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

by Rebecca Griffiths

  ‘Oh, Terry can charm anyone, can’t you, Terry? And anyway, how did you know I was here?’ Queenie interjected.

  ‘Uncle Fish. Gloria’s in the ward above this one.’

  ‘Oh, yes, that’s right. I forgot.’ She dabbed her eyes with the edge of the hospital sheet. ‘I’ve been meaning to visit her. Bad, aren’t I?’

  No one answered. The nurse busied herself around her silently, tucking in Queenie’s blankets and checking her drip, while Terrence stared into the middle distance. She thought he looked distracted and awkward, and there were dots of dried blood on his cheeks where he’d nicked himself shaving.

  ‘How’s the patient?’ he eventually asked the nurse and put the bag of grapes he’d brought with him on the table beside her bed.

  ‘She’s going to be just fine.’ The assurance was given with a generous smile. ‘But she’s to rest, do you hear? No more of this gadding about. You’re to take better care that she does, young man.’ She gave Terrence a sharp look. ‘That was a close shave she had today, she might not be so lucky next time.’

  They waited for the nurse to go.

  ‘She thinks we’re a couple.’ Queenie’s observation made him smile: warm, kind – a chink of the old Terrence. ‘I nearly lost the baby, Terry.’

  ‘B-but… but wasn’t that what you wanted?’

  ‘No, not now.’ She watched his delicate pianist fingers twist the buttons of his coat. ‘The shock of it all, it’s made me decide.’

  ‘Decide what?’

  She paused to think, to weigh up the importance of what she wanted to share. ‘I’ve decided I’m not going to give the baby away; I’m going to keep it. Where there’s a will, there’s a way, eh, Terry?’ She found herself echoing the very same sentiment the Welshman, Timothy Evans, had in the Elgin that night.

  Terrence was oddly quiet. Queenie was hoping he’d be pleased with this news, her change of heart, but he didn’t seem interested. Deeply preoccupied, he looked weird, wired somehow, and those tender bruises under his eyes were worrying. It was obvious he wasn’t himself, that something was eating him up. Queenie wanted to ask him what was wrong, but she was afraid the answer might have something to do with her.

  ‘It’s not half bad in here.’ Terrence turned to her. ‘It’s nice to know you’re in safe hands.’

  ‘Shame we didn’t have the NHS for my mum. I might still have her.’

  ‘Me too with my dad.’ Terrence was about to sit but Queenie’s portmanteau was on the only chair.

  ‘Just move it.’

  He set it on the floor and positioned himself beside the bed. ‘Where were you going, anyway? Uncle Fish said you collapsed in Waterloo Station. He’s been in to see you, by the way, but you were sleeping. He sends his love.’

  ‘That’s nice of him.’

  ‘So, where were you going?’

  ‘Dorset.’

  ‘In January? Whatever for?’

  ‘If you give me my handbag, I’ll show you.’ She watched him lift it from the back of the chair. ‘Here…’ She opened it and passed him Joy’s note. Waited for him to read it. ‘What do you think?’

  ‘I don’t know. What do you think?’ he batted her question back and returned the note to her.

  ‘She’s gone there, Terry. To Dorset.’ Queenie put it away in her bag. ‘She’s gone to that place Charles used to take her.’

  ‘Has she? Well, that’s good. At least it’ll mean she’s safe.’

  ‘Safe? What are you on about?’

  ‘Oh, nothing.’ Terrence flapped away her query and presented one of his own. ‘What makes you think she’s gone there? It’s hardly the time of year for a seaside holiday.’

  ‘I just know. Call it feminine instinct.’ She slumped back against her pillows, exhausted. ‘Don’t look at me like that.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Never mind. Anyway, it’s a little fishing village… Smuggler’s something, I can’t remember.’

  ‘Smuggler’s Cove, yes, I know it.’

  ‘That’s right, I forgot, you used to have holidays there, didn’t you? Oh, Terry, I’m so cross with myself, I wanted to go and find her, I was going to beg for her forgiveness.’

  ‘You were?’ He looked mildly surprised.

  ‘Yes, but I can’t go now, can I? Not like this. And I’m wondering…’ She broke off, dropped her eyes.

  ‘What?’

  ‘If you’ll go instead. Just to make sure Joy’s all right?’

  ‘It’s a long way from London, Queenie. I’ll need to clear it with work, not that I’m sure they’ll give me the time off.’

  ‘But if you say it’s an emergency. Oh, Terry, please say you’ll go and fetch her home? You’re my only hope. I’m frightened she’s going to do something to herself.’

  ‘Like what?’ He jerked his head in alarm.

  ‘I don’t know.’ Tears gathered at the corners of her eyes. ‘I just know she’s broken, but she won’t ask for help.’

  ‘You don’t know that. You haven’t seen Joy since Buster told her about you and Charles.’

  ‘I remember how she was when her father died.’ Queenie brushed a tear away. ‘She feels things so very deeply, Terry, you don’t know her like I do.’

  ‘I’m sorry, darling, and this is going to be hard for you to hear, but you’re the last person in the world Joy would come to.’

  ‘You’re right. But I feel so bad about what I’ve done to her. I never deserved her; I’ve been so selfish. All I want is the chance to make it up with her, to tell her how sorry I am. Please, Terry, you’ve got to help me put this right. I miss her… I miss her so much.’

  ‘Don’t cry.’ Terrence, soft at her side. ‘And try not to worry. It will be all right, I’m sure it will be all right. Look, I’ll sort something with the bank and get a train first thing tomorrow morning. If she’s there, I’ll find her.’

  ‘And bring her home?’

  ‘If that’s what Joy wants. But if she has gone there, she probably just wants to be left alone.’

  ‘But you’ll try? The only thing that matters now is that Joy is okay. Find her for me, Terry, please? Talk to her, tell her how sorry I am and that I’ll do anything to make it up to her if she lets me.’

  ‘I’ll do my best.’

  ‘Oh, thank you so much. You don’t know what a relief that is. I don’t know what I’d do without you. I’ve been missing you as well, you know.’

  ‘And I’ve missed you too. The club’s not the same without you. Are you sure you don’t want to come back?’

  She shook her head. ‘I can’t sing, not like I used to. This dreadful thing I’ve done to Joy, I just wish I could turn back the clock. I’ve ruined everything… everything.’ Queenie burst into tears again.

  ‘You’ve got to stop being so hard on yourself, d’you hear? You didn’t deliberately set out to cause this.’

  ‘Is that what you think, really?’ she asked in a small voice. ‘I thought you hated me, and that’s why you’ve been avoiding me.’

  ‘Avoiding you, darling? Don’t be silly.’ Terrence stroked the inside of her arm. The cool tips of his fingers finding a patch of skin between the IV and bandages. ‘Things have been busy for me, that’s all.’ He had that faraway look in his eyes again. ‘You couldn’t see to lending me a few bob, could you, darling? I’m a bit strapped this month.’

  ‘Sure, I can.’ Queenie opened her purse, the troubled look on Terrence’s face bothering her more than him tapping her for money. ‘Oh, look, you’d better take this with you.’ She passed him a small square photograph of Joy wearing a beret and a broad smile. The black skeleton of the Eiffel Tower rising like some grotesque scaffold behind her.

  67

  Another nightmare-choked sleep and Terrence woke in a sweat and a tangle of sheets. He’d been plagued by nightmares since returning to Britain from Italy after the war, long before the anxiety and distress he now had about Christie. He walked in the shadows and was haunted by the ghosts of the men he’d killed. But
he couldn’t think about it, not if he was to keep putting one foot in front of the other.

  The rain had eased, but with no moon, everything had been devoured by inky blackness. It panicked him and he leant down to touch the Winchester flashlight he kept within reach on the floor. Reassured, he didn’t need to turn it on; it was enough to know it was there. For a long time, he lay in the dark too tired to sit up, listening to the rain that had started again. It pummelled the exterior walls. Its ferocity waxing and waning, with several seconds of calm dropping between the violent surges.

  Ultimately, his mind got the better of his weariness and he stumbled out of bed, fumbled for the light. Was momentarily blinded by the electric overkill. He squinted at his watch. The only thing he left on when he went to bed. He thought he’d slept for hours but his head had barely touched the pillow. Naked, he walked to the window and peeked around the blind. Outside, darkness still ruled. Only the merest hint of a pink dawn bleeding in from the east. It was time to go out and face the world, and he brushed his teeth and shaved up at the basin. Saw a smattering of coarse grey hairs at his temples. Hairs he would swear weren’t there a month ago. The pimples around his mouth. His bloodshot eyes. He didn’t know the man who was mirrored back to him.

  At this moment, a banging from downstairs.

  Christie? These past months, Christie was always his first thought.

  He stepped away from the washstand and grabbed a towel, wrapped it around himself before opening the door and craning his neck to look down on the drop of the staircase to the tiny hall with its strip of linoleum. Saw the old-fashioned telephone on its bracket on the wall. Nothing. But as he stared at the telephone it began to ring. He ignored it and went back into his room, where he dressed and packed the items he imagined he would need into his canvas kitbag. Checked his pockets for his wallet of Queenie’s money and the photograph of Joy, and slung it onto his shoulder.

  Out in the street, the rain had stopped and the sun was rising, gathering strength over the rooftops. It was going to be a fine day, not that the idea cheered Terrence.

  ‘’Ow do, lad.’

  ‘You!’ He jumped back. ‘What d’you want now?’

  ‘That’s not very polite.’ Christie’s neatly dressed figure slipped free of the shadows: his right hand shoved inside the pocket of his coat, the left curved around a smouldering cigarette. ‘And where might you be off to on such a fine morning?’

  ‘None of your business.’ Terrence turned up the collar of his overcoat and made off down the street. He wasn’t as surprised to see Christie as he should have been. The man had been making a habit of hanging around here and outside the Mockin’ Bird, demanding money. ‘Christ!’ he shouted, unable to control his temper. ‘I can’t bloody move without you being there. I’ve said I’ll get you the money, now clear off before someone sees you.’

  ‘Don’t be coming it with me, lad. I could have police on to you in a flash.’ Christie trotted after him; no sign of the bad back he was forever complaining about.

  ‘Look, how many more bloody times, I’ve got nothing.’ He was thinking about Malcolm as well as the shocking state of his finances. ‘You’ve bled me dry. I’m behind on—’

  ‘Don’t give me that – likes of you can always get hold of money.’ Christie cut across him, needing to take two steps for every one of Terrence’s strides. ‘And if you don’t give me what you owe…’

  ‘Just leave me alone.’

  ‘I’ll do what I want, lad, and you’d do well to remember it. You’re lowest of low so far as law’s concerned, and if you don’t pay up, I’ll have police on you like a dose of salts.’

  The black-edged threat he kept hearing prickled along Terrence’s hairline, up into his scalp. He stopped at the top of the street and turned to face him. Terrence had to give it to the bastard, he was clever. Without needing to resort to violence or even raising his voice, he applied a steady pressure by pestering and threatening all hours of the day and night to get what he wanted. Forced to steal from his employer and living in abject fear every minute of every day, Terrence was near breaking point. He stared at the pale face beneath the trilby. The face of his blackmailer, who led a kind of Jekyll and Hyde existence. Jekyll being the respectable, neat ledger clerk, genteel, moralising and superior. Hyde came out at night, the frequenter of squalid cafés and the consort of pimps and prostitutes. Echoes with his own existence, his dismal thoughts.

  ‘You think you’re so bloody superior, don’t you? Sneaking around in those shoes you wear and putting it about that you can help women in trouble. I know what you are.’

  ‘You better not be threatening me, lad.’ The cold, pit pony eyes bored into him. ‘I don’t take kindly to threats, not from a dirty bugger like you. You’ve a nerve, with a secret like yours?’

  It was true, he was wasting his breath, so Terrence came at things from another angle: ‘You look different. Getting to you, is it?’ Terrence glared at him. He couldn’t believe that a man who used prostitutes and was capable of blackmail could be deemed a suitable witness in a murder trial. It was sickening to think the life of another man was in the hands of this reprobate. ‘Been giving your evidence in court, have you?’

  ‘I have, as a matter of fact.’ Puffed-up with his own self-importance.

  ‘Why do you do that thing with your mouth all the time? Creepy, creepy. Coming all moral with me, you use prostitutes for fuck’s sake.’

  ‘I’ve told you before, I don’t care for foul language. And aye, as you come to mention it, a man is about to have his head put in a noose on my say-so.’ Terrence gawped at Christie in horror and put a hand to his neck. This man’s callous conceitedness made his chest tighten. ‘But I’ve not come here to discuss Timothy Evans. I want to know where my money is.’

  How come it was always Christie who was indignant? Terrence couldn’t believe the audacity of the man; the situation he was in was as maddening as it was frightening. It was as if Christie had his own moral code, and despite occupying the shadowy, sleazy world where everyone was guilty of something, he managed to elevate himself above the scum he mixed with after dark. It was like Albert said: morals and values and evil were a dung heap, and everyone stood on their own and shouted out about everyone else. This was Christie in a nutshell: full of snivelling hypocrisy.

  Terrence watched Christie stoop to retie his plimsolls. ‘It’s why you wear those things, so you can slink about unheard.’ This man was his own shadow in a world of shadows. Down among the city’s gangland in the shady back alleys. ‘You killed Beryl Evans, didn’t you? A botched abortion, the defence said. I’ve been following it in the papers.’ Terrence stared at Christie’s puny back, measuring where the vital organs were. Thought: It wouldn’t take much. A knife would go in smooth as butter. Why not? He had nothing to lose. With Malcolm gone, about to be kicked out of his lodgings, his job at the bank teetering on a knife-edge… killing this man who was slowly killing him was his only way out. ‘You’re going to stand by and let them hang an innocent man.’

  ‘Innocent? Don’t give me that.’ Christie scoffed, upright again. Then, as if remembering it was something he should do, he put a hand to his back and grimaced, let go an amplified groan. ‘You’ve not been following things as closely as you think, lad.’ Another exaggerated grimace. Terrence ignored it; there was no way he was getting any sympathy from him. ‘Is that all you’ve got? What it says in papers? I’ve been there, in court; a principal witness, I am. That Beryl were strangled, and her husband did it. Same as he did for their baby daughter.’

  ‘You sure about that?’ Terrence was remembering that awful November night, the gut-wrenching cry of a baby before Christie had slammed the door on him.

  ‘What possible motive would I have for killing a child? You want to stop casting aspersions, lad. Dangerous for someone with your habits. Or would you like authorities to come round and ask for your opinion on it? Aye, you might find yourself up in court if you don’t watch it.’

  Terrence had to
admire him for this bravura performance and suspected it was what he had done during Evans’ trial when the defence counsel had tried to present an alternative version of events.

  ‘Anyway, you don’t know them like I did.’ Christie was doing that sucking thing with his mouth again. ‘Fighting like cat and dog, morning, noon and night.’

  ‘Why do you whisper all the time? Can’t you speak up?’

  ‘My larynx got damaged in the First War. I had aphonia, it left me with an extremely quiet voice.’

  ‘Got you out of the trenches, did it? You just do it for attention, in the way you’re always complaining about your back. You’re nothing but a bloody shirker.’

  ‘I couldn’t care less what you think about me, lad. Now, if you’d give me what I’ve come for, I’ll be on my way.’ Christie, enjoying himself. ‘And you and that darkie can get back to whatever filthy business you get up to. I could have you sent to prison. Do you know what they do to your sort in prison?’ A repulsive smile.

  ‘How come you’ve got the time to be hanging around and bothering me all the time? Why aren’t you in work?’ Terrence was thinking about the struggle he’d had with his employers to get two days off.

  ‘Why aren’t you married?’ Christie whacked back a question of his own. ‘Decent men get married.’

  ‘What – like you, you mean?’

  ‘It’s not normal.’ Christie ignored him. ‘The way you sorts carry on. What would your mother say?’

  ‘You leave my mother out of this.’

  ‘I will if you give me what you owe me, lad.’

  ‘I’ll get you it,’ Terrence hissed, about to walk off.

  ‘You make sure you do,’ the soft voice threatened. ‘It’d break your mother’s heart if she got to finding out who real Terry were. Terry and his filthy ways. And she’s a bad heart, I heard.’ The wormy lips parted to give him a thin smile. ‘You wouldn’t want to be responsible for bringing about her untimely death, now would you?’

  * * *

  The Swanage train was almost empty. Fearful that Christie was following him, Terrence repeatedly checked the carriage in the same way he had sifted the crowds in the ticket hall for the man’s horrid, glassy gleam. Trouble was, the crowd was mostly men in hats and coats, and he couldn’t be sure. Safe for now, he breathed his relief. His only travelling companion was a woman with an impressive set of whiskers who sat across the gangway. He watched her, fascinated, as she gabbled vaguely to herself in a lilting voice. Her supposed insanity was strangely comforting; it drew him away from London’s unstable heart and the things that troubled him. Christie’s threats and Terrence’s need to pay up didn’t go away but, tipping his head against the headrest, they did, at least, ebb a little. Beyond the train were the tiled roofs and the high-rise buildings of the capital. It was still early, and the January sun hadn’t quite burnt away last night’s rain. The few trees that were scattered here and there seemed to hang around on street corners like tramps. Bleached and stale with the scoured look of winter on their flaking boughs.