Blood Brothers (4 page)

Slightly bemused, Kate followed him across the busy newsroom where few of the reporters, including, she noticed, a couple of women, so much as glanced in her direction. He led her to a glassed off area where she instantly felt more at home. There were only a couple of photographers in evidence, both of them middle-aged men who looked distinctly harassed, but there were many cameras lying about, some of them the heavy glass plate machines which were rapidly going out of use. There was the usual jumble of contact sheets and glossy black and white prints she was used to at the agency and all the lights over the row of darkroom doors were glowing red. At the end of the room a heavy, sandy-haired man in shirtsleeves was studying pictures at his desk, tossing some on to a pile of what looked like rejected shots and keeping a small number spread out in front of him. He glanced up at Carter Price and Kate only briefly before returning to his task.

‘Bill, old man,’ Price said heartily. ‘This is Kate O’Donnell. She’s with Ken Fellows’ agency and I’m just giving her a quick tour round the old place. I thought you might like to meet a lady snapper. Ken reckons she’s pretty good.’

Kenyon looked up at that and waved a hand in Kate’s direction, with a look which while not downright scornful she still did not find the least bit encouraging. ‘Scraping the bottom of the barrel, is he?’ Kenyon asked with a faint sneer. ‘I told him it wasn’t easy to run an agency.’

Kate flushed and would have retorted angrily if Price had not jumped in quickly.

‘Oh, I don’t think so,’ he said. ‘That’s not right at all. Ken thinks very highly of Kate.’

Kenyon glanced up and shrugged. ‘A woman wouldn’t cut it here,’ he said. ‘You’d get trampled underfoot, darling. It’s cut-throat enough in here, and out there, in the real world, it’s a bloody jungle.’ He turned back to his pictures with a dismissive expression and Price shrugged while Kate swallowed down an angry retort which she knew would be a waste of breath.

‘Come on, pet,’ Price said. ‘I’ll show you the Linotype machines and the case room – that’s where they fit the metal type into pages. And I’ll take you down to see the presses. They won’t start rolling till later, when the first edition goes. Then you really feel the building shake. But there’ll only be blokes around down there. That’s certainly somewhere you won’t see a woman working. The printers’ unions wouldn’t have it for a moment. They don’t even like women walking through their space.’

‘It’ll happen eventually,’ Kate muttered, her face stormy. ‘They’ll run out of excuses in the end.’

For half an hour she trailed after Price as he led her into the business end of the printers’ domain, noisy, hot and reeking of oily ink and hot metal, conscious of the hostile looks which were occasionally flashed in her direction by the blue-overalled operatives who were producing the next morning’s paper. This, she thought, was a citadel which would not easily be breached.

‘The Linotype men are only doing what you do with a typewriter,’ she whispered to Price at one point, gazing at the clattering machines slotting type into place.

‘God, don’t let them hear you say that,’ Price said, laughing. ‘They earn three or four times what a typist does – and more. Why do you think they’re so aggressive about keeping women well away from printing? It’d drop wages through the floor if the bosses could employ girls.’

‘It’ll change,’ Kate said flatly.

‘It’ll take a century,’ Price said equally flatly. ‘Come on. Let’s go and have that drink I promised you before you start a riot – or, even worse, a strike.’

Price led the way back into the newsroom and his desk where he flicked through piles of papers for a moment before being approached by a young woman with a tray loaded up with small brown envelopes. She handed one to Price who signed for it.

‘Pay day,’ Price said. ‘Newspapers have so many workers on weekly cash pay that they pay the journalists the same way. The union’s trying to get us cheques but they’ve not managed it yet.’

He pocketed the envelope casually and they made their way out of the looming glass building, past the conveyor belts which carried the printed papers from the presses to be bundled up with string before delivery, and through massive doors on the ground floor which led into a narrow alley where dozens of
Globe
vans were parked and groups of men stood or sat about, some of them playing cards, and smoking and gossiping. Price said nothing until they had turned a corner and were making their way back to Fleet Street.

‘It’s an old-fashioned industry,’ he said quietly at last. ‘And the print unions run the production side. Jobs pass from father to son, have done for generations. There’s corruption in there, everyone’s sure of it, but the management can’t do a thing about it because if the beggars choose to stop the presses one night a whole day’s work becomes a dead loss. No one can sell yesterday’s newspaper.’ He sounded bitter and Kate guessed that a crime reporter worth his salt might not be best pleased by crime in his own backyard. He led her to a pub in another alley just off the main road, settled her at a corner table, bought her a gin and tonic and himself a pint of beer, and slumped into the seat opposite her with a sigh as he unbuttoned his waistcoat to reveal straining shirt buttons beneath.

‘So,’ he said. ‘I’ve let you pick my brains. Have I shown you how impossible some of your ambitions are?’

‘Maybe,’ Kate said, sipping her drink thoughtfully. ‘But there’s always a first time. Ken had never had a woman on the books till he took me on. And he seems happy enough with me now. Even the other photographers seem to be getting used to the idea slowly.’

‘It’s easy for Ken to stick his neck out,’ Price said. ‘He’s his own boss and doesn’t have the print unions to contend with. No one cares tuppence who took the pictures that come in from agencies like Ken’s. Though even there I think you’ll have a struggle to get to the top.’

‘We’ll see,’ Kate said with more optimism than she really felt. ‘No one thought women could fly warplanes till they found they needed them to do it during the war. My mam knew someone who went off and did it. You never know what you can do until you try.’

‘Anyway, never mind all that,’ Price said dismissively. ‘Now I want to pick your brains about some of your more interesting friends. A little
quid pro quo.’

Kate raised an eyebrow at that. It wasn’t quite the
quid pro quo
she had been half expecting. ‘What interesting friends?’

‘For starters, what do you know about Ray Robertson and his brother Georgie?’

Kate’s eyes widened in astonishment. ‘How do you know that I know anything about them,’ she asked, her mouth slightly dry.

‘Darling, I’m a crime reporter. I followed your brother’s case. And the nasty business in Notting Hill. And your dealings with the crazy Russian woman. I also know you’re having a fling with that dodgy copper, Harry Barnard – though from what I’m picking up from Scotland Yard, the vice squad is going to get a very thorough going over shortly from Assistant Commissioner Amis. A new broom Soho cops will need to watch out for. And, as it goes, I happen to know you’ve met Ray Robertson more than once.’

‘Is that why you came to Ken? To suss me out for your story rather than my pictures?’

‘Not at all,’ he said quickly. ‘I need a photographer and Bill Kenyon’s being coy about giving me one. These investigations take time and persistence and he can’t spare the manpower, he says. It’s a bonus I got you, with your interesting contacts. So tell me about Ray Robertson.’

‘I met him at one of his boxing galas,’ Kate said defensively. ‘Ken sent me to take pictures of it, for heaven’s sake. I had to get all dolled up in my best frock.’

Price smiled wolfishly. ‘I bet you’d never been to anything quite like that before. I suppose there are places where being a woman with a camera could be quite an advantage. And what about Georgie? Did you meet him too?’

‘Only that once,’ Kate said, not disguising her distaste. ‘He made a pass at me.’

‘Did he now? I don’t expect your friend Flash Harry thought much of that, did he? Was he there? Or is he too junior to be asked to Ray and Georgie’s parties?’

‘He was there,’ Kate admitted. ‘If you know so much you must know he and Ray are old friends from when they were scallies together somewhere in the East End. But there were other policemen there too.’

‘Of course there were,’ Price said with a smile. ‘The Robertsons both know which side their bread is buttered in Soho. But Georgie was always a bit of a loose cannon as I hear it and bloody dangerous with it. Not just violent but a bit twisted.’

‘You seem to be forgetting that Harry Barnard was responsible for arresting Georgie Robertson,’ Kate snapped. ‘He hates him. Even though he’s known him as well as Ray since they were kids together, he says he’s always hated Georgie. He says he’s a psychopath.’

‘I wouldn’t argue with that,’ Price said. ‘By rights they’d hang him for what he got up to with kids, but we’re too namby-pamby for that now. It wasn’t just the
Globe
who argued to keep the rope, you know. The whole country thought Parliament was crazy. And your Harry Barnard may have arrested Robertson, but just maybe, from what I hear, he could have quietly let DCI Venables get away. They never found his body, you know. Missing believed drowned is as far as that ever got. I wonder if he really did drown or whether he had enough mates in the Force to see him safe, the bent looking after the bent, as it were. Scotland Yard doesn’t seem totally convinced he’s dead.’

‘Harry wouldn’t do anything like that,’ Kate said, draining her drink and pulling on her coat. ‘I think I need to go now.’

‘So it’s Harry you’re meeting is it, petal? You’re quite sure about him, are you? I never had him down as the marrying kind. And I’m damn sure he’s much too close to Ray Robertson for a copper. It’s one thing to take the odd backhander. We all know that goes on in Soho with the vice squad. But to be in bed with one of London’s biggest gangsters is something else. Especially when as far as I hear it, that someone’s working pretty hard to get his brother out of jail.’

‘Are you sure about that,’ Kate asked, her expression icy now. ‘Harry doesn’t talk about his work all the time. But I got the impression Ray Robertson was quite happy to have his brother off the scene. He’s a nasty bit of work and has become a liability to Ray I think. Anyway I didn’t come here to have my brains picked like this. Thanks for the drink, Carter. And the tour. And for your information. If you and Ken cooked this up to put me off Fleet Street, you’ve pretty well succeeded.’

K
ate walked thoughtfully back to the underground at Holborn and fought her way through the rush hour crowds to Shepherd’s Bush. She had lied to Carter Price about a dinner date. In fact her flatmate Tess had promised to cook supper. But she would, she thought, as she strap-hung on the Bakerloo line, call Harry Barnard later and give him the gist of what Price had talked about in the pub. It was obvious that the reporter was picking up a lot of confidential information, probably from Scotland Yard itself, and she guessed that Harry would be very interested in a lot of what he had said.

She had not seen the sergeant for a couple of weeks and she had come away from the last visit to his smart but curiously sterile flat with a feeling that perhaps his interest in her was waning. And the longer she waited for him to ring, the more uncertain she became that she actually wanted him to. He was not the type to settle down, she was sure, and she herself didn’t long for domesticity. In her experience of teeming Catholic Liverpool around Scotland Road, babies followed marriage with an inevitability and frequency which alarmed her. But she had at last escaped the clutches of all-enveloping families and censorious priests. She was enjoying her freedom too much now to get involved in another family for years yet. And so far Harry’s promise that he was ‘taking precautions’ had proved trustworthy.

‘Come on, la,’ Tess pressed her later over sausages and mash. ‘Tell us all about this fella from the
Globe
. Is he after what they’re all after or what?’

Kate grinned. ‘Oh, I expect so. Liverpool, London, aren’t they all the same? I’m sure he’d grab anything that was offered. Anyway I don’t fancy him so there aren’t likely to be any offers. He’s middle aged and podgy and far too full of himself.’

‘So why did you bother to meet him then?’

‘Oh, I think Ken set it all up to put me off the idea of working for the newspapers. I don’t think either of them believe newspaper photography is a suitable job for a woman.’

‘You think Ken doesn’t want to lose you now?’ Tess looked slightly sceptical. ‘After all the fuss he made about taking on a woman himself? He wasn’t exactly keen, was he?’

‘Well, maybe he’s changed his mind,’ Kate said. ‘I work hard enough for him and I’ve produced some good pictures for him, one way and another.’

‘At a price,’ Tess said, looking sombre, and Kate knew she was thinking of the risks Kate had taken along the way that had involved her friend’s safety as well as her own.

‘I’m sorry you got involved in all that,’ she said quietly. ‘Anyway, hanging on to me is the only reason I can think of for him to make sure I saw all the downside of Fleet Street. And if that’s what it was, Carter Price easily proved Ken’s point. If all the picture editors are like the one at the
Globe
I’ll never get a foot in the door.’

Tess looked at her friend quizzically. ‘But you still think maybe they’re not? You’re still an optimist?’

‘Of course I am, la. You never know till you try, do you?’ Kate said with a grin. ‘Anyway I’m quite content with Ken at the moment. He seems happy to send me on most assignments that come up. Even the blokes are learning to live with me. They take me to the pub for lunch now and again, though I can’t keep up with their intake of booze and they regard it as a mortal insult if I offer to buy a round. But I’m very nearly one of the team, though I’ll never be one of the boys.’

‘It’s taken a while,’ Tess said doubtfully. ‘At least in teaching we get the jobs, but as far as I can see we don’t get the top ones. Still, not to worry. I’ll probably meet some nice Catholic boy and have lots of kids. That would please my mam.’