The Ladykiller

by Martina Cole

  He went to the office and rang the police. Then he sat in the chair and waited for them to arrive.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Patrick finally got to Kate’s at ten thirty. He pulled up outside her house and was gratified to see that the light was on in the lounge. He told Willy to take the car home and walked up the tiny path to her front door. He rang the bell. Kate was making herself a cheese sandwich in the kitchen. She went to the door licking her fingers clean.

  ‘I rang you at eight, but Mrs Manners said you were out. I didn’t expect to see you until tomorrow.’

  He walked into the hall. ‘I didn’t know if you’d rung or not, to be honest; I haven’t been home.’ He followed Kate into the lounge.

  ‘Take your coat off. Be quiet, my mum’s in bed. I’m just making a sandwich, do you want one?’

  ‘What is it?’ Kelly hadn’t eaten since lunchtime.

  ‘Cheese or cheese?’

  ‘Cheese it is then. I’ll make the tea.’

  He went to the kitchen and they both worked in silence for a while.

  ‘You upset me, you know, Pat. With what you did. But I see now that whatever way we got the testing, it can only be for the best.’

  Patrick had forgotten about it. He shrugged.

  ‘Kate, you know I’m a repoman, don’t you?’

  His voice was quiet and serious and it made her look at him.

  ‘Yes, why?’

  ‘Did you know I owned massage parlours too?’

  ‘Yes. I knew you had a vested interest. What’s all this about?’

  Suddenly she was not at all sure she wanted to hear any more. What was it Caitlin had said - Patrick Kelly was one of the new breed of businessmen? He worked within the law, just. Was he going to ask her to help him with something not quite legit?

  ‘One of my girls was murdered earlier today. I don’t know if you heard it on the news? In Barking. Her neck was broken. Snapped like a twig. I feel terrible, Kate, really terrible. She was twenty-one years old.

  ‘From what I can gather she had on average five or six punters a day. She slept with all those different men every day. Do you know, it’s weird, Kate, but it never occurred to me before. Those women were like animals to me. You’re sorry if people ill treat them but you forget about them quickly . . .’

  Kate watched him for a second. She picked up the plates of sandwiches and took them into the lounge, then she poured the tea and took that in too.

  ‘Come and sit down, Pat, I think you need to get all this off your chest.’

  He followed Kate through into the lounge. Sitting on the settee, he sipped his tea.

  ‘What’s really wrong, Pat? Is it the girl getting murdered or the fact that she was on your premises at the time?’

  Kate had hit the proverbial nail on the head and Kelly was shocked that she knew him so well after such a short time.

  ‘A bit of both, I think, if I’m honest. You should have seen her, Kate, she could have been my Mandy lying there. I’ve been doing everything humanly possible to help catch this Ripper bloke and yet I’ve been catering to scum like him for years.’

  ‘Well, Pat, women will always sell their bodies. From soft porn to hard porn to streetwalking, sex is one of the biggest moneyspinners in the world. The girl would maybe have done it anyway, if not for you then for someone else. Is that what you want to hear? Is that what you want me to say?’

  Kate’s voice was low but there was no mistaking her fury. Patrick looked into her face and for the first time he saw real anger. It unnerved him.

  ‘I heard about that girl’s death today, Pat, it was on the news. I didn’t know you owned the massage parlour. But shall I tell you what went through my mind as I listened to the radio? I thought, I wonder who’s the man making money off this girl’s back. I knew it would be a man. Funny that, isn’t it? I never dreamt it was you though. The man who paid for the blood testing of five thousand men to find the pervert who killed his daughter. Will you be paying for this inquiry, by the way?’ Kate lifted her eyebrows at Kelly and he had the grace to look away.

  ‘No, I didn’t think so. If you’ve come here for tea and sympathy and somewhere to lick your wounds I’m afraid you came to the wrong place, Pat. I have nothing for you as far as that girl’s concerned. You helped murder her as if you snapped her neck yourself. Any sympathy I have is for her family. I bet that never occurred to you either, did it? That all the women who work for you are someone’s daughter or someone’s mother. You don’t have the monopoly on grief, Pat. Try and put yourself in her parents’ position. At least when you found out about Mandy’s death you didn’t have the added trauma of finding out she met her death while plying her trade, fucking strange men.

  ‘What’s it you just said? “Those women were like animals to me.” My God, Patrick Kelly, you’ve got some bloody front coming here!’

  Patrick stared at her.

  ‘Have you quite finished? If I’d wanted a bloody lecture I’d have gone to a university. I came here to try and sort out my head, that’s all. I never harmed that girl, I never wanted anything to happen to her, to any of them . . .’

  He was floundering and he knew it. Kate had stated the plain, ugly truth and his only form of defence was attack.

  ‘You make me laugh sometimes, Mrs Highbrow Bloody Policewoman. Well, did it ever occur to you that some of them girls like their job? Did it? That if they didn’t work for me they would work for someone else . . . Well, did it? DID IT?’

  Kate shook her head sadly.

  ‘I’m not seeing them though am I? I’m seeing you, Pat, and I don’t care how much you rant and rave, I’ve nothing for you tonight. I’ve no sympathy for you, I’m sorry. If you want that I suggest you go and see the girl’s parents. That might put it in perspective for you. Though after what happened to Mandy, I’d have thought you of all people would have understood what they’re going through.’

  Patrick felt the temper rising and he was honest enough to admit that it was not because of Kate’s words, but because he felt ashamed. He could not admit that to her though.

  ‘I’m bloody going. I should have known a bloody Old Bill wouldn’t be any good to me when the chips were down. Your trouble is you fancy yourself as some kind of bleeding saint, Kate. Well, listen to me. I don’t need you or anyone else to point out my shortcomings. I’ve been aware of them for years. From the time I could understand what was going on around me. Yes, I wanted a bit of tea and sympathy, the same as you did when your daughter OD’d. And thanks a lot for nothing. I tell you something now, I don’t need you. I don’t need anyone really, I never did and I never will.’

  As soon as he said the words he was sorry. He wanted to take Kate in his arms and love her, have her love him, but he couldn’t.

  Kate watched him walk from the room, and heard the front door slam.

  They had needed to get all this out in the open. But she was sorry it had come about like this. His dealings with the massage parlours would always have been between them; now they both knew where they stood.

  That poor girl was dead. Patrick was feeling guilty, whatever he said. But where had that got her?

  Kate stared at her sandwich.

  She didn’t feel hungry any more.

  Patrick walked out of Kate’s and cursed silently. He had let Willy go and now he would have to phone for a taxi. He began to wander aimlessly, looking for a phone box. Like George he was finding solace in the darkness. He breathed the cold night air into his lungs and once more his mind was on Gillian Enderby. He saw her lying in the cubicle, her hair falling down over the table, nearly touching the floor. She was a sweet-looking girl. She didn’t look like a prostitute, but then none of them did at first. He remembered a younger Violet - what a girl she had been!

  He saw the lights of a call box and quickened his stride. Renée had never been happy about the prostitution. She would sit in for him on the repo side of the business but had flatly refused to have anything to do with the massage parlours. It was
an unspoken agreement that they were never mentioned at home, even in passing.

  He walked into the phone booth and after unsuccessfully trying to find a cab number rang up Willy and ordered him to pick him up. He knew better than to ask why his boss was ringing from a call box and not from Kate’s.

  Patrick stood outside the phone booth and stamped his feet. It was freezing. Kevin Cosgrove had supposedly been picking up Mandy from outside a phone booth. It had been vandalised, that’s why she had begun to walk home. He pushed his hands deeper into the pockets of his overcoat. Gillian Enderby was at this moment on ice somewhere. Her parents were going through what he had gone through.

  Later that night, as he lay in his bed, he wished that Kate was with him. He missed her. She was in her forties; she was dark when he had always had a preference for blondes; she was flat-chested and he had always liked his women to be well endowed; and to put the tin lid on it, she was a policewoman. In fact, she was the antithesis of everything he had ever said he wanted in a woman.

  Yet he wanted her desperately.

  Mandy and Gillian Enderby crawled once more into his troubled thoughts and finally he admitted defeat and got out of bed and went downstairs. He went to make himself a hot drink and took it back to bed after lacing it liberally with brandy.

  Still he lay there, tossing and turning.

  Kate, in her lonely bed, was doing exactly the same.

  Willy was surprised to see Patrick up and dressed at six thirty and already on the telephone. He wondered briefly who he had got out of bed. After his own breakfast Patrick called him at seven fifteen and said he wanted to go to an address in East Ham. It was a council maisonette. Willy saw a man answer the door and then, after a brief exchange of words, saw Patrick go inside.

  Curiouser and curiouser, he thought. Then he picked up his paper and began the process of looking at the semi-naked woman on page three once again.

  Patrick introduced himself to Stan Enderby and the man invited him in. Enderby was about his own age but had not had the benefit of money. He looked older than his years, from the tobacco-stained fingers, the large beer belly and receding hairline to the impossibly thin roll-up clamped to the side of his mouth.

  ‘The wife’s upstairs, Mr Kelly. Took it bad, she has. Gilly was her pride and joy, you see. We never knew that she was . . . that she did what she did.’

  Patrick followed him into a tiny front room that was sparsely furnished though very clean. He sat on the chair by the window and looked down briefly at his car.

  ‘Would you like a cup of tea, or something stronger?’ Stanley held up a bottle of cheap Tesco whisky and Patrick nodded his head in assent. He waited until the man gave him his glass.

  ‘Thank you.’

  Kelly knew that Enderby was at a loss. His reputation had as usual preceded him and inhibited a natural response. He’d have welcomed blame, anger. Anything but this passivity, this pretence that he was a welcome visitor. But he knew that Enderby was scared of him. In the past he had profited from his reputation, but at this moment if Enderby had slammed the glass of whisky into his face, he would have accepted it. Would have admired him even.

  ‘I have come to offer you my condolences, Mr Enderby. I feel a sense of responsibility for what happened to your daughter and would be most grateful if you would allow me to pay for the funeral.’

  ‘That’s more than kind, Mr Kelly. We never expected anything . . .’

  As he spoke, the front-room door opened and a tiny woman walked in. She was a faded blonde, and Kelly knew immediately this was Gillian’s mother. They were like two peas in a pod.

  ‘What do you want?’ Her voice was aggressive.

  Stanley Enderby looked at his wife in shock.

  ‘This is Mr Kelly, Maureen.’

  ‘Oh, shut up, Stan, for Gawd’s sake.’ She turned back to Patrick. ‘I asked you a question, Kelly, what do you want?’

  He dropped his eyes. He could see the accusation in her face. ‘I came to offer my condolences, Mrs Enderby.’

  ‘He’s gonna pay for the funeral and that, ain’t you, Mr Kelly?’

  Stanley’s voice was tight. He was not a man who could handle scenes of any kind. All his married life he had tried to avoid confrontations with his tiny but quick-tempered wife.

  Maureen Enderby sneered. Her hard eyes slowly swept Patrick from his head to his toes.

  ‘So Pat Kelly’s coming around with his cheque book, is he, making everything better? I remember you when you didn’t have a pot to piss in, you ponce! I remember your mother and your sisters when Gracie was moonlighting down the bleeding docks. You learnt all about whoring at an early age, didn’t you? Then you came and took my girl and put her on the fucking bash and now she’s dead! Well, some pervert got your girl, didn’t he? I’d call it poetic justice.’

  Patrick’s face was white now.

  ‘I never put your daughter on the game, Mrs Enderby. I had no knowledge of her working there. I never know any of the girls.’

  Maureen rushed at him and thumped him in the chest, her face contorted with grief.

  ‘Well, you should have then! You should have known who they were. My daughter was a drug addict. I never knew that until today . . . I never knew it. She was sleeping with men to pay for her drugs. Drugs she probably bought from you!’

  Patrick shook his head violently. ‘I have never, ever sold drugs. Whatever else I may have done to you, real or imagined, I have never sold drugs!’

  ‘No, Patrick Kelly.’ Maureen’s voice was quiet now. ‘You just sold degradation, didn’t you?’

  She turned to her husband.

  ‘Get this scum out of my house, Stan. Now!’

  Patrick looked at the man in front of him and shook his head as if to say: I understand.

  ‘Take your cheque book, Mr Kelly. I want none of your dirty money. I’ll bury me own according to my purse, not yours.’

  Patrick left the maisonette and Stanley followed him out on to the landing.

  ‘I’m sorry, Mr Kelly, but it’s what happened. It’s turned her head like. She’ll come round. We’re potless, see. I ain’t worked for four years. And now we ain’t got Gilly’s money coming in.’

  Kelly nodded. ‘I’ll see that you get the money, Mr Enderby.’

  ‘I think it would be best in notes like, we ain’t got a bank account.’ His voice trailed off and Patrick nodded again. He went down the stairs and got into his car. Out of the two of them he preferred the girl’s mother. At least her grief was genuine. Gillian Enderby’s father was capitalising on his daughter’s death, which hardly seemed to bother him.

  But it bothered Patrick Kelly.

  It bothered him a lot.

  Kate had arrived at the church early and sat alone at the back, enjoying the quietness and solitude. As a Roman Catholic, Mandy Kelly’s body had been left in church overnight ready for the Requiem Mass in the morning. Her Aunt Grace was delegated to sit with the body while the soul departed for heaven. This was an old Irish tradition that was still kept alive by every new generation.

  Kate knelt down and prayed for the first time in years. She had forgotten the feeling of peace and contentment an empty church could bring. She prayed for the soul of Mandy Kelly and all the murdered women and girls.

  The funeral was at nine thirty, but the church had begun to fill up before nine. Kate watched from the back as various criminals and businessmen turned up. She was not too surprised when Chief Constable Frederick Flowers arrived with his wife. Or when the local MP and his wife also showed up. She did admit to a slight feeling of surprise when she noticed two prominent heads of the Serious Crime Squad. Both shook Patrick’s hand and one of the men, known in the force as Mad Bill McCormack because of his unorthodox methods of obtaining arrests with a pickaxe handle, actually hugged him close. To Kate it was a real education and her naivety troubled her. She was a good detective, she knew her job, but this closeness between the criminal world and the police had never before been so blatantly thrust on her. O
h, she knew that it went on, but it seemed that the days when villains and police met only under cover of darkness were over. Now they met socially.

  She pushed the thoughts from her mind. It was the funeral of Patrick’s only child and she should be pleased for him that so many people had turned out to pay their respects. It helped some people when their departed were shown to be popular and cared for.

  She watched Patrick scanning the church and finally his eyes found hers. She smiled at him briefly. His face immediately relaxed and for those few seconds she felt once more the pull he had on her.

  After the Mass, as the mourners left the church and the body was taken to the grave, Patrick fell into step beside her. He held on to her arm lightly but firmly as if frightened she was going to run away. Kate glanced at him and saw the tears on his long dark lashes. She realised that he needed her, and more to the point, she needed him. She accompanied him to the graveside. As the priest began the final blessings she felt his grief as if it was a physical thing. His shoulders heaved and instinctively she grasped his hand tightly and he held on to her, pulling her to him. She knew that it was taking all his willpower not to break down there and then, in front of everybody. He was finally burying his beloved child and the full realisation of all that had happened had only just hit him.

  Mandy was not coming home.

  Not now, not ever.

  Kate saw that she was buried beside her mother. Poor Patrick. His whole life was now buried in two small plots of land.

  Kate saw Patrick’s sister watching her and dropped her gaze. Finally it was all over and people began to make their way back to their cars. Patrick stood at the graveside, oblivious of the offers of condolence. Kate stayed beside him and noticed Kevin Cosgrove standing apart from all the others. He waited until the grave was quiet and walked to it. On Mandy’s coffin, now lying in the ground, waiting to be covered, he threw a single white rose. Then he walked away.