Blood Brothers (7 page)

‘Sounds like quite an education,’ Copeland said. ‘I’m looking forward to it. I gather you know Robertson quite well yourself, Harry.’ He smirked.

‘I happened to grow up in the same neck of the woods as they did,’ Barnard said. ‘Same school to start with. We were evacuated to a farm together for a while. After that we went our separate ways.’

‘No one’s ever pinned the older brother down, have they?’ Copeland pressed on. ‘Funny, that.’

Barnard scowled but said nothing. Any differences of opinion he was going to have with Copeland, and he had no doubt there would be a few, would not be aired in front of the DCI.

‘Find Sergeant Copeland a desk, Barnard, and fill him in on current cases.’

‘Are we any nearer an ID for the body on the building site, guv?’ Barnard asked.

‘I’ve heard nothing more from forensics,’ Jackson said. ‘We’ll chase them later in the day if nothing comes back. In the meantime, introduce Sergeant Copeland to the rest of CID and then to the manor. I’m sure he’ll be a great help to us all.’

You lying bastard, Barnard thought as he closed the door on an anxious looking DCI. You’re stuck between a rock and a hard place and I’m not sure whether I can drag you out or you’ll drag me down with you.

Kate had agreed to meet Harry Barnard at the Blue Lagoon coffee bar after work and had half agreed to go out for a meal with him afterwards. But she was on her second cappuccino, and checking her watch every couple of minutes, before he arrived a good half hour after he had promised.

‘Sorry, sorry, a bad day,’ he said, pushing his hat to the back of his head and making no effort to take his coat off. ‘Do you want to stay here or go somewhere different? After the day I’ve had I’d like a change of scene. Soho’s losing its charm.’

Reckoning she had little choice, Kate pulled her coat off the back of her chair, and stood up. ‘Have you got the car,’ she asked, failing to react to his attempt to kiss her.

‘Parked just outside,’ Barnard said, waving at the red Capri, visible through the steamy windows, with its wheels on the pavement and a taxi driver irately trying to squeeze through the narrow gap which remained. He put an arm round her shoulder and ushered her outside, held the car door open for her and ignored the angry hooting of another driver trying to inch past. He swung into the driving seat and glanced at her briefly.

‘I love you when you get mad,’ he said, and raised a faint smile. ‘Come on, I’ll take you to a very nice Italian I know in Charlotte Street, far enough from the nick and all its works for no one to see us. Will that suit?’

Kate nodded. ‘Are all men as impossible as you?’ she asked, but had to be satisfied with an only marginally shamefaced grin in reply as he weaved the car through the narrow streets of Soho to cross Oxford Street and park eventually outside a bustling restaurant, on a corner which looked as if it was serving food on at least three floors of a tall building.

‘This place is supposed to be authentic Neapolitan,’ he said. ‘Their speciality is pizza. Have you ever had pizza?’ Kate shook her head and Barnard laughed. ‘It’s another world up there in the north, isn’t it? No wonder all these Liverpool bands head down south as quickly as they can.’

Kate pulled a wry face but did not have the heart to argue.

He quickly locked the car and led her into the restaurant where they were soon seated in a small alcove away from the window and faced with a menu listing eighteen different varieties of the mysterious pizza which Kate studied in wonderment. She watched a waiter carrying plates to a neighbouring table.

‘Is that it?’ she asked.

‘It’s like a pastry base, a bit like bread, and then they put all these different toppings on top. You just choose what you like best,’ Barnard explained.

After they had painstakingly ordered their toppings and Barnard had poured her a glass of wine out of a raffia-encased bottle, Kate waited for a moment before picking up her glass, saying nothing.

‘So how was your visit to the
Globe
?’ Barnard asked at last.

Kate shrugged. ‘Interesting, but the picture editor wasn’t interested in me. I was a woman – or a girl, as he would put it. But I did get something out of it. I’m going to work with Carter Price taking some pictures he wants on his own account. Ken has agreed I can help him. It will be good experience.’

‘With that fat creep?’ Barnard said. ‘I wouldn’t trust him further than I could throw him.’

‘That’s because you don’t like crime reporters,’ Kate said. ‘Anyway it’s only a temporary arrangement. He’s doing some investigating that he doesn’t want the picture desk to know about until he’s got a bit further with it. It shouldn’t take long.’

Barnard took a long swig of his wine and lit a cigarette, looking stormy and Kate offered her sweetest smile.

‘Come on. I work for Ken, not you. It’ll be OK. So, stop all this avoiding the issue. Tell me what’s going on with you and why you were late.’

‘Ah, it’s a long story,’ Barnard said quietly. ‘We’ve had a visit at the nick from the top brass who seem to think we’re doing a lousy job, especially in Soho. So they’ve drafted in an extra detective sergeant who’s supposed to be keeping an eye out for infringements of the rules. The problem is he’s a bit of a thug with a reputation for bending the rules himself. My job this afternoon was to give him a guided tour round my patch. I can’t say many of my contacts greeted him with much enthusiasm. I think his reputation had travelled ahead of him. It’s hardly surprising. He was all over the
Globe
and the rest not long ago.’

‘What has he been up to?’ Kate asked.

‘He’s a bit free with his fists. If a suspect won’t talk he likes to help him to see it our way with a bit more than a few slaps. He worked for the City of London police, so I’ve not met him personally before, but there was one case where he was lucky not to end up in the dock himself. A suspect died in his cell after a session with Copeland. Somehow they got a verdict of misadventure at the inquest and nothing more was done about it but I’m sure that’s why he’s moved on to the Met. I reckon he was pushed out and the Yard were fool enough to take him on. When I took him round it was obvious some of my contacts knew who he was and they weren’t best pleased. He’s trouble.’

‘Won’t he be useful in this murder case?’ Kate asked. ‘Didn’t you say you thought it was a gangster killing?’

‘Maybe,’ Barnard said, moving his wine glass as the waiter arrived with two enormous pizzas which Kate gazed at in amazement.

‘We’ll be here all night,’ she said and ignored Barnard’s shake of the head. He had, she guessed, different plans. ‘So why only maybe?’ she asked.

‘I told you. It’s a long story, going back to Georgie Robertson’s case. I’ve got a nasty feeling about the body we found on the building site. I think it might be one of the witnesses who’s supposed to be kept safe for the trial. You remember the old tramp at the church? It’s almost impossible to be sure, the state the body’s in, but I think it could be him. In which case I’m worried about the rest of them, especially the young lad, Jimmy.’

‘Jimmy?’ Kate sighed. Even the mention of the boy’s name cast her back to some of her darkest days. She chewed thoughtfully on a slice of pizza.

‘What about your friend Ray?’ she asked. ‘Could he be trying to get his brother out?’

Barnard stared at her in disbelief. ‘Ray was very keen back then to get his brother inside,’ he said. ‘He reckoned he was a liability. But at the moment I need to keep away from Ray. With Copeland breathing down my neck he’s the last person I want to be seen with for a bit.’

‘Seems to me you’re in a bind,’ Kate said.

‘Seems to me, you’re probably right,’ Barnard said gloomily.

C
arter Price picked Kate up after work the next day, opening the door of a black Citroën DS with a flourish and ushering her inside.

‘Very nice,’ she said as she snuggled down as he got back into the driving seat.

‘Not mine,’ Price said dismissively. ‘It’s best if the bad guys don’t see my car too often.’

Kate raised an eyebrow at that and wondered just how bad these bad guys were. ‘Where are we going?’ Kate asked, as she settled herself into her seat. She knew very little about cars but knew that this one was something special.

‘Just a little recce south of the river,’ Price said, swinging the big car effortlessly around Piccadilly Circus and into the Strand with a motion Kate had not encountered before and was not sure she liked. ‘I know where Reg Smith and his mates drink regularly and I’d like to just watch and see who he’s talking to. We won’t go inside. If you take snaps of the people going in and out while Smith is inside we’ll get some idea of what’s going on. Surveillance, the cops call it, but I get the feeling that there’s not much of it going on in Bermondsey these days. I guess he’s got the local nick pretty well sewn up.’

‘Won’t anyone recognize you,’ Kate asked uneasily as they crossed Waterloo Bridge and headed south down heavily congested main roads.

‘They might but they won’t see us if we stay in the car, petal,’ Price said reassuringly.

‘Or could they recognize the car anyway? It’s not exactly anonymous, is it?’

‘I told you, it’s not mine. I borrowed it. If we come down here again we’ll use a different one. Bermondsey and Rotherhithe are funny old places. They’re cut off from the rest of south London by the railway going up to London Bridge. People don’t move in and out much, though it took a hammering during the war. Reg Smith was born there, I think, and must still have lots of friends round and about, though I hear he’s living in some big house near Blackheath now. Quite smart, that area. But I told you. This is just surveillance. We’ll slide in quietly and park outside his favourite pub for a while and then slide out again. I’m not stupid enough to go head to head with Reg Smith. That’s a sure way to end up at the bottom of the Thames.’

‘Or dumped on a building site,’ Kate said with a shudder, thinking of the body Harry Barnard was investigating.

‘Yeah,’ Price agreed. ‘According to the Yard they haven’t identified that poor beggar yet. You haven’t heard anything different from your buddy Sergeant Barnard have you?’ Kate shook her head. She knew that Harry would not thank her for passing anything on to Carter Price, especially fears that witnesses in a major case were being interfered with. And the same went for telling Harry what Price was up to. She was going to have to be very careful juggling these two men and she wondered whether this assignment had been a good idea.

Price took a right turn at a major junction and eventually crossed a bridge above multiple tracks where the rackety commuter trains which ran south of the river to the Kent suburbs were speeding in both directions. He then took a left, past a park and street after street of small brick houses, some of them still lying derelict as an obvious result of bombing.

‘East London took a hammering during the blitz, both banks of the Thames,’ Price said. ‘The Surrey docks are over that way.’ He waved a hand vaguely to the right. ‘And on the other bank is Wapping and the Isle of Dogs. I was in my teens and I can remember the fires burning day after day. But the docks are in big trouble these days. Shipping is moving out further down the river and the dockers are a bolshie lot. It’ll all be dead and gone soon.’

‘I know about dockers,’ Kate said, hackles rising. ‘Don’t forget I come from Liverpool. We got hammered by the Germans too, you know. It wasn’t just you lot in London.’ The car was stuffy and Kate opened a window. ‘What’s that awful smell?’ she asked.

Price sniffed. ‘Tannery,’ he said. ‘This was the leather district for years. They used to put the dirty stuff down here south of the river, away from the posher areas. But it’s all dying out now, just like the docks. There’s not much going on in that trade. I think there’s only one tannery left but it still makes a dreadful pong. There’s a biscuit factory down here too. You sometimes get a nicer class of whiff from that. But with the docks in trouble this whole area’s going to fall apart soon. Shipping will move to Tilbury and no one will know what to do with all the redundant water round here. It’s no wonder they put up with gangsters like Smith. If there’s not much else going on crime might look like a good bet.’

‘My grandfather came over from Ireland and worked in the docks,’ Kate said. ‘It doesn’t seem possible they could close.’

‘It’s more than possible, it’s highly likely,’ Price said dismissively. ‘Just look at this area and the things that have gone, and not just because of the Blitz.’ He waved at a substantial Victorian building on the right. ‘The Leather and Hide Exchange. How’s that for a Victorian relic. Dickens had Bill Sykes meet a nasty end round here, too. It was a notorious slum in his time.’

‘You know a lot about it,’ Kate said.

‘I was brought up not far away in Deptford. I’ve always been interested in local history.’

He turned into a short street at the end of which Kate could glimpse the river.

‘Here we are, the Angel,’ Price said, pulling into the kerb at a T junction and opposite a solid four-square London pub which appeared to back on to the river bank itself. ‘If we sit quietly here for a bit no one will notice us and we can see who comes and goes. Is the light good enough for you to take some snaps?’

‘I doubt it,’ Kate said, peering through the deepening evening gloom. ‘If you want good shots I need daylight. If I use flash someone will certainly notice.’

‘Of course they bloody will,’ Price said. ‘I should have thought of that. I tell you what. We’ll just wait a while to see who’s coming and going. Then you can have a wander round with your unobtrusive little camera. At least you’re not lumbered with one of those heavy beggars. You’ll just look like a visitor gazing at the river. You can get to the embankment down the side of the pub there, look. Take a few shots while there’s still a bit of light, and next time we’ll try it in daylight. I know for a fact that Reg Smith is a Millwall fanatic and the stadium’s just down the road. Just the right club for a bastard like him. The fans are all thugs. I reckon he’ll meet up with his mates here on Saturday for a few bevvies before the match and we can catch him then. Be interesting to see who he goes to the match with. And we’ll mosey down to Blackheath in daylight too and see what he gets up to at home. I’ll check out his address.’