by Jim Kelly
Brooke fled before the saws could start their work.
On the doorstep he stopped and lit a cigarette. They’d always known the boy would be dead. But without a body the victim had inhabited a kind of earthly purgatory. Now, at least, he had been released from that, although the cruel ordeal was not over. The autopsy was underway, the reassemblage of the body would take place for the purposes of identification, and then storage would follow, in one of Comfort’s steel drawers. And there it would lie until the coroner released the body for burial; an order which relied on Brooke finding the boy’s killer.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
As Brooke walked up King’s Parade a neat line of choirboys, exiting the great chapel, broke ranks at an unheard word of command and began a frantic battle of snowballs. Otherwise, the city centre was quiet, although the faint sounds of a piano were drifting from the doors of the Mitre, in Bridgeland. As he crossed the river on the Great Bridge a clock struck ten. Climbing Castle Hill, he cut off to the left around the base of the slope, turning up an alleyway by the Old Ferry, an inn infamous for Saturday night brawls.
Edison’s note was precise: when free, Brooke was to proceed at the first opportunity to the Castle End Working Men’s Institute in the Upper Town. He was on no account to enter by the front doors, but to climb Pound Hill from the Old Ferry and slip into the delivery yard at the rear of the club. He should knock there to gain entry. Not for the first time Brooke was impressed by Edison’s natural authority and confidence, in that he had clearly taken charge of the operation on the ground.
Brooke followed the path laid down for him by his detective sergeant. His shoes slid badly on the ice and snow of the hill as he climbed away from the river. The Stuke – as the institute was affectionately known – was a red brick and cream confection, a Gothic folly paid for, according to a plaque, with donations from several colleges. The blackout screens over the lancet windows were brutally efficient. The club looked dead, except that a telltale column of white smoke rose from the chimney. Walking to the back, Brooke followed Edison’s instructions and executed a sharp knock on the wide doors marked CELLARAGE.
The steward, in a white shirt and tie, let him in without a word. Down a corridor Brooke glimpsed the bar, and beyond that a large room dotted with tables at which men in pairs shuffled dominoes. Cigarette fumes hung in the air, whisked aside by sudden belches of pipe smoke. The radio played something orchestral and improving: Vaughan Williams perhaps, or Britten.
‘Old timers tonight,’ said the steward. ‘I’ve told ’em we’ve got family staying. They’re not stupid, but they know when to keep mum.’
Up the stairs Edison sat by candlelight at a dormer window, cradling a pint of beer.
‘Sir. Anything from the river?’
Brooke briefed him on the latest: ‘I left Dr Comfort to complete the autopsy.’
The news clearly gave Edison some food for thought, as he nodded, taking several sips from his beer. Brooke waited for the steward to bring him the whisky he had ordered, and then pulled up a chair beside his detective sergeant.
‘Which house?’ he asked.
‘Well, sir, not so much a house as a warren. Sorry for the summons, but the next move’s tricky. I thought you’d want to see for yourself.’
Opposite them a small street ran off Pound Hill, no more than a wide alley, a hundred yards long. This was Honey Hill. On either side, tumbledown buildings, mostly wooden-framed, teetered over the pathway. A patchwork of roofs, dotted with chimneys and windows, completed a picture of a medieval hovel, transported unchanged into the twentieth century.
‘A slum, really,’ said Edison. ‘We didn’t want to alert anyone to our interest, so it’s not been easy. The buildings form one interconnected block. There are at least six landlords, with flats to rent, rooms to rent, beds to rent. I checked with the council: there’s three toilets and a single bath. All of it’s facing demolition. Water supply is by a standpipe at the far end.’
Edison shook his head, sipped his pint again, and set it aside.
‘And he’s in there, is he?’
‘Yes, sir. Local constable knew the name. Patrick O’Leary – so, P. O. He’s a regular in the Spinning House cells of a Saturday night. Drunk and disorderly, a common assault last October. Drinks in the Commercial at Mitcham’s Corner. I got a detective constable to follow him home from work. He’s a builder’s labourer.’ Edison checked his watch. ‘Got home two hours ago. He went in the third door on the right. As I say, the place is a warren, but there’s no way out except down the street, unless he’s got a head for heights and he’s desperate, in which case the rooftops would work. But if we go in we can watch the streets. He’d have to come down eventually.’
A door opened on Honey Hill and a dog loped out, squatted down in the snow, and trotted back inside, the owner unseen but for a hand.
‘One other thing,’ said Edison. ‘From what I was told in Coventry it’s very unlikely the bomb factory’s here. Thin walls, loads of people about – it just doesn’t work. It’ll be a garage, a lock-up, a cellar.’
‘If we watch him he could lead us to it?’
‘That’s it, sir.’
Downstairs they heard the cacophony of dominoes being shuffled on tables and a sudden convivial hum.
The blanket of snow along Honey Hill was unblemished except for the dog’s stain.
Brooke lit a cigarette.
‘As you say, Edison. A tricky decision. We could have him in the cells tonight. If we lost him there’d be hell to pay. Any telephone lines in the block?’
‘Not one, sir. Nearest box is there.’
At an angle they could see down Pound Hill to a telephone box under a fir tree. The snow had made a neat pyramid of its roof.
The dilemma was clear. If the IRA cell had plans for a second bomb and O’Leary spotted he was being watched, he could alert the rest. They’d all go to ground, but they might decide to set off the second bomb first, especially if it was already in place or preparations were complete. Or had the murder of Sean Flynn thrown them into panic? Perhaps the rest of the gang would come here, to Honey Hill. Or O’Leary might lead them to his comrades.
It was a trap, but they needed time for it to be sprung.
‘I’d be much happier if that telephone box wasn’t there,’ said Brooke. ‘What if he knows we’re watching? What if he raises the alarm?’ He weighed the odds and made a decision. ‘Let’s watch him tonight, tomorrow, see what he does, who he talks too. We might get lucky. I’ll get a shift rota set up so you can get a break. Let’s keep a watching brief.
‘I’m off to London to see the parents of Sean Flynn in the morning, after I’ve told Father Ward the bad news first thing. I can’t just ring the local nick and leave a message for the parents that their boy is dead. I’ll tell them face-to-face. And it’s a chance to find out more about Sean, and his family. I’ll be back by dusk. If nothing changes here we’ll pick O’Leary up tomorrow night, at midnight.’
Brooke slipped down the stairs, ordered Edison a fresh pint and went out into the snow. Standing in the silence he fished in his overcoat pocket. The penknife had been his mother’s, so it had a pearl handle, although the blade was worn because she’d used it to prune roses. He walked down Pound Hill, slipped into the phone box and cut the wire.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
On Trinity Street, walking home, Brooke paused beneath Jo Ashmore’s lofty rooftop eyrie. The compacted snow dulled the usual rat-a-tat of his metal Blakeys on the pavement, and the frost had frozen the water in the drainpipes, and so the silence was complete. Which is why he heard the laughter: Jo’s liquid voice certainly, but not alone, up at her Observation Post. The man’s voice was understated, and soft, but with a teasing edge. Brooke, in the shadows smoking, examined his response. He felt displaced, and disappointed to miss Jo’s youthful company and the hot toddy, and the panoramic view of his city. But there was also a sense of fatherly comfort, that her long exile above the roofs, looking down on life, was
drawing to an end. Looking up he thought he could see cigarette smoke drifting out over the street. Their words grew softer and Brooke imagined them getting closer, which made him feel like a voyeur, so he fled.
He set out again for home and a hot bath, even some food, respecting the letter of Aldiss’s strict regime, but opposite the ghostly white walls of the Senate House he came to an abrupt full stop, catching on the still air the savoury aroma of freshly fried bacon. Following his nose, he entered Market Hill, the square empty but for a few stalls swaddled in tarpaulin, and a single splash of electric light where the regular tea hut had reopened despite the cold snap.
A platoon of soldiers crowded at the hatch, while a group of tram drivers, still in uniform, clutched steaming mugs, gathered round a small brazier from which smoke dribbled upwards in a vertical column untouched by any breeze. Rose King, proprietor, was Brooke’s oldest and most reliable nighthawk. The cafe was usually open twenty-four hours a day. The bitter winter weather had forced a brief shutdown. Now she was back in business. Rose reserved the night shift for herself, leaving the daylight hours to her three daughters.
Brooke’s first beat as a uniformed police constable after the Great War, a north–south line through the old city, had taken him across Market Hill four times a night, a journey which never managed to reveal exactly where the ‘hill’ lay, given the piazza and the streets about were all fen-flat. In an old book on the city’s ancient history Claire had bought him one Christmas he’d found an answer to the riddle: there was no hill, for the old Saxon word had at its root the concept of a meeting place. Height was, apparently, a secondary quality.
It was certainly a good place for nighthawks to meet.
The soldiers parted to let Brooke get to the counter.
‘Well, well. It’s the night detective,’ said Rose, sloshing a dark tannic soup into a large mug. She carefully tucked away a lock of grey hair under a colourful headscarf. ‘The usual?’ she said, placing two rashers on the griddle.
Rose’s counter was her stage, and every movement a dramatic gesture. She cut two slices of bread and coated them with margarine, with a single sweep of a broad knife.
Armed with two cups of tea she came round to stand with Brooke, close to the flames which had begun to flicker amid the smoke, her fingertips poking out of woollen mittens.
‘Cold night,’ said Brooke.
‘Getting colder. But people get used to it, so we thought we’d show willing. Open all night for nearly twenty years, Brooke, so England expects. Can’t let the customers down. This is the Home Front. And it ain’t gonna get any warmer, is it? The ice is here for a week, maybe more. Just listen.’
Rose was a student of folklore, particularly when it pertained to the weather.
Brooke strained his ears yet could hear nothing but the soldiers talking, so he shrugged.
‘Exactly,’ said Rose, triumphant. ‘Most nights this time you can hear the trains in the yards; the wheels, the couplings. Silence means a north wind. Not down here, up there …’ She pointed skywards.
‘How are the girls?’ asked Brooke, keen to keep the conversation rational.
‘The big news is that Dawn’s pregnant. Her first, and she didn’t even know. I told her – it was plain as a pikestaff. Hair shining, eyes bright, cheeks like apples. She glowed. Sure enough she’s three months gone.’
A fleeting image came to Brooke, of the radiant Mrs Walsh, the young wife of the head teacher of St Alban’s School. Was there joyful news for the head teacher? Did he know?
Brooke told Rose about Joy’s baby and the prospect of being a grandfather, and that Claire was already painting the old nursery below the attic. A cot had been purchased, but stored in the garden shed, to avoid bad luck.
Rose beamed, delighted to find any evidence of continuing superstition. ‘The other girls have got their hands full. We’ve taken in three evacuees.’
‘Londoners?’
She nodded. ‘East Enders. It’s a bit of an eye-opener, I can tell you. Bath time’s an innovation. And the language … Still, the money helps, and if you put the ration books together you can rustle up a decent meal.’
The idea that the government paid for the upkeep of the children had not occurred to Brooke. There were supposed to be ten thousand children in the town billeted with families. The city had become a giant playground.
‘Any sign of the parents?’
‘They took the kids home for Christmas, but they’re back now. The government keeps saying the children need to stay put, out of harm’s way, but a lot are going back. Ours will follow, you watch. Unless the bombs start to fall. Then it will be full steam ahead, backwards. Like everything else. The more they go on about not panicking, the more likely everyone will. They’ll be stuffing the kids on any old train out of the Smoke just to get them safe, you see.’ Rose drank her tea. ‘How’s your boy?’
‘Luke? We just watch the post for letters. He’s stuck on the Belgian border waiting for it to all start. Joy’s man is on submarines. She’s trying to keep from thinking about it, but it’s not working. You know they have to volunteer for subs? They won’t send anyone down who doesn’t want to go. I’m amazed they can raise a crew, let alone hundreds of them.’
They fell silent, watching the fire.
‘I had the Civil Defence lot here an hour ago, all talking about the kiddie you found in the river.’ Rose sneaked a sideways glance at Brooke’s face, lit by the flames. ‘You’ll find the killer. I know you will. But if it don’t happen, or if it takes time, don’t take it personal. Go home, Eden. Sleep.’
Brooke resettled his hat, executed a mock salute and slipped away.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Brooke found the children of St Alban’s in the playground, swarming in that peculiar way unique to the under-tens: a version of Brownian motion, the haphazard oscillation of molecules in gas. Brooke always imagined that he could hear the telltale noise of buzzing bees. The speed of circulation had been vastly increased by a fresh overnight snowfall. The cramped yard had a single drain, which had spilt over and frozen, so that through the milling crowd the occasional child shot by at speed. Snowballs flew in all directions. The informal discipline of St Alban’s stood in sharp contrast to the cliché of Jesuit cruelty. Mrs Walsh, the head’s wife, was in the middle of the melee, cheerfully swinging a very small child around as if about to launch a Highland hammer.
The school building was two storeys, with large metal grilled windows, and a single white statue of St Alban set in a central niche. Christmas decorations still obscured the interior. For the first time the identity of the patron saint of the school and church struck Brooke as significant: St Alban, the first martyr of the English. Had it been chosen to smooth the cultural waters, to dampen Victorian fears of an Irish takeover of the wider church?
As Brooke entered, a bell rang out in the playground. Liam Walsh, the head, met him in the central corridor of the school, the backbone of the rudimentary ground floor. Today he wore a threadbare corduroy suit and ran a hand back through the thinning red hair. Children, oblivious, scuttled round him at speed. At the far end of the corridor a Virgin Mary stood in a grotto, the flesh painted in realistic tones, a light burning in a silver dish, Bernadette kneeling amongst the rock flowers.
Walsh’s eyes, examining the parquet floor, rose slowly to meet Brooke’s, but he must have read there an intimation of what was to come. ‘Bad news, Inspector? We’ve been praying. The children at least were hopeful.’
Brooke told him the boy had been found. There was no doubt it was Sean Flynn.
‘I’m going to London this morning to tell the parents. We’ll have to wait for a formal identification of course, possibly at the weekend,’ said Brooke. ‘But as I say, the child fits the description of the missing boy. We found the body below Jesus Lock, his ID label upstream. He’d been coshed, a blow which would have killed him in its own right. We must find the man who did this, Mr Walsh. I’d like to speak to the children again.’
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nbsp; Walsh was silent, head bowed, and Brooke realised with a shock that he was praying. A brief, fleeting sign of the cross released him, and he led the way towards the Virgin at the end of the corridor. Around them the children streamed back into the classrooms, the building filling with the smell of damp wool and soaked leather.
‘We’ve put the evacuees in the same class for now,’ said Walsh, his whisper-like voice even less audible than usual. ‘They’re all of an age, and we have the room. And they’re a disparate crowd, many of them travelled alone, without friends, but they’re closer now. All this must be terrifying.’
They entered a classroom. The children sat in pairs at desks, listening to Mrs Walsh call the register. In front of the class she seemed older, but nonetheless still remarkably youthful in comparison to her husband. She managed to radiate good health even here in a damp classroom, in the stark white light flooding in from the playground.
She called out the children’s surnames, nodding briefly as each stood, then sat.
‘Thank you, Mrs Walsh,’ said the head. ‘If I may. We must pray for the soul of Sean Flynn, children. It seems that God has decided that he may never come back to us. We must pray for his parents, and his brothers. Sean will be in heaven soon, but we must pray for him nonetheless.’
The children stood uncertainly and joined in an Our Father.
Brooke thought about the missing child. Frank Edwardes was right. The abduction, the murder, were clearly planned. But the child was a visitor who knew no one. How could this small boy have represented a threat to anyone? Did the family have links with the IRA? Had he met his killer at some point between leaving his home and lights-out in the church? Who had he met, and where?