A Lesser Evil (49 page)

She took a deep breath. ‘I can whisper a name,’ she blurted out. ‘The name of the man I think is behind it.’

Dan’s expression was almost laughable, the kind of look he might give old Mrs Jarvis if she told him she’d helped in the Great Train Robbery last month.

‘I know,’ she said, hanging her head. ‘You think I can’t possibly know anyone dubious, but in fact I was married to a scoundrel once, and that’s how I came to end up here.’

She had no intention of divulging her story to anyone, not even Dan whom she felt she could trust. ‘If I tell you what I know about this man, you must promise me that you won’t tell anyone you got it from me.’

He looked at her long and hard. ‘I promise,’ he said, then leaned forward in his chair, his expression boyishly eager.

‘His legitimate businesses are mainly in Soho,’ she said. ‘John Bolton used to manage one of his clubs. I saw him go into the Muckles’ several times, including that last card party.’

He gasped. ‘And you kept this to yourself, even when a child was killed?’

Nora reeled at the contempt in his voice. ‘Angela’s death didn’t appear to have anything to do with the card players. We all thought they’d gone home the night before Alfie killed her. It was only when I heard John was dead that I thought about this man again, and I’ve got good reason to be afraid of him myself, so I couldn’t speak out. But now Fifi and Yvette –’ She broke off as she began to cry.

‘Okay,’ Dan said. ‘Just tell me his name.’

‘Jack Trueman,’ she said in a low voice. ‘Please don’t tell the police you got it from me.’

Dan let out a long low whistling breath and rubbed his hands on his thighs. She hardly dared look at him for fear he would attack her verbally. ‘I’m sorry I’m such a coward,’ she whispered.

Dan got up from his chair and put one hand on her shoulder. ‘At least you finally told me. Thank you.’

Nora got up, afraid for Dan now because she could see steely determination in his eyes. ‘He’s a very dangerous man,’ she said, her voice shaking. ‘Be careful who you trust.’

She stood watching him as he went back upstairs, the muscles rippling in his bare young back. She was even more afraid then because she knew if Fifi was dead, Dan’s revenge would be terrible.

As Dan was putting a shirt and shoes on, he heard Nora go down the stairs and leave the house. He guessed she’d rushed off because she was afraid he would come back down and press her for more information. Frank was frying bacon on the ground floor, and the smell wafted up, making Dan feel just a little queasy. He opened the bedroom window wide, and sat on the bed for a minute to compose himself.

There was no guarantee Nora was right in thinking that this man Jack Trueman had killed Bolton, or snatched Fifi and Yvette. And without telling the police where he got the name, and with nothing to back it up with, they were likely to dismiss it as poppycock. So how could he take this information to them and make them act on it?

Johnny Milkins’ remark on Saturday night when he took Harry and Clara into the Rifleman came back to him then.

‘
I reckon one of the men that played cards with Alfie was a copper. It stands to reason. Alfie never got nicked for nothin’. He found out stuff that could only have come from the nick. And they ain’t really pushing to find your Fifi, are they?
’

Harry had dismissed Milkins’ claim as utter rubbish, to him all policemen were above reproach. Dan knew that wasn’t so, he was only too well aware that many of them took bribes from villains to look the other way, or at least give advance warning of raids. But he didn’t believe any policemen, bent or not, would mix socially with Alfie.

Yet if this man Trueman owned nightclubs, it was quite likely he’d have a copper or two in his pocket.

So if there was a bent copper at the nick, and he got to hear what Dan had to say, would he tip Trueman off?

One side of his brain said he was being paranoid, but the other said he couldn’t take any chances. A nervous villain with police on his tail might do anything. He’d certainly get rid of any evidence.

Dan got up from the bed and reached for his jacket. The first thing to do was to find out more about Jack Trueman.

Fifi woke to the sound of rain. She was warmer than usual and was about to close her eyes again when she realized the blanket over her felt thicker. She touched it, and found it was doubled over her, Yvette’s coat on top.

She moved her head to look round, but couldn’t see Yvette, and it was alarm that made her wake properly.

It was dusk. Another twenty minutes or so and it would be really dark, and she realized she must have been asleep for several hours. Yvette had been acting very strangely in the morning, sitting well away from Fifi, rocking herself and muttering in French, while running the belt from her skirt through her hands as if it were a rosary.

Fifi had gone to her and put her arms around her, and told her to stop talking and to come and lie down to conserve her strength.

Yvette had looked at her strangely. ‘I thought I was with Mama,’ she said.

They had lain down together, and the last thing Fifi remembered before she drifted off was Yvette taking hold of her hand. ‘Sleep,
ma petite
,’ she had said softly as a mother might to a child. ‘May the angels take care of you.’

Remembering those last words, it was all Fifi could do to make herself look round and up, for she instinctively knew what she was going to see and didn’t want to.

Yet she still screamed when she saw her.

Yvette was dangling in space from the top rail of the cage, her brown belt tight around her neck. Her eyes were bulging horribly and her mouth gaping open as if in a silent scream. The slight breeze was making her body sway.

Fifi knew that if she was to get up, she’d faint, so she lay down again, shut her eyes tightly and pulled the blanket over her head.

It seemed incredible that Yvette had found the strength to climb up there, and the steely nerve not only to do what she intended but control herself enough to be quiet and not wake her friend. Even the place she’d picked was out of Fifi’s line of vision from the mattress.

Yet even though Fifi wished she could be big-hearted enough to be glad Yvette’s troubles were over, her whole being wanted to shriek at her selfishness for leaving her alone to die. But she was too weak to rage and shriek; she had got to resign herself to lying here while a dead body swung overhead.

Last night Yvette had whispered many things in the darkness, about how when the war was over, she and the other girls in the brothel were dragged out into the street where their heads were shaved because it was thought they collaborated with the Germans.

She spoke of walking by night towards Calais, sleeping in fields and barns by day so she wouldn’t be seen, and rooting for something edible in fields and orchards which had been laid to waste by troops during the war. She was eventually rescued by a group of old nuns living in a ruined church. They nursed her back to health, sharing the meagre rations they had, and it was they who put her in touch with the refugee organization which helped her to get to England.

Fifi had thought she was telling her this to prove how long you could survive without food if you had the will to live, as she did then. But now it looked to Fifi as if she’d been trying to say she wished she’d just given up then and allowed herself to die.

Fifi felt compelled to look up again. The light was fading, ten more minutes and it would be pitch dark, and she felt she couldn’t leave her friend dangling in space. She would have to force herself to climb up and bring her body down.

Just a week before she’d climbed up there as nimbly as a monkey, but when she tried to do it now, she found all her strength was gone. There was no power in her grip on the bars, her legs and arms had lost their coordination. This was evidence that the wasting process of thirst and starvation was well underway.

But she continued, her breath rasping with the effort. When she did finally reach Yvette and put one arm out to test her weight, she realized she was just too weak to lift her enough to unbuckle the belt around her neck, and she’d got nothing to cut it with.

Just touching her friend, feeling the stiffness of the body which had kept her warm all these nights made her cry and shake so much she nearly fell down. Every bone in her body ached, her vision was blurred and she knew it was the beginning of the end.

Somehow she managed to get back down and crawl back to the mattress, but the effort it took was so great that she could hardly manage to pull the blanket over herself again.

She would never be able to get up again; this was it, the last part of the slow slither into death. She recalled telling Yvette how she’d read somewhere that yogis in India could last for weeks without food or water by slowing down their breathing and lying quite still. Yvette had only smiled, so perhaps she had already made up her mind what she was going to do.

Fifi’s mouth and throat were so dry she couldn’t think of anything else. She knew too that even if she did hear someone outside, she couldn’t shout. But it was the prospect of another night in here which terrified her most. She was sure that rats would descend on her, sensing she couldn’t fight them off.

Chapter Nineteen

Dan hesitated at the gate to Johnny Milkins’ scaffolding yard. The rain had turned the ground into a mud bath, and a half-loaded flat-bed truck stood in the centre of it.

It wasn’t the mud that deterred Dan, just the fear that if Johnny could give him the information he needed, he would feel compelled to act on it, alone and without police backup. Was he doing the right thing?

Johnny appeared in the doorway of his office at the back of the yard, his big face breaking into a welcoming grin as he saw Dan.

‘Come on in, the water’s lovely,’ he yelled out. ‘Or are you afraid of mucking up yer shiny shoes?’

Dan smiled despite his anxiety. The big man’s humour was always a tonic. He sidestepped the worst of the mud and made it to the office. ‘Just in time for a brew,’ Johnny said, slapping Dan on the back. ‘This pissing rain is buggering up my schedule. I had to send the men home. To tell the truth I was just thinking of going meself. Can’t do a sodding thing in weather like this.’

Dan took off his mackintosh and hung it on a hook on the wall. The office was really only a shed, with as much mud on the floor as outside, and piled high with papers and boxes of assorted scaffolding joints. The walls were covered in pin-up pictures, many of which had moustaches and beards added, and on the floor was what appeared to be a large quantity of ladies’ knitwear in a large open carton. Clearly something that had fallen off a lorry.

‘Been trying on women’s clothes?’ Dan joked as Johnny plugged in an electric kettle balanced on an old beer crate.

‘You caught me out,’ Johnny said. ‘Another few minutes I’d ’ave been dressed in a pink twinset. But don’t tell no one. It don’t fit me image.’

‘I won’t tell anyone if you promise you won’t tell anyone about what I’m going to ask you,’ Dan said.

‘You want me to bung you a few bob fer the rent?’ Johnny retorted. ‘Or are you trying to tell me I’m a bloody loud-mouth?’

‘Neither,’ Dan said. He sat down on a chair with a broken back. ‘It’s just I know you’ve got a mate down the nick, and I don’t want him to know about this.’

‘Something about Fifi?’ Johnny was suddenly serious. He liked Fifi, and Dan was pretty certain he’d do anything for her.

Dan nodded. ‘Well, in as much as I may have got a lead on who’s got her. But I’m scared to go to see Plod for the very reasons you brought up on Saturday.’

‘’Er dad didn’t believe me, did ’e?’ Johnny said and laughed, his huge stomach quivering.

‘No, but I do. I want to know the SP on Jack Trueman. Do you know him?’

Johnny sucked in his cheeks and looked anxious. ‘Only by his rep. He’s an evil bastard,’ he said. ‘Not the sort of geezer I’d shake ’ands wiv. Whatcha wanna know for? Someone told you ’e might ’ave Fifi?’

‘That’s about the size of it.’

Johnny shook his head slowly. It wasn’t an indication he didn’t believe it, more that he thought it unwise to take it any further. ‘Who told you that?’

‘I can’t tell you, but believe me it’s someone with their head stuck on straight and no reason to make it up.’

The kettle boiled and Johnny hurled the contents of a battered teapot out of the door, put a couple more spoons of fresh tea in it and filled it up, stirring it vigorously before answering.

‘Okay, I reckon it’s possible. John Bolton did work fer ’im some time back an’ all,’ he said, scratching his head thoughtfully. ‘But then every face on the manor ’as done summat fer ’im at some time, even me. That’s cos ’e gets is fingers in every pie. But I can’t get the connection wiv Fifi.’

‘Trueman was at the Muckles’,’ Dan said.

‘Well, that bastard Alfie would arse-lick Old Nick ’imself if ’e thought there was something to be gained by it,’ Johnny said, his genial face darkening. ‘But it’s fuckin’ ’ard trying to imagine Trueman getting cosy wiv a maggot like ’im.’

‘He has been there, several times, that’s definite. Fifi told the Plod she’d seen him there with Bolton, only she didn’t know the man’s name.’

‘Yeah?’ Johnny looked worried now. ‘When did she do that?’

‘The day before Bolton was chucked in the river.’

‘Shit,’ Johnny exclaimed.

‘So I want to know where Trueman hangs out,’ Dan said. ‘I can’t wait till the Plod get their finger out. Fifi might be dead by then.’

Johnny looked hard at Dan, as if weighing up whether he should help him or not. ‘Tell me, Johnny,’ Dan said simply. ‘I’m not asking you to get involved. If he captures me I won’t tell him where I got the info from, all I want is his address.’

Johnny poured tea into two mud-splattered cups, spooned some condensed milk and a couple of sugars into each and handed one to Dan.

‘’E’s probably the ’eaviest, deadliest bloke in London,’ he said, his voice subdued now, all humour gone. ‘’E’s got an army around ’im ’an all. Everyone is shit scared of ’im. You can’t take ’im on. It just ain’t possible.’