by Roberta Kray
‘So you do think it was suicide?’
‘I don’t know, and nor do you. Perhaps no one ever will. There was a lot of booze around. She’d been drinking, too much probably. She could have just lost her footing and stumbled or slipped.’
Judith shivered. She felt an icy coldness in her bones as though her own body was sliding under the waters of the Thames. When she had handed over the gun, she had done it with the best of intentions, but now it felt like she had made a terrible mistake. ‘What do you think the fight was about?’
‘Doyle probably figured something out.’
‘About Lennie Hull’s murder?’
‘What makes you say that?’
‘Because everything seems to lead back to that man. Do you think Tombs had something to do with it?’
Saul lit a cigarette and took a couple of puffs before replying. ‘Thinking it and proving it are two entirely different things. He’s had five years to cover his tracks.’
‘And Elsa? Did he kill her too?’
‘If he did one, then he probably did the other.’
Judith hadn’t noticed where they were going, but now she realised they had retraced the route she had taken with Ivor Doyle. She stopped by the wrought-iron gates and gazed into the graveyard. If it was true about Tombs, then he really was the devil. Perhaps it was time to stop hiding the truth. ‘Nell came to see me,’ she said. ‘She more or less confessed to shooting Lennie Hull. I think she genuinely believed she’d done it.’
‘And then you gave Doyle the gun.’
‘How did you know that?’
‘I didn’t, not for sure.’
Judith gave a grim smile. Her gaze slid over the grass and the tombstones, her mind more preoccupied by the dead than the living. ‘I found it in a locker at Connolly’s. When Doyle looked at it, he realised it hadn’t been fired.’ She paused and then asked, ‘Will you tell the police?’
‘I am the police.’
‘You know what I mean, the others.’
‘That might not help Doyle much. For one, it would prove the gun was in his possession, and for two, if he thought Tombs was guilty of Hull’s murder but had let Nell go on thinking it was her, it would give him a motive to try and blow the bastard’s brains out.’ Saul pulled on his cigarette. ‘No, we’re better off keeping quiet and I’m pretty sure Doyle will see it that way too. Tombs will serve some time at least. It might not be perfect justice, but it’s better than nothing.’
‘And Elsa? What about justice for her?’
‘I won’t give up. I’ll keep on digging. If he did do it, I’ll get the evidence one day. Don’t worry: he’ll pay one way or another.’
‘So what now?’ she asked, at a loss as to what to do next.
‘It’s over. You should go home.’
It wasn’t the first time she’d heard those words, but it was the first time she had agreed with them. Judith looked across the graveyard and thought about other people’s lives, their secrets, hopes and fears – all turned to dust eventually. She thought of Charlotte and Annie, of the sea and the smell of salt in the air. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘It’s time to go home.’
Epilogue
September 1950
Judith leaned against the rail of the ferry, watching the land recede. No one could say she hadn’t given it a try. She had spent the past year in Westport, trying to rebuild her life: new flat, new job, realistic expectations. But she hadn’t been able to settle. Something had changed, a shift she couldn’t fully explain. The town felt too small, too claustrophobic, as though it was slowly suffocating her.
Annie and Charlotte had come to see her off at the station. The image was still in her head: the two of them standing on the platform, waving to her. She would miss them, but it wouldn’t be for ever. One day, she would probably come back. Westport was still home, after all. It just wasn’t the right place for her at the moment.
She switched her attention to the grey water below. Inevitably, she thought of Nell, wondering what had been in her mind when she’d stood on the bank of the Thames that night. There was a connection between them – they had loved the same man – but the past had unravelled them both. And what of Ivor Doyle? She briefly closed her eyes.
A gull wheeled overhead, its white wings catching the sun. She was not sure what she expected from this new adventure: maybe only a chance to spread her own wings and have some new experiences before it was too late. She had never been abroad in her life, and although Amsterdam wasn’t a million miles away, it felt like she was embarking on a great journey. Nerves fluttered in her stomach, but she had no regrets. Sometimes you just had to jump and hope for the best.
Maud Bishop had covered her face with her hands when the judge passed a twelve-year sentence on her husband, not in horror as some people might have presumed, but in order to hide her delight and relief. She was free. Within a matter of weeks, with the help of Saul Hannah, she had received the insurance money – her reward for secretly grassing up six armed robbers – and fled London with her kids.
Edinburgh was the destination she had chosen at random from the board at the train station. She had intended to move on, to find somewhere less busy to live, one of the surrounding towns perhaps, but had quickly seen the advantages of staying. There was work here and there was anonymity. In a city this size, no one would find them.
Maud often thought about that night six years ago when she’d gone out looking for Mick. Three days he’d been missing. The cupboards were bare and the kids hadn’t eaten. She had traipsed from pub to pub, all his regular haunts, until, disappointed, she had given up the search and headed back towards home.
It was as she’d turned a corner near the station that she’d seen the two of them rowing in the street, Lennie Hull and the fair-haired girl. Nell, that was her name. Nell had been waving a gun in his face while Lennie laughed and sneered at her. As Maud had stopped to consider what to do next – she didn’t want to get involved – the other man had appeared from the shadows. Even in the dim light she’d known who it was. Everyone knew Alf Tombs. At first she had thought he was going to intervene, but that hadn’t been his intention at all. It had been over in a moment, a single well-aimed shot that had almost blown Hull’s head off.
Tombs had buggered off as quickly and silently as he’d arrived, but the girl hadn’t moved. Like she was in shock, paralysed. Eventually, she had thrown the gun into the gutter and started to run. Maud had waited a while before emerging from the shadows. She remembered the sudden stillness in the air, the aftermath of death. Why had she picked up the gun? To this day she wasn’t sure. To try and protect the girl, perhaps. But the girl hadn’t shot Lennie, so that didn’t make much sense.
It was then that she’d panicked. People must have heard the shot. What if they came and found her there? She had shoved the gun in her bag and hurried away. That had been her first mistake; her second had been to tell Elsa about it. And that wouldn’t have happened either if she hadn’t run slap bang into her just outside the Fox. Maud, stunned and scared, had garbled out the story.
‘Give the gun to me,’ Elsa had said. ‘I’ll get rid of it.’
And Maud hadn’t thought twice about doing just that. Grateful, that was what she’d been. The gun linked her, as a witness at least, to Hull’s murder, and she had no desire to stand up in court and give evidence against Tombs. Truth was, she was glad Lennie was dead. The man had always been a nasty bastard.
She should have known better than to have trusted Elsa, but it was too late for regrets. What was done was done. The girl had chanced her arm, probably tried to blackmail Tombs, and come off the worse for it. Maud could have told Saul, told him everything, but she had not cared enough for Elsa to jeopardise her own plans.
As she pushed the pram along Princes Street, she had high hopes for her baby daughter. Rosie would not grow up with fear and loathing, a victim of her father’s fists. She would have love and safety and opportunities. As would all her other kids. A Scottish accent was, she decide
d, a small price to pay for a better future.
Even after a year, Jimmy Taylor hadn’t stopped thinking about the hammer. He still returned to the green at regular intervals, dreading the thought that the council might decide to do some landscaping, or that the bush would die and be dug up. He would stare at the dull brown dirt while he smoked a cigarette and rue the day he had ever crossed paths with Elsa Keep.
He replayed that night in his head over and over again. He had only gone to the flat on a whim, not even intending to ring the bell. Just to look. Just to see who was coming and going. But when he’d got there and peered over the railing, he’d seen that a light was on and the door ajar. He’d waited for a while, but no one had appeared.
Curiosity had eventually got the better of him. He’d looked around, made sure the coast was clear and then gone quietly down the metal steps. He’d pushed the door open a bit wider and said, ‘Hello?’
Nothing.
‘Hello?’ A bit louder this time, but still she hadn’t responded.
It was only as he’d crossed the threshold that he’d seen the state of the place. Someone must have broken in. If he’d been smart, he’d have turned tail that very second and got the hell out of there, but he wasn’t and he hadn’t. Instead he’d carried on, sidestepping the debris, until he’d noticed the hammer lying on the floor. The head was stained red and he’d already picked it up before realising that was the wrong thing to do. Blood, was it? Shit. He’d sucked in a breath through his teeth, and immediately let the hammer fall to the ground again.
To this day he didn’t know what had possessed him to go into the small room. He could smell death, perhaps, or sense it, the hairs on the back of his neck standing on end. The sight of her body had simultaneously repulsed and fascinated him: those open, glassy eyes, the stillness, the waxy colour of her skin.
And then the adrenalin had kicked in. Get the fuck out of the place! He’d been almost at the front door when he’d remembered the hammer, the weapon with his fingerprints all over it. Going back, picking it up, making a split-second decision as to whether to take it with him or try and clean off the prints right there. His heart beating so hard it could have burst right out of his chest.
It had taken every last inch of restraint for him not to sprint up the steps. Instead he had gone up carefully, his ears tuned to the slightest sound, hoping no one was watching from a window as he made his way to the green, ill-lit and empty. He could have taken the hammer home, but hadn’t dared. What if someone had seen him? What if the law came knocking at the door? To be caught in possession would be a death warrant.
It had not occurred to him to use the hammer to dig the hole. Instead he had crouched down and dug the soil out with his bare hands, scrabbling in the shadows, praying that no one would cross the green. Using his jacket, he had cleaned the hammer as best he could and then placed it in its shallow grave.
Jimmy still hoped they’d catch the killer – not for Elsa’s sake but for his own. He was sick of waking with cold sweats in the middle of the night, sick of being forever on edge. How could he rest easy while evidence that could convict him lay just below the surface? But he remained too scared to dig it up, too afraid of the consequences if he was caught in the act. Even dead, Elsa Keep was trouble. Some women were like that.
*
Alf Tombs knew he had got off lightly, all things considered. Yes, he was banged up for a few years, but it was nothing he couldn’t handle. Had the truth come out, he’d have been looking at a visit from Pierrepoint, and a rope around his neck. Doyle could have pointed the finger, but he wouldn’t have been able to prove anything, not when it came to Lennie Hull or Elsa Keep. If his old friend had come clean about the gun being his, he would have ended up in the dock too.
He had no regrets. Lennie Hull had got what was coming, and so had Elsa. She’d brought it on herself, trying to blackmail him like that. As if he was going to let a broad like her, a nobody, hold him to ransom. She hadn’t understood what she was getting into. She’d underestimated him, and that had been a big mistake.
It had bothered him for a while, the hammer disappearing like that. He’d been wearing gloves, so no fingerprints, and had left the weapon on the living room floor. Where had it gone? It was a mystery. He could have just shot the blackmailing bitch, but he’d needed it to look like a burglary gone wrong.
It was unfortunate about Nell, but not his fault. And all right, he could have told her at the time that she hadn’t shot Lennie, but that would have been tricky without implicating himself. Anyway, she should have been grateful that he’d done the job for her. It was the case, however, that Nell’s guilt had come in handy later on when Doyle had come back to London, a bit of leverage when it came to persuading him to open all those post office doors.
To this day, he wasn’t sure how Doyle had discovered the truth. It had come as a surprise, an unwelcome one, when he’d produced the gun Nell had been waving around the night Lennie had gone to meet his maker. Alf knew he should have reacted differently. Perhaps Doyle had always suspected something was off, always had a niggling doubt in the back of his mind.
Still, it hadn’t worked out so badly in the end. Being banged up had meant an end to his plans for the Heathrow job. All that planning, all those hours of hard work, blown out of the water in a matter of minutes. He’d cursed Doyle at the time, but not for long. Pat Hull and his gang had turned up at the airport to find a bloody reception committee waiting for them. Someone must have tipped off the filth. You had to laugh! Maybe there was a God after all.
Alf gazed around at the four bare walls of his cell and grinned. There was no denying that people sometimes got away with murder.
Already Saul Hannah looked back with nostalgia on the Ghost Squad, at a time when he roamed freely and never had to sit behind a desk. Now his days were more regimented, his work closely supervised. It didn’t suit him, working as part of a team. He was often bored, and frequently irritable. His colleagues, decent men most of them, didn’t know what to make of him. His superiors looked on him with suspicion.
He continued to try and cultivate his snouts, usually when he was off duty. Soho was still his hunting ground, the place where the lowlifes and the disenfranchised gathered in numbers to mingle with their own, or just to drown their sorrows. Nothing ever really changed. Tombs was banged up, Pat Hull too, but already others had slipped into the vacated spaces. The criminal world abhorred a vacuum.
He often thought about Tombs and Doyle and the damaged girl who’d been pulled from the river. Sometimes when he saw a redhead in the street, he’d do a double-take, thinking it might be Judith Jonson. Where was she now? He might have taken a chance if he’d been braver, but the past continued to haunt him. He could not forget what he had lost, and nor could she.
Saul had not forgotten about Elsa Keep either. When Tombs got out of jail, he’d be waiting. What went around came around; no one could escape justice for ever.
As the waves rose and fell, Judith kept her gaze fixed firmly on the horizon. She could not have said whether the anxiety she was feeling was down to the heaving of the boat or to what lay ahead. What did she know of Amsterdam? Art and canals and bicycles. She breathed deeply, drawing in the salty air.
Her fingers curled around the envelope in her pocket. She had read the letter a hundred times, thrown it away and retrieved it from the bin. Now it was covered in tea stains. She had read the lines and between the lines, made up her mind and changed it again. Doubt was her constant companion.
When the ferry docked, she picked up her suitcase and joined the queue to disembark. Every step took her closer. As she passed through Customs, her eyes were already searching for the fair-haired man, for the face she would know anywhere. This time it would be on her terms. No long-term plans or promises. There was no going back, but maybe, just maybe, there was a new way forward.
r />