Dressed To Kill (A Kate O'Donnell Mystery) (18 page)

‘I’m afraid he was found this morning in his Alfa Romeo with his throat cut,’ Barnard said, ready enough to shock Lubin perhaps into giving something away. But the Russian merely looked stunned and sat down in the chair with a thump while Kate, turning pale, gasped and grabbed hold of the table for support.

‘Dear God in heaven,’ Lubin said. ‘What is going on round here?’

‘That’s what I would like to find out, Mr Lubin,’ Barnard said. ‘Do you have any idea why anyone would want to kill Ricky Smart? This is not an area without its criminals but they don’t generally target people at random. There has to be a reason for such a deliberate assault on a man inside his own car. This wasn’t some random street violence where someone pulled a knife. He seems to have been in the driving seat when he was killed by a single, very violent blow. So I’d like you to think very hard, Mr Lubin, about what that reason might be. Tell me how Smart set about his job of recruiting girls for you, please. Where he went, who he saw, anything you know about his activities in the East End.’

Lubin stood up and then sank into the chair he had been perched on, with a massive sigh. ‘He didn’t tell me a lot. It wasn’t something he did every day of the week. He just said that when we needed fresh talent he went to certain schools, and once he had persuaded one girl to come and work here, it was easier to persuade more. Word went around, you know how young girls chatter . . .’

‘But you seem to have a pretty fast turnover of girls, Mr Lubin. How long would you say you employ them?’

Lubin shuffled uneasily in his chair. ‘They never turn out to be as good as you expect,’ he said. ‘You hope you can train them up, but more often than not they don’t do as well as you hope they will, or as Ricky hopes when he brings them to me. I take them on a month’s trial generally, if they scrub up at all well. But not many stay longer than that.’

Kate drew a sharp breath at this sanitized version of how Lubin and Smart treated their recruits but she knew that she had better keep her version of their procedures to herself for now.

‘And where do they go when they leave here?’ Barnard snapped. ‘Do you make sure that they get home safely again or do you just throw them out on to the street?’

‘Ricky dealt with all that,’ Lubin said. ‘As far as I know he sent them home.’

‘Well, Jenny Maitland certainly didn’t go back home, did she? She ended up on the game. And the other girl, Sylvia, seems to have been left to fend for herself when she got pregnant. Did you or Smart use these girls for sexual favours?’

Lubin made a fairly unsuccessful effort to look affronted. ‘Ricky may have done that,’ he said, glancing at Kate and flushing red. ‘I tried not to get involved.’

‘And did Mr Smart also try to trick the girls into prostitution when they left? Was he pimping?’

‘That’s a disgraceful suggestion,’ Lubin protested.

‘Not really,’ Barnard said. ‘You’re ideally placed here in the heart of Soho to get into the sex trade. Is that what Ricky was up to? Were you involved in that? Because I can tell you for nothing that some people would regard that as an invasion of their territory, and would think nothing of putting a stop to it with a knife.’

Lubin turned a dirty shade of gray and Kate noticed that his hands were shaking. ‘I don’t know anything about what Ricky was doing in his own time,’ Lubin said. ‘But maybe these people will think I did. Am I in danger too, Sergeant? Are they going to come for me as well with a knife?’

‘I’ve no idea, Mr Lubin,’ Barnard said. ‘In the meantime I’d like you to come down to the police station to give us your fingerprints, purely for the purposes of elimination – at this stage. Have you ever been in Mr Smart’s car?’

‘No, no,’ Lubin said. ‘Never.’ He hesitated. ‘Can’t you give me some protection from these people?’ he asked. ‘Am I safe here anymore?’

Barnard smiled slightly wolfishly. ‘If you haven’t been doing anything illegal I should think you’re quite safe, Mr Lubin. Perhaps we can see you at the nick at four this afternoon? That would be very helpful.’ He got up and gave Kate a brief smile before leaving the studio echoing to the sharp slam of the door.

Lubin looked at Kate helplessly for a moment. ‘What has that idiot been doing to get us into this mess?’ he asked. ‘Perhaps I’d better go away for a while, close the studio for a bit, I’ve nothing planned that can’t be postponed.’

‘I don’t know what Ricky was up to, but you and him have been treating those girls like so much rubbish, picking them up then throwing them away when you’ve finished with them. And if Ricky was putting your rejects on the streets maybe he deserved what he got.’

Lubin’s jaw dropped in astonishment but he said nothing and Kate was astonished to see tears in his eyes. ‘Ricky Smart was the seed of the devil,’ he said. ‘You don’t know half of it.’

But Kate, who reckoned she knew as much as she wanted to, turned away. ‘If that’s true you should tell the police everything you know this afternoon.’ she said. ‘The girls who died deserve that much.’

Lubin shook his head and let the tears roll. ‘That’s easy to say,’ he moaned. ‘But impossible to do.’

Kate turned her back on him and followed Barnard down the stairs and caught up with him quickly. ‘You said you wanted a word, la,’ she said, linking an arm in his.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Nothing personal, just a quick warning. I think DCI Jackson may want to interview you as a witness. You’ll have to tell him what happened between you and Ricky Smart of course, but I’d rather you didn’t tell him you’d told me about it. I’m not sure it would do either of us any good if he got the idea we had a particular grudge against him. I don’t think he’d imagine that you cut his throat, but it might cross his mind that I did.’

W
ith time on her hands when Andrei Lubin closed up the studio and set off for the police station,

telling her to phone him before coming in again, Kate made her way back to the Ken Fellows Agency and told her boss what had happened.

‘You certainly have a genius for getting yourself into dodgy situations, girl,’ he said. ‘Do you really think he’s going to close the place down?’

‘He’s certainly very scared,’ Kate said. ‘And with good reason. Ricky Smart was my least favourite person, as it happens, but to be killed like that.’ She shrugged. ‘Someone really wanted him out of the way, and if it’s something to do with the girls at the studio, Andrei might be next in line. Closing down for a bit and making himself scarce might be the best thing he can do.’

Fellows steepled his hands in front of his face and looked thoughtful. ‘It might also make the police think he had something to do with Smart’s death,’ he said. ‘I’ll get on to him in the morning. He can’t just dump you and end our arrangement willy-nilly. I’ve paid good money to have him train you up, and so far you’ve done very well. So we need to think about how to build on that. If he’s packing it in – even for a short time – you’d better follow up with this cousin of his, and we’ll see what other contacts you can make. If Lubin isn’t taking pictures there’ll be a gap in the market which maybe we can fill. You know what they say: one man’s disaster is another man’s opportunity?’

Kate nodded somewhat wanly. ‘Tatiana’s a bit critical, of me not the pictures,’ she said. ‘She says I need to smarten up, buy some more fashionable gear . . . but I’m pretty skint. I lost most of my clothes in the fire at our flat. If you want me to do fashion I can’t look as if I just got off the train from Lime Street.’

‘Dear God, am I supposed to dress you now? That’s a new one. The blokes’ll be asking me to buy them flowery shirts and ties next in case they look too old-fashioned when they’re out on assignment. They’ll want to ponce around like that detective boyfriend of yours if we’re not careful – next best thing to a poof.’

Kate shook her head but knew better than to protest about any of Ken’s assumptions. ‘I certainly can’t go to this do Tatiana wants me to cover unless I look a bit smart,’ she insisted. ‘It wouldn’t do the agency’s reputation any good, would it? I haven’t even got the dress I went to Ray Robertson’s boxing gala in, because I lost it in the fire and anyway I can see now it’s a bit 1950s. I’ve learned that much.’

Fellows pulled a sour face but reached into his back pocket and peeled a couple of ten-pound notes off the roll of cash he brought out. ‘See what you can get for that,’ he said grudgingly as he handed them over. ‘And don’t think you can do this again in a hurry. There’d better be a lot of commissions coming in to make it worthwhile.’

Kate gave Fellows a flashing smile. ‘I’ll see if I can get a bargain or two,’ she said. ‘Perhaps I can go shopping in the morning before I come in? Carnaby Street is supposed to be good. Or Bazaar.’

‘Be here by lunchtime,’ Fellows said. ‘I should have sorted Lubin out by then and then we’ll see where we go next.’

Smiling broadly, Kate made her way through the main office, where a few of her male colleagues were packing up for the day and looked at her curiously as she passed by their desks, but they made no comment. Most had still not come to terms with the idea of a female photographer in their midst and she knew from their expressions even now that some of them never would.

On her way down Frith Street she passed the open door of the Jazz Cellar just as Stan Weston and Chris Swift were coming out, neither of them looking very happy.

‘Hi,’ she said. ‘I’ll have some pictures to show you from the other night as soon as I’ve developed them. Sorry I’ve taken so long over them but I’ve been a bit busy with one thing and another. Can I bring them round tomorrow maybe?’ Weston looked at her for a moment as if he did not quite recognize her. He looked tired and seriously worried, dark bags under his eyes.

‘The photographer girl,’ Swift said. ‘You let her take pictures the other night. You remember, before we got done over by the Old Bill.’

Weston nodded and offered Kate a faint smile. ‘Oh yes, course,’ he said. ‘Tomorrow’ll be fine. Hopefully we’ll be back to normal tomorrow.’

‘You’re not normal yet?’ Kate asked, surprised. ‘No one got hurt, did they? You should see the way the bizzies wade in on a Liverpool Saturday night when they’ve found something – or someone – they’ve taken a dislike to. They chuck them into the paddy wagons like sides of beef when they’ve finished with them. Half of them are unconscious by the time they get to the bridewell.’

‘Depends on whether you think getting arrested is the same as getting hurt,’ Swift said tartly. ‘They kept me there all night for no reason at all that I could see, and Muddy Abraham’s still there.’

Kate was slightly surprised by the vehemence Swift showed. He had seemed the least talkative of the band members when she had been taking photographs of them, almost to the point of avoiding her lens if he could. She had wondered if he was one of those people who really hate having their photograph taken.

‘We can’t put on a normal show, not with Muddy Abraham still banged up,’ Weston said angrily. ‘People come a long way to hear him. We’re on our way to see a brief to see if we can get him out. They’ve only charged him with possession of marijuana, that’s not enough to be remanded for days at a time. I don’t know what the hell’s going on.’

Kate could see how worried the band leader was. ‘I may know someone who does know what’s going on, but I’ve no way of contacting him just now,’ she said. ‘I know he’s in a meeting. I’ll see what I can find out later and tell you when I bring your pictures in tomorrow. See you later.’ And she swung on down the street wondering why she felt distinctly elated by the idea of putting in a call to Harry Barnard, even if it was on someone else’s behalf.

But when she finally made contact at the station with Barnard the sergeant did not sound particularly pleased to hear her voice and sounded exceedingly reluctant to explain why exactly Muddy Abraham was still languishing in a cell.

‘Something else dodgy has come up with Abraham,’ was all he would say over the phone.

‘This is another case of you lot trying to pin things on a black man because you don’t like the look of him, is it?’ she asked angrily. ‘Like in Notting Hill?’

‘Not me, darling,’ Barnard came back quickly. ‘This is nothing to do with me, honest to God, believe me.’

But Kate had already hung up without saying goodbye.

‘Damn and blast,’ Barnard said to himself after he listened to the crackling of the dead line for a moment before he realized Kate had gone. He had been distracted from the Muddy Abraham case when Ricky Smart’s body had been discovered but he knew he had also been curiously reluctant to pass on to DCI Jackson what he had learned about Abraham’s history at the American embassy. But his instinct for self-protection kicked in hard now and he carefully inserted a sheet of paper into the typewriter on his desk and painstakingly began to type up his report on the American musician with two fingers, aiming for it to be on the DCI’s desk before complaints from the Jazz cellar’s lawyers hit the same spot.

Kate succeeded in prising Tess out of school for a couple of hours the next morning when she had free periods from teaching and they made their way to the Kings Road in arty Chelsea where it was immediately obvious that fashion had moved into a whole new dimension just a couple of underground stations from where they shared a flat in Shepherd’s Bush.

‘If they wore their skirts much shorter they’d get arrested,’ Tess said as they followed a couple of skinny girls in very short skirts and patterned tights into Mary Quant’s Bazaar emporium, the first shop she had opened in the mid-fifties long before she became well known as the leader of the fashion revolution.

‘I must have one,’ Kate said, her eyes gleaming with excitement.

‘They wouldn’t let me into school in one of those,’ Tess said. ‘They’re already bringing out a tape measure when some of the girls hitch their uniform up round their knickers. I can just guess how this is going to go down with the nuns at St Aloysius back home. Not that I really want to look like a tart, anyway.’

‘Oh, come on, la, this is just a bit of fun. I’m going to get a skirt and some boots, and then see if I can find a slinky top to go to this do Tatiana wants me to take pictures at.’