by Ray Connolly
It was at this moment, as he wandered around his flat gulping beer, that he noticed a small stack of Marty’s postcards of himself left uselessly on the mantlepiece. He picked one up and examined it. Maybe Marty’s crazy notion would have a real value after all. And sitting down he wondered what he should write.
Chapter Eighteen
It was Sunday evening before Kate was properly awake. As always there were no shy goodbyes after the frantic tumblings of the night before, and, by the time she was dressed, packed and down in the hall waiting for the car to take her back to Perth, both the Grasshopper and Neanderthal were long gone.
Barbara met her in the hall. She too had her bags packed: ‘Sarah’s here,’ she rasped out of the corner of her mouth as Kate reached her. ‘She’s spent the whole afternoon walking Flanders round the grounds.’
‘Keeping a motherly eye on us,’ scoffed Kate.
‘More like wheeling and dealing in human flesh, as they say in the best Sunday newspapers,’ retorted Barbara.
‘What happened to our two friends?’
‘Does it matter?’
‘But they have gone?’
‘Gone to plan further college reunions when we all get back to London, I imagine,’ said Barbara without enthusiasm. It had been a wearing night for both of them.
‘Have you eaten?’ asked Kate.
‘I had lunch with our leader. She was swimming all over Flanders like a piranha in gingham. He loved it.’
Piranha in gingham, thought Kate, and wondered from which lover Barbara had picked up that particular phrase.
At that moment Sarah and a flushed-face Colonel Flanders entered the hall. Sarah beamed at Kate: ‘Darling, I’m so pleased for you. I understand that you’ve been absolutely charming. Both of you. I’m delighted. Colonel Flanders has been telling me what a splendid time you all had last night. I’m sorry I missed it.’
She said all of this in a loud and ringing voice, more for the benefit of Flanders than her two girls. They didn’t need this kind of encouragement. Their rewards came monthly through the post to their rent-free flats. But by this open display of apparent satisfaction that she had helped participate in a successful weekend she was, in her way, legitimizing the whole transaction. Who could imagine that this attractive and sophisticated woman and this benign elderly gentleman could be involved in anything as sordid as the procuring of prostitutes?
‘I think you could say a good time was had by all,’ chortled Flanders, and then laughed at himself for being so risqué.
Sarah’s face folded into creases of smiles.
Barbara moved from one foot to the other: ‘Could you?’ she asked. ‘Could you really say that?’ She was looking Sarah directly in the eyes, deliberately seeking an argument.
Sarah turned away as though she had not heard: ‘Well, we mustn’t keep you any longer, Colonel. Thank you so much for lunch. It’s been an absolutely lovely day, I must run if I’m to catch the plane.’ She turned to Barbara and Kate: ‘What about you two girls? I booked seats on the ten o’clock from Glasgow for you. Can’t have you losing your beauty sleep in railway sleeping cars all night again, can we?’
Kate looked at Barbara. The last thing she wanted was to be around when Barbara told Sarah that she intended joining Harrigan. No doubt Barbara had chosen this moment because Sarah was without the support of Daley and his boys.
‘If you don’t mind, Sarah,’ said Kate, ‘I’ll stick to the train. I rather like it. It’s quaint … almost romantic,’ she lied.
‘I’ll fly, thank you,’ said Barbara. ‘I’m in a hurry.’
‘Good, we can have a nice long talk, can’t we?’ said Sarah, as though promising a reprimand to a fourth form schoolgirl.
‘Yes,’ said Barbara.
Bidding goodbye to Flanders the three women made towards the two separate cars waiting for them, one to take Kate to Perth for the train, while the other would run Sarah and Barbara to Glasgow Airport. Kate climbed into her car first and slammed the door shut. Then, just as her driver was about to accelerate away out of the long sweeping drive of the hotel, she heard a tapping at the window. She opened it.
Barbara was there. She pushed her head inside the car: ‘It’s my birthday tomorrow, Kate. If you’re not working tomorrow night come round to my place and we’ll have a little party.’
‘Oh no, no more parties, please.’
‘No, not that kind of party. Just you and me. Say you’ll come, Kate. Girls like us have to stick together, even if we are going to work for rival firms.’
‘It won’t make me join you.’
‘I know that. Besides I don’t think your heart’s properly in it any more. I’m not sure that I want anyone who isn’t dedicated working for me. But tell me you’ll come around anyway.’
‘Well …’ Kate searched for an excuse, but Barbara would have none of it.
‘Promise … at about eleven o’clock. Promise, please.’
‘Okay … tomorrow night,’ Kate capitulated. As she did Barbara pushed her head forward and kissed Kate on the forehead. ‘Take care with Sarah, Barbara,’ said Kate.
‘Don’t worry. See you tomorrow night.’
‘Good luck,’ said Kate.
Barbara smiled at her and withdrew to climb into her own car.
As she did so Kate found herself looking past Barbara and into the dark, beautiful and perfectly malevolent eyes of Sarah.
Kate slept badly on the journey back to London as repeatedly her dreams reproached her with unwelcome reminders of the tastes and smells of the previous night. The weekend had not been the success she had hoped. It had not stopped her thinking about Charlie.
The train arrived in London at eight on Monday morning, and before nine her taxi was dropping her outside her flat. She was glad to be home. She felt as though she had been away for weeks.
The porter was waiting for her as she opened the front door of Phillimore Mansions and let herself into the main lobby.
‘Miss Sullivan …’ he called, as he hobbled arthritically out of his little office by the doors. ‘Glad I caught you … a gentleman called last night while you were away. He left this for you …’
He handed her a large white envelope. On the front her name and address were written in a scrawl which was neither printing nor fully joined-up writing.
‘He said that I was to give it to you personally,’ said the porter, smiling with what looked like a flush of self-importance.
Kate felt in her purse for fifty pence for the old man, which he accepted with such gratitude that it made her wonder if he actually got paid anything for working on the doors.
She took the lift up to her flat and was in the penthouse before she opened the envelope. There was a postcard inside. She pulled it out. Charlie’s face was smiling out at her. She turned the card over. There were only four words. It read: ‘I love you, Charlie.’
The postcard changed everything. For a full hour Kate just lay on her bed examining the strange, scrawly handwriting, daydreaming at the picture and getting a lump in her throat every time she read the message. At one point she thought of phoning this manager Marty Z. Finch, but she didn’t. It would have been pointless, she told herself. Yet despite this she felt a surge of exhilaration whenever she looked at the card, and floated through the rest of the day on a surge of romanticism.
She tried to telephone Barbara to wish her Happy Birthday a couple of times during the late afternoon, but getting no reply she went about her usual routine with a visit to her hairdresser to repair the damage of the weekend and an hour’s exercising at the Dance Centre. Late in the day she called in at a small antique shop to buy Barbara a small silver snuff box for a present. Barbara could always find little potions to put in such containers.
At ten forty-five, having spent the evening watching television, she telephoned for a radio taxi. It came almost at once, and pulling a raincoat over her jeans and sweater she picked up her bag and went into the hall. Then she stopped. She had left Charlie’s postcard
on the table by her bed. She ran back into the bedroom and tucked the card safely into the pocket of her mackintosh. Just having it with her made her feel good.
Barbara lived on the first floor of a white stucco mansion near Regent’s Park, not much more than a couple of hundred yards from London Zoo. As the taxi made its way through the rain around the outside of the park Kate remembered how Barbara had once told her that overnight guests regularly complained about being woken up at an ungodly hour of the morning by the piercing, high-pitched cries of what sounded like a colony of monkeys mating.
This, Barbara had said, was at least one good reason why she preferred the large draughty rooms of Regent’s Park to some bijou little knocking shop in Mayfair. Another reason was, no doubt, the fact that Barbara was the sole tenant of the mansion, the owner being a Dutch property speculator who owned houses all over London, but who lived for most of the year in Ibiza. To Kate the house always seemed an austere, lonely place, but Barbara liked the total privacy.
The street was silent as the taxi pulled up outside the house. Kate paid the cabbie and climbed the steps to the front door. A battery of numbered buttons (installed when the speculator was naive enough to think that he might actually let the house for rent instead of merely sitting back while it doubled and quadrupled in value) faced her. Pulling an old envelope from her handbag she reminded herself of the combination, and then pressing a sequence of six buttons she waited while the device buzzed, the lock was released, and the door bounced gently open.
Inside a low 75-watt bulb was shining. Kate made her way across the spacious hall towards the elegant, sweeping staircase. The whole house was silent.
Barbara’s flat was at the top of the first flight of stairs and at the back of the house. Kate knew it well. Reaching it she tapped lightly on the door. There was no reply. She waited and then tapped again. Silence. As usual Barbara was either out or had fallen asleep. Kate sighed. Going back down the stairs she felt under the carpet on the fourth step from the top for the key which Barbara always left hidden for occasions such as these. Pulling it out from between the lining and the carpet Kate went back up the steps and unlocking the door let herself into the flat. She had had to do this many times before but never at night, and the gloom of the place disturbed her. Perhaps when Barbara joined Harrigan she would get a flat in a more friendly part of town, she thought vainly. Sarah had been trying and failing to get Barbara to move into a more central and luxurious place for years.
The interior of the flat was in darkness. She seriously wondered now whether Barbara had forgotten about the invitation completely and gone off for the night. It was quite possible.
Kate felt around the walls for the light switch. She couldn’t remember where it was and couldn’t find it. Pushing forward she headed towards where she knew the living-room was situated, taking care not to bump into anything on the way. It was very dark, virtually black. Thank God she wasn’t afraid of the dark, she told herself, with a fraction less assurance than usual.
She stepped into the living-room: ‘Barbara,’ she called. There was no answer.
She pressed the light switch by the door. It didn’t work. The room stayed in total blackness. Kate considered blundering along the passageway to Barbara’s bedroom, but decided against it. You never know, she thought, perhaps the man from Paramount had come back from Rumania.
She knew the living-room well and aimed herself at the window where she remembered there was a table lamp on a desk. She wished she’d never bothered coming over now. This was typical of Barbara. Men might think that she was kooky, but to her friends – well, her friend – she was just inconsiderate.
Kate moved carefully across the centre of the room. She didn’t see what she walked into. She just felt it. Something smooth, and warm and naked. Her face went straight into the pit of a flat sweet-smelling stomach, a stomach which swung away from her as she hit it, and then seemed to fall back again, leaning heavily all over her. Kate gasped in shock, and putting up her hands to protect herself she found herself gripping the warm smooth damp flesh of the back of a woman’s thighs and buttocks. Suddenly she felt faint. She couldn’t scream. She heaved herself forward and gasping for air reached the window. Even before she reached the curtains she found the table lamp. She struggled with the switch. The light came on. It was then that she saw what she had hit.
Hanging, swinging from the light flex in the centre of the room, was the naked body of Barbara. The room was high and the wire flex long. The wire had been tied in a noose around Barbara’s neck. As Kate stared in mute terror the human punchbag that was Barbara uncoiled so that it slowly turned towards her, facing her with the absurd bloated expression of a half-crazy smile on its lips, tongue poking and eyes bulging, a smile forced open by the pressure of the wire around the neck.
Kate did not scream. She was incapable of sound. Surprisingly she was later to remember exactly what she had seen. The tiny white patch on Barbara’s body where she had worn a bikini, the upturned chair by her side, the champagne glass empty and broken on the floor as though she had been holding it at the moment of death, the magnum of champagne in the bucket of crushed ice on the table. But, although she took everything in, Kate’s eyes never once left the slowly swinging body of her friend, the body which was still warm and smelled of the Oil of Patchouly that Barbara liked so much.
Suddenly the sickening smell of Patchouly made Kate feel giddy. The room was warm, she turned to the window, and pulled back the curtain. If she didn’t have some fresh air she knew she would pass out. She opened the window wide and pushed her head outside, taking deep gulps of the cool air. Her eyes were closed. She gripped on to the window-sill to prevent herself from fainting.
Below her she heard a noise, a sudden shout of surprise. It came from the small mews street which ran behind the house.
She opened her eyes and peered down at almost the same moment that the blond Daley looked up. Their eyes met for no more than a second. Daley, accompanied by Big Willie and Keith, seemed frozen, half in and half out of a red Ford Granada.
Before Daley could move back towards the house Kate had slammed down the window, and was throwing herself across the room, past the swinging, grinning corpse, and out down the steps of the huge empty mansion, running in terror across the hall and towards the front of the house as she heard the scuffling of feet approaching the back.
She knew she was running for her life.
Chapter Nineteen
The road was empty as Kate came tearing out of the house. In the back garden she could hear the frantic dashing of her pursuers as they sought to scramble over the six foot wall which divided the front garden from the back. Without pausing to see how far behind they were Kate charged into the street, and on towards the park. Behind her she could hear Daley and the others dropping down over the wall. She thanked God that their car had been parked at the back of the house.
By now her breath was coming in broken gulps as she forced her legs onwards. Crossing the road she headed blindly on, away from Barbara’s house and its horrors. Still she could hear Daley behind her. Sobbing with terror she dived down an embankment, falling and skidding on to a tow-path. Blocking her way of escape into the park were the black waters of a canal. She turned towards Camden Town. The path was dimly lit and narrow. She could hear her shoes echoing on the cobbles, but she was too afraid to stop and take them off.
Ahead of her a row of barges was tethered to the side of the footpath. She ran on. Now the sounds of Daley were less distinct. She wondered if he had followed her down to the canal. She stopped and listened, her heart punching and racing against her ribs, sobs of fear being smothered in the gasps of her racing breath. Carefully she slipped out of her shoes. Again she could hear someone coming. But now there was only one pair of footsteps. They must have split up to find her, she thought. Again she was running, but now she had turned a corner in the canal, away from Barbara’s home. It was extraordinary how quiet it was. She cursed the rain. No one would be out wal
king on a night such as this. She was nearing exhaustion, but still the clatter of footsteps followed. She had to find somewhere to hide.
She had passed about twenty barges. They were carrying timber. At random she chose one, and climbed on to the old craft. It sank a little in the water and then rose again as it took her weight. Very carefully she clambered around to the far side. She thanked God there was no moon.
The timber was piled high on the barge, long planks of pine stacked seven feet high in the bottom of the boat. She crouched down behind the wood, and peered back the way she had come. The canal and tow-path were in a small sharply-cut valley which separated the park from the road, and was overhung with thick, impenetrable shrubbery. For a few moments she saw nothing, and then, moving more slowly and hesitantly now, came the familiar figure of Big Willie, loping along, checking the steep slopes of the cut and glancing over all of the barges in turn. He moved towards her carefully. She pushed her head down, His footsteps grew nearer. She knew she had to move at exactly the right moment to stay out of his line of vision. He reached the barge she had chosen, and stopped. She could hear his breath coming in short, wheezing gasps. Absurdly she felt a desperate desire to cry out in fear. Her mind’s eye recalled the sight of Barbara spiralling from the ceiling.
She heard the footsteps move on down the path a little way and stop again. Silently she edged further around the barge. Then came the sound of Big Willie running again, as he moved on down the tow-path. She had to stay where she was. To have tried to double back would have been to run the risk of bumping into Daley or Keith. She waited. Suddenly she heard the sound of footsteps, but this time they were measured. She allowed herself to fall forward and, hugging the tarpaulin which covered the timber, she looked out. Coming around the tow-path from the direction of Barbara’s flat were two policemen making an evening’s inspection of the canal and barges. The sound of their voices reached her. They were discussing football. For one long moment she wanted to race out and to throw herself on their protection. But she didn’t. She didn’t move at all.
