by Jim Kelly
A man put his head out of the door of the cobbler’s.
‘If you’re after food, forget it,’ he said. ‘They’ve shut up shop. Now the old man’s gone they’re out of business. Lad’s still there, he works out at Marshall’s. I thought I heard him last night – but there’s no sign.’
‘We need to get inside. We’re from the Borough.’
‘There’s a spare key with the landlord – that’s Harry Thompson, guvnor at the Red Lion.’ He nodded down the street towards the Kite, spat in the gutter and went back inside.
Brooke despatched Edison to get the key while he tried the back of the property. A gate gave onto a line of rear yards. The Roma’s had two raised beds in which tomato plants thrived. There was a shed full of drying vegetables: mostly onions and ginger, garlic and what looked like chillies.
Brooke rattled the door, but it too was locked. Inside he could see the kitchen, dominated by a gas range and several very large tin pans.
Back in the lane he quizzed the neighbours. The cobbler had nothing to add to his previous summary, except that the Zeri family had lived next door long before he’d taken up the shop after the Great War.
‘They were on the wrong side that time too. You’d think they’d bloody well learn.’
‘Actually, they were on our side when it mattered,’ said Brooke, touching his hat. ‘In fact, I doubt we’d have won without them. By the way, how did the boy get about? There’s no bike in the yard.’
The cobbler shrugged. ‘Then he’s out on it.’
‘Don’t recall the make? Colour?’ asked Brooke.
‘It was just a bike. Nothing special. There’s thousands …’
The woman in the pawnshop was happy to provide brief biographical details: the parents – Leon and Rosa – had been taken away after Mussolini’s invasions in Africa. They were both Italian citizens. They’d both been taken to camps in the North. There was a daughter who’d married another ‘wop’ and gone to live in Bedford.
‘The boy’s got no money. So far he’s been in here with the silver spoons, a couple of serving plates and a fur coat. I think he sends what he can to the camps. Nice people,’ she added, then ushered Brooke to the door.
Brooke stood in the street and tried to recall a visit to the Roma when he was a child. His mother had brought him here about a year before she’d died. So he’d have been six. It was the night something had happened between his parents but he had never been sure of the exact events. His mother and father had never argued, at least not in front of him or the cleaning lady. There had always been a sadness about his mother; she was gregarious, even glamorous, and Cambridge was perhaps a disappointment. She’d studied the history of art in London, where she’d met the studious professor at a dance. That night before the war, when she’d brought her son to eat fresh tagliatelle, she’d been dressed up to go out, in a fur coat and a sparkling necklace. She’d gone down to the laboratory in the basement at home and reappeared with glassy eyes, telling him to get into his school suit.
While the alleyway had always been down at heel, the restaurant was a romantic island: candles on tables, the linen crisp, an intoxicating buzz of laughter and chatter. They hadn’t booked – which in retrospect had perhaps provided a clue. Where had she planned to go with his father? The City Arms, perhaps, or Formal Hall at Trinity, or a party at one of the villas in Trumpington. Clearly the professor’s work had led to a late cancellation. So she’d taken her son to the Roma instead. They’d had pasta, then lamb, cut in thin chops and fried in a garlic batter. His mother had asked for it in Italian, and it turned out to be the house speciality, which had brought the owners to their table to serve the dishes.
Brooke recalled a thin, sinewy man, with very dark hair, and a dazzling smile. His wife had hung back, wringing her hands in an apron.
They’d finished with ice cream. His mother had drunk red wine from a carafe, which she’d finished, giving Brooke a splash in his glass. She’d had a spirit too, a white oily liquid laden with what looked like elderberries. She told him all the dishes came from the same part of Italy: the mountains beyond Genoa.
How did she know so much? her son had asked.
‘Our honeymoon,’ she’d said.
Brooke ditched his Black Russian in the street, wondering if his inability as a child to understand the world of adults explained the satisfaction he enjoyed as a detective, unpicking the motives of others.
Edison arrived with the key. The interior of Roma was a tawdry version of Brooke’s memory of that night so long ago. The restaurant had been closed for weeks, but the dust and threadbare rugs spoke of a longer decline. There was a large framed poster of some Italian mountains and a small village, and in one corner an ornate shield in enamel depicting a green tree, against a red sky, with white jagged mountains. A crown was set above the tree.
The legend read: Comune di Patigno.
Upstairs, Brooke found three bedrooms, one of which had been given over to dry stores: canned fruit, flour and tinned fish. The box room appeared to have been young Bruno’s. The bed was made up, but in disarray.
Back downstairs he found Edison in the kitchen, gingerly lifting pots and pans. A meat-and-two-veg man at heart, he looked ill at ease in the presence of a string of garlic.
‘There’s something here, sir,’ he said.
At the back of the larder, the cans and packets had been pushed aside to reveal a wall safe. The door was open, the inside empty.
‘If he had any money, he’s taken it,’ said Edison. ‘Maybe he’s planning a long trip.’
‘Or tickets for two,’ added Brooke.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Mrs Muir, Chief Inspector Carnegie-Brown’s secretary, was an upright woman in perpetual tweed, who organised the telephonists but avoided their company, and that of almost everyone else in the building. She drank tea from a flask and went home for lunch. She took the seat Brooke offered her in his office but declined a cigarette, crossing her legs at the knee and settling her shorthand pad in place, adjusting a pair of flyaway spectacles. Poised, like some angular wading bird, she awaited Brooke’s words.
Brooke’s priority was to find Peggy Wylde and Bruno Zeri. The girl had gone missing the day after her grandmother had been robbed and murdered. She’d last been seen meeting her boyfriend at the gates of Marshall aerodrome. They knew he was short of money, and Peggy would have known about her grandmother’s cash and jewellery, and that she spent her nights in the public shelter. Was Zeri the thief? Had Nora recognised him? The lovers had met the next day outside Marshall. Was the Lucifer Zeri’s bike? Nobody seemed to recall the make, let alone the colour. Young Jack on Earl Street might have noticed the badge, but he had an eye for bicycles.
Mrs Muir fidgeted on her chair. Normally Brooke laboured away at his typewriter to produce notes and correspondence, but dealing with County demanded that the bureaucratic niceties be followed.
‘This is for Inspector Joyce’s attention at County, Mrs Muir – up at the Castle.’
The Cambridgeshire force covered the wider county, leaving the old city to the Borough. Its headquarters, once in the city itself, had been moved up to the old castle, a position of lofty grandeur more suited to the chief constable’s ambitions. The ingrained antagonism between the two forces stretched back into the mists of time.
‘It should be marked as urgent, please, with copies to Chief Inspector Carnegie-Brown and myself.’
Brooke cleared his throat.
‘Dear Raymond. Here is the copy we discussed. I understand the chief constables are of one mind …’
Brooke lit a cigarette, turned his back on Mrs Muir and studied the half-open blinds. The evening light was soft and warm.
‘This is an absolute priority. I’ll leave design and typeface to your men with the know-how. A budget of £50 has been agreed. The poster bills should read as follows …
‘WANTED in connection with incidents in Cambridge. Bruno Stefano Zeri, aged 18. Black hair, sallow complexion, brown eyes
. Stands six feet tall. Slim build. Speaks with strong Italian accent. May be carrying cash amount, or other goods of value. Any information on the suspect’s whereabouts to Cambridge Borough Police: Cambridge 6767.’
Brooke opened a file and extracted a passport-sized photograph of Zeri, taken by Marshall airfield for his security pass. The young man was handsome, olive-skinned, brown-eyed, with an engaging smile.
‘Can you attach this to the note, Mrs Muir, and then pass everything along to one of the messengers?’
She began to gather up her things, but Brooke held up a hand.
‘Sorry – an addition: MAY BE TRAVELLING WITH … Peggy Wylde, aged 21. Dark hair, fair complexion, green eyes. Approximately five feet two inches tall. Last seen wearing a sky-blue dress, with a white belt, and carrying a gas mask decorated with sequins and tassels. Smart, polished, black leather shoes.’
Mrs Muir closed her notebook. Outside they heard steps on the stairs, and then a tentative knock at the door.
‘I’m hoping this is the other picture,’ said Brooke, jumping up.
A young man stood on the threshold.
‘I’m Ollie Fox, Connie’s boyfriend. The girls are out looking for Peggy. Alice is in bed. So they sent me with this …’
Ollie still had some puppy fat, but the young man was emerging, and Brooke thought he’d be a fully fledged grown-up by the turn of the year, no doubt eager to get into a uniform. Short and stocky, he looked like he’d make a decent rugby scrum-half. In his large hands he held a brown-paper package.
‘Come in, Ollie. This is Mrs Muir. She’s organising a poster of Peggy so that we can track her down quickly before she comes to any harm.’
The boy was shy and kept his eyes down, looking at his feet. He gave Brooke the parcel, inside which was a framed photograph of Peggy Wylde. It had been taken in a studio and there was a backdrop of a country garden with a Gothic ruin. Brooke was struck by her beauty, which was founded on her wide cheekbones and even wider eyes. In fact, it was clear she wasn’t ‘pretty’, in the fleeting sense often used, but rather ‘beautiful’, in the sense that her looks might well last a lifetime. It provided an unkind contrast with her sisters, who were bonny enough but hardly photogenic.
‘Alice said it was alright to use it but not to damage it,’ said Ollie carefully, relaxing slightly, as if he’d been relieved of some duty. ‘They’re all upset. Alice says Peggy’s run off to live in sin,’ he added, shifting his feet.
Brooke gave Mrs Muir the portrait and asked her if she’d carefully remove the image and attach it to the memo for reproduction in the poster.
‘Can you make it clear we’d like both original images back, Mrs Muir, in good condition?’
Mrs Muir gathered up her things. She’d looked at the picture of the girl, and now she looked again, holding the frame at arm’s length.
‘You’d never forget that face,’ she said. ‘You’d think she was a film star.’
The boy shifted his feet.
‘I’ll take it up myself to the inspector at the Castle,’ she said, and fled.
Ollie didn’t know what to do with his hands, which Brooke had already noted were bony, and hung loose.
‘Do you think Peggy’s run off to live in sin?’ he asked.
‘I didn’t know her that well,’ he said. ‘Me and Connie have only been going out a bit. I saw her and that – cos I work at Marshall’s too, but she hangs out with the other girls at lunch and breaks – they put out a picnic and lie in the sun.
‘That’s how I met Connie. It was Peggy’s twenty-first and word got round she was in The Propeller – that’s the pub up by the airfield. We gatecrashed, me and my mate Johnnie, and Connie was there.’
Brooke nodded, lighting up a Black Russian.
‘We’re going to send a picture of Peggy and her boyfriend up to the police headquarters on the hill, Ollie. They’ve got a machine which can blow the image up and make a poster. Then we’re going to send the posters to railway stations, and ferry ports, and docks, and to other police stations. That way we’ll track them down.’
‘Peggy’s gone with him, then?’ asked Ollie.
‘Maybe. We just don’t know, but it looks like it.’
‘Bruno wouldn’t hurt her,’ said Ollie.
‘You met him, then?’
‘Yeah. He was alright. He was good to me right from the off because he’s lost parents – they’ve been taken away because we’re fighting the Eyeties. That’s right, isn’t it?’
Brooke nodded. ‘Why did that make him a friend?’
‘I don’t have parents, neither. I’m a Barnardo’s boy. Sid and Marjorie took me on, but I’m old enough now to do what I want. Bruno came and watched me box at the boy’s club in the Upper Town.’
‘Why did he do that?’
‘He could use his fists. There’s an old bloke there that they call the trainer but he knows nothing. It’s just to keep us off the streets. We’re tearaways, that’s what they tell us. I told Bruno the trainer was a duffer.’ He grinned widely. ‘So Bruno came along and got in the ring and showed us. He was dead strong and fast with his hands. He gave the trainer the runaround an’ all.’
One of the switchboard girls arrived with a tray of mugs.
‘Teatime,’ she announced and gave one to Ollie.
‘Sit down, Ollie,’ said Brooke. ‘What else did he do? He was short of money, wasn’t he?’
Ollie nodded. ‘He said one day he’d have his own restaurant. He said that the Roma – that’s the cafe – that was his dad’s dream. He was gonna make a life for himself. Start up his own place. Be his own man. I’m gonna do the same too,’ he said. ‘You know, make something of m’self.’ He slurped his tea, his face suddenly flushed by the revelation of his ambitions.
‘Good for you,’ said Brooke.
The girl had left biscuits on a plate, which the boy kept glancing at until Brooke said he could help himself.
‘Did he say any more about his plans?’
‘He said he had cousins, family, that they lived up North and that they’d promised, like, to give him a hand to get started up there. He was gonna call it Zeri’s. It’s a good name, isn’t it?’
‘Did he say where these cousins were?’
‘Yeah – it was a funny name. He showed me on a map once, there’s a big one at the Boy’s Club cos they try to sneak in some lessons. I think he wanted Peggy to go with him too.’
He concentrated hard, and Brooke could see his lips moving as he tried to recall the name of the place.
‘It was called Little Italy but he said its real name was Ancoats. Something like that. That’s up North, right?’
‘It’s Manchester,’ said Brooke. Which made sense, because the diaspora of the thirties had brought many Italians to the city to run ice-cream parlours, restaurants and cafes. And Zeri had borrowed the phone up at the Marshall canteen the day he’d left and asked for a Manchester number.
Ten minutes later he watched from the window as Ollie rode away, teetering slightly as he mounted his bike, while Brooke held the phone receiver to his ear, waiting for the switchboard to get him a line to Manchester police headquarters.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Brooke pushed himself off from the grassy steps into the river and turned against the current. The lock gates lower down the Cam at Jesus Green and Baits Bite must have been opened, for the river ran with a gentle, persistent force against him as he headed south with a steady stroke. By the time he’d reached Silver Street Bridge he could feel the big bass drumbeat in his chest, so different from the fluttering of the jazz heart.
He forged ahead, wary of punts and dinghies on a stretch of water often crowded at sunset. He lingered in the pool by the inn, his nose an inch above the placid water, but detected no note of petrol, or any dangerous chemical; nothing more pungent than rotting reed and – from somewhere close – the unmistakable combination of chip fat and vinegar.
Swimming on, he ran through a checklist in his head, making sure he’d don
e all he could to track down the runaway lovers. A chief inspector at Ancoats had taken Zeri’s details and would circulate the poster within the Italian community in the city, while uniformed officers would visit restaurants, cafes and ice-cream parlours. Brooke had suggested that they keep the mood downbeat: the Borough wanted to talk to Zeri and Wylde about events in Cambridge. There was no point creating a panic, and driving the fugitives underground, by mentioning the possibility of links with looting and murder.
The regular swimming strokes inspired logical thought.
He slid past his house at Newnham Croft, noting that the French windows were open but there was no sign of Joy and the baby. Reaching the open water meadows, he turned onto his back and looked at the sky, paddling with his feet, his body otherwise still, held in a dynamic equilibrium, sandwiched perfectly between cool water and warm air. The sun was down, but its lambent light shone on the great billowing fair-weather clouds in the stratosphere.
He’d reached a bend, so he rolled over and swam on to where an overhanging oak provided branches for a rope and a tyre. Great trees dotted the banks of the upper river, and as a child he’d given these landmarks their own names, at one point inscribing them in ink on one of his father’s Ordnance Survey maps – a crime which had invited immediate punishment: he was ‘gated’ for a month, a stinging reprisal which confined him to the house and barred him from the city.
This particular spot had always had its hanging heavy rope and was marked on his morbid private map as The Gallows Tree.
On the towpath beside it, a cyclist waited on a slim racing machine.
‘Mr Brooke …’ The young man waved, and he recognised Vin Swift, the cyclists’ captain from Michaelhouse.
The young athlete carefully leant the machine against the tree and knelt on the bank. Meanwhile three small boys had arrived and had begun to swing in the old tyre.
‘Mr Doric said you’d be on the river; I’ve been up and down searching.’
One of the boys threw himself skywards at the perfect moment in the trajectory of the swinging tyre, launching himself in an arc before plummeting into the water.