Dead Beat (30 page)

‘But you're not sure?'

‘Not yet, no,' Barnard said. ‘And before I tackle Georgie, I need to know what the hell he's up to. Otherwise I'm floundering around in the dark.'

Robertson nodded slowly. ‘All right,' he said. ‘But this is for your ears only, not for the whole of the Metropolitan bloody Police. Understood?

‘Understood,' Barnard agreed.

Ray steepled his hands under his chin as if considering some business problem, which Barnard supposed in a way he was. Whatever affection there had been between the brothers when they were kids, he thought, and he didn't think there had ever been much, had long ago gone rancid.

‘Right, let's put it this way,' Robertson said. ‘My aim is to expand the business. I think you know that. We've done very well here in the East End, but there's richer pickings up west and I want some of them. This doesn't please a certain Maltese gentleman who's got a lot of fingers in a lot of Soho pies. You know who I mean?'

Barnard nodded.

‘So there's two choices, right? We can muscle in on his territory, and there'll be a bloody war. Or we can do it more civilized, and split the trade up between us. And that's what I want to do. Saves a lot of aggravation. Basically, I want the protection business and he can have the porn and the women. But wee Georgie thinks different. He seems determined to get into the sex trade, porn magazines, women, blokes, boys, the whole bloody lot, queers and all. And Mr Falzon doesn't like that. The last straw was when I caught him blackmailing someone who'd been at some steamy party out in Essex, using my contacts in high places, guests at my parties . . . One of them came to me complaining. That was when I decided Georgie had to be stopped. Falzon won't have anything to do with queers. Georgie's putting everything I'm working for at risk. So how can I help you, Harry boy? How can we pin the little bastard to the floor?'

‘Do you know where he is?' Barnard asked.

‘No, but I know where he's going to be at seven. We're both going to see our ma. We always do on a Thursday night. Old family tradition. You remember Ada Street?'

‘She's never moved out, then?'

‘Nah, we've offered to buy her a new place a hundred times, but she won't have it. Won't hear of moving away. She was bloody lucky Hitler didn't blow the place to smithereens, but it's still standing, just about. She's getting more and more cantankerous as time goes by but she still thinks she rules the roost.' Robertson laughed. ‘She doesn't know the half of it.'

‘Right, I'll pick him up for a chat,' Barnard said. ‘Nothing heavy at this stage. It'll all have to go back to DCI Venables in the end. It's his case. But I've got Georgie in the frame for this one. Though whether he had a motive for picking on this woman or whether it was just for kicks, I can't imagine.'

‘I can,' Ray said. ‘He's still the same Georgie who incinerated moggies when he was nine years old, don't forget.' He sighed heavily. ‘It's time he was stopped,' he said.

‘So tell your ma Georgie might be a bit late tonight,' Barnard said. ‘I'll pick him up before he gets there.'

‘Nice to see you, Harry,' Georgie Robertson said expansively when Barnard swung open the passenger door of the Capri as his quarry parked his car an hour or so later in Bethnal Green and walked past on the way to his mother's house. ‘What can I do for you?'

‘A quick word, Georgie,' Barnard said and waited patiently while Georgie pulled at the knees of his beautifully tailored dark suit so as not to crease them and settled himself into the passenger seat. ‘We'll just take a quick spin round the block, shall we?'

Georgie nodded approvingly as Barnard swung away from the kerb and cut into the traffic stream on Roman Road. ‘Not a bad motor,' he said. ‘You doing well for yourself, then? I guess you are, working in Soho.'

Barnard merely grunted as he manoeuvred round a bus and then turned into a side street and stopped halfway along beside the bombed-out wreck of a factory which had not been touched since it had gone up in flames in 1941.

‘Smoke?' Georgie asked, pulling out a pack of Balkan Sobranie and offering one.

‘No, ta,' Barnard said. ‘We need to talk.'

Georgie shrugged and lit up.

‘There's been another killing on my manor today,' Barnard said. ‘Some poor woman died very messily indeed. At St Peter's Church. You know it?'

‘That place that takes in kids off the streets? Yes, I know it. Padre's wasting his time, isn't he? Like trying to empty the Thames with a bloody sieve. There's always more kids coming off the trains and plenty of people ready to snap them up for this and that.'

‘Just like you snap them up, you mean?' Barnard said harshly.

‘Nah, not my line of country,' Robertson said easily. ‘I leave the street girls to the spics like Falzon. And the protection to my bloody stupid brother. He's got no imagination, Ray. You know that? I'm looking for bigger fish to fry these days. A much classier clientele. Ask my mate Ted Venables if you don't believe me. He knows what's going on.'

Barnard's stomach lurched suddenly. If Venables knew what was going on and was doing nothing about it, it could only mean one thing: Georgie was paying him off. That was something Ray had not mentioned when he outlined his brother's unwelcome venture into freewheeling pornography and blackmail. And it explained perfectly why Georgie and Venables had been on such good terms at the Delilah Club.

‘Yeah, yeah, Ted's on the case. I know that,' he said as if his colleague's involvement was stale news. ‘But this latest killing's someone from out of town, some toffee-nosed woman from the suburbs, and pretty nasty at that. Scotland Yard aren't going to like it. Coming on top of the two killings in Greek Street, Pete Marelli and the queer actor, they're going to get very twitchy. And I happen to know you've been mooching round St Peter's. You were recognized.' But if Barnard thought that accusation would throw Robertson he was soon disabused.

‘I reckon Ted's got all the angles covered,' Georgie said easily. ‘They're not going to bust a gut over a pervert and a porn merchant, are they? As I hear it, you've got a suspect for those two anyway. I'm sure Ted can add another victim or two to the list. If not, I can tell you for a fact that Pete Marelli got it because he crossed the big man. He'd agreed to help me out with some of my publishing plans, a nice line in stuff for the queer boys, and Falzon didn't like it. You know what the spics are like. Cut your throat as soon as look at you. But if you can't pin it on Frankie's lads, I'm sure you can pin it on this suspect for the other job. Two in the same building? Got to be connected, haven't they? And this woman? No trouble as far as Ted's concerned, I reckon.'

‘Not if the suspect was securely locked up at the time,' Barnard said. ‘Not even Ted can put his suspect at St Peter's torturing an old bird when he was in a remand cell in jail.'

But Georgie just shrugged. ‘D'you want in, Harry? I reckon we could stretch to a cut if that's what you fancy. As you're based in Soho it could be useful. Eyes and ears and all that, now Ted's moved onwards and upwards and doesn't get out on the streets like he used to.'

Barnard took a deep breath. ‘I'll think about it,' he said. He had, he thought, already been handed this partnership on a plate, and had not realized its significance, when Kate O'Donnell had shown him a photograph of Georgie Robertson and Ted Venables raising glasses of champagne to each other at the Delilah Club. Though how far the partnership stretched might be very difficult to unravel. Blackmail victims were notoriously reluctant to complain to the police and the sleazier the things they had been involved in the more reticent they would be. And there was no way Georgie or anyone else was going to give him chapter and verse on the links between the private parties young Jimmy had been taken to and the pornographic magazines and blackmail attempts which seemed to follow.

‘I need to get to my ma's,' Georgie said, suddenly impatient. ‘She doesn't like it if we're late.'

‘We'll talk again, Georgie,' Barnard said as Robertson opened the car door and he noticed a low-slung dark car pulling in behind him. He had not realized they were being followed nor that Georgie now commanded that level of heavyweight protection.

‘Okey-dokey,' Georgie said, so cheerfully that Barnard wondered for a moment if his suspicions were some sort of dark fantasy. But as he slipped the car into gear and pulled away from the kerb, closely followed by Robertson's limo, he knew that even amongst the gangs of the East End and Soho there were very few men who would kill with Georgie Robertson's expertise and enthusiasm. As he had said to his brother, and Ray had not bothered to argue, this had Georgie's fingerprints all over it, though it might be much harder to prove than he had anticipated now he knew that Georgie had heavyweight support right at the heart of the murder investigation. No wonder Venables had looked a much happier man just recently, he thought. He might be getting that boat he coveted much earlier than he had expected.

Barnard drove thoughtfully back to St Peter's and parked outside the churchyard railings, beyond which temporary lights slung from the trees now illuminated the side of the building as forensics officers and photographers waited their turn impatiently to carry out their duties in the confined space of the boiler house. A coroner's van, with a couple of men idling beside it as they waited to remove the body, was parked behind the squad cars. Barnard sat for a moment watching the bustling scene, which had attracted an audience of gawping passers-by on their way to an evening's entertainment in the nearby pubs and clubs. He wanted to talk to David Hamilton again, but very much did not want to talk to, or even see, DCI Venables. The bombshell Georgie Robertson had dropped about his relationship with Ted needed some time to assimilate, he thought. The landscape had suddenly lurched around him and he was sure that there were mantraps and unexploded bombs strewn around his manor which could catch him out any time. He no longer knew who he could trust and that made him very edgy indeed. His train of thought was disturbed by a slight tap on the window and he wound it down to find himself face-to-face with Hamish Macdonald, breathing alcohol fumes into the car.

‘What the hell do you want, Hamish?' Barnard said impatiently.

‘I've been here a wee while,' the Scot said. ‘A man sees things if he's got his eyes open.'

Barnard felt suddenly cold. ‘Get in the car,' he said, swallowing his reluctance to let the malodorous vagrant through the door. Hamish slid into the passenger seat and Barnard turned to face him. ‘So what did you see?' he asked, almost afraid of the answer.

‘I was waiting and watching, to see if the wee laddie was still here,' Hamish said, sounding more sober than Barnard expected. ‘I saw people going in and out, the woman who's dead. She went in but I didnae see her come out again. And then two men, a big fellow in a hat and coat, and a wee chappie, wi' dark hair. They went in, and after a long while they came out again. They'd been round the side of the kirk, so when they'd gone I went to take a look, and told the young lassie who came in later.'

‘You sent her off to find a body in that state, you stupid bastard?' Barnard complained. ‘Why didn't you tell the vicar or call the police yourself?'

‘Ach, well, I'd had enough of the polis, hadn't I?' Hamish came back. ‘I didnae want to be involved. But that's not the main thing. Not at all.'

‘So what is?'

‘Ye'll only want tae know this if ye're an honest man, Mr Barnard. And how can I be sure of that?'

Barnard sighed and met the sharp blue eyes of the old man. ‘You'll have to take it on trust, Hamish,' he said, his voice weary. ‘Tell me what you saw.'

‘The man who came earlier came back again,' Hamish said. ‘The big man, he came back with the polis. He was one of them.'

‘Could you swear to that in court? Identify him and swear he was here twice?' Barnard asked, his heart thumping.

‘If I had tae,' Hamish said. ‘That was a terrible thing they did.'

Barnard turned away and stared out of the windscreen in silence, watching the comings and goings in the churchyard again for a moment and then suddenly drawing a sharp breath. ‘Is that him?' he asked Hamish urgently as Ted Venables came out of the churchyard gate and made towards his car.

‘Aye, that's him,' Hamish said, confirming something Barnard really did not want to know.

NINETEEN

K
ate O'Donnell took a train to Guildford from Waterloo, gazing sightlessly out of the window as it clattered through south London and out into the Surrey countryside. The late commuters filling the carriage thinned out past Wimbledon and only a few dozen people got off at her destination, slamming the train doors behind them and hurrying out of the station like zombies towards the car-park or up the hill towards the town. She paused briefly to buy a map at the bookstall which was about to pull down its shutters for the night, and then followed the other passengers up the station approach and after studying the map carefully underneath a street lamp she found her way to the long High Street, up the hill, past the main shops and into the darker suburban streets beyond.

The vicarage was in an ill-lit, tree-lined road alongside a Victorian church, not unlike St Peter's in Soho, as far as Kate could judge. The church was in total darkness but there were lights in the downstairs windows of the vicarage and a car was parked on the drive outside the front door. She approached cautiously, not sure what sort of reception might await her inside. She did not expect that the vicar would be particularly pleased to know that she had been able to discover Jimmy Earnshaw's whereabouts so easily, or necessarily let her talk to him, but she knew she had to try for Tom's sake.