Corrupted: Murder and cover-up at the heart of government (Charles Holborne Legal Thrillers Book 4)

by Simon Michael

  Mo knows there must be more beneath the boy’s unresponsive surface because of his nightmares. Every night Teddy shouts out and sits up suddenly, instantly awake, panting as if in a race, his borrowed over-large pyjamas damp with sweat. Then he mumbles apologies and settles back down, and won’t be drawn on the content of his dreams.

  So the whoop of pleasure and excitement generated by the new clothes is novel and takes Mo completely by surprise.

  ‘If I’d known you’d be so excited about a shirt, I’d’ve got you one right at the off,’ says Mo, as Teddy, now dressed in his new blue shirt and grey slacks, spins around happily. ‘No one ever bought you clothes before?’

  ‘No; not like these.’

  ‘Like what then?’

  Teddy frowns, already retreating into his shell.

  ‘What, yer mum never bought you nothing?’ challenges Mo. ‘Don’t believe it.’

  Mo is astonished when the boy actually replies. ‘She did. But only clothes for little boys. I was in shorts till this year’s birthday — and the clothes I ran away in were the only grown-up ones I have.’

  Mo meets Teddy’s gaze and a look passes between them before the younger boy’s eyes dart away and his plump cheeks flush. You poor little sod, thinks Mo, putting two and two together accurately. So your mother knew, eh?

  For a moment Mo wonders if he has the stomach to follow his orders. A flicker of defiance flares briefly, gutters, and is gone. You don’t cross Ronnie Kray, he tells himself; particularly when he’s something special planned. So he turns away from Teddy and opens the bedsit window to fetch the bottle of milk he keeps cold on the windowsill. He hears Teddy starting to undress again.

  ‘Nah, leave ’em on,’ he says. ‘We’re going to a party.’

  ‘What sort of party?’

  ‘Just a party, I tell yer. You been to a party before, aintcha?’

  Teddy shakes his head. ‘Not really. I’ve been to tea with my uncles…’

  ‘Well, this’ll be exciting, then.’

  ‘But what happens?’

  Mo hears the anxiety in the boy’s voice. He puts down the milk and crosses the room to Teddy. He reaches out and fastens the button-down collars of the new shirt and tenderly brushes the wayward gold locks off the boy’s forehead. Teddy lets Mo touch him with the same intimate indifference as if the older boy were his mother.

  Mo stands back, evaluating the golden boy. The evening sunshine slanting through the attic window seems to intensify the colours of his clothing, his creamy complexion and shiny hair. For a moment the boy’s appearance is so striking it takes Mo’s breath away and causes him to forget Teddy’s question. The thought crosses Mo’s mind: maybe he really is an angel?

  Mo can’t remember when he last had what he used to call a ‘churchy’ thought. All that was ended years ago by Father Connor’s tearful fumblings in the vestry. But Teddy is something else — so innocent, so trusting and so beautiful; there’s a purity about him. Mo long ago forgot that anything could be like that. He shakes himself back to Teddy’s question.

  ‘“What happens?” What d’you think happens? It’s a party. There’ll be music and chat, food and drink, that sorta thing. Geezers havin’ a good time, a few laughs.’

  ‘Do people dance?’ asks Teddy, his fair eyebrows contracting into a frown.

  Mo laughs. ‘I dunno; probably. Why? There’s no need to look so worried, Teddy. No one can make yer dance if you don’t want to.’

  Teddy shrugs awkwardly, and his complexion pinks. ‘It’s just that I don’t know how.’

  Mo laughs again and on impulse hugs the boy, a genuine gesture of tenderness, and although Teddy’s hands remain loosely by his sides he nonetheless relaxes in the embrace. ‘Silly sod. There’s no need to be embarrassed,’ says Mo into Teddy’s ear, inhaling the boyish smell. ‘I’ll look after you.’

  Mo disengages and turns away, unable to let Teddy see his expression.

  Mo busies himself examining his hair in the blotched and cracked mirror propped on top of the dresser. Taking a comb from his back trouser pocket, he lifts his arms gingerly and, careful to avoid the tender bump above his ear, adjusts his parting.

  ‘Right,’ he announces, cheerful and business-like again. He replaces the milk on the windowsill, picks up his wallet and slips it into his Hepworth jacket pocket. ‘Let’s go.’

  Teddy has never seen anywhere like this flat. The block looked very ordinary on the outside, but inside it reminds him of something out of a dream or a film. The door was opened to them by two of Mo’s friends, who apparently arrived only seconds before them. The boys were excited to meet one another and hugged and playfully punched one another on the arms. Teddy notices that one of them, a skinny dark boy with long eyelashes, kisses Mo on the cheek. Mo draws the boy aside.

  ‘You not on the raid?’ he whispers.

  ‘Ain’t you heard?’

  ‘Heard what?’

  ‘Mancuso’s dead.’

  Mo’s mouth drops open. ‘What, ’cos of what I did?’

  The dark boy shrugs. ‘Seems so. The Filth are all over their place at the mo, so Ronnie thought we’d better lie low for a couple of days. You OK? You look funny.’

  Mo nods uncertainly. ‘It’s just that, well, I never killed anyone before. It feels odd.’

  ‘But they was coming at you, weren’t they? So it’s self-defence.’

  ‘S’pose so…’

  Teddy stands aimlessly, only a yard or two away, but Mo doesn’t introduce him and he’s not invited into the conversation.

  ‘Why dontcha go look round?’ says Mo swiftly over a shoulder to him. ‘There’s some drinks in that room over there.’ Mo nods to a door on the other side of the hallway. ‘Get yourself a lemonade.’ He returns to his conversation.

  Teddy still hesitates but Mo has turned his back again and so, after a few indecisive moments more, he moves reluctantly across the hallway and enters what looks like the main reception room. The first thing that strikes Teddy is the smell; the air has a sweet, cloying aroma that reminds him of incense. He scans the room for its source and sees two sticks in a small green jar smouldering on a windowsill.

  Opposite the door two men sit on a settee, very close to one another. One is old, in Teddy’s estimation at least forty-five, perhaps fifty, and the other much younger, only a few years older than Teddy himself. The younger man pats the other’s leg, quite high up his thigh, and they chink their glasses together. Although Teddy can hear raised voices and laughter from a room off to his right, the only other person in the room where he stands is a man setting up a film projector.

  None of the three men in the room pays Teddy any attention. He looks around. The room is very colourfully furnished. There are what Teddy initially takes to be carpets hanging on two of the walls. He has never seen tapestries before and for a moment wonders if perhaps they’ve been hung there to dry after being cleaned, but then he notes the heavy gold-coloured finials finishing the thick metal poles from which they are suspended and realises that these are a feature of the room.

  He approaches one of the tapestries and runs his fingertips through the multi-coloured pile, marvelling at how the colours woven into the carpets make up pictures. Elephants and tigers run around the border through tall grasses in lush greens and bronzes. Further towards the centre of the room stands an enormous carved wooden elephant. Long white tusks ending in sharp points protrude from the black wood. The top of the elephant’s head is level with Teddy’s shoulder. Teddy walks over to it and runs his hand across the undulations in the animal’s skull.

  ‘Great, isn’t it?’ says a voice. ‘Comes from Africa.’

  Teddy spins round. The man speaking is the one who was setting up the film projector. He crouches by its side as he inserts a spool of film onto a spindle and threads the loose end through the mechanism.

  ‘Yes,’ replies Teddy uncertainly.

  ‘What do they call you?’ asks the man, standing up.

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Y
our name; what’s your name?’

  ‘Teddy.’

  ‘Cute.’

  ‘What are you up to, Nigel?’ calls a cultured and commanding voice from the noisy room.

  ‘Coming!’ he shouts in reply.

  A blond man pops his head out of the other room and beckons to Nigel urgently. Teddy recognises Leslie Holt, the man who let them into the imposing white house on Eaton Square.

  ‘He wants you,’ says Holt to the projectionist, looking briefly at Teddy and recognising him.

  Nigel winks at Teddy. ‘His master’s voice,’ he says. ‘Can’t keep the Queen Mother waiting, can we?’

  Teddy doesn’t understand this comment but is glad when the man moves off. There was a look in his eyes that Teddy recognised only too well.

  Teddy looks round for the promised lemonade but there are no drinks in this room. His eyes land on the two men on the couch. They are now kissing, their mouths open wetly, and the young man’s hand is at the top of the older man’s thigh, moving purposefully. Teddy averts his eyes, anxious to get away, and looks uncertainly towards the room into which Nigel has just disappeared and from which emanates most of the party noise.

  A hand lands on his shoulder and he jumps. It’s Mo.

  ‘Not got a drink yet?’ asks Mo.

  Teddy shakes his head. He looks terrified, ready to bolt. Mo puts his arm around the boy’s shoulders. ‘Sorry I left you to it, Ted. Had a bit of business to discuss. Come on — I’ll take you through.’

  Filey Avenue, Walthamstow, has a surprisingly suburban feel to it, despite the fact that it’s situated on the north-eastern border of the boroughs making up central London. The houses are mainly the result of late Edwardian and inter-war development, many with handsome bay windows and tall rooms. Number 67 is one such, a three-storey building presently divided into two separate dwellings and possessing a large back garden. To the south of the garden, separated from it by a wooden fence in much need of repair, is a service road which runs around the back of a more modern development, a horseshoe-shaped arrangement of three blocks of flats called Cedra Court which front onto Cazenove Road. The development is one of several in the area built in the 1930s with modern metal window frames and central balconies.

  The rear of 67 Filey Avenue can no longer be described as a garden. The property has been vacant for several years, and in that time the area has become a dumping ground for other local residents. It now contains a sagging stained mattress, most of the contents of which have been pulled out by nesting birds and animals, some abandoned building materials, a rusting washing mangle and the frame of an old bicycle.

  Accordingly, the derelict van at the back of the garden, sitting on its four deflated tyres, attracts no attention. Its cantilevered angle and proximity to the earth suggest that its rear axle has finally given up the effort of supporting the weight of the vehicle, and the accretion of pigeon droppings and leaves from the spindly ash trees surrounding it almost completely camouflage it in organic matter. It’s been there so long and is such an integral part of the landscape that local residents no longer notice it. That fact suits perfectly the men who silently come and go via the passageway from Filey Avenue, pass the house and walk to the rear of what was once the garden, to enter and leave the van through its rear doors.

  The men presently on duty inside the van are Detective Sergeant Murray and Detective Constable Pettigrew. This is the third night they have kept watch through the broken fence on the horseshoe-shaped blocks of flats with the patch of green lawn between them. The men will be glad to be relieved by a different team on the following day. Some attempt has been made to make the interior of their hideout habitable; it has been swept out and washed and felt boards have been applied to the inside metal walls to provide some insulation. Its locks have been repaired and the bulkhead between the seats and the rear removed to provide more space for camera equipment. But nothing can be done about the smell, an unpleasant blend of rust, mould and engine oil, now augmented by greasy hamburger wrappings and instant coffee.

  Murray, Pettigrew and their teammates have been on duty in a variety of vehicles outside the flats making up Cedra Court for several weeks. Despite its condition, the van is the preferred vantage point; at least from here it’s possible to get in and out of the vehicle without being detected and relieve full bladders in the tall grass and scrub of the darkened garden, a comfort denied to colleagues positioned at the front of the blocks.

  This surveillance began when the names Ronald Kray and Reginald Kray were added to a list and thus became “C11 nominals”: persons of interest to the Metropolitan Police’s newly formed, and reputedly incorruptible, Criminal Intelligence Branch. C11, based in a handful of shabby offices on the first floor of New Scotland Yard at Victoria Embankment, has a remit to “collect, evaluate and disseminate information about organised crime and prominent criminals.” So that is exactly what Murray and Pettigrew are doing as they drink cold coffee at half past one in the morning inside a derelict van: logging entries to and departures from the flat owned by Ronnie Kray.

  Although the curtains have been drawn since night fell, it’s a warm evening and the windows are open, causing them to flutter lazily and light to leak from around their edges. Every now and then the lounge’s central illumination is extinguished and, for up to thirty minutes at a time, is replaced by the blue-white flicker of a film projector. Each time the quality of the light changes one of the officers notes the time and against the entry writes: “home movies”.

  The rear doors of the van open silently and a dark shape slips out. It wriggles through the broken slats of the fence, steps across the service road into the lea of the building, and is soon lost in the deep shadows of the northerly stretch of the horseshoe.

  The policeman creeps cautiously towards the windows above him. He inclines his head and listens intently. He can hear the low hubbub of voices, a man’s high-pitched laugh raised above the others, and then the distinctive crackle-click-hiss of a stylus landing on a vinyl record. Two seconds later Veronica Bennett’s voice bursts into the night air with “Baby I Love You”. The policeman retraces his steps to the van, silently opens and closes the rear door behind him, settles back in his familiar sagging seat and makes an appropriate entry in the log.

  ‘I like this one,’ comments his colleague.

  Over the course of the evening the patient policemen situated at various vantage points around the blocks count twenty guests into the party and, in the early hours of the morning, eight out. Photographs are taken of each arrival and departure. All are men, and they divide into two distinct groups. The larger is made up of pretty young men in fashionable clothes and modern haircuts, several of whom are well known to the watching policemen. They pay particular attention, for example, to a skinny man with a flop of blond hair who climbs out of a silver sports car. That car is still parked on the opposite side of Cazenove Road, approximately eighty yards from where the men sit. Its driver is Leslie Holt, a well-known cat burglar; an East End homosexual man with West End tastes; tastes satisfied by close friendships with older men.

  The smaller group is altogether different. Its members are older, more conservatively dressed and tend to be more discreet — in one case comically furtive —when entering or leaving the premises. They are not the sort of men on whom C11 usually find themselves carrying out surveillance and in all but two cases the watching policemen don’t know their identities.

  However, the two who are recognised prompt astonishment. One of the earliest to arrive for the party, at an almost recklessly early hour while the streets are still busy, is a man recognised as an MP. It takes a radio call and a description before the answer comes back: Tom Driberg, Labour MP for Barking. The other man is identified immediately by the watchers: a portly man with a thick mane of greying hair swept back from a square forehead and dark rings under his eyes: formerly Sir Robert Boothby MP, and now Baron Boothby of Buchan and Rattray Head, prominent Conservative politician and former chairman of the Ro
yal Philharmonic Orchestra; known to his colleagues and the public alike as “Bob Boothby”.

  As Boothby parks his car on the service road and walks towards the building, chatting amiably with another middle-aged man, Detective Constable Pettigrew turns to his sergeant.

  ‘Is that who I think it is?’

  ‘It certainly is,’ replies DS Murray, making a neat pencil note on his log. ‘Which tells us all we need to know about the nature of tonight’s party.’

  ‘Which is?’

  Murray smiles in the dark at his subordinate officer. ‘Now, what do you suppose links Ronnie Kray, a bunch of young pretty-boy villains and Bob Boothby?’ he asks in the manner of a teacher to a slightly slow pupil.

  ‘No idea, sarge.’

  ‘They’re all poofs,’ says Murray without evident rancour or disapproval.

  ‘Do you want me to make a note about that?’ asks the young detective.

  ‘No, of course not.’

  Pettigrew looks across at his sergeant, surprised at the other’s unconcern. Murray shrugs. ‘That’s not what we’re here for. It’s the Krays we want.’

  ‘But … it’s still against the law!’ protests Pettigrew.

  ‘Calm down, son. It is still against the law — for the moment anyway — although you know the way the wind’s blowing. The point is, it’s not our job. Focus on what’s important: the Krays.’

  So the two policemen settle down again to their observations and their careful note-taking, building a case against the two violent sociopaths who, for too long, have ruled London’s underworld.

  The flat heaves with men in various states of undress, drunkenness and excitement. It reeks of aftershave, alcohol and sex. Teddy sits on a hemp pouffe in the corner of the main reception room trying to make himself invisible. At intervals during the evening that has almost been possible, as every now and then the lights have been extinguished and Nigel has projected gay porn movies onto the screen.

  Party guests in twos and, once, threes, take it in turns to occupy the two large couches from where they stroke, squeeze and suck furtively, accompanied by tinny sex sounds from the film projector’s small loudspeaker. Teddy has never before seen pornography of any sort, but he’s all too familiar with sweat-sheened older men grunting as they part round white buttocks to penetrate younger men.