Dangerous (43 page)

‘I don’t see—’

‘One.’

‘Why do you—’

‘Two.’

‘All right, for God’s sake! All right! They’re in there, down in the darkroom.’ With a shaking hand he clutched at his bleeding mouth and indicated the door on his right.

‘Is it locked?’

‘Of course it bloody is.’ Bennett opened the top drawer, took out a key, gave it to one of the heavies.

The two men went to the door, opened it to darkness. Flicked on the light. They went down a shallow set of steps. Clara followed. At the bottom was another door. One of the men pushed it open. Inside was a gloomy red-lit square box of a room, with prints pegged up on a small line, and red, white and grey dishes lined up. There was a strong whiff of chemicals down here. And there, in the far corner, was the file cabinet.

Clara took the key and went over and opened it. David Bennett was pretty organized for an artistic type. Things were neatly labelled. CAR and INSURANCE and NEGATIVES 1-250, all set out. Not alphabetical, but neat nevertheless. BANK STATEMENTS was easy to find. Clara pulled out the file and took it back up to the reception area with her. Marcus’s two goons followed.

Marcus was still at the desk, and David Bennett was still in his chair, a reddening handkerchief clamped to his mouth. He went both wide-eyed and pale as Clara laid the file out on the desk, opened it up, took out his statements for the last year.

‘My friend Jan told me something very interesting and I’ve only just remembered it,’ she said to Bennett. ‘She said that Sal Dryden had been flush with more cash than usual before her death. Bragging about her bank book and how much dosh she had in it. And . . . ’ Clara hesitated, looking down the lines of figures . . . ‘Dear me, you’re a bit hard up, aren’t you? Especially here, in the months before Sal died.’

‘Look . . . ’ he said.

But Clara went on.

‘There were some big sums going into the account now and again . . . I guess that was Yasta Frate’s input for the porno pictures, yes? Not many of those. But there was a regular payment going out, five hundred pounds every month. That’s a big amount, wouldn’t you say? And I would also guess that if the police were to check Sal’s old bank book –
if
they cared enough to bother – they would find that same amount going
in
every month. Looking at these statements, those payments stopped when Sal died. Isn’t that funny?’ She looked into his eyes. ‘No, not funny at all, actually. She was going to tell Bernie, my sister, your sweet little fiancée, what you were really like, unless you paid up. Sal was blackmailing you. Wasn’t she?’

115

‘All right!’ Bennett’s voice was muffled beneath the hankie. He glared up at Marcus. ‘Christ, you knocked out my fucking tooth.’

‘Sal was blackmailing you. She was always desperate for cash and she knew you wouldn’t want Bernie finding out about those porno shots you took. So she hatched a plan. She’d fleece you,’ said Clara.

‘All right, it’s true,’ he burst out. ‘She was crippling me, that cow. She said she’d tell Bernie everything, but what the hell does any of it matter now anyway?
You
made sure Bernie knew all about me.’

‘And now Bernie’s dead,’ said Clara quietly.

‘She . . .
what
?’

‘She committed suicide.’

‘Christ.’ He looked genuinely shocked. Maybe he
had
loved her, in his twisted way.

‘Go on about Sal,’ prompted Clara.

‘What? Well . . . I had to stop her,’ he shrugged helplessly. ‘She was cleaning me out. I didn’t know which way to turn. So I went there. Asked her to stop, but she just laughed. She laughed in my face! I got so mad.
Furious.
And I did it.’

‘They always say murderers like to revisit the scene,’ said Clara. ‘Is that what you were doing, the day we met outside her flat?’

He was nodding now. He let out a shaky breath. ‘You know what? It’s a relief to admit it. It’s been tormenting me, all this. I kept going back there. Not just the day I saw you, but before that. It . . . haunted me. I’m not a violent man, you know. I’m not a bad man. I went back there . . . and it was horrible. I couldn’t believe what I’d done, but she
forced
me to do it.’

Clara exchanged a long look with Marcus. Then she looked again at David Bennett, the object of her sister’s love. If Bernie had lived . . . this would have
destroyed
her. But Bernie was already gone. She wouldn’t suffer any more.

‘Now what?’ asked Bennett as silence fell.

‘Now,’ said Clara, ‘we go down the nick with you and these statements. And you confess. You tell them you killed Sal Dryden.’

‘Wait . . . ’ He was shaking his head, seeing his whole world falling apart in front of him.

Clara looked at him and her eyes were hard. ‘Or you vanish. We can make people vanish, you know. Quite easily. A long stretch inside – or a quick exit. You choose.’

116

A few days after Bernie had taken her dive off the fire escape, Henry dragged himself out of bed. Depression sapped him, made him feel weak. Bernie’s death, Bernie’s tormented life that had impacted so viciously on his own, kept running through his head. Clara, turning her back on him for all that time. He hadn’t deserved that. He’d been wounded by it, and had put up a thick defensive shell around himself because of it.

He washed, dressed, ate some toast, drank some tea, and wondered what the fuck he was going to do with the rest of his life.

He was finished with working for that nutjob Fulton Sears, he knew that for certain. Maybe he could carve out a chunk of the action for himself, who knew? Right now, he didn’t have the energy, but life went on. Life
always
went on, and soon he knew he would start to feel himself again. He was tough, resilient; he’d had to be. So maybe Clara had even done him a favour. Maybe Bernie had, too. Who knew?

He went to Sears’s flat and knocked on the door. None of the other boys were about outside, and that surprised him. But then, really? Rats always deserted a sinking ship, and Fulton Sears was sunk all right.

One of the boys – it was Joey, dim, faithful, strong in the arm and weak in the head – opened the door, let him in.

‘Sears in?’ asked Henry.

Joey shrugged, his face unhappy. Henry followed him into the lounge and there was Fulton Sears sitting in the corner on the carpet. There was a smashed table beside him, and bits and pieces around him – a comb, a broken watch, a hankie. Sears’s eyes were wandering around the room, not fastening on anything. His trousers were wet where he’d pissed himself, and he was muttering something under his breath.

‘Holy shit,’ said Henry.

Sears’s boxer dog whined and nudged at Henry’s leg, looking up at him with pitiful eyes. The dog looked emaciated. Wasn’t anybody feeding the damned thing? Certainly not Sears. He was out of it. Henry stepped closer to the man on the floor.

‘Fulton? Mr Sears?’ he said.

Sears didn’t even look at him, didn’t seem able to focus. And now that Henry was closer he could hear that Sears was saying over and over again
cunt bitch whore cunt bitch whore
.

He turned. ‘Joey, we . . . ’ he started, and then he realized he was talking to thin air. Joey was gone. And would not return; he could see there was nothing to come back for. Sears had once been a power on the streets of Soho, but that time was past.

Henry let out a sigh.

Then he turned and left the flat, the dog trailing at his heels. He went to the phone box, dialled 999, and asked for an ambulance.

He came out of the box. The dog was sitting there, waiting. What was the mutt’s name? Charlie?

‘Hey, Charlie,’ he said.

The dog wagged its stumpy tail, gave a little grin.

Henry sighed again. ‘Come the fuck on then,’ he said. ‘Let’s go.’

117

Milly Sears was
seriously
pissed off with her husband. She was sitting in the hospital beside his mother’s bed, and
Christ
the old girl was taking her time over shuffling off the old mortal coil. He was the one who should be here, seeing to all this shit, not her. And where was he? Living it up down in London.

Oh, she knew Ivan. He’d be shagging other women down there for sure. And drinking too much; that beer belly of his was getting out of control, she kept telling him. But did he listen? He did not.

And when she’d done all this, when the old girl finally kicked the bucket, who was going to be left sorting out that disgusting pest-hole bungalow?
Her
, that’s who. Muggins.

She heaved a sigh and looked at his mother. That old cow had never liked her. Milly had red hair, and his mother always said you could never trust a woman with red hair, she would be fiery and she’d like sex too much.

Like it or not, I’m certainly not getting much of it
, thought Milly bitterly.

Ivan wasn’t interested in her any more. She suspected that new secretary at the car sales place; he always looked in the other direction a bit too carefully whenever
that
little bint was about.

‘Mrs Sears?’

The nurse was standing there on the other side of the bed, staring at her. Milly snapped back to the here and now.

‘I’m afraid she’s gone,’ said the nurse.

Milly looked at her mother-in-law’s face, at the sagging jaw and half-open eyes. The old bitch had died, and she hadn’t even noticed.

‘Oh!’ Milly sprang to her feet. ‘Oh God.’ She’d been sitting here beside a corpse, all unaware. The nurse was looking at her, so she fished out her hankie and puckered her face, dabbed at her eyes. ‘Oh dear,’ she said.

The nurse pulled the sheet up over the old woman’s face.

‘There will be some forms to fill in, if you’d like to come into the office?’ asked the nurse.

Milly nodded, and followed as the nurse led the way.

When Milly finally got home in the small hours of the morning, it was to find the police on her doorstep.

Christ, what’s he been and done now?
she wondered as her taxi drove away.

Ivan was always half a step away from being banged up. He took risks, liked the dodgy deals. She wished to Christ he wouldn’t do that. They’d be getting the cash from the bungalow soon, it wasn’t like he had to worry about money.

‘Mrs Sears? Millicent Sears?’ asked one of the Bill.

‘Yes. That’s me,’ she said.

‘can we go inside?’ asked the other one.

She was shagged out from all the hospital nonsense. And now
this
. Bloody Ivan, when would he ever learn to play things straight?

‘What’s this about?’ she asked nervously.

‘I’m afraid we’ve some bad news.’

So she went inside with them, sat them down in the lounge, and that was when Milly Sears found out that her husband Ivan had been murdered while in London, and she was a widow.

This time, she didn’t have to force the tears.

This time, they were real.

118

Clara was finding things different as she went around the Soho streets. Surprisingly different. People were nodding their heads to her, even
smiling
at her, where before they had been spitting at her and calling her a nark.

Marcus had his red E-type Jag back again, the clubs were ticking over, everything was right with the world – except she was crippled with grief over Bernie. Wishing she could have spotted the signs, could have been more sensitive, could have
known
what was going on with her little sister.

But how could she?

And Henry! She felt so bad about Henry, the way she’d misjudged him, even when he was only a child. Bernie had deceived her, it was true, but shouldn’t she have been more aware, shouldn’t she have somehow
seen
what was happening?

She couldn’t even bring herself to make the arrangements for Bernie’s funeral, she felt too numb, too sad. It was Henry who picked up the slack, stepped in, did what was necessary. Henry, who was virtually a stranger to her because she had pushed him away all his life, Henry with that skinny chestnut-and-white boxer dog trailing around at his heels.

‘You’re a heroine now,’ said Marcus when she mentioned the attention she was getting on the streets. ‘You got the man who killed Sal Dryden.’

‘Some heroine,’ said Clara gloomily. ‘My sister was in bits. And I didn’t even notice.’

‘She hid it from you.’

‘I’ll never forgive myself.’

‘Yeah,’ said Marcus. ‘You will.’

119

Life went on. Clara toured around the clubs the way she always had, and landed up at the Heart of Oak to find little Jan in her long black evening gown, sitting on a bar stool before the start of evening’s trade while the barman polished glasses and restocked the mixers.

‘Hiya, Clar!’ Her face lit up when she saw Clara come in.

‘Jan,’ said Clara, sitting down. She’d given up telling Jan not to call her Clar. It never did sink in.

Then Jan’s face sobered. ‘I heard about your sister. I’m sorry, Clar. It’s awful.’

‘Thanks.’ The pain lanced her again, the grief, the awful finality of what Bernie had done. She would never see her again, and it killed her to know that, to acknowledge the truth of it.

‘I never had a sister,’ said Jan, her eyes anxious as they rested on Clara’s face.

‘No?’ Clara really didn’t want to talk about this. She was afraid she’d begin to cry and never be able to stop.

‘No. I was an only child. Wasn’t even wanted.’

Clara looked at Jan. No sisters or brothers. No friends, only Sal. And Sal was gone. She felt a sudden wave of warmth for poor tubby awkward little Jan.

‘We can be sisters,’ said Clara after a moment’s thought. ‘You and me. Not
blood
, but as good as. How about that?’

Jan’s face flushed and her eyes filled with tears. ‘Really?’ she gasped.

‘Yeah, really.’

Jan flung herself off her stool and hugged Clara hard. ‘Shit, that’s wonderful!’ she giggled, laughing and crying at the same time.

‘Don’t mark the dress,’ said Clara, smiling.

‘No! OK.’ Jan sniffed and reassembled herself, heaved herself back up onto her bar stool. She swiped at her eyes. ‘Sisters!’ she laughed.

‘Yeah. Sisters.’