Bad Girl (31 page)

It only took Frank a few minutes to gather his belongings together, and half an hour later they were back in Camden. Helen made some food – a quick bowl of pasta, to mop up the Scotch – and while they ate in the kitchen, she told him about everything that had happened since the trial. The only part she glossed over was her time with Lily. Although she trusted Frank, she didn’t want him to pity her or to think of her as damaged.

‘So,’ he said. ‘Terry Street owns the Fox now.’

‘Yeah, Yvonne couldn’t wait to get rid of it. She was on that plane before the ink was dry on the contract. Do you think Tommy might be able to buy it back?’

‘If he can get the cash together… and if Terry’s prepared to sell.’

‘Big ifs.’ She paused. ‘What about Dagenham? Couldn’t he raise some money from there?’

Frank, surprised, narrowed his grey eyes. ‘How do you know about Dagenham?’

Helen had been aware of both of the long-firm frauds. ‘Because you and Tommy used to talk about it when I was around. I guess you thought I was too young to understand.’

Frank laughed. ‘We thought wrong then, huh?’

‘I never said anything to anyone. I wouldn’t.’

‘The keeper of secrets,’ he said.

Helen could feel his eyes on her, and blushed again. ‘I wouldn’t say that exactly.’ She reached out for her glass of whisky, even though she knew she’d drunk too much already. ‘If the job was never finished off, couldn’t you—’

‘It’s too late,’ Frank said, shaking his head. ‘The minute we got sent down, Alfie would have cleared the stock, grabbed the money and got the hell out.’

‘But you haven’t been there, you haven’t tried to contact him?’

‘Waste of time,’ he said.

‘You don’t know that. We could go over there tomorrow. I’m sure Moira would lend us the car.’ But she could see that Frank thought it was pointless. ‘Or you could start another one, begin again. Couldn’t you do that?’

‘If I had the money,’ Frank said. ‘These things cost to set up.’

‘I have some. Maybe I could help out.’

Frank put down his fork and pushed his bowl aside. ‘I don’t think so.’

Helen, hoping that she hadn’t offended his pride, stood up and put the dishes in the sink. ‘Well, the offer’s there.’ She sloshed some water into the bowl and glanced over her shoulder. ‘Do you want to go through to the living room?’

Frank took the bottle of Scotch with him and sat down on the sofa. Helen followed him through and curled up in the armchair. There were so many things she wanted to ask, but she wasn’t sure where to start. After a short silence she said, ‘So what made you come back to Kellston?’

‘Isn’t that what criminals do?’ he replied drily. ‘Return to the scene of the crime?’

‘Except it wasn’t your crime.’

Frank gave a shrug. ‘Hell, we’re all guilty of something.’

Helen couldn’t understand how he could be so blasé about it. If she’d been sent down for something she hadn’t done, she’d be awash with rage and bitterness. However, if it hadn’t been for the whisky loosening her tongue, she would never have asked the next question. ‘So what are you so guilty of?’

Frank’s face immediately darkened. He fumbled for his cigarettes and lit one quickly. ‘You don’t want to know.’

‘You mean that you don’t want to tell me.’

He glanced across at her, breathing out a long, thin stream of smoke. ‘Yeah, that too.’

‘Okay,’ she said. ‘I didn’t mean to pry.’ She took another sip of her drink before changing the subject. ‘Did Tommy ever talk to you about my mum?’

‘Not really. I didn’t even know he had a sister until…’ He shifted on the sofa, leaning forward to tap the cigarette against the edge of the ashtray. ‘So what’s the plan, Mouse? Sorry,
Helen
. I’ll get used to it eventually. What are you planning to do about Eddie Chapelle?’

‘Talk to him, I suppose, try and find out what he knows.’

‘And if he was involved, do you really think he’s going to tell you?’

‘I guess not.’

‘And what are you going to do then?’

Helen gave a shrug.

‘Not much of a plan,’ he said, grinning.

She smiled weakly back. ‘You got a better one?’

‘Not yet,’ he said. ‘But if Mr Chapelle’s got something to hide, I suggest we tread carefully.’

Helen felt a flutter in her chest as he said
we
. It was like an acknowledgement that she was no longer alone and that they were in this together. ‘Are you sure you want to get involved? I’ll understand if you don’t. You’ve only just got out of jail.’

‘Which means I’ve got nothing else to do.’

‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘I appreciate it. I suppose you think I’m crazy doing this.’

‘Does it matter what I think?’

‘Yes,’ she said.

‘Then no, I don’t think so. Sometimes, when you have loose ends, you have to find a way of tying them up. It’s not doing that that drives you crazy.’

Helen gave a nod. ‘And what about
your
loose ends? Connor let you go down for a crime you didn’t commit. How do you come to terms with that?’

Frank hesitated for a moment, turning the glass around in his hand. ‘I’m not sure that he did.’

‘What?’

‘I’m not sure that Connor killed Joe Quinn.’

Helen’s brow creased into a frown. ‘But he must have done.’

‘Just like I must have known that the body was in the boot of the Jag.’

‘It’s not the same.’

Frank looked up at her. ‘It might be.’

Helen didn’t think so. She remembered Shirley tottering across the car park with the bottle of vodka in her hand. She remembered Connor coming up behind her, grabbing her arm and whirling her around, punching her hard in the face. He was capable, more than capable, of murdering Joe. ‘They were always fighting. Connor threatened to kill him.’

‘Threatened, yeah, but that’s not the same as actually doing it.’

‘But if he didn’t, then who did?’

‘Oh, I don’t know. Someone who wanted Joe Quinn out of the way. Someone who needed a scapegoat. Connor was the obvious choice.’

‘And what about you and Tommy?’

‘Collateral damage,’ said Frank. ‘No one could have anticipated that Tommy would take the keys off him, refuse to let him drive. And I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. That’s the way it is sometimes.’

‘So have you got any ideas?’

Frank smiled. ‘Lots of ideas, but not a shred of evidence. There are plenty of firms who’d have liked to see the back of Joe Quinn, the Gissing brothers being right at the top of the list.’

The mention of the Gissings prompted another memory for Helen. ‘Wasn’t there a rumour that Lazenby was connected to them?’ She wondered now if she’d made a mistake in going to see the chief inspector. But if she hadn’t, then she’d never have found out about Eddie Chapelle.

Frank knocked back his whisky. ‘Plenty of rumours about pretty much everything. Doesn’t mean that they’re true – or that they’re not.’

There was another silence. Helen wondered if she should put some music on, but then worried that it might seem too… Too what? Too much like a date, perhaps. Instead she said, ‘So what happened to all your things, the stuff you had in Barley Road?’

‘It’s in Tommy’s lock-up.’

Helen, who’d thought she knew pretty much everything about Tommy, hadn’t known about this. ‘A lock-up?’

‘In Dalston,’ Frank said. ‘I got a mate to clear out the flat and store everything there. I should go over sometime and pick up my clothes. I’ve been wearing the same shirt for the last three days.’ He bent his face towards his shoulder and sniffed loudly. ‘Can you tell?’

‘Would you like the polite answer to that?’

‘Sorry,’ he said.

‘It doesn’t matter. Look, we could go to the lock-up tomorrow. And then go up to Dagenham, see if Alfie Blunt’s still around.’

Frank laughed. ‘You’re not giving up on that one, are you? But yeah, it sounds like a plan.’

They carried on talking until midnight, when Helen helped him to pull out the sofa bed and then fetched some blankets and a pillow from the cupboard in the hall. ‘There’s plenty of hot water if you want a shower. And there’s clean towels in the bathroom.’ Her hand flew up to her mouth. ‘Oh, I wasn’t hinting. I just meant…’

‘It’s okay, I know what you meant. And thanks.’

‘Good night then.’

‘Sleep well,’ Frank said.

Helen froze in the doorway, recalling with a tremble that those were the last words he’d said to her before he’d been arrested.

When Helen walked into the kitchen the following morning, it was to find Frank Meyer showered and shaved and wearing jeans with a clean, if slightly crumpled, grey T-shirt. He looked better than he had the night before, and none the worse for having consumed half a bottle of whisky. She, on the other hand, was suffering from a nagging headache and the feeling that she might have said too much.

‘I made coffee,’ he said, nodding towards the percolator.

‘Good.’ She smiled tentatively as she poured some into a mug. ‘Have you had any breakfast?’

‘I helped myself to toast. I hope that’s okay?’

‘Of course it is. Make yourself at home. Well, it is your home for as long as… Just ask if you need anything.’

‘You’ve got a nice place here,’ he said, as if he’d only just arrived and was noticing his surroundings for the first time.

‘I like it. You sleep all right?’

‘Like a baby.’

‘Good,’ she said again. She put a slice of bread into the toaster. ‘There’s cereal in the cupboard and eggs in the fridge. Are you sure you wouldn’t like some more toast?’ She knew that she was fussing, but she couldn’t help herself. It would take a while to get used to having him around.

‘I’m fine, thanks.’

While she was waiting for the toast to pop up, Helen went over to the window and looked down on the street. ‘Ah, Moira’s dropped the car off. I’ve got the spare keys. We can go over to Dalston and pick up your things.’

‘Are you sure she doesn’t mind?’

Helen turned around and went back to the counter. ‘No, of course not. I often borrow it.’

‘It’s good of her.’ He drank some coffee. ‘So are she and Tommy… Are they an item now?’

Helen took the piece of toast and her mug, then went over to the table and sat down opposite him. ‘An item? No, I don’t think so. They’re just friends.’ She spread a thin layer of butter over the toast while she considered it some more. ‘I think they’re just friends.’

‘You don’t sound too sure.’

‘She doesn’t visit or anything. She offered, but I don’t think Tommy wanted her to.’

‘Sometimes it’s easier that way.’

Helen took a bite of toast, chewed it and looked at him. ‘Is it?’

‘You have to try and forget about the outside world.
Your
world is that prison, that cell, the day-to-day routine. You start yearning for more and it’ll drive you crazy. Acceptance, that’s the thing.’

‘And that’s how you got through it?’

‘More or less.’

Whenever Helen talked to him, she got the feeling that there were lines she should be reading between, things unspoken that she couldn’t quite grasp. She didn’t know Frank well enough, perhaps, to fully understand him. Quickly, she ate the toast and finished off her coffee. ‘You ready, then?’

The Sunday morning traffic was light, and twenty minutes later they were in Dalston. Frank guided her around the back streets until they reached a car repair shop with a row of lock-ups running along beside it. Helen stopped the Ford Fiesta and switched off the ignition. The garage was closed and there was no one else around.

‘How come I never knew about this?’ she asked as they got out of the car.

Frank grinned. ‘Well, I guess Tommy had his secrets like everyone else. And he probably didn’t want Yvonne to find out. We used to keep stock here if we ran out of room at the shop.’ He took a bunch of keys from his pocket and walked towards the lock-ups. ‘I know the guy who runs the place, Billy Kent. He was the one who cleared my flat out for me.’

‘What happened to the MG?’

Frank nodded towards the garage. ‘Billy flogged it. Not much point in having it sitting around for seven years. Plus, it helps to have a bit of extra cash when you’re inside.’

There were two large padlocks on the door. Frank unlocked them both and rolled up the metal shutter. The inside of the lock-up was about the same size as a regular residential garage, with boxes stacked along the left-hand side. To the right were four large wooden crates, a rusty lawnmower and various bits of junk. The place had a damp, musty kind of smell.

While Frank started rooting through the crates, pulling out the articles he wanted to take with him, Helen wandered over to the boxes. Most of them were sealed, but a couple at the end only had the flaps tucked under. Out of curiosity, she flipped open the first one and found a heap of Christmas decorations: long strands of tinsel, coloured baubles, even an angel with a single lacy wing.

‘Hey, look at these,’ Frank said.

She turned to see him posing in a pair of sunglasses. ‘Very smart.’

‘Ray-Bans,’ he said. ‘Are Ray-Bans still cool, or have I missed the boat?’

‘They’re still cool.’

‘Good.’ He pushed them up on to his forehead and then crouched down and carried on sorting through his stuff.

She watched as he put a pile of LPs to one side. ‘Aren’t you bringing those?’

‘Do you think I should? I don’t want to clutter up your place.’

‘I don’t mind, so long as there’s no heavy metal. My head can’t cope with heavy metal.’

He selected a few from the pile and read the names off the covers. ‘Dylan, Van Morrison, Ry Cooder. Anything too objectionable there?’

‘No.’

‘Okay, I’ll bring them along.’

Helen closed the decorations box and opened the next, smaller one. There was a crumpled red coat folded over on top. Some of Yvonne’s old things, she thought at first, before recalling that Yvonne didn’t even know about the lock-up. She picked up the coat and shook it out. It had black trim at the collar with black buttons down the front and at the wrists. At first it seemed only faintly familiar, but then it hit her like a lightning strike.
The coat had belonged to her mother.
She remembered her wearing it when she came to Camberley Road. Helen’s hands began to tremble. She drew in her breath, her lungs constricting.

The gasp alerted Frank, who stopped what he was doing and looked over at her. ‘What is it?’

‘This was my mum’s,’ she whispered. She raised it to her face and buried her nose in the fabric. If she’d been hoping for some lingering scent, she was quickly disappointed. The coat had a strange, acrid smell. ‘What’s it doing here?’

Frank stood up and came over to her. ‘Tommy must have… he must have collected her things from the flat after…’

‘You didn’t know they were here?’

He shook his head. ‘I guess he didn’t know what to do with them. He couldn’t bring himself to throw them away and so he just stored them here. Maybe he thought that… I don’t know. Maybe he thought that you might like to have them one day.’

Helen put the coat to one side while she rummaged around in the box. There were a few other items of clothing, none of which she recognised, as well as a couple of brightly coloured fruit bowls, a plastic carrier bag containing numerous strings of beads and an old watch that had stopped working long ago. Right at the bottom she came across a metal tin and pulled it out to look at it. It was about ten inches wide, silver-coloured, with scorch marks across the surface. In the top right-hand corner were the initials LQ painted on in a childlike hand.

‘It looks like an old petty cash tin,’ Frank said.

Helen tried to open it but it was locked. She shook it and could hear something shifting around inside. ‘LQ,’ she said, touching the initials with her fingertips. ‘She must have had this when she was living at the Fox.’

‘You want me to try and get it open?’ Frank glanced around the garage. ‘I’m sure there’s something in here we could use.’

But Helen quickly shook her head. Whatever was inside had been important enough for her mum to want to keep private. She didn’t want to look at it in some musty lock-up in Dalston. She wasn’t ready yet and she didn’t want to get emotional in front of Frank. ‘It’s okay. I’ll take it back with me, open it at home.’

‘Would you like me to put the box in the car? I’m pretty much done here.’

Helen placed the tin back in the box and then laid the red coat carefully on top. ‘It’s all right. I can carry it. It’s not heavy.’

They loaded up the boot with Frank’s clothes, records and a few chosen books. He would pick up the rest of his stuff when he had a more permanent place to live. ‘Are you okay?’ he asked as she placed the box in an empty corner.

‘Why shouldn’t I be?’

‘Because they’re your mum’s things and you didn’t know they were here. You’re not mad, are you? Only Tommy’s always tried to do right by you – even if he did sometimes screw it up.’

Helen gave him a wry smile. ‘Hey, I was mad at him for not letting me know she’d been murdered. This doesn’t really compare.’ She thought of Tommy going to the wrecked flat in Kilburn and picking through what remained of his sister’s belongings. ‘I wonder if he went to Samuel Street on his own.’

‘Probably. He didn’t say anything about it to me.’

‘It can’t have been easy for him, knowing what happened there. To be honest, I’m surprised anything survived the fire.’

Frank closed the boot. ‘He probably meant to give them to you when you were older.’

‘Maybe.’

Helen leaned her elbows on the roof of the car while Frank went and secured the lock-up. The sun was shining and she could feel the heat on the crown of her head and her shoulders. She wondered if finding her mum’s things was some kind of sign. Did she believe in messages from the other side? Here she was, just beginning an investigation into the murder, and suddenly the box turned up. A mere coincidence, or something more? She was inclined towards the latter and found it vaguely comforting.

‘Home, then?’ asked Frank.

‘It’s early yet. Let’s go to Dagenham and check out the shop.’

Frank slid the sunglasses back over his eyes. ‘There won’t be a shop. We’ll be wasting our time.’

‘Well I’ve nothing better to do. How about you?’

‘It’ll be a wasted journey.’

‘You can’t be sure of that.’

‘I can’t be sure that the sun’s going to rise tomorrow morning, but it’s a pretty good bet.’

Helen held up the car keys and jangled them in front of him. ‘I’ll let you drive. So long as you’re careful. You still remember how to drive, don’t you?’

Frank leaned across the roof and held out his hand. ‘Now you’re talking. Maybe that trip to Dagenham isn’t such a bad idea after all.’