The Black Mile (30 page)

FRIDAY, 7
^th
FEBRUARY 1941

 
55

DETECTIVE INSPECTOR FRANK MURPHY took Henry up to
his office. He had left him for half an hour in the dingy waiting room
downstairs. Long enough for him to rehearse what he was going to say, fret
whether he was going to be in trouble for not saying it sooner, fight second
thoughts to open the door and run into the daylight.

 
“Sit down,
Mr. Drake.”

 
“Thank-you.”

 
Murphy sat
and stared at him: cold, bored.

 
“I’m very
grateful,” Henry started.

 
“You said it
was important.”

 
“I think it
is.”

 
“What
happened to your face?”

 
“It’s part
of it.”

 
“Part of
what, man?”

 
“The Ripper
case.”

 
Murphy gave
him a derisive look. “Johnson was hung yesterday morning. It’s finished. It was
in the papers.”

 
“There’s
something I need to show you.”

 
Henry took
the magazine out of his bag.

 
Murphy took
it, flicked through the first few pages. “What is this? Pornography?”

 
“Turn to the
middle.”

 
Murphy
thumbed pages. He paused.

 
Jenkins.

 
Worthing.

 
Stokes.

 
“What the
hell is this?”

 
“You see?”

 
“This better
not be a joke.”

 
“No, sir. It
isn’t.”

 
“Where did
you get it?”

 
“I write for
the magazine. I took a piece in to be published yesterday. There were magazines
there––I hadn’t seen it before so I took one.”

 
“We assumed
they were random. Like the others. If we’d known this––”

 
“What?”

 
“We wouldn’t
have hung Johnson.”

 
“Last year,
before the murders, I got a telephone call. A fellow said he had a story for
me. He said he was selling pictures.”

 
“Like
these?”

 
“Do you know
Viscount Asquith? He makes aeroplanes.”

 
“I’ve read
about him.”

 
Henry
nodded. “He was in the pictures. They were dynamite, Inspector. Asquith was
dressed up as a Nazi. He was having relations with Jenkins. Stokes and Worthing
were in the pictures, too. All of them. All together.”

 
“They knew
each other?”

 
“I got the
impression they did. I went to a meeting to talk about buying the pictures.
Jenkins was there. There was talk of the others. They were selling the pictures
together.”

 
“Did you buy
them?”

 
“She was
murdered the night before we were due to meet again. I read about it the
morning afterwards. I knew it couldn’t be a coincidence, so I went to find
Worthing.”

 
“You went to
her flat.”

 
“And found
her body.”

 
“Why didn’t
you tell me this before?”

 
“I was
frightened.”

 
“Bollocks.
You didn’t want to the story to get out.”

 
Shame burned.
“They warned me off.”

 
“Stokes
might’ve died because you kept your mouth shut.”

 
Henry
gestured to the scar on his face. “They beat me and then they cut me. They told
me to stay away. What was I supposed to do?”

 
“You
should’ve told us.”

 
Henry looked
away.

 
“Who did
it?”

 
“I don’t
know who they were. Two men.”

 
“Is there
anything else?”

 
“Jenkins was
with two men when I met her. One of them wouldn’t give me his name. The other
was a fellow called Jackie Field. His club burned down with the body of a man
inside it. Field hasn’t been seen since. You don’t need the brains of Lloyd
George to work it out.”

 
“Why now,
Drake? You’ve sat on this long enough.”

 
“I couldn’t
prove anything before. I only saw the pictures once. And I didn’t think you’d
believe me.” He tapped the book. “But now there’s something to go on.”

 
Murphy
stared into the middle distance.

 
“What should
I do?”

“You’re going to show me where
you got this. Tomorrow. I’m going to have a look.”

 
56

TEA AND BISCUITS CHEZ GRIMES. They had a two-up,
two-down in shabby Hackney, half a mile from George’s place in London Fields.
George had obviously liked to stay close to Mum and Dad. A chintzy front room,
flock wallpaper, a sofa covered with an antimacassar, framed pictures of George
on the sideboard. Nancy switched on the wireless and stood listening to the
Home Service: the Australian PM had arrived for talks with Churchill; Anthony
Eden was touring the Balkans to drum up support. Charlie was too buzzed to
care. Joseph Grimes took a step-ladder from the outside shed and opened up the
loft. Charlie’s stomach did butterflies. He sipped his tea, tried to stop his hands
from shaking.

 
Nancy had
met him outside, linked her arm through his as she walked him to the door. “A
friend of George’s is a friend of ours”, she’d said, two in the afternoon and
already smelling of gin; he felt queasy, told himself it was nerves but he knew
it was guilt at selling the old dear a line.

 
I am the man
who investigated your son.

 
I am the man
who saw his brains spread across his sitting room walls.

 
The loft
hatch slammed shut. “I knew I put it up there,” the old man said, bringing a
box into the sitting room.

 
Charlie
opened it. A dress, a coat, some shoes. He searched each carefully. There was
an address book in the coat pocket.

 
He held it
up. “Have you looked inside?”

 
“No,
officer. Didn’t know it was there.”

 
Charlie took
opened it: handwritten entries, a letter per page.

 
A: Angela,
Annie, Annette.

 
Annie
Stokes.

 
He flicked.

 
B,C,D,E,F.

 
Anticipation
and excitement grew––he knew what he was going to find.

G,H,I,J,K,L.

 
M: Michael,
Manda, Molly.

 
Molly
Jenkins.

 
Flashbacks:
two dead bodies, an empty surface shelter and a room that reeked of
blood.  

 
“Anything
helpful?” Nancy said.

 
“Maybe. I’ll
take this with me if you don’t mind.”

 
“Of course.
What have you found?”

 
“Thank you.
You’ve been very helpful.”

 
“Officer?
Please?”

 
Her face was
full of hope.

 
But he
couldn’t say. “I’ll be in touch.”

 
“If you need
anything else, you’ll let us know?”

 
“Of course.
I’ll be in touch.”

o         
o          o

VERNON WHITE AND RODERICK CARLYLE, the D.C.s who
made up his little team, sat in Charlie’s office at Scotland Yard, notepads on
their laps. Two young, enthusiastic men he’d hand-picked from uniform. His men.

 
“There’s
something for us to look into.” He turned to a sheet of notes he had scribbled:
brainwaves, thoughts linked by lines and ringed with circles, stream of
consciousness stuff. “In September last year I received a complaint from a Soho
businessman about George Grimes, a D.C. working out of Savile Row nick.”

 
“I knew him,
guv.”

 
“I
investigated the complaint, found he was extorting the man, arrested and
charged him. Straightforward case. But then he telephoned me and said he wanted
to talk, said he had information. He stood me up so I went around to his house,
found him with his brains on the walls and a police revolver on the floor. Do
you remember it?”

 
“Yes, guv.
Suicide, wasn’t it?”

 
“That’s what
we said then but I’ve come across evidence that makes me doubt it. I can’t say
what that evidence is yet. You’ll have to trust me.”

 
“Are you
re-opening the file?”

 
“Unofficially. We’re going to pick at a few of
the loose threads and see if anything unravels. When I interviewed the
businessman, he said there were two policemen shaking him down. Grimes and one
other. Grimes wouldn’t give anyone else up.”

 
“Why lie
about that?”

 
“Loyalty,
fear, whatever. I want to see if there’s anything in it. So I’m going to go
back to Field and take another statement. You two are going to look at the
men.” He put a list down on the table. “These are the fellows who were serving
at West End Central C.I.D. when Grimes died. There are nine of them. Vernon,
you take Timms, Regan, Slater and Winston; Roddy, take Donald, Regan, Lucas, Fraser.
I want full background checks on each of them. Everything you can find out.
Maybe something comes up that we can follow-up on. And keep it hush-hush, at
least for the moment. I don’t want this getting to brass until I know whether
it’s worth making a fuss about.”

 
“What about
Alf McCartney?”

 
“What?”

 
“He was at
Savile Row then.”

 
“I’ll think
about that. Alright?”

 
White and
Carlyle nodded that they were happy: solid investigators and loyal to a T.

 
Carlyle
said, “If it wasn’t suicide, what then? You think someone did him in?”

 
Charlie
looked down at the sheet of notes: an arrow from George to Constance Worthing.
Arrows to two other dead girls.

 
“Keep an
open mind.”

SATURDAY, 8
^th
FEBRUARY 1941

 
57

FRANK FOLLOWED HENRY DRAKE as they crossed
Bishopsgate and headed into Spitalfields. It was a mixed area. Parts of it were
decent, the fringes of the city, money lapping around the place, but you only
needed to walk a couple of streets and everything changed. A real melting pot,
one-hundred per cent mongrel. Hasidic Jews in their black silk overcoats and
round fur hats. Irish bruisers drinking on stoops. A scattering of coloureds:
Somalian stevedores from the cheap flophouses on Cheshire Street who worked the
docks, North African seaman from the freighters. There’d been a flood of Jewish
immigrants since fascism swept Europe; Frank wondered what old Adolf would have
made of a place like this. The heart of the
shtetl.

 
“How far is
it?”

 
“Not far.
Round the corner.”

 
They slowed
as they passed into the busiest stretch of the market. Traders pushed wooden
carts, shouting prices in Yiddish. The sound of haggling in half a dozen
different languages moulded into an anarchic hubbub. On either side: bookstores
for rabbinical study, beigel shops, the Great Synagogue advertising LONDON
HEBREW TALMUD TORAH CLASSES FOR JEWISH CHILDREN, tailors’ premises, kosher
butchers, cabinet makers, the Russian Vapour Baths. The locals were savvy and
marked him for Old Bill. Passers-by observed him warily, some tipping their
hats, others crossing the street.

 
Drake turned
into an alley and stopped at a plain door. “Here.”

 
Frank pointed
down the alley. “Wait there.”

 
He knocked
on the door.

 
Nothing.

 
He knelt
down, pushed open the letter box and peered inside.

 
Cameras on
tripods, a bed beneath twin arc lights. Beyond that, a large room with a
printing press.

 
“Looks like
it’s empty.”

 
“What do you
want to do?”

 
“We’ll wait
for him.”

 
A Jewish
café was opposite the mouth of the alley. Frank went inside and ordered cheese
sandwiches and two bottles of ginger beer. They sat down at the window and
waited.

 
Drake
fiddled with the bottle cap. “Say they did know each other––”

 
“The five
girls before were random. We know that.”

 
“So this was
someone else?”

 
“We can’t
say that for sure.”

 
“But it
might have been.”

 
“There’d be
questions to answer.”

 
“What about
Johnson?”

 
“I don’t
know.”

 
“I read the
case––you found their belongings in his house. The ration books–– how else
would they have got there?”

 
“He always
denied seeing them before,” Frank said. He swore blind he’d never seen them
before. Right until the end.”

 
Drake looked
puzzled. “Someone left them there?”

 
“That’s what
he said. I don’t know.”

 
“But if it
wasn’t him?”

 
“I know. The
Ripper hasn’t been caught.”

 
Frank turned
his face away. The Ripper was still on the street. Still hunting.

 
And he still
had no idea where his daughter was.

 
Drake turned
to the glass.

 
“Murphy.”

 
Frank
turned. A man and two women turned into the alley. The bloke was big,
clumsy-looking, with an unruly mop of yellow hair.

“That’s him?”

 
“With the
blond hair.”

 
Frank stared
at him.

 
“What?”

 
“He looks
familiar.”

 
The man who
printed the handbills of Eve.

 
He searched
his memory for a name: Butters.

 
He stopped
at the door, unlocked it and went inside. Frank only caught glimpses of the
girls: young, pretty.

 
“Do you need
me?” Drake said.

 
“Not now.”

 
“So?”

 
“Leave this
to me now, alright? Don’t get involved.”

 
“Of course.”

 
“I’m
serious, Mr. Drake. It’s dangerous.”

 
“I know.”

 
“Then leave
it to me. Just go home.”

 
“You’ll let
me know what happens?”

 
“Don’t
worry. You’ll get your story.”

 
Frank
prepared himself.

 
Ten minutes
to be safe. He followed the alley to the door, put his ear to it and listened:
animal moaning, a man’s voice giving direction. He knelt down, pushed open the
letter-box and looked inside. The two girls on a bed, naked. Butters behind a
camera shooting pictures. 

 
Red mist.

 
Frank took a
step back and put his size ten through the panel. The lock splintered, the
girls screamed. Butters spun, lost his balance, tripped over the tripod. Frank
was onto him in two strides, picked him up by the lapels and flung him at the
wall; he slammed into shelves, flasks of photographic chemicals crashing down,
liquid running across the floor. Frank grabbed him, planted him face down, put
a knee in his back and yanked his wrists together and up. “If you struggle,
I’ll break your bloody arms.”

 
“I’m not
doing anything,” Butters squealed.

 
He turned to
the girls. “Put some clothes on.”

 
“What are
you doing? What have I done?”

 
Frank yanked
his wrists up, felt the bones creak.

 
“I’m just a
photographer. Please.”

 
“Just a
photographer.” He wanted to keep yanking, wanted the bones to fracture and
snap. “If I let you up are you going to behave yourself?”

 
“Yes. I
swear.”

 
Frank let go
of his wrists. He raised his knee from his back and stood. Butters got to his
knees, rolling his shoulders.
Frank took the moment to look
around: a small space, bare wooden boards and mouldy walls; a ratty divan
pushed to one side; a desk; a sink; shelves on every other wall, photographic
equipment and flasks of chemicals. The two girls had gathered their clothes and
had fled to anteroom.

 
“What do you
want?”

 
“I have some
questions.”

 
“Wait a minute––
I know you.” He squinted at him. “That’s it––I printed pictures for you. The
missing girl. Your daughter.”

 
“That’s
right.”

 
“I remember.
Pretty girl.”

 
“I’d be
careful what you say.”

 
“What are
you? Police?”

 
“Clever
boy.”

 
“Let me see
your credentials.”

 
“Are you
having a laugh?” Frank chuckled. “My credentials?”

 
“That you
are who you say you are.”

 
Frank drove
his fist into his gut. “That do for you? Bloody credentials. Bloody nerve.”

 
Butters
retched.

 
Frank
grabbed him by the collar and yanked him up.

 
“I’ve got
some questions and you’re going to give me honest answers. If you don’t, I’m
going to come back and find you and make your life a living hell. Taking
advantage of those poor judies in there––I’ve got enough to put you away for a
year, two if I slip the Judge a note saying what a nasty little cowson you are.
We understand each other, don’t we?”

 
“Y-y-yes,
officer.”

 
“Good.” He
held up the copy of the magazine Drake had given him. “Tell me about this.”

 
“Lilliput?
Dirty pictures. Erotic stories. Smut. What do you want to know?”

 
“You print
it here?”

 
“Yes.”

 
Frank
indicated the set. “And you take the pictures?”

 
“Some of
them.”

 
“And the
others?”

 
“I’m given
them.”

 
“And then
what?”

 
“I put it
together.”

 
“Is it your
business?”

 
“I wish.”

 
“So who owns
it?”

 
“I don’t
know.”

 
“Don’t lie
to me.”

 
“There’s a
man, we work on it together.”

 
“What’s his
name?”

 
“I can’t––”

 
“You’ve got
a bloody short memory, son. You reckon you’d be able to do time on the Moor?
Soft lad like you?”

 
“Alright,
alright. Eddie Coyle.”

 
“What?”

 
“That’s his
name. Eddie Coyle.”

 
EDDIE COYLE.

 
Hell.

 
Eddie Coyle:

 
Constance
Worthing’s boy-friend.

 
Constance
Worthing’s pimp.

 
“What is
it?”

 
“Keep
going.”

 
“Eddie tells
me what he wants, he gives me some photographs, I shoot some others, I pay a
bloke to write smut for it. I put it all together, I print the books, I deliver
them, he pays me. That’s it as far as I’m concerned. That’s all I know.”

 
“Coyle sells
it?”

 
“Of course.”

 
“Where?”

 
“Mail-order.
He’s got a list. Some kind of subscription club. Don’t ask me about it because
I swear I don’t know anything else.”

 
“When did it
start?”

 
“I’m not
sure. I’ve been doing it for a year.”

 
Frank
indicated the girls in the other room. “Where do you find them? Coyle?”

 
“A man I
know. He finds them for me.”

 
“How?”

 
“Train
stations. Bus stations. Shop doorways, for all I know. I don’t ask questions,
alright? The way I see it, the less I know, the better.”

 
“What’s his
name?”

 
“Gino. He’s
a Malt. And I don’t know his surname––something Wop, I don’t remember, I’ve
only just started working with him. I had another fellow a year ago but it went
wide. Had to start again.”

 
“What was
his name?”

 
“Field.
Jackie Field. He used to run a nightclub.”

 
Jackie
Field: tried to sell pictures of Asquith to Drake. Then found girls for the
smut. What was going on?

 
“Alright,
Butters. You’re doing well. I’ve got one more question for you. Give it to me
straight and I’m gone in ten minutes. Mess me around and you’re coming back to
the nick.”

 
“Fine. Just
get on with it.”

 
He opened
Drake’s magazine to the centre-spread.

 
Jenkins.

 
Worthing.

 
Stokes.

 
“This
picture––when was it taken?”

 
“I–– I don’t
know.”

 
He shoved it
in his face. “When?”

 
“No,
really––I can’t recall.”

 
Frank
pointed at the divan. “Do you take me for an idiot? It was taken in this room.
They were sat on that.”

 
“I don’t
know––”

 
“When?”

 
“I don’t––”

 
Frank closed
a fist. “WHEN?”

 
Butters
reached up to a shelf, took a glass flask, smashed it against Frank’s forehead:
toner ran into his eyes, blinding him. Shrieks and screams from the girls. He
couldn’t see a thing, grabbed the shelf, tearing it from the wall, more flasks
shattering. He swiped his hand across his eyes, rubbing glass into his skin and
blood into the chemicals, squinting through the blurred haze: Butters out the
door and into the alley, the girls right behind him. Pain jagged razors into
his eyes; Frank palmed his way along the wall to the sink, filled the basin and
dunked his head. Blood and bits of glass mixed with the water. He pulled up,
cuts revealed on his forehead and his cheeks, fresh blood already running from
his scalp.

 
Into the
alley: Butters long gone. The girls long gone.

 
Back inside.

 
Quick:
Butters probably fetching reinforcements.

 
He went to
the desk and pulled the drawers, tipped them upside down and went through the
debris: bills for photographic equipment, doodled ideas for shot set-ups,
bundles of pound notes, lists of names. He found a ledger and scanned it: lists
of businesses and figures printed neatly next to them: five pounds here,
fifteen pounds there, twenty-five pounds. Bloody good money to be made in porn.
He ran his finger down the list; one name repeated again and again. He flipped
pages; the same name, two dozen times.

 
EDDIE COYLE.