A Lesser Evil Part 31

But her curiosity got the better of her, and she stole quietly out into the garden, keeping her head well below the fence that separated the houses. When she reached the bottom of the garden and the cover of the tree that overhung the back wall, she stood up on an old crate to see into number 11.

Her view of the Muckles' back room was uninterrupted, and as the lights in there were bright she could see everyone clearly, except for two of the men nearest the window who had their backs to it. There were six men in all, including Alfie, and the table was strewn with gla.s.ses, bottles, overloaded ashtrays and cards, with a heap of money in the centre.

Molly was standing, or rather posing seductively, by the door through to the hall, wearing a flimsy red negligee, with just underwear and stockings underneath, and she was holding Angela by the hand.

One swift glance at the men's leering faces, Molly's coquettish expression and Angela's look of complete bewilderment was enough for Yvette to know exactly what Molly was offering.

Her body or that of the child's, in exchange for the money on the table.

Had she not experienced the self-same thing herself as a child, she might very well have imagined Angela's presence was an accident, that she'd come down for a drink at an inopportune moment. But there was no mistaking the slathering hunger in the men's faces, and nothing else would create such a highly charged atmosphere, certainly not just Molly's body which could probably be bought for a bottle of drink.

'There's over two hundred quid in the pot,' one of the men yelled out. 'She ain't worth that much.'

Yvette began to tremble. She clasped her hands together and offered up a silent prayer that the men would denounce a mother who could sell her child, and leave hurriedly.

'Ones this young don't come cheap,' Molly said, then bending over she caught the hem of the child's nightdress and with a flourish whipped it off over Angela's head, leaving her stark naked.

'No, Mum!' Angela cried out, trying to cover herself with her thin arms.

Only a completely perverted beast could possibly have viewed the skinny little girl with her dirty face and unbrushed hair as an object of desire. Her ribs stood out like a relief map, her arms were like sticks of macaroni. But this was obviously what the men were feeling, for there was a buzz of appreciation. Overcome by a wave of both terror and nausea, Yvette got down from the crate and hurried indoors.

'I was sick again and again,' she whispered to Fifi. 'I 'ad feelings Alfie did theese to Mary, and I'm sure he also do it to his older girls when they lived there too. But Angela ees so leetle. She 'ave no b.r.e.a.s.t.s, no 'ips, just a small child. I should 'ave gone to the police right then, but I was too frightened and sick.'

Fifi felt sick herself. If she'd had any food inside her she was sure she'd have brought it up. She had formed the opinion that Alfie Muckle was allowing men to use his children, but thinking of something hideous like that in your own head could never be as horrifying as discovering those nightmare images were real.

'Do you know which man got her?' she asked.

'Oui,' Yvette whispered. She was trembling by Fifi's side. 'I did not see him but I 'eard his voice and I know it was ze big older man, who come so often. I know 'is name is Jack Trueman, because Molly she boast so often about this rich man who is her friend.'

The name meant nothing to Fifi, but it could very well have been the man with the Jaguar. 'So he took Angela upstairs?' she asked.

'I don't hear right away,' Yvette said. 'Later I go outside again when some of ze men are gone. I 'ope I am mistaken, you see, but then I hear the sound coming from the room at ze top. The old bed creak and poor Angela crying.'

Fifi shuddered. 'Then what?'

'I hear Angela crying in the morning. I think Molly must slap her to shut her up, and then I see ze whole family leave for their day out. I am, 'ow you say?, out of my wits.'

'Beside yourself,' Fifi corrected her automatically, seeing in her own mind the Muckles leaving the house that morning and her amus.e.m.e.nt at the spectacle of them all in holiday clothes.

'Yes, that is it, beside myself. I want to go in there and comfort her. I feel so badly for her. So I climb over ze back fence and go in.'

She described the filth she saw as she got into the kitchen, and Fifi was there with her, reliving every step of the way that she'd taken herself later that same day.

'I come to that top room and I open ze door, and there Angela is, suffering the way I suffered so many years ago. She had ze blood on her, her privates swollen and red. She look at me with theese big eyes, they say to me that she knows this is what she will get every Friday night, and even if I take her now, look after her and get 'elp, she will never forget. Just as I can never forget.'

Yvette made a kind of keening sound in her throat and began rocking herself.

'So what did you do?' Fifi asked, putting her arm round her and hugging her tightly. What she wanted to hear was something which didn't fit in with what she'd seen, for she still didn't believe Yvette was capable of killing the child.

'She didn't speak. I theenk she was in shock. I put my hand on her forehead. I say I 'elp her, but she is stiff, like she is paralysed. Just her eyes pleading with me, and it comes to me that she is asking me to kill her.'

She fell silent for a moment or two, and then when she did speak again her voice was suddenly cold, crisp and unrepentant. 'I pick up ze pillow and I hold it over her face. She didn't even struggle. Just her hands coming up like so.'

Fifi felt the fluttering of Yvette's hands even though she couldn't see them.

'It was quick. I wait till her hands go down, then I take the pillow away. She is dead and will never suffer that again.

I go out on ze landing where there is cupboard; I find a clean sheet and put it over her. Then I go back to my flat.'

Too stunned to speak, and appalled as she was, Fifi could understand what made Yvette do it. She had no doubt that when she was confronted by the ravaged child, her mind flipped back to her own terrible experiences in France.

Maybe after the first man raped her, Yvette had lain like that in the bed wis.h.i.+ng for death.

What Yvette did, in her own mind at least, was an act of compa.s.sion. She was putting a fatally wounded animal out of its misery. Giving Angela what had been denied her.

'You understand now why I do not want to live?' Yvette said suddenly, breaking the silence. 'I 'ave theese on my conscience, I cannot forget. And now you are afraid of me too?'

'No, I'm not afraid of you,' Fifi said slowly. 'I can understand.'

She lay there silently for some little while. She felt sick and giddy, and she was frightened too by the enormity of what she'd been told. To think that all this had been going on just across the road to her. A seven-year-old child sold to the highest bidder! How could any mother be so depraved?

All through the summer she had been reading the juicy story of Christine Keeler, Mandy Rice-Davies and John Profumo, actually enjoying and being t.i.tillated by the scandal. But this far more terrible stuff had been going on right under everyone's nose.

'You are afraid,' Yvette said sorrowfully.

'Not of you,' Fifi sighed. 'I just wish you'd come over to me that night, or even the next morning, and told me what was going on. Then none of this would have happened.'

'But no one could understand what something like that could do to a leetle girl,' Yvette said sorrowfully. 'Once eet is done she have it in her head for life. They might give her a new home, buy her a bicycle and dollies. But it never go away.'

Fifi could neither agree nor disagree. All she wished was that day when Angela had been with her, she'd acted on her instinct and got outside help for the child. But she was too drained now to discuss it further. Angela was dead, let down by everyone her parents, neighbours, doctor and teachers. Everyone who touched her young life had some responsibility, but it was too late to apportion blame now.

She tried to go to sleep, but her head was still whirling with what she'd been told.

'Why didn't the police find your fingerprints?' she asked suddenly. The police had taken hers, Dan's, Frank and Stan's and probably everyone else's they'd spoken to, to compare with ones they found in number 11. One of the biggest problems the police had had during this investigation was the number of fingerprints in the house, and many of them couldn't be matched to ones they had on record.

'I 'ad my rubber gloves on because I not like to touch anything in that house, eet is so dirty.'

Fifi remembered how she had scrubbed her hands after coming out of there, but she wouldn't have thought of putting on gloves before she entered. She thought a prosecuting lawyer would claim that made it a premeditated crime. 'I see. Were you in your flat all that day?'

'No,' Yvette said. 'I see you up in your window, and so I go out along the back wall like Alfie do. I get a taxi to my fitting. I know I will arrive at the time I was expected. I tell the police I left just after eight and went by bus.'

Yvette fell asleep then but Fifi was unable to. Just as it was difficult to credit anyone with taking the rest of their family for a day out after selling a seven-year-old to some pervert, so it was just as hard to imagine a woman doing what Yvette had done. Not so much the actual killing of Angela, that made a kind of sense, but for her to escape along a wall minutes later and spend the day doing a dress fitting seemed very calculated.

A cold chill crept over Fifi. Yvette had told her all this because she didn't believe they were going to be rescued. What if she woke in the morning, felt optimistic someone would find them and then regretted telling her? What might she do then?

'She wouldn't do that,' she told herself very firmly. 'And anyway Dan will find me. I know he will.'

On Tuesday morning Dan found it hard to get out of bed. The lack of sleep in the past week had finally got to him and he hadn't woken up at all during the night. As he lay there listening to still more rain against the window, and knowing the day ahead would hold nothing but more misery, he wanted to fall asleep again and have some respite from the nagging anxiety.

But he'd promised Harry and Clara he'd go down to the police station and see if there was any progress and then join them at the hotel afterwards. The story of Fifi and Yvette's disappearance was in all the newspapers the previous day, and they needed to stay where they could be contacted in case anyone phoned with some information.

Clara and Harry had come here yesterday and Clara sent Dan off to the launderette with his was.h.i.+ng while she cleaned the flat. Harry said she always cleaned when she was upset, but Dan had found it upsetting to see her doing all the jobs Fifi had once done.

The woman in the launderette wanted to know everything. While Dan knew this was because she had often talked to Fifi and was just worried about her, he couldn't get out of the launderette fast enough, because he was now finding it hard to talk to people. Tears kept welling up and he found he got his words confused; in fact he had a job to string a sentence together.

It was good that Harry had gone with him yesterday to see his boss. Arnie Blake was a decent bloke, though short on humanity when he had penalty clauses hanging over his head. But Harry had a knack of putting things in such a way that anyone would feel obliged to go along with what he said. Arnie eventually told Dan he could have as much time off as he needed, and he'd still have a job to return to, but right now Dan thought if he didn't get Fifi back in one piece he'd be flinging himself under a tube train.

He had never experienced misery like this before. Throughout his bleak childhood, National Service, periods of sleeping rough, terrible digs and all the other black spots in his life, some of which were caused by women, he'd still managed to remain cheerful. But then with every other woman he'd ever been involved with he'd always kept a part of himself back. He'd given all of himself to Fifi; she was his sun, moon and stars. Without her everything was grey, and he missed her physically as if he'd had a limb cut off.

Reluctantly he got out of bed, washed, shaved and put on his trousers, but as he opened the wardrobe to get out a clean s.h.i.+rt and saw all the freshly ironed ones that Clara had hung in there beside Fifi's clothes, he began to cry.

He tried to laugh at himself but he couldn't. Fifi hated ironing s.h.i.+rts, and mostly she just ironed the collar and the front and hung them up hoping he wouldn't notice. To see them all perfect was absolute evidence she wasn't here, and to him confirmation she was never coming back.

He had cried several times in the last few days, but not like this. It was as though something had broken inside him and he could no longer suppress the pain and anguish. He banged the wardrobe shut but it made no difference; everywhere there was evidence of Fifi her hairbrush on the chest of drawers, the dressing-gown on the back of the door, her slippers by the bed.

He wrenched the dressing-gown off the door and holding it to his face he sobbed and sobbed. He could smell her Blue Gra.s.s perfume on the soft material, and the smell evoked memories of their wedding day and the first time they made love.

She was so innocent then, but so eager to please him. He'd never cared that she was a lousy cook, or that she didn't like ironing or clearing up, he would gladly have waited on her hand and foot as long as he could spend every night with her beautiful body close to his and those soft arms around him.

'Dan?'

At the sound of Miss Diamond's voice he took the dressing-gown away from his face and saw the older woman in the bedroom doorway. She was dressed for work in a suit, and she looked very anxious.

'I'm sorry to intrude,' she said. 'But I heard you crying and I was afraid you'd got bad news.'

The sympathy in her voice just made Dan cry harder, and all at once Miss Diamond had her arms round him, holding him tightly.

'It was just the s.h.i.+rts, and seeing Fifi's things,' he managed to get out. 'There's no news yet.'

She took his hand and led him still bare-chested down to her kitchen where she sat him down, saying she was going to make him a cup of tea. But he was still unable to stop crying and she stood by his chair, held him to her breast and let him weep, just silently patting his back as if he were a small child.

'You poor love,' she said after a little while. 'You've been so brave and strong for so long, but it's all got too much for you.'

Dan calmed down enough to say he mustn't stop her from going to work, but she waved that off by saying it didn't matter, she could always make the time up another day. She made him tea, then some scrambled eggs, and asked if there had been any response from anyone now Fifi's picture had been in the papers.

The tea and the eggs made Dan feel a little better, and he told her about what had gone on at the weekend and that Fifi's parents were staying in the hotel today and he'd go there later after he'd called at the police station.

'They don't seem to be taking the connection with John Bolton very seriously,' he said. It was surprisingly easy to talk to Miss Diamond; she was matter of fact about it all, and she didn't ask stupid questions or interrupt with irrelevant personal anecdotes the way most people did. She just sat there opposite him at the table and gently encouraged him to talk. 'I don't think they even believe there is a connection, even if it's as plain as day that there is,' he went on. 'They say they are investigating it, but they haven't told me one concrete thing they've done. They ought to be turning over all John's known a.s.sociates, pulling people in, but as far as I can see they've done nothing.

'This bloke Fifi saw with the red Jag for instance,' he continued angrily. 'She saw him and John going into the Muckles' one Friday. Why can't they find him? How many people around here have got new red Jags, for G.o.d's sake! There can't be that many in the whole of London. It's obvious to me that Fifi was s.n.a.t.c.hed because she'd been to the police about him, and you can't tell me she's the only person that could pick him out in a line-up! It can't be that f.u.c.king difficult either to find out who John worked with. I don't think they've even leaned on Vera.'

He blushed. 'Sorry about the swearing, Miss Diamond,' he said. The business about the car had really annoyed him. He'd asked Roper if they'd contacted all the Jaguar dealers in London and got a list of everyone who had bought a new red one in the past two years. Roper said there were men out there doing just that right now, but so far the only names they'd turned up were bonafide business and professional men.

'Miss Diamond is a bit formal, Nora will do,' she said, and half smiled as she ruffled Dan's hair. 'And what you're going through is enough to make anyone swear. I'm sure the police are doing their job, and they were over at Vera's on Sunday while you were out. But it isn't easy to get people to talk after what happened to John, they are too afraid.'

'Afraid of what?' Dan exclaimed. 'They don't have to give themselves away or shout it from the rooftops, all they need to do is whisper a name if they know it. They are b.l.o.o.d.y cowards!'

Nora's stomach churned at Dan's condemnation of the neighbours. She'd spoken to Frank Ubley on Sunday and he'd said all this had come out because people were too cowardly to stand up to the Muckles, himself included. Yesterday she'd called into the corner shop and overheard a couple of people discussing Fifi and Yvette's disappearance. Their view was that someone around here knew exactly who was responsible, and if the two women were found dead, they should be horsewhipped for not telling the police what they knew.

She had been stricken with guilt all last night, going over and over it in her mind. But she'd told herself that she couldn't just go to the police and tell them she thought Jack Trueman was the man they wanted, not without telling them why. She'd come to the conclusion in the early hours of this morning that she should type an anonymous letter when she got into work. But faced now with Dan's distress and the serious danger Fifi and Yvette were in, she couldn't keep quiet any longer. As Dan had said himself, 'They don't have to give themselves away or shout it from the rooftops, all they need to do is whisper a name.'

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 s.h.i.+rt 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 s.n.a.t.c.hed 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 poppyc.o.c.k. So how could he take this information to them and make them act on it?

Johnny Milkins' remark on Sat.u.r.day 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 pus.h.i.+ng 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.