The Chelsea Murders (3 page)

Twenty-five-year-old Germaine … feeling unwell … in the nude for life classes at Chelsea Art School … registered as a model with the Inner London Education Authority …

He knew from a slight stiffening behind him exactly when Summers connected with that. A bit of posing, just the odd session, eh? Bloody newspapers had it, and the police didn’t. Should have had it: model, looking for work, Chelsea. Warton stored this in his festering brain bank and read on.

They actually had a little picture of him, on page 2, looking like a tit in a trance as he had emerged from Miss Jane
Manningham
-Worsley’s to have a drag in the car while pondering the pickles in the earlier nightmare.
Det. Ch. Supt. Edward Warton, in charge of the Chelsea Inquiries,
read the caption, and an accompanying small box encapsulated the nature of the inquiries to date.

Yes. All they weren’t using were phrases like ‘tight-lipped police officials were not indicating today whether …’

There were certain phrases that catastrophes to others had taught him to watch out for. They weren’t using this one yet. They hadn’t got on to the pregnancy, either. They were sniffing at it. ‘Feeling unwell.’ Sniffing at it.

There was a lot he had to say to Summers, and the moment he looked at Summers he knew that Summers was expecting it, but he didn’t say it yet. That was not his way.

‘They haven’t got the pregnancy yet, Summers,’ was all he said.

‘No, sir.’

‘I don’t want them to.’ Summoning huge reserves he said, ‘You could be right, Summers. He might not have anything to do with it. But somebody had. He’s not answering calls, is he?’

‘No, we’ve got someone there, sir.’

Warton sat brooding. It was hours since he’d stumbled out in the dark. He had a longing for a nice stressless office; desk, central carpet, smell of floor polish. Problems to do with
manning
, budgets, the odd conference. Might bring in a few flowers from the garden at Sander stead. Decent neighbours there,
insurance
officials, bank officials. See them getting up in the middle of the night to examine the inside of a whore.

His mouth was well furred, but he lit a cigarette and
broodingly
examined the box on page 2 again. It had the quality of a tombstone. He scented something about it. It might not have occurred to them yet; they worked fast and were mainly in the dark, too.

‘Summers, you and I know these murders have nothing in common, don’t we?’

‘Obvious, sir.’ Summers relaxed slightly.

‘Ng.’ Warton drew on his cigarette. ‘One of these bright bastards, give him a day or two, will start asking if we haven’t got a maniac here.’

‘T
HINK
we’ve got a maniac here, Chris?’

‘Maniac, h’m.’

‘What do you think?’

‘Maniac. Strong.’

‘Not bad, though, is it?’

‘Oh, not
bad
. No. Maniac’

‘Chelsea maniac,’ the editor said.

‘Chelsea maniac’

They sampled it a bit, looking at each other.

‘I’m wondering if we’ve quite reached that point,’ Chris said.

‘Well, have they reached some other?’

‘Oh, no. Running about. Still, the elements are a bit mixed, aren’t they? American oil man. Eighty-two-year-old spinster. Barmaid.’

‘Model,’ the editor said.

‘Model,’ Chris allowed.

‘Was she in the pudding club, by the way?’

‘Probably. They aren’t saying.’

‘What’s the landlord say?’

‘He isn’t saying. You can’t get at him.’

‘What about friends?’

‘We’re trying friends. Mooney is.’

‘Yes. Good work from her. Bonus, I think.’

‘Thanks. She’ll be glad. What she’s really after,’ Chris said, ‘is a job.’

‘I know. Tricky, that. Hiring problems and so forth.’

‘Oh, sure … I mean, I get the
story
. It’s strong, though.’

‘I like it,’ the editor said, simply.

‘I like it, too.’

‘It’s a very good word. As a word.’

‘Oh, good word.’

‘With follow-through … Bed-sitters, student hostels, old-age homes.’

‘Judo, karate, manly arts.’

‘Double locks, peep-holes … I basically wanted
you
to be convinced there was stuff, Chris.’

‘Well, I am, jack,’ Chris said. ‘Womanly arts, too, come to that,’ he added. ‘Special evening classes. They get them going for the balls, don’t they?’

‘And that spray. What’s that spray stuff?’

‘Mace.’

‘That. Run on the stocks. Suppliers besieged … You know, it’s a little beauty when you think of it. Gun licences, dogs. Dogs good. What was that word a moment ago? Besieged. Chelsea besieged.’

‘Chelsea Under Siege.’

‘I’ll think of it. Good night shot. Policeman watching. Atmospheric. Damn it, it’s better than Cambridge! Well, it’s Chelsea, isn’t it? Double locks, peep-holes. And the Thatcher angle – never let us forget. Copper watching Thatcher. Anyone can get raped, can’t they? Jesus,’ he said, wistfully.

‘Yeah. I mean, it’s good, anyway,’ Chris said. ‘We’re working on this film crew. You know, filming while it actually happened. They seem to have a spade in charge.’

‘Really?’

‘Yeah, real one, all black. Johnston. Artie Johnston,’ he said, looking at a note. ‘Nominal producer. Some arty-farty thing. Using various gilded Chelsea layabouts. Opens up certain vistas.’

‘Yes. Who else have they got?’

‘Director a young kook, Steve – is it? – yes, Giffard, brilliant career at film school, great things expected. The whole thing is kooky. It’s a group. What I was thinking there – the Polanski case, gifted director, wife murdered, the Manson shower. You know. Also, the art director’s a lecturer at Chelsea Art School – could easily have known this girl.’

‘Who is he?’

‘Another weirdo. Frank –
Doctor
Frank Colbert-Greer. Art historian. Queer as a coot. He’s writing a book on something.’

‘Where’s this from – Mooney?’

‘Yeah. What I was thinking – they’re all young. Gifted.
Evil
, is what I was sort of straining away at. A kind of nest, or
coven
. Know what I mean?’

‘Yes. I wouldn’t go overboard, though. I mean, I get the angles – evil, covens, gifted young. On the other hand, it isn’t a maniac, is it?’ asked the editor seriously. ‘Get one of those on his rounds and you can’t print enough copies. Women going in fear. What’s the bastard up to? They seek him here, they seek him there. Panic stalks the streets. Closely followed by us.’

‘Well, I see that, but –’

‘Not for a moment that I’m pissing on covens. It’s simply a question of proportion. There ought to be some way of speeding this up. They aren’t getting tight-lipped yet, are they?’

‘Not yet. Not really. Only on whether she was in the club or not. Understandable.’

‘Yes. Don’t let’s be too understanding … Greer. I’ve heard of him.’

‘The father. Portraitist. Painted all the Bloomsbury group. Dr Frank’s the fruit of his late fornications.’

‘Got him, have we?’

‘We will. He’s out of sight at the moment.’

‘What do you mean, out of sight?’

‘Not at home. Gone away.’

‘Police looking for him?’

‘We are.’

‘What’s this, Chris?’

‘Little hunch of Mooney’s. There might be nothing in it. She gets things, that girl, though.’

M
OONEY
was just then getting the beer. She was doing it in The Chelsea Potter (known as The Potters), one of a dozen pubs in the stretch between Sloane Square and World’s End. The attraction of The Potters was that Frank regularly used it. It didn’t look as if he’d be doing so tonight, however. All she’d got was Artie and Steve.

‘Well, then,’ she said, making the best of this. ‘And how’s Frank and his book these days? Where is he, anyway?’

‘Frank?’ Steve said. ‘Well, I think he’s just about up to Rossetti – that it, Artie?’

‘Rossetti?’ Artie said, startled. ‘Oh,
Rossetti
. Dante Gabriel. Big Gabe,’ he added. ‘Yeah, that’s where he’s at with it.’

‘Well, good,’ Mooney said.

Something was going on, for certain. No questions were being answered on Frank. She tried again.

‘It’s time I gave him another par on that, I promised him. There ought to be a way I could tie up the book with the film, give you all a turn.’

‘Sweetheart, it’s not a Pre-Raphaelite
film
,’ Artie told her.

He was like a long black cat, golliwog smile in place under his beehive; she smiled back at him.

‘How did the night-shooting go, incidentally?’

‘Good. You should have come. I told you.’

‘Does
Frank
take a practical interest in that?’ she asked with immense seriousness.

‘Well, of course he does. He has to,’ Artie said. ‘There’s a hundred things, costume, period, style.’

‘He was there, was he?’

She actually saw Steve’s foot move there, just as Artie opened his mouth. Artie didn’t falter. ‘Well, that’s always a scramble,’ he said. ‘I’ve got to keep my eyes on everything to be sure we don’t miss things. I mean, we hire that stuff practically by the minute. Well, you know how we’re working.’

Mooney knew how they were working. She’d done a couple of stories on the film, which she’d thought at first a joke. She knew now it was no joke. They were obsessed with it. Every penny they had or could borrow had gone into it. They’d taken their dim part-time jobs just to be able to carry on with it.

She listened as Artie carried on about it now: their
hand-cranking
flicker effects, the long mascara looks, bumbling
Keystone
cops – all the 1920-ish tricks they were using to make a piece of period slapstick out of some contemporary situations.

She’d heard it all before, though, so she watched Steve.

She saw that the little manikin, though relaxed, was
watching
her. It was his idea, most of the film, she knew. He’d dreamed it up at the film school. All three of them, Steve, Artie and Frank, had been at the school – and before that at Chelsea Art School. Frank was back at the art school now, though as a lecturer this time.

She sought for ways to get back to Frank; and tackled it her own way, as soon as Artie drew breath.

‘How’s Abo, then?’ she said. ‘Still coming up with the bread?’

The foot moved again, and this time Artie did falter.

‘Why – I guess so,’ he said.

‘Of course he is,’ said little Steve. ‘That’s a
bright
Arab.’

‘What’s he doing these days?’

‘Shagging his ears off,’ Artie said.

‘Apart from that.’

What Abo was doing apart from that, as Mooney knew, was learning English, with Frank.

‘I haven’t seen too much of him,’ Steve said.

‘Has he got over that cousin of his?’

‘Unfortunately.’

‘Some party!’

‘It was.’ Steve sipped his beer. ‘What that Arab needs is more cousins.’

‘I thought he had two thousand already,’ Artie said; adding curiously, ‘And why the hell is everv last one of them called Feisal?’

‘They aren’t,’ Mooney said. ‘Some are called Abo.’

‘Well, that’s right,’ Artie confessed. ‘And Mohammed. Abo is a Mohammed, too.’

‘No, he isn’t.’ Mooney was the expert on this. She had
written
a little piece after Abo’s commemorative party for his young countryman Feisal, who had been beheaded for assassinating his Uncle Feisal, king of Saudi Arabia. ‘He’s
ibn
Mohammed – Abdul Azbig
ibn
Mohammed. It means his father was
Mohammed
.’

‘Every Arab’s father was Mohammed,’ Steve said. ‘He was the father of the race.’

‘No, he wasn’t.’ Mooney knew this, too. ‘Abraham was. He was the father of all the Semites, Jews
and
Arabs.’

‘Catholic guy, Abraham. Ibrahim,’ Steve said prissily,
speaking
like Abo.

Just then Abo spoke for himself. ‘Hello,’ he said, with muted delight. He’d swung in, questing, from the King’s Road, long leather jacket swinging. Mooney recollected the boom of a Ferrari some moments before.

‘Hello, Abo, we were discussing your Catholic family,’ she said.

‘Catholic?’

‘Have a beer,’ Mooney said.

‘Whisky. Whisky?’ Abo said, producing his wallet.

‘Go on, pervert us.’

Abo bought the whisky, sizing up the form in the pub. There wasn’t much; Thursday evening. The labourers who favoured the place were paid on Friday. Abo, twenty years old, weirdly resembling in feature his late monarch Feisal, had catholic tastes.

‘I’ve been meaning to call you, Abo,’ Mooney said, in a friendly fashion. In her many calls today she’d already tried him a dozen times. ‘How’s it going?’

‘Very good.’

‘How are the English studies?’

‘Good,’ Abo said.

‘How’s Frank?’

‘He is my good friend.’

‘Teaching you much English?’

‘Much. Oh!’ Abo said, rolling his eyes to show how much.

‘Did he work you hard today?’

‘Not today. Frank not here today.’

‘Where is he?’

‘We fold our tents,’ Steve said, ‘and quietly steal away. Longfellow.’

‘So soon?’

‘Artie has a job,’ Steve said, ‘which I’m walking him to. But we’d be glad of a piece. Really. Let’s get together soon.’

‘Sure,’ Mooney said, and hungrily watched them go.

Nothing out of Abo, as she’d instantly sensed. He didn’t know anything. That was why they’d left her with him.

All Abo knew (though he bought her another whisky) was that this was one of the ugliest women he’d ever seen. Women should be blonde and about his own size, which was five foot five, and they should have faces either like dolls or like gazelles. This one had a face like a camel.

But he thought his own thoughts, and Mooney thought hers.

She thought about Artie.

He was weird.

They all were, but he was possibly the weirdest. There couldn’t be too many young Liverpool blacks who’d translated and published their own versions of the poems of Rimbaud. She knew about his sea-going days, of his three years in Paris and two in Los Angeles; his art school scholarship. Now he was producer of the film, and it was in this capacity, as she knew, that he was reading away in the reference library, covering all the cases in which the police had made particular fools of
themselves
– both to duplicate the hairier bits of action and to steer them clear of libel.

Knowing all this, she still felt she didn’t know much.

She knew far more about Frank, if only because feckless Frank told you everything – even his most ‘intimate’ items. He’d had lectureships at several art schools until he’d decided suddenly to do his book on the Pre-Raphaelites, and had then dropped the other schools, retaining only Chelsea.

To make ends meet and pay his whack with the film, he’d taken a job at a language school because of its flexible hours;
and at the language school he’d met Abo, now the principal backer of the film.

That was how things happened with Frank.

Abo, intended for a classier seat of learning, was having his troubles with English. Meanwhile, fantastically rich, palatially housed, he wasn’t averse to casting a few alms in a direction that guaranteed him a ready supply of boys and girls.

Mooney wondered what had gone wrong there. She had an idea something had. But mainly she wondered about Frank. You could always raise Frank somewhere. She hadn’t been able to raise him for two days now.

Something funny was going on.

Frank wasn’t just deviant and not just a hop-head. To say he was degenerate was simply to offer an opening remark on his whole fascinating awfulness.

She was aware that Abo was asking if she wanted more whisky. She thanked him and said she didn’t, and went home and resumed phoning.

She had a flat close by in the King’s Road.

It was opposite the post office.

Artie knew he was late when he left the pub but he didn’t hurry. He actually slowed. Steve was keeping something from him.

Every time Frank had been mentioned, the subject had been changed. Okay, there was something with Frank; immediately, without question, he had followed Steve’s lead. Now Steve was still doing it.

Artie felt one of his rages building up; felt it in his hands, the desire to smash faces, to break things.

He kept talking, though. Steve might still tell him; as if he’d meant to all the time, but that business had to come first.

The business was lousy.

Abo had called at the shop to give Steve the bills back. He said he wouldn’t be paying any more. That left them in a great position; a few hundred feet of film stock left, no way of
hiring
equipment or costumes for the next scenes. They couldn’t
even see the results of the night-shooting; the labs wouldn’t let the stuff out without money.

‘What’s the least they’d take?’ Steve said.

‘Two hundred. It’s nothing on what we owe. They’ve been okay.’

‘Well, we’ll have to get it,’ Steve said.

‘What is it with Abo?’

‘Who knows? We’ll settle him, but it takes time.’

‘Can’t Frank talk to him?’ Artie said.

‘He’ll have to.’

In the pause Artie said, ‘Where is Frank?’

‘I don’t know,’ Steve said.

Artie let some moments elapse.

‘Why did he come in to see you?’ Artie said.

‘He bombed out over the girl. I told you.’

‘What were you supposed to do about it?’

‘Christ, Artie,’ Steve said. ‘He
flipped
. He came in in a flipped condition. He wanted his hand held. I held it.’

‘He was screwing her, wasn’t he?’

‘You know Frank doesn’t screw girls.’

‘He does some bloody thing. Where is he now?’

‘In bed, I suppose. He’s low, leave him alone.’

‘If he was in bed, Mary would have got at him.’

‘So he’s somewhere else. What do you want, Artie?’

Artie wanted to yell
To know why you’ve got him away from the police.
He knew where Frank would be: at the country pad his old portraitist Dad had left him. They’d been there. No phones, hardly any roads. He’d be hiding while he thought what to do. He waited for Steve to say casually he might have a couple of things to do himself that week-end. Then he would pick Steve up and throw him in the road.

Steve didn’t say this. He said, ‘What did the police want?’

‘You know what they wanted,’ Artie said. ‘They wanted a list of everybody on the location.’

‘Did you give them it?’

‘Everyone I knew. Frank wasn’t there, was he?’

‘Oh, Jesus!’ Steve said.

They had got to the restaurant now.

‘Okay,’ Artie said. He left Steve and went in right away.

They were all eating duck inside.

Serge said, ‘
Ah, le poète en personne. La muse est parmi nous’.

‘Que pouvons-nous lui offrir?
’ Marc said.
‘
Qu’est-ce qui va inspirer son âme et son palais aujourd’ hui?
’

Artie told them all what they could do.

Steve was crossing the Albert Bridge in a cab. He got off at the other side of the river and hurried into the residential hostel.

He wasn’t, strictly speaking, entitled to this favoured
accommodation
, but he’d managed to keep himself listed as a student.

He let himself into his flat and switched on the light. He had left the door locked that led to his bathroom and bedroom and he unlocked it and switched the light on there, too.

Frank stirred unhealthily in the bed.

‘Get up now, Frank,’ Steve said.