Playing with Fire

by Patricia Hall

  Barnard sat down on the edge of the bed, breathing heavily. He had to report this as soon as he could, though he still hoped against hope that there was an innocent explanation for the tiny pool of rusty red on the floor. He had no doubt at all that it was blood. He put his gloves on and began to trawl through the papers in a battered school satchel which looked as though it was where Evie kept her official documents – her rent book, receipts and records of fines for soliciting – but he found nothing to tell him where her mother and daughter lived. It would have to be done through official channels, and if Evie could not be found the two women downstairs would very likely have to be questioned as witnesses and his own credibility on the streets would be shattered.

  He went downstairs slowly and found Evie’s friends smoking and still looking stressed outside the front door.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said with a shrug. ‘She’s not there. It looks as if she slept there but she must have gone out early for some reason. I’ll report her as possibly missing and we’ll track down her mother to see if she’s gone there first and I’ll get someone to come round and make her door secure again. Did she seem as if she was worried about anything in particular?’

  ‘No more than anyone else,’ one of Evie’s friends said. ‘Nobody knows what the hell’s going on around here at the moment.’

  ‘Has anyone approached you for protection money?’ Barnard asked.

  ‘Not yet,’ the woman said. ‘But I’m sure someone was hassling Evie. She told them to go to hell.’

  ‘Right,’ Barnard said with a sinking feeling in his stomach. He could imagine how fiercely Evie would resist that sort of demand and what the reaction of the violent men who were effectively terrorizing the neighbourhood would be. ‘I’ll see what I can find out. Give me some details where I can contact you later if we find there’s some reason for serious worry and I need to talk to you again.’

  They gave him addresses and hurried away towards Oxford Street looking anxious while Barnard continued back to the nick, aware with every step that he took that the air was thick with a threat he could almost touch. The usual anticipation as cafes and shops opened their doors to the new day was not there and nor were the customers and clients, mainly legitimate at this time of day on the rain-washed morning streets. Conversation was brief and muted if it happened at all and some passers-by who evidently recognized him moved to the opposite side of the road as if to avoid him. If someone was trying to bring terror to Soho’s square mile they were doing a pretty good job, Barnard thought angrily, and the police were having rings run round them very efficiently indeed.

  Kate O’Donnell met Dave Donovan in Denmark Street at lunchtime outside Jack Mansfield’s office.

  ‘I think it would have been better to phone first,’ she said as they waited for a quartet of musicians to struggle down the stairs and out of the building with their instruments, bickering angrily as they went.

  ‘He would have turned me and the band down,’ Donovan said. ‘I came across him when I was down here, la, and we didn’t exactly hit it off.’

  ‘You always were a seriously awkward devil,’ Kate said unsympathetically. ‘Not that Mr Mansfield inspires much confidence. Anyway, let’s give him another try. He did say he’s raised some interest in Marie’s music so he might be a bit more motivated to help find her.’

  ‘She’s got a seriously good voice, though she doesn’t always choose the right songs. But then Cilla didn’t at first either, did she? Brian Epstein wasn’t interested the first time he heard her.’

  ‘Really?’ Kate said.

  ‘You’d gone by then. But Ringo was pushing her at the Cavern. He wasn’t with the Beatles then but they all knew each other. We all knew each other,’ he ended slightly plaintively, and Kate was aware of how deep the divide now was between those who had won the platinum records and much, much more besides and those who had not, when all had started out with the same high hopes just a few years back. She sighed as she pushed the door open and set off up the stairs.

  ‘Maybe if I go first he’ll let you in as well,’ she said. ‘You really shouldn’t annoy people so much, you know. You have to smile and make friends to find things out.’

  ‘Is that what your boyfriend does?’ Donovan said, his expression sulky. ‘He’ll be the first bizzy in history to make that his selling point.’

  Kate glanced back at Dave and then shrugged. This was neither the time nor the place to get into that sort of an argument with Donovan, who was never going to forgive the Londoner who he believed had stolen his girl. He was the type who wallowed in his grudges. She stopped outside the door to Mansfield’s agency and put her finger to her lips.

  ‘Calm down,’ she said. ‘Let me do the talking; you just back me up. OK?’

  ‘OK,’ Donovan muttered and followed Kate into the outer office where the same young woman who had been behind the typewriter the first time she had come was leafing her way through a copy of the New Musical Express with the Rolling Stones on the cover. She showed no sign of remembering Kate when she finally turned her attention to the visitors.

  ‘You got an appointment?’ she asked. ‘He’s going out to lunch in ten minutes.’

  ‘Ten minutes will do,’ Kate said. ‘Shall we go through?’

  ‘Oh, you’re that grotty bird from Liverpool,’ the receptionist said, waking up to what was happening only when Kate pushed Jack Mansfield’s office door open to find the man himself leaning back at his desk with a bottle of Scotch on his desk and a half full glass at his lips.

  ‘Who the hell …?’ he began but he got no further as Donovan pushed Kate aside and took the glass out of the manager’s hand, spilling spirit over the papers on the agent’s desk.

  ‘I’ve come all the way from Liverpool to talk to you, whack,’ he said. ‘I want to know where the hell Marie Collins is. You already told Miss O’Donnell here that you saw her, you made a tape with her and now you say there’s been some interest in her songs. Now what I don’t understand is why you’re not following that up with an audition. How the hell have you lost track of her? And if she’s really gone missing, why haven’t you reported it to the bizzies?’

  ‘She wasn’t at the house she said she would be at,’ Kate said loudly, pulling Donovan back across the desk before he hit Mansfield. ‘And the phone number she gave Dave isn’t being answered. Shouldn’t one of us report her missing to the police?’

  ‘What I don’t get is why you haven’t done that already,’ Donovan said, his voice thick with emotion.

  ‘I’m not a bloody nursemaid for these kids,’ Mansfield said angrily. ‘Your Marie was only one of the dodgy girls who come down from the sticks and think they can follow in Cilla Black’s footsteps. I only gave her the time of day because when I heard her voice I thought she really did have what it takes. But it would take a lot of hard work and I wasn’t convinced she’d put that in. Most of them that come through that door are a waste of bloody space. And it’s getting worse. I should have known better with your girlfriend, mate. She came in breathing alcohol all over me. Forgot to suck her peppermints, did she?’

  ‘Marie? Are you saying she was drunk? I’ve never seen her drink more than a Babycham.’

  ‘Well, maybe she’s made some new friends down here,’ Mansfield said. ‘I know for a fact that there’s a lot of booze drunk by these kids and there’s more and more using drugs as well. If you ask me the whole scene’s getting out of hand. Anyway, I’m not going to waste any more time on Marie. If you want to report her missing to the police feel free, but don’t involve me.’

  ‘We’ll do that, but if we do they’ll come asking you questions a lot more fiercely than we have,’ Kate said, grabbing Donovan’s arm tight and steering him towards the door. But she stopped before she reached it.

  ‘She must have left you some details,’ she said. ‘Address, phone number? How were you supposed to get in contact with her if you had some news?’

  ‘My girl will have kept all that stuff – ask her. Th
ough remember I had her down as Ellie Fox. And I reckon she said she would come back to check out what happened to the reel. I’m sure I asked her to. But we’ve not heard from her. They’re all unreliable little toerags, these musicians, all out of control. I don’t know why I bother. Ask my girl if she kept any details or got a phone number she didn’t tell me about.’ But when it came to it and they asked the receptionist to help, she was unexpectedly sympathetic but not very informative.

  ‘I’ve only been here two weeks and he seems to go through temps like there’s no tomorrow,’ she said. ‘I’m going to tell the agency I don’t want to come back here next week. I reckon he’s going bust. He’s kidding these kids who come in, telling them he can get them auditions. I don’t think he bothers half the time.’

  ‘Can you give us the details you’ve got?’ Kate asked. ‘We could go round and see if she’s there at least. Dave will feel we’ve done our best then, won’t you, Dave?’

  Donovan grunted his assent and the receptionist wrote down an address and phone number that was not the same one Marie had given Dave before she left Liverpool.

  ‘I never got a reply on the phone so I sent her a letter a couple of days ago asking her to ring here but she hasn’t done that either. It’s only in Camden Town. She could walk down here. Remember she’s calling herself Ellie Fox now. At least the boss thinks she is. Maybe you’ll have better luck tracking her down. We’ve pretty well given up.’

  ‘It sounds as if “his girl” is running the place pretty much on her own,’ Kate said as they made their way back down the stairs without extracting anything more useful after she had made a token search of what seemed to be a filing system in complete disarray. She had given Kate nothing last time they had met and she had done only a little better this time. Outside on Denmark Street, they stood and looked at each other for a moment in near despair.

  ‘We’ll have to keep trying this number,’ Kate said. ‘Or you could go round to the house yourself. Camden Town’s not far on the Tube.’

  ‘I suppose you want to get your bizzy involved,’ Donovan said.

  ‘Only if you do too,’ Kate said. ‘He’s helped me try to find her already by driving me to Wimbledon but that turned out to be a complete dead end. I think you’ll have to make it official now if you want the police to help. They’ve got a murder case in Soho and Harry’s very much up to his eyes with that.’

  ‘But the police at home just tell me she’s an adult person and she’s got a right to disappear if she wants to. I’ve got no claim on her and we’ve got no evidence that there’s been a crime. I talked to a bizzy I know back home in Anfield. He more or less said there’s nothing I can do. I’ve got no status.’ His shoulders slumped and he staggered slightly against a tall passer-by carrying a guitar case.

  ‘Sorry, whack,’ he muttered.

  ‘More Liverpool talent?’ the stranger said with a grin and an arm to help Donovan to get his balance back. ‘It’s a bloody northern invasion.’

  ‘You’ll just have to work harder down here,’ Donovan said irritably. ‘Anyway, the Rolling Stones are doing OK. And this new lot, the Rainmen. They’re mainly Londoners, aren’t they?’

  ‘And the Kinks,’ the stranger said. ‘I’ll tell you something for nothing though. If you’re thinking of talking to Jack Mansfield I’d say don’t, especially if you’re as pretty as this lady here. It’s all hot air and empty promises with that bloke. Making tapes and promising auditions but all he really wants is to get the girls into bed. All he ever offers in the end is a few invitations to parties and the risk of an unwanted bun in the oven. Steer clear is my advice.’

  ‘Yeah, we’ve already discovered he’s not exactly reliable,’ Donovan said.

  ‘You don’t know how unreliable,’ the stranger said. ‘He’s a con man, is Mansfield. I wouldn’t let him near my great auntie Mabel.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘I’m early for my session,’ he said. ‘Come and have a coffee and tell me about this girl you’re looking for. I heard you talking about someone missing. I may have come across her. Or know someone who has. Name is Steve, by the way.’

  ‘I’m Kate and this is Dave,’ Kate offered reluctantly. She reckoned that what Steve had offered them on Mansfield’s reputation was little more that she would have been able to uncover herself in time and after the encounter with the other nosy stranger in the Blue Lagoon she was reluctant to share anything with anyone else she didn’t know. She looked suspiciously at the coffee bar on the corner of the street that he led them to and followed the two musicians through the door warily.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ the man with the guitar asked as he propped his instrument carefully against a chair. ‘You look as if you’ve lost a fiver and found a ha’penny.’

  Kate shrugged. ‘I had a nasty experience in a pub round here yesterday,’ she said. ‘The place got trashed while I was there, and there’s been a murder at another pub.’

  ‘I heard about that,’ Steve said. ‘Nasty. What will you have? Cappuccino?’

  ‘Are you in a band?’ Dave asked, still with a touch of aggression in his voice.

  Steve shook his head. ‘No, I’m just a session player. We fill in the background when it’s needed.’

  Dave nodded. ‘The Beatles are using more backing now,’ he said. ‘It’s not something the Liverpool groups are big on, to be honest. Or maybe we just can’t afford it. We’re the poor relations. Everyone who’s anyone gets sucked down to London. Liverpool will end up just a backwater.’

  ‘Come on, Dave,’ Kate said. ‘It’s not as bad as that.’

  ‘Isn’t it? Could you find a good job at home when you finished at college?’

  ‘Taking baby pictures in a local photographers, or school photos, sure, but I wanted more than that, just as all you lads did,’ Kate said. ‘The Liverpool Echo didn’t want me. And you boys in the bands were just as bad when girls wanted to join in the fun. How many of you gave the girls a chance? All you wanted the girls to do was get their knickers in a twist and take them off when you felt in the mood. Cilla was a very lucky girl.’

  ‘And so were you by the sound of it,’ Steve said, looking somewhat stunned by the turn the conversation had taken. He turned to Donovan. ‘Anyway, tell me about your girlfriend and I’ll see if I can find anyone who’s seen her – or heard her, maybe. If she’s landed an audition she must be pretty good. But that’s only if you can believe a word Jack Mansfield says.’

  Kate sipped her coffee for a moment until she noticed a passer-by she thought she recognized.

  ‘Give me a minute, boys,’ she said, pulling her camera out of her bag, dodging on to the pavement outside and through the hurrying crowds until she was sure that the person in her sights really was Ray Robertson deep in conversation with a man she did not recognize. Without getting close enough to attract their attention, she took a couple of shots that she knew Harry Barnard would be glad to see but as her quarry headed in the direction of the Delilah Club, which she guessed would be their destination, she dropped back. Just as she had easily recognized Robertson she knew with a sense of real foreboding that he might recognise her too. And that was a possibility she did not want to risk.

  TEN

  Kate knew that what she planned might not end well. She had asked Dave Donovan to meet her when she finished work, hoping that Harry Barnard would also turn up to collect her and she could persuade the two men to sit down over a drink and talk to each other, and also fill Harry in on her sighting of Ray Robertson. She just hoped that they would not come to blows. She had mentioned to Dave the unsolved mystery around the death of the girl at the Late Supper Club, and although she insisted that the victim of the fatal fall was much younger than Marie Collins, Dave had not totally believed that. He insisted that the fact that an unidentified body lay in the hospital morgue had to be checked out. And she reckoned that Harry might regard the possibility that he could identify the body at last as a reason to talk to Dave even if he only ended up insisting that the girl who fell could not p
ossibly be Dave’s missing girlfriend.

  ‘Harry will only tell you what he’s told me,’ Kate had argued.

  ‘I want to hear it from him,’ Dave said with an obstinate look which Kate recognized from old long-dead arguments, ‘I want to ask him some questions.’ So they waited over coffee in the Blue Lagoon from where it was possible from a window table to see the door which led to the Ken Fellows Agency, and it was not long before Kate saw the familiar figure turn into Frith Street and take up a waiting pose by the door, glancing up at the still illuminated office windows above him.

  ‘Stay here,’ Kate said to Donovan. ‘I’ll persuade him to come in for a coffee. I don’t suppose he’ll be too pleased to see you.’

  Barnard looked surprised when she approached him from an unfamiliar direction and his expression darkened when she explained why.

  ‘There’s no way I should be discussing details like that with him,’ he said. ‘It’s a stupid thing to set up, Kate, and could get both of us into trouble.’

  ‘It’ll take two minutes to tell him it’s nonsense,’ Kate said. ‘And it won’t do anyone any harm. We’re just having a friendly drink after work, la, nothing heavy at all.’

  ‘One cup of coffee then,’ Barnard conceded. ‘I really came over early to tell you I’d be late home tonight. I’ve not finished with DI Watson yet and then I need to check someone out who seems to have gone missing unexpectedly. It shouldn’t take too long but don’t cook for me. I’ll pick something up on the way back. Come on, Kate. I haven’t got much time before Fred Watson starts missing me.’