set up the drum kit in the corner there and then the rest of you fellers get one above the other on the fire escape with your guitars. I think I can make that look quite good.’

  Donovan looked at her doubtfully for a moment and the boy she knew as Miffy sniggered slightly, but the drummer, Stevo, nodded and Mike, the quiet one with the bass guitar, looked interested.

  ‘That’s clever,’ he said. ‘It’ll look like New York. Know worra mean?’

  ‘Exactly,’ Kate said. ‘Now let’s
get on with it.’ She spent almost an hour coaxing the four of them into various poses on the fire escape, until the light had faded and she had run out of fittings for the flash. She pushed her hair out of her eyes wearily and turned back into the gloomy rehearsal room again.

  ‘I’ll do you some contact prints and we can choose the best,’ she said.

  ‘Ta, Kate,’ Donovan said. ‘I’m really grateful, you know.’

  ‘And what about your side of the bargain?’ she asked anxiously. ‘Did you ask around about our Tommy?’

  ‘I did, babe, and I had a stroke of luck,’ Donovan said, putting a proprietorial hand around Kate’s waist which she firmly pushed away. ‘I told you Miffy would scout out the fashion scene for you. He was the one who found these suits. Dead cheap, they were. He says he saw Tom a couple of weeks back, bumped into him outside the tube station at Oxford Circus, and he told him he was working in a little men’s shop in a back street behind a big shop called Liberty’s.’ He turned to Miffy, who was the only one who looked at home in his smart new suit. ‘Where was it Kate’s brother was working, kidder?’

  ‘Can’t remember the name of the shop but it was in Carnaby Street,’ Miffy said as he zipped his guitar into its case. ‘Never been there meself, but Tom rated it, said it was the coming place.’

  ‘I’ve never heard of it,’ Kate said. ‘But I’ll go and have a look anyway. It sounds just the sort of place he would be, doesn’t it?’

  ‘We’re going for a bevvy now, babe. D’you fancy coming down the boozer?’ Donovan said, when the band had packed their instruments into a battered van parked just behind the rehearsal rooms.

  Kate hesitated for a second and then shook her head. She and Donovan had been together for almost a year back home, a relationship which had been more on-and-off than the Liverpool docks, and she did not want to give him even the slightest impression that she might be ready to resume where they had finally and acrimoniously left off. ‘It’s a long way back, and I told Marie and Tess that I’d be in for something to eat. I’ll phone you when I’ve developed the pics. So I’ll see you soon.’