by Ray Connolly
Silently she watched as the two policemen continued their patrol and moved away around a bend in the canal. They had been her chance of safety. But she hadn’t taken it. Why? She knew the answer without asking. She didn’t want to become involved. All she wanted was to get away, get out of the whole thing. She just wanted to disappear. To have gone to the police would have merely delayed the danger, and made public her profession. She would never be safe in London again now. When hookers fell out with their bosses there wasn’t anywhere they could turn.
She lay still against the timber. Presently she heard a rustling in the undergrowth, and looking up saw the figure of Big Willie emerge from the steep banks of the cut. He must have hidden there when the police had passed. Now, however, he appeared to have lost interest in his search for Kate because he was moving quickly back the way he had come, back towards where he would find Daley. Kate lay still for what seemed like an eternity as he loped away down the path. Eventually the sound of his footsteps died away. The rain was still falling. Her jeans and raincoat were soaked. But still she didn’t move. Every sound forced her heart to jump.
At last she looked at her watch. It was nearly two o’clock. She had been running and hiding for over two hours. Gradually she levered herself to a standing position. There was no sign of any pursuers now. Carefully and silently she pulled on her shoes again. Her feet were cold and numb. She noticed that she had ripped her coat on a piece of uncovered timber.
Carefully climbing across the barge she reached the tow-path again. Daley must have assumed he had missed her. He was probably waiting for her outside her flat right now. She couldn’t go back there. She was locked out.
Part Three
Chapter Twenty
Marty the Zee sat at his desk and considered his mailing list. Surely if he sent two hundred postcards to every name in the music business that must make some impression. He had discovered that Charlie could attract a following. All the business had to do was to see what he had seen. He examined the nicotine stains on his fingers. Was it possible that while he had been pushing and failing with punk and disco and glitter and gay and every other kind of rock and roll during the past ten years his most promising artist had been wasting his life teaching in a girls’ school and playing in a cocktail bar? Of course he had always known that Charlie was gifted, but it had never occurred to him that he might be that gifted. Maybe he was in the wrong business after all, as his wife so frequently told him, he thought, and them instantly banished the idea. Better late than never. He looked at Charlie’s picture. Not a bad-looking chap, really. Those scar marks around his chin actually seemed to help. Funny name for a star though …
At that moment his musings were interrupted by the sound of the door being opened. He looked up, and his jaw nearly fell off his face.
‘I’m looking for Charlie Fairweather.’
For five seconds Marty said nothing. Standing there in his office was one of the most delicious women he had ever seen … tall and fair and aloof-looking. Untouchable, the way he really liked them: unattainable – like Grace Kelly.
‘What?’ he said, trying to dust away the dandruff he knew would have collected on the shoulders of his jacket.
‘Charlie Fairweather … are you Mr Finch …? You’re his agent aren’t you …? He sent me a card …’
The woman produced the postcard Marty had had printed for Charlie. She had a rather desperate look about her, Marty noticed now, and her raincoat was stained and torn.
‘He’s working today,’ said Marty.
‘I must see him … do you have a telephone number …?’
She sounded as though she were on the brink of hysteria. Now that he looked more closely he could see that her eyes were tired and bloodshot.
Marty hesitated. Charlie might not want to see the woman, he thought. What if she was pregnant … an affiliation order … marry me or else …! Marty took a grip on himself. Charlie should be so lucky.
‘He’s working,’ he said. ‘I’ll be talking to him tonight, probably. I could tell him you called … if you’d like to leave a name.’
‘No … I must see him now.’
Marty scratched his ear. In all the years they had been friends no one had ever wanted to see Charlie urgently … not until now. A few weeks at the Mystery Train and he was driving beautiful women wild with desire.
‘In that case you’d better try the club,’ he said. ‘He’s doing an extra lunch-time spot today.’
‘What club?’ asked the girl.
‘You mean you don’t know him from the Mystery Train?’ asked Marty, wondering for a wicked moment whether Charlie had been moonlighting and pocketing his commission.
‘Where’s the Mystery Train?’ asked the girl.
Marty told her. As the girl turned to leave he called out: ‘You didn’t give me your name … I mean just in case you miss him … I can tell him you called.’
‘Kate,’ she said.
‘Kate. Nice name, Kate…’
She opened the door to go out. Again Marty called after her: ‘I don’t suppose you sing, do you? There’s a lot of work around for pretty girls with voices … pretty girls without voices for that matter. I mean the industry’s wide open for new faces these days … and new sounds … all you need is the right agent.’
‘No thank you,’ she said, a shadow of irony crossing her lips. ‘I already have an agent.’
And with that the door closed and she was gone, tapping away down the uncarpeted wooden staircase that led out on to the street.
Marty pushed his hand through his hair, oblivious now to the dandruff, and hurried over to the window. Across the road a tart was leaning out of her bedroom window shouting something to a couple of German boys in the street below. Marty looked at her, as he did twenty times a day, and shook his head in disgust.
Below him Kate emerged from the shabby doorway and hurried along out of his sight in the direction of Covent Garden.
Chapter Twenty-One
Charlie didn’t see her at first. The crowd was thick today, although more were chatting and drinking than listening, but as in the evenings he had gathered an assortment of regulars around him, and by the time he launched himself into Wild Strawberries he could sense an air of relief that he had finally got around to the song they most wanted to hear. He had played it now every day for nearly three weeks and was actually becoming a little bored with it. He thought how dull it must be to be Paul McCartney and be expected to sing Yesterday every time one performed.
As he came towards the close of the song he became aware that a woman had moved through to the front of the crowd and was virtually crushed against the piano. His eyes flicked up as he sang the last melody lines. For a moment he stumbled, but he didn’t fall. Forcing his eyes down again, away from her, he finished the song, and let his hands come to rest as the applause swelled around the club. Only then did he allow himself to look back at her. Her eyes were red with heavy blue bags under them. The tan of early summer had gone completely. She looked tired.
Nervously he tried a joke: ‘If you ask for As Time Goes By I’ll spit in your eye,’ he said.
She told him about her discovery of Barbara’s body while they walked through Covent Garden, wandering between the Inigo Jones columns and then sitting in an outside café where the fruit and vegetable market had once stood. At first Charlie wondered whether she was suffering from some kind of nervous breakdown, so absurd did her story appear, but there was no doubting the degree of panic she was in, as she sobbed and shook and spoke of murder and people of whom he had never heard, like Daley, Harrigan and Sarah.
Finally Charlie said the only sensible thing of which he could think. ‘You have to go to the police.’
Kate looked at him in horror: ‘No. I can’t tell the police. They won’t be able to protect me. I’d never be safe again.’
Charlie gazed around at the ancient buildings. He was bewildered. He simply didn’t know what to think. He had dreamed of a moment such as this, a time
when Kate would be holding on to him begging him for the comfort he had to offer, but now that it was happening he was aware only of his own confusion, and a realization that he didn’t know how to respond adequately.
‘How did you find me?’ asked Charlie at last, after ordering them both more to drink.
‘Last night I waited until I felt it was safe to move and then I began to walk back towards town,’ she said, struggling to control her shaking. ‘I kept to the busiest streets. I was frightened of every shadow. I was sure I was being followed. Every time I saw a policeman I thought I had to tell him, but I couldn’t. I didn’t dare.
‘When it came light I had walked as far as Westminster. I got a coffee in a stand-up café. There was no one I could think of that I could turn to. Everyone I know is connected in some way with the business. I just wanted to disappear. And I kept thinking about you. I had your picture in my pocket. I’d thought about you during the night. I’d wondered where you lived. This morning I tried to find your address in the telephone directories, but there was no Charlie Fairweather listed …’
‘My agent always insists on his artistes being ex-directory,’ said Charlie by way of explanation and with some embarrassment. It was Marty’s way of ensuring that none of his artistes should cheat him out of his ten per cent by accepting bookings on the side. Marty could be eccentric.
Whether Kate heard or comprehended the absurdity of Marty’s little rule Charlie had no way of knowing because she was already going on with her story.
‘Anyway I had my hands in my pockets and realized that for half the night I’d been twisting up the postcard you sent me, and when I took it out I discovered your agent’s name and address. It took me until an hour ago to pluck up the courage to go and see him.’
‘I’m glad you did,’ said Charlie, mainly because he couldn’t think of anything else to say. What do you say to a girl who’s discovered a murder and who is too frightened to go to the police? Charlie needed thinking time.
The recording session was due to begin at three-thirty. Marty had booked a small cheap studio for four hours, during which time he expected Charlie to put down Wild Strawberries and at least three other songs, so that he might have a decent tape to hawk around the record companies. Charlie pointed out that four hours was hardly enough time for him to get the piano arrangement track straight on just one song, but since money was tight and studio time expensive, he agreed to busk his way singing and playing through all four.
He would have preferred to have cancelled the session and stayed with Kate, but he knew that Marty couldn’t afford to throw away the cost of studio time, and besides he needed time on his own to work out exactly what he must do. Kate’s presence got in the way of any rational thought. So at three twenty-five, when her tears seemed to have abated for the moment, he put up his hand and hailed a taxi for her.
‘Look, I want you to take my keys and go to my flat and wait there for me. I have a job to do, and you need some sleep before we do anything,’ he said. ‘So go here …’ he scribbled down his address on the back of an old envelope, ‘… it’s the basement flat. Nobody will bother you … you’ll be perfectly safe. I’ll be home around midnight … just go and have a long sleep, and we’ll have something to eat when I get in … Okay?’
A taxi pulled up at the side of the road. Kate hesitated.
‘Go on,’ insisted Charlie. ‘Things will look better after you’ve had a long sleep.’
‘Murder will look better?’
‘Well, it’ll look different.’
‘I can’t believe so …’ said Kate.
‘We’ll talk about it tonight. We’ll have a long time to think and talk about what we should do.’ As he said this he suddenly caught a mental image of a naked woman left hanging by the neck from a wire flex, as Kate had described it, and he wondered if they would ever be able to sit back and discuss anything like that. Surely it couldn’t wait for tonight, he thought. He ought to tell someone. But he instantly blocked his mind to common sense. Kate didn’t want the police involved. The most important thing right now was to provide Kate with a safe house. She needed somewhere to hide and recover.
‘You won’t tell anyone, will you?’ said Kate anxiously. ‘I mean you won’t go to the police.’
‘I promise,’ he said, and suddenly leaning forward he gave her the chaste sort of kiss he might have offered a daughter. ‘Come on now, be a brave girl.’
With that he slammed the taxi door and shouting his address to the driver he stepped back on to the pavement and watched while the cab did a U-turn in the busy street and set off towards West London.
He was bewildered. Within two hours his world had turned inside out. Perhaps he should feel happy, he thought, but the corpse of Barbara, whoever she was, swung over whatever elation he had originally felt on seeing Kate again.
For the first time in five years he needed a cigarette. Crossing the road he entered a small newsagent and tobacconist’s shop, being forced to stoop so that he wouldn’t hit his forehead on the low entrance.
‘A packet of Marlboro, please,’ he said … ‘and a book of matches.’
The shopkeeper, a woman of about seventy with dyed jet black hair and skin like alabaster, turned to get the cigarettes. On the counter in front of her was a vast variety of soft to medium porn sex magazines. Instinctively he looked down and found himself being assailed by a veritable complex of Kodachrome female genitalia.
‘We’ve got the new Fiesta,’ said the shopkeeper, noticing that his eyes had been arrested by the display. ‘Very nice, this month. It’s one of those readers’ wives issues. A lot of people like that …’
‘What?’ Charlie was gaping at her in astonishment.
She realized instantly that erotica was not for him. ‘That’s sixty-four, thank you,’ she said without changing her tone and passed the cigarettes across to him.
‘I’ll take an evening paper, too,’ said Charlie, picking one off the newly delivered pile, and giving the shopkeeper an extra ten pence.
She took the money, put it into the till and patted her hair. Charlie hurried from the shop. Porn was one thing he didn’t need. Re-crossing the road, he lit a cigarette, and headed towards the studio in Garwick Street.
Only when he was inside and at the piano waiting for the engineers to cue him in did he actually glance at his newspaper. An item in the stop press hit him like a thumb in the eye. ‘NUDE MODEL FOUND HANGED’, it read.
And he was supposed to be singing love songs.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Kate felt like a thief, moving silently, stealthily around Charlie’s flat, always afraid that someone from the rooms above might hear her and come to investigate. She didn’t want to pry, didn’t want to see anything that Charlie might regard as private and personal, yet everything she did see interested her: because everything was part of Charlie. In the kitchen she saw the single pint of milk in the small fridge, amid the half-dozen cans of beer, the three eggs, and one piece of cheese. It was the kitchen of a single self-sufficient person. Charlie seemed to have one of everything that was necessary and little more besides. Taking off her shoes and coat she wandered into the living-room. The sunlight was bright so she drew the heavy curtains, and gazing at the objects on the mantelpiece she felt an inevitable sadness that Charlie appeared to have so few possessions. In the bedroom she was surprised to see a double bed, and suddenly found herself wondering about the women he had shared it with. Incongruously a shaft of jealousy lanced her.
In the bathroom, a small, functional and neat place which smelled of plain, white soap and shaving cream, she ran the water, and taking off the clothes she had been wearing for fifteen hours she hid in the warmth of steam, heat and water.
She did not wish to think of the future. It hardly seemed to exist. Her roads forward were blocked. She was frightened: too frightened to have a future. And yet she knew that Charlie could not be the answer. They were from different worlds. Just as soon as she had rested she would know what to
do, she told herself: a few hours away from her fears, and away from the memory of the grinning, swinging corpse of Barbara and she would have a solution.
She dried herself on a large multi-coloured bath towel, and then seeing Charlie’s pale blue bathrobe hanging on the inside of the bathroom door, she pulled it tightly around her body. It swamped her. She pushed her nose into the material, and cried silently into its towelling folds. Her body was heavy with tiredness, and the ache of too many hours without sleep filled her forehead and face, but her mind chased repeatedly after the frightening spectres which danced in and out of her imagination.
In the bedroom she lay at first outside the sheets. But she needed the comfort of a hiding place and after a few moments climbed between the sheets, her head buried in the pillows. By and by she fell into a kind of sleep, a sleep more wearing than consciousness, in which nightmares fought mocking battles through her mind.
Charlie arrived home just before midnight, exactly as he promised. Tonight was going to be special in all kinds of ways that he couldn’t begin to imagine, and so on the way back to Lansdowne Road he had stopped at a late night food and wine store and stocked up with all kinds of things he would never normally have bought. He had never been particularly interested in cooking for himself, but now he had at least to make an effort.
So it was that when he got home he was laden with steaks and bottles of wine, melons, raspberries, ice-cream, three different kinds of cheese, yard long sticks of French bread and even fancy candles which he thought might adorn his living-room table and make his home more cosy. He had had other girls in to stay with him before, but no one like Kate had ever been invited.
