Except that in this place they probably weren’t even called customers, Woodend thought. In the Longchamps, they were probably referred to as guests or patrons.
Tea was served in a delicate china pot, by a lady who, though dressed up like an Edwardian maid, had probably never had to scrub a pan in her entire life. She did not smile at Woodend, as she had at her other customers – at her other guests – which he took to be a clear indication that while his business would be tolerated, it was not exactly welcome.
At five past ten, Rachael Tompkinson walked through the door. Though she was clearly concerned about the nature of the meeting she had arranged, she seemed perfectly at home in the location where it was about to take place.
This was her natural stamping ground, Woodend thought. She did not feel even the least bit awkward, though he most certainly did, and though – he was sure – her best friend Pearl would have done.
The smile on her face, as she sat down opposite him, managed somehow to combine uncertainty with resolution. She was a good kid caught up in a difficult situation but determined to do what was right, Woodend decided.
‘Tell me about Pearl,’ he said.
‘She was the sweetest girl I ever met in my whole life,’ Rachael replied. ‘I felt so drab and colourless next to her, but she certainly never tried to make me feel that way.’
‘That’s not what I’m askin’,’ Woodend said softly.
‘I know it isn’t,’ Rachael admitted. ‘You want to know what happened to her that night, don’t you?’
‘Yes.’
Rachael took hold of her left index finger with her right hand, and bent it back so far that she winced with the pain.
‘Steady, lass,’ Woodend said.
The girl smiled again, grateful for his concern, then said, ‘Would you mind if I started at the beginning? It would be so much easier for me if I could do that.’
‘Start wherever you want to,’ Woodend told her.
‘There was a lot of mystery in Pearl’s life,’ Rachael said. ‘In fact, it was absolutely full of it. She didn’t know who her father was, she didn’t know where her mum got her money from, and she didn’t know who was paying her scholarship. But she wanted to know those things. It was important to her to find out!’
‘I’m sure it was,’ Woodend said sympathetically.
‘She started searching around her house for clues that might help to answer her questions, but there weren’t any.’
No, Woodend thought, there wouldn’t have been. Mrs Jones had struck him as far too careful to leave clues like that lying around.
‘She was getting pretty desperate by that point,’ Rachael continued, ‘so she decided that when her mum was talking to her friends from the church, she’d secretly listen in. I know that sounds awful, but …’
‘It doesn’t sound awful at all,’ Woodend assured her. ‘In fact, given the circumstances, it’s perfectly understandable.’
‘That’s what I told her,’ Rachael said. ‘I wasn’t sure I believed it myself, but I told her anyway, because she was my best friend.’
‘So she started eavesdroppin’ on her mum,’ Woodend said. ‘Did she learn anythin’ from listenin’ in to these conversations?’
‘Bits and pieces, here and there. None of the things she heard made much sense on its own, so then she tried to put them all together – it was a bit like doing a very complicated jigsaw puzzle.’
‘An’ when she’d finished it, what did the picture look like?’
‘It didn’t look like anything very much, because there were so many pieces still missing. But she was sure of a few things.’
‘An’ what were they?’
‘That her father was still alive, that he lived somewhere in London, and that he … that he wasn’t quite respectable.’
‘What exactly do you mean when you say he was not quite respectable? That he was some kind of crook?’
‘Yes, I suppose that is what I mean.’
‘Go on,’ Woodend encouraged.
‘She wanted to meet him, even if he was a criminal, because he was still her father.’
‘Of course he was,’ Woodend agreed.
‘So I said that if she really did want to find him, the best place to look would probably be in a nightclub.’
‘In a what?’
‘In a nightclub. That is where criminals hang out, isn’t it?’
The words ‘hang out’ did not come easily to her lips, Woodend thought. They were alien words, describing an alien environment about which she knew so very, very little.
‘But before she could go to a nightclub, she had to have the right kind of dress,’ Rachael continued. ‘We both saved up our pocket money like fury, and in the end, we had enough to buy the dress. It was a very nice dress – a very grown-up dress. I would have looked so silly in it. But Pearl didn’t. It made her look much older than she really was.’
They’d been kids, playing a kids’ game which was just one step up from dolls and dolls’ houses.
The only problem was that they’d chosen to play it in a rather unpleasant part of the adult world.
‘So how did it work, this search of yours?’ Woodend asked.
‘We’d drawn up a list of the nightclubs which looked promising, and Pearl was visiting them, one by one.’
‘An’ they let her in, did they?’
‘Oh yes! Remember, in that dress, she looked a lot older than she really was. Besides, she was a pretty girl – and you can never have too many pretty girls in a nightclub.’ For the first time, Rachael looked questioningly at Woodend. ‘I’m surprised that as a policeman you didn’t already know that.’
She had no concept of what a nightclub was actually like, Woodend thought – of the prostitutes and the pimps and the drug-peddlers who made up at least a third of the customers. She had seen a more glamorous version of what went on in the Hollywood films – a version in which even the gangsters were sanitized – and she had taken that as real.
‘What did Pearl do, once she was inside the club?’ he asked.
‘She looked for her father, of course.’
‘An’ how would she have known him, if she’d found him?’
‘He’d look a little like her, don’t you think?’ Rachael asked, as if that was obvious to her, and she was amazed it wasn’t obvious to him.
‘Possibly,’ Woodend said.
‘And she wasn’t just doing it on her own, you know. She did have my help.’
‘You went in there with her?’
‘Gosh, no! They’d never have let me in. And anyway, I would have been far too frightened to go in, even if they had. But she had the camera with her, you see.’
‘Which camera?’
‘My father’s. It’s a very expensive one, actually.’ Rachael looked down at the table. ‘I “borrowed” it.’
‘So she took pictures of all the men she thought might possibly be her dad. Didn’t they object?’
‘No, because they didn’t even know she was taking pictures of them. That’s where she was clever.’
‘Clever? How?’
‘When she saw a man she thought might be her father, she’d go to the people at the table next to his and ask them if they’d mind if she took their photo.’
‘But when she took the actual picture, she’d make sure that the man she was interested in appeared at the edge of it?’ Woodend guessed.
‘That’s right. And later, when she’d had the film developed, we’d go through the pictures together, and try to work out if any of the men she’d taken a photograph of could be her father. It was all such tremendous fun.’ Rachael looked down at the table again. ‘At least, it seemed like tremendous fun at the time.’
‘How often did she go on one of these expeditions?’
‘She did it four times, altogether. We went to the Birdcage Club, the Blue Angel, the Orinoco, and the Charleston.’
‘We went?’ Woodend asked, pouncing on the word.
‘I … I waited outside.’
‘Which one was the last you went to?’
‘The Charleston.’
‘An’ that was the night Pearl was murdered?’
‘Yes.’
‘Tell me what happened.’
‘There was a thick smog that night. It was very cold, and I was worried about how we’d eventually get home. But I knew that Pearl wouldn’t come out until she’d done what she’d set out to do – because she was that kind of girl.’
‘So I believe.’
‘When she did come out, she was with a man. He was holding her by the arm. He wasn’t exactly dragging her, but you could tell that she wasn’t awfully keen on the idea of going with him.’
‘What was he like, this man?’
‘He was tall.’
‘That’s a start. What else can you tell me about him?’
‘I didn’t get a clear view of him, because he had his hat pulled right down. And with all that smog around, you couldn’t see much anyway. But Pearl saw me – because she knew where to look.’
‘But you don’t think the man saw you?’
‘I’m sure he didn’t. He looked at Pearl, and he looked up and down the street, but he never even so much as glanced in my direction.’
‘Did Pearl say anythin’ to you?’
‘No, she just shook her head, as if to tell me that I shouldn’t come any closer. And so I didn’t. I just stood there, while he opened the door of his car, and bundled Pearl inside. But I shouldn’t just have stood there, should I? I should have tried to help her! I knew, even then, that I should have tried to help her.’
If you had tried to help her, you wouldn’t have saved Pearl – and you’d probably have ended up dead yourself, Woodend thought.
‘You did what Pearl wanted you to do, an’ that’s all one friend can ever do for another,’ he told the girl. ‘Did you leave then?’
Rachael shook her head. ‘No, I stayed just where I was.’
‘Why?’
‘In case they came back.’
‘But they didn’t?’
‘The man did – about half an hour later. When I saw that Pearl wasn’t with him, I thought about going to the police.’
‘Then why didn’t you?’
‘Because I thought that if I did, I would only be getting Pearl into more trouble. But it wouldn’t have got her into trouble, would it? It couldn’t have got her into trouble – because she was already dead by then!’
‘Yes, I think she probably was,’ Woodend said.
Tears had started to form in Rachael’s eyes.
‘I … I couldn’t stay out there all night, and so I went home,’ she said, in a thick voice. ‘When Pearl wasn’t in school the next morning, I didn’t know what to think. I spent the whole day worrying about her. And then, the morning after that, I saw her picture on the front page of the newspaper, and I … and I was so scared. And I’m still scared now.’
‘You did all you could,’ Woodend told her. ‘Much more than most people twice your age would have managed.’
‘Do you think the man I saw coming out of the club with her was her father?’ Rachael asked.
‘I don’t know,’ Woodend admitted.
‘But just say he was. Say that she’d finally found him, after all her searching. If she was sure enough it was him, she’d probably have told him who she was, wouldn’t she?’
‘It’s possible.’
‘And instead of being delighted to see her, as she thought he would be, he took her to that bomb site – and he slit her throat. What … what kind of man is it who could kill his own daughter like that?’
‘I don’t know,’ Woodend said again, as an image of his own little Pauline Anne came to his mind.
‘You have to catch him, Mr Woodend,’ Rachael said desperately. ‘Promise me you’ll catch him.’
‘Oh, I’ll catch him, all right,’ Wooded told her. ‘However long it takes – whatever it involves – I’ll catch him.’
Twenty-Two
Unless he is clearly a high roller with money to burn, no man entering a nightclub on his own should expect to be shown to one of the better tables, and since the man in the hairy sports coat certainly did not fall within a million miles of this category, the head waiter led him to a small, cramped table at the back of the room.
Woodend raised no objection, even though the table was so close to the toilets that it was almost a part of them. He didn’t even mind that his view of the stage was partially obscured by a large pillar, because he wasn’t there to watch the entertainment – instead, he’d come to watch the people who were watching the entertainment.
‘Would you care for a bottle of champagne, sir?’ the head waiter suggested, snidely.
‘Aye, why not?’ Woodend agreed. ‘Bring me a bottle of the Dom Perignon ’36.’
The head waiter looked at him with loathing. ‘I’m afraid we’ve run out of that particular vintage, sir.’
‘Well, don’t get your knickers in a twist about it, old lad. The ’38 will do me almost as well.’
‘We’ve just run out of that as well,’ the head waiter said, not even bothering to try and sound convincing.
‘Oh dear, what a pity!’ Woodend said. ‘Never mind, I’ll have a pint of your best bitter instead.’
As the head waiter stalked away, Woodend lit up a cigarette and looked around him. The Charleston Club was lacking in many things, he quickly decided, but what it lacked most of all was any sense of zing.
It had none of the sophisticated glamour of establishments like Toby Burroughs’s Las Vegas Club, but neither did it have, by way of compensation, that inherently exciting sense of danger which positively crackled through the air in some of the rougher clubs in the East End.
What it was, in reality, was a haven in which the lower middle classes could flirt with the idea of living the high life, and yet remain safe in the knowledge that they had not actually stepped far beyond the bounds of their normal, comfortable, bourgeois existence.
It was certainly not a place where he would ever have begun his search for a shadowy member of the criminal underworld, Woodend thought. But then, of course, he was not a sixteen-year-old girl who had a great deal of imagination, but very little experience of the world as it really was.
And the fact that Pearl had chosen the wrong type of club for her investigation didn’t really matter at all. The only important thing was that she had chosen it – and that that choice had led to her death.
A second waiter, lower in the pecking order, arrived at the table carrying a pint of bitter on a metal tray.
‘That’ll be ten bob,’ he said, slamming the pint pot down on the table with all the finesse of a riveter hammering in a bolt.
‘Ten bob!’ Woodend repeated. ‘Bloody hellfire, I could have bought half the brewery for that!’ He took a ten-shilling note out of his pocket, and handed it over. ‘I’d like to see the manager,’ he said.
The waiter pocketed the money, then shrugged indifferently. ‘The boss is too busy to see you,’ he said.
‘How do you know that?’ Woodend wondered. ‘Have you checked? Before you serve one of the tables, do you always go to the boss and ask him what you’re to say if the customer requests an interview?’
‘There’s no need to do that,’ the waiter said, with a smirk. ‘He’s always too busy to see the punters.’
Or, at least, he was always too busy to see punters who had been seated at tables close to the bogs, Woodend thought.
‘I’d still like you to check with him, anyway,’ he said, producing his warrant card. ‘Tell him I’m the Old Bill.’
‘So yer a copper,’ the waiter, giving the warrant card a brief inspection. ‘A detective sergeant! Yer don’t expect the boss to be impressed that a detective sergeant wants to see ’im, do yer?’
‘No, I don’t, really,’ Woodend admitted. ‘But I do think he’ll be rather interested to hear what this particular detective sergeant’s got to say.’
‘About what?’
‘About the safety standards in this shit hole. I’ve only been here for ten minutes, but without even really lookin’ for them, I’ve spotted five or six serious infringements of the fire-safety regulations.’
‘Yer don’t need to bovver the boss about that,’ the waiter said. ‘I’ll ’ave a word wiv ’im myself, and there’ll be an envelope waiting for yer on yer way out.’
Woodend stood up. ‘Do I look like the kind of copper you can buy?’ he demanded menacingly.
The waiter took a couple of steps backwards. ‘No offence intended,’ he said.
‘Well, plenty taken,’ Woodend told him. ‘Five minutes from now, I expected to be either talkin’ to the manager, or nickin’ you for attemptin’ to bribe a policeman. Which one is it goin’ to be?’
‘I’ll tell ’im you want to see ’im,’ the waiter said.
‘Good idea,’ Woodend agreed.
The manager of the Charleston Club was called Cliff Robinson. He was somewhere in his mid-forties, of medium build, with pale sandy hair, and when Woodend asked him who owned the club, he said, ‘I do.’
‘What I mean is, who really owns it?’ Woodend persisted.
‘Me,’ Robinson said firmly. ‘This is a legitimate nightclub, not some kind of front for laundering dirty money.’
‘An’ you expect me just to take your word for that, do you, Mr Robinson?’ Woodend asked.
‘No, I don’t,’ Robinson replied. ‘What I expect you to do is check around. But when you do check, you’ll soon discover that I’ve got no criminal record, and no business connection with anybody who has. And if you still don’t believe me, you can have a word with your pals back at the Yard.’
But I do believe you, Woodend thought.
And that was the problem – because this was simply not the kind of club that a Ron Smithers or a Toby Burroughs would come to for a night’s entertainment. It was not even the kind of club that lesser gangsters, with a pretension to being hard men, would ever want to be associated with.
Yet on the night that Pearl had visited the club, there had been at least one man there who was a cold-blooded killer.
He took Pearl’s photograph out of his pocket, and placed it in the middle of the manager’s desk.
‘Does she look familiar?’ he asked.
Fatal Quest Page 20
