The Chelsea Murders Read Online Free

big, or regular, washer.
    A combful of blondish hair was on a dressing table whose glass top was finely dusted with powder. Under the glass was aselection of photos; one, squarish and larger than the others, of a pony-tailed blonde looking candidly up from some undisclosed activity on a floor. Enormous boobs drooped from a bikini top. A quarter page, Mooney hungrily thought, if ever she’d seen one. If it happened to be old Germaine, of course … She sought frantically for ways to pose her inquiry.
    ‘Is this recent?’ she said reverently.
    ‘I don’t know when she had it done,’ Logan said moodily.
    ‘Ah, they will love it,’ Mooney said; she raised the glass and whipped the thing out. On the back, to her still dawning astonishment at the nature of what was blossoming here, a rubber stamp said Property of the I.L.E.A. She had it in her shoulder bag in a flash. ‘It reminds me so of her last holiday,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘Things go so fast, when was it now?’
    She had thought, with the impregnated air of the room, that Logan was about to sneeze, but realized, with no loss of faculties, that he was crying. ‘Perhaps her passport will tell us,’ she said.
    *
    She called the Globe from a call-box two hundred yards away, having thanked the fuzz for looking after her bike. She heard the sirens going as she got through.
    ‘Chris, you’re right, it’s a big one. Anything fresh from Packer, first?’
    ‘Yeah. She was strangled. The river police picked her out downstream of Albert Bridge but she must have gone in between Wandsworth and Battersea, maybe Lots Road. Don’t mess about, love, what have you got?’
    ‘What I’ve got, first of all, is a fantastic picture. Exclusive.’
    ‘Portrait?’
    ‘ Portrait ? Tits down to here. Bikini.’
    ‘Yeah?’
    ‘It looks professional.’ She was gazing at it. ‘It says I.L.E.A. on the back. That’s something, eh?’
    ‘I.L.E.A.?’
    ‘Inner London Education Authority.’
    ‘What does that mean?’
    ‘Well, damn it, what can it mean? An art school. She was modelling. We haven’t just got a barmaid here. We’ve got an artist’s model. Murdered. In Chelsea.’
    ‘Christ. Anybody else got it?’
    ‘Nobody. I was there before the C.I.D. I can hear them now. There are sirens going. Listen, I’ll bring it in. I’d better give you a bit of stuff first.’
    ‘Okay, hang on. I’ll put you on to Typists.’ The phone jiggled. ‘Transfer this call to copy-takers. Urgent.’
    ‘Copy,’ Typists said.
    ‘Mooney, Chelsea,’ Mooney said.
    ‘Yeah, Mary.’
    ‘Chelsea Art Model Murder.’
    ‘Chelsea Art Model Murder,’ Typists said, clicking away.
    ‘Distraught fifty-four-year-old Gerald Logan, landlord of The Gold Key,’ Mooney dictated. She spelled it out. She spelled out the girl’s name, too, and her age, and all the other passport details. She spelled out about fifty-four-year-old Gerald’s wife, now dying in the Brompton Hospital, and how he had given the twenty-five-year-old Manchester hopeful bed and board while she pursued her promising career.
    Fifty-four-year-old Gerald and twenty-five-year-old Germaine had both liked a breath of river air before packing it in for the night. Not finding her, he had gone to see if she was taking one by herself. He wondered if she had strolled over to the opposite bank where he had seen some television or film shooting going on at one of the abandoned wharves, but he hadn’t gone to see.
    ‘You want that last par in?’ Typists said. There had been some trouble unscrambling it.
    ‘Why not? I’ve got a photo-caption, too,’ Mooney said. ‘Do you want it?’
    ‘Who’s got the photo?’
    ‘I have. I’m bringing it in.’
    ‘No, love. Art department, when you get here.’
    ‘Mooney, Chelsea, right?’
    ‘Got it.’

4
    T HE men making the siren noise spent some minutes clearing up the mystery of Mrs Mooney. There were mysteries in abundance already but to Detective Chief Inspector Summers one of the