Dangerous (35 page)

When the club door opened, Clara nearly bolted for it in panic.

‘Wait,’ said Marcus, taking hold of her arm.

Another shot fired. Another. Then another.

‘He’ll have to reload now. Let’s go,’ he snapped, and shoved her ahead of him toward the club door.

It was the longest few steps Clara had ever taken. At any moment she expected to feel the numbing impact of a shot in her back, but none came. She was in the door, Marcus running behind her, and then it was slamming shut and the sniper had had time to reload, because two shots crashed into the closed door as they backed away from it.

‘Jesus!’ she cried out in terror, clinging on to Marcus.

‘It’s OK, it’s over,’ he said, and his face looked bleached, almost grey; she’d never seen him looking so grim.

Over? Of course it wasn’t.

Clara wiped a hand over her eyes.

Someone had just tried to put a bullet in her. She didn’t know who’d fired the gun, but she certainly knew who’d ordered it.

88

‘You want to go
where
?’ asked Marcus the day after the shooting. He’d been out for most of the day, not even telling her where or what he’d been up to.

‘David Bennett’s studio, I want to talk to him.’ Clara’s voice was edged with irritation. She’d been about to go out to hail a taxi, but her legs had turned to jelly at the thought of stepping out of the door. Now she was getting the third degree.

‘Someone tried to kill you yesterday,’ Marcus reminded her.

‘I know that!’ she snapped. She was trying not to think about it. Trying to carry on as normal. Only nothing felt normal any more. She was relieved that Marcus hadn’t come near her last night; on top of all that had happened, it would have been one shock to the system too many. Irritatingly, though, while there was relief, there was also this niggling feeling of
so where the hell was he? With sodding Paulette?

‘And you were going to walk out the door alone?’

‘I’ll go mad, cooped up in here.’ Actually, she didn’t think she
could
have gone out alone. She felt limp with fear at the thought, and she hated that.

‘Better cooped up than dead,’ said Marcus.

‘So come with me. Bring the pit bulls too.’ Clara indicated the two burly men who were propping up the bar while their boss and his wife were having this conversation. ‘Let’s go mob-handed, why not?’

‘Is this important?’ asked Marcus.

Clara thought of Sal, eviscerated. Poor bloody Sal, selling her body for profit and winding up dead for her trouble. All for the entertainment of men who would snigger and wank over the images of her in those stark black-and-white shots.

For a moment Clara felt too choked to speak. Instead, she pulled a couple of the remaining photos out of her bag and showed them to him. ‘That girl there – she used to work for me. She’s dead now, murdered. So yeah, it is important.’

Marcus stared at the prints. Then he handed them back to her. ‘OK. Let’s go.’

‘Oh Christ, not you,’ said David when Clara stepped into his studio’s tiny reception area.

He was sitting at the desk, matching up negs to proof prints. There was a stack of wedding albums on one side of the desk, a pile of 8 x 6 pictures on the other. He looked impatient, annoyed.

Probably misses Bernie’s input on the grunt work
, thought Clara.
Well, good
.

Marcus followed her in. The pit bulls stationed themselves outside the studio door.

‘Yeah, me again. Wanted to ask you something,’ said Clara.

‘What, for Chrissakes? Can’t it wait? I’m up to my arse here . . . ’ The phone started ringing and he snatched it up. ‘David Bennett Studios, can I help you?’ he asked in a completely different voice. He was silent, listening. Then he said. ‘You see, I did explain this to the bride. To your daughter, yes. It’s what’s known as anomalous reflectance. That is, the bridesmaid’s dress was lilac, but it’s come out pale blue. It’s caused by the chemicals in the printing reacting to certain dyes in the dress.’

David rolled his eyes and rubbed at his brow as the person at the other end of the phone spoke again.

‘We tried that, adjusting the colour balance, but the
other
bridesmaid’s dress is pink, and adding extra cyan made that too dark and also gave a pink cast to the bride’s white dress, so it was no good. It
does
happen, I assure—’

Marcus snatched the phone out of David’s hand and threw it back onto the cradle.

‘What did you do that for? That was the bride’s mother, now she’s going to think I put the phone down on her. Can’t this wait?’

‘No, it can’t,’ said Clara. ‘Those pictures of Sal . . . ’

‘Not this again. The police have asked me about this. Now you. I don’t know a fucking thing. I took some photos, I was paid for them. That’s all.’

Marcus stood there, looking down at David. ‘And who is this anyway?’ David demanded. ‘What’s with the goons outside? What—’

Marcus leaned over and grabbed the front of David’s collarless granddad shirt. He pulled David over the desk. Some of the albums thunked onto the floor. Marcus stared into David’s startled eyes from inches away.

‘I’m Marcus Redmayne,’ he said. ‘That’s who the fuck I am. Those are my goons outside the door. This is Clara Redmayne, my old lady. So you keep a civil tongue in your head when you speak to her. Got it?’

‘All right, keep your hair on!’ David blustered, struggling against Marcus’s grip.

Marcus shoved David back down into his chair. He sat there, winded, eyes wide, looking from Marcus to Clara and back again. Marcus stepped back, waved a hand to Clara, indicating that the floor was hers.

Clara didn’t know whether to be impressed or annoyed.

‘Those pictures,’ she said, looking down at David like he was shit on her shoe. ‘I want to know details of who you sold them to. Did someone actually commission the damned things to start with?’

‘I’ve said all this. The police gave me a caution over it. People have asked me before about taking stuff like that. I turned them down. But when I needed the cash to get started with this business . . . ’

‘Yeah, and then you forgot your high-minded scruples, I know. When did you take them?’

‘Last summer. Around June.’

Just a few months before Sal was killed
, thought Clara.

‘You got off lightly, didn’t you,’ she said. ‘People can get banged up for producing pornography, David. And when it involves kids, the cons inside can get rough.’

Clara heard Marcus sigh heavily behind her. She ignored him.

‘All right, all bloody right!’ David burst out. ‘Jesus, like any of it matters any more anyway! A cellar club owner paid me to take them and he said I could sell them on afterwards, reprint them anytime I wanted because it made him look good.’

‘How the hell could it make him look good?’ asked Clara.

‘Made him look fearsome, see? Ferocious. The bastard’s built like a bull.’

‘I don’t get it,’ she said.

‘Yasta Frate set me up in business here. He’s the one who paid for the sessions. Drafted in the girls and the boys too.’

‘The
children
, you mean.’

‘Them, yeah.’

‘Yasta Frate,’ said Clara. ‘Haven’t I heard that name before? Who is he?’

‘He’s the guy in the photos. The West Indian.’

Something went
click
in Clara’s brain as she remembered what Jan had told her about Yasta Frate. He was Jan’s landlord. And he had been Sal’s, too.

89

When they stepped out of the studio, it was to find one of Marcus’s heavies yanking a piece of paper off a telephone pole.

‘What’s that?’ asked Marcus.

The heavy said nothing, just handed it to him. Marcus unscrewed the paper and Clara peeped over his shoulder and went white.
Clara Redmayne’s a copper’s nark
, it shouted. Marcus put it in his pocket.

‘For fuck’s sake,’ said Clara.

‘Oh, come on. You can’t say you’re surprised.
I’m
not,’ he snapped, and they went over to the car.

Clara felt exposed now, out on the street. She couldn’t forget the noise those bullets had made,
thunking
into Marcus’s car. The damage they’d caused to the metal. They could easily have hit her. And now things tied onto lamp posts; she was looking at everyone who walked past thinking
Who put that up there?
And then a woman passed by, gave her a sneering look, spat at her feet and walked straight on.

‘Jesus!’ Clara sprang back and collided with Marcus. Then she turned and started after the woman.

‘Hold on, Tiger,’ he said, grabbing her arm and hustling her into the back of the motor while his two pit bulls got in the front.

‘Have you heard of this bloke? This Yasta Frate?’ Clara asked Marcus as one of the heavies drove out into the traffic.

‘What?’ He gave her a pained look.

‘Yasta Frate. The man in the photos. Do you know him?’

Marcus stared at her. ‘Clara. You’re in trouble here. People are spitting at you in the street. People are sticking your name up on lamp posts. Yesterday, someone took potshots at you. And you’re asking me who Yasta Frate is? For fuck’s sake, who cares? The girl’s dead, let her rest.’

‘You do know him, don’t you?’ said Clara.

‘Let it go.’

‘No!’

‘All right. I do. He’s small-time. Runs a couple of cellar clubs around the area. Lives in one of them, I heard.’

‘And he pays nonces like David Bennett to take photos of him shafting women and kids.’

‘You’re thinking he had something to do with her death?’ Marcus frowned. ‘Why would he kill her?’

‘Have you heard of snuff movies?’

‘You think there are other photos going around? Ones that show him
killing
this girl? That he’d get some sort of sick kick out of it? That he’d let incriminating stuff do the rounds? You’re mad.’

‘Well, they wouldn’t be “going around”. Maybe he keeps a private collection of stuff like that.’

Marcus was staring at her.

‘What?’ she asked.

‘Christ, what a mind you’ve got. What sort of dark fucking horrible things go on in there?’

There had been horrible things. Things that haunted her still, although he would never know about that. That recurring dream of her dead mother, the cold blue lifeless child cradled in her arms. The night-time horrors, the fear of going back there, to that awful place, the terror of never truly escaping the slums.

‘These things do happen,’ she shrugged, staring right back at him. She couldn’t read him, not at all, and she could read most people. She stared into those almost-black eyes, as deep as pools of oil and just as expressionless.

She shivered. Did he care that she was under threat? If anything happened to her, she was his wife and all that she had would pass directly to him. She remembered what he’d said on their wedding day, that he wished he could divorce her straight away. Would he truly be sorry if she died?

She didn’t think he would.

Not for a minute.

And she
could
die, easily.

Ever since that sniper thing, she had felt that she was being watched. That someone was keeping their eye on her, biding their time. And if the worst happened? Marcus would just carry on, take over her clubs. He had Paulette for recreational purposes. And probably – oh, and this made Clara’s guts heave – maybe he was keeping Paulette still, in her flat, in luxury; a convenient piece of arse on the side.

90

Jan was there at the Oak with a couple of the other girls, all getting set for the evening’s trade. She beamed like a beacon when she saw Clara walk into the bar with Marcus.

‘Hiya, Clar,’ she said, bouncing up, pleased as a puppy when its master comes home.

‘Don’t call me Clar,’ said Clara, and got out the photos.

‘What’s this? Oh these aren’t . . . ’ Jan’s smile vanished as she looked at them. ‘God, poor old Sal. What a way to go, eh?’

‘You know the man in these shots, don’t you?’

Jan looked from the naked couple in one shot and then up at Clara. ‘Course I know him. That’s Yasta Frate. Sal used to be on the game in Notting Hill, Frate came over on the boat and moved in with her and ponced off her, took most of her earnings, the poor cow. Then she got out from there, got that other place – the one where we found her – and started working at the Oak. But he took over the flats and wound up as her landlord. He was mine, too. Still is.’

‘So they fell out, her and Frate?’ said Clara.

‘He couldn’t have been too pleased, she was his meal ticket way back and he’s the sort to bear a grudge. She took up with another bloke last year, a younger man. You know him. He was here at your wedding reception.’

Clara looked startled. ‘
I
do? What d’you mean?’

‘Course you do. He was causing trouble, you remember? Smashed up the DJ’s deck and some of his records.’

‘But . . . that was my brother. Henry. You’re talking about Henry.’

‘That’s right,’ said Jan. ‘That’s the one.’

Oh shit
, thought Clara.

91

It was the middle of the day but Yasta Frate was asleep on the couch in the room behind the Gallipoli, safe and secure as a bug in a rug. These cellars, they’d come all through the war untouched. Like the Windmill, they were below ground and solid as could be. He always felt
safe
here.

Safe to shoot up.

Safe to do
whatever
.

While the brothers partied in the basement club, he was back here counting the takings, doing whatever the fuck he liked. So, when there was a hammering and a banging on the door upstairs and it woke him up, he didn’t worry. He had boys up there, take care of anything.

Annoying, though. Waking him up like that. He stretched and yawned and pulled his pony-skin coat closer over him. Big trouble with cellars, they were several degrees cooler than street level. Nice for keeping your wine in; not so good for anything else. He’d had a heavy night last night, and his head . . . well, it wasn’t the best, not today. All that banging about the place, he could do without it. Seriously.

Then the door crashed open and he shot off the couch like a bullet.