The Chelsea Murders Read Free

under-lit.’
    ‘Great. You look shagged, Artie,’ Steve said.
    ‘Yeah. Anyway,’ Artie said. He was tugging out his notes. ‘Here’s this. And we got problems with green blood. I was looking for Frank.’
    ‘Leave Frank, Artie. He’s low today.’
    ‘I couldn’t find him. Where the hell –’
    ‘Leave him. It’s that chick they pulled out of the river.’
    ‘What chick?’
    ‘Haven’t you seen the news?’
    ‘Jesus, I’ve had no time –’
    ‘From The Gold Key. The barmaid. She’s drowned. Leave him just for –’
    ‘Hey, what you do?’ Blue Stuff said. ‘Customer standing.’
    ‘Won’t be a tick, Denny.’ Blue Stuff’s given name was Ogden, in honour of a Baptist minister in Hong Kong, but he was known as Denny, and on occasion Chairman, for he was also the chairman of his company, Wu Enterprises. He had a lot of enterprises, did Wu.
    ‘No tick. Customer. What you want, Artie, you buy arose?’
    ‘Just looking in, Denny.’
    ‘Not a coffee shop. Flank rooking in, Arab rooking in. Crose shop here. Go somewhere else rook in.’
    ‘Yeah, okay, only I’ve got to sleep tomorrow,’ Artie told him, and realized he should be telling Steve. ‘So don’t call me,’ he told Steve. ‘I just brought this in. We can meet in the evening.’
    ‘You’re surely not going to work now.’
    ‘I have to. I forgot to tell them I’d be up all night.’
    ‘Rooking very fine. Extleme fashion,’ Denny was saying as Artie left. He’d taken over the scarecrow himself, spreading his L’s and R’s as usual.
    Artie was spreading his, too, as he went back out in the rain. Gleen blood. Why Flank in shop? Why Arab? He began to talk French to himself. He’d be speaking it for most of the evening. He could feel his brain tiring now. It was still going ceaselessly but it felt heavy. There was something it was trying to tell him, but it needed more Speed.
    Before he got to work he passed another newspaper poster, however, and realized what it was. Strangled, the poster said. Drowned, Steve had said.
    Could it be the same one? There were so many. Sleeping and waking, his life was full of murder lately.

3
    ‘W HAT kind of beastly thing?’ Mooney said. She was looking along her long legs and scruffy jeans to her sneakers, equally scruffy, on the arm of the next chair. (This was hours earlier and a couple of miles away.) There was no one else in the room and it was raining outside and she didn’t feel very good, anyway. He’d asked her twice if he couldn’t speak to the editor himself. She’d told him he couldn’t. It was Wednesday, and the editor was off in Dorking putting the sodding thing to press.
    She looked idly over the last proof pages, willing him to say ‘contraceptive’. Not a bad little story if he’d gone and found one there in the vestry.
    She saw she had quite a nice by-line on the front page. CHELSEA PENSIONER SAVES GIRL FROM GANG . Gazette Reporter : Mary Mooney . The phone on the next desk was giving her a headache, so she lifted it off. ‘Vicar, could you hang on a tick,’ she said, and answered it. ‘News room.’
    ‘Mary Mooney there?’
    ‘Speaking … Chris?’ she said. The Evening Globe.
    ‘Mary – could you get down to The Gold Key, pub near
    World’s End?’
    ‘What’s doing?’
    ‘I don’t know. Could be big. Germaine – check that spelling – Roberts. Barmaid. We’ve got it as Diane Germaine Roberts. She was picked up out of the river. A buzz from Scotland Yard. She was a part-timer there.’
    ‘What, drowned?’
    ‘Yeah, she was drowned. Packer was just on the blower. He’s over there. Apparently she was living on the premises.’
    ‘Gold Key. Germaine Roberts. Packer’s where?’ she said.
    ‘At the Yard. He’s staying there. The Gold Key is on the corner of –’
    ‘I know The Gold Key. What – taxi?’ Mooney said.
    ‘Just get there fast as you can.’
    ‘Okay, fine, I’ll call,’ Mooney said. She got her feet down off the chair. The third ? Was it