She Died Young (20 page)

chapter
27

B
LACKSTONE HAD INVITED SONIA
to dinner at a discreet little place off Dover Street. Mayfair was a part of London he disliked. The wealth behind its stony façades sucked the air out of the streets.

He was careful to arrive early and was happy to wait, fortified by a double whisky. The softly lit restaurant, with its pink damask tablecloths and pink shaded table lamps, was rather too much like a boudoir for his taste, but perhaps women liked that. Sonia, of course, was not just ‘women’. She liked anywhere expensive, however, and this restaurant certainly wasn’t cheap.

He had no special plan. To question Sonia directly would be useless. Discretion was her watchword. They might begin with an exchange of views on Suez and Hungary, for Sonia had claims to education, and presented herself not simply as a woman of the world, but as a woman in the world, a serious person. Perhaps in a different century she would have shone as a salon hostess, or become the mistress of kings and archdukes with all their wealth and influence at her disposal. Yet those women, as far as Blackstone could remember, had traded on their erotic appeal, had risen from bed to bed. Sonia, by contrast, was a fixer, whose own sexual tastes and life remained a mystery.

She was, of course, or had been, married to Vince Mallory. She’d told Blackstone she’d met the boxing promoter when he was in Stockholm negotiating a big fight. That, and the fact that she had grown up in Malmö, was all Blackstone knew. The couple lived apart. There were no children, but Sonia was always clear she remained on good terms with her husband. Mallory was said to have a weakness for the boxers he steered to success, but that might be malicious rumour put about by his enemies.

What fascinated him about Sonia was the way she rose above the usual human desires. She had, or seemed to have, no vices, no obsessions, no weaknesses that Blackstone could see. He wasn’t even sure how much she cared about money. Of course she liked it, who wouldn’t, but it wasn’t, he believed, straightforward greed that drove her. What did? He didn’t know. Until Valerie’s death had stirred his curiosity he hadn’t especially cared to know either. She provided a service of which he’d availed himself from time to time and was an occasional source of useful information. Now, though, the memory of the girl he’d so briefly known lying glassily in the mortuary was causing him to ask questions, to wonder, to speculate as to what Sonia’s place in the scheme of things might really be.

He stood up as Sonia crossed the room behind the waiter, who was slightly over-acting his role as he showed madam to her table with pantomimed obsequiousness. It was almost as if he knew what she was, knew that her classy sophistication was as much a mask as his exaggerated politesse.

Blackstone had made an effort to smarten himself up. He’d shaved, his tie and shirt were clean and his suit freshly pressed. He still didn’t look good enough for her in her shellacked perfection; black this evening, as discreet as ever, the perfect suit, the perfect court shoes, with the perfect contrast of the perfect pale mink stole and everything topped by the perfect gamine cap of dark hair. Did she really do so well out of her business? She was only an upmarket madam, after all. But as she approached their table, walking with a slightly hesitant sideways movement, he was flattered she’d taken so much trouble.

They exchanged pleasantries; Hungary and Suez were indeed briefly mentioned. Then Sonia leaned forward and said, ‘I can talk to you as an old friend, can’t I, Gerry? If I ever want to get something into the papers I know who to come to. But I also know you can be discreet when it suits you.’

‘I’m a journalist. I’m the soul of discretion, and most of all when printing a story might get me into trouble. Having said that, my job is to get a story.’

‘Yes, but you said yourself, nine out of ten stories never get printed at all.’

‘That could be – but what are you getting at?’

‘Sometimes things – stories – need time to develop, to come to fruition.’

This was bait of some kind and he wondered what the trap was.

‘This thing with the girl,’ she went on, ‘that’s not going to be splashed all over the papers, is it?’

Blackstone watched her. She seemed calm enough. ‘It hasn’t aroused much interest so far,’ he said cautiously. ‘Would that worry you – if it did?’

‘No … no … Mallory wouldn’t be too pleased.’ She always referred to her husband by his last name. Was it to distance herself from him? ‘You understand. The Ambassadors is very chic just now, you know, and any kind of scandal could be damaging. Not that Mallory had anything to do with it, of course.’

If that was the case, why say it? wondered Blackstone, but Sonia continued quickly: ‘Some sordid little story about a back-street hotel … you can play it down, can’t you?’

‘I’ll do my best.’

‘I’m expanding the business too, making some changes.’ She smiled as she spoke, a long-lipped smile; she looked sad when she smiled. ‘I’m going to host parties, special parties – you know, for adventurous couples and single people too. Things are going to change anyway, aren’t they? Isn’t there some talk of a change in the law?’

‘You mean the Wolfenden Committee?’

‘Is that what it’s called?’

‘The rumour is they’re going to clear women off the streets and let up on poofs, but not poofs in
pissoirs
.’

‘Charming. So there’ll be competition from all the girls who’ll be renting a room with a telephone and trying to turn themselves into call girls. Little tarts.’ She frowned and her long lips twisted. ‘I could wring their little necks.’

Her venom startled him. It wasn’t like Sonia to display spite, or indeed any emotion, but he supposed she feared the loss of lucrative business.

‘You wouldn’t be in charge any more,’ he ventured.

The spasm had passed. She was glassy cool again. ‘I’ve never been …
in charge
as you put it.’

‘Could you start a club?’

His companion shook her head. ‘Mallory owns clubs. As you know. I don’t want to get involved in any of that. But times are changing. Britain is becoming a little bit more unbuttoned, don’t you think?’

The waiter was hovering with his order pad and Sonia picked up the menu.

‘Hors d’oeuvres, please, and grilled sole,’ she said without hesitation.

Blackstone ordered lobster bisque and steak as the easy way out and thought how funny it was to be ordering steak, and how everyone had forgotten about rationing after a mere two years and yet how there still seemed something a little unreal about this new shiny society of television and teddy boys and teenagers and astonishingly full employment. And all in the middle of another shoddy little war. Yes, Britain was loosening up a little. But: ‘Maybe,’ he said; and then: ‘So you want me to try to shut down the Argyle Street story.’

‘I just wondered, Gerry,’ and she created a little diversion by extracting her cigarette case from her bag, then putting a cigarette to her lips, leaning forward so that he could light it. ‘I just wondered whether it’s a good idea to get too excited about … you know – that poor girl.’ She blew out a plume of smoke, her gaze off in the corner. ‘Don’t you think that kind of scandal … if it became one … would be sort of turning the clock back? You know, those sordid
News of the World
stories. We don’t want to go back to that sort of thing, do we? Turning sex into a dirty little hole-in-the-corner secret?’

Was she warning him off? Did she have the
power
to warn him off? The story definitely bothered her and he’d have to find out why; but perhaps not by asking overt questions.

‘Sex is always good for a column or two, but Bodkin Adams is the big story now,’ he said soothingly. ‘That and the international scene, of course.’ It was he who’d got Valerie’s story into NIBs in the first place in the vague hope it would lead to more information. Now he regretted it. The idea of her wasted life all over the front pages upset him. Camenzuli’s arrest had already reached an inside page and there was always the possibility that it would blow up into a sleazy scandal. Sonia’s reasons for wanting it buried were no doubt very different from his and he would – eventually – discover what they were.

The first course arrived. The waiter bent solicitously over Sonia as he arranged her plate.

Blackstone took a spoonful of soup. It tasted good: salty, creamy lobster flavour, but with a hint of sharpness.

He made a sideways move. ‘Before we leave the subject, there is just one more thing about poor Valerie. I wondered why you were under the impression she knew Sonny Marsden.’

Sonia poked at the clusters of salad on her plate. ‘Call this hors d’oeuvres? Not half what you’d get in Sweden.’ Disdainfully, she lifted a forkful of Russian salad and chewed it without enthusiasm. ‘Did I say that?’ she said vaguely. ‘Oh it must have been just something I heard. And girls like her, well, you know … a lot of the girls like the West Indians.’

‘I’m not sure what you mean when you say girls like her.’ He spoke stiffly.

She looked at him curiously. ‘I’m sorry if I misled you.’

‘The question is, Sonia dear,
why
you misled me.’

‘Gerry! Don’t be angry. It was just a possibility, that’s all.’

He decided not to pursue it – for the moment. He spooned up his soup. When it was finished he wiped his mouth and smiled. He reached for his cigarettes. That was enough about Valerie for now. He’d learn nothing more from Sonia. ‘I heard a rumour myself about a client of yours,’ he said.

‘Oh?’

‘I know. You’re discretion personified. I was just rather amused, though, that you have eminent Oxford professors crossing your threshold.’

From the way her eyes flickered – so slightly – he knew he’d hit the mark.

But: ‘I don’t know where you can have heard that.’ She seemed almost bored.

Something clicked. Of course. He couldn’t believe he’d never thought of it before. If Sonia had visitors seeking her services who were eminent in one way or another, then there would be ample opportunities for her to blackmail them.

Blackmail! Why had he never thought of that?

‘Special Branch are interested in him.’

She raised her eyebrows. Otherwise her mask was perfection. But his words had hit home. She was thinking about it. He’d leave it to sink to the bottom of her mind and see what happened.

‘And you’re interested in that?’

‘I could be,’ he said.

‘You know I never discuss clients.’

‘Of course not, Sonia,’ he replied smoothly. ‘And I’m not asking you to. But I suppose you have quite a few distinguished visitors and not necessarily of the kind one might expect.’

‘You’re fishing, Gerry.’ Momentarily, she was almost flirtatious.

‘No, darling, I’m just interested in you. Everything about you. You’re such a mysterious woman, you know that, don’t you?’

She looked away and for a moment her mouth quivered slightly. He almost thought she was close to tears, but that would be unheard of and perhaps he’d been mistaken, for when she looked at him again there was no hint of emotion. ‘There’s nothing much to know about me, Gerry, and it’s kind of you to take an interest, but I’m not in the least interesting. Or mysterious.’

The waiter brought the main course. Sonia picked delicately at her fish, lifting the flesh off its bones. ‘But you know, people are so amazingly stupid, just begging to be exploited. Masochists. Not that I exploit them any more than a dominatrix exploits the men she thrashes. She’s just giving them what they want. And that’s what I do too.’

He found her contempt rather chilling and had nothing to say in return. They ate in silence. Only when she had finished – but her plate was left half full – did she speak again. She looked at him solemnly, almost tragically. ‘You know,’ she said, ‘if I ever …’

‘Ever?’ He smoked, watched and waited.

She seemed to be lost in thought. But all she said was: ‘Oh … nothing.’ Then she changed her mind. ‘As a matter of fact, Gerry, I did a rather silly thing the other day. I left a message for a client. I rang his flat. Some woman answered. His secretary, she said. I left my name. That was stupid of me, wasn’t it? I don’t know what possessed me. But I don’t suppose it matters, really.’

Blackstone wondered why she’d mentioned it and if it was a tiny chink in the armour. He smoked and waited for her to say more.

After a contemplative pause as they looked at the menu and chose dessert, she began again: ‘If I ever needed a lawyer, Gerry, is there someone – I mean who would you recommend?’

‘A lawyer, Sonia? What have you been up to?’

She smiled. ‘Absolutely nothing, darling. It’s purely hypothetical.’

‘I’m sure your husband knows the best lawyers going.’

‘No, that wouldn’t …’

Suppose Sonia
did
dabble in blackmail. The threat of getting a story into the papers would be enough to make a public figure cough up. Perhaps that was the reason for Quinault’s visit to her flat. To pass on to her some of the money McGovern had seen at the house. But even a blackmailer might face threats in return.

part two