A Lesser Evil

  Fifi had sensed when he began hiding himself away from her that he wished he hadn’t told her all that stuff about Molly. She had kept her promise of silence, she hadn’t even told Dan about it. But maybe he didn’t believe that.

  She wasn’t going to back away now; she was determined to make him talk to her. ‘I insist,’ she said. ‘I’ll be back at work on Monday, so it’s my last chance to be a bit naughty and drink during the day.’

  He tried to produce a smile, but it was a weak, forlorn one. ‘Was that your mum I saw you leaving with yesterday?’ he asked. ‘If so, she looks young enough to be your sister.’

  ‘Yes, it was Mum, a surprise visit. I’ll tell her what you said. That will make her day.’

  She thought Frank looked ill. He’d lost weight and his normal good colour. Once she’d got her drink and paid for them, she suggested they sat over in the corner.

  ‘Now why have you been avoiding me?’ she asked teasingly. ‘I thought we were friends.’

  Frank shrugged. ‘I’ve been down in the dumps. I couldn’t face talking to anyone.’

  ‘Well, it was a good job you didn’t run into me,’ Fifi said. ‘I was down too, but it affected me the other way. I was talking non-stop to anyone that would let me.’

  ‘It just seems to be getting worse rather than better,’ he said wearily. ‘And now they’ve got Stan again.’

  ‘So we heard,’ Fifi replied, putting her hand over Frank’s. ‘Dan and I think it sounds like a load of old rubbish.’

  Frank looked as if he was going to cry. ‘I’ve just been up to the nick to see if they’d let me see him, but they wouldn’t. They’ll have to charge him soon, or let him go. He’s been there nearly twenty-four hours.’

  ‘Do you know anything about the woman who made the claims?’

  ‘A bit. She’s called Frieda and she’s rough, got several kids and her old man’s doing time,’ Frank said, his voice wavering. ‘Stan used to empty her bins, and she set her cap at him at the end of last year, always coming out with a cup of tea for him and that.’

  ‘Do the police know that?’

  ‘Stan’s bound to have told them now. Last Christmas Eve she came in here all dressed up, on the hunt for him.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘Stan was a bit drunk, he kissed her under the mistletoe and flirted a bit. The next day when he came for his Christmas dinner with me, he felt really bad about it. He said he’d only got to know the woman because her little girl used to chat to him, but he didn’t really like her mother, and now he’d given her the wrong signals. I said he’d have to put her straight.’

  ‘Did he?’ Fifi asked.

  Frank shook his head. ‘You know what Stan’s like, too much of a gent to be rude to any woman.’

  ‘So she got her claws into him then?’

  ‘Not in the way you mean. He didn’t take Frieda out or anything like that, but he liked the little girl, and felt sorry for her cos she were a bit neglected. Next thing Frieda was tapping him up for a few bob when the kid needed new shoes and stuff. I reckon it must’ve got out of hand, because back in June Stan was getting the other blokes on the dust van to do the bins on that street so he didn’t have to see her.’

  ‘Do you think this is like “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned”?’ Fifi asked.

  ‘I reckon so. I know Stan ain’t seen her or the kid for ages, and if he really had done something to the child, Frieda would’ve screamed blue murder right away. The way I see it, she heard about what happened in the street, and thought she’d jump on the bandwagon and make some mischief for him.’

  ‘Evil cow!’ Fifi exclaimed. ‘But did you tell the police this today?’ she asked.

  ‘Yeah, fat lot of good it did though. They see me and Stan as a team because we’re mates. And of course there was that joke I made in the pub, they took that seriously.’

  Fifi tried everything to cheer Frank up. She showed him her white arm, told him about The Day of the Triffids, and some of the more amusing things her mother had said during her visit. But it was impossible to make him either laugh or talk, and after a second drink she left to go home.

  Once outside in the sunshine though, and just a tiny bit tiddly after two shandies on an empty stomach, she didn’t want to spend the afternoon indoors. All at once she hit on the idea of going down to the council depot in Stockwell to see if she could enlist the help of one of Stan’s workmates.

  She had the idea that if she explained to them that he was in deep trouble, and that she thought this woman Frieda had made a false allegation, one of them might be persuaded to go to the police and tell them what they knew about her.

  It was only one stop on the tube, and she asked a road sweeper for directions from there. Stan had told her once that the depot was just the place where the dust vans were cleaned and garaged, and that the refuse was dumped elsewhere. Yet as she turned into Miles Lane, a narrow, winding street of dilapidated small houses and workshops, the stench of rotting rubbish was overpowering.

  The gate had a ‘No Admittance’ sign, but it was open so Fifi went in. Two young men stripped to the waist were cleaning a truck with hoses, and another two middle-aged men were sitting on the ground, with their backs against the wall of an office, having a cigarette.

  Fifi walked hesitantly over to these two, ignoring the wolf whistles from the younger ones.

  ‘I’d like some help, please,’ she said, smiling flirtatiously, even though they were tubby, with thinning hair, and in very dirty overalls.

  ‘Anything you want you can have, including me,’ said the slightly bigger man, who had a squashed nose like a boxer’s. He got to his feet. ‘Bert’s the name. I’d shake your hand but mine’s too dirty to touch a pretty little thing like you.’

  ‘Do you know Stan the Pole?’ she asked.

  The man’s face tightened and he instinctively moved a step back, so clearly he knew Stan was in police custody. ‘Yeah, we know ’im,’ he said. ‘What’s ’e to you?’

  ‘Just a neighbour and a friend,’ she said. ‘I want to help him because I know he hasn’t done anything wrong.’

  ‘Then ’e ain’t got nothin’ to worry about,’ Bert replied.

  ‘But a woman has claimed he molested her child,’ Fifi said.

  ‘So!’ he exclaimed, and the fact he didn’t display any shock or ask any questions suggested he knew exactly who she was referring to.

  ‘I was hoping that someone here might go to the police station and tell them that what she’s saying isn’t true.’

  ‘’Ow do we know it ain’t?’ Bert’s friend asked as he got to his feet. ‘Stan’s a weird bugger.’

  ‘He’s just foreign and different, not a child molester. I’d stake my life on that,’ Fifi said. ‘Do you know the woman who made the complaint? Her name is Frieda.’

  ‘Might do,’ Bert said, his eyes narrowing.

  ‘Well, if you do, you must have an opinion about her?’

  ‘She’s a scrubber,’ the other man chimed in.

  Fifi smiled. She thought she was winning. Neither of these two men seemed very bright, but then Stan had once said that the biggest drawback of the job was the mentality of the men he had to work with.

  ‘So did you know she was pestering Stan?’ she asked.

  ‘She’s after anyfing in trousers,’ Bert said. ‘’E were a mug giving ’er kid things, ’er ma must’ve thought ’er luck was in.’

  ‘And he tried to avoid her, didn’t he?’ Fifi said patiently.

  ‘Dunno, all we ’eard was that she ’ad the ’ots fer ’im,’ Bert said. ‘We used to take the mickey.’

  ‘Would you go and tell the police that then?’ she asked. ‘Please! I know Stan would stick up for any of you.’

  ‘We can’t say nothin’,’ Bert said, and he looked down at the ground and shuffled his feet as if slightly ashamed. ‘We been told not to.’

  ‘Who by?’

  ‘Daren’t say,’ he replied.

  Fifi sighed. ‘Just you t
wo, or all the men here?’

  ‘All of us.’

  Fifi sensed she was beaten. She had no idea if what the man said was true, or if he’d made it up to get rid of her. But she clearly wasn’t going to get much more out of him.

  ‘Can you just tell me what road Frieda lives on then?’ she asked. ‘That wouldn’t hurt, would it?’

  ‘Whatcha want to know that for?’ Bert asked.

  ‘As you won’t help Stan I thought I might be able to find someone there who would,’ she said.

  ‘Look, it ain’t that we don’t wanna ’elp ’im,’ the other man said, glancing at his companion as if they shared some secret.

  ‘I understand, you’re afraid you’ll lose your jobs.’

  He nodded. ‘’E’s an ’ard bastard, our boss, don’t care that we got kids an’ all.’

  Fifi wanted to smile. He was so thick it hadn’t occurred to him that he’d let slip who had said they were to say nothing. ‘So just whisper what road, I’ll find a way to do the rest,’ she said.

  ‘Jasper Street,’ Bert said quickly. ‘Now go afore the boss comes back and sees you.’

  As Fifi walked back down Miles Lane, she wondered why the men’s boss had warned them to say nothing about Stan. That was very odd – what possible reason could he have for demanding such a thing?

  She was at the end of the lane, just about to cross the intersecting road, when a red Jaguar came along. The driver was slowing to turn into Miles Lane, and he looked right at her and grinned lecherously.

  He was middle-aged, a big, wide-shouldered man with silver-grey hair slicked back from his tanned face. And Fifi knew she had seen him somewhere before.

  She continued across the road but turned and looked back, trying to place him. He turned right and drove into the council depot.

  Fifi walked on back to the tube station, but her mind was on the man. He could be the boss the men were nervous about, and she wondered if he had perhaps come into the Rifleman at some time with Stan.

  But she couldn’t imagine the foreman of a rubbish depot earning enough to have such a flashy car. She knew very little about cars but she was sure that was the latest model.

  Outside the tube station Fifi paused again, wondering what she should do about Frieda. Ten minutes ago it had seemed such a good idea just to go there and have it out with the woman, but now she wasn’t so sure. From what Frank said she sounded very rough, and she just might go for her. On top of that Frieda might report Fifi to the police, and that could get her into trouble. Nor did she know how far it was to Jasper Street, and she had intended to make something special for dinner tonight.

  She wavered for several minutes before deciding it really wasn’t her place to go banging on a stranger’s door, and it might make things worse for Stan rather than better.

  Once she was on the tube her mind kept turning back to the man in the red car. Dan always remembered people by their cars, but she wasn’t sure she should ask him about this one as it would involve telling him about her visit to the depot. She knew he wouldn’t approve, he’d say she was sticking her nose in other people’s business and that might start another row. She didn’t want anything to spoil her first evening without the plaster.

  Back at home Fifi got out the ingredients for the fish pie she wanted to make. She’d cut the recipe out of a magazine some time ago. It looked delicious in the picture, and it sounded easy to make, even for her, as she was well aware she wasn’t a very good cook.

  While the fish was simmering in some stock, she made the pastry and the white sauce. But maybe she overcooked the fish because when she strained it, it looked more like grey soup. But she mixed it all into the white sauce anyway, put it into a pie dish and then placed the pastry on top. She made some decorative pastry leaves like in the picture, but when she put them on, the pastry began to sag down in the middle. Assuming it would rise as it cooked, she put it into the oven and went off to have a bath.

  She was longer in the bath than she intended as it was so lovely to be able to immerse herself completely without the plaster on her arm. By the time she’d got out, she noticed that the whole house stank of fish, and worse still of burning. She rushed back and opened the oven to find the pie looking absolutely nothing like the one in the picture. It was only the edges that were burned, but the pastry hadn’t risen, it had sunk even further into the filling and looked awful.

  Undeterred, she prepared the vegetables and laid the table in the living room. She was sure it would taste nice even if it didn’t look it, and Dan was always appreciative when he knew she’d made an effort.

  By six she was ready, wearing Dan’s favourite black dress, with her face made up. She turned the oven right down to its lowest setting and went over to the window to watch for Dan coming home.

  Yvette came out of her house and hurried up the street. As always she was wearing one of her shapeless dresses, with a dull brown cardigan over it. It looked as if she was just going to the shop as she had a purse in her hand. As Yvette got to number 13 where the Boltons lived, John came out, and they stopped to talk.

  Fifi had only ever spoken to John once or twice, and that was in the Rifleman when she and Dan first came to the street. He was in his late thirties, a big, handsome man with black hair, greying at the temples, vivid blue eyes, an engaging smile, and extremely sharp suits. It was whispered that he was a villain, and he certainly didn’t appear to have a real job as he never emerged from number 2 before noon.

  Vera, his wife, was a voluptuous red-head who worked as an usherette in a West End cinema. Someone in the street had told Fifi that their flat was very plushy, with thick carpets, expensive furniture and all the latest appliances, so the whispers about him were probably true.

  Next to Dan, John was the best-looking man in the street, even Yvette had remarked on that. Fifi had seen her talking to him on several occasions, and although she expected it was only because Yvette made clothes for Vera sometimes, Dan had often joked that the dressmaker had the hots for John.

  She looked animated enough for that, her hands fluttering as if she were describing something to him. Fifi wished she was close enough to hear what they were talking about.

  Suddenly Fifi’s memory was jolted as John turned slightly and she saw his profile. She had the same view of him as when he waited for the door to be opened at the Muckles. It was some weeks ago, long before she had the miscarriage. But more importantly, his companion that evening had been the man she’d seen this afternoon in the red Jaguar.

  While Fifi was busy studying Yvette and John Bolton, Sergeant Mike Wallis was talking to Detective Inspector Roper in his office.

  ‘What’s it going to be, guv?’ Wallis said. ‘Charge him or let him go?’

  Roper lit a cigarette and drew heavily on it. He had been sitting at his desk for over an hour mulling over the evidence against Stan the Pole. But the man had been in custody over twenty hours now, and he couldn’t keep him any longer without charging him.

  ‘I don’t believe that slag of a woman,’ he said viciously. ‘Okay, the Pole is a bit of an odd fish and he lied to us the first time round about where he was at the time of the murder. But he doesn’t strike me as a nonce or a killer. Have you checked to see if Frieda Marchant’s got any form?’

  Wallis nodded, and got out his notebook. ‘She has, two counts of receiving back in ’61, and more recently shoplifting. PC Coombs spoke to her neighbours who say she’s a troublemaker, she neglects her kids, and she’ll do or say anything for a few bob. I’d say that someone put her up to this.’

  ‘So would I,’ Roper sighed, loosening his tie and undoing the top button on his shirt. ‘But who, that’s the question? She’s Alfie’s kind of woman, not that much different to his missus, but he could hardly order her to make mischief for Stan from the prison.

  ‘She certainly has had some sort of relationship with Stan, and he admits some involvement with the kid, and buying her presents. I’m inclined to believe his story, that he just liked the kid and fe
lt sorry for her, and this is Fat Frieda’s revenge for him turning her down.’

  ‘Thing is, can we believe his story about oversleeping on the day of the murder?’ Wallis asked. ‘Not one of the men at the council yard would admit he clocked Stan in that morning.’

  ‘Well, they wouldn’t,’ Roper said, stubbing out his cigarette and lighting another one immediately. ‘Anyone admitting that would get the sack. Besides, Stan’s fingerprints don’t match any of those from the bedroom of number 11, so I think we’ll let the poor sod go. But let’s put Fat Frieda under surveillance. If she was put up to this, she might go calling on them, and with luck it will be someone that was at that card game.’

  ‘Tell me, guv, do you still think it was Alfie or Molly that killed the kid?’

  Roper shook his head wearily. ‘I dunno, Mike. I was a hundred per cent sure. But the more information we get, the more I doubt my own judgement. I almost believed Molly about Frank Ubley, for Christ’s sake! She made it sound so bloody plausible. It was a stroke of luck for him that he’d gone into that flower shop by the tube station. It might have been a different outcome if the shopkeeper hadn’t remembered him taking so long to choose flowers for his wife’s grave. I felt bad that I’d even suspected the poor sod after that. Then this comes up about the Pole! So now…’ He paused to grimace. ‘Well, let’s just say I’m even more confused. Alfie’s the kind that would grass up his grandmother to save his own neck. So why won’t he give the names of the men at that card party?’

  ‘Is it worth bringing John Bolton in again?’ Wallis asked. ‘I know he couldn’t have done it, but I got the idea he was holding something back.’ He flicked back through his notebook to the notes he’d made when they interviewed Bolton before. ‘“I just didn’t like the company,”’ he read out, and looked at the older officer. ‘That was what he said about the one card game he went to. He wasn’t talking about Alfie, was he? I mean, they grew up in the same street, they were even pals as kids, so he already knew what he was like. So it stands to reason there was someone else there he didn’t like. Reckon we could get him to tell us?’