The bedroom was unexpectedly large, and festooned with colourful silks. It was lit by lamps draped with sari fabric and the walls were a patchwork of pasted pages from fashion magazines. A two-bar fire took off the worst of the chill. Joan perched against a chest of drawers stuffed with towels, clothes and makeup boxes, while Beryl indicated the little bathroom opposite the open door.
‘I’m busy. I’ve got to be out of here in fifteen minutes. But we can talk.’
She worked on her makeup in the bathroom mirror. Joan didn’t mind at all. It was easier to talk if they weren’t facing each other anyway.
‘I already told that stuffed shirt from the police what I know,’ Beryl said. ‘But he didn’t believe me. Of course he didn’t. I’m just a tart, aren’t I?’
‘What did you tell him?’ Joan asked. Beryl mustn’t know that she had access to the reports – which by the way included her address, which Joan was absolutely certain she wasn’t allowed to use for encounters like this. If she was ever caught, ‘gross insubordination’ would be the least of it.
‘Well, I made up a little white lie that I had a headache and I asked Gina to stand in for me,’ Beryl admitted. ‘But it was true that she didn’t mind. She wanted to. That policeman had it in his head that I set her up, but I didn’t. He wouldn’t listen.’
‘They never do,’ Joan called out. She was enjoying her new persona. It was liberating.
‘I told him I only went to my sister’s because I was in a panic and missing my friend. He was positive I’d arranged the whole thing on behalf of the Billy Hill gang or something,’ Beryl said. ‘I got the idea that maybe a gang was involved, and they’d come after me. I s’pose just now I thought you were one of them, maybe. But I’ve been thinking. Gina wasn’t mixed up in anything dodgy like that. She wouldn’t. Nor would I. So, that policeman can go hang himself.’
Joan was struck by something Beryl had said earlier. ‘You told him Gina wanted to stand in for you. So it was her idea to swap places?’
Beryl popped her head round the door. The other eye was done now. She looked magnificent.
‘Definitely. She asked, and it was no skin off my nose. I pointed out he needed a blonde, and she said she’d dye her hair. It wasn’t a bad idea. She could make more money that way. Gentlemen prefer them, et cetera.’
‘Don’t they just!’ Joan rolled her eyes.
‘I warned her Perez . . . Rodriguez . . . whoever the papers say he was . . . had a reputation for not being kindly, shall we say? Gina said she knew.’
‘Why did she do it? Choose him, I mean. Did she, um, like that sort of thing?’
The woman in black had a much broader imagination than the original Joan, she realised, to her own surprise. She was developing a persona for herself. ‘Elaine’, who was worldly-wise, well travelled and largely unshockable.
‘What? Are you joking?’ Beryl scoffed. ‘Gina liked champagne and roses. She liked to go dancing. Blokes like him? You grit your teeth and get on with it. Maybe she just wanted to go blonde and this was the start of it. He was some sort of VIP. Not like the posh ones, but he got what he wanted. She was always very ambitious, was Gina. I mean, really ambitious. She wanted to hook a prince or something. She seemed to think she could get one, too.’ Beryl turned back to the bathroom. ‘And look what happened.’ She went back to her bathroom mirror.
‘Weren’t you worried when you didn’t hear from her afterwards?’
‘Of course! I was going spare with it. I called the hotel where they were supposed to go, but they didn’t know anything. I thought he might’ve actually taken her to the Dorchester, and maybe he’d paid for more time with her, but those posh hotels pretend nothing like that would ever happen. Nothing under their snooty roof. They wouldn’t talk to me.’
‘You had no idea she’d gone to Cresswell Place?’
‘Why would I? I didn’t even know she had a key.’
‘Where was she supposed to go?’
‘A cheap place in Earl’s Court. I’m not surprised she changed her mind. She’d been to Cresswell Place before. A few of us had. It was nicer. She’d probably kept the key from back then.’
‘Wouldn’t the agency have noticed?’ Joan asked.
‘I doubt it. We lose keys all the time. They just get replacements made. It’s not a problem.’
Joan pushed from her mind the sympathy for the poor tenants who knew nothing about the free use of their front doors. ‘Elaine’ didn’t care about such details.
‘And it was definitely Gina’s idea to go there, not his?’
Beryl looked in and now her eyelashes were twice as long. Her cheeks were brighter too. ‘I s’pose. If the agency didn’t send them, that brute wouldn’t’ve thought to go. He wasn’t a real VIP, however much he liked to think he was. He got mates rates for some reason, but he was nobody special.’ She disappeared again.
‘Why didn’t you tell the police? About Gina coming to you in the first place? Why say you had a headache?’
‘Because she had a secret, didn’t she?’ Beryl said in slightly muffled tones. ‘Why else would she want to swap for a slimeball like Perez? There was something she didn’t want anyone to know, not even me. I wasn’t going to tell them that.’
‘Why not?’
Beryl snorted derisively. ‘Wouldn’t trust those bedbugs as far as I could throw ’em.’
So the Queen had been right. Women talked to women more easily than they talked to men.
‘I saw the inspector on the news,’ Joan called out, truthfully. ‘He looked all right.’
‘He means well enough, but . . . he’s one of them, isn’t he?’
Beryl popped back again, lipstick done. Her face had more definition, but it had lost a certain softness that Joan actually preferred. She wondered if ‘Elaine’ swung both ways. Goodness.
‘“One of them”?’ she repeated.
‘They make it pretty clear what side they’re on. You go to them ’cause someone’s roughed you up, or not paid up, and next thing you know, you’re the one in the clink. Why bother?’ Beryl shuddered ‘Take that weasel, Willis, he’s a right one.’
‘Willis?’
‘Copper from the Vice Squad. Looks like a Boy Scout. You must know him.’
‘Oh, him!’ Joan said, nodding as if she did.
Beryl warmed to her theme. ‘Makes out he’s like your big brother in public. He’s all, “Can I help you, miss? What seems to be the problem?” And the minute you’re in private, he’s all over you like a wet cloth. He’s got cold fingers and all. Lets you know there’s nothing he couldn’t do to you if he was minded. Evil sod.’
‘Bastards,’ Joan said, with relish.
Beryl shrugged and looked briefly wistful. She started expertly removing the curlers from her hair, untwisting them by feel and depositing them in a heap on the chest of drawers beside Joan.
‘They’re not all like that, to be fair. There’s one I met. Tall bloke. A sergeant, I think. Very kindly-looking, but strong, too. Massive shoulders. I wouldn’t’ve minded him taking care of me.’ She laughed. ‘But his guvnor hardly let him say a word. He was too busy telling me about “dangerous characters” who wanted to cut me up. I was so scared I didn’t know what to think. I wasn’t going to get involved. Besides, it was too late for Gina.’ She bit her lip and welled up, reaching for a tissue so she could carefully remove tears before they did any damage.
‘I’m so sorry.’
‘Why? It’s hardly your fault. Anyway, it’s not me you need if you want to know what she was up to. It’s Rita, her flatmate. Best buddies, those two. If anyone knows anything, she would.’