Dressed To Kill (A Kate O'Donnell Mystery) (11 page)

A uniformed officer climbed up on to the stage holding a document in his hand and was immediately accosted by a crimson-faced Stan Weston, trumpet in hand, demanding to know what the hell was going on. By this time some members of the audience were getting up from their tables and attempting to leave the club and were being forcibly restrained by officers manning all the doors. After a couple of men had been unceremoniously handcuffed, most of the rest subsided back into their place, complaining loudly but offering no resistance.

‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ the officer in charge shouted across the growing murmur of outrage. ‘If you will stay in your seats, we won’t detain you long. But before anyone leaves we will require your names and addresses and we will want to search you. We may well need to contact you in the next few days.’ There was another definite murmur of discontent at that but as people took in the strength of the police presence and the very determined way they were preventing anyone from reaching the doors, they gradually settled back at their tables again, some finishing their drinks quickly as if they might lose them.

‘I have a warrant to search these premises for illegal substances,’ the officer on the stage continued. ‘And that includes every one of you.’ Stan Weston made to object again but the officer brushed him away. Standing unobtrusively behind a very large uniformed sergeant in the main entrance, DS Harry Barnard had his sights set on Muddy Abraham, who was pacing anxiously at the back of the stage, puffing soundlessly at his saxophone. He did not look, Barnard thought, any sort of a picture of innocence.

Inspector Dave Lewis, who was in charge of the operation, jumped down from the stage and began to organize his men. One he sent to close down the bar, which led to furious complaints from some of the audience as the shutters rattled down. Four he sent up to herd the musicians into the tiny space backstage, with instructions to keep them there until he was ready to deal with them. The rest he set to searching the punters, taking names and addresses and eventually shepherding them out of the door if there was no reason to detain them. When all this was under way, he nodded to Harry Barnard.

‘Do you want to have first pop at the band?’ he asked. ‘I shouldn’t think many of the punters will be carrying drugs, though I can see a few spliffs chucked away on the floor. If there’s a supplier here it’s most likely to be one of the musicians. And I hear you’re looking for other things as well.’

‘I’d like all of the band down at the nick eventually,’ Barnard said. ‘And all of them searched, and all that space round the back. I’m not so bothered about marijuana but I want some evidence that there’s been girls using the club as a base for prostitution. Can you get your lads to ask the punters if they’ve ever been offered sex here? And who did the offering. My guv’nor reckons there has to be a link with the girl they found dead at the back. A night in the cells might concentrate their minds.’

‘Ask the lads in there with them to search them and all their music paraphernalia,’ Lewis said. ‘I can’t see the place opening again soon. I hear your guv’nor wants it closed down.’

‘So he says,’ Barnard said. ‘But he has some odd ideas, does Jackson. He seems to think Soho’s full of poofters. I reckon he had a nasty experience in the bogs when he was at school. What do you reckon?’

Lewis laughed. ‘If you carry on wearing ties like that, Harry, he’ll have you on a charge,’ he said, eyeing his latest flowery Liberty’s creation suspiciously.

Barnard grinned. ‘You have to keep up to date, Dave, if you pound these streets. It’s a question of credibility.’

‘And a hand in the till, maybe,’ Lewis said sourly. ‘I can’t afford to shop in the West End.’

‘I’ll talk to the Dixieland crew,’ Barnard said quickly. ‘Can you lay on transport later?’

‘I’ll see what I can do.’

Kate O’Donnell was up early the next morning, early enough to attract the attention of her flatmate, Tess, who was usually leaving the house to be at school soon after eight just as the friend she had come down from Liverpool with staggered out of bed.

‘What’s got into you?’ Tess asked, stuffing a piece of bread into the toaster. ‘Do you want some?’

‘I’ve had breakfast already,’ Kate said, waving a hand airily at the open pack of butter on the table and what looked like a very aged jar of jam.

‘Where did this come from?’ Tess asked suspiciously, picking it up and sniffing it.

‘I think the previous tenants must have left it,’ Kate said. ‘I found it at the back of the cupboard.’

‘Eugh,’ Tess said, and pushed it away. ‘Anyway, where are you going so bright and early? I thought your arty studio didn’t get going till midday.’

‘Not quite,’ Kate said. ‘But I’m popping into a different studio on my way. There’s this designer who wants me to take some pictures for her. She’s Andrei Lubin’s cousin but he won’t work for her for some reason. Some family feud. She calls herself a princess, so maybe that annoys him. She’s married to some lord in the shires anyway, la, for what it’s worth. And she designs all this very trendy gear, straight from Paris, she says. And he hates that. Anyway, I’ve hooked her for Ken Fellows, I think, which should earn me some credit, if nothing else. I’m just going to suss the place out this morning, see how the space and the light is.’

‘I thought you said taking pictures out of doors was all the rage now,’ Tess said, stuffing a mountain of exercise books that she had spent the previous evening marking into her bag.

‘According to Andrei it is. We were fiddling around in Highgate cemetery the other day. But I don’t reckon it’s compulsory. We’ll see.’ She put her camera into her handbag and pulled on a jacket and a soft suede cap.

‘That’s nice,’ Tess said.

‘Carnaby Street,’ Kate said, looking at herself critically. ‘We must go shopping soon. We still look as if we’re just off the train from Lime Street.’

‘Well, we are, la. Anyway, I can’t go to school in a skirt up to my knickers. The lads would go doolally and the head would boot me out the door.’

Kate laughed as she opened the door. ‘Your little girls will be chopping the hems off their gymslips before long, you’ll see, and what will your headmaster do then, poor thing,’ she said, and left the flat before Tess could reply.

The tube was packed and Kate had to push her way out at Oxford Circus, a stop before she normally made her exit from a later, less crowded train. At ground level she crossed the road and turned the corner beyond Peter Robinson’s fashion store and made her way into the narrow streets behind the major shops where most of the small businesses seemed to deal in the multitude of fancy goods which the rag trade required: buttons and buckles, sequins and braids, ribbons and linings and threads in a multitude of colours and sizes.

Tatiana had given her precise instructions and it did not take long to find the door with a plate advertising Broughton-Clarke Design and a prominent bell alongside. She pushed and waited and it was not long before Tatiana herself opened the door, looking faintly surprised.

‘You really did mean it when you said you’d come early,’ she said. ‘Come in. I’m all on my own just now. My assistant’s gone out to get us some breakfast.’ She led the way up a narrow flight of wooden stairs and into a room crammed with mannequins in various stages of dress and undress but all wearing clothes in a unique blend of plain colours and geometric patterns, which Kate found quite dazzling.

‘Wow,’ she said. ‘These are quite something.’

Tatiana smiled complacently. ‘I told you,’ she said. ‘My cousin Andrei hates them but I tell him: this is the future. You only have to look at some of the French designers like Courrèges to see what is going to happen. No one is going to be wearing a twinset and pearls any more.’

‘So you want to be in at the start of this revolution in London?’ Kate said. ‘Well, I can take some pictures for you but there’s not much room to do it here.’

‘There’s another room at the back,’ Tatiana said. ‘That’s where we do the cutting, through here . . .’ She led the way again into a room dominated by a large cutting table, swatches of fabrics and piles of half-finished garments.

Kate looked around again and sighed. ‘It’s very dark in here and very cluttered,’ she said. ‘I think we’d be better out of doors, though that’s more tricky to arrange. You’re dependent on the weather for a start. But it’s not impossible. The clothes you’ve got in there would look very startling against certain backdrops. Andrei’s not wrong. It can work very well, a shoot outdoors.’

‘Let’s do that then,’ Tatiana said. ‘I’ll get some finishing done and contact you when I think I’m ready to launch myself on to the world.’

‘You’d better leave messages for me at my agency. I don’t think Andrei will appreciate you ringing me at the studio. But I’m only with him for another two weeks so it shouldn’t interfere with our plans.’

‘Has he got you into bed yet, darlink?’ Tatiana asked with a smirk. ‘He doesn’t usually hang about.’

Kate frowned. ‘I find Ricky Smart more of a pain in the bum,’ she said. ‘But so far I’ve managed to fend them off. My boss wants me to stay the course, but I may need a pair of steel knickers.’

But before she could squeeze herself across the room to the door, it was flung open by a tall man in an almost orange three-piece tweed suit, a country check shirt, stringy woollen tie and green trilby.

‘Ah,’ Tatiana said, with an edge of weariness to her voice. ‘This is my husband, Roddy. He had to come into town this morning so he drove me in early, before the rush. This is Kate O’Donnell who’s going to do some photographs for me, darlink. Some fashion shots for the magazines, I hope. I even wondered if we could do some fashion shots down there, at home. Taking the models out of doors seems to be the in thing just now.’

Kate flinched slightly under the sharp gaze of pale blue eyes in a flushed and ruddy face.

‘Jolly good show,’ Roddy Broughton-Clarke said. ‘Photographer, are you? Unusual for a girl, eh? But that might be jolly useful all round.’

‘I already thought of asking Kate to take some pictures at our next party,’ Tatiana said quickly. ‘I know you don’t want to have Andrei take them again.’

‘Rather not, even if he is family,’ Roddy said. ‘Rather fell out with him last time, you know. Seemed more interested in joining in the fun than doing his job.’

Kate raised an eyebrow at that, but Roddy, it seemed, once started was difficult to stop. He fixed his watery gaze on his wife.

‘Good idea to invite her down to have a recce, don’t you know? A bit much to simply drop her in the deep end when the old place is full of guests.’ He turned to Kate. ‘Come down tomorrow, why don’t you. You don’t work on Saturday, do you? Can you get yourself to Amersham on the jolly old Metropolitan line? We’ll meet you at the station?’

Taken aback slightly, Kate nodded and Roddy turned back to his wife.

‘Just dropped in to say I’m heading back now, dear. Got what I wanted in Jermyn Street. I’ll pick you up at the station later.’ And with a waft of chilly air from outside, he was gone.

‘It’s not a bad idea,’ Tatiana said thoughtfully. ‘His parties are nothing to do with me, but he does like to have a photographer there and if you want to do that it would be best to know your way around. You might enjoy it anyway. Not everyone lives in a crumbling Jacobean stately home. That’s why people come, of course. Roddy’s very determined to make it work. And when Roddy wants something, he usually gets it. He was in the commandos during the war, you know. He’s a whole lot tougher than he looks. So will you come?’

‘I suppose so,’ Kate said, feeling pressured.

‘It is very photogenic, darlink. You might find it useful for my designs too. Andrei would be spitting blood if we did that but I think he’s blown it with Roddy. Won’t have him at the Hall any more.’

Kate looked at her, wondering how she had got herself into this situation so quickly. ‘He didn’t talk about how much he’s going to pay me,’ she said. ‘And I’ll have to do the developing and printing either in Andrei’s darkroom or at my own agency. That will all have to be arranged.’

‘Andrei will let you do it,’ Tatiana said with more confidence in her cousin than Kate thought was justified. ‘He’d give his right arm to get into Roddy’s good books again. Come down and have a look, anyway. Here’s the phone number. Call us when you get to Amersham station and I’ll come and fetch you. It’s only about ten minutes away. And you can stay for lunch, and you can sort out all the details about the next party with Roddy. That would be good.’

Kate nodded, wondering how she had been railroaded into something that she was not at all sure she wanted to do. Roddy Broughton-Clarke had not inspired her with much confidence as a possible employer. She would go to the house because it intrigued her, but she would not necessarily take up his commission unless the rewards were very good indeed.

‘I’ll see you tomorrow then,’ she said to Tatiana. ‘And maybe you’ll know by then how close you are to doing a shoot. In the meantime I’ll suss out some other likely locations. Bye for now.’

DS Harry Barnard was at work early that morning, too. He hung up his jacket carefully in an almost empty CID room, picked up a strong coffee from the canteen and made his way to the custody area, whistling loudly.

‘The jazz musicians?’ he asked the sergeant. ‘Still all here, are they?’

‘Oh yes,’ the sergeant said. ‘Complaining loudly, especially Stan Weston, and the black bastard. But as they found the darkie with a stash of marijuana he’s not likely to be going anywhere soon.’

‘I want to talk to both of them,’ Barnard said.

‘Feel free,’ the sergeant said, handing Barnard two sets of keys. ‘Number five and number ten.’

Barnard peered into each cell in turn and decided to tackle Weston first. He found him sitting morosely on his bunk gazing at the odorous lavatory behind the door. He recognized Barnard and stood up.

‘Have you come to let me out of here?’ he demanded. ‘This is a complete farce. My club’s been running for nearly twenty years, since the war ended, and we’ve never had trouble with you lot. Never. We don’t let tarts in, not that many of my customers are interested. They don’t come to Soho for the sex, they come for the music. We’re well known for it, we get the top artists, Americans go to a lot of trouble to get permits to play the Jazz Cellar. We’re class.’