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

by Simon Michael

  Charles steps out from under the shower, running his hands backwards through his dark curls to stop water dripping into his eyes. Duke hands him his towel. Charles rubs his head furiously with it and then ties it round his waist before padding over to the benches. ‘I’m carded, right?’

  ‘Yeah, but —’ says Duke, reluctantly.

  Charles got himself “carded” — certified fit to fight by the doctor — months earlier, even before telling Duke he wanted a fight. He paid for the examination without telling Duke or any of the other trainers at the club.

  ‘So the doc thinks I’m fit enough to fight, right?’

  ‘It ain’t a question of whether you’re fit enough, it’s —’

  ‘And I’m definitely on the undercard at Manor Place Baths on Tuesday, right?’

  There’s a sudden commotion outside the changing rooms, and somebody shouts Duke’s name urgently, twice. Duke shakes his head sorrowfully and leaves the steamy changing room. A bunch of noisy kids in boxing kit are jostling their way excitedly up the corridor towards the gym, and Duke has to elbow them out of the way.

  Charles finishes drying off and gets dressed. He stows the sweaty clothes and damp towel in his rucksack and is on his way out of the club when he remembers something he needs to ask Duke. He retraces his steps up the corridor and heads back towards the gym.

  At the end of the corridor he finds his way blocked by a dozen youngsters in varying states of undress, excitedly trying to peer through the windows into the gym.

  ‘Excuse me, lads,’ says Charles, pushing his way through.

  He reaches the door to find two heavyset black men with their backs to the inside, preventing access. Charles pushes gently and one of them stands back enough to let Charles enter. As he does so, there’s a fusillade of pops and clicks and Charles is temporarily blinded by camera flashlights going off in front of him. Shading his eyes, Charles is confronted by a bank of journalists and cameramen facing in his direction, all shouting instructions at a line of three men with their backs towards the door, their heads leaning into one another so as to be captured in a close-up facsimile of friendship.

  As Charles’s eyes readjust he sees that the periphery of the room, out of range of the cameras, is packed with suits; Charles has never seen so much Hepworth and Cardin in such a confined space. His attention is drawn immediately to a slim young man with thick lips and a lock of blond hair falling over one dangerous eye leaning languorously against the boxing ring behind him. Charles recognises him immediately. This was the young man who, for days on end, watched Charles so attentively from the public gallery of the Old Bailey earlier that year; the young man who planned for that notorious murder trial to end in Charles’s own death; and the young man who was throughout acting on the orders of Ronnie Kray.

  The man suddenly notices Charles’s scrutiny and straightens up, elbowing a shorter dark-haired man at his side and pointing directly at Charles. Both men make a move towards the door, entering the field of view between the photographers and their subjects and causing the photographers to shout and wave them back out of shot. The three subjects of the photoshoot turn simultaneously to see what has caused the disruption, and Charles suddenly feels his heart beat faster. He recognises all three of them.

  On the wings of the threesome and bookending the man in the centre, dressed impeccably as always in almost identical expensive Italian suits, ties and cufflinks, stand Ronald and Reginald Kray. The gangsters flank a black man who is three or four inches taller than they and who wears a light grey jacket over a solid box-shaped torso, hair cut very short to his skull, and a thin moustache. He is even more famous than the twins and is a man Charles has admired for years: Sonny Liston.

  Duke has also seen the movement of the two men towards Charles and how it has interrupted the proceedings, and he casts a nervous glance at the Krays. Although it was before his time, Duke has heard the stories from before the War: how Charles and the Krays once boxed together at that very gym, even sharing a trainer for a period; how Charles has fallen foul of them since then, and as a result found himself on the Colonel’s list — Ronnie Kray’s shortlist of people who have, in his immortal phrase, “taken liberties” and who are to be dealt with. He has also learned that, somehow — and on terms that are still the subject of much East End pub speculation — a truce has been agreed.

  Sensing potential trouble between his friend and his business partners, Duke pushes through the crowd of journalists and bustles as fast as his maimed knees will allow across the open space between the photographers and their subjects, intending to spin Charles round and escort him out of the gym as soon as possible.

  ‘Come on, Charles,’ he mutters in Charles’s ear as he takes his arm and steers him round one hundred and eighty degrees.

  ‘’Ere!’ calls a voice.

  Charles pulls himself out of Duke’s grip and turns back. Reggie Kray is approaching Charles. Charles drops his rucksack behind him and lowers his stance, not quite into a fighting stance, but ready for whatever may come. There’s a renewed burst of flashing from the photographers in front of them as they sense something dramatic might be about to happen, but Reggie holds his hand out and the smile on his face appears genuine. Charles notes that his cheeks are flushed and his eyes sparkle. He’s excited, thinks Charles; this is a big moment for him.

  ‘Now, now, Charlie, take it easy,’ says Reggie, as if Charles were one of his best mates. ‘Come and meet someone. I know you’ll appreciate this; something to tell your grandkids,’ he says, grinning even wider. ‘Assuming you live that long,’ he adds quietly, with a wink.

  He takes Charles by the arm and walks him back to where the big black man stands.

  ‘Mr Liston, let me introduce you to another boxer. Mr Horo—’ Charles notes the hesitation and is surprised that Reggie makes a deliberate effort not to use “Horowitz”, Charles’s East End name — ‘Holborne, here is a very well-known barrister, what you’d call a trial lawyer, but he was a bloody useful amateur heavyweight in his prime. You might have heard of his uncle, Kid Carter, the lightweight?’

  Charles raises his eyebrows, amazed that Reggie Kray would know or remember that small detail of Horowitz family lore of which Charles himself is so proud. But on reflection, he thinks, perhaps it isn’t so surprising. The Krays are known for their astonishing memories for people and faces. They know everyone in the East End and the criminal fraternity beyond; their family connections, criminal records, associates, friends and enemies. The twins’ success is due, in part at least, to their encyclopaedic knowledge of who did what to whom, and why; they know exactly where pressure can usefully be applied, who holds which grudges and where favours are owed.

  Charles casts a quick glance at Ronnie, trying to gauge the other, and usually more dangerous, twin’s mood. Ronnie remains a pace or two further back, staring at Charles dispassionately with his cold fisheyes from under heavy lids. The fixed smile he showed for the cameras has disappeared completely. Charles can’t decide if Ronnie’s affected by drugs or alcohol or is just disconnected from the excitement all round him, but he gives the impression of a depressed man. Nonetheless, Charles detects no aggression.

  Liston is offering his hand and Charles, considering it safe to ignore the Krays for a moment, now directs his attention to the big boxer. Charles takes the offered hand, the largest fist he has ever seen, in both of his and shakes it warmly.

  ‘It’s a great honour to meet you, Mr Liston,’ he says, with sincerity. ‘My dad’s going to be so jealous.’

  Charles looks carefully at Liston’s face but is unable to detect any trace of the cut under the left eye received in the third round of one of the most unexpected title wins of all time; the one in which Cassius Clay bragged and bullied Liston out of his world heavyweight title.

  ‘Likewise,’ replies Liston softly, releasing his hand and turning back to face the reporters.

  Reggie’s glance lingers on Charles’s face a moment longer. Charles sees excitement and pr
ide in Reggie’s expression. Having the recently dethroned heavyweight boxer of the world visit your little gym in Kennington and being photographed with your arm round him by the national press is indeed a coup, and Charles appreciates that, but there’s something more in Reggie’s face. Charles is conscious of a moment of connection between him and the twin, an instant in which their shared love of the sport unites them briefly.

  Both were very good amateur boxers, at the same gym and in the same deprived part of the East End. For a period, before one of them became a notorious gangster and the other a respected barrister, before their paths diverged so irrevocably, they shared the same dream: that boxing might be their route out of the East End. For a short moment, the look that passes between Reggie Kray and Charlie Horowitz takes them back to their childhood and all the things they had in common before their worlds became so much more complicated.

  Charles half smiles and nods his acknowledgement and thanks to the well-dressed, reputed murderer in front of him. Reggie nods in reply and returns to his brother and Liston.

  Charles picks up his rucksack and pushes his way out of the double doors. Duke follows him through the crowd of star-struck kids still trying to get a glimpse of their hero.

  ‘Now I know why we’ve had all this painting done,’ Duke mutters, ‘but I’d no idea they was coming. They just turned up with all the press. Now they’re off to open up some new club.’

  Charles smiles. ‘Reggie was always good at the circus. Patrons of the arts, charity fundraisers, and now this. I can see the headline: Local businessmen help to keep kids off the street and out of crime,’ he says sardonically.

  He strides off down the corridor but again Duke grabs his arm.

  ‘What now?’ demands Charles, irritated at being manhandled.

  ‘Is everything OK?’ asks Duke, ignoring his friend’s demeanour. ‘You and the twins? We all knew you was on Ronnie’s List, but things seem all right now.’

  ‘If you mean is he going to have me killed imminently, the answer’s no. If you mean is everything settled, well…’ He pauses, thinks about the answer and then shrugs. ‘Same answer. But, just for this afternoon, the Krays showed me a kindness, and I won’t forget it.’

  Charles puts an affectionate hand on his friend’s shoulder and as he does so, catches sight of the old clock on the wall behind Duke’s head.

  ‘Jesus Christ!’ he exclaims, ‘I’m going to be in such trouble!’ and he launches himself into a sprint down the corridor and out into the street, leaving the doors banging behind him.

  Charles is indeed in big trouble. Sally sits upright on her chair at the Horowitz family dining table, her hands folded demurely in her lap, embarrassed and furious in equal measure. Millie Horowitz and Sonia Horowitz, his sister-in-law, bustle about her, making space on the already crowded table for yet more platters of food. Pickled gherkins — not the three-inch knobbly versions Sally has seen in jars but large, almost cucumber-sized, gherkins that Millie calls new green; chopped herring, something Sally has never seen before in any form and of which she’s deeply suspicious; golden brown fried fish balls, steaming slightly and smelling enticing; and a large plaited loaf of warm challah bread under a beautiful embroidered covering that looks like an upmarket tea towel with a fringe. Despite its unfamiliarity, the laden table is making her mouth water.

  ‘Do you go to this trouble every Friday night?’ she whispers to Sonia as she passes.

  Sonia smiles and touches Sally reassuringly on the shoulder. ‘Yes. This is our Sabbath meal. Always.’

  This is the first Friday night supper to which Sally has been invited, and she’s only now beginning to understand how much of a big deal it is. As Charles has tried to explain, Friday night is the beginning of the Sabbath and it’s sacrosanct family time; the emotional heart of a Jewish family. Charles has himself rarely been at his mother’s Sabbath table over recent years. He was persona non grata in his parents’ home for most of the time since his second year at Cambridge, when he changed his name and married Henrietta Lloyd-Williams without a word to his parents. In fact, now he’s “living in sin” with another non-Jewish woman, he never expected to receive this invitation but, bizarrely, it turned out that the Horowitzes used to employ Sally’s mother as an out-worker and knew Sally when she was a small child. That appears to have provided her and Charles with an unexpected visa into the Horowitz heartland.

  Millie Horowitz enters the room and places two silver candlesticks in the centre of the table. Each contains a tall candle, a perfect alabaster column almost a foot tall, the base of which has been melted into the candlestick to keep it secure. Sally sees that the top of the wicks have been lit briefly to burn off the excess and ensure the candles will burn slowly and evenly.

  Finally Charles’s father, Harry, and his younger brother, David, enter. Both men wear yarmulkes. Harry, carrying a silver salver bearing a single silver goblet and a bottle of red wine, is an older and diminutive version of Charles. He has the same features and the same curly hair, in his case mostly white, but he seems to Sally to be half Charles’s size both in girth and height. Notwithstanding his stature, he has the same presence as Charles; he says little, but there is nonetheless something commanding about the little tailor. He wears a three-piece suit, although the jacket is now hanging over the back of his chair, and across his slim torso is the chain of a fob watch which he keeps in his waistcoat pocket.

  David is tall — taller than Charles by an inch or two —and fair. Whereas the other members of the family are obviously Jewish, or at least Mediterranean, in colouring and appearance, David’s skin is lighter and his hair so blond that, a few years earlier, were it necessary, he might have passed for Aryan. One might even think that David was adopted until he opens his mouth to speak; then the voice that emerges is almost identical to that of his older brother. David has his mother’s fine features and grey-blue eyes, but the scowl that most frequently deforms Millie Horowitz’s face is conspicuous by its absence on David’s. There is a disarming openness about him; he seems always to be smiling.

  David places the plate he has brought in, containing fillets of freshly fried fish, onto the sideboard behind Sally. Harry stands behind his chair at the head of the table and carefully deposits the silver salver at his place setting.

  ‘Nu?’ asks Millie from the opposite end of the table. Her lips are pursed tight and even Sally’s unfamiliar eye cannot miss the volcano of anger being suppressed in her slender frame.

  Harry pauses to take the fob watch out of his waistcoat pocket. He moves, as always, with measured deliberation, neither hurrying nor dallying. The gold lid springs open, he looks at the time, closes the watch with a crisp click, and replaces it in his pocket before speaking.

  ‘Give him another ten minutes,’ he says quietly in his Jewish East End accent.

  ‘It’s gone sunset,’ says Millie, glaring at her husband. She picks up a box of matches and opens it as if to light the candles.

  ‘No, it hasn’t. Give him ten minutes,’ repeats Harry.

  Millie pauses, sighs and then closes the box of matches, replacing it on the table in front of the candles.

  The time of the sunset is published each week in The Jewish Chronicle so that Jews across the country know exactly when they should be lighting their candles to signify the start of the Sabbath. That act should be the last “work” done by the family until the Sabbath ends, and Millie is genuine in her belief that to light the candles after sunset would be a sin. On the other hand, were the latecomer David, she would give him a further ten minutes without question.

  Sally is only marginally less cross with the absent scion of the Horowitz family than his mother. She feels exposed and embarrassed. Charles is well aware how anxious she has been about this evening, and they planned to drive the short distance from Hampstead to the Horowitz home in Hendon together. As the senior clerk at Chancery Court she frequently works late on Friday evenings, the cleaners vacuuming around her, often long after most of the barr
isters have departed. There are always briefs to be allocated for the following week, fee notes to be sent out, appeals against reductions in her guvnors’ fees and correspondence from solicitors to be answered. As one of the few women in a man’s world, not to mention the youngest senior clerk in the Temple, she has to work twice as hard as everyone else to prove herself, and it’s an article of faith to clear her desk completely every Friday night to allow a clean start for the problems certain to arise the following week.

  Despite that, Sally managed to run down the steps of Chancery Court shortly after six o’clock, and was surprised to find Charles absent when she reached Hampstead. She thought he was working on some papers at home that day, but it didn’t look as if he’d been at his desk at all. So she bathed, dressed and applied fresh makeup, looking at the alarm clock by the side of their new double bed every few minutes, expecting at any time to hear the front door open and close and the thunder of Charles dashing up the stairs two at a time with some excuse, probably a last-minute run around the Heath. But with only fifteen minutes to go before they were due at the Horowitz home there was still no sign of him. Eventually, rather than be late herself, she walked downhill in her unsuitable heels to Finchley Road and hailed a northbound cab wondering if, perhaps, he’d already gone ahead for some reason.

  The Horowitz family were surprised when she arrived alone but were welcoming and polite. Nonetheless, the grim set of Millie’s lips as she showed Sally in did not forebode well. Another forty-five minutes have elapsed and Millie’s every gesture betrays increasing anger, anger shared by Sally. For Charles to have abandoned her to face the ordeal of her first Friday night dinner alone is unforgiveable.

  The doorbell finally rings and Charles’s apologetic voice is heard in the hallway. He follows David into the dining room bearing a rather sad bunch of flowers. He kisses his mother briefly on the cheek as she places a jug of water on the table. She barely acknowledges him.