Dead Beat

by Patricia Hall

  Barnard laughed. ‘You were unlucky,’ he said. ‘I happened to see you coming out of your office. I’ve been watching you hawk your little snap around. So – did you find him? Was he in that last place you went to? You were in there much longer than you were anywhere else.’

  Kate shook her head. ‘You’re wasting your time,’ she said flatly. ‘He’s been working there but he’s not been in for days. It’s a dead end. You can check it out yourself.’

  ‘Oh, don’t worry, I will,’ Barnard said. ‘But not until you tell me what made you come to Carnaby Street in the first place. I’m sure you didn’t just stick pins in the map, did you? Who told you this was a likely spot to look for him?’

  Kate thought about that carefully. ‘I talked to some friends from Liverpool,’ she said. ‘They told me they’d seen Tom and thought he was working somewhere round Oxford Circus. This seemed like an obvious place to look. It’s just the sort of thing he likes, all this stuff . . .’ She waved a hand at the pavement racks of clothes but trailed off slightly miserably, looking for a sympathy which, judging by the look in Barnard’s eye, she was not going to get.

  ‘Didn’t it cross your mind that you should have contacted me before you came down here making your own inquiries?’ he asked. ‘If you’d actually found him, what would you have done, Miss O’Donnell? Bought him a ticket to France?’

  Kate managed a wan smile. ‘Don’t be silly,’ she said. ‘I’d have persuaded him to talk to the police, of course. What else can he do?’ But she knew Barnard did not believe her.

  ‘By rights I should take you back to the nick and hand you over to the officer in charge of this case,’ he said. ‘But as you haven’t found him I’ll let it go for now. But only for now, mind. I don’t want you doing your own detective work on this case. Not only will it not help your brother, it’ll land you in court yourself, if you’re not careful. Do you understand that? Helping a suspect evade the police is a criminal offence, Miss O’Donnell, make no mistake about that. And it has serious consequences, believe me.’

  ‘But I haven’t helped him,’ Kate said quietly. ‘I haven’t even found him, any more than you have.’ She glanced at her watch. ‘I need to get back to work,’ she said.

  ‘And I need to talk to this man you say knows him,’ Barnard countered quickly. ‘Keep in touch, from now on, Miss O’Donnell, won’t you?’

  ‘Of course, Sergeant,’ Kate said, offering her sweetest smile, while she wondered just what good all those years of confessing her sins had done when it came to the crunch. To keep Tom safe she knew she would lie for as long as it took. What she also knew was that she would take more care to keep out of Sergeant Barnard’s way in future.

  EIGHT

  Kate O’Donnell stood as if mesmerized on the edge of the crowd. She was not normally a reticent person and she knew she looked good in her strappy green silk dress, tight at the waist and full in the skirt, and the only item of clothing she had ever bought at Liverpool’s top department store, Bon Marché, and spent more than ten pounds on. Teemed with high-heeled court shoes and a bag just big enough to contain her camera and a few other necessities, she knew the effect she was having, not least because Ken Fellows had cast a critical eye over her outfit and told her so before sending her off to the charity boxing match and reception organized by Ray and Georgie Robertson at the fashionable Delilah Club just off Regent Street.

  ‘Not bad,’ he had conceded, evidently in spite of himself. ‘Not bad at all. You’ll do. Now you’re quite clear what you’re at, aren’t you? Get a list of the guests from Ray Robertson’s fixer, feller called Tony Statham, big bloke with not much hair. Think you can manage that?’

  ‘I’ll try,’ Kate said, biting back her irritation.

  ‘Then call me and we’ll go through the list, see who’s worth a picture. He generally pulls in some big names: sportsmen, theatre people, politicians. What I want is people like that letting their hair down. Some of the rags’ll be there themselves, but not all of them, so we’ve a good chance of flogging a few snaps to the rest if they’re good enough. So I’m relying on you, Kate. And make sure that if you get a shot of an interesting bloke with a pretty girl you find out who the girl is. There’s a rumour going around that a government minister is up to no good with some tart called Christine. Ask Tony if she’s there and then keep an eye on her. Could be a really good story, that.’

  ‘Fine,’ Kate said.

  ‘And you’d better take a taxi home. You don’t want to be getting the last tube back in that outfit.’ Fellows had made the offer slightly reluctantly and took the edge off it by insisting that he wanted her contact prints on his desk by nine the next morning. ‘If you’ve got anything good I want it on the evening picture desks by ten,’ he said. ‘The do’s too late for the morning papers to get pics in, except perhaps for the last edition, so the Evening Standard and the News’ll be right in the market. The diaries will love it.’ Ken had looked at her doubtfully for a moment.

  ‘Are you sure you can handle this?’ he asked. ‘I’d planned for Bob Johnson to go but he’s off sick.’

  ‘Of course I can,’ Kate had answered, but now, feeling small and nervous in the throng of large dinner-jacketed men, and a few elegantly dressed women, with jewels which she guessed must be real and heady perfume she guessed must be Chanel, not to mention the fur coats they’d been handing into the cloakroom to hang beside her modest tweed, she wondered if she had bitten off more than she could chew. ‘Come on, girl,’ she told herself, intending to seek out Tony Statham and taking a deep breath before pushing off into the melee, which was drifting towards the seats around the boxing ring set up in a farther room.

  Statham turned out to be a huge man who looked as if he had been shoehorned into his starched shirt and dinner jacket, putting the buttons under considerable strain. The room was getting hot when Kate at last found herself being pointed towards Statham who was standing in the doorway to the boxing arena tightly packed with gilt and red velvet chairs, directing people to their seats while mopping his brow with a large handkerchief and holding a slightly crumpled list in the other.

  ‘Name, darling?’ he inquired as Kate approached, an anxious frown creasing his brow.

  ‘I’m from the Ken Fellows Agency,’ she said. ‘Ken said you’d help me with the guest list if I asked you.’

  ‘Ken recruiting pretty birds now, is he, the old lech?’ Statham asked, casting a lingering but jaundiced eye over Kate from head to foot. ‘Hope you don’t faint at the sight of blood.’

  ‘It’s the party I’m more interested in than the boxing,’ Kate said. ‘Ken says Mr Robertson’s parties are quite something.’

  ‘He raises a lot of money for charity, petal,’ Statham said. ‘Sporting charities mainly. He’s got a name for it. People come to support the charities, don’t they?’

  Kate dodged out of the way of a tall man waving a glass of champagne in the direction of his companion, who was wearing a strapless dress which exposed more of her breasts than Kate thought was possible without getting arrested. She raised her eyebrows and Statham gave her a sardonic look.

  ‘You’d better come and meet Ray and Georgie, or they’ll wonder what you’re doing here,’ he said. ‘Georgie’ll have your knickers off as soon as look at you if he doesn’t know who you are. You want to watch out for him.’

  Statham grabbed hold of another thickset man who seemed just as seriously ill at ease in his dinner jacket. ‘Make sure all these people get to their seats before the bell goes,’ he said. He took Kate’s elbow in a massive grip and steered her back into the main reception room, where a thinning crowd was still enjoying the champagne and canapés, and took her towards an area close to the bar cordoned off with gold tasselled rope. The two men she took to be Ray and Georgie Robertson were evidently in expansive hospitable mood, surrounded by a cluster of guests, all drinking champagne and several of them smoking mammoth cigars and exhaling clouds of blue smoke.

  Statham edged his way towards Ray, wit
h Kate in tow. ‘A minute, boss, before you go in?’ he said. ‘This young lady’s from the Ken Fellows. He usually sends Bob Johnson, but I thought you’d want to know that it’s a doll this time.’

  Kate saw both Robertsons’ eyes swivel in her direction, Ray’s coldly neutral and Georgie’s hotly appraising. By the time the night was over, Kate thought, she looked likely to have been mentally undressed by almost every man in the room. Someone in the crowd behind her gave a faint wolf whistle of appreciation, which earned him a filthy look from Statham.

  ‘Have a word, Tony,’ Ray Robertson said angrily. ‘I’m not having that nonsense here. Lowers the tone.’ Statham moved back into the crowd of guests looking for the importunate whistler, while Robertson turned his attention back to Kate and his expression back to as benign as she guessed it ever got.

  ‘Got your camera in good nick, then, have you, sweetheart?’ he asked. ‘This is my brother Georgie, if you haven’t met before.’ Kate gave Georgie a faint smile as his appraising look grew more intense but turned away thankfully as Ray waved his hand around the circle of his guests. ‘Lord Francome, just joined the government, you know, Sir David Seal MP and Lady Seal, Winston Jones, hot from Her Majesty’s Theatre, John O’Reilly, won the Derby last year.’ He waved towards a couple slightly apart from the other guests. ‘And that’s Fred Bettany, my accountant, most important man in a business, you know.’

  Kate was about to ask about the tall, blonde woman in what must certainly be a designer dress, figure-hugging to emphasize her abundant assets, to whom Georgie Robertson was paying close attention, but Ray had not finished.

  ‘Anything else I can help you with, just ask. Tony knows everyone and anyone. He’ll look after you.’

  Summarily dismissed, Kate felt everyone’s eyes flicker again briefly in her direction and then swivel back to their conversations. She was, she thought, one step above the hired help and just as invisible to these VIPs. The only person whose attention she had really captured, she thought, was Georgie Robertson’s, and that could turn out to be a distinct disadvantage. He was still watching her with unsmiling dark eyes and a slight smile which she did not like. She pulled her camera out of her bag and took a couple of token shots as Ray Robertson began to shepherd the group towards the exhibition boxing match which seemed to be about to begin. She would do better later, she thought, when the exhibition was over and people were more relaxed as the drink continued to flow and the food on the buffet tables at the far end of the room was unveiled.

  In the event, the boxing match turned out to be a short, sharp affair between two young men who looked to Kate’s untutored eyes far too skinny to go anywhere near a boxing ring. She stood beside Tony Statham at the back of the room watching while they pounded each other ineffectually for several rounds before one of the boxers began to bleed freely from a cut above the eye and, to groans of disappointment from the crowd, the referee stopped the fight and the young men put on their dressing gowns again and danced back the way they had so recently come to their dressing rooms.

  ‘Pity, that,’ Statham said, turning away, disgruntled. ‘Ray had hopes of that lad, but it looks as if he’s a bleeder. That’s the second time he’s not got past round three.’

  ‘I thought you had to be beefy to be a fighter?’ Kate said.

  ‘Not to be a flyweight,’ Statham said dismissively. ‘Don’t you know anyfink? Right, it’s buffet time. Can you get on by yourself now? I’ve got stuff to do. Here.’ He waved a sheet of paper at her. ‘Mr Ray said to give you the guest list.’

  ‘I’ll be fine,’ Kate said, turning to join the general exodus from the auditorium, feeling slightly more confident that she could now do her job. But as she was jostled by the crowd she realized that someone had an exploratory hand on her hip. She pulled away sharply and spun round to find herself face-to-face with Georgie Robertson, this time with more of a leer than a smile on his face.

  ‘Please don’t do that,’ she said so loudly that a handful of people in the crush turned towards her and she flushed before catching the amused eyes of the last person she expected to see at the Robertsons’ party.

  ‘What on earth are you doing here?’ she asked, realizing that Robertson had quickly melted away behind her.

  ‘I might ask you the same question,’ Harry Barnard came back quickly. ‘I thought you were slumming it in Notting Hill with your girlfriends. Who brought you to this do, then?’

  ‘Nobody brought me, I’m working,’ Kate snapped, pulling her camera from her bag and waving it in Barnard’s face.

  ‘Still a little one?’ Barnard said, with an unapologetic grin. ‘Those hefty beggars the men use too heavy for you, are they?’

  ‘This is the latest thing, thirty-five millimetre, and a good one too,’ Kate said defensively. ‘Ken Fellows reckons it’s the future for news. What about you? What are you doing here?’

  ‘The Robertsons like to keep well in with the Met. There’s usually a few coppers here – one of my bosses tonight, as it goes. But I was really invited because I do a bit of sparring at the boxing club Ray and Georgie run in the East End for these lads. The Robertsons and I go way back. We all lived in Bethnal Green and were evacuated together during the war.’ He glanced back at the area sectioned off for important visitors, catching sight of an angry exchange between the Robertson brothers which he would dearly love to have been closer to, before taking Kate’s arm and steering her to a quiet corner of the room. ‘Has anyone told you you look stunning tonight, even if you are working?’ he asked. ‘I hope Ken Fellows appreciates you.’

  ‘I hope he’ll appreciate me even more when he sees my pictures in the morning,’ Kate said, disentangling herself from Barnard’s grip. ‘I really need to get on.’

  ‘Ah, but do you know whose pictures to take?’ Barnard asked. ‘You see that tall bloke with Ray?’

  ‘Lord Francome?’ Kate countered, recognizing the man whose name she had been told earlier. She had a good memory for faces.

  ‘Well done,’ Barnard said. ‘Just been given a junior job at the Ministry of Defence. Well, if you keep an eye on who he’s chatting to you might get a really good story. There’s a girl here called Christine Jones – tall, blonde, in a red dress, low cut, lipstick to match – rumour has it Francome’s got the hots for her and she’s no better than she should be, a high class tart, in fact. Get a picture of those two together and you could make your fortune. Or Ken Fellows’, I suppose, more likely.’

  ‘You’re joking?’ Kate said, slightly bemused.

  ‘Certainly not,’ Barnard said. ‘Anyway, you can take it or leave it.’

  ‘And who’s the woman in the gold dress, looks like a film star, talking to Georgie Robertson? Is she a high class tart, too?’

  To Kate’s surprise, Barnard looked startled by her question and took a moment or two to answer. ‘No way,’ he said very quietly. ‘She’s Mrs Shirley Bettany. That’s her husband talking to Ray Robertson. Fred Bettany is his accountant.’

  Kate looked again at the tall, greying accountant with the unexpectedly glamorous wife and raised an eyebrow.

  ‘Doing very nicely for himself, is Fred, big house in Hampstead . . .’ Barnard drew her further away from the VIPs’ enclosure. ‘But if we ever pin anything on Ray, I’d put money on Fred going down with him. Now, are you going to let me get you a drink?’

  ‘I’m working,’ Kate said again.

  ‘So you are,’ Barnard said with a shrug. ‘You’d better get on with it, then. I won’t get in your way.’ And he turned away and disappeared into the crowd, leaving Kate with a slight sense of disappointment.

  Later that evening, Harry Barnard stood in a doorway across the road from the Delilah Club watching the swing doors disgorge the Robertsons’ guests. He saw DCI Venables and Assistant Commissioner Arthur Wright stumble into a taxi together, spotted Lord Francome pull up outside in his Jag and lean over to open the passenger door for the blonde in the red dress and a fur stole, and Georgie Robertson storm out, his pale face
knotted in fury as he hailed a taxi which turned into Piccadilly and headed east at a rate of knots. Barnard was still wondering what Georgie Robertson and DCI Venables had been discussing so animatedly when he had happened to stumble on them together in the Gents. They had cut their conversation short when he arrived, Venables ducking into a cubicle with a muttered greeting to Barnard, and Georgie turning on his heel and letting the door slam heavily behind him. Barnard guessed that the only topic of conversation between the pair would have to be financial but the nature of the favours conferred to whom by whom, and why, he could not even begin to guess.

  Next out were the Bettanys, Shirley also clutching a fur stole around her shoulders, concealing her revealing neckline, Fred with a hand raised imperiously for the next cab in the line waiting outside the club doors. Barnard wondered if he imagined that Shirley had seen him across the busy road, and smiled faintly to himself. He would ask her next time he saw her more privately, he thought, confident that it would not be too long before that happened.

  Finally the person he was waiting for appeared and he dodged through the traffic to greet Kate O’Donnell for the second time that night, to her evident surprise.

  ‘It’ll cost you to get a cab as late as this,’ he said. ‘My car’s just round the corner. I’ll give you a lift. It’s not out of my way.’

  Kate shivered slightly, her coat too thin to keep out the evening chill. She wondered if spring would ever come this year. She was tired, she had to get up early next day and her defences crumbled, although she was sure that she would live to regret it. ‘All right,’ she said, wearily. ‘If you’re sure it’s on your way.’

  ‘Of course it is,’ Barnard lied easily. He took her arm and steered her into the narrow streets behind the club where he had parked, and opened the passenger door of the red Capri.

  ‘This is nice,’ Kate said, more out of politeness than because she knew anything at all about cars. Where she had lived in Liverpool for most of her life you took the bus or you walked. Private cars were as rare as hens’ teeth. ‘I like the colour.’