Curtain Call (25 page)

She forced herself to speak. ‘You didn't tell him – I mean, anything – where I lived. You didn't –'

Alice, flinching at the distress in her voice, said, ‘Course I didn't tell him. Not that I could anyway! I just said I knew you, 'at's all.'

‘Who is he, this feller?' said Rita.

‘Just someone I met a while ago. He was – he tried to hurt me.' It was like a bad dream coming back to her, only this man wasn't part of any dream, he was as real to her as her own hands.
He's been looking for you since
. How long would it be before he found her? Her eyes made a sweep of the bar, the anonymous faces around her suddenly unknowable, menacing. She felt her hand shake as she raised the glass to her mouth. Where could she be safe from him now? Every street corner, every pub, every tramcar she rode, he would be somewhere close, watching. Rita was pressing Alice for more information.

‘His name? Well, they usually make it up, don't they?'

‘But d'you remember it, or not?'

Alice squinted into the middle distance, trying to retrieve it from her addled brain. After a few moments she gave a sighing shrug. Rita, who saw how the news had upset Madeleine, tried a tone of consolation.

‘Don't worry about it, love. That sort are like a bad smell, honestly – they just go after a while.'

‘Yeah, she's right,' said Alice, chipping in. ‘I've known some right pests in my time, waiting outside cafes, on the lookout. Why, this one feller kept following me home – like a dog!'

‘Who was that, then?' said Rita.

‘Oh, I must've told you 'bout him,' she said, launching into another of her garrulous stories, with Rita supplying interested
oohs
and
really
s in between the few pauses. As she listened Madeleine felt a gloom enfolding her. She couldn't bring herself to tell them – that the man who had been asking about her wasn't some fool, some run-of-the-mill ‘pest' you could brush off. Perhaps if Rita had been on her own she might have told her the whole thing, but with Alice – well, she suspected that once Alice got hold of something it didn't stay secret for very long. And the more people who knew, the greater was the danger to her. She had heard the stories of girls who'd been attacked by punters, some quite badly, it was a risk you had to take, but so long as a ponce or some other protector was around you generally didn't have to worry. There was Roddy, of course, but she didn't dare tell him that she'd gone ‘off the books' with a man; he'd think she was doing it all the time.

‘Wait,' said Alice, tapping Madeleine's arm, ‘I
do
remember – Rusk. The punter's name was Mr Rusk.'

‘That ring a bell?' asked Rita.

Madeleine slowly shook her head. Did it? She thought she'd seen that name recently, but couldn't recall where. Alice, reluctant to see her feat of memory go to waste, said, ‘What if I see him again? They usually come back for more, even ones like him.'

‘Don't go anywhere near him,' said Madeleine, in a voice edged with panic. ‘Please, Alice, I mean it. If you do see him again, call the police.'

Alice pulled a face of mock alarm. ‘All right, all right!'

‘Promise me you will.'

Alice glanced at Rita, as though to share a joke, but Rita wasn't smiling. ‘All right. I promise – cross my heart and hope to die.' She gave a nervous giggle.

Rita was scrutinising her. ‘What's this about, Maddy – I mean, “call the police”?! Who
is
this punter?'

‘I told you . . . he tried to hurt me. I just know he's – dangerous.'

She couldn't tell them any more. If she became known as the woman who had escaped the ‘infamous' Tiepin Killer, the more people would talk – and the more likely the trail would lead him to her. It was better to lie low and keep quiet. If by some mischance Alice encountered him again, she would know what to do.

A few minutes after ten Roddy returned to collect her. He couldn't be persuaded to buy them another round of drinks, though he chatted with them for a while. As she was leaving with him, Rita muttered to her, ‘Be careful,' and Madeleine heard in her tone something more than ordinary solicitude; it sounded like she'd given Rita a fright.

Roddy had stopped the car for a moment to buy cigarettes. While he was gone Madeleine took out her purse and removed a folded clipping of newsprint she had secreted there. It was the story in the
Chronicle
which Nina had first brought to her attention, headlined
THIRD ‘TIEPIN' MURDER VICTIM NAMED
, with the pencil sketch of the alleged killer alongside. She stared intently at the face, wondering at the eyes and why they seemed familiar.

She heard Roddy opening the driver's door, and she put away the cutting in her purse. He appraised her with one of his up-and-down looks, a lightning-fast inventory of her person that would precede some tart remark about her hair, or her dress. This evening he just nodded, which was as close to approval as he ever came. They set off again through the streets, dark and glistening from a recent downpour. She could feel Roddy's sidelong glances at her; eventually she looked round at him.

‘Is there something the matter?' she asked.

‘Hmm? Oh, no . . . Just wondering how you were getting along with – things.'

‘Fine,' she shrugged. ‘Things are fine.'

‘Only I don't want you to think you're alone out here. I mean, I'm not just your boss, I'm also keeping an eye out for you, like – well, like a friend would.' He paused, waiting for a reaction. When none came he continued. ‘So if you're ever in need of someone to, you know – because things can get rough – it's important to have a feller who knows what's what . . . out there . . . D'you understand?'

Madeleine looked at him for a moment, then nodded at something over his shoulder. ‘I think we're here.'

The Mirabelle's sign was picked out in hot-pink lights. Roddy, clicking his tongue in distraction, parked the car. Without looking at her he took out his wallet and peeled off a five-pound note, which he held forth between his middle and index finger. Madeleine waited, not saying anything.

‘What's wrong?' he said. ‘Aren't you going to take it?'

‘What's it for?' she asked quietly.

‘A bonus – just a little something for your . . . you know.'

Madeleine didn't know – she hadn't done anything to earn a ‘bonus'. But she was not so well off that she could refuse it, and trying to act high-minded would be lost on Roddy in any case. She reached out to take the note from his fingers, expecting him to pull it away, as he did for a joke, but this time he just let it go. ‘Thanks,' she said, catching his eye briefly; she sensed his satisfaction at dispensing this bounty.

He jerked his head towards the restaurant as if to say,
Off you go
, but then seemed to remember his new-found gallantry. ‘Wait,' he said to her, climbing out of the car. He walked round to her side and opened the passenger door, something he hadn't done since the very first week they'd met. She got out and straightened her clothes while he stood there, hesitating. He seemed about to add something, but the thunk of the car door as she closed it checked him.

‘Night, then,' she said, keeping her voice as neutral as she could.

‘Yeah, night,' he said, in the tone of someone who hadn't quite had his say.

The evening might have passed like any other. The punter's name was Turnbull, a director of a commercial paints firm from Walton-on-Thames. He'd been married for twenty-three years, had a son and two daughters (all at boarding school), and spent most of his weekends sailing off Bournemouth. They had a holiday home down there. The conversation was friendly in its limited way, tolerably tedious, and mercifully free of self-justification. Madeleine found it hard to listen to them complaining about their marriage, the shortcomings of the wife, the lack of understanding. It seemed to double the disloyalty. She always expected them to be different, these men, but the longer she continued as an escort the more they resembled one another – whether they came to her out of frustration, or loneliness, or lust, they all ended up sounding the same.

The dinner at the Mirabelle was disappointing, though they both drank quite a lot. The horrified way in which Mr Turnbull stared at the bill made Madeleine think there might have been a death threat scrawled on it. But he didn't cause a fuss, thank goodness, and paid up. A taxi took them to a hotel near Charing Cross, where she found herself addressed as ‘Mrs Turnbull'. She noticed the reception manager discreetly peer over the desk to check if they had any luggage, then nod to himself: it was to be a short stay. The room, on the top floor, offered a view down towards the river; she could see it glint in the dark. The lace curtains were dusty, and the ancient radiator stone cold, but she didn't mind. She sensed that Turnbull was in a slight hurry, careful not to miss the last train home.

It proved to be even swifter than she'd hoped. The bedside light had been off for no more than two minutes when she heard a groan, and he rolled away from her, muttering an apology. She remembered Rita's phrase for it – ‘he got off a stop too early'. Once he had crept away to the bathroom she switched the light on again. She shifted her weight away from the middle of the bed and pulled back the blanket to examine the sheet, where the usual memento had been left: a map of Ireland, just drying. The sheath, which he hadn't managed to get on, lay next to it like a shrivelled party balloon.

She was still getting dressed when he emerged from the bathroom, drying his face with a towel. It needed only a glance for her to notice something amiss. His hair had taken on a strange lopsided look, as though a gust of wind had blown it sideways – and then she realised.

‘What's wrong?' he said, catching her frown.

‘I think it's –' She found herself unable to tell him that his wig had slipped, so she merely gestured with her eyes. He gave another groan – a bad night had suddenly got worse – and he turned back to the bathroom. She felt rather sorry for him, though she was also thinking of the funny story it would make when she next saw Rita. (Keep your hair on!) And then she was thinking of something not funny at all, something horrible, in fact. It was him again, with the dark mercury eyes and the tie around her throat, whose face had reared up in memory just that evening –
He's been looking for you since
. That was it,
that
was the thing she had forgotten – her hand had grabbed at his hair when he was forcing her down on the bed, she had got hold of it for a second. A half-second. She was reliving it in her head. Now it made sense. How had she forgotten that?

‘I REALLY DON'T
see what difference it makes.'

Nina paused at this remark and stared hard at her younger sister. If she didn't know better she might have assumed that satire was in play – except that Bee didn't really ‘do' jokes. They were having tea in the Lyons Corner House at the foot of Tottenham Court Road, which was just as well: the polite chatter from other tables would prevent her from doing as instinct demanded, namely to scream in her sister's face. God knows she had enough provocation. But she also knew how to behave, having spent most of her life tiptoeing around her mother's moods. Mentally she started counting to ten, admiring in the meantime the sculptural quality of Bee's head, set off by her dark bobbed hair; it was something she had first noticed when she was a girl, that perfectly shaped skull, and it became a puzzlement over the years that so little of merit had emerged from inside it. She was petulant, tactless and spoilt – her mother's child, if ever there was.

‘You “don't see what difference it makes”,' Nina said slowly, in echo. ‘I wonder if you'd say that if the house were bequeathed to me, or to Fliss, and you got left with nothing –'

‘But you won't be left with nothing! Mummy is going to divide the rest of her things between us – her jewellery and . . . whatever money there is.'

‘In other words, practically nothing. The only thing of value she owns is the house. Can you not understand how it might make us feel
excluded
?'

‘Well, you shouldn't,' said Bee, spooning sugar into her tea. ‘I'm not going to stop you from coming to the house, or even
living
in the house. You can have your own room – there!'

She looked rather pleased by this thought, as if it reflected a nature of pure generosity. Nina stared at her again, trying to decide whether her sister was being manipulative or merely obtuse. She suspected the latter, which gave her no comfort. ‘Where there's a will there's affray,' Stephen had quipped when she told him about it. That had been no comfort either.

‘Thank you for the offer,' she said with heavy irony, which Bee missed, because she immediately jumped in with an afterthought.

‘Not your old bedroom, though. I'm afraid I've taken that.'

Nina took a moment to construe this. ‘D'you mean to say – have you already moved in?'

‘Well, Mummy said there was no point in paying rent at Fulham, and with Mr Dorsch living in that big house –'

‘Wait –
wait
. You're both assuming an awful lot. How can you be certain that Mr Dorsch will ask Mum to marry him?'

Bee shrugged. ‘She seems to think he will. And they looked very cosy together at the dinner.'

The dinner. This was an occasion Mrs Land had hosted for her three daughters and Mr Dorsch last week, ostensibly a casual affair but to Nina's eye a scheme to encourage the widower to regard himself as ‘one of the family'. It had been quite a convivial evening, true – her mother was a good cook, and Mr Dorsch had brought round some fine Austrian muscat to drink – but Nina nevertheless sensed a misreading of the situation. While Mr Dorsch's manner was cheerful and attentive, she detected no special warmth emanating from him towards his hostess, for all her vivacity. If he did have passion it was devoted to the pursuit of his charity work for the Spanish orphans still coming over in boatloads from the civil war. The toast he raised to Mrs Land in the middle of dinner was sincere but explicitly one of gratitude for her continuing good offices as a volunteer. Nina, making silent study of the moment, caught the tiniest glint of disappointment in her mother's hitherto bright gaze. She felt almost sorry for her.