Dressed To Kill (A Kate O'Donnell Mystery) (20 page)

Jackson swung round in his chair. ‘What do you think about that, Sergeant?’ he asked.

Barnard sighed. ‘I think Miss O’Donnell’s boss was right,’ he said. ‘We might believe her but you know as well as I do how hard it is to make an allegation like that stick if there’s no cast-iron witness to back up what she says, and how unpleasant it can be in court for the victim.’

‘That’s because so many stupid girls think they can get back at their ex-boyfriends by crying rape,’ Jackson said flatly, as if there was no room for argument. ‘It’s the easiest allegation in the world to make and the hardest to prove. It happens all the time.’

‘I’m not a liar,’ Kate said, still fuming. ‘It happened, exactly as I told Ken Fellows, and my flatmate saw it happening, but she doesn’t know Ricky Smart and it was too dark for her to identify him even vaguely.’

‘So let’s move on, shall we?’ Jackson said, turning his attention back to Kate, his blue eyes hard. ‘I’m told that Smart trawled the East End schools for likely girls to model for his boss. Can you be sure that was all he was recruiting them for?’

‘None of the girls I met at the studio seemed to suspect that there was anything more to it, though they knew that Andrei might try to get them into bed and then chuck them out at a moment’s notice. I just assumed that most of them went home again. They were very young to be in the West End on their own. But obviously Jenny didn’t do that, so maybe Andrei, or Ricky, had other plans for them all along. I just don’t know. I can’t tell you. I’ve known them all less than two weeks . . .’

‘Did the models ever talk about meeting Smart for the first time?’ Jackson asked. ‘Did you get the impression it had always happened at a school? Outside the gates?’

‘I know Jenny Maitland and Sylvia Hubbard went to the same school but Sylvia was a year behind Jenny. She told me that.’

‘We’ve identified that school,’ Barnard offered from his chair by the door.

Jackson glanced at him with some irritation. ‘Did any of the girls mention anywhere else they might have been recruited?’ he asked.

Kate shrugged. ‘I don’t think so,’ she said. ‘There wasn’t much time for chit-chat. Andrei worked them very hard while they were at the studio. They were glad to get out of the place when he’d finished with them, I think. They didn’t hang around.’

‘Do you know where any of them were living?’

‘No,’ Kate said. ‘I did think it was odd because I know how difficult it is to find places to rent, and they can’t have been earning much from Andrei’s efforts. But I didn’t get the impression they were going home to mum every evening.’

‘Never mind,’ Jackson said. ‘We’ll get a search warrant for the studio and break in if we have to. There must be records in there of who was employed and where they lived, if only for the Inland Revenue.’

‘June did all the paperwork,’ Kate said. ‘I do remember her saying that she lived in Lewisham and came in on the train. She was quite chatty. She’ll tell you far more than I can if you can track her down.’

‘Right, Miss O’Donnell, I think that will be all for now,’ Jackson said. ‘Sergeant Barnard will show you out.’ And with that he collected up his papers and walked out.

Barnard walked back to Soho with Kate. She refused his offer of a coffee at the Blue Lagoon and they parted at the door to the Fellows Agency with a kiss on Kate’s cheek that seemed tentative on both sides. Barnard left her with a sigh and took a stroll round his manor, without his usual enthusiasm, then headed back towards the nick by way of the Delilah Club, where he thought he might catch Ray Robertson for a chat, in the hope that his more exotic criminal ambitions might have been abandoned by now. But as he turned the corner towards the club’s main doors he drew back. Ray Robertson himself was coming out of the swing doors with another man, both similarly dressed in heavy camel coats and turned-down trilbies, and looking similarly pleased with themselves. They were heading towards Robertson’s Jag, which was parked outside. Barnard froze, pulling his own hat low, but not so low that he could not watch what was going on from under the brim.

What spooked him entirely was that he recognized the man who was ushered into the back of the Jag before Robertson followed. His name was Reg Smith and he ran one of the biggest crime enterprises in London, but strictly south of the river, well away from Robertson’s fiefdoms in Soho and the East End. But if he and Ray were having friendly meetings, Barnard thought angrily, then maybe Fred Bettany was right to be worried about what his boss was up to. Having been rebuffed in Notting Hill, Ray might be responding like a spoilt child who’s had his toys taken away. Barnard had seen him do that as a twelve-year-old boy, and had no doubt he could do it again, with devastating consequences for someone, quite possibly Robertson himself.

He crossed Regent Street and found a phone box and called Fred Bettany’s home number where his wife picked up the phone quickly.

‘Harry,’ she murmured. ‘How nice to hear from you. Are you free to come round?’

‘’Fraid not,’ he said. ‘I’m at work, babe. But I need to talk to Fred urgently. I’ve just seen Ray schmoozing the biggest crook in south London and I need to know what the hell he thinks he’s up to.’

Barnard heard Shirley draw a sharp breath. ‘I knew Fred was worried about something,’ she said. ‘He’s been very jumpy for weeks. Do you want me to get him to call you?’

‘At home this evening, if he can,’ Barnard said. ‘Before Ray ends up in the next cell to Reynolds and Biggs and the rest of them. I reckon he’s trying to bite off a whole lot more than he can chew.’

‘Oh dear,’ Shirley said doubtfully. ‘I’ll get him to call, darling. But don’t be a stranger. Please.’

‘I’ll see you soon,’ Barnard said and hung up quickly, the pleading in her voice touching an unexpected nerve. But however unhappy Shirley Bettany was with Barnard’s long absence from her bed, she was as good as her word in passing on his message and at eight o’clock that evening the sergeant took a call from Ray Robertson’s accountant and told him succinctly who he had seen him coming out of the Delilah Club with that lunchtime. He heard Fred draw a sharp breath at the other end of the line.

‘Jesus wept,’ he said. ‘I told him he was crazy to think he could get involved with that maniac,’ he said. ‘Ray’s never been on the right side of the law, as far as I know, but he’s not a killer and he’s not greedy. He’s made a good living sticking to what he knows. But ever since the train robbery, even after most of them were arrested, he’s been moaning about how many millions they got away with, and how he’d like to retire to the sun in Spain or somewhere and relax. I ask you? What would a born-and-bred East End boy like him do in Spain, for God’s sake.’

‘He’d hate the oily food,’ Barnard said. ‘He’s a pie-and-chips man, is Ray, through and through.’

‘He’d never get as far as Spain in any case,’ Fred said. ‘That bastard Smith would run rings round him, use him up and throw him away.’

‘Given the things Smith’s being investigated for Ray wouldn’t last a week working with him. The latest thing, apparently, is a bloke who got on the wrong side of him and was found nailed to the floor like Jesus bloody Christ before he was shot. Ray’s not in that league for violence or – to be honest, Fred – brain power.’

‘So how do we stop him?’ Fred asked. ‘I’ve tried to talk him out of it. But I tried to persuade him not to try to move into Notting Hill and that didn’t work. Even now he knows I was right about that he’s still not listening to my advice. I’ve been seriously thinking about getting out and moving on myself.’

‘Don’t do that, Fred,’ Barnard said, hoping that his voice would not betray quite how fervently he did not want the Bettanys to move on anywhere. ‘Ray would be lost without you.’ And so would I if you took Shirley away, he thought. He hesitated for no more than a moment. ‘I’ll go and see him again myself tomorrow, if I get the chance,’ he said.

‘He’ll be at the Delilah in the morning,’ Fred said. ‘I do know that. You could catch him then.’

‘Fine,’ Barnard said. ‘I’ll see what I can do.’

‘T
he best thing for you to do until Lubin comes back is to see if you can get any more work out of his cousin,’ Ken Fellows said, putting an arm round Kate’s shoulders as she sat at her desk the next morning at a loose end.

She pulled away irritably. ‘Tatiana did say that there would be more when she’d completed her next set of designs,’ she said. ‘I could stroll round there and see how it’s going. She may know when Andrei’s likely to be back as well.’ Anything to get out of the office where her premature return from her fashion studio assignment had been greeted with a certain amount of derision by her colleagues who seemed to regard the sight of a woman with a camera as some sort of aberrant mutation. Their contempt did not seem to be diminishing with time, however much her pictures met with the boss’s approval. But since she had come back to the agency she was undoubtedly bored and glad of any excuse to get out of the office.

She strolled down Oxford Street slowly, window-shopping as she went, before turning into the side streets behind the big stores with their shiny Christmas displays and weaving her way to Tatiana Broughton-Clarke’s cramped studio. She could see lights inside and Tatiana’s assistant opened the door and waved her up the narrow staircase. If anyone dropped a match in one of these old buildings, Kate thought, the whole block would go up like Liverpool’s docklands in the war. She had been regaled as a child with stories of the bombing of the port, something blitzed Londoners seemed totally unaware of. But then, she thought, it seemed to her that they had always thought they were the centre of the world, if not the universe. Nowhere else existed.

Tatiana did not seem too surprised to see her and took the pins out of her mouth to acknowledge her arrival with a smile.

‘I’m at a loose end with Andrei gone,’ Kate said. ‘Ken Fellows wondered how another shoot would suit you. If you’ve got anything ready to show, of course.’

‘Well, not quite yet,’ Tatiana said waving a hand at the parts of various garments she was working on, none of which seemed to have been sewn together yet. ‘But come in and have a coffee, darlink. I want you to tell me all about what’s been happening with poor Ricky and Andrei. Ricky was a spiv but a useful spiv, in some ways. I’ll miss him.’

‘It looks as if someone had enough of him,’ Kate said.

‘Surely the police don’t really think Andrei is the murderer, do they?’ Tatiana said. ‘Surely that’s a crazy idea? He likes to pretend to be some dashing Cossack but the truth is he’s a damp squib, completely useless in a crisis. Roddy took him out shooting once and he dropped his gun in a bog. Took them hours to clean it up.’

‘They certainly want to talk to him,’ Kate said. ‘And so does my boss. And I do too, as it goes. I left some stuff at the studio that I want to get hold of if he’s not going to open the place up again. I’ve no idea where the girl who came in to do the typing lives. In any case she probably hasn’t got a key. In spite of what you say Andrei did seem to be running a fairly successful business,’ Kate complained mildly as Tatiana poured coffee into two mugs and made space amongst the clutter for them to sit down.

‘Don’t you believe it,’ Tatiana said. ‘Ricky is – was, excuse me – the driving force there, believe me. Andrei will be completely lost without him. Not that I think Ricky would have stayed there much longer. I happen to know he had a lot of irons in the fire, as it goes. He was keen to make the big time.’

‘Yes, I suppose that makes sense, Andrei did rely on Ricky. He’ll be lost without him,’ Kate conceded, remembering how Andrei himself did little more than take the pictures, leaving all the rest to his energetic – and unscrupulous – assistant.

‘Was he really killed in that rather nice Alfa Romeo he was driving?’ Tatiana asked. ‘What a shame. I rather fancied that car when he’d finished with it, if I could persuade Roddy to disburse of course. Until I get my own money coming in I’m rather dependent on him. I’d really love my own car. At the moment I have to take the underground to Amersham and get Roddy to pick me up there. His family may have once owned a chunk of Buckinghamshire, but the land’s mostly gone now and Roddy’s as tight-fisted as a Russian peasant with winter coming on.’

Kate sipped her coffee slowly. ‘So when do you think you might be ready for another shoot?’ she asked eventually. ‘If Andrei’s moved on permanently my boss wants me to build up my own contacts in fashion. There should be a few of Andrei’s clients looking for a new agency, shouldn’t there?’

‘Oh, Andrei will be back,’ Tatiana said airily. ‘I don’t suppose for half a minute he had anything to do with Ricky’s nasty death. I know he doesn’t like the sight of blood. He was not at all keen on Roddy’s shooting party even before he dropped his gun. Squeamish, Roddy said he was. If the police want to talk to him he’ll either realize himself that he’d better get it over with, or they’ll track him down. He’s got a little place somewhere on the coast in Suffolk that his mother left him. That’s where he’ll be.’

‘Is he on the phone there?’ Kate asked. ‘My boss would really like to talk to him.’

Tatiana laughed and shook her head. ‘It’s just a fisherman’s hovel. He hardly ever goes there. His mother was a shop-girl his father took a fancy to. She grew up out there – what’s it called? Southwold, I think. Some fairly scruffy seaside place. Her father worked in a brewery or something. He’ll never tell you all this. He likes to pretend he’s a Russian count. It goes down well with some of those society women he takes photographs of. But he’s really no more than a peasant on his mother’s side.’

Tatiana looked critically at Kate’s outfit. ‘I like the little cap,’ she said. ‘Did you buy some other new clothes as well?’

‘I did,’ Kate said. ‘I got another miniskirt and some boots in Carnaby Street. And the cap.’

‘Mmm,’ Tatiana said. ‘I’ll see if I can run you up a blouse, something silky and on trend, black and beige, maybe, and let you know the details for Roddy’s next little do. Andrei’s definitely not going to do the snaps any more. He said something to Roddy the last time he came to our place. I don’t know what it was about but Roddy said he wouldn’t have him there again. They’ve never really got on. Pity really. It would be better to keep it in the family but you’ll have to do.’