A Lesser Evil (36 page)

‘Common sense tells me it can’t have anything to do with Angela’s death.’ Frank shook his head sadly. ‘But what are the chances of two people living in the same street being killed within weeks of each other, without there being a connection?’

‘There was a connection. John played cards at the Muckles’,’ Fifi said a little sharply.

‘Yeah, but that’s not much of one, and he certainly weren’t there at the last game,’ Frank said thoughtfully. ‘Of course, he might have been able to finger the blokes that were there. Maybe they were afraid he’d blow the whistle on them?’

She couldn’t continue talking to Frank, her legs felt as if they were about to give way. ‘I’m really tired. I must go on up and see to the tea,’ she said.

‘You all right, love?’ Frank asked, taking a step closer. ‘You’re as white as a sheet.’

‘I just need to sit down and put my feet up,’ she said, trying to smile.

‘You make Dan go and get you fish and chips tonight,’ he said, patting her paternally on the shoulder. ‘And tuck yerself up in bed nice and early.’

Fifi felt even sicker then. Obviously Frank didn’t realize Dan had gone. She certainly couldn’t bring herself to tell him, not now when she felt so wobbly and tearful.

While Fifi was talking to Frank, Nora Diamond was in the bathroom rinsing out her stockings and she heard what was said. She quickly went into her living room and shut the door before Fifi came up the stairs because she couldn’t face her.

She hung her stockings over the back of a chair to dry, then poured herself a large gin and tonic. She had already taken off her office suit and her girdle, and put on her housecoat, just as she did every evening when she got home from work. Normally she only had a small gin and sat down to watch the news before making her dinner, but tonight she needed a large one to steady her nerves.

Nora had heard the argument between Dan and Fifi on Saturday. She had been cleaning her living room with the door open. When Dan went rushing down the stairs she looked out of the window and saw him hurrying up the street with a bag over his shoulder.

Nora heard Fifi crying several times over the weekend. Her heart kept telling her to go up there and offer some comfort, but her head told her it was none of her business and that if Fifi needed help or someone to talk to, she’d call on her.

This morning Nora had watched Fifi from the window as she went off to work. She had looked elegant in a checked blue jacket, tight skirt and high-heeled shoes, her shiny blonde hair bouncing on her shoulders. The sight brought back memories of when her own heart was broken, yet she’d still done her face and hair and marched out to meet the world head on.

Nora liked both Dan and Fifi, so she didn’t want to apportion blame to either of them. Whatever the causes of the breakup, it was a terrible shame. They’d been so good together.

But it wasn’t Fifi and Dan’s problems that bothered her tonight. It was John Bolton’s death.

Mrs Witherspoon was better than the BBC at broadcasting trouble and disaster. Nora had only gone into the shop for a quarter of tea on her way home, and was immediately regaled with the news.

She was deeply shocked and horrified, but she had to control her emotions and react in the way Mrs Witherspoon expected of snooty Miss Diamond, a woman who was as unyielding and cold as her namesake.

In twelve years of living in Dale Street, Nora had learned that when her neighbours were puzzled by someone new, in the absence of fact, they invented something which suited them. Yvette was rumoured to have been a member of the French Resistance, Stan was sometimes a Polish war hero, but more often an illegal immigrant. When Fifi first appeared it was said she was a model, though this rumour soon died as Fifi candidly told the truth about herself.

Nora had been amused when she discovered that she was supposed to be a doctor who had been struck off. She could only imagine this was because in her first week here she’d given first aid to a man who had been knocked down by a car. In fact her limited medical knowledge had been gained during the war, when she was a volunteer nurse’s aide in a hospital in Dorset.

She had chosen not to dispel this myth, however, because it proved to be a good smokescreen.

John Bolton was the only person who knew the truth about her. He had helped her when she had absolutely no one else to turn to, but by mutual agreement they had never revealed their connections with one another. Even Vera, his wife, knew nothing of it.

Nora sat back in her chair and closed her eyes. She never normally dwelt on the past. But John was dead, by tomorrow or the next day the newspapers would be digging up his lurid history, and she felt it only right to spend this evening recalling what he was like as a young man. He’d been compassionate and courageous then, a man whose looks, wit and intelligence could have taken him right to the top. Sadly he chose to become enmeshed in the criminal world, but even that hadn’t stopped her feeling gratitude and affection for him.

She was thirty-one when she met him. It was 1950, shortly after Reggie had run out on her. She had reverted to her maiden name of Amy Tuckett, because she wanted to forget she had ever been Mrs Reggie Soames.

A friend in Plymouth had put her in touch with the owner of the Starlight nightclub in Soho. He was looking for a mature and classy woman to act as his manageress, and her friend thought she’d be perfect for the job. John was the head barman at the club.

Despite everything Reggie had put her through, she was still a head-turner in those days. She was overweight now, and she dyed her hair to cover up the grey, but back then it was a rich glossy auburn, and she had a perfect figure. People used to say she looked like Ava Gardner, and she copied the film star’s famous hairstyle, swept back at one side with a cascade of waves down to her shoulders on the other.

Even in 1950, long before Soho became synonymous with vice and stripclubs, it still had a hardcore of criminal activity. But to Nora, who had spent almost all her life in Dorset, it was an exciting, sophisticated place and it was some weeks before she became aware of its seedier undertones. The club in Greek Street was elegantly appointed, with a clientele of aristocrats and very wealthy people. Her job was to greet them and make sure they had a good time, and to supervise twenty hostesses who kept the unattached men company for the evening.

Nora loved the job and took a pride in it. The hostesses got a fee for their entertainment services, and Nora got a proportion of each one. She went out of her way to know a little about all her girls, advised them on clothes, hair and makeup, and did her best to match the right girl with the right man. She was fair too, never singling out favourites who got all the work when the club was quiet, as she heard they did in other clubs. There was a rule that no hostess should go home with a customer, for the club could be closed down if it became a front for prostitution, and Nora was vigilant about this.

Released at last from all the anxiety and heartache Reggie had caused her, and earning around fifty pounds a week when as a secretary she would have been lucky to earn ten, her new life was good. Each night she met interesting, charming people, and she found a small, comfortable flat just a short walk from the club.

All the girls were half in love with John Bolton, the head barman. It wasn’t just that he was only twenty-five, lean and handsome, while most of the regulars in the club were portly and well past forty, but he had an irrepressible sense of humour and great charm.

Just his looks were enough, for he had magnetic dark blue eyes, black hair and smooth olive skin. On Nora’s first night he slipped her a double whisky with a wink, understanding she was nervous. It was he who told her which were the valuable punters and which ones were troublemakers. He also told her which girls needed encouragement, and the ones who were likely to give her grief.

For six months Nora was supremely happy. She stopped dwelling on her trust funds that had been plundered, the disgrace and shame Reggie had put her through. Sometimes she even felt strangely grateful, for she now had a far more fulfilling, glamorous life, and total independence.

But then one night three men came into the club. Big, tough-looking men with rough voices and faces that had clearly been moulded by fists, but wearing hand-tailored suits and gold watches. Such men were commonplace in Soho. They lived on the profits of vice, villainy or thuggery, but they were always big spenders, and usually behaved impeccably when they came to the Starlight.

These three men hadn’t come for an evening’s entertainment, however, they’d come to see her. They demanded to know where Reggie was, saying he owed them £15,000 for gambling debts, and they showed her an IOU signed by him.

Of course she told them that he’d robbed her and run out on her and that she had no idea where he was. But they said that as his wife, she would have to pay.

She just shrugged it off, told them it was nothing to do with her, and that she couldn’t possibly be held responsible. When they left quietly, she assumed they’d accepted what she’d said.

But the following night, she’d just got into her flat in the early hours of the morning when the doorbell rang. She opened it, thinking it was the woman who lived above her, and there were the men again.

They pushed her aside and barged in, one holding her back so she couldn’t phone the police. They turned the whole flat upside down, pulling out drawers, going through the wardrobe, even the bookcase, and when they found nothing but £20 in her purse, they threatened her.

One of the men held her arms behind her back, while the leader, whom they called ‘Earl’, ran a knife menacingly down her cheek.

‘You are a good-looking woman, and I expect you want to stay that way. So pay us and you can.’

She was terrified, instinctively knowing by the cruelty in his cold blue eyes that he’d enjoy scarring her for life. She cried and told them again and again that she had nothing but what she earned at the club. He said that for the time being he would settle for £50 a week, and he would be round to the club every Friday night to collect it. As the men left, taking the money from her purse with them, Earl turned at the door and smirked menacingly.

‘Don’t even think about going to the police or you’ll find yourself waking up in hospital with your face rearranged. And don’t try and run for it either. We’ll soon track you down and make you regret it.’

Nora guessed that they had found out about her wealthy background and didn’t believe that Reggie had taken everything. She realized, too, that if she’d taken an ordinary job in an office or shop, she would never have come to their notice. But by taking a position in a Soho nightclub, she might just as well have advertised herself in the national newspapers.

She didn’t dare go to the police for fear of the men carrying out their threat, but she couldn’t leave her flat and job either. For five weeks she paid them, each time pleading that she couldn’t continue to do so as that was all she earned.

She was sick with fear and anxiety, she couldn’t sleep or eat, and the few pounds she had tucked away for a rainy day were soon eaten up in living expenses.

But on the sixth Friday, Earl said that in future they wanted £100 every week, because at the rate she was paying it back she’d be on her old age pension before the debt was cleared.

She pleaded with him, insisted there was no possible way she could give him that much. But Earl just laughed at her.

‘You’re sitting on a gold mine,’ he said with a sneer. ‘You might be knocking on a bit, but there’s blokes who’d pay thirty or forty quid to fuck you. So do it and stop snivelling. Next week we want a ton.’

John came over to her after they’d left the club. ‘What’s going on, darlin’?’ he asked.

‘Nothing,’ she said, trying to smile, but she was so scared she was shaking.

‘I know that crew,’ he said, his usual wide grin disappearing. ‘What have they got on you?’

She fobbed him off with a quip about one of them asking her for a date and getting nasty when she refused, but John wasn’t easy to fool, and she felt him looking speculatively at her whenever she was sharp with one of the girls or a customer.

The following Friday night she was a bag of nerves. She didn’t even have £50 to give them as she’d had to pay a month’s rent.

They came in at nine, before the club got busy, went straight over to a table on the far side of the bar and beckoned to her. She was so scared of Earl that she could hardly manage to tell him that all she had for him was £40.

‘You ain’t listened to a word I said,’ Earl said contemptuously. ‘I don’t like that. So get hustling, doll! You owe me and I’ll be back to get it.’

She could barely walk out to the staff restroom, she was trembling so badly, and once in there she was violently sick. A couple of her girls came in and saw her, but she managed to tell them she must have got food poisoning.

She was still hanging over the toilet bowl when she heard John come up behind her.

‘I never saw food poisoning come on just through talking to a rat,’ he said, but he wasn’t mocking her, his tone was kindly and anxious.

She had to tell him all about it, and he got a wet cloth and wiped her face, then hugged her and let her cry on his shoulder.

‘I wish I could tell you they won’t carry out their threat,’ he said in a low voice. ‘But I’m afraid they will. You see, it’s not them your old man owed the money to, it’s their boss. And they’re as afraid of him as you are of them, so they have to get a result.’

‘What can I do then?’ she cried, realizing that John must know who their boss was. ‘I can’t get the money, I can’t go to the police, and they’ll track me down wherever I go! I can’t live in fear like this.’

‘I’ll hide you,’ he said. ‘You’ll have to leave the job and your flat. There’s no way I can protect you while you’re still around here. Now, do exactly as I tell you and you’ll be okay.’

John’s plan was that she had to go back into the club and act as if everything was normal. He said he expected they’d posted a lookout to make sure she didn’t run for it. Meanwhile he’d work out a plan and tip her the wink when it was time to go.