Dead Beat

by Patricia Hall

  Trudging through the deep, soft sand of the dunes, which sucked at their feet like treacle, they eventually found themselves standing above the shore line, where a slight chop on the grey water lapped and swirled relentlessly on to the flat expanse of beach as the tide came in. Across the estuary, the Wirral shore was a dark line on the horizon and beyond that the faint smudge of the Welsh hills were hardly distinguishable from the cloudy sky to the south. There was no sign of life on the strand which stretched unbroken in both directions, and only a single Irish ferry on the vast expanse of water in front of them, ploughing towards the open sea. Maybe Tom was hoping to be on one of those, she thought, heading for Dublin or Belfast or even the Isle of Man. She took a deep breath of the tangy air and turned to face Declan, her heart thumping.

  ‘Now what?’ she asked in little more than a breathy whisper, as if raising her voice would bring retribution in its wake.

  Declan glanced at his watch. ‘We wait,’ he said. ‘We’re a bit earlier than they said. We were lucky with the train. I wasn’t sure how often they ran.’ They sat down on the edge of the dunes in an uneasy silence, huddling into their coats against the cold, blustery wind, and invisible to anyone approaching from the landward side. Eventually they spotted two figures walking along the edge of the water towards them as if out for an innocent afternoon stroll.

  ‘Is that them?’ Kate asked, unsure of herself suddenly as she realized that she had not seen Tom for almost two years and that in that time he might have changed beyond recognition. Declan stood up, brushing the sand off his clothes, but did not move until the two figures slowly turned towards them and eventually gave a slight wave of greeting.

  ‘It’s them,’ he said. ‘Thank Christ for that.’

  Kate felt relief surge through her and bring tears to her eyes. Both young men were wearing duffle coats with the hoods up and it was not until Tom held out his arms to her that she could distinguish him from his friend.

  ‘I am so glad to see you, Katie,’ her brother said, as he grabbed hold of her and hugged her close. She could feel his tears on her cheek. Declan and his friend, who did not offer a name, strolled off together, leaving Kate and Tom to sink down again into the shelter of the dunes with their arms around each other.

  ‘We’ve been so worried,’ Kate whispered. ‘I didn’t know what to say to Mam, but the police had been round there so she was beside herself anyway.’

  ‘I know,’ Tom said. ‘I’m so sorry, but as soon as I heard what had happened at the flat I thought I’d better stay out of the way for a bit. I knew the police would think the worst. You’ve no idea what it’s like living like we do, doing something illegal all the time, never knowing when the police might come storming in like they do at the pubs and clubs we go to. You can’t even use a public lavvie for fear of being arrested.’

  Kate took a moment to digest exactly what her brother was saying. ‘Do you mean that you didn’t know your friend was dead when you came up here?’

  ‘Of course I didn’t,’ Tom said. ‘Jon and I had been having a lot of rows. He was getting into things I didn’t want to be involved in. I began to think weeks ago I should leave.’

  ‘Like what?’ Kate whispered.

  ‘Nothing too heavy but I could see the way he was heading. We’d been doing a bit of modelling, and it was getting more and more near the knuckle. And then he got interested in boys. I found him in the flat with a young lad one night, so I decided I had to get out. I needed some time to sort myself out.’

  Kate looked at her brother for a long moment, not daring to admit she had seen a ‘not too heavy’ photograph of Jonathon in the magazine Declan had let her keep. To her, it felt as heavy as a guilty conscience concealed in her handbag. ‘How did you get here then?’ she whispered.

  ‘I hitched a lift with Dave Donovan’s band last Monday. They were playing at a club in Wallasey. They dropped me off and I went to stay with . . .’ He hesitated. ‘Just a friend. You don’t need to know. Let’s just say I’m with a kidder I knew before I went down south, I don’t want the bizzies knocking on his door. Anyway, Declan gave us a ring a couple of days later. He was ringing round everyone he could think of trying to find me. He told us what was going on. He’d had a visit from a couple of detectives and he’d heard our mam had too. I just couldn’t believe it. I still can’t.’

  Kate took a minute to absorb what Tom had just said. ‘You haven’t been to see our mam, have you?’ she persisted.

  Tom glanced away, not meeting her eyes, and shrugged helplessly. ‘Course not,’ he said.

  ‘But you weren’t in London when your friend was killed?’

  ‘No, that’s what I’m telling you. Jon had gone off to work as usual on the day I left. He was working lunchtimes in a bar in the West End – “resting” is what actors call it. He seemed to spend most of his time resting, which is why he got into the modelling and stuff. I left after he’d gone, met up with Dave and the lads and came north.’

  ‘So you don’t have anything to worry about,’ Kate said. ‘You don’t have to hide from the police.’

  ‘That’s what Declan said, but I’m scared, Kate. Really scared. I didn’t tell anyone I was coming away, obviously not Jon, but not even the kidder I was working for in Carnaby Street. I’d just had a blazing row with Jon about what he was up to and as soon as he went out I packed my stuff and planned to go and catch a train. Then I remembered Dave was in London and I wondered if he or any of his mates was going north. I was walking out on my job as well, remember, and I knew I was going to be broke. Anyway, it turned out he was driving up home that night for a gig the next day so I hitched a lift. I don’t think I really realized what I’d done till we got up near Warrington and stopped for a drink. Then I sat there with a pint and couldn’t work out what to do for the best, go on or go back. I didn’t want to go home to mam. I even thought of bailing out and getting the next train back to London to try to make it up with Jon. But in the end I called my mate and fixed to stay with him for a few days to try and sort myself out. Then Dec phoned a few days later, because the bizzies had been round, and I found out what had happened to Jon. It’s all a bit of a blur, that day I came away, and knowing Dave he’ll be pretty vague about dates and times. My mate up here knows when I arrived but you can bet your life the bizzies won’t believe him if they don’t want to. We’re all queers to them and deserve anything they chuck at us. And it’s true Jon and me hadn’t been getting on for a while. Some people down there know that. They know we’d been at each others’ throats. It’ll all sounds really bad, bad enough for them to be sure I did it.’

  ‘You couldn’t cut someone’s throat,’ Kate said angrily.

  Tom went pale and buried his head in his hands. ‘Is that how it happened?’ he whispered.

  Kate hugged him hard. ‘You didn’t know?’

  ‘No, I didn’t know. Dec didn’t tell me that.’

  Kate left Tom with his friend, failing in every effort to persuade him to talk to the police who, she was sure, would track him down eventually. The most she achieved was a tentative promise to think about what to do next and to ring her in London when she got back. Disappointed and depressed, she said little on the journey back into the city with Declan, and they parted at the station without making any plans to meet again. Kate had extracted a phone number from Tom so she knew she could contact him but it was a measure of his paranoia that she had to work hard to get even that and swear not to give it to anyone else.

  Back in the city, Kate knew that she would have to do something to justify to Ken Fellows the day off she had taken for her trip to the north. She did not know where John Lennon – with or without a wife – was living and knew she had almost no chance of finding out. The Beatles were so famous in Liverpool that hysterical teenaged girls were in constant hot pursuit of all four of them and they kept their whereabouts as secret as they possibly could. But Kate knew there was one place where she might just possibly find out.

  She walked across the city fr
om the station and made her way to the lane just off the shopping centre which was Matthew Street. A gaggle of teenaged girls was, as usual, hanging around amongst the litter and detritus from the fruit warehouses around the entrance of the Cavern Club, hoping to see one of their heroes go in or come out. Kate could remember going to the Cavern as a young teenager with a boyfriend who was a jazz fanatic, but since those purist days when jazz fans regarded themselves as a distinct cut above the burgeoning rock groups, with their Teddy boy reputation, the Cavern had effectively caved in to fashion. For the last few years it had given a home to the Mersey Beat and was regularly filled beyond capacity at lunchtime and in the evenings with near hysterical fans.

  Kate pushed past the teenagers and stepped through the open door and down into the familiar, fetid, almost airless hole that was the club. There had obviously been a lunchtime performance and the floor was still littered with sandwich wrappers and smelt of sweat and faintly of the gas which provided the only lighting under the brick cellar arches. If a fireman had seen the place when it was heaving, Kate thought, he’d have closed it down on the spot. A couple of women were making a desultory attempt to clean up and on the stage, where the amps regularly shorted and failed during performances as moisture ran down the walls, she spotted a man she knew was something to do with running the place.

  ‘You won’t remember me,’ she said by way of greeting. ‘But I used to be at art college with John Lennon and Cynthia. I work in London now as a photographer, and I’m trying to track them down. You don’t have a phone number, do you?’

  The man looked at her with deep suspicion on what she could see of his face in the gloomy light. ‘Who’s Cynthia?’

  ‘Ah,’ Kate said carefully. ‘His girlfriend? Or she was when we were at college.’

  The man shrugged. ‘I wouldn’t know about that, petal,’ he said. ‘And I can’t go handing out the musicians’ phone numbers, can I? There’s a couple of thousand girls like you who want John Lennon’s phone number.’

  Kate thought for a moment before she tried again. ‘Do you know his Auntie Mimi?’ she asked eventually.

  The man snorted. ‘Do I know Mimi Smith? I should say so. She used to come down here laying the law down, trying to get John to do this and that, anything but play in a band. I know Mimi all right. Why she can’t just go along for the ride and enjoy it like George’s mam I can’t understand.’

  ‘Well, do you know where she lives? I could ask her if she could put me in touch with John and Cyn,’ Kate pleaded. ‘I think I can help the Beatles out with some publicity pictures in London. I work for a big agency. Honestly, I’m not trying it on. I’ve known them for years.’

  The man sighed heavily. ‘Might have her address in the files. John was still living with her when I first met him. He’s got his own place now and I’m not telling you where that is. Come on, let’s have a look. But I wish you luck with Mimi. She’s a real tartar, she is. No messing.’

  And five minutes later, hot and sweaty, but with an address on a piece of paper in her bag, Kate climbed back up to street level and wearily went looking for a bus to Woolton.

  Number 251 Menlove Avenue was an unassuming suburban house in a tree-lined road, another ride out of town, and when Kate knocked she thought at first no one was at home. But eventually the front door opened and to her surprise Kate found herself face-to-face with a heavily pregnant Cynthia Powell, or was it now Cynthia Lennon? she wondered.

  ‘Cyn,’ she said, with as cheerful a smile as she could muster. ‘I bet you don’t remember me. Kate O’Donnell from the college of art’

  Cynthia stared at Kate for a long time before she shrugged, offered a faint smile and motioned her through the door, looking carefully up and down the street before closing it again. Kate was no expert but looking at Cynthia’s bump she thought it could not be long before the baby was born.

  ‘I’m here by myself,’ Cynthia said. ‘Mimi’s gone shopping. I come up here sometimes just to get out of the flat. It’s so poky I think I might come here permanently after the baby’s born. John’s away so much now . . .’ She trailed off and Kate felt sorry for her.

  ‘You got married then?’ she asked as she followed Cynthia into the front room and took a seat.

  ‘Of course we did, once we knew the baby was coming. Nothing big. Just the registry office. My parents didn’t come.’ She shrugged and flopped down heavily beside Kate. ‘If you want a cup of tea you’ll have to make it yourself. The kitchen’s at the back.’ Kate shook her head and wondered just how much Cynthia had craved the big white wedding her parents must have expected one day.

  ‘No tea thanks, I’m fine,’ she said. ‘I was hoping I’d find you and John together to take some pictures of you. I work for a photographic agency in London now and they’re really interested in the Liverpool bands. They think the Beatles are going to be really great.’

  ‘Well, it’s not for want of trying,’ Cynthia said. ‘John’s away more than he’s at home these days. They’re down in London this week talking about the next recording. You know they’ve had a couple of records out?’

  ‘Yes, I heard one just last week,’ Kate said.

  ‘I don’t know if they’re going to be a success,’ Cynthia said doubtfully. ‘They seem to have been at it so long now. All that time they spent in Hamburg.’

  ‘I can’t imagine John as a dad,’ Kate said lightly, thinking that the future of this little family would be pretty grim if John Lennon’s fortunes did not improve. Cynthia would find it hard to launch a career of her own with a baby at home. ‘Their new record seems to be doing all right, anyway.’

  Cynthia nodded and gazed out of the window with a hand on her extended belly. ‘If they get as much support down south as they do up here we’ll be fine,’ she said. But her bleak expression told Kate that perhaps she thought that unlikely. ‘Though I get pretty sick of the girls running after him all the time. That’s why we kept the wedding quiet. I think some of them would try to kill me if they knew I was married to John.’

  ‘Well, you won’t be able to keep it secret if they really do make it,’ Kate said. ‘You’ll have all the London papers and magazines running after you. Will you let me take a picture, ready for when you’re famous? That would be really good. And my boss would be pleased. I’ve only got my job on trial so the more I can do to keep him happy the better for me.’

  Cynthia looked uncertain. ‘What would you do with it?’ she asked.

  ‘Well, if the bands begin to look as though they’re going to make it, not just the Beatles but Gerry and the Pacemakers and the rest, my boss wants to be able to offer some picture features to the papers. The Liverpool Beat, they could call it.’

  ‘The Mersey Beat they’re calling it up here. There’s a magazine now, you know. I ought to ask John, or Brian,’ Cynthia said, still doubtful. ‘Brian Epstein, their manager. He runs that record shop in Whitechapel, Nems. You must know it. Some of the lads were always hanging about in there when we were at college. He looks after all the Beatles’ publicity and stuff now.’

  Including their pictures, most likely, Kate thought ruefully. But she was not quite ready to give up. ‘But this will be your publicity,’ she said. ‘There’s no reason why you should be left out if they get to be famous,’ Kate persisted. ‘I wouldn’t want to be kept in the shadows like a guilty secret by my baby’s dad.’ She glanced again at Cynthia’s left hand but could not see a wedding ring.

  ‘Yeah, you’re right. Just let me go and powder my nose and you can take a couple of snaps. What’s the harm in that? You can let me have one as well. It’ll be funny to see what I looked like in this state when it’s all over, won’t it?’ She lumbered to her feet and went into the hall and came back with her hair combed and her lipstick renewed. ‘Go on then,’ she said more cheerfully. ‘Let’s have a picture of Mrs Lennon and baby. Why not?’

  ELEVEN

  DS Harry Barnard had made it his business to be at the magistrate’s court that morning when the vagrant Ham
ish Macdonald came before their worships. After the hearing, when most of the derelicts who had been picked up the previous night had been handed down fines that they had no possibility of paying, and had resigned themselves to a week or two in jail instead, he went down to the cells and located Hamish sitting on a bench with the rest, waiting for prison transport to arrive.

  ‘How much was it, Hamish?’ Barnard asked, making sure that the Scot could see the ten pound note he had folded in his hand.

  ‘Ten quid or ten days,’ Hamish muttered, his mouth dry as his thirst grew.

  ‘It’s worth that to me to have a chat with your young friend you were telling me about last night,’ Barnard said quietly. ‘Are you on?’ He was sure that this must be the boy DCI Venables was interested in, his suspicions confirmed by the duty sergeant’s report that they had found a nurse’s cap lying in the mud on the railway embankment where the vagrants had been rounded up.

  ‘I’m bloody not on if ye arrest him instead of me, ye devious bastard,’ Hamish muttered.

  ‘How about if I find him somewhere safe to stay? He sounds too young to be on the streets.’

  ‘Aye, he’s that all right,’ Hamish said. ‘He’s naething but a wee lad, whatever he gets up tae. Says he’s sixteen but I don’t believe him. And he’ll come back to the gaff looking for me. Bound to. He’s got nowhere else to go and I keep an eye out for him.’ He gave Barnard a pleading glance and got a brief nod in return.

  ‘So let’s clear your fine and go and see if we can find him,’ he said.

  Barnard ducked the issue of giving the less than savoury-smelling Macdonald a ride in his own car by hitching a lift in a police van which was heading towards Bloomsbury, and getting the driver to drop them off at the corner of Clerkenwell and Farringdon Roads. From there they could walk.