Dressed To Kill (A Kate O'Donnell Mystery) (8 page)

‘To get rid of it, you mean?’ Kate said cautiously.

The girl nodded and Kate drew a sharp breath. All her upbringing told her that the very idea was terribly wrong but when she looked at Sylvia, little more than a child herself, she could not bring herself to even begin to persuade her not to go ahead with what she was planning.

‘Some of these people are very dangerous,’ she said quietly. ‘Are you sure?’

‘’Course I’m sure,’ she said. ‘What else can I do?’

Kate made the coffee silently and handed Sylvia a cup.

‘Though I need the cash and I don’t know where I’m going to get that from,’ the girl said as she took a sip and grimaced. ‘I’ve gone off coffee,’ she muttered, putting the cup down.

‘How did you end up here?’ Kate asked as the two of them perched on high stools and Sylvia opened a packet of custard creams and began to eat them voraciously.

‘It seemed better than anything else, didn’t it?’ she said. ‘Where I came from you worked in a shop or a factory, then you got married and had a load of kids. When Ricky turned up outside the school looking for pretty girls to go modelling it seemed like a good idea at the time. He can be very persuasive, can Ricky.’

‘He does the recruiting, does he?’

‘I think he hangs around some of the schools looking for likely targets. It’s been going on for ages. It was only when I got here that I realized that a lot of them don’t stay long. Andrei chucks people out as soon as look at them if they don’t suit. I expect if he discovers I’m pregnant I’ll be out on my ear.’

‘And then what would you do?’ Kate asked.

‘I don’t know,’ Sylvia said. ‘That’s why I’ve got to get rid of it.’ A single tear ran down her face. ‘There was another girl here from my school. She was the year ahead of me. Jenny Maitland she was called. She seemed to be doing fine when I started, but suddenly she vanished. I asked Ricky where she’d gone, but he told me he hadn’t a clue. She just went, didn’t she, he said. She’s a free agent.’

‘Jenny?’ Kate said, remembering that the girl who had been found dead behind the jazz club had been called Jenny. ‘How long ago did she leave?’

‘Oh, I don’t know. A couple of months, maybe. I can’t remember.’ The girl looked at Kate speculatively. ‘Could you lend me some money?’ she said.

Kate drew a sharp breath. ‘I can’t do that,’ she said quietly. ‘I know you’re desperate but . . . I can’t.’ She sipped her coffee as another tear slid down Sylvia’s cheek. ‘If you’re sure that’s what you want to do, can’t you get Andrei or Ricky to help you? Surely it’s their responsibility.’

‘If I ask them they’ll throw me out,’ she said. ‘With or without the baby they’ll throw me out.’

Kate sighed and then suddenly had an idea. ‘Did you realize that the girl who was found dead a couple of days ago was called Jenny?’ she asked.

Sylvia shook her head.

‘You know the police pay for information sometimes. If I took you to see a policeman I know and you told him about Jenny Maitland and how you were both recruited by Ricky he might think it’s worth paying you for. I can’t be sure, but it’s worth a try. It sounds as if he needs to know anyway.’

‘But if Andrei found out I was telling the police things, he might throw me out. He’s not going to be very pleased is he? You haven’t seen him in a rage.’

‘I’m sure Sergeant Barnard wouldn’t say where his information came from,’ Kate said. ‘Why don’t you let me ring him, la. I can check it all out if you like.’

Sylvia was silent for a moment and then she nodded. ‘Go on then,’ she said.

Back at the nick, wondering what to tell the DCI about his anxieties, Barnard picked up the phone at the first ring and when Kate explained what Sylvia knew about the dead girl he sounded immediately interested.

‘Meet me at the Blue Lagoon,’ he said. ‘Coming to the police station will likely frighten your little friend to death, but she’ll probably have to come in to make a statement in the end. We’ll do a bit of persuading. It strikes me that these people you’re working for are recruiting under-age girls, if nothing worse.’

‘Ten minutes,’ Kate said.

The three of them arrived at almost the same moment and Barnard bought them all frothy coffee in the coffee bar’s trademark glass cups before sitting down with them at a Formica table and offering Sylvia a cigarette and lighting it carefully for her. The girl’s hand shook and he glanced at Kate sharply.

‘Is she OK?’ he asked.

‘She has some problems,’ Kate said.

‘All right,’ Barnard said. ‘We’ll make this as painless as we can.’ He turned to Sylvia. ‘Kate tells me you knew a girl called Jenny Maitland. Is that right?’

Sylvia nodded, her eyes full of tears. ‘She went to my school, didn’t she?’ she said. ‘She was a year ahead and was one of those who came up west with Ricky Smart. I knew him when he came back again the next year. We all quite fancied being models, didn’t we? If Jean Shrimpton could do it we didn’t see why we shouldn’t.’

‘And Jenny was still working for this Russian bloke when you arrived?’

‘Yes, she was there on and off. But I don’t think she was very happy. She kept having rows with Ricky. Andrei seemed to quite like her, indulged her, but I expect he was sleeping with her then.’

‘That was what generally happened, was it?’ Barnard asked.

‘That’s what usually happened, yes.’

‘And when they got tired of them? What happened then?’

‘They were soon out the door,’ Sylvia said. ‘We never saw them again. We never knew where they went. They just weren’t good enough, according to Andrei. Not up to scratch, though I always thought that it was the prettiest ones who went. Jenny Maitland was lovely looking.’

Barnard nodded, thinking of the photograph of the girl taken on the mortuary slab. Even in death she had been attractive. But her looks had not been enough to keep her off the streets.

‘How about you? Have you had the same sort of treatment?’ Barnard asked.

Sylvia looked away, flushed and a tear ran down her cheek.

Barnard’s lips tightened. ‘Right,’ he said.

‘She’s pregnant,’ Kate said quietly, and Barnard sighed. ‘Is there a chance you can pay her for her information? She needs the money.’

‘Won’t this Andrei do anything?’ Barnard asked.

‘He doesn’t know yet, but he won’t. He’ll throw me out on the street. I’m no use to him now, am I? I’ll be looking like a balloon in a couple of months,’ Sylvia mumbled into her coffee cup.

Barnard flashed a slightly desperate look at Kate. ‘Information received?’ he said quietly. ‘I suppose that’s fair.’ he turned to Sylvia again. ‘What’s the going rate for what you want?’

‘Thirty pounds,’ Sylvia whispered.

Barnard whistled. ‘I’ll be round to see your boss later,’ he said. ‘He’s got some serious questions to answer about Jenny Maitland. I’ll see what I can do about the cash.’ He looked at Kate much more seriously than he usually did. ‘No promises,’ he said. ‘Meet me here about five o’clock. I might have some answers then.’

‘Make it half past,’ she said. ‘I’m going to see Ken Fellows at five to see if I can get myself out of Lubin’s clutches. I don’t think I can bear to stay there another two weeks.’

R
icky Smart put an arm around Kate and stroked her left breast and laughed uproariously when she pushed him away.

‘What’s your problem? By invitation only, is it? You don’t know what you’re missing, sweetheart,’ he said.

‘Go away, Ricky,’ Kate said. Ken, she thought, had to get her out of here.

‘Are all the girls in Liverpool as uptight as you?’ Ricky sneered. ‘You’re all getting above yourselves since the blessed Beatles hit the big time. It won’t last, you know. It’ll all be over in six months, you’ll see. They’ll be dead and buried and forgotten.’

‘I doubt it,’ Kate said. She had got back to the studio before Andrei and Ricky and had time to help Sylvia tidy her hair and repair her make-up before the men arrived. It was obvious as soon as they came up the stairs that their trip had not been a productive one. Andrei had flung his portfolio of photographs on to a chair and pulled the rack of clothes which they were booked to photograph that day into the middle of the floor.

‘Kate, will you make a start on this shoot,’ he said. ‘Sylvia’s early but the rest of the girls will be in any minute. We can’t waste time. Here, I want them to wear these. I reckon stockings will be obsolete soon.’ He dropped half a dozen pairs of tights in plastic packets on to a table.

‘Oh, Gawd help us, what will we do without a flash of stocking tops and knickers?’ Ricky Smart wailed. ‘It’s one of the pleasures of a summer day in London. All those girls sitting on the grass eating their sandwiches and showing their suspenders and, if you’re lucky, a little bit more than that.’

‘Shut up, Ricky,’ Lubin snapped. ‘Come in here and tell me what we did wrong for that prissy cow at
Vogue
. You realize that was Bailey himself with the models, smirking in the corner. What’s he got that we haven’t?’

‘I told you we were trying to walk before we could run,’ Smart said, following Lubin into the tiny space he called his office. ‘We haven’t got the experience yet.’ He shut the door but Kate could still hear the two men’s angry voices. ‘I think maybe you’d better talk to Tatiana. Maybe take some pics for her after all. She’ll know what all the designers are up to, and what the girls are buying. She might be really useful.’

‘She’s an amateur. She’s just playing at it,’ Kate heard Lubin object before he slammed the door, muffling the rest of their conversation. She turned her attention to the girls who were drifting in one by one and began to distribute the dresses – more avant-garde
than anything she had seen here before – to the models and make sure that they adjusted their make-up to suit the heavy, dark-eyed look Andrei liked. The trouble with this assignment, she thought, was not that she did not like fashion but that she really could not see herself devoting her career to it. The people she had met so far in the rag trade would drive her doolally in a very short time, she thought.

Sylvia, who had struggled into her short dress with some difficulty, grabbed Kate’s arm as she spotted DS Harry Barnard walking through the open studio door.

‘That was quick,’ Kate said quietly.

‘I told you I needed to talk to your Mr Lubin about Jenny Maitland,’ he said. ‘Is he in?’

Kate waved at the closed office door. ‘He’s in there,’ she said.

Barnard squeezed his way through the bustle of semi-dressed girls with every sign of enjoyment, tapped on the door and went into Lubin’s sanctum. He closed the door behind him but Kate wondered if he had deliberately raised his voice because she could still hear most of what was being said. It was obvious that both Lubin and Smart resented any suggestion that they should be held responsible for Jenny in any way once she had left their employment. Kate marshalled the girls into their position on the set, and began to take some preliminary shots, positioning herself as close as possible to the office door so that she could still hear the conversation, which seemed to be rapidly turning into a rant on Andrei Lubin’s part. He could not be held responsible if girls lied about their age, either to work or to sleep with him, if they were so minded, he said loudly, and a lot of them it seemed, were so minded while they worked at the studio. Kate could just imagine Ricky Smart smirking at that blunt response. But neither of the men, it appeared, had seen or heard of Jenny after Lubin sacked her. They assumed she had gone back home to her family. In other words, they claimed to know absolutely nothing about the last two months of the girl’s life.

All three of the men eventually came out of the office. Lubin picked up a camera and strode over to Kate, looking thunderous but intent on taking over the shoot. Smart, with a secret smirk, followed Barnard out and ushered him to the door. But as he turned back he looked less than happy with his interview and did not even glance at Kate.

‘I’m sure I’ll have more questions to ask you, and your boss, and quite possibly some of your models as the inquiry progresses,’ Barnard called out to the retreating Smart, before turning away himself and thundering down the stairs.

Kate arrived at the Blue Lagoon early, her interview with Ken Fellows having been brief and unsatisfactory. She ordered herself a cappuccino and sat stirring the froth idly as she waited for Barnard to arrive. Fellows had actually laughed when she complained about Andrei and Ricky’s persistent advances.

‘News to me, girl,’ he had said. ‘I thought they were all poofters.’

‘Definitely not,’ she had shot back. ‘In any case I think I’ve learned enough about the rag trade. I’m not cut out for that sort of photography anyway.’

‘It’s another string to our bow, girl, if we can show them some sexy fashion shots,’ her boss said. ‘You stick it out and we’ll put some of your best shots in our portfolio.’

‘But we’ve got Tatiana Broughton-Clarke,’ she had argued. ‘I’ll pin her down to a shoot and if you hold the rights you can put as many of her designs in your portfolio as you like. You won’t squeeze the rights to any of Lubin’s pictures out of him. You know that.’

‘See the contract out,’ Fellows had said, irritated now. ‘It’s not very long. I’m sure you’ll fend off his unwanted attentions. You’re not a little girl.’ And with that he had picked up his phone to dial a call.

Kate was still simmering with discontent when Barnard finally arrived.

He got himself a coffee and slipped into the seat opposite her. ‘You don’t look too happy,’ he said. ‘What’s up?’

‘I tried to persuade the boss to let me bail out of Lubin’s studio,’ she said.

‘Good idea,’ Barnard agreed. ‘Seems to me he’s running a knocking shop with under-age girls. I’ll be paying him close attention over the next few weeks. But it’s always the same with these cases: the girls say they were willing, and even if they claim to have been forced it’s hard to get a conviction. The juries don’t believe them.’

‘You’re joking,’ Kate said.

‘It’s generally one person’s word against another’s in sex cases,’ Barnard said. ‘Pimps and rapists generally walk free.’

Kate stared at him in horror for a moment and then sighed. ‘Anyway, Ken doesn’t want me to leave,’ Kate said. ‘He seemed to think the fact that Andrei and Ricky both seem to want to get me into bed was funny. I don’t see the joke.’