‘Too posh for you, darling.’ The man in his thirties behind the desk avoided eye contact.
‘Well they say out there that you have rooms for dossers. . just askin’. .’
The man sat back in his chair and looked at her. He had a hard face, the face of an ex-con. If he did posses a sense of humour, Yewdall felt that it must live deep within his psyche.
‘Is that what is said?’
‘Yes.’
‘Word gets round.’ He paused. ‘What else is said?’
‘That it’s not free. You have to work.’
The hard man gave a very slight nod of his head. ‘How old are you?’
‘Old enough.’
‘That’s not what I asked.’
‘Twenty-four. . but I’m not working the street. Not for anything, not for anyone.’
‘What’s the accent?’
‘Potteries. . Stoke-on-Trent way.’
‘Got a name and an address up there?’
‘Penelope Lawrence, Two-one-four Rutland Street, Hanley.’
‘I’ll make a phone call. Come back in a couple of days Penelope Lawrence, but you’ll have to work. We don’t carry passengers.’
‘Two days?’
‘Two days.’ He lowered his head and wrote her name and address on his notepad.
The man and the woman sat contentedly side by side in the living room of their house in east London. The man turned to the woman and asked, ‘Cocoa?’
Kathleen Vicary smiled. ‘Yes, please. . it will help us sleep.’
SIX
The hugely built West Indian male seemed to Penny Yewdall to appear from nowhere, emerging out of the throng that negotiated the steps from Piccadilly Circus underground station to Regent Street. Gold rings adorned his fingers, his shoes were of crocodile skin, and he wore a full-length leather coat with an expensive looking suit beneath it. He towered over her and she caught a powerful scent of aftershave. They made eye contact. ‘Pretty chick,’ he sneered.
Penny Yewdall ignored him and glanced away.
‘Pretty chick, pretty white chick. . pretty honky chick. . little snowdrop chick. Come with me girl, I can show you how to make some real money. . real bread.’
She still ignored him.
‘Real soft bed, chick. . warm bed, clean sheets, better than this cold and damp stairway, pretty chick.’ The man’s harassment of her was public, naked, yet not one person intervened on her behalf. ‘Good clothes, new clothes.’
She continued to ignore him.
‘Real money, chick,’ he chanted, ‘jewellery, good clothes.’ Then he bent further towards her, hinging at the waist with powerful stomach muscles, so close that Yewdall smelled his minty breath through the fog of aftershave, and then the man said, ‘Harry Vicary says to be careful of a geezer called “Mongoose Charlie”, he offs people for Yates.’ Then he melted away into the crowd, leaving her alone once more, sitting in the drizzle with one or two very low denomination coins of the realm in her little plastic beaker, but comforted by the realization that she was being monitored. The crowd had hidden eyes.
She left the stairs at dusk having developed a strange trance-like detachment from the world, which she realized is the norm for down-and-outs — it was evidently the way they survived, mind and body separated from each other. They spent the days lost in their thoughts and memories and fantasies, and the nights lost in their dreams. Again she ate takeaway food from stalls in the street, curled up in doorways snatching sleep — occasionally she was moved on by a uniformed police officer but somehow survived until she felt it was time to go and sit on the stairs at the ‘Dilly Lady’ for another day. On the third day, in the forenoon, she walked to Kilburn and entered the premises of WLM Rents.
‘I expected you yesterday,’ the man said coldly as she approached.
‘You said two days.’
‘I meant the day after the next day.’
‘I thought you meant two full days I had to wait.’
The man sniffed. ‘Never mind. We can help you.’ He opened a drawer and tossed her two keys on an inexpensive key fob. ‘It’s 123 Claremont Road. Do you know it?’
Couldn’t be better, Yewdall thought, but said, ‘No. . I can find it.’
‘Left out the door, on the left just before the railway line.’
‘Got it.’
‘Your room will be the ground floor room, on the left once you are over the threshold.’
‘OK.’
‘But you’ll be working.’
‘Not on the street.’
‘No. Other jobs.’
‘OK.’
Penny Yewdall walked the greasy pavement in a steady drizzle to the address she had been given, the very address central to the investigation, and her room was the room in which the Welsh girl, Gaynor Davies, had been strangled. It could not, she once again thought, it just could not be better. She reached the house and rang the front doorbell. There was no answer. She tried the first key in the lock. It didn’t fit and so she let herself in with the second of the two keys. The house was gloomy. Even mid-morning it had a gloom about it and the smell of damp was strong and gripped her chest. ‘Hello,’ she called. Her voice echoed in the hallway. She walked forward and closed the door behind her, and then let herself into the ground floor room to the left of the hallway. She stepped into the room and stopped. A man stood in the room — tall, muscular, cold eyes. Yewdall and the man stared at each other.
‘I was told this was my room,’ Yewdall spoke nervously.
‘Where you been, girl?’
‘None of your business.’
The slap sent Yewdall reeling backwards until she fell against the wall and then to the floor. The urge to retaliate was strong but she resisted it. The handler was correct. She had to role-play, and weakened, emaciated female dossers take the slaps, they don’t hit back.
‘Where you been!’ The man advanced and stood over her, fists clenched. ‘Where you been! Where you been!’ The man’s eyes burned with anger.
‘Begging. .’ Yewdall panted. ‘I’ve been begging.’
‘Make any money?’
‘Hardly nothing. .’
The man pulled her up by her upper arm and threw her against the wall. He felt in her pockets and pulled out a handful of loose change, and the plastic bag containing twenty pence pieces. ‘What’s this?’ He held the bag up to her face.
‘Money. It’s all I have.’
‘Since when do dossers collect twenty pence pieces?’ Unlike the large, black police officer, the breath of this man was hot and malodorous, a mixture, it seemed to Yewdall, of gum disease, tobacco and alcohol.
‘I nipped a guy for them. He was milking parking meters.’
‘You nipped a guy for them but you won’t work King’s Cross? Mr Yates, he won’t like that.’ The man gripped her forearm.
‘Who’s he?’
‘The man. . he’s the man you work for. You live in his house, then you work for Mr Yates and Gail Bowling — you work for them both.’
‘But I knew the guy.’ Penny Yewdall turned her head away; she looked down towards the floor. ‘Known him for years. We had a thing going once so I didn’t see myself as being a brass. . he wasn’t a stranger.’
‘How does he do it, the parking meters?’
‘He uses tweezers — slides them in and the coin pops back out. Filth to worry about and CCTV cameras but he’s real quick, real lively.’
‘In London?’
‘No. . up in Stoke-on-Trent.’
The man sneered and relaxed his grip, but still held her. ‘Now I know you’re telling the truth — can’t do that in London but up in Stoke they’re still fighting the Second World War. . primitive. Anyway, get yourself washed and clean your clothes, Mr Yates wants to see you — you’ll be working tonight.’ He dropped the bag of coins on the floor and let go of Yewdall’s arm, then left the room, and went out of the house.