Bad Penny Blues

by Cathi Unsworth

  This isn't the moon, nor the beam of a lighthouse that's coming towards me now. It's a pair of headlights in a long black car that slows down as it catches me in its rays, slows down and turns around across the road, comes to a halt just where the last one did, just where I came in. Is he a cab, come to take me home? I can't make it out.

  He winds the window down and says something to me, but it's lost in a burst of static like a radio being turned on, the dial slipped between stations. I lean in towards him.

  “Can you take me to Shepherd's Bush, mister?” I hear myself say, and I see him nod, reach out to take the handle of the rear door…

  My fingers touch metal and the dial slips.

  A squeal of feedback and a burst of static, a cat screams and a woman laughs. The sound of a guitar like the revving of a motorbike engine, the ominous thump of bass, coming up distorted into the night air, like music being played underwater.

  The dial slips…

  43 HERE COMES THE NIGHT

  Somewhere out of town.

  They had pored over the map, marked with red pins for the bodies. Apart from Jeanette White, every single one of them had been found in or around the Thames west of Hammersmith. That was where to look.

  Somewhere that looks like a factory, or an electricity sub station, with cooling towers and transformers.

  Closing in between Brentford and Acton, last resting places of Mathilde Bressant and Mavis McGruder, areas of industrial sprawl. Looking for factory estates with motor repair shops on them, going through lists of employees, security guards, nightwatchmen. Endless lists that took months to comb through; beyond Coulter's retirement, beyond Christmas and New Year, into the early days of 1965.

  Then the name they had been searching for came up. A phone call confirmed it.

  On the 13th of January, Pete stood on a railway bridge in Acton, looking across the embankment towards the Swan Factory Estate. A bleak, brown range of low brick and concrete buildings, cooling towers rising out of them, corrugated iron and barbed wire fencing circling them, crouched and frowning under a grey sky.

  There were thirty-five factories employing six thousand people on the Swan Estate, a sports ground and plenty of wasteland in between. Unrestricted public access 24 hours a day, which was good. Pete didn't want to have to show his credentials. He had the name of the boss of every operation and a cover story about looking for work as security, a riff on his army and police background that sounded feasible, if anybody stopped him to ask.

  Pete walked through the southwesterly wind that brought particles of rain stinging against his face. Walked towards the disused Oldham Aero Engine factory, gone bust last August but still left open and unsecured, the premises belonging to the estate, new tenants not yet found. Followed some employees from neighbouring companies as they took a short cut through the empty hangar to a café on Westfields Road beyond it, taking in the old mattresses, discarded beer cans and used rubbers that lay amongst the dust and the still machinery, signs of Oldham Aero developing a night time identity to rival Gobbler's Gulch and Ronald McSweeney's tennis club.

  Turned east towards the next large building, parallel to Oldham Aero, a big brick construction with its name painted in three-foot high letters along the front and sides. YATES & LISTON MOTOR ENGINEERS & COACH BUILDERS.

  Went down the side of it, listening to the hammer and clang of the machines, the whirr of the extractor fans, the hiss and whoosh of the paint sprayers. Crossed the road towards the premises at the rear of it, Eastfields, another aircraft firm specialising in precision casting bodywork.

  Between these two factories and Oldham Aero, waste ground studded with low buildings. Pete circled back towards them, found a block of men's toilets, an outbuilding housing transformers, another solitary men's toilet, a locked switch-room and a boiler house.

  Abandon hope all ye who enter here chalked on the wall of the boiler house.

  Walked through the wind and the stinging rain, following a metal pipeline towards a transformer shed. Walked around it, noticing vents on each side tacked over with wire mesh. Felt a prickling down his spine, his blood starting to hum, like the moment before you got up from your corner and danced to the middle of the ring.

  Two sliding locks on the door were all that kept the shed closed.

  Pete took his torch from his coat pocket, drew back the locks with his gloved hands. Took one look behind him, saw only the dull humps of buildings through the drizzle. Stepped through and closed the door.

  It was freezing inside the shed, the wind coming in through the wire mesh vents on either side of him moaning loudly in his ears. His throat felt dry as he switched the torch on, dry and tight, heart hammering in his ribcage as the circle of light swooped across the pipes and valves, across the brick and brass and then stopped as it fell on something that was not metal nor stone, something that was curved and curled and shrouded in sackcloth.

  He stepped towards it, his own breath hanging on the air in a cloud, knelt down and touched the sacking. Pulled it away from the white, nude body of a girl, a girl with black hair waved and cut into a bob, a girl who looked so very much like Bobby Clarke, except that her blank, black staring eyes screamed out above a mouth that had been stoppered, a cry that had been cut off forever by the fruit of the original sin –

  A bright, hard, green apple forced between her lips.

  He lurched upwards, blood pounding, reeled backwards, into something cold, something hard, something pushing against the back of his neck.

  “Bradley?” The voice sounded surprised. “I weren't expecting you.”

  He had come in so silently that Pete hadn't even heard above the noise of the wind, the shock of the sight before him. Or maybe Grigson had been there all along, skulking in the darkest corner of his lair.

  “But then,” he went on, “I always did make you for a rubber heels bastard. I could smell it on you, like flies round shit. What are you, then? The advance party?”

  Pete tried to push down the rush of fear that jumped in his gut, keep his voice level.

  “Hello Ron,” he said. “Who did you think it was going to be?”

  The man behind him gave a low chuckle. “Don't give me that old pony,” he said. “You know full well who I mean.” He shoved the gun into the side of Pete's face, rubbed the cold metal up and down his cheek. As he moved in closer, Pete could smell the decay on his breath, the grease on his hair. He smelt like a man who'd been sleeping rough, a man who'd scarcely been home since November. Grigson's wife said she'd last seen her husband on Christmas Day, but he hadn't stopped for long.

  “We'll both just have to wait for him, won't we?” he said. “Should make life interesting.”

  Pete stared down at the defiled woman at his feet. “Who is she?” he asked.

  “I dunno,” Grigson said. “Just some Paddy whore I bumped into. She weren't on the list.”

  “She looks just like the first one.”

  “D’you know,” Grigson's tone turned incredulous again, “that's just what I thought. She was in the same place and all, just outside Holland Park tube, seemed like it was meant to be. I mean, all this trouble over that silly little tart. Got me so mad that I couldn't resist it. I did have a funny feeling about her when I saw her though, for a minute I thought she might have come back to haunt me.” He gave a sharp laugh. In his fugitive state, Grigson was beginning to unravel. “’Til she opened her gob, that is. No, I reckon it was fate what put her there,” he went on. “Brought it on herself, she did. And you got to admit, I did a good job on her. Used all the same methods. You'd never be able to tell her from an original, ’cept he always took the apple out of their mouths before I dumped them. I thought I'd leave it, give you flatfoot bastards something more interesting to go on. Something that might explain the motivation.”

  All the time Grigson was speaking, Pete had been calculating the distance between his heel and the other man's knee, the trajectory a bullet would take if the trigger were to be squeezed. The gun rested u
pwards, towards the ceiling. A discharge might temporarily blind him, his skin would get burned, but he wouldn't get hit.

  “You a religious man yourself then, Ron?” he asked.

  He didn't wait for the reply, just kicked back hard with his right leg, swivelled round to the left, brought up his fist as hard as he had ever punched. Fist connected to jaw as the gun went off, deafeningly loud, the flare of it illuminating Grigson crumpling, the gun dropping out of his hand.

  Adrenalin was pumping so hard, Pete couldn't even work out if he had been hit. As Grigson floundered, he kicked the gun as far into the darkness as he could, launched himself on top of the other man. Slowly realised that everything still seemed to be working properly. And that Grigson wasn't putting up a fight. The blow to the jaw had KO'd him. He scrambled for the torch he'd dropped on the concrete floor, felt his fingers connect with it just as the door swung open.

  Francis Bream standing there.

  “Pete!” Bream's eyes rapidly took in the tableau before him. “You got him?”

  Pete looked from him to Grigson, eyes rolled to the back of his head.

  “Looks like it,” he said, getting to his feet. “No thanks to you.”

  “Sorry, I was…” Bream started to say, but then his eyes fell on the body of the woman, her flesh luminous in the dim light. A muscle twitched in his cheek.

  “Not another one,” he said, walking forwards. “Who is she?”

  Pete stepped aside, brushing filth from his coat. “I don't know,” he said. “She wasn't on the list, apparently.”

  Bream winced, gaze transfixed on the apple in her mouth. “Christ.”

  Pete put his hand on Bream's arm, noticed the broken skin on his knuckles. “What's the list, Frank? Can you explain any of this to me?”

  Bream shook his head. “I'll do my best,” he said, dragging his watery eyes away from the corpse and back towards Pete's. “Suppose I should start at the beginning, shouldn't I?”

  “Bobby Clarke?” said Pete.

  “Clarke got killed because Simon Fitzgerald took a fancy to her,” said Bream, “one night at Teddy's. Badgered Marks to get her to come to this party they were having, the usual swingers stuff. Said he had to have her, a right petulant sod about it he was. But they were making a lot of gelt off Simon in them days, so they indulged him.”

  Pete flashed back to their last night at Teddy's, Marks talking to the corpulent manager, a brown envelope passing between their hands.

  “The Chopper went out to get her, taking our friend here with him. A couple of hours later they were driving her back to Gobbler's Gulch.”

  “It was Fitzgerald?” Pete frowned.

  “It was an accident,” said Bream, “a bit of rough stuff gone too far. Marks got Grigson to help him wash her clean and then dump her, made sure his pet copper was tied into it. Must have got someone else down to the murder scene too – remember how you told me that the body had been moved after you found her, that night in the pub with Dai? That's when I realised no one was playing straight.”

  Pete nodded, slow throbbing pain coming into his knuckles now as the adrenalin receded.

  “Anyway, nothing happened for months, so they were beginning to feel safe – until you nicked Gypsy George O’Hanrahan with the Somerset family album. Wesker was impressed by how you took O’Hanrahan down, thought you had balls, which was why I encouraged him to offer you a transfer. He trusted me, The Bastard did; thought I was his eyes and his ears. Grigson was dead against it, he read you right from the off, but Wesker was sure there wouldn't be no trouble once you were all tied up in all their bagwork, bringing in all Ernie's faces. Trouble was, right in the middle of us cleaning up the streets of Soho, there was another party and another dead tart to dispose of.”

  “Bronwyn Evans.” Pete tried to keep up with his former colleague. “Or Gladys Small, as they called her. What happened to her?”

  Bream rolled his eyes. “Simon got ants in his pants again,” he said. “Asked The Chopper for a girl. Well, remember I told you about Big Tits Beryl? She'd been having a bit of bother with Evans, who was a drunk, loud-mouthed sort of tart, her best years long behind her, if she ever had any in the first place. Marks knew her of old, knew she was a liability. He must have thought that if Fitzgerald went off his rocker again, here was one girl who wouldn't be missed. That time, they tried to dispose of her more carefully, but even so, Marks couldn't resist winding us lot up by burying her opposite the first one, just to see how much of a flap he could get us into. Worked and all, didn't it?”

  Pete shook his head. “My God,” was all he could say.

  “So, anyway,” Bream went on, “you know what comes next. The riot, the pieces of brick. Grigson gets the sack, Wesker gets carted off to the funny farm – and with all his protection gone, Fitzgerald goes and tops himself, even before the Welsh tart's body is found. That was the end of the first Jack the Stripper. But the second one was a whole lot more sinister.”

  The wind shrieked through the air vents, icy fingers caressing their ears, their noses. Pete shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “Go on,” he said.

  “Something else happened on the day of the riot, that wasn't realised until later,” Bream said. “Wesker had retained some of Gypsy George's stash for safekeeping. Not all of it, just the pictures taken at Teddy's,” he raised his eyebrows, “and the negatives. The stuff that might incriminate him, should it ever fall into the wrong hands. Only in all the bother that day, they somehow got lost…”

  “You,” Pete began, but Bream winked, put his finger to his lips.

  Bream had the photos on him, that night at Teddy's. Had taken them into the lion's den.

  “See, Marks,” Bream said, “was only one little cog in a much bigger wheel.”

  Minton, thought Pete, Somerset.

  Bream nodded, as if reading his mind. “And the ones much higher up than him decided something must be done. They'd already had one of their mates, a respected MP, taking a hit. Not to mention the unfortunate doctor who'd tended them with such care.” Bream glanced down at Grigson, poked at him gingerly with his toe to make sure he was still out cold. “They didn't want no more call-girl scandals. So one of them had a bright idea. Dim old plod still hadn't twigged Simon Fitzgerald for Clarke and Evans, didn't look like we ever would, and Si weren't in a position to tell any tales. So why not just carry on his work? Make it look like the killer was still around. Resurrect him, turn him into a figure of nightmare who preyed upon ladies of the night, killed them in mysterious ways and left their bodies in places designed to fool us all? Let the press use their all-too predictable brains to come up with a name for him, something the public would enjoy – leave them nude and it wouldn't take long. And so the second Jack the Stripper was born.”

  Pete shook his head, all the pictures falling into place now.

  “They made a list of all the girls they reckon posed the worst threat. The regulars at these parties,” Bream continued, “the ones who worked for Ernie. Then the mastermind behind this fiendish plan volunteered his services to play the part of Jack.”

  The throbbing in Pete's knuckles was intensifying, along with the expression in Bream's green eyes.

  “He had his reasons, you see. He had this daughter he was rather more fond of than any decent father should be. Only she'd rebelled against him and made him look stupid, turned her back on him, slipped out of his grasp. He weren't used to not getting his way and his jealous rage turned him into a monster. He'd been in the army, seen active service; he knew how to be cruel and how to do it without leaving a mark. He took out his sadistic lust on these women, and good old Grigson here, now that he weren't any use in an official capacity no more, got to be his bagman.

  “See, Grigson was in a unique position – the girls all knew him as a good source of income, they'd go off with him willingly, even the ones who were all tooled up to take on the Stripper.” Bream gave a bitter laugh. “Trouble is, it took me too long to work this all out. And when I did, it wer
en't just a matter of finding him. That was easy enough, he hadn't moved house or anything. No, my problem was that I had to persuade him I was still as bent as he thought I was. Still the same old Bream, the clown they all took me for, just wanting to relive old times, chasing skirt and getting pissed, way we used to do in the old days. Months of talking bollocks and standing rounds it took me. I thought I had him, that night on the ’Bello…”

  “That's why he went rogue,” said Pete. “He thought they'd sent you after him, that the game was over and they were taking care of the loose ends. That's why he left Jeanette White in Kensington, it was a warning. That's why he did for this poor beggar, that's what he was telling me…”

  A long groan rose up from the floored bulk between them. Grigson was coming round.

  “Better get him cuffed up,” said a voice from the doorway.

  The two men turned at the same time.

  A dark shape against the pale light.

  “The van's parked just around the corner.” DCI Bell motioned with his head.

  For the briefest of moments, Pete and Bream exchanged glances, then bent down to haul Grigson up to his feet, not a phantom any more but a woozy, stinking man in a dirty sheepskin coat. His left eye had closed up where his injury had started to swell, his head lolled down on his chest. They pushed him towards the door and he stumbled like the walking dead.

  Bell put his hand on Pete's chest. “Stay here a minute,” he said. “You go on, Bream.”

  Bell waited until Bream was out of earshot before he crossed the threshold, walked over to where the dead girl lay. No flicker of emotion over the face of this senior detective, this old war hero, as he studied the corpse. Just a regretful shaking of his head. Pete would never know how long the DCI had been standing there, listening to him and Bream talk. Never be able to read what was going on behind those hard grey-green eyes.

  “Have you recovered all of the missing photographs now, sir?” he said instead.