by Roberta Kray
It was a statement, not a question. Judith wasn’t exactly sure what she meant – what Lennie had done to Nell? What Ivor had done to Lennie? – but sensing she might learn more from keeping quiet, she simply nodded.
‘You told Elsa Keep. Ivor told you and you told Elsa.’
Judith put her hand in her pocket, felt for the key and was reassured to feel the cool, hard metal between her fingers. She decided to be blunt. ‘Is that why Elsa had to be killed? Did she know too much?’
Nell seemed more anxious than shocked at the implied accusation. The tip of her tongue slid across her upper lip. ‘Ivor was with me on Saturday.’
‘Of course he was.’
‘He didn’t go out. He was home all night.’
‘There’s nothing to worry about, then.’
Nell gave a thin smile. ‘Is it money? Is that what you want?’
Judith wondered if this amounted to an admission of guilt – Ivor’s guilt, at least. ‘All I want is Elsa’s killer found.’ And yet she wondered if this was really the case. If Ivor Doyle was exposed as the murderer, he’d be charged, tried and hanged. She remembered Pierrepoint sitting at the bar in the Fitzroy Tavern, and a shiver ran through her.
Nell’s gaze made another circuit of the room. She spoke without looking directly at Judith. ‘Lennie shouldn’t have done what he did to me.’
‘No.’
‘He was evil, and that’s the beginning and end of it.’
Judith tried not to stare at the scars on the woman’s face, at the damage that could never be undone. Instead, she studied her clothes, old and stained, a blue dress and grey cardigan, a pair of shoes with worn-down heels. As if she’d dressed in a hurry, not bothering to look in the mirror. There was chipped polish on her fingernails, and only a section of her hair had been brushed. An odd smell drifted off her, something slightly musty.
‘He deserved it,’ Nell continued, her voice high and sharp. ‘If anyone deserved to die, it was him. After what he did to me … He was always up here, in my head.’ She made a fleeting gesture with her hand. ‘As if he hadn’t finished with me yet, as if he wanted to hurt me some more. It wouldn’t go away: every day, every night. I had to try and stop that, didn’t I? I had to do something. But I didn’t mean to … not really … I only wanted to scare him, to make him feel like I’d felt, but then …’
Judith nodded, the hairs on her arms standing on end. Was Nell really saying what she thought she was? Was she actually confessing? In order to avoid any doubt, she phrased her words carefully. ‘There are people who think Ivor did it.’
Nell gave an odd little laugh. ‘Ivor? He wasn’t even here. How could he?’
Judith found herself both confused and bewildered. How were you supposed to react to someone admitting to murder? And was it even true? The damage to Nell wasn’t just physical; it was in her mind too. Perhaps she was delusional, acting out some fantasy. Or maybe she loved Ivor enough to try and cover for him, to shift the blame onto herself. ‘So, what about Elsa?’
‘What about her?’ As if everything was perfectly normal, as if the awful words about Lennie had never been spoken, Nell smiled.
‘I suppose Ivor was scared that she’d tell the police.’
‘Ivor isn’t scared of anything.’ Nell paused, stared at Judith and said defiantly, ‘He was with me all night. He didn’t go anywhere.’
Judith was about to press her on this when the door to the lounge opened and one of the elderly ladies came in carrying a ball of wool and some knitting needles. Muriel, that was her name. She smiled at them both and settled herself into an armchair by the unlit fire. Judith silently cursed. There was no way the conversation could be resumed now that they had company, not unless they were going to conduct it in a whisper.
Nell clearly thought the same. ‘Oh, is that the time?’ she said, glancing at the clock on the mantelpiece and rising to her feet. ‘I really have to go.’
‘I’ll see you out.’
‘There’s no need,’ Nell said. ‘Really there isn’t. Goodbye.’
And before Judith could even consider following her, she had rushed across the room and out into the hall. There was the tap of her heels on the wooden floor, closely followed by the sound of the front door being opened and closed. She was gone.
Judith sat back, stunned by what had happened. She wished Nell hadn’t told her what she had; she felt overwhelmed by it, burdened. What was she supposed to do now? She closed her eyes, clenched her hands in her lap. The only noise in the lounge was the soft, rhythmic clacking of Muriel’s knitting needles. It stirred a memory in her, a school history lesson about the French Revolution where old women had sat near the guillotine and knitted between executions.
45
Saul Hannah was making the most of his liberty. By the end of September, when the Ghost Squad was disbanded, he would no longer have the same freedom to roam. He’d have to account for his movements, work as part of a team, answer to a boss. His hours would be shorter, but that was nothing to look forward to. His work was his life and everything revolved around it.
For now, however, the streets of Mayfair and Soho were still his territory, and he prowled from pub to pub looking for familiar faces. There was always more of a buzz around Soho on a Friday. By the evening, the whole place would be heaving. Payday meant customers with money to spend, welcome news for the hookers, the bookies’ runners, the drinking and gambling clubs, not to mention the dips who preyed on the drunk and the careless.
He wasn’t searching for anyone in particular, just putting himself out there in case someone felt like talking. A word here, a word there could eventually add up to something useful. There was still no news on Elsa’s killer. It was almost a week now, and the trail, if there had ever been one, was rapidly growing cold.
He wondered how Judith would cope if Ivor Doyle was eventually revealed as the murderer. She might despise her husband for what he’d done to her, but it was a thin line between love and hate. Could it have been him? It had certainly been peculiar him asking if Elsa had possessed a gun. Or maybe he’d been doing someone else’s dirty work – Tombs’s, for example.
There was a rumour doing the rounds that Alf Tombs was planning something big. He’d been seen with Geordie Mack, and that only meant one thing – guns. Saul had inadvertently dropped a hint about it when he’d taken Judith to Leo’s, something along the lines of Tombs not being too happy about his locksmith being dragged into a murder inquiry, especially at the moment. She’d picked up on it, of course, but he’d managed to gloss over the error. He didn’t think she’d say anything to Doyle, but you never knew with women. He frowned, annoyed at himself. It was unusual for him to make careless mistakes like that.
He walked into the Bell and ordered a pint. It worried him that Judith Jonson was getting in over her head. That business with Pat Hull could be just the tip of the iceberg – if Hull thought she knew more than she did, he’d be back. And what if she’d been seen with Doyle? That wouldn’t go down well. Hull might start thinking she was in league with him, trying to conceal the identity of Lennie’s killer. Tombs and Hull had been at loggerheads for years, an ongoing battle that could easily explode into all-out warfare.
But she wasn’t his responsibility. The choices she was making were hers, and if she was stubborn enough to stick by them, there was nothing he could do except watch her back, although he couldn’t do that twenty-four hours a day. And that was something else that bothered him – the fact that he wanted to. Somehow that woman had got under his skin and he couldn’t stop thinking about her.
Monaghan arrived at the same time as his pint. He sidled up to Saul, leaned an elbow on the bar and glanced furtively round the pub.
‘I’ve checked,’ Saul said. ‘There’s no one here.’
‘No harm in checking again.’
‘You want a drink?’
Monaghan always wanted a drink. ‘That’s very courteous of you, Mr Hannah. I’ll take a Scotch.’
Saul beckoned
the barman over and put the order in. Then he turned back to his companion, nodding as he examined his face. ‘You’re looking slightly better, Roy, if you don’t mind me saying.’
‘Some wounds never heal,’ Monaghan replied mournfully. He briefly stroked the scar on his bony face, wincing at the memory of the beating. ‘Ten years of my life I gave to that man, and what thanks do I get for it?’
Saul grinned, thinking that he sounded like a wife who’d been cheated on and dumped. ‘That’s the trouble with villains, Roy. You just can’t trust them.’
‘There ain’t no loyalty no more, that’s the problem.’
‘You nicked off him, for God’s sake. What did you expect him to do, give you a medal?’
Monaghan attacked his Scotch with gusto, emptying half the glass in a single gulp. ‘A misunderstanding, that’s all it were. If Alf had given me five minutes to explain …’
‘I don’t reckon any amount of explaining was going to get you out of that one. Anyway, delightful as it is to see you again, I’m presuming there’s a reason?’
Monaghan gave another shifty look round the pub. ‘I heard a whisper Alf’s out to get Pat Hull.’
Saul snorted. ‘Tell me something I don’t know. Those two have been at each other’s throats for years.’
‘No, this is serious.’
‘It’s always serious. What makes this any different?’
‘Shooters,’ Monaghan said softly. ‘They’ve both been tooling up.’
Saul lifted an eyebrow. He already knew why Hull needed guns, and it was nothing to do with Tombs. ‘Well, with a bit of luck, they’ll shoot each other and make everyone happy. You heard anything about the Elsa Keep murder?’
‘The waitress?’
‘Yes, the waitress.’
‘Nah.’
‘Nothing at all?’
‘I’ve just said, ain’t I?’ Monaghan downed the last half of his Scotch, put the glass down on the bar and stared at it with a desperate kind of longing. Knowing that he wouldn’t get another unless he came up with something interesting, he trawled his brain for further information. ‘Maybe there is something, now I come to think of it. That blonde you were asking me about, Nell McAllister, Doyle’s girl. She was in the Montevideo the other night – Wednesday, I think I was.’
‘Fascinating,’ Saul said.
‘She don’t go out much, ain’t been there for a while. Turned up to have a chat with Alf.’ Monaghan paused to gaze at the empty glass again. ‘She weren’t too happy, by all accounts. That Elsa might have been mentioned, something to do with her and Doyle.’
Saul’s ears pricked up. ‘Might have or definitely was?’
‘I can only tell you what the geezer told me. He’s the barman there. Reckoned Nell was in a state, though, been on the hard stuff and more besides. Not all there, if you get my meaning.’
‘Doyle wasn’t with her?’
‘Nah, just her and Alf. It got a bit heated and he put her in a cab.’
‘They rowed?’
Monaghan shrugged his skinny shoulders. ‘You know what women are like when they’ve had one too many. Everything’s a bleedin’ drama.’
Saul wasn’t sure what to make of it all. Lots of people must be talking about Elsa’s murder – that was hardly odd or unusual – but when you put Tombs and Nell together … Alarm bells went off in his head. It could be something and nothing, but then again …
Alf Tombs paced from one side of the room to the other, pausing every time he reached the window to gaze down into the street. His little office in Soho was a bolthole the law didn’t know about, a good place to store incriminating paperwork and everything else he preferred to keep private. Here, with only his own thoughts for company, he could make plans, plot the future and reminisce about the past.
Diagonally opposite was the Colony Room Club, a drinking establishment for artists, musicians, writers and the like, and a venue with a reputation for behaviour as questionable as its bilious green walls. It occupied a small room on the first floor, reached by a flight of stinking steps, the memory of which still made his nose wrinkle. He had only been there once, and once had been enough.
Alf was a live-and-let-live kind of person and didn’t much care what other people got up to behind closed doors. Although the experience had been interesting, he had found the atmosphere toxic: too many egos colliding and clashing, too much rowing and bitching and general nastiness. He preferred to drink in more civilised surroundings, and in the company of those he understood.
As he looked through the window, he noticed Francis Bacon strolling down the street. Although the bloke was feted as a genius, Alf didn’t get it. He couldn’t see how that stuff was art, more like an angry explosion of paint on canvas. He continued to watch until the artist had passed through the door to the club – if past history was anything to go by, it would be a long while before he emerged again – and then resumed his pacing of the office.
Alf had a lot on his mind. He was concerned about Heathrow and considering a change of plan. Maybe it would be better to let Hull go ahead with the heist and intercept him on his way back. That way they would get all the reward with none of the risk. This, he knew, would be the sensible option, but the temptation to get in there first still pulled at him. It would be payback for the New Bond Street job he’d lost out on, and would send a message to Hull that he couldn’t be messed with. Reputation was everything in this game.
He’d seen nothing more of Nell since she’d turned up at the Montevideo, and little of Doyle either. Something was brewing, though. He could feel it in his bones. Could he trust Doyle on the Heathrow job? Although it pained him to admit it, he wasn’t sure he could. Since Judith Jonson had come on the scene, everything had changed. She had stirred up matters that should have been laid to rest years ago. She was causing trouble, big trouble, and he’d had enough of it. It was time, he decided, to give the girl a taste of her own medicine.
He sat down at his desk, flipped through the phone directory, found the number he was looking for and dialled. It took five rings before it was answered.
‘Jimmy,’ he said. ‘How are you doing? It’s Alf, Alf Tombs. I was hoping you could do me a favour.’
Jimmy Taylor listened, nodded and swiftly wrote down the name and number he was given, then said goodbye and replaced the receiver. He couldn’t deny that he’d almost shit himself when he’d heard Judith Jonson’s name mentioned. His heart had started racing, thumping in his chest, and his hands had gone clammy. There was no way Tombs could know what had happened at Elsa Keep’s, and yet the fear of exposure was always with him.
‘Who was that?’ his dad asked.
‘No one,’ Jimmy said. ‘Just someone asking about opening hours.’
It was another twenty minutes before he was able to nip out. He didn’t want to use the phone at the shop just in case it could be traced. Truth be told, he’d have rather not got involved – he had enough to worry about at the moment – but no one refused Alf Tombs a favour.
He stepped inside the phone box by the bus stop and pulled some change from his pocket. It was a woman who answered.
‘Good afternoon, Kellston Gazette.’
Jimmy asked for Donald Smart, and the woman asked who was calling. Unprepared for this, he hesitated, racking his brains for a fake name. A white bakery van went by on the street, the company name emblazoned in blue across the side: Malcolm Goodrich & Sons. ‘Er … Goodrich,’ he said, ‘Jack Goodrich.’
While he waited for the woman to put him through, he watched the people going in and out of the station and tapped his free hand impatiently against his thigh. Eventually, Smart came on the line.
‘Mr Goodrich? Hello, how can I help?’
Jimmy spoke quickly, wanting to get it over and done with. ‘It’s about the Elsa Keep murder. I may have some information for you. Well, not about the murder so much as the girl who found the body. Judith Jonson, right?’
‘I believe so.’
‘I don’t know if y
ou’ve been told, only she’s a tom … a prostitute.’
‘You sure about that?’
‘She got thrown out of a local B and B for it. Sycamore House, it’s called, on Station Road. You can check if you like. Mrs Jolly, that’s the landlady’s name. Could be Elsa Keep was on the game too. Might be important, don’t you think?’
‘Are the police aware of this, Mr Goodrich?’
‘How would I know? I ain’t told them, if that’s what you mean.’
‘And are you aware of Judith Jonson’s whereabouts now?’
‘Nah, mate, ain’t got a clue. Dare say she’s still around, though. Shouldn’t be too hard to find.’ And then, before Smart could ask him any more questions, Jimmy hung up. He took his change, had a quick look round and exited the phone box.
Maud Bishop had got used to the trains, so much so that she barely noticed now when they went past. Even the shuddering of the house had become normal, a brief stirring of bricks and mortar, a trembling in the foundations. It was only the smuts that bothered her, the dirt that billowed out and rained down on her washing. As she unpegged the sheets, she thought about the place she’d move to, somewhere far away from the railway, somewhere clean and fresh and quiet.
She hadn’t spoken to Mick since yesterday morning. He’d been out till the early hours, rolling in bladdered at about four o’clock, and was still sleeping it off. Thankfully, he’d been too pissed to wake her up and force himself on her. Small mercies, she thought, but she wasn’t out of the woods yet. When he woke with a hangover, he’d be looking for someone to blame.
She tentatively touched the lobe of her ear, where the fag burn still throbbed and stung. Bastard. Her life would be so much better without him – no more pain, no more fear, no more stepping on eggshells in case she did or said something to offend him. All within her grasp so long as she played it smart.
Until this moment, Maud hadn’t made up her mind as to whether she’d tell Mick about Judith trying to talk to her. She was tempted to keep quiet, but wondered if anyone had spotted them from the caff. That place was always full of Mick’s cronies. What if one of them tipped him off about the redhead approaching her? It seemed unlikely, but no risk – no matter how small – was worth taking.
