Dressed To Kill (A Kate O'Donnell Mystery) (24 page)

‘Right,’ Kate said. ‘I can’t say I noticed her at the time, I was concentrating on getting a good shot of Muddy in the foreground. There were lots of people milling about behind him. But it’s definitely her. What she was doing there I can’t imagine. I didn’t see her myself, so I don’t know how long she was in the club, but I thought you’d be interested.’

‘You thought right,’ Barnard said, relaxing slightly and brushing his fingers over hers. ‘They’ve all being denying the street girls worked inside the club ever since Jenny Maitland’s body was found in the back yard. But they can’t deny this. Muddy Abraham’s already hinted that Swift had contact with Jenny. I think we can talk to him and Swift again now with much more to go on, thanks to you. That’s great.’

‘You think Sylvia was working on the street?’

‘I think Ricky Smart was recruiting the girls as models, as far as that went. He took them to the studio but we know none of them stayed with Lubin long because he got tired of them and chucked them out. Then Smart found them work elsewhere, almost certainly as tarts. I’ve no doubt it was a lucrative little business while it lasted. But unfortunately he picked the wrong streets. He was muscling into territory where some very powerful people have the trade sewn up. They don’t like intruders.’

‘Dear God,’ Kate said softly. ‘Poor kids.’ She shuffled through the pictures again but what the club had been used for tainted her memories of a good night out. She picked out Muddy Abraham’s face. ‘What’s happening to the American?’ she asked. ‘Is he still locked up?’

‘It turned out he’d been on the US Army’s wanted list for years for something that happened at the end of the war when he should have been on his way home. They want him sent back to the States, deported, and I can’t see any way we can stop that. My boss is very keen to see him go.’

‘What do they want him for?’ Kate asked.

‘Murder,’ Barnard said quietly. ‘He could go to the electric chair. I’m trying to slow the process down but I don’t have high hopes that I can stop it.’

‘I’ll never understand why people come to a place that seems to hate them so much,’ Kate said. ‘I’ve always wondered that about my Irish ancestors coming to Liverpool. The locals hated them, because they were Irish and Catholic and dirt poor.’

‘I guess, as Muddy Abraham says, some places are better than other places, even if they’re not perfect,’ Barnard said. ‘He seems to believe England is better for him than America.’

‘But not much better, as it turns out,’ Kate said. ‘Can’t you do anything for him?’

‘We can hang on to him as a witness in two murder cases, but even if we can file charges eventually, that won’t last forever. My DCI might not even go along with that much. He doesn’t like black men, he doesn’t like drugs and he doesn’t like jazz musicians – or any musicians come to that. He’s not exactly part of the rock and roll generation, is he? You only have to look at him. He’d close half of Soho down if he could. And the American army officer who’s in charge of this sort of thing is very determined to have Abraham back. I’m not sure whether it’s because he’s just keen or whether Abraham’s colour has anything to do with it. He’s supposed to have killed a white sergeant, though he says he never even knew the man had died.’

‘Will he get a fair trial?’ Kate asked.

‘Depends where he’s taken for trial, I suppose,’ Barnard said. ‘It’ll be a military court I expect and I don’t know how they work or how prejudiced they might be.’

Kate sighed and Barnard thought he could see a tear in her eyes.

‘Come on, cheer up,’ he said. ‘You can’t solve all the world’s problems. If you’re at a loose end come out for a meal with me tonight. No strings, I promise. I’ll pick you up and run you home afterwards.’

Kate looked at him for a long time and then nodded. ‘All right,’ she said. Why not, she thought, and if she ended up at his flat in Highgate so be it. You couldn’t go on saying no for ever.

Harry Barnard walked back to the nick feeling absurdly pleased, like an eighteen year old looking forward to his first date. He did not understand how this little Scouse newcomer, ten years younger than he was himself, broke down his defences so easily and completely but she did. He went up the stairs to CID two at a time and knocked on the DCI’s door. Jackson was behind his desk with a single file open in front of him, fountain pen lined up to one side ready for action.

‘Ah, Sergeant, I was wondering where you were?’

‘Inquiries, sir,’ Barnard said easily. ‘Two quite useful leads as it happens, one that could possibly give us a motive for the deaths of the girl Jenny Maitland and Ricky Smart. And links it to the Jazz Cellar, which I know you always thought was suspect.’

‘Tell me more, laddie,’ Jackson said, his eyes taking on a zealous gleam. He drank in avidly Barnard’s description of his interview with Muddy Abraham, the sax player’s admission that at least one of the street girls had connections with Chris Swift and Kate O’Donnell’s unexpected production of a photograph which clearly showed Swift having an animated conversation with the second dead girl from Lubin’s studio, the unfortunate Sylvia Hubbard.

‘I knew that place was a den of iniquity,’ Jackson muttered half under his breath as if aware that such old-fashioned condemnation would not necessarily gain him credibility around the nick, and certainly not with the sharp young sergeant in front of him who was obviously enjoying 1963.

‘I think we need to hang on to Muddy Abraham in this country for the time being,’ Barnard said, trying to keep his expression neutral. ‘We’re going to need his testimony if we’re going to pin Swift, or any of the others at the Jazz cellar down. One fuzzy photograph won’t do it.’

‘The American army won’t like that. We owe it to them to give him back as soon as we can,’ Jackson objected. ‘It’s a capital charge he’s on.’

‘They’ve waited for nineteen years to settle the score,’ Barnard said. ‘I’m sure a few months waiting for a trial here won’t hurt. They owe it to us for picking him up, after all. That was all down to your raid on the Jazz Cellar. I bet you never expected a catch like that, guv. Quite a feather in your cap.’

Jackson’s thin lips offered an apology for a smile. ‘I suppose you could say that, Sergeant,’ he said. ‘Let’s hang on to him for the time being then and hope for a result at the Bailey, if we get that far. So let’s get on with it. Don’t hang about. One less vice ring in Soho can’t be a bad outcome to what looked just like another wee tramp who picked the wrong fellow to sell her services to. Bring Swift in and see what he knows. If there’s a link to Ricky Smart we’ve cracked it.’

C
hris Swift didn’t even look particularly surprised when Barnard arrested him an hour or so later. Barnard guessed that he had seen Kate’s pictures and realized that he might be incriminated by them, though he seemed not to have reckoned that the police would turn up so quickly. It was Stan Weston who objected most vociferously as the police made their intentions clear and his rehearsal with his new saxophone player was rudely interrupted.

‘How the hell am I going to open tonight without a clarinet?’ he demanded. ‘You’ve already got Muddy banged up, what more do you want? I’m going to have to close the club at this rate. We’re going to be out of business.’

‘You should be more careful about what you allow to go on on the premises,’ Barnard had said unsympathetically. If the club closed at least DCI Jackson would be happy, he thought. There’s always a silver lining for someone. ‘Anyway, you have some questions to answer yourself about what’s been going on here.’

He sent Swift back to the nick in the patrol car he had come in and then settled Weston down at a table close to the stage, leaving the rest of the band kicking their heels at the bar, where the shutters were firmly down. The man clutching a saxophone looked severely disenchanted.

‘Right,’ Barnard said. ‘Let’s get the relationship between the Jazz Cellar and girls on the street sorted out, shall we? Once and for all?’ He slapped the incriminating photograph down on the table and let Weston look at it for a moment.

‘I don’t know what you mean by relationship,’ Weston blustered, before deciding that some sort of honesty might be the better course. ‘It was absolutely nothing to do with me, or the club. They came in sometimes with Chris, as you evidently know by now. And he was often with another guy, whose name I don’t know. The girls came and went with the two of them. It was all perfectly innocent as far as I was concerned, inside the club anyway. They weren’t soliciting in here – there’s not much space for that sort of thing – but I guess I saw blokes following them outside. What happened after that I don’t know, but I expect we both have a good idea.’

‘Did you see Swift with the girl in the photograph? Sylvia Hubbard, she was called?’

‘No, not that night, but other nights, other girls and often the other bloke as well. They obviously all knew each other.’

‘Did you see the murdered girl, Jenny Maitland, ever? In the club? Anywhere?’ Barnard pressed.

‘Once or twice, maybe,’ Weston admitted.

‘And you didn’t think to tell us this when she was found dead in your back yard?’ Barnard did not try to hide the contempt in his voice.

‘I was afraid we might be closed down if any of this came out after the murder,’ he said. ‘This place opened before the war. I took it over when I was demobbed. It’s not much to look at but we’ve had them all here, the greats, even Americans in the thirties. Louis Armstrong dropped in when he played a concert in London, might even have played a few notes here but you couldn’t let the Musicians Union know, couldn’t advertise the fact. Now the ban’s been lifted I’ve been working on some exchanges – our lads in New York, the Yanks coming here. The place is going to take off, believe me. I couldn’t see all that go to waste . . .’

‘Because of some little tart, who became a dead little tart, right outside your back door? You must have suspected there was a link to Chris Swift and his partner.’

‘She was nothing to do with me, nothing to do with the club, nothing illegal went on here. Why should we be blamed for what goes on outside? There’s more little tarts out there than I’ve had hot dinners.’ Weston looked haggard.

‘I want you down at the station,’ Barnard said, his eyes bleak. ‘Say five o’clock. I want a complete statement, every detail, signed and sealed, and then we’ll think about whether there should be any charges. Don’t be late.’

He left the band leader slumped in his chair with his eyes closed, ignored the rest of the band who watched his exit in total silence, and slammed his way out into the fresh air, leaving the doors swinging wildly.

Back at the nick, with Chris Swift waiting in a cell to be questioned, he put his head round the DCI’s door and brought him up to date with developments.

‘Do you want to sit in, guv?’ he asked, but the Scot shook his head.

‘Find me a definite link between Swift and Ricky Smart,’ he said. ‘We know Smart was doing the recruiting and Swift seems to have been in on the pimping. Maybe they fell out, or maybe someone else took exception to what they were up to. Swift could lead us to much bigger fish if we handle him right.’

‘Right,’ he said, glancing at his watch. ‘Softly softly then, guv, if that’s what you want.’

He had promised to pick Kate up at seven thirty. That gave him three or four hours to grill Swift and then leave him to stew in a cell overnight. That should concentrate his mind on the advantages of helping the police with their inquiries, he thought. There was no great hurry. They could put him on a holding charge of living off immoral earnings and get him remanded in custody if they chose while they pursued the murder charges, or let him out and keep him under observation to see where he led them. That might be even more useful, Barnard thought as he went down to the cells to have Swift brought up.

‘Right Mr Swift,’ Barnard said when he and DC Ross Staples had him settled in an interview room. The musician looked pale and deflated, smoking compulsively from a crumpled pack of Gauloises on the table in front of him. The ashtray was already half full.

‘Let’s start with your relationship with young Sylvia Hubbard, shall we?’ Barnard said. ‘No doubt you’ve seen the photograph taken in the club last week when you probably spoke to Sylvia for the last time. Were you the father of her child?’

Swift shrugged. ‘I could have been,’ he said. ‘Though I wasn’t the only man she was sleeping with. She came in that night trying to get me to pay for an abortion. I’m sure I used some protection when I was with her.’

‘Did you know she was only fifteen?’ Barnard asked.

‘No, I bloody didn’t, she looked much older. They all do these days don’t they? They’re dancing around, plastered in make-up and high heels by the time they’re twelve, a lot of them. Jailbait my ma would call them. Asking for it. They shouldn’t be working in Soho at that age, calling themselves models. We all know where that ends up.’

‘We also have evidence that you knew the murdered girl, Jenny Maitland, which is something you could have told us earlier. Did you have sex with her too?’

‘No, I hardly knew her. I . . .’ He hesitated, obviously debating the best way of extricating himself from the deep pit he had fallen into. ‘This was not my project, not my business, I got into it almost by accident because I fancied Sylvia and then I met the man who was behind her, and Jenny and God knows how many others.’

‘And that would be . . .?’ Barnard prompted.

Swift sighed. ‘The bloke who brought them all to Soho in the first place, of course. Ricky Smart. He was in the club with Jenny Maitland and Sylvia months ago. It was obvious he was pimping them and when I got involved with Sylvia he persuaded me to help, to bring them into the club so they could look for clients. It didn’t seem like much and he paid me well. I kept the girls out of Stan Weston’s way. I think he guessed and just chose to turn a blind eye. Maybe he was in on it too. Ricky always seemed to have plenty of cash in his pocket. He could have bought more than just me. He looked sometimes as if he could have bought the whole club, lock stock and barrel. I don’t know.’

‘Do you think Ricky Smart has set up this organization on his own, or is he working for someone else?’ Barnard asked.