Barnard nodded and Jackson went on to detail other officers to visit Smart’s workplace and home address as soon as the ID was confirmed and convene again later in the day for more instructions.
Barnard drove the DCI back from the hospital to the nick, carefully obeying every traffic regulation he could remember and a few extra just in case. Keith Jackson had stood impassively by while the pathologist examined the body of Ricky Smart, his identity easily confirmed by Barnard himself who tried not to let his eyes dwell on the fact that the man’s head was only loosely attached to his body. The pathologist had found no other external injuries on the corpse but surmised, when he opened the stomach, that Smart had consumed a considerable quantity of alcohol before he died and almost certainly should not have been behind the wheel of a car.
‘From the position of the body he must have driven the car to where it was found,’ Barnard said. ‘And from the position of the car, in a dead-end alley up against doors that were obviously regularly used, he was either lured there to meet someone or forced to drive there by someone else in the vehicle.’
‘The blow that cut his throat most likely came from behind,’ the pathologist had offered. ‘You couldn’t easily get that sort of wound from the side in the confined space of a car. My best guess is that someone was sitting behind him and reached round with an extremely sharp knife.’
‘Have we found the weapon?’ Jackson asked Barnard, as he drove across Oxford Circus and swung down Regent Street.
‘Not to my knowledge, guv,’ the sergeant replied. He overtook a bus cautiously, knowing that he must tell Jackson about Kate O’Donnell’s involvement with Smart and Lubin and knowing that the information would raise all sorts of questions in the Scotsman’s mind. Even so, he reckoned that sooner was very much better than later in this case.
‘There is one thing about this case – and the deaths of the two young girls – you ought to know, guv,’ he began tentatively. ‘There’s a young photographer working temporarily in Lubin’s studio, a female photographer, who I’ve known for a while.’
Jackson’s bright blue eyes focused on Barnard’s, his face impassive. ‘And?’ he said as the silence lengthened.
‘She’s called Kate O’Donnell. I met her before your time, guv,’ Barnard said. ‘Her brother was a suspect in a case I worked on while Ted Venables was still around. She contacted me again recently because she was a worried about what Smart and Lubin were up to with the girls they employed. She’s working there for a month to learn about fashion. In fact what she said was very helpful in the Jenny Maitland case. It helped us identify her, and link her to Lubin’s studio. She was sure the two men were sleeping with the models, more or less as a matter of course. Some of them were obviously under-age. Kate told me she was having trouble herself in fending Smart off, but she’s a lot older and more streetwise so she was able to cope with working there. It was only for a short time anyway.’ That, Barnard thought, was as much as he wanted to tell the DCI about Kate’s troubles with Smart. He would warn her not to mention to anyone that she had told Barnard about Smart’s attack on her doorstep. That would open a can of worms for both of them if Jackson found out.
‘Sleeping with the models, even under-age models, is not the same as working the streets,’ Jackson said.
‘I suspect that happened after the girls left the studio,’ Barnard said. ‘A lot of the girls Smart recruited were being sacked quite quickly. Some of them only worked there for a few weeks, and I was beginning to wonder if they were being put on to the streets either by those two themselves or someone they were passing them on to. It was looking very nasty. And then Kate contacted me again when a second girl went missing, Sylvia Hubbard, the one who turned up in casualty after a botched abortion. She wasn’t strictly speaking missing, she was only away for a day or so before she turned up in hospital. But it made me even more suspicious that something odd was going on. I was on the case with Smart and Lubin before someone else decided to take him out a bit more finally than I had in mind.’
‘Are you involved with this young woman?’ Jackson asked coldly.
‘No, guv,’ Barnard said. ‘Not that I wouldn’t like to be, but the answer from her is no. In this case she is strictly a witness and likely to be a useful one.’ He pulled up outside the nick and Jackson opened the passenger door.
‘See you keep it that way,’ he said, before getting out of the car. ‘Briefing at half four.’
Strolling across Regent Street on his way to grill Andrei Lubin about his relationship with Ricky Smart, and hoping for a quiet word in Kate’s ear in case Jackson took it into his head to interview her without him, Harry Barnard noticed a Jaguar parked half on the pavement outside the Delilah Club, a stone’s throw from Piccadilly Circus. It was a sure sign that the owner of the club, Ray Robertson, was in residence. Although it was only lunchtime and the place would not swing into action for another eight or nine hours, the main doors responded to his push and he made his way through a deserted reception area, across the dance floor and to a small narrow door beyond the bandstand marked simply ‘Office’. He tapped and a familiar voice called him in.
‘Flash! Come in, come in, I was hoping I might see you. I hear there’s been some unpleasantness on your manor.’
‘You’re well informed,’ Barnard said drily. ‘It’s not in the papers yet, as far as I know.’
‘It pays to be well informed, you know that,’ Robertson said. ‘So inform me some more. Who is this beggar who got his throat cut? What the hell’s going on, Harry?’
‘I came to ask you the same question,’ Barnard said. ‘We know who he is. He’s Ricky Smart who worked for a photographer called Andrei Lubin, organizing models for him. The worst he’d been accused of as far as I knew was sleeping with under-aged girls and fathering illegitimate kids. But I guess there was a lot more than that going on.’
‘You say he was recruiting models? Pretty girls, that’d be, then?’
‘Sure,’ Barnard said. ‘A bit skinny for my taste. Certainly no Marilyn Monroes amongst them. But pretty enough.’
‘You think they were tempted to try to put them on the streets?’
‘Could be.’
‘That would get up Frankie Falzon’s nose, for sure,’ Robertson said. ‘You asked me about the Jazz Cellar and girls, remember? But I couldn’t raise a whisper about that place. But I did get a hint that Falzon’s not best pleased about something or someone. Maybe it was this bloke Smart, not the jazz fellows, you should have been following up.
‘And Falzon’s a man who favours the knife,’ Barnard said. ‘We know that from past experience.’
‘Well, I wish you the best of luck if you’re going to try to get anything out of that mob. It takes me all my time to get to see him even if I want to discuss things that are in his best interest. He’s not really a businessman, at all. He still thinks he’s a clan chieftain hidden in the countryside with his men all sworn to secrecy. Bloody Robin Hood, or who’s the other one, the Scottish one – Rob Roy was it? If you can find a chink in his armour let me know. There’s a few questions I would like a straight answer to as well.’
Barnard laughed. ‘I’m not sure my dour Scottish guv’nor would go with that idea,’ he said. ‘He’s definitely some Scottish version of the sheriff of Nottingham. He’d hang the lot of you, given half a chance.’
Barnard’s next port of call was Andrei Lubin’s studio where, as he had hoped, he found Kate O’Donnell and Lubin himself working with three young models in various outfits that made no attempt to cover up more than was strictly necessary.
Kate grinned at the sergeant while Lubin’s attention was distracted by one of the models complaining that dress was so skimpy it risked revealing her naked breasts.
‘If the skirts get much shorter they’ll have to turn them into shorts in the interests of public decency,’ Barnard whispered. ‘Mind you if we start arresting girls for exposing themselves the custody officers won’t complain.’
‘What do y
ou want, la?’ Kate asked in broad Liverpudlian and Barnard reverted quickly to an official look.
‘A word with you, honey, but later. Just now it’s bad news, I’m afraid,’ he said, turning away. ‘Mr Lubin, can you spare me a few minutes? I need to talk to you about Ricky Smart.’
Lubin turned impatiently in his direction but evidently picked up on Barnard’s seriousness quickly enough. ‘Take five and go and get some coffee, girls. You’d better put your coats on or you’ll catch your death of cold in that gear.’
After they had all left, he perched languidly on the arm of a chair. ‘Ricky?’ he said. ‘Where the hell is Ricky? That’s what I want to know.’
‘I’m afraid he was found this morning in his Alfa Romeo with his throat cut,’ Barnard said, ready enough to shock Lubin perhaps into giving something away. But the Russian merely looked stunned and sat down in the chair with a thump while Kate, turning pale, gasped and grabbed hold of the table for support.
‘Dear God in heaven,’ Lubin said. ‘What is going on round here?’
‘That’s what I would like to find out, Mr Lubin,’ Barnard said. ‘Do you have any idea why anyone would want to kill Ricky Smart? This is not an area without its criminals but they don’t generally target people at random. There has to be a reason for such a deliberate assault on a man inside his own car. This wasn’t some random street violence where someone pulled a knife. He seems to have been in the driving seat when he was killed by a single, very violent blow. So I’d like you to think very hard, Mr Lubin, about what that reason might be. Tell me how Smart set about his job of recruiting girls for you, please. Where he went, who he saw, anything you know about his activities in the East End.’
Lubin stood up and then sank into the chair he had been perched on, with a massive sigh. ‘He didn’t tell me a lot. It wasn’t something he did every day of the week. He just said that when we needed fresh talent he went to certain schools, and once he had persuaded one girl to come and work here, it was easier to persuade more. Word went around, you know how young girls chatter . . .’
‘But you seem to have a pretty fast turnover of girls, Mr Lubin. How long would you say you employ them?’
Lubin shuffled uneasily in his chair. ‘They never turn out to be as good as you expect,’ he said. ‘You hope you can train them up, but more often than not they don’t do as well as you hope they will, or as Ricky hopes when he brings them to me. I take them on a month’s trial generally, if they scrub up at all well. But not many stay longer than that.’
Kate drew a sharp breath at this sanitized version of how Lubin and Smart treated their recruits but she knew that she had better keep her version of their procedures to herself for now.
‘And where do they go when they leave here?’ Barnard snapped. ‘Do you make sure that they get home safely again or do you just throw them out on to the street?’
‘Ricky dealt with all that,’ Lubin said. ‘As far as I know he sent them home.’
‘Well, Jenny Maitland certainly didn’t go back home, did she? She ended up on the game. And the other girl, Sylvia, seems to have been left to fend for herself when she got pregnant. Did you or Smart use these girls for sexual favours?’
Lubin made a fairly unsuccessful effort to look affronted. ‘Ricky may have done that,’ he said, glancing at Kate and flushing red. ‘I tried not to get involved.’
‘And did Mr Smart also try to trick the girls into prostitution when they left? Was he pimping?’
‘That’s a disgraceful suggestion,’ Lubin protested.
‘Not really,’ Barnard said. ‘You’re ideally placed here in the heart of Soho to get into the sex trade. Is that what Ricky was up to? Were you involved in that? Because I can tell you for nothing that some people would regard that as an invasion of their territory, and would think nothing of putting a stop to it with a knife.’
Lubin turned a dirty shade of gray and Kate noticed that his hands were shaking. ‘I don’t know anything about what Ricky was doing in his own time,’ Lubin said. ‘But maybe these people will think I did. Am I in danger too, Sergeant? Are they going to come for me as well with a knife?’
‘I’ve no idea, Mr Lubin,’ Barnard said. ‘In the meantime I’d like you to come down to the police station to give us your fingerprints, purely for the purposes of elimination – at this stage. Have you ever been in Mr Smart’s car?’
‘No, no,’ Lubin said. ‘Never.’ He hesitated. ‘Can’t you give me some protection from these people?’ he asked. ‘Am I safe here anymore?’
Barnard smiled slightly wolfishly. ‘If you haven’t been doing anything illegal I should think you’re quite safe, Mr Lubin. Perhaps we can see you at the nick at four this afternoon? That would be very helpful.’ He got up and gave Kate a brief smile before leaving the studio echoing to the sharp slam of the door.
Lubin looked at Kate helplessly for a moment. ‘What has that idiot been doing to get us into this mess?’ he asked. ‘Perhaps I’d better go away for a while, close the studio for a bit, I’ve nothing planned that can’t be postponed.’
‘I don’t know what Ricky was up to, but you and him have been treating those girls like so much rubbish, picking them up then throwing them away when you’ve finished with them. And if Ricky was putting your rejects on the streets maybe he deserved what he got.’
Lubin’s jaw dropped in astonishment but he said nothing and Kate was astonished to see tears in his eyes. ‘Ricky Smart was the seed of the devil,’ he said. ‘You don’t know half of it.’
But Kate, who reckoned she knew as much as she wanted to, turned away. ‘If that’s true you should tell the police everything you know this afternoon.’ she said. ‘The girls who died deserve that much.’
Lubin shook his head and let the tears roll. ‘That’s easy to say,’ he moaned. ‘But impossible to do.’
Kate turned her back on him and followed Barnard down the stairs and caught up with him quickly. ‘You said you wanted a word, la,’ she said, linking an arm in his.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Nothing personal, just a quick warning. I think DCI Jackson may want to interview you as a witness. You’ll have to tell him what happened between you and Ricky Smart of course, but I’d rather you didn’t tell him you’d told me about it. I’m not sure it would do either of us any good if he got the idea we had a particular grudge against him. I don’t think he’d imagine that you cut his throat, but it might cross his mind that I did.’
THIRTEEN
With time on her hands when Andrei Lubin closed up the studio and set off for the police station,
telling her to phone him before coming in again, Kate made her way back to the Ken Fellows Agency and told her boss what had happened.
‘You certainly have a genius for getting yourself into dodgy situations, girl,’ he said. ‘Do you really think he’s going to close the place down?’
‘He’s certainly very scared,’ Kate said. ‘And with good reason. Ricky Smart was my least favourite person, as it happens, but to be killed like that.’ She shrugged. ‘Someone really wanted him out of the way, and if it’s something to do with the girls at the studio, Andrei might be next in line. Closing down for a bit and making himself scarce might be the best thing he can do.’
Fellows steepled his hands in front of his face and looked thoughtful. ‘It might also make the police think he had something to do with Smart’s death,’ he said. ‘I’ll get on to him in the morning. He can’t just dump you and end our arrangement willy-nilly. I’ve paid good money to have him train you up, and so far you’ve done very well. So we need to think about how to build on that. If he’s packing it in – even for a short time – you’d better follow up with this cousin of his, and we’ll see what other contacts you can make. If Lubin isn’t taking pictures there’ll be a gap in the market which maybe we can fill. You know what they say: one man’s disaster is another man’s opportunity?’
Kate nodded somewhat wanly. ‘Tatiana’s a bit critical, of me not the pictures,’ she said.
‘She says I need to smarten up, buy some more fashionable gear . . . but I’m pretty skint. I lost most of my clothes in the fire at our flat. If you want me to do fashion I can’t look as if I just got off the train from Lime Street.’
‘Dear God, am I supposed to dress you now? That’s a new one. The blokes’ll be asking me to buy them flowery shirts and ties next in case they look too old-fashioned when they’re out on assignment. They’ll want to ponce around like that detective boyfriend of yours if we’re not careful – next best thing to a poof.’
Kate shook her head but knew better than to protest about any of Ken’s assumptions. ‘I certainly can’t go to this do Tatiana wants me to cover unless I look a bit smart,’ she insisted. ‘It wouldn’t do the agency’s reputation any good, would it? I haven’t even got the dress I went to Ray Robertson’s boxing gala in, because I lost it in the fire and anyway I can see now it’s a bit 1950s. I’ve learned that much.’
Fellows pulled a sour face but reached into his back pocket and peeled a couple of ten-pound notes off the roll of cash he brought out. ‘See what you can get for that,’ he said grudgingly as he handed them over. ‘And don’t think you can do this again in a hurry. There’d better be a lot of commissions coming in to make it worthwhile.’
Kate gave Fellows a flashing smile. ‘I’ll see if I can get a bargain or two,’ she said. ‘Perhaps I can go shopping in the morning before I come in? Carnaby Street is supposed to be good. Or Bazaar.’
‘Be here by lunchtime,’ Fellows said. ‘I should have sorted Lubin out by then and then we’ll see where we go next.’
Smiling broadly, Kate made her way through the main office, where a few of her male colleagues were packing up for the day and looked at her curiously as she passed by their desks, but they made no comment. Most had still not come to terms with the idea of a female photographer in their midst and she knew from their expressions even now that some of them never would.
Dressed to Kill Page 14
