The Lighterman: The Kray Twins are out for revenge... (Charles Holborne Legal Thrillers Book 3)

by Simon Michael

  Ronnie staggers back, trying at the same time to move sideways and avoid the right-handed punch which he knows is coming, but his left foot slips at the same moment as the tug rolls slightly to starboard. All of a sudden Ronnie is sitting on his backside, looking surprised. Before he can clamber to his feet, Charles straightens up, takes two quick steps forward, plants his left foot solidly and swings his right foot hard at Ronnie’s exposed head. He imagines Ronnie’s chin to be a rugby ball and kicks through it as he was taught at university. His ankle connects solidly under Ronnie’s chin, and the blow snaps the gangster’s jaws shut with such a clack! that the sound would have been heard on both banks of the river. Ronnie falls spread-eagled onto his back, his suit trousers and shirt soaked through. His eyes are open but he’s only semiconscious.

  There is a sudden crack from the pistol behind Charles and he freezes for a millisecond, expecting immediate pain, but none comes. He leaps over Ronnie and grabs the line coiled by the capstan behind the fallen gangster, looping it round his neck and pulling hard. Ronnie writhes and kicks and his fingers scrabble at the rope, but Charles pulls with all his might, closing Ronnie’s windpipe.

  Charles looks up at Connolly. Connolly’s gun arm is outstretched, supported by his other hand, and he’s within an instant of pulling the trigger again, but now Charles is kneeling behind Ronnie and the big Scotsman no longer has a clear shot. He hesitates. With the movement of the tug making his arm sway and only half of Charles’s body for a target, he can’t be sure what he’ll hit.

  ‘Put it down, or your boss is a dead man!’

  Connolly doesn’t obey, but he does lower the gun fractionally.

  ‘Throw it down!’ screams Charles, pulling tighter still.

  Ronnie’s face is going purple and his eyes look as if they are popping out of his skull. His clawing fingers and frantic leg movements are becoming weaker. Connolly drops the revolver carefully by his feet.

  Charles looks up sharply, trying to gauge from the almost black riverbanks where they have reached. They’re coming up on Hammersmith Bridge. He searches his memory for a trick he and all the other apprentices used to do on sunny afternoons during the war. It might just work, but not if the tug goes through the centre arches. He spins round to look at the silhouette of the looming bridge and then turns back to Connolly.

  ‘For God’s sake not through the centre arches!’ screams Charles, eyes wide with simulated fear.

  ‘What?’ mumbles Connolly, confused.

  ‘Haven’t you heard of the sandbanks? For God’s sake man, we’ll run aground and all drown!’

  A head appears out of the wheelhouse and Charles sees the pilot for the first time, a young man, little more than a teenager, with a thin face and wild eyes. ‘What’s he saying?’ he demands of Connolly.

  Connolly shrugs, and gestures at the bridge, only sixty feet away.

  ‘Sandbanks or something in the centre arches.’

  Charles shouts to the young pilot. ‘Steer to the right, for God’s sake! Go through the lowest arch!’

  The boy’s head disappears back inside the wheelhouse and the tug lists suddenly to port as he spins the wheel too violently to starboard. Charles watches as Connolly’s revolver slides several feet across the foredeck towards the gunwale, where it stops.

  At the very same moment as Connolly steps across to retrieve the gun, the tug enters the lowest arch of Hammersmith Bridge. Charles drops Ronnie’s torso, stands, turns, and runs the six feet towards the tug’s prow. With his first leap his left foot is up on the gunwale and with all the strength in his legs he launches himself into the night sky, arms reaching upwards towards the underside of the bridge. He makes good contact, grips the steel girder, and the tug continues on its angled journey through the arch.

  Charles lifts his legs to let the wheelhouse pass beneath him and waits for the barge. By the time Connolly has retrieved the gun the tug is already emerging from the other side of the bridge. Connolly looks at the foredeck, puzzled at Charles’s absence, and then spins round but everything behind the wheelhouse is pitch black. Charles waits another second and then drops onto the flat roof of the barge behind its tarpaulin-covered load.

  He remains still for a few seconds, listening intently. Ahead of him, from the deck of the tug, come shouted orders and Charles hears the engine note drop, but behind him he hears, much louder than before, Merlin’s whistle. Charles crawls to the hatch and slides it open, dropping down into the hold. There is only one place Merlin could be confined: in the tiny cabin at the back, and as Charles picks himself up he hears thumping on timber.

  ‘Izzy?’ calls Charles.

  ‘Charlie?’ comes Merlin’s muffled voice. ‘Is that you? I thought I heard a gunshot.’

  ‘He missed. Keep talking and I’ll follow your voice.’

  It is so dark at the bottom of the barge that Charles can’t even see his hands in front of his face. He moves forward cautiously, his arms outstretched in front of him, lifting his bare feet carefully so as not to trip on any invisible obstacles. His hand encounters the wooden cabin door and, by feel, he identifies a plank of wood propped at an angle jamming the door shut. He lifts it out of the way and pulls the door open to find Merlin, a lit match in his hand, almost burned down to his fingertips. The two men embrace, and the match burns out.

  ‘How’d you get away?’ asks Merlin.

  ‘Remember that trick we did as kids, hanging off the underside of the bridge? Come on, let’s get out of here. We’re going to have to swim, but we’re close to the bank.’

  ‘Fuck that!’ replies Merlin, pushing past Charles. ‘I’m not leaving them with my tug. It’s everything, my entire livelihood.’

  ‘There’s three of them,’ says Charles, but Merlin is already about to pull himself out of the hatch. ‘And they’ve got at least one gun!’ he calls, but in vain: Merlin’s feet disappear through the slightly lighter rectangle of darkness and Charles can hear him crawling above his head on the deck.

  ‘Shit!’ swears Charles to himself, but he follows.

  He joins Merlin crouched behind the load.

  ‘Listen!’ says Merlin.

  Charles strains his ears. ‘The engine’s been cut.’

  ‘Yes. We’re drifting with the tide. Can you see where we are?’

  Charles looks to port but can’t see well enough to recognise any landmarks. He points to starboard. ‘Isn’t that “The Old Ship”?’

  Merlin peers in the direction of Charles’s pointed arm. They’re approaching a brightly lit pub on the north bank of the river from which can be heard the faint sounds of music. ‘Yes, I think you’re right. Which means…’

  Merlin leans out slightly from behind the packing cases and looks for’ard. He can see the outline of Big Pat Connolly, backlit by the yellow light from the wheelhouse, standing at the stern of the General Grant, squinting into the dark. The big Glaswegian appears to be facing the lighter and the revolver can be seen in his right hand, hanging loosely by his side. The young pilot has left the wheelhouse and is standing over Ronnie Kray, who sits on the bottom step of the wheelhouse ladder. The boy is examining Ronnie’s neck.

  ‘Those fucking idiots — there’s no one at the wheel! Look: we’re going to run aground on Chiswick Eyot! She’ll beach and capsize!’

  As the lighter slides past the pub on the northern shore, Charles looks out from behind his side of the packing crates. Ahead of them, less than fifty yards away, is a low dark island covered in trees. The tug is drifting on the fast tide with the wind behind it and the eyot is approaching fast, four points off the starboard bow.

  Merlin half stands but Charles hauls him back down by the sleeve. ‘What d’you think you’re doing?’

  ‘I’m gonna rush them and try to get her under power again. The barge is on a short line, only five or six feet; I can jump the gap.’

  ‘That’s suicide. You’ll never make it to the tug: you’ll be dead before you even get off the lighter!’

  ‘But I’ve got t
o do something!’ hisses Merlin, wrenching his arm free of Charles’s grip.

  ‘Wait a sec, let me think!’

  Merlin stops and Charles makes some rapid calculations. Kray and his colleagues have yet to find the light that would have illuminated the stern of the tug, so everything abaft the wheelhouse, including the lighter, remains in complete darkness. They might just be able to take them by surprise if they’re quick enough.

  ‘Have you got anything we can use as a weapon?’ asks Charles. ‘What’s under here?’ he whispers, lifting up the corner of the tarpaulin.

  ‘Nothing; just empty packing cases. And the sweep.’

  The sweep is an eighteen-foot long oar or paddle used by lighterman to steer the unpowered lighters on the tide and, when occasion demands, to paddle. Using them is extremely hard work and with every lighterage firm having at least one tug, they are now used relatively rarely.

  Charles feels underneath the tarpaulin and his hand encounters the blade. He slides it out behind him quietly.

  ‘It’s going to be fucking heavy,’ says Charles. ‘Do you think you can swing it?’

  ‘I don’t know. You were always stronger than me.’

  ‘Yeah, but you still work the river every day; I’m just a desk jockey. OK, let’s give it a go. You go down the starboard side and try to distract them; I’ll need the port side to give me enough room to swing. But we’ve got fifty feet to cover.’

  Charles hefts the sweep, passing it through his hands until it’s balanced, and then readjusts it, moving as much of its length ahead of him as is possible to lift.

  ‘Ready?’ he asks.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Good luck.’

  The cousins creep out from their opposite sides of the crates. The three men ahead of them in the light are completely unaware that the tug is only a couple of seconds from running aground. Charles and Merlin manage to get half the way to the tug’s stern before being seen.

  Then: ‘Hey, boss!’ calls Connolly, half turning towards the wheelhouse. ‘They’re here!’

  Time slows almost to a halt over the next few seconds, as everything happens at once but seemingly in slow motion. With an inarticulate war cry, Merlin sets off at a sprint, covering the remaining distance and leaping into the air to clear the six feet of black water between the prow of the lighter and the stern of the tug. Charles, too, runs the last few feet, raising the sweep to his right shoulder as he moves.

  One pace short of the prow, Charles plants his left foot like a hammer thrower and pivots around it, extending his arms and swinging the sweep in a horizontal arc towards Connolly’s head. At precisely that moment Connolly turns and raises his gun arm towards Merlin who is, simultaneously, in the air between the two vessels.

  The wooden pole thrums in Charles’s hands like the wings of an enormous insect as it sweeps round. Then, with a satisfying thud! and a violent jarring of the timber which sends a juddering vibration all the way up to Charles’s shoulders, the blade cracks heavily against Connolly’s skull. A split-second later the gun fires.

  Charles completes his three-hundred-and-sixty-degree spin just in time to see Connolly’s corpulent body entering the water, coattails flailing, and the glint of the revolver leaving his hand and describing a separate arc before it too disappears beneath the surface.

  Charles’s elation lasts less than a heartbeat as the General Grant beaches on the eyot and immediately lists precipitously to port. He watches in horror as the deck turns into a forty-five-degree slope. His eyes frantically sweep across the tug seeking Merlin but he can see only the white shirt-clad Kray twin and the thin-faced youth, both tumbling across the wet deck towards the water. Then, for a split second, he spots Merlin’s muscled forearms hanging off the stern gunwale of the General Grant, up to his neck in turbulent water. And then Charles knows, with complete prescient clarity, exactly what’s about to happen, and he is utterly powerless to prevent it.

  ‘Izzy!’ he screams, as the momentum of the lighter carries it inexorably into collision with the stern of the beached tug. Merlin is lost to Charles’s sight and there is a sickening crunching sound. The lighter rebounds slowly and Charles watches, open mouthed, as Merlin’s hands release the gunwale and sink beneath the waves.

  ‘No!’ cries Charles.

  He jumps feet-first into the water and swims to the point where he last saw the lighterman. He dives blindly, repeatedly, frantically, feeling in the black water for his cousin.

  He doesn’t know how long he searches, ten minutes, twenty perhaps, and he doesn’t know how he ends up lying on his back in the mud, gasping for breath and sobbing. He has no idea what has happened to Ronnie Kray, Big Pat Connolly or the pilot, and he doesn’t care. He stares unseeing at the clouds sweeping across the night sky above him and the patches of stars between them, oblivious to the cold creeping stealthily into his bones and into his heart.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Charles stands by Izzy’s graveside, shoulder to shoulder with his brother. On Charles’s other side is his father, Harry, and Raynor Conway, Izzy’s younger brother. Opposite, amongst the women, is his mother, Millie, holding the hand of her sister-in-law, Aunt Bea. Next to Aunt Bea is David’s wife, Sonia. It took Beatrice nearly twenty minutes to get from the Memorial Chapel in the cemetery to the graveside. She abandoned her wheelchair and insisted on walking, but her breathing difficulties required her to stop every few steps. By the time she reached the open grave, all the other mourners had been waiting for some time and were beginning to get cold.

  It hasn’t rained for a couple of days but the area around the graveside is still sodden, and Charles looks at the shoes of the mourners opposite him, all caked with muddy clay, picked up from the recently refilled graves on either side of Izzy’s.

  Charles’s mind wanders as the rabbi intones the ancient prayers in Hebrew. Wonderful things were said about Izzy during the funeral service, by the rabbi who knew him only slightly and by several of the mourners who knew him better. All related anecdotes concerning Izzy’s mischievous sense of humour; his acts of kindness to all who needed him; his attractiveness to women; and, of course, his steadfast support of his ailing mother.

  Charles chose not to speak. The others’ well-intentioned words described the man he knew, at least in some respects, but he was acutely aware that Izzy led a half-life, of which most around the grave were completely ignorant. Charles can’t help feeling that he’s taking part in a charade, ironically, just as Izzy did for all his adult life.

  Charles becomes aware that his mother is staring intently at him, and he smiles sympathetically at her over the open grave. She continues to gaze at him without smiling and, after a moment, looks down. What have I done this time? he wonders wearily. He considers his mother’s grey hair, fluttering free from under her scarf, and the ever-deepening lines around her eyes and on her forehead. She looks old, thinks Charles. And bitter. I wonder how long it’ll be before I’m burying her? Then, remembering the Krays, he corrects himself: How long it will be before she’s burying me?

  ‘You never came to see me,’ chides Henrietta’s voice, close to Charles’s right ear.

  Your family wouldn’t let me come to the funeral, he answers silently.

  ‘But you never came to see me,’ she insists.

  Are we going to have a row about this, now? asks Charles. Really?

  For once Henrietta doesn’t answer back.

  The service by the grave is short. A small clean trowel is handed around the menfolk, and each stoops in turn to lift a small quantity of soil from the fresh pile heaped at the graveside to drop it onto the coffin. Clods of damp earth and stone strike the coffin lid, and as always Charles wonders if they might wake the occupant. With every thud-rattle Beatrice utters a quiet moan, each one signifying the deepening and irreparable tear in her heart. She was, of course, delighted to see Raynor who returned from Canada for the first time in years to attend the funeral, but everybody knows it: Izzy was her favourite, her friend and her care
r. In any case Raynor will soon depart to return to his business, his wife, and his two children in Toronto, and then Beatrice will be alone.

  When all the men have dropped their trowels-full of soil, the mourners line up again for the recitation of Kaddish, the ancient Aramaic prayer for the dead.

  ‘Yis-gadal, v’yis-kadash, sh’may raboh,’ — Exalted and hallowed be His great Name — say Raynor and Beatrice, the principal mourners, and all present, including Charles, answer with “Amen”. Charles finds himself reciting the responses along with everyone else, despite the fact that he believes in none of it. Nonetheless, there is power in these words, the ghosts of a dead language spoken so many thousands of years before, a sort of irresistible magic that sweeps him along despite himself, and to his complete surprise and embarrassment, he feels tears leaking from his eyes and his breath catching deep in his chest.

  Charles doesn’t cry. He wept once after Henrietta was murdered but, other than that, he can’t remember when he last cried, even as a child. Millie and Beatrice look over the grave at him. Beatrice’s expression is one of sympathy and shared grief; Millie’s is more impenetrable.

  The prayer reaches its end, as always, with a plea for the God who makes peace in his heavens to make peace for all the world, albeit with a special mention for Israel, and the congregation says “Amen.”

  Charles is still trying to stifle his sobs when a tissue appears in front of his face, offered by David. Charles takes it and wipes away his embarrassment.

  The rabbi shakes hands with members of the close family and those of his congregation whom he knows well from his Sabbath services, and the mourners begin to move in twos and threes back up the muddy path where they will wash their hands at the tap outside the Memorial Chapel, in accordance with Jewish custom.

  Charles takes a few steps away from the graveside to compose himself. After a moment he feels a solicitous hand on his back.