Last Rights (21 page)

‘But I didn’t send her any note,’ I said. ‘I spent that night over in Limehouse.’

Ruby, however, must have thought that the note was
from me. That, or she had to have known the bearer of the missive once she got outside. But I had said to her that I would
never ask her to leave the synagogue to do anything for me. And she’d done just that.

‘I think we should own up and tell the coppers Ruby’s missing. I’m scared for her,’ I said to Hannah, as a couple of the comrades
came out of the synagogue. One of them was the ginger-haired lad who’d let me in to see Ruby.

‘You do that and we’ll smash your head in,’ he said, as he and his mate closed in around me.

‘We’re looking for her, all right,’ the other, far darker young bloke said, ‘now we know she ain’t with you.’

Hannah said something in Yiddish and the boys backed away a little.

‘The bloke who came for her said he was your lad,’ the ginger youngster said to me.

‘What was he like?’ I asked.

‘Small, dark, black suit . . .’

An undertaker’s lad. Yes. But not mine. Arthur is six foot tall and has hair the same colour as Jean Harlow’s was. This other
little lad was someone else, if someone else who knew me. I wondered if his voice had been unusually coarse and rasping for
his age or whether the voice I’d heard in Limehouse had been that of someone who was using this lad. But the comrades couldn’t
remember anything about his voice.

But why had whoever had drawn Ruby out done so? How had he or they known where she was? If they’d been coppers they’d have
been all over the synagogue by now, them not liking the Commies too much these days, so it
obviously wasn’t them. Someone bubbling up from Ruby and her sisters’ past, someone not Phyllis Neilson?

The two comrades moved off then without further threats to me.

‘I promised them I’d keep you away from the coppers,’ Hannah said, as we watched them pass into the thickness of the blackout.

‘But someone could be holding her, hurting her,’ I said.

‘I know,’ Hannah said. ‘But if you cross the Commies they’ll hurt you, so put it from your mind, Mr H.’

When I’d first met her, Ruby had been a frightened woman, suspicious of just about everyone except those closest to her. I’d
told her I wouldn’t ask her to leave that synagogue. She had to have either known my so-called ‘boy’ very well or something
in that note must have had a real effect on her. There was also, personally, something else. Someone, be it the gruff-voiced
geezer in Limehouse or not, knew who I was, what I did and about my involvement with Ruby. For what purpose?

But whatever the reason, Ruby was now missing and not even Bessie Stern, whom Hannah and I went to see afterwards, had any
idea where she might be.

‘She changed her name to House,’ the old matchmaker said, as she gave me a cup of tea and took a fag, if rather sniffily,
from Hannah. ‘I knew who she was. I recognised the name Reynolds, remembered all them poor little orphaned girls. But I told
her I’d keep her secret and I was true to that until I asked the Commie rabbi to take care of her and then I told you. She
never killed Shlomo, I don’t care what anyone says.’

‘Why did you contact me?’ I said.

Bessie Stern shrugged. ‘Because Ruby told me to. She thought that if you was with her sister and her girl you had to be all
right. I thought the sister might come back and see me herself at some point, to be honest with you. I’d’ve told her everything.
But she had her own troubles too. Whatever, you had to be better than the police – no one can trust them now. They’ll do anything
to make their lives easy, the poor bastards. Who can blame them in such times?’ She shrugged again. ‘And then this lawyer
came to help her sister. Ruby said he couldn’t be trusted either. What can a person do? Poor Ruby is afraid she’ll hang like
her mother. She’s afraid that someone wants her to hang like her mother. And now this with her sister . . .’

‘You’ve no idea who she might have gone off with last night?’ I said.

‘No.’ She shook her head, tutting as she did so. ‘You know, she was well hidden in that synagogue. I don’t hold with Commies
myself. We,’ she looked pointedly at Hannah as she spoke, ‘don’t have no politics, our kind. Our rabbi don’t hold with breaking
the law. But I knew that Rabbi Numan and his people would look after her. The Commies all closed in around her, as they do.
You know she said her father was Jewish? He told her mother what town he come from back in his own country. It was Riga. A
lot of people come from Riga. Course, Ruby never knew him, but coming down here made her feel sort of close, I think, to Yiddisher
people . . . And then there was Shlomo . . .’

‘Mrs Stern,’ I said, ‘do you think that his son . . .’

‘Gerald never approved,’ she said. ‘He even put some very bad rumour around about his father. But he’d never have done nothing
mad, not nothing that might’ve got him into trouble.’

‘Why’s that?’

‘Because he’s already got the business from his father,’ Bessie said. ‘And as for the house and all the rest of it, well,
the house is Gerald’s now too, so it would’ve only been old Shlomo’s cash and none of that had been taken. Maybe he found
out about Ruby’s past and killed his father . . . No.’ Bessie Stern shook her head. ‘He wouldn’t’ve needed to kill Shlomo.
He was a naturally suspicious old bastard. If anyone had told him about Ruby’s mother he would’ve thrown her into the street.
Much as he loved her he would have done so. He could never have brought himself to trust her. Silly old fool, he believed
in bad blood, like a lot of the old ones. I only knew about Ruby’s past because, as I said, I remembered that Reynolds murder.
You know, Ruby looks the spit of her mother.’

‘And you trusted her? So you never told no one?’ Hannah said. ‘Not even when old Mr Kaplan was found dead?’

‘Look, darling,’ Bessie said, I felt a little savagely, ‘you might think I’m nothing but a gossipy old frummer, you with your
goyim ways. But I believed Ruby and I trusted her. She fitted here, you know, with our life. She was a good girl, nice girl,
worked to study the Torah – know what I mean? – even before old Shlomo ever whispered about marriage. So her mother, rest
her soul, killed some
horrible man? That wasn’t Ruby. She never killed no one. Biggest mistake she did was running off like that, me helping her,
may I be forgiven. But she was so scared and we all know how the coppers are! And, anyway, when they come they did have her
real name – knew her! How did they know her? I’ve thought maybe Shlomo’s son found out somehow, gave it to them. But, no,
that don’t make sense. There’s no way Gerald could have found that out. No. If anyone told the coppers anything, if anyone
has it in for Ruby, it has to be someone else. Ruby, I know you know, she told me, she thought that maybe someone from her
mother’s time come to do revenge on her.’

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘a woman. You saw her too, Ruby said, just before the air raid when Shlomo died. At the end of the street .
. .’

‘Yes, yes. I told the coppers about that,’ Bessie said. ‘Ruby wondered if it was the man her mother murdered, his sister.’

‘It can’t have been,’ I said. ‘She’s dead.’

‘Oh. Poor soul. God love her.’

‘But, anyway, the person who come for Ruby at the synagogue was a man,’ Hannah said.

‘With maybe a note from some woman? This woman we both saw,’ Bessie said.

‘No,’ I said. ‘The Commie boys told us Ruby said the note was from me.’

‘But it wasn’t?’

‘No.’ I shook my head.

‘And yet if it’d been from the woman she suspected – or she thought it was from her – maybe she lied about you
writing it to get out of there to her, confront her maybe. But, no, she was scared, she wouldn’t’ve left the synagogue for
anyone she didn’t trust.’

‘Then maybe she is with someone she can trust?’ Hannah said.

‘But Ruby doesn’t trust people,’ Bessie said thoughtfully, as she sucked hard on her fag. ‘But maybe . . .’

‘What?’

Bessie shrugged. ‘Maybe trust didn’t come into it. Maybe it was someone beyond trust, someone she loved?’

‘But Shlomo . . .’

‘Oh, I don’t mean like a lover,’ the old woman said. ‘Ruby never had none of them except Shlomo, as far as I know. No, I mean
maybe a relative, someone from her past.’

‘I don’t think so,’ I said. ‘The comrades up at the synagogue said that the boy who came with the note claimed to come from
my shop. Ruby didn’t make anything up. She was lured out.’

However, that didn’t mean that Bessie didn’t have a point. Although the Reynolds girls had split up after their time at the
orphanage, Ruby at least had been concerned about Pearl, which was partly why she’d contacted me. People can find each other
and information about each other when they need to. It was therefore possible that one or other of the remaining Reynolds
girls had found where Ruby was and . . . But no, nobody outside the synagogue had known where Ruby was, except me. No one
in the community knew about Ruby’s past, except Bessie Stern and the comrades. Not, of course, that you
can trust anyone entirely. The ukulele music, which Bessie said was coming from one of their Yiddisher music halls, had started
to get on my nerves by then so we left. Those wailing notes, they give me the shivers. I don’t know why: being what I am I
should understand – Indian music is even stranger, if anything – but I don’t.

Then, walking back home from Bessie’s, Hannah and I were reminded of the existence of some other, much more violent parties
who had an interest in one of the Reynolds girls. I had, I confess, forgotten temporarily about the Dooleys.

‘I warned you, you black bastard!’

We were only a spit from Rathbone Street when Johnny and Dickie Dooley jumped us. Whether they’d seen us coming or just happened
to be leaving Canning Town station, I was never to find out. But Johnny had me pushed up against the side of the ticket office,
my head pressed against a poster exhorting us all to ‘Keep mum’, as quick as a wink. I like to think that I can handle myself,
but I’m not a young man and I’d smoked a lot more fags and pipes in my time than this young thug.

‘You’re still helping her, aren’t you?’ Johnny said. ‘My slag of a sister-in-law.’

Somewhere to my left, there was a flash of something shiny. Hannah saw it too and said, ‘If you hurt him I’ll tell the old
Bill it was you. I don’t fucking care.’

Johnny Dooley turned to face Hannah who, I could now just about see, was being held by his brother. ‘Think the coppers’ll
believe you, you old tart?’ And then, turning
back to me, he said, ‘Fucking hell, Hancock, you ain’t ’arf got a cheap taste in women.’

I wanted to say something in Hannah’s defence, but he’d moved his hand up to my Adam’s apple so, for the moment, speech was
impossible.

‘Now, I heard that some lawyer the tart’s got herself turned up at your shop the other day,’ Johnny said. ‘I’ve also heard
that the tart’s bastard’s been seen in this manor. Now, you know that if I find out that bastard’s with you, you and all your
women ain’t going to be too safe.’

‘’Specially that blonde slag,’ Dickie put in. ‘What’s she? Your—’

‘She’s my sister,’ I finally managed to gasp. My heart was racing now. If these animals were threatening my family . . .

‘Funny.’ Johnny moved his face so close to mine I could taste his beer-raddled breath. ‘She don’t look like a wog, that one.
She looks like a slapper.’

‘Then maybe she’d get on well with your wife!’ I said, through gritted teeth. It had only been a short conversation I’d had
with Velma about the Dooleys, but Johnny’s wife’s name had stuck in my mind. ‘Your Martine.’

Even in the almost total darkness, I could see a movement where his face was as he curled his lips into a cruel sneer. ‘Don’t
you—’

‘Everyone knows,’ I said, knowing that ‘everyone’ was really a very small church, ‘how cut up your Martine was when your Kevin
died.’

‘Yeah, well, she liked him. He was a good brother, a sort.’

‘Oh, I heard she liked him a lot,’ I said. And then, further gambling on the little that Velma had told me, I added, ‘They’ve
been seen, Kevin and Martine. She liked him a whole big lot.’

‘What—’

‘Enough to make a younger brother jealous. I mean Kevin was a big, powerful man—’

The punch split my lip and, for a moment, I felt it might have broken my jaw too. But Johnny Dooley was a lot shorter than
me so by the time his fist had got to my face it had lost quite a bit of its power.

‘You fucking—’ I heard Hannah start then a slap and then a small, strangled cry that was obviously Hannah’s too.

‘Tell your brother to leave her alone!’ I breathed at Johnny.

‘Don’t you ever use your dirty wog’s mouth to speak about my Mart—’

‘Where was your Martine on the night your Kevin died, Johnny? And where were you?’ Questions that had been at the back of
my mind and wouldn’t go away. After all, if the Dooleys were so blameless, what was this about? Surely not just Vi Dooley’s
dislike of Pearl?

‘What?’

‘Kevin said it was a woman as attacked him. She have an argument with him, did she, Johnny?’ I felt his fist tighten round
my collar yet again. ‘Or did she kill him because you threatened to kill her if she didn’t? Did you watch her do it?’

‘What’s he on about, Johnny?’ I heard his brother, Dickie, say. ‘I thought you had words with your missus about her and Kev—’

‘Shut up!’

I could have kissed Dickie for more or less confirming what Velma had told me. ‘I’d be very careful if I were you, Johnny,’
I said.

‘Or what?’

‘Or maybe the police might be interested to know about Martine and your brother Kevin. They might want to ask you some more
questions about what you were doing on the night he died. Jealousy, especially between brothers, is a strong motive for murder.’

‘I never hurt my brother!’ Johnny Dooley gasped. ‘I was with loads of people down our Anderson. The coppers know!’

‘Oh, you don’t have to convince me,’ I said. ‘But you might have to convince the police if they should suddenly develop doubts,
if you know what I mean.’