Dressed To Kill (A Kate O'Donnell Mystery) (7 page)

‘Isn’t jazz a bit old-fashioned?’ Tess asked, as they settled themselves at a table. ‘I had an uncle who used to play clarinet in a jazz band but I don’t think many people ever took much notice of them. They were too old to attract the girls. Don’t they make the music up as they go along?’

‘It’s called improvising,’ Dave said loftily. ‘They take a tune and weave around it. I just really wanted to hear some muckers who knew what they were doing instead of just strumming three chords on a guitar.’

‘Like your lot do?’ Kate said tartly. She glanced around the rest of the tables where people were settling themselves in and ordering drinks. Tess was right, she thought. The three of them must be the youngest in the room so far, apart from a group of young men at a corner table who looked like students but even they were wearing tweed sports jackets and cravats and sporting haircuts short enough to pass muster in the Brigade of Guards. The fashion revolution the likes of Tatiana Broughton-Clarke and other designers were promoting still had a long way to go, she thought.

‘Here we go,’ Dave Donovan said as a clatter of drums and cymbals reduced the buzz of conversation in the dimly lit room, which was already growing hot and smoky. The drummer had led the influx of musicians on to the tiny stage, which hardly seemed big enough to accommodate the entire band. There was a smattering of applause as the trumpet player, middle aged, paunchy and balding, soberly dressed in shirt, tie and waistcoat, edged his way to the front and, without any introduction, launched into a melody, backed by a fast beat from the drummer and bass, which many of the audience appeared to recognize and applauded more loudly.

For more than an hour the music continued, the players, getting visibly hotter, refreshing themselves with beers handed up from the bar and throwing off top layers of clothing as they continued. At last Stan Weston signalled some sort of conclusion with what seemed to Kate to be an impossibly high blast on his trumpet, leading to a crescendo of applause from the audience.

‘Ladies and gents,’ he said as the noise subsided slightly. ‘We’ll be back in one half hour when we will be entertaining Mr Gerry Statham, the best jazz singer this country’s ever produced . . . Enjoy yourselves. Make yourselves at home.’

‘Wow,’ Kate said. ‘What did you make of that then?’

Dave Donovan and Tess both looked slightly stunned although in different ways.

‘Great stuff,’ Dave said, but Tess looked dubious.

‘It’s all American, isn’t it?’ she said. ‘I can’t say I like it much. I’d rather have the Beatles or Gerry and the Pacemakers any day.’

‘And there’s another group on the up as well,’ Donovan said slightly gloomily. ‘I heard a group called the Rollin’ Stones the other night. They were standing in at a club I was at but I thought they were pretty good. I hope they’ve not going to get in ahead of us with a recording contract.’

‘I wonder if they’d let me take any pictures,’ Kate said, gazing at the empty stage. ‘I’m not sure that Ken knows about this place. But it might be worth a try. I don’t really think fashion’s going to turn out to be my scene. Ken’s only dumped it on me because I’m the only female he’s got.’

‘Let’s go and ask them if they’d like you to snap them,’ Donovan said, jumping to his feet. ‘Can’t do any harm, can it? You hang on to the table, Tess. Don’t let anyone take our places.’

Tess pulled a disgruntled face at that but she did as she was told. There would be recriminations later, Kate thought.

Not quite knowing where she was going, she went with Donovan to the door beside the stage that the musicians had used and followed him through it when he pushed it open. Beyond was a small room, even more hot and stuffy than the club itself, where most members of the band appeared to be knocking back pints of beer. Stan Weston was slumped in a battered armchair, nursing his trumpet and a pint glass, shirt sleeves pushed up now and waistcoat discarded, but looked up sharply when he saw them.

‘Who the hell are you?’ he asked. ‘This is private.’

‘I’ve just signed up with EMI,’ Donovan lied airily. ‘Dave Donovan of the Ants. And this is Kate O’Donnell who’s taken some incredibly moody publicity pics for us. I though you might like to meet her. She’s very good and could take some snaps for you tonight if you like, for you to have a look at. No obligation.’

Kate pulled her precious Voigtlander out of her bag. ‘Perhaps you don’t have any of the great Gerry Statham at the club,’ she said. ‘I can focus on him if you like. I could let you see anything I take first thing tomorrow.’ If I get up early and do the developing and printing very fast, she thought.

‘Could be useful, Stan,’ the saxophonist said, tall, grizzled and black, with a distinct American drawl, drawing deeply on a battered-looking cigarette. ‘You can’t say we’ve had good publicity this week with a dead girl on the stoop.’

Weston scowled. ‘True,’ he said. ‘I was thinking of talking to Bob Davies on the
Evening News,
see if he’ll cover Gerry’s gigs.’

‘If you could offer him some pics of your singer it might go down well,’ Donovan jumped in. ‘You’ve not got anyone else taking pictures tonight, have you?’

‘Have a drink, why don’t you? What’ll it be?’ Weston said as he introduced the rest of the band.

To Kate’s surprise Muddy Abraham waved his cigarette in her direction but Donovan waved it away impatiently.

‘Gerry’s not here yet but we’ll see what he says,’ Weston said. ‘I can’t see he’ll have any objection. But don’t get in the way of the audience. They like to concentrate, you know. This isn’t pop music. It’s a whole lot more serious than that.’

By the end of the evening Kate had shot a roll of film, but her companions were less than happy. She could see that Tess, the convent girl, had been shocked by Gerry Statham’s explicit songs and gestures and Dave had stalked off alone at the end, declaring himself furious at the drummer, Steve O’Leary’s sleepy-eyed invitation to Kate to spend the night at his place, which the clarinettist, Chris Swift witnessed with a disapproving scowl. Kate had quickly turned the invitation down but smiled at Dave’s reaction, not unhappy to see him go. After this rare evening spent together, there was no way she felt inclined to give him any encouragement. The Liverpool they had enjoyed together so recently was rapidly fading away, she thought, and it wasn’t going to come back again. There was no way she would contemplate going ‘home’. The two flatmates eventually dodged their way side by side towards Leicester Square underground station through Soho streets still teeming with revellers.

‘If that’s jazz, you can keep it,’ Tess complained as they made their way down the escalator. ‘It’s disgusting. And why did Dave say the American offered you his cigarette, for heaven’s sake, and think it was funny.’

‘Dave said it wasn’t tobacco, it was marijuana,’ Kate said quietly. ‘Best keep quiet about that, maybe. They seem to be having enough trouble with the police without being raided for drugs.’ She didn’t tell Tess quite what a real possibility that might be, or that, as she had dodged around the tables and the stage taking her pictures, the distinctive aroma of the drug had grown more intense as the evening progressed, though exactly whether it was coming from the stage or the audience was difficult to pin down.

DS Harry Barnard was taking his usual mid-morning stroll around Soho. The place was barely awake yet: a peep show had lured in a few curious tourists to gape at a couple of girls who promised more than they delivered. A couple of Americans in trademark cowboy hats were staring aghast at a bookshop window, the like of which they had obviously never seen before. And a couple of tarts, pale and gaunt without their make-up, were chatting on a street corner, one clutching a bottle of milk, the other a loaf of bread.

‘Morning, girls,’ he said. ‘Just the people I want to see.’ Both women looked less than enchanted by his approach, but they knew better than to scuttle away without at least a reluctant word. Harry Barnard could make life too uncomfortable for them if they tried that.

‘I’ve got a name for the kid who was found dead the other day,’ he said. ‘Jenny Maitland she was called, up from the East End about a year ago. Now what I want to know is how long she’s been on the game and who was running her. Sure as eggs, a kid that age wasn’t working on her own. Stands to reason.’

‘They don’t plan it like that,’ the older of the two women said. ‘A lot of them now are following the bands, hanging round the recording studios screaming, or else they want to be models and they hang around the photo studios trying to cadge an entry. They all think they can sing, or else they’re going to be the next Jean Shrimpton. Since David Bailey, the models seem to have got younger and younger. Barely out of nappies some of them. Skirts up to their knickers.’

‘Anywhere particular round here?’ Barnard asked.

‘Some of the studios take them on and then throw them out as soon as they prove they’re no good. There’s a couple of kids renting a room below us. They might be worth talking to. They might have known this Jenny Maitland. I’m not sure they’re turning tricks but I’m damn sure they soon will be.’

‘Right, I’ll have a word,’ Barnard said. ‘What number are you? Twenty-five?’ The two women nodded.

‘I blame the parents,’ one said as they turned away. ‘They’re out of control, the kids these days.’

‘Yeah, yeah,’ Barnard muttered under his breath. ‘And your lot weren’t, out with the teddy boys as like as not.’ He strolled round Soho Square, where a few office workers were taking an early lunch hour on the benches, enjoying an unseasonable outbreak of sunshine, and started down Greek Street, when he found himself walking in step with a small weaselly man who might in an earlier incarnation have earned his crust as a jockey. Now, he knew, he worked for Ray Robertson as an errand boy and runner.

‘Mick,’ he said. ‘How’s it going?’

‘Can we have a chat, Mr Barnard? Somewhere quiet? I’ve got a message for you.’

Barnard hustled Mick through the half-open door of the nearest pub where the barman looked for a moment as if he would try to throw them out but when he recognized Barnard he shrugged.

‘Drink?’ he asked.

‘Two large Scotches,’ Barnard said sitting at a corner table and making no attempt to pay when the drinks were brought. ‘So,’ he said. ‘What’s this message?’

‘It’s from Mr Bettany,’ Mick said and Barnard froze.

‘Fred Bettany? Ray’s money man?’ he asked.

‘The same. He says he wants to have a chat. He says could you meet him this evening at the Spaniards on Hampstead Heath. You know it?’

Mouth dry, Barnard sipped his Scotch and tried to control his breathing. ‘I know it. What time?’

‘Six o’clock. He’ll pop in on the way home. He’s with Mr Robertson at the Delilah all day today, busy with meetings, he said.’

‘Tell him I’ll see him there,’ Barnard said, wondering if Ray Robertson knew about this meeting and fearing even more whether or not he knew about what Barnard feared it was about. He picked up his glass and drained it, putting it down carefully so as not to reveal his shaking hand. ‘Is Mr Robertson going to be with him?’

‘Nah,’ Mick said. ‘I don’t think this is anything to do with him. Just you and Mr Bettany.’ And that, Barnard thought, with a vivid image of Fred Bettany’s wife slipping in between the sheets with him, stark naked and infinitely enticing, was what he was afraid of. If Fred had somehow uncovered that secret, a transfer to the Outer Hebrides might not be far enough.

On his way back to the nick he tried the door of the house his contacts had told him a couple of young women were working and to his surprise found it open. When he shouted, a bleary-eyed face peered over the banisters, not one he recognized so he guessed she was a recent arrival. He went up, warrant card in hand and hustled her back into the bedroom where the door was open.

‘You on your own, darling?’ he asked.

The girl, who was in a loose robe, which she clutched tightly around her, and slippers, nodded. ‘I’m not working,’ she said, looking anxious.

‘Just now, or at all?’ Barnard asked. ‘Come on, you can tell your uncle Harry. I’m not looking for a trick, I just want some information. You know a girl was found dead the other day just down the street? What’s your name?’

‘Josie,’ the girl said.

‘And how old are you, Josie?’

‘Sixteen,’ she said, although Barnard found it hard to believe. She might look sixteen or more in full make-up and night-time gear, but here and now, shivering on the landing, she could have been twelve.

‘Do you have someone looking after you?’ he asked.

‘Yeah, yeah, of course I have,’ Josie said. ‘I’m not stupid.’

‘Well, we get the feeling that some girls your sort of age are being a bit stupid, taking risks, including the one who died. Did you know Jenny Maitland?’

Josie shook her head dully.

‘She came to Soho to be a model and ended up on the streets like you.’

‘She’s not the only one,’ Josie said unexpectedly. ‘I heard someone say . . .’ She hesitated, obviously wondering if she had gone too far.

‘Say what?’ Barnard pressed her.

‘Say there were new girls, supposed to be models, but it was all a front. They were schoolgirls being groomed . . . My man didn’t like it, said he would pass it on to his boss.’

Barnard nodded bleakly. He smelled the beginnings of a war, and did not like it.

Andrei’s studio was at something of a loose end. Kate had got in that morning only to find the boss heading out in the opposite direction.

‘Got a meeting with the editor at
Vogue
,’ he had said breathlessly as he bustled out with Ricky Smart in close attendance and not neglecting to put a casual arm around her waist as he passed. ‘Maybe this is our breakthrough. You never know.’

Kate raised her eyebrows, careful that neither man could see her. She hung up her coat and glanced around the studio. There was no one there except Sylvia, looking even more pale and wan than the last time she had seen her.

‘I’ll make some coffee,’ Kate said, filling the kettle and switching it on. ‘Are you all right?’

‘Not really but I’ve got the name of someone to go and see,’ she said listlessly.