The Girl at My Door: An utterly gripping mystery thriller based on a true crime Read online

  The Girl at My Door

  An utterly gripping mystery thriller based on a true crime

  Rebecca Griffiths

  Books by Rebecca Griffiths

  The Girl at My Door

  * * *

  Sweet Sacrifice

  Cry Baby

  A Place to Lie

  The Primrose Path

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Three Years Later

  Postscript

  Hear More from Rebecca

  Books by Rebecca Griffiths

  A Letter from Rebecca

  Acknowledgements

  For my husband, Steven.

  Without you, there would be nothing.

  … I got a stocking and tied it round her neck to put her to sleep.

  * * *

  Extract from the testimony of British serial killer and necrophile

  John Reginald Halliday Christie, June 1953

  Prologue

  He could almost taste her anxiety. Brackish. Moist. Anxiety that had nothing to do with him. Not yet, anyway. Neat and ordinary in his brown trilby and raincoat, he was one of the invisible people, no different from the thousands of others who moved about these city streets after dark. It was his ordinariness that allowed him to walk close on her heels, silent in his soft shoes, listening to the tantalising rasp of her stocking tops as thigh rubbed thigh. Close enough to reach out and touch the tender skin behind her ear, if he wanted to. And he did want to, very badly. He licked his lips and leered into her shadow. Women knew what they were doing; they knew their power. Arousing his masculinity and then stifling it, mocking it… humiliating it. It was why he committed such bestial and revolting crimes against them.

  London cowered behind the fog. The vapour curling up off the Thames and thickening in his lungs made it difficult to breathe. Buildings, rising taller than trees from the wet pavements, melted into the murkiness as he trailed the woman down street after street, his eye fixed on the glittery diamante trinket pinned to the folds of her hair. The only thing of interest amid the gloom, in a city where everything was filmed in the greasy hue of gaslight and choked in smog.

  When she reached a busy thoroughfare, she stopped and turned. For a terrible moment he thought she was on to him but the gesture was nothing more than a reflex: something carried from childhood and the automatic drill of road safety lessons. Things he’d needed to learn in adulthood when he arrived here twenty-five years ago, unfamiliar with the tempo of London traffic. Her face was as pale as the moon that rose above the moors back home, and looking at her more closely, he appreciated how young and beautiful she was. It made his heart beat faster.

  Hurry, she seemed to tell herself, crossing briskly from kerb to kerb through the grind of buses and taxicabs and the rain that had begun to fall. He was guessing this route she’d decided on was a shortcut and now she wasn’t sure. Shame he wasn’t wearing his special constable’s uniform, with the bogus authority it gave him – bogus because his role in the Emergency Reserve had ended in 1943. It would have allowed him to march right up to her and offer his assistance. Women in distress were always happy to trust an officer of the law.

  ‘Are you lost, lass?’ He chuckled to himself, delighting in her panic as she scanned the stretch of pavement, the whites of her eyes caught in passing headlamps. ‘You look as if you are.’

  Now.

  Do it now.

  He knew his persistence would be rewarded. Like the trapping of the small yet exquisitely beautiful tortoiseshell butterfly on Swales Moor when he was a boy. These chances were just as rare, so he needed to go easy.

  Then, a passing bus and the woman’s expression brightened. Too fast, surely? Pulse thumping and oddly concerned for her safety, he gasped when she stepped into the road and thrust out a hand to seize the pole.

  He watched her swing aboard, whiplashed by the tail of her coat. He had gone and missed his chance, but there would be another. He only had to be lucky once, he consoled himself; she had to be lucky every time.

  1

  London, 1949

  Queenie Osbourne stepped back from the microphone and slipped, slinky as a mermaid in her sequin-scaled gown, beneath the wave of applause. It was as if the appreciation in the smoky nightclub was going on in another room. For another singer. And had nothing to do with her. She noticed the cigar-sucking bulk of Cyril Bream, the Mockin’ Bird’s owner, a man everyone called Uncle Fish, watching from the wings and beckoned to him. He swayed towards her: an overloaded cargo ship negotiating the sea of music stands, drum kit and piano, his Humpty Dumpty appearance belying the intellect of a man who had made his fortune in the cotton mills of Manchester. He reached for her hand inside its satin glove and lifted it into the air while she stared out at the members seated at tables adorned with tasselled lamps.

  ‘They love you.’ Cyril kissed her hand, his white Edwardian moustache prickling the satin. There were tears in his eyes. Tears like he’d had the day of her audition. ‘Pop in and see me before you go,’ he said, then disappeared.

  * * *

  Queenie left the stage and trailed the cheers of appreciation down to the dressing room in the fishtail of her dress. Once inside, she drew back the red velvet curtain, making it clatter on its rings. The curtain was there to partition the room and give her privacy when she needed it. Most of the time she didn’t. It was her dressing room, and apart from Terrence, the other boys in the band rarely came in here. She sat before the mirror, unclipped her hair and fanned it over her shoulders, loving the loose, long waves. Who else had hair like this? She appreciated its glassy sheen, its rich brown tones. Close to the mirror, melting into her image, Queenie failed to notice Terrence Banks stan
ding by the door.

  ‘You coming for a drink?’ Tall and dapper in his pinstriped suit and polka-dot tie, his question slid beneath her vanity.

  ‘I was only…’ Her excuses died in her mouth. What was she doing? Admiring herself, loving herself? ‘Sorry.’ She blushed.

  ‘What for?’

  She shrugged – there was nothing to say. She’d been caught out and now she was ashamed.

  ‘You’re beautiful, darling. And if you’ve got it, flaunt it.’ Terrence fiddled with the handkerchief ruched in his breast pocket. ‘Another full house tonight. It’s that write-up in the Standard, calling you the next Billie Holiday. It echoed what that Herbie Weiszmann said. Lucky, on his visit from New York, he walks into our little club. Who’d have thought it? Our Queenie, singing on Broadway… Let’s go celebrate.’

  ‘I won’t be a tick.’ She turned away, strangely embarrassed, not quite knowing how to deal with the prospect of stardom. ‘I just need to sort my face out.’

  ‘Pretty necklace – who gave you that?’

  Queenie pressed a hand to the emerald pendant swinging from her neck. ‘Digsby.’

  ‘Not that old chrome dome?’

  She winked and applied a fresh coat of red lipstick.

  ‘God, Queenie, you don’t let him touch you?’ A horrified look.

  ‘Don’t be silly. I never let any of them touch me.’

  ‘How come? They must want something in return.’

  ‘I know how to play them, that’s all.’ She blotted her mouth.

  ‘You worry me. Everything’s a game to you.’

  Another wink. ‘Silly old duffer gave me these too.’ A flash of her earrings.

  ‘You and your sparkly things. You’re such a magpie.’

  ‘But I don’t steal things.’

  Terrence undid his top button and loosened his tie. ‘No, you just steal their hearts, darling.’

  They left the dressing room and walked up the narrow flight of stairs, made their way to the bar with its dimpled stools and banks of glasses. Aside from the rest of the band, the Mockin’ Bird was empty.

  ‘What’ll you have?’ Terrence waved a hand over the optics.

  ‘Port and lemon. Easy on the ice.’

  ‘Our singer’s such a star, isn’t she, lads?’ The click of his lighter and he lit one of Queenie’s slim white Sobranies. ‘She told you about Broadway?’ He passed it to her and took another for himself.

  ‘Shh, Terry. I’ve not signed the contract yet. I might stay here.’ She drew on her cigarette.

  ‘You can’t pass up on that.’ He exhaled smoke in two grey tusks. ‘Weiszmann’s fixing you a recording deal with Atlantic Records, too. This is the chance of a lifetime.’

  ‘I’m with Terry,’ Dick, the saxophonist, piped up. ‘You’ve gotta go for it.’

  Buster, the band’s drummer, sat at the bar wearing his haunted look and a suit that had probably belonged to his late father. Prone to angry outbursts, he was a man racked with anxiety and Queenie had always found him a little unnerving. Not that she could blame him if he ranted at the likes of her: someone who hadn’t heard a shell fired, or seen a friend blown to pieces, who didn’t have nightmares and hear dead men screaming in the dark. As a girl, she’d been packed off to her grandparents’ farm to be safe during the Blitz because this man, along with thousands like him, believed it was his job to protect her and others like her.

  She watched as he took a last leisurely pull on his fag and fumbled for the edge of the counter. It was obvious he was drunk, that he needed its support to get to his feet.

  ‘Come on, Buster, tell us a story.’

  Queenie thought he was at his best when he told stories, on nights like these when they sat around listening to him pluck things from the air. Frightening things that made the hairs stand up on the back of her neck.

  ‘I’d best be off.’ Buster downed what was left of his pint and pocketed his Woodbines.

  ‘Want a hand? Can’t you reach?’ Terrence, teasing, lifted Buster’s army overcoat down with ease. A coat which, although carefully dyed, still betrayed its origin in every line.

  They waited for their drummer to leave, for the outer door to bang shut, then an outbreak of chortling and adenoidal snorting.

  ‘He was out again tonight.’

  ‘What d’you mean?’ Queenie looked at Dick, who nodded, letting Terrence explain.

  ‘He’s missing the beat all the time.’

  ‘I didn’t notice.’

  ‘He drinks too much.’

  ‘You can’t say anything – the poor guy thinks the world is against him as it is.’ She lit another of her cigarettes. ‘He told me he still has nightmares because of the war.’

  ‘We all have nightmares. Everyone’s lost something, someone… We’re all half of what we were before the bloody war.’

  Surprised by the bitterness in Terrence’s voice, she thought of her brother who never came home from the South China Sea.

  ‘You’re smoking a lot.’ He changed the subject.

  ‘No more than you.’

  He leant over the ashtray. ‘Excuse me. I don’t wear scarlet lipstick, it’s not my colour, darling.’

  Queenie broke into song. ‘… A cigarette… a lipstick’s traces…’ Her voice, caramel-sweet with its sexy rasp, circled the empty club.

  Terrence hummed along to the tune of ‘These Foolish Things’, his fingers working the burr oak counter of the bar: an imaginary piano.

  At that moment the main door of the club swung open and a tall, loose-limbed black man in a smart coat and hat hovered unsure on the threshold. His row of beautiful white teeth gleamed like an advertisement.

  ‘Who’s that?’ Queenie liked the look of him.

  ‘It’s Malcolm. He must’ve finished early. Blast it, I told him to wait for me outside.’ Terrence fumbled for his overcoat.

  ‘That’s him, is it? I’d love to meet him.’

  ‘You will, Queenie. Soon.’

  ‘Why not now? Go on, Terry, invite him in. We can have a drink, all of us.’

  Terrence shot her a look that said this was impossible.

  ‘Where are you going? Can I come with you?’

  Another look, sheepish, his cheekbones flushing cherry-pink. ‘Not this time, Queenie. Sorry.’

  * * *

  It was almost three in the morning and Cyril Bream, his ledger open on his desk, was poring over the bills. A cigar smouldering at his elbow, his round face illuminated by the desk lamp. The increase in taxes and business rates was beyond his comprehension. He tallied the incomings and outgoings, wrote his findings in pencil in the corresponding columns. The next few weeks were going to be lean. He let his big soft body sag into his chair. At least with the invention of the NHS, he no longer had his wife’s hospital bills to pay. If he was careful… if he could hold on to Queenie, they would get through. But who was he kidding? She wasn’t going to pass up a chance like that and stay in this little place.

  He rubbed his eyes and got up to lift the blackout curtain he’d yet to take down. Revealed a sky full of stars. There would be a frost tonight, he predicted, before dropping it again. On the sideboard, a bottle of single malt the band had bought him for his birthday a fortnight ago. Sixty-five. He was a relic in a dead world. He poured himself a compensatory fingerful and gulped it down. All very well playing the jolly old buffer, but the truth was that he nurtured a real dread of the future. There was hope when he’d still had his sons, but neither George nor William had come home from the front, and now Cyril felt he was nothing more than flotsam in a world that had no room or use for him any more. He sat down again and tried to focus on his accounts, but instead his mind wandered to his wife. Not the bedridden woman she had become in the last few years, a woman too ill to leave hospital, but the way she had looked when they’d first met. Barely twenty, her long legs muscular like a tennis player’s. Her bobbed blonde hair and beaded headband, the swish of the braided fringe on her flapper dress when she danced the Lindy Hop.<
br />
  * * *

  Queenie left the bar and knocked on the office door.

  ‘My dear girl, come in.’ Uncle Fish motioned her to one of his easy chairs. ‘Would you like a drink?’

  She shook her head and sat down tidily. Her fingers coiled around the strap of her evening bag. ‘How’s Gloria?’

  Queenie looked at a framed photograph on the desk: a family snapshot of her employer with his wife and sons. Terrence was right – everyone had lost someone.

  ‘As well as can be expected. They’re looking after her very well at the Royal Brompton.’

  ‘I could visit her?’

  ‘Would you?’ He sucked on the end of his cigar. ‘Poor darling could do with cheering up.’

  ‘You said you wanted to see me?’

  ‘I did, my dear.’ He pushed a poker deep into the fire. A fire so low it was nearly out.