A Lesser Evil (40 page)

‘Why have you brought her here?’ she asked more boldly than she felt. ‘Are you going to bring in everyone from Dale Street? If you do, you might need a bigger cage.’

She was disadvantaged in every way – they were in shadow, whereas she was caught full on in the beam of the torch, and she knew she must look awful with her face blotchy from crying, and her skirt and blouse all creased up. Under the circumstances her appearance wasn’t going to make a scrap of difference to how they treated her, but if she couldn’t look good, she was at least going to have a stab at making herself memorable.

‘Don’t try and be funny,’ Del said.

‘Will you think I’m trying to be funny if I ask for a bucket to pee in?’ she said with a wide, false smile.

‘I’ll get you one,’ he said, turning away and walking towards the door.

Fifi was burning to examine Yvette, but being left alone with Martin was a golden opportunity to try to work on him.

Moving over to the bars, she put her hands through them. ‘What did you bring me to eat?’ she asked. ‘I’m starving.’

He came right up to the bars. ‘Just a pork pie and a cake,’ he said with a rueful half-smile. ‘It was all we could get.’

Fifi waited until she’d got the bag in her hand. ‘Are you a child molester too?’ she asked, looking hard at him. She knew she had no proof that this was what his boss was, for the conclusions she’d come to were only guesswork. But she had to say something to rattle a response from him.

He certainly didn’t look or act like a would-be gangster. His light brown hair was cut into the fashionable college-boy style, and he was wearing what appeared to be a handknitted jumper under his donkey jacket. He might be brawny but she didn’t think he was a cruel man; his eyes looked far too gentle.

‘No, I’m bloody not,’ he retorted, looking startled and puzzled by such a question.

‘So why are you helping men who are?’ she asked.

‘Whatcha mean?’ he asked, and the way the torch swayed in his hand suggested he was unnerved by her question.

Fifi thought it
was
possible he knew nothing of the murder in Dale Street if he didn’t read newspapers or live in Kennington; none of the girls in the office had said anything about it. He could have been ordered to do this job without knowing what lay behind it.

‘A few weeks ago a seven-year-old girl was raped and killed in Dale Street. Both Yvette and I live there, it was me who found the little girl. So whoever ordered you to bring us here is up to their neck in it, or they wouldn’t want a couple of innocent women out the way. So you can’t blame me for thinking you must be a nonce, if you work for one.’

She didn’t know the word ‘nonce’ until Angela died. But since then she had heard people spit it out with utter disgust, and she knew the average man would want to tear apart, limb from limb, anyone with a leaning that way.

Martin looked at her in horror, his eyes wide and panicked. ‘You’ve got it all wrong,’ he said, gulping so hard his Adam’s apple went up and down like a yo-yo.

The barn door opened and Del came back in.

‘I haven’t got it wrong, but I think you have,’ Fifi said quietly but firmly. ‘Think on it. Would your mother or your girlfriend be proud of you if they knew you worked for beasts that screw children, then kill them?’

Del was too far away to hear what she had said, but as he came into the arc of light he was scowling. ‘What’s she going on about now?’ he asked Martin.

‘I was just asking him how he came to have such a dirty job,’ Fifi said airily. ‘But I suppose if you’re up to your neck in shit all the time, eventually you get to like the smell of it?’

‘Is that supposed to be funny?’ Del asked, and opening the cage door again, put a bucket in.

‘Do you see me laughing?’ Fifi replied and she asked Martin to shine the torch on Yvette while she knelt down beside her to examine her. To Fifi’s relief, Yvette appeared to be in a deep sleep rather than unconscious from a blow, and the blood on her face was only from a scratch, not a real wound. ‘Was a timid little dressmaker too much for you to handle? Is that why you’ve drugged her?’ she asked indignantly, glowering at the two men.

‘She’ll sleep it off,’ Del replied nonchalantly. ‘Come on, mate, we’re off,’ he said to Martin.

Fifi sensed Martin was the weak link in this duo, so she looked straight at him. ‘You ought to sleep on what you’re doing,’ she said warningly. ‘Be a gangster if you like, but don’t be the muscle for a murdering child molester.’

‘What are you on about?’ Del asked scornfully.

Fifi got to her feet and put her hands on her hips, staring impudently at the two men. She felt Del was a man who prided himself on being a hard bastard, she doubted he had a conscience. But she knew from things Dan had said that even the most cold-hearted of thugs didn’t approve of child molesters.

‘The man you work for is an animal that screws children and then kills them,’ she said. ‘If you do his dirty work for him, then you’re as bad as he is.’

‘You’re round the bend,’ Del exclaimed. He looked at Martin. ‘She tell you that too?’

Martin nodded grimly, moving from foot to foot as if very uncomfortable.

‘The boss said she were a lying bitch.’ Del gave a humourless laugh. ‘He could have told us she were mad as well!’

‘I’m not mad, or a liar,’ Fifi said evenly. ‘I’m sane enough to see you two are being made a right pair of patsies. Can’t you read? Angela Muckle’s murder was in all the papers. I’m a witness because I found her. But don’t take my word for it, check it out.’

‘Listen, darlin’,’ Del said contemptuously, moving nearer to the bars. ‘Shut yer gob if you know what’s good for you.’

It was impossible to tell whether he knew the truth or not, as his face gave nothing away. But Fifi could see by his gorilla-like stance that he wanted to hit her; his hands were clenching into fists, and she was glad the cage bars were between them.

‘Okay, but don’t say you weren’t warned,’ she shrugged. ‘I just hope you’re being well paid, because you’ll have to leave the country if you kill us. You see, we aren’t like John Bolton, a villain no one cares about. You’ll have every policeman in England on your tail, and you won’t have any mates left once they find out you keep company with nonces.’

Del turned away, catching Martin by the arm. ‘That’s it, we’re off,’ he said. ‘Fuckin’ mad bitch.’

As they reached the barn door, Martin looked back over his shoulder. She couldn’t see his face clearly enough to know whether she’d worried him or not, but the slight hesitation suggested she had.

The light went off, the door shut with a dull metallic thud, and she could hear the chain which secured it being clanked as they put the padlock on. Their car headlights beamed through the cracks around the door for a few seconds, then Fifi heard it roar away.

Her bravado vanished as soon as she was enveloped in darkness again. She sat down and shuffled on her bottom, her hands groping out in front of her for Yvette, and tears ran down her cheeks unchecked.

Dan had pointed out men like Del and Martin in the Rifleman, jokingly calling them ‘London’s wartime byproducts’. He said that as boys of nine or ten during the war, they often weren’t evacuated, and with absent fathers and often uncaring mothers they rarely went to school, spending their time marauding around London in gangs instead. These gangs became a substitute for a family as they looted bombed shops and houses or broke into homes while the owners were in the shelters. Their only code was ‘Never grass, and stand by your mates’.

A couple of years of National Service honed their bullyboy tendencies still further. On their demob, with no education or qualifications, they chose a criminal life rather than manual labour. As Dan had pointed out, the fifties were a boom time for villains. The ones with sharp minds went into acquiring land and building shoddy new estates. Others opened clubs and pubs, or supplied hard-to-get luxuries. But for every entrepreneur, dozens of foot soldiers were needed to put the frighteners on, supply muscle and collect debts. The men at the top didn’t dirty their hands.

Martin and Del were clearly two of those foot soldiers, and as such Fifi couldn’t hold out much hope that Martin would help her. When it came to a showdown, men like him followed the pack.

As Fifi’s eyes grew accustomed to the gloom, she finally saw the small mound that was Yvette and crawled over to her.

‘Yvette!’ she called out as she shook her, but the only sound in response was a little snore. Fifi realized she must get her on to the mattress so they could share the one blanket, for Yvette’s skin felt cold and by morning she would be like a block of ice.

She found the mattress, hauled it over and rolled Yvette on to it. Then, lying down beside her, she pulled the blanket over them both.

‘Fifi! Ees it really you?’

Fifi half opened her eyes at the familiar French accent. ‘Yes, it’s me, but I wish it wasn’t,’ she said sleepily.

She saw it was dawn, a weak grey light coming through the narrow windows at the top of the barn.

‘But ’ow did we get here together?’ Yvette asked. ‘Did you rescue me from ze men? Why are we in a cage?’

Fifi might only have been here less than twenty-four hours, but it seemed like an eternity, and Yvette’s accent, which Dan loved to mimic, was such a strong reminder of him and home. ‘Can’t we sleep a little longer?’ she asked. ‘Then we talk.’

‘
Non
, we must talk now,’ Yvette said. ‘I do not understand.’

‘Well, get back in here with me, it’s freezing,’ Fifi said.

Once Yvette was under the blanket with her again, cuddled up tightly to keep warm, Fifi explained how she got here, and how Yvette was brought later in the evening.

‘What day is it?’ Yvette asked.

‘Wednesday,’ Fifi replied. ‘Now, tell me how they got you.’

‘The man came on Monday evening,’ Yvette said, her dark eyes very frightened. ‘I was in the hall going to my kitchen when ze knock came on ze front door. If I had been sewing I would have looked out ze window first. But I opened ze door, and the man said he was a policeman and he wanted to take me to the police station. I say I have to get my bag and my coat first. I believe him; he looked like a policeman, wizout the uniform.’

She went on to say it was only as she got outside in the dark that she became nervous, for the car wasn’t a police one. But the man caught hold of her hand and wouldn’t let her go. When she struggled he put his arms around her and pushed her into the back of the car, then drove off.

‘It was a long way,’ she said. ‘I think we go south because we didn’t go over ze Thames. They take me to a house; it was small and very dirty. I cry and scream and the man hit me.’

‘What did the man look like?’ Fifi asked.

‘He was big, more than six feet, with dark hair; ze other man was smaller, he ’ave a funny mouth.’ She held up the side of her lip to show her teeth. ‘Like this,’ she said.

‘They weren’t the men who brought you here,’ Fifi said thoughtfully. ‘So did you hear them talking? Did they say why they wanted you?’

‘They think I ’ave gone to the police and they ask what I tell them,’ she said. ‘I keep saying I never go to police, only answered questions when Angela die. But they do not believe me. All night they keep on. I ’ave to sit on a hard chair. I want to go to sleep, but they don’t let me. So many questions, all the time.’

‘What sort of questions?’

‘About what I see. I tell them I was not there the day Angela die. They ask if I know John Bolton. If I talk to him. I say yes I talk to him if I see him in the street, but not about Angela. I talk to nobody about this.’

‘Did you know John was found dead in the river?’

Yvette inhaled sharply, and stiffened beside Fifi. ‘No! This cannot be!’

‘He was,’ Fifi said. ‘I was told on Monday when I got home from work. It frightened me because I sensed it had something to do with Angela. You were right in telling me I shouldn’t have gone to the police because I recognized that man in the red Jaguar as having been with John.’

Yvette didn’t answer, and all at once Fifi understood why she had been captured.

‘You had to tell them it was me who went to the police? Didn’t you?’

‘
Oui
,’ Yvette said in a sad little whisper. ‘They say they will cut off my fingers if I don’t tell them. Wizout my fingers I cannot sew. I think you ’ave Dan to look after you, you will be safe.’

While Fifi still didn’t know how the men discovered that someone in Dale Street had been to the police, they obviously assumed it was Yvette because she lived right next door to the Muckles.

Fifi couldn’t feel angry that Yvette had told on her. She knew she’d sing like a canary herself if someone was threatening to cut her fingers off. All she felt was deep, deep sorrow that through her, Yvette would have to be killed too.

‘You are angry wiz me,’ Yvette whispered brokenly.

‘No I’m not,’ Fifi said, putting her arm around the older woman. ‘It’s you who should be angry with me, you warned me to mind my own business enough times. This is my fault.’

‘It will be okay,’ Yvette said, kissing Fifi’s forehead comfortingly. ‘Your Dan, he will get ’elp for us.’

Fifi had to admit then that Dan had walked out, and that she hadn’t told him about the man in the Jaguar anyway. ‘It might be days before anyone misses us,’ she finished up. She almost added that
they might be dead by then
, but she managed to stop herself in time.

‘We mustn’t panic,’ Fifi said after a couple of minutes’ silence. ‘I haven’t given up on Martin yet. He might help us.’

The day passed very slowly. The sun came out around eleven in the morning, slanting down through the narrow windows and making them feel warm enough to divide the pork pie in two and eat it. They decided to leave the cake, a large currant bun, until dusk, just in case the men didn’t come back with more food. They dozed on the mattress, Fifi climbed the bars again and again for some exercise, and they talked a little, but although Yvette seemed to appreciate Fifi telling her about her childhood and her friends back in Bristol she was mostly silent, perhaps dwelling on what their end might be.