The Girl at My Door: An utterly gripping mystery thriller based on a true crime

by Rebecca Griffiths

  Picking winners was something his father had liked to do on Saturday mornings. Thinking of his father evoked a memory of the day he died. Something that was never far away. Tied in a knot, it swung close to his heart. That faceless teacher who sidled up to him and Colin during their music lesson to say the headmaster wanted to see them. Standing in the corridor and picking each other’s brains for the bad thing they had done. It was their sister, Susan, who filled them in. Over a tin of Heinz Cream of Tomato. Eyes shiny with tears as she explained that their dad had suffered a fatal stroke and they mustn’t be upset because Uncle Alan was on his way. And sure enough, their favourite uncle was there by the time they got up the next morning. Big and broad in his merchant navy uniform. A uniform he wore to the funeral, holding Terrence’s hand through a white cotton glove, so all he could think of as his father’s coffin was lowered into the ground was the discomfort of those reinforced seams digging into his fingers. His uncle made promises through his seafarer’s moustache to take him fishing and took him to buy a rod and reel set at Woolworths. Terrence had it somewhere, in the spare room at his mother’s, unused and still in its wrappings.

  An engine backfired. Loud as gunshot. Then a bright clap of laughter and someone slammed a car door. It jolted him out of the memories he was happy to tuck away again. The alleyway leading to Albert’s was up ahead. He was early. There was still a sliver of light in the sky. He pushed his weight against the familiar black door and found the place surprisingly packed. A churn of faces through the usual screen of smoke. It could be any time of day or night in here, or any time of year. He yawned, looking around at the gas lamps burning like a row of mock suns. It always surprised him to see this place full of people. Where did they all come from? How did they get to hear of it? And if they’d heard of it, wasn’t it only a matter of time before the law came to hear of it also?

  As he carried this thought and the frisson of fear it brought with it to the bar, he became aware of a scuffle on his periphery. A young prostitute in a flea-bitten feather boa and torn black stockings came charging up from downstairs, clutching her neck. She looked distraught: knocking into people, spilling their drinks, her mascara streaming in muddy rivulets down her cheeks, into her cleavage. The person she was running away from thumped against Terrence and he spun on his heels to confront whoever it was. The unwanted contact released that smell again. Jeyes Fluid. Along with something stronger, like industrial drain cleaner. It was that man in the horn-rimmed spectacles and trilby again.

  ‘Oi, you!’ Terrence loped after him, following him outside into the darkness that had dropped down over the city like a trap door. ‘Stop!’

  But the man didn’t stop. Nimble in his plimsolls. By the time Terrence reached the end of the alleyway, the stranger had vanished.

  36

  A brisk breeze had come up since Queenie had left the house, and lazy clouds rimmed in gold gathered to the west. It would be dark soon; the city would only be identifiable by its lights. Slowly, the distance growing between her and home, her fear of what was to come dissipated a little. In its place, a queer kind of relief settled inside her. Yes, this was ugly and shameful, but she could do this, she could make things good again, for her and for Joy. Already, she felt, the terrible burden of her secret was a little lighter. Terrence said this John Christie she was on her way to see had trained to be a doctor. That he was intelligent and well respected. He did say respected, didn’t he? Terrence might not have used that precise word, but she was sure it amounted to the same thing. Yes, this man would sort her out, in the way he’d helped others in trouble like her. She was sure she remembered Terrence telling her that.

  A rag-and-bone man pulled up on the opposite side and Queenie did something she never did: she crossed the street to stroke the muzzle of his tired, old pony. A flash of Joy, feeding her apple to a horse on her birthday. The memory, bringing a pang of remorse for what she had done to her friend, had her blinking back tears.

  ‘Don’t you be feedin’ him nuffin’.’ The man in charge, gruff at her shoulder. ‘No sugar lumps, miss.’

  Sugar lumps? Chance would be a fine thing. She dabbed her eyes and searched the face scored by the weather for the irony that wasn’t there. The man was craggy like a fallen bough that had been left out in all seasons. He dumped what he’d been given into his cart and swung up into the seat, and with a click of his tongue, the horse moved off down the street with a clip-clop and a rattle of iron in the load at his back.

  Queenie put one foot in front of the other and moved along the pavement. The choke of coal smoke silting her nostrils as she listened to mothers calling their children in for tea. It seemed that suddenly there were children everywhere, babies and mothers with prams – they had never been of interest before. She passed the open doorway of the newsagents and ducked into its darkened innards. Chose a copy of Woman’s Weekly and a quarter of liquorice twists ahead of her Tube journey. Not her usual read, but Vogue was too heavy to carry to Ladbroke Grove and back. This one fit nicely into her handbag. She never used to like the taste of liquorice but had recently found she couldn’t get enough of the stuff. She put a piece in her mouth and was leaving the shop when Emily Boyd, from three doors down, nearly ran into her with her pram.

  They exchanged silent nods and Emily disappeared inside the shop. Left her pram on the pavement. Queenie peeped in on the infant and, moved by the baby’s supine stare, imagined him searching hers for answers about the universe. Queenie put a hand on her tummy and felt the sting of fresh tears. A tear was rolling down her cheek when Emily Boyd reappeared in the shop doorway with two cooking apples and a brown loaf. Embarrassed, Queenie made her excuses and turned away but was blocked by an image of her own face. Captured in one of the publicity fliers advertising the Mockin’ Bird and fastened to a lamp post. She barely recognised the woman with the carefree expression. How changed she was. And feeling fraudulent, she wanted to tear it down.

  She watched Emily push her pram away down the street. Perhaps she shouldn’t have dismissed Terrence’s offer. Could they marry and bring the child up together? As well as Heloise’s, she listened to the other voice in her head, the one that told her she didn’t love him, not like that, and he certainly didn’t love her. No, it told her, she couldn’t keep the baby, it wouldn’t be fair on either of them. It wouldn’t be fair on Joy. Get a grip, she told herself and blew her nose. Her moods were all over the place: she was up one minute, down the next. How could she seriously think she could bring a child up on her own? What woman could with no family and her own mother gone? No, there was no way she could keep it, and she needed to stop being so romantic.

  She crossed the road, walked through the confusion of horns and glare of headlamps, and reached the boundary railings pinpointing the entrance to South Wimbledon Underground. Her mind, whirling like a carousel she couldn’t get off, made her knees give way a little.

  ‘Are you unwell, miss?’ One of the uniformed police officers standing guard at the entrance leapt to her aid. ‘You look rather unsteady there.’

  She felt the ominous weight of his hand on her elbow as she let herself be ushered inside the bustling ticket hall.

  ‘I’m quite all right.’ She forced a smile into her eyes. ‘I just haven’t eaten much today.’

  ‘Well, mind how you go, miss.’ The policeman backed away to his post.

  A fleeting look at him and his colleague, before moving through the ticket barrier and down the steps. If only he knew what she was on her way to do: her thoughts sobering ones. If only he knew.

  37

  Terrence abandoned his search for the man in the trilby and returned to Albert’s. A blast of noise and smoke when he pushed open the door and stepped inside for the second time that evening. At the bar, waiting to be served, he smoked a cigarette and looked around him, wondering where the girl in the boa had gone. Other prostitutes had gathered. Jittery as the house sparrows in his mother’s garden. He feared for them. How was it right that any girl had to sell
herself this way? Did none of them have families who cared about them? He supposed not, and it wasn’t termed the oldest profession in the world for nothing: it would always go on. Legal, illegal – it mattered not. It seemed, or so Terrence had noticed, the only family these girls had was each other. And seated at the head of this unorthodox domicile, the one who was top of the dung heap: Albert. Albert, the velvet-clad patriarch.

  Waiting his turn, Terrence took the opportunity to observe Albert. His self-imposed grandeur, the operatic hand gestures. He was a real showman and was certainly gifted at keeping his regulars entertained with his wild stories loaded in folklore and myth. In his elaborate clothes, strutting behind his bar like a peacock, the man could be considered appealing from a distance. And up close, too, if you ignored the bad breath and grime. Eavesdropping on conversations between His Girls, as Albert called them, Terrence learnt he was kind, that he treated them with respect. That his cut was fair compared to other brothel owners. Terrence supposed there was a modicum of safety working in the dungeon below stairs – it had to be better than plying their trade on the street and was, at least, inside in the dry and the warm.

  ‘You’re early tonight, my fine young fellow. What can I get you?’ Albert’s hand was on his arm. Encrusted in rings.

  ‘Scotch and a splash, please.’

  ‘Didn’t I see you come in, then disappear out again? Is anything the matter?’

  Terrence watched the progress of the lace-fringed sleeve, the grubby hand beneath as it reached for the optic.

  ‘There’s a man who comes here… I’ve seen him a couple of times.’

  ‘Oh, yes?’ Albert eyed him kindly.

  ‘Small, quite insignificant. I’m not sure why I noticed him. He just gives me a bad feeling.’

  ‘A bad feeling, eh?’

  ‘He wears a raincoat and, erm, a trilby.’

  ‘Small, you say? Insignificant?’

  ‘That’s right. Round-rimmed glasses… oh, and…’ Terrence squinted through the sting of smoke that hung between them, remembering something else. ‘He wears these tennis shoes, sort of plimsoll things.’

  ‘Ooo, I know who you mean.’ Albert gave a theatrical shiver. ‘He’s a dark one, he is. A right queer fish. There was us, thinking he was this nice, well-educated fellow.’ A heavy sigh. ‘It seems we got him quite wrong, Terry, old boy.’

  ‘We?’ Terrence shook his head; he didn’t understand.

  ‘Oh, yes.’ Another shiver. ‘He practically strangled Marie tonight, poor lamb.’ Terrence followed the direction Albert pointed and saw the girl with the boa again. Saw too how she was still gripping her neck.

  ‘Strangled her? Dear God.’ Terrence, horrified. ‘I saw her running away from him. It’s why I went after him, but he’d disappeared.’

  ‘They’re so defenceless, aren’t they?’ Albert gave Marie a fatherly wink. ‘I try and look after them, but I can’t stand watch.’ A smile slid over his mouth. ‘My clients would never allow that. But him… it seems he’s a dangerous one. You want to ask Marie to show you the marks on her neck?’

  Terrence pulled a face. ‘The bastard doesn’t look strong enough, but—’

  ‘You’re right, it wouldn’t take much to snap their girly bones.’ Albert read his thoughts.

  ‘She should tell someone… report him.’

  ‘Who to?’ Albert looked at him as if he was stupid. ‘Who gives a damn about these lost souls? No one. We are, all of us, on the fringes of so-called decent society. None of us… well, some of us, maybe, but most of us, the likes of you and me, Terry, we don’t have that kind of recourse. We’re on our own. Vulnerable to the world.’

  Terrence nodded his agreement. Who could they go to? Who could any of them go to? The police weren’t a help to the likes of them, they were a danger.

  ‘Don’t look so concerned, my dear. Marie won’t be going near him again, will you, duckie?’ Albert called over to her. ‘Apparently, he was in here the other night, boasting about some young couple living in the flat above his. Saying how he’s taken a shine to the young mother. Beryl, her name is. I only remember it because that was my dear mother’s name… Oh, yes, he’s a dark one, all right. Saying all these ghastly things he’d like to do to her. I do wish I hadn’t given you his name, Terry. I am most terribly sorry about that.’

  ‘You gave me his name?’

  ‘Yes. I heard he was a decent fellow, but as things have turned out there’s something altogether nastier going on with him. Was your friend all right? I’d hate for her to have come to any harm.’

  The penny dropped. The name and address Albert had found for him. The one he’d written down and given to Queenie.

  ‘Did she go along to see him?’ Albert cringed, as if not wanting the answer. ‘Did he sort her out?’

  38

  Deep underground, somewhere between South Wimbledon and Ladbroke Grove, Queenie sat with her lush dark hair and handbag. Her legs crossed, an elbow propped on the dividing armrest, she smoked a cigarette without letting any single thought dominate her mind. Inhaling and exhaling in rhythm with the swaying of the train, she barely noticed the crowd of commuters and only vaguely acknowledged her luck at finding a seat. The carriage glowed dimly under the rows of lamps and was littered with discarded newspapers. The air was thick with the expended cigarette smoke she was adding to. Whenever the Tube lurched to a stop, she watched the doors pull apart, equating the exaggerated hiss to the industrial laundry she worked in when first back from Goldchurch after the war. A job she was relieved to jack in as soon as she could. The carriage emptied and refilled itself with passengers before the lips of the doors kissed closed again. A man in a dodgy suit caught her eye and smiled. She looked away and took out her copy of Woman’s Weekly, leafed through the pages.

  The train lurched again.

  She consulted the map above her head. Nearly there. The man opposite was on his feet. His briefcase collided with her knee.

  ‘Sorry, love.’ He leered in close before steadying himself upright.

  The substantial copper bangle on his wrist chinking against the handrail made her look up and into his bloodshot eyes, the threaded capillaries mapping his face. She didn’t answer him and was glad to see him get off.

  The train surged forward and clattered on. Queenie put her magazine away and looked at her reflection in the window opposite. The train’s rocking, a lullaby rhythm: Keep the baby… keep the baby… keep the baby. She closed her eyes to it until the sudden cry of a baby had her opening them again. A mother, cuddling an infant on her lap, had sat beside her. She didn’t smile at the child. She couldn’t. She was too taut with anxiety.

  Ladbroke Grove. Her stop. Queenie swallowed the last of her liquorice sweet and, rising to her feet, she adjusted her handbag and squeezed out past the row of knees and groans of protest, onto the platform, through the ticket hall and out to the street.

  Daylight had been exchanged for a textured orange miasma, as gas lamps quivered against the encroachment of night. The wind had dropped and a cold, syrupy fog now shrouded the city and obscured the moon. Thickening into a soup, it had swathed the buildings like a living, breathing thing.

  Queenie was in unfamiliar territory and it made her nervous. All around, the disjointed rise and fall of voices merged with the blare of horns and growl of traffic. Hurrying along, across the busy intersection with Lancaster Road, she fastened her coat and retied her headscarf. Abiding by Terrence’s directions, she ducked down into a side street and left the main thoroughfare behind. This was a shortcut to St Marks Road. According to Terrence, Rillington Place was bounded by it on one end and the other end by the wall of Rickard’s Transport Depot for Coaches and Vans. It should be easy to find.

  The streets were stained by mustard-yellow gaslight that did nothing to brighten the shadows. She’d been warned that Notting Hill was rough, and it was, it was a slum. A battlefield. Half the houses in the streets were missing, torn up by bomb blasts, and despite the darkness, children were still pla
ying on a steep slope of rubble. Grubbing around with pretend pistols. A girl with her leg in an iron brace bumped against her, making her look across at a section of fireplace showing where homes had been. The girl giggled and scurried ahead, the drag of her left leg carried behind her like an insult. A municipal notice had been pinned to a wooden stake and hammered into the torn asphalt. NEW FLATS, it boasted, but Queenie doubted anything new would help the dinginess of this area.

  She stamped her feet and thumped her arms against her sides in an attempt to warm up. The agitated barking of a dog echoed around her and she looked sideways to monitor the progress of a young mother pushing a pram along the pavement. Hunched against the cold, the woman eyed her with suspicion. A van slithered past. In the bounce of headlamps, the perspective lengthened to the entire street and she walked past endless doorways shrouded in fog. Close up, the houses were shabby with flaking paintwork. Broken glass and bricks filled the tiny rectangles of scanty grass that grew between the bay windows and kerb.

  A lamplighter was clanking along the street behind her with his ladder. His job was done for the night. Not that his efforts were effective: visibility was still poor and the undesirable feeling of this part of London frightened her. As she walked, she scanned the abandoned streets that yawned off into obscurity. The rows of dark-fronted houses, their curtains drawn against the world. Then a shadowy pub doorway came into view. The Elgin. Flanked by two black pillars, its sign, a cold eye, beckoned her through the gloom. A relief to see it, she trotted over and leant against the brick exterior, unsure if she should go inside. Alone in the dripping dark, she listened to herself breathing and pinched her cheeks that had gone numb from the cold. She checked her watch. Six thirty. Terrence had told her not to arrive before eight, that Mr Christie didn’t care to be disturbed before he’d had the chance to digest his supper. She could risk a drink and a warm in here, couldn’t she?