No Peace for the Wicked Read online

  About the Book

  1950s London may be at peace, but war among Lizzie’s friends in Soho is about to begin …

  With her new job and her friends, Maggie, Bert and Rosie in the Old Compton Street cafe, Lizzie Robbins has been feeling more settled recently. And she has a new man in her life – at least she thinks she does. TC is Rosie’s dad and everybody’s favourite policeman. But is he interested in Lizzie?

  Then Peace – a beautiful part-Chinese girl – who has been staying with Lizzie goes missing. Lizzie is devastated, and knows there’s only one thing to do. Together she and TC must search the seedy docks around Limehouse. Home to the Chinese community, it’s a very dangerous place indeed …

  Also by Pip Granger

  NOT ALL TARTS ARE APPLE

  THE WIDOW GINGER

  TROUBLE IN PARADISE

  and published by Corgi Books

  No Peace For

  The Wicked

  PIP GRANGER

  This eBook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  Version 1.0

  Epub ISBN 9781446437926

  www.randomhouse.co.uk

  TRANSWORLD PUBLISHERS

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  a division of The Random House Group Ltd

  RANDOM HOUSE AUSTRALIA (PTY) LTD

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  New South Wales 2061, Australia

  RANDOM HOUSE NEW ZEALAND LTD

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  RANDOM HOUSE SOUTH AFRICA (PTY) LTD

  Endulini, 5a Jubilee Road, Parktown 2193, South Africa

  Published 2005 by Bantam Press

  a division of Transworld Publishers

  Copyright © Pip Granger 2005

  The right of Pip Granger to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All the characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN 0593 051378

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Book

  Also by Pip Granger

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  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

  Author’s Note

  This one’s for Ray

  and in memory of my dear friend

  Terry Pizzey

  Prologue

  If only my mother could have seen me: on my knees deep in the heart of sinful Soho, with a mouthful of pins, taking up the hem of a stunning creation in sequin-encrusted scarlet. The gorgeous gaudiness of the dress on its own would have had her praying so hard her poor knees would have been quite worn out. Such sinful waste! And scarlet, the colour of harlots and fallen women! But the fact that it was being worn by Freddy the Frock would have finished her off completely, despite the innocent explanation: being on the short side, Freddy often stood in for absent customers when a hem needed seeing to. Mother would have died of mortification anyway, if she hadn’t already done that when I married Sid – or so my aunts always said. Luckily, if the old darling could see me at all, it was from the safe haven of ‘the other side’, where shame couldn’t kill her for a second time.

  Anything could bring on an attack of mortal shame in my childhood home: dropping an ‘h’, talking with one’s mouth full, wearing red, showing a knee, lipstick, laughing on a Sunday, whistling at any time, playing with the children at my school or worse, in the street. I remember the hours I spent with my nose pressed to the window, watching the other girls, skirts tucked into their bloomers as they leapfrogged over their giggling friends or did handstands against the sooty brick walls along our road or skipped, using someone’s mum’s washing line purloined for the purpose. I longed and longed to join them, despite my mother’s and aunts’ holy horror, or perhaps because of it. But I never did – at least, not until some time after I had met Sid, and by then, I was too old for it; well, almost. I did once run amok in Regent’s Park with a skipping rope and leapfrog over the chunky black bollards that kept vehicles out, but I didn’t tuck my skirt into my underwear. I was definitely too old for that.

  It certainly was a stretch, the journey from my early years in Islington to the theatrical costumier’s in St Anne’s Court where I worked. However, all that’s another story. This one involves some of the best friends I have ever had, and a lovely girl called Peace. And it all began in the first few weeks of 1956, not long after I moved into the small flat above Bandy’s, a drinking club that nestled in an alley just round the corner from Old Compton Street.

  1

  Everybody called it ‘Freddy the Frock’s’, but in fact the theatrical costumier’s where I worked was owned and run by Freddy and his partner Antony. My job had become the best part of my life since I had been there. I loved the shop and its gorgeous fabrics, I loved the colourful customers and I adored my two bosses. I thought I had strayed into Wonderland the very first time I walked into the place and it still felt like Wonderland to me a year or two later.

  The immediate thing that confronted me as I walked nervously through the door on my first day was a hundred empty eye sockets belonging to a display of masks on the wall opposite the door. Some were glamorous jewelled eye masks, incredibly elaborate in shape and decoration and held on sticks. Others depicted fearsome characters like phantoms, monsters and devils, and were fixed to the head with elastic that was meant to be hidden by an appropriate hat. In the back room were stands that held whole heads, like asses or cows with crumpled horns; but we didn’t keep many of those, as they took up too much room. They were hauled out of storage as and when they were needed, along with the theatrical armour, Puss in Boots’s boots, Tinkerbell’s wings and Captain
Hook’s hook and jacket, complete with ticking crocodile.

  The counter ran the whole width of the shop so we could roll out bolts of fabric and measure them against the brass yard rule attached to its edge. The counter of mellow beech wood had seen years of service, long before Freddy and Antony’s time. Some time in the eighteenth century, number 7 St Anne’s Court had become a haberdasher’s, and was one still when Freddy and Antony had taken over the premises just after the war.

  Located right in the middle of Soho, the shop was close at hand for the many theatres and clubs of the West End. We also had a modest sideline in bespoke evening wear for ladies. In 1956, glamorous evening wear was a must for any self-respecting, well-turned-out lady with a social life. The theatre, smart restaurants, clubs and, of course, the debutante circuit all required the right formal clothes. Freddy and Antony were just the chaps to design and make them, and all the local show business girls and cabaret artists, as well as the ladies of leisure from the posh squares round and about, knew it.

  On the wall behind the counter were shelves piled up with bolts of fabric that filled every inch available. Silk, satin, sequin-, jewel- or ribbon-encrusted voile and plain old cotton organdie glowed in every colour imaginable. Then there were the trims. A whole wall was devoted to trims – rhinestones, diamanté, sequins, silk flowers, tassels and pearls sewn on backing strips and sold by the yard.

  Beneath the counter were drawers and drawers of buttons, hooks, eyes, press studs, zips, bias binding, sequins, jewels and pearl drops sorted by colour and type. A full-length mirror disguised the door to the workroom behind. Tucked away in one corner was the stockroom with the lavatory and basin.

  The place was an earthly heaven for a person as starved of colour as I had been all my life, and I took to being the shop’s assistant and general dogsbody like a duck takes to its pond. I felt as if I had come home – which was strange when you consider how drab my home had really been. But as time had gone on, and to my utter astonishment, it had become apparent to my bosses that I had an unsuspected talent.

  ‘I’ve never known anyone with an eye for colour like our Lizzie’s. She just has to give a body the once-over and she’s taken in skin tone, eyes, hair, the lot,’ Freddy boasted to a plump Widow Twankey as he stuffed a set of huge false bosoms down the front of the frock. ‘Next thing you know, she’s back with just the colours to suit. She never fails. What’s more, she’s got a colour memory second to none, ducky, second to none!’

  Freddy completely ignored the fact that I was standing right next to him and was blushing furiously. I wasn’t used to being shown off like some kind of prize. I’d been taught to stick close to the woodwork and leave the limelight for others.

  Freddy reminded me of a brilliant little dragonfly as he darted back and forth, tweaking a sleeve here and a dart there, head tilted and eyes narrowed as he assessed the figure before him. Freddy was small for a man, being around five and a half feet tall, with a slender, wiry figure and small hands and feet to match. He had the face of an angelic schoolboy, complete with thick dark hair that flopped fetchingly over his forehead in a fringe. His narrow face was blessed with large, beautiful, brown eyes that could sparkle with merriment, melt with sympathy, flutter with pleading or glitter with irritation as the situation demanded. He also had several inches of thick, dark lashes, envied by every woman who ever crossed his path.

  Had he been an actor, he would have been the young man who skipped on to the stage wearing tennis trousers and a Fair Isle sweater, waved a racquet and asked if there was ‘Anyone for tennis?’ The resemblance disappeared when he spoke. His appearance may have suggested the playing fields of Eton, but his voice was pure East Acton alley.

  ‘It means she can hold colour in her mind’s eye, and doesn’t have to take a swatch with her,’ Freddy explained to Widow Twankey – whose mind was firmly fixed on the three o’clock at Aintree, judging by the well-thumbed racing paper in his hand and the dog-end that smouldered unregarded in the corner of his mouth.

  ‘I’ve seen her do it.’ Freddy carried on blithely, utterly unaware of his unresponsive audience and his squirming assistant. ‘We were in some fashion department, Selfridges I think, poaching ideas, when she swooped down on this scarf which was the exact same shade of blue as a frock we’d made a fortnight before! Now blues don’t always go with each other, and there’s loads of different shades, so it’s not easy to match, or complement either, not from memory it isn’t. Madam over there does it easy as you please.’ Freddy shrugged philosophically, indicating that there was no explaining the phenomenon. Funny thing was, I’d never thought anything of it. I thought everyone could do it, but apparently not.

  ‘So now we always send her out to pick up any bits and bobs we might need to finish a garment.’ He gave an almighty yank to Widow Twankey’s left sleeve and there was an ominous ripping sound from the tacking stitches that held it on. ‘Oh bugger! Can you sew that back on again, Lizzie, while I get the skirt right?’ Freddy asked.

  Antony had the idea a few hours later while Freddy was perched on a chair, clad from Adam’s apple to bony ankle in scarlet sequins, doing duty as a dressmaker’s dummy once again. The Widow Twankey had left and we’d moved on to a dress for a cabaret singer.

  As I looked at Freddy twinkling in the workroom lights, I thought how strange it was that I spent part of my days dressing men in women’s clothing, as if it was the most normal thing in the world. And of course it was in a theatrical costumier’s in the middle of Soho – but in my childhood home in Islington, and the cheerless Chapel Hall just up the road, it would have been an outrage. I had never seen a pantomime as a child, as they smacked of fun and thus were branded as Devil’s work. The likes of a Widow Twankey or a Mother Goose never crossed my path until I worked at Freddy the Frock’s. It was funny how times changed, I mused, as Antony’s cultured voice broke into my thoughts.

  ‘I’ve been thinking, Freddy dear,’ he said, turning him slightly so that he could get another bit of hem pinned up. Antony was the exact opposite to Freddy to look at, and in his manner. He was tall and very fair, and while Freddy was as chatty as a flock of sparrows, Antony was quiet and thoughtful for the most part, although he could have flashes of ‘artistic temperament’ where his work was concerned. Because he was the quiet one, everyone thought that Antony’s was the business brain behind the shop, but it wasn’t. Freddy was the shrewd one who made all the business decisions: Antony made the artistic ones.

  ‘We’ve been so busy over the winter season, what with the pantomimes, Christmas shows and so forth,’ Antony continued quietly, ‘that we’ve hardly had time to breathe. I think we should seriously consider training Elizabeth up to take on some of the fancier work.’

  Freddy nodded. ‘Cinderella’s still not happy with her bodice and I’ve worked and reworked that bloody thing until my poor fingers are numb and bleeding. She’s always been a cow, that one.’ He huffed and turned another few inches. ‘You’re right, it would help a lot if Lizzie could turn her hand to more than just the schlep work.’

  As it happened, the schlep work had suited me fine up until then. I looked forward to Monday mornings the way a starving beggar looks forward to a square meal. Work meant that I could forget the awful, gnawing hole where my heart and my home life should have been, ever since my daughter, Jenny, had died a year and a half before. While I was dashing around after the demands of customers and my bosses, whole stretches of time passed when I didn’t think of anything except the task at hand. What’s more, I had discovered that, for me, aimlessness was the way that madness lay. I had teetered very close to that particular brink and had been pulled back in the nick of time by my employers and a shop full of wonder. So naturally, I was very interested in any plan that would increase my skills and keep me even busier.

  ‘We’re too busy at the minute to do anything much about it, ducky, but we could ask Sugar to show you a thing or two,’ Freddy suggested as we talked about it some more later that day. ‘What do you r
eckon, Lizzie? Would you mind learning fancy work from Sugar, if he’ll do it? He’s the best person with a needle we know: he can embroider, do fancy detailing and he’s good at design too. The man has the lot at his fingertips.’

  ‘I think I’d like it,’ I said cautiously. ‘I’m fond of Sugar. He’s a nice man.’

  And so it was agreed. I’d ask Sugar for lessons the very next time I saw him.

  2

  Sugar Plum Flaherty, my friend and neighbour, lived and worked with Bandy Bunyan, the owner of the drinking club below my flat. He was her right-hand man, chief barman, cook, bottle washer and closest confidant. Rumour sometimes had it that they were lovers, but rumour was equally insistent that Sugar was not a ladies’ man, but a man’s man when it came to romance. The truth was, nobody actually knew, because nobody had ever seen Sugar with a known lover, male or female. Speculation often ran riot though, especially round at Freddy the Frock’s.

  ‘The problem is that he’s never given anyone even an interesting glance, let alone a full-blown lecherous leer in my presence, or in yours, Freddy dear. So whatever we think is pure guesswork. What about you, Elizabeth?’ Antony asked. ‘Have ever you noticed Sugar eyeing anyone?’

  I shook my head. Sugar always seemed to be equally interested in everyone in a general sort of way. Naturally, he was more fond of some people than others. He adored Bandy, for instance, would do almost anything for her, but he was also the only one brave enough to stand up to her when she was being difficult, which was fairly often. Freddy and Antony were special favourites as well, but then they all shared an interest in fabrics, sewing and women’s clothes; Freddy and Antony designed and made them and Sugar designed, made and sometimes wore them.

  Sugar went in phases, like the moon. On the street, he dressed his tall frame in a relatively conventional way, if you can call a jaunty beret, bright scarf and three-piece suit conventional. But at other times, in private, he liked to dress in women’s clothes. He even had phases with those too. Sometimes he went for glamour: high heels, sequinned gown, long gloves, wig, false eyelashes, nail polish, full make-up, jewellery, everything. At other times, he could be someone’s favourite aunt, comfortable, homey. It all depended on his mood. He liked to be dressed up when in company, but naturally, he had to choose that company very carefully. He restricted it to like-minded chaps, home, very private parties at the club and a few close friends.