A Lesser Evil - Lesley Pearse [186]
‘And you can bet that right now, even in a hospital bed, he’ll be working on some plausible story to cover that,’ Dan said gloomily. ‘And he’s got enough money to hire a first-class defence.’
They fell silent for a while, both thinking deeply about the pros and cons of revealing what Yvette did.
‘I think you must tell the truth,’ Dan said reluctantly after some little while. Whichever way he looked at it, he didn’t feel right holding back something so serious. ‘Low as the Muckles are, you can’t let them be convicted of murder when they didn’t do it. You’d have it on your conscience for ever.’
‘Molly doesn’t have any qualms about what she does to people,’ Fifi argued. ‘Yvette told her about the Paris brothel when she first came to England. She thought Molly was her friend then and she needed to talk about it. Molly blackmailed her with it, not asking for money as she did with Frank, but intimidating her so she would keep quiet about what she knew was going on at number eleven.’
‘That’s pretty evil, I agree,’ Dan nodded. ‘But Yvette could have moved away – no one with even a grain of common sense would just stay and put up with all that.’
‘Don’t judge her so harshly, Dan.’ Fifi took his hand in hers and kissed it. ‘She was all alone, she came to believe Molly had almost witchlike powers to track her down. What she’d been through in the war left her very damaged and with tremendous guilt. I honestly think she felt kind of cheated by not ending up in Auschwitz or Belsen.’
Dan nodded. ‘Okay. But there’s more to this than just pinning Angela’s death on someone. Alfie and Molly were never innocent bystanders. Trueman and the other men who were there that night came to wallow in Alfie’s sty because I suspect he provided them with kicks they couldn’t get anywhere else. You said Yvette hinted that there were other young people there in the past. Don’t you think that needs investigating and exposing? It might also shock Trueman’s thugs enough for them to come through with information about him which might make certain he never comes out of prison either.’
‘I suppose you’re right,’ Fifi said wearily. ‘I just wish I’d never poked my nose into anything. I never will again.’
‘Can I hold you to that?’ Dan grinned.
Martin heard the news that Jack Trueman had been beaten up when he called into the Bastille coffee bar at five-thirty on Tuesday to collect the day’s takings. Patsy, the little blonde manageress, called him into the kitchen out the back and broke the news.
‘There were police all over the place earlier this afternoon and we heard an ambulance too, but we didn’t think nothing of it. Then one of the girls from Mirabelle’s come running in here, said the police had gone swarming up into the office and found Jack tied up and beaten to a pulp.’
Martin was so staggered he could only stare wide-eyed at Patsy. He even thought it might be a wind-up.
‘Who did it?’ he asked eventually.
‘Well, Tricia was told by Janice that it was this goodlooking bloke who came in the office that morning. He said he was going to meet Janice for lunch. But he didn’t show, and when she got back to the office there was a note pinned on the door telling her not to go in, but wait for the police. They came soon after and they told Janice to go down into Mirabelle’s while they investigated, and it weren’t long after that the ambulance come and took Jack away.’
Martin immediately felt nervous because if this was the start of a turf war he knew Jack would expect all his men to retaliate hard and fast.
‘It was to do with those two women that have gone missing, the ones that were in the paper,’ Patsy said, tapping him on the arm because he didn’t appear to be paying attention. ‘Tricia reckoned the man was the pretty blonde one’s old man.’
‘You what?’ Martin exclaimed. ‘No, it can’t have been!’
‘Well, that’s what she heard the coppers say,’ Patsy retorted. ‘But if Jack had got those women you’d have known about it, wouldn’t you?’
Martin went all cold. He said he knew nothing about it, then,