Deep Cover

by Peter Turnbull

  Merry Flint scowled at Meadows, Ainsclough and Swannell. ‘You can make this go away?’

  ‘We can,’ Swannell replied softly, ‘if Mr Meadows agrees.’

  ‘I agree. I really want the two supermarket workers who are taking the stuff out. I am not really bothered about the out of work doleys who are taking a meagre slice. It’s always better to collar the thieves rather than the receivers. So, yes, I agree.’

  ‘But whether we do make it go away or not is another matter.’ Ainsclough also spoke softly. He enjoyed working with Swannell; he had found that both men had a tacit understanding that the whisper is louder than the shout. ‘As you told us, Merry, you’re under a suspended sentence, so if we charge you then inside you go, you do bird. Again.’

  ‘So it’s scratchy backy time?’

  ‘Dare say that’s one way of putting it – you scratch our back and we will scratch yours. Help us, we help you. You work for yourself or you work against yourself.’

  Merry Flint scowled again. She was, observed Ainsclough, a lighter skinned black girl, possibly of mixed race, but by her loud clothing and beads and bangles she had clearly embraced West Indian culture. However, her speech pattern, apart from the very occasional exclamation, was pure London street-speak. ‘So what does the Old Bill need to know?’

  ‘This Old Bill needs to know about the assault the other night, in the alley.’ Ainsclough indicated himself and Swannell.

  ‘And this Old Bill wants the S.P. on the supermarket. All of it.’

  ‘So, this Bill first . . .’ Ainsclough leaned forward, ‘the other night . . . start singing.’

  ‘I was Lee Marvin – hadn’t eaten proper for a day or two – so I was skip-divin’ in the evening just after it got dark. These two guys turned into the alley. I sat back between the two skips – I was opposite them but they didn’t see me . . . comes in handy being black sometimes. Thought they was the Old Bill at first – looked the part: tall and fit . . . Then I saw they had a little geezer with them, and the little guy went on the deck like about ninety miles an hour. He was clucking . . . desperate . . . he was pleading, man, pleading so bad. I didn’t see no tools, but the two geezers didn’t need them, they just stuck the boot in again and again. One bad old kicking he got . . . the little guy.’

  ‘Would you recognize them again?’ Swannell asked.

  ‘No . . . it was dark.’ Merry Flint shook her head. ‘They were both honkies . . . both snowdrops . . . tall and fit . . . vicious. Don’t know how handy they’d be in a level skirmish, but they don’t show no mercy to the little guy, no, man, no mercy . . . no mercy at all. He got a slap alright . . . no mercy.’

  ‘Beards?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘So they were both clean-shaven?’

  ‘Yes, clean-shaved.’

  ‘Did they say anything?’ Ainsclough asked.

  ‘Not a lot.’

  ‘What then? What did you hear?’

  ‘Not much, but I reckoned they belonged to a firm, it wasn’t personal to them.’

  ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘Well, they were kickin’ this little guy and then one said, “That’s enough . . . that’ll do”, something like that, and the other geezer, he said, “The boss wants it done proper”.’

  ‘I see, “the boss”?’

  ‘Yes, so that’s what got me thinking that they was part of a firm.’

  ‘Fair enough . . . carry on.’

  ‘So the first geezer says, “It’s done, he’s not getting up”, but the second guy just goes on kicking and kicking and kicking . . . bouncing the little guy’s head off the wall like it was a toy ball.’

  ‘Local accents?’

  ‘Yeah, it was a London team alright, but not posh London; it was Canning Town not Swiss Cottage.’

  ‘Understood. What else? Anything else you heard?’

  ‘Well, the first one, he just stopped . . .’

  ‘Stopped?’

  ‘Yes, he was not a happy camper. He helped the other guy put the little guy down, and he put the boot in a few times but the other guy he went at it mental, like . . . like he was possessed. It was then that the first guy just stood still. All the time folk was walking past the end of the alley and no one noticed what was going down . . . dark and raining. Then the first geezer—’

  ‘The one who was just watching by this time?’

  ‘Yes. He said to the second geezer, “It’s done, Rusher. That’s it. We need to clear the pitch”.’

  ‘“Rusher”?’ Swannell repeated. ‘He called the second geezer “Rusher”?’

  ‘Yes, I heard it bell-like, “Rusher”, that’s what he called him. “Rusher”.’

  ‘OK, then what?’

  ‘Well, then I suppose Rusher got the first geezer’s drift and he stopped putting the wellie in. Then the first geezer, he said, “Let’s clear the pitch and get these dugs burned”.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘But you know, I think when he said that he was giving the Rusher character a reason to want to leave, like he had had enough of the aggro and didn’t want no more.’

  ‘Interesting.’ Swannell tapped his notepad with the tip of his ballpoint.

  ‘So it was like they watch Crimewatch on telly and know that the little geezer’s blood would be everywhere, so they had to get back to their place, change clothes . . . burn the stuff they had been wearing . . . burn the old evidence.’

  ‘So they left it at that?’ Swannell asked.

  ‘Yeah, they just walked out the alley, calm as you please, like two regular geezers lookin’ for a pub on the way home.’

  ‘So what did you do?’

  ‘Legged it, darlin’, legged it until I found a phone box, phoned three nines and, like a daft cow, I told ’em my name.’ She glanced at the ceiling. ‘I mean, how many Merry Flints with form what live in North West Six . . .? Told ’em what I’d seen and where . . . then, like . . . soon, like, he was at the door of my flat.’ She pointed to Meadows. ‘If I hadn’t given my name, I wouldn’t have been rumbled and pulled. I’m not a grass. I seen what they do to grasses. You know what it means to “cut the grass”?’

  ‘I can guess.’

  ‘I heard about a brass that grassed on her pimp . . . carried her into the hospital with half her face hanging off, the other half was left lying in the road. So this will make the receiving go away?’

  Swannell and Ainsclough glanced at each other. Swannell said, ‘Yes, so far as these two Bills from New Scotland Yard are concerned. It can be made to go away.’ He and Ainsclough stood.

  ‘But this Old Bill still wants information,’ Meadows said, ‘so stay put while I escort these two gentlemen out of the nick.’

  Merry Flint folded her arms tightly in front of her and stared indignantly at the floor.

  Penny Yewdall gently replaced the telephone handset. ‘I just love the Welsh accent, so musical.’ She smiled across the desks at Frankie Brunnie.

  ‘Isn’t it? I know what you mean . . . and the least pleasant accent? Birmingham? Yorkshire?’

  ‘Depends what you’re at home with, but the Welsh accent . . . Anyway, that was the Glamorgan police – Mr and Mrs Davies are travelling to London today to identify their daughter.’

  ‘She has been identified, surely?’

  ‘Yes . . . I mean, to view the body. That’s what I meant. Help with closure, and they might be able to tell us something – shed a little light – though I hold out little hope.’

  ‘Yes.’ Brunnie paused and sat back in his chair, taking his hands slowly from the keyboard, staring with open eyes and mouth at the computer screen. ‘Oh my . . .’

  ‘What!’ Penny Yewdall exclaimed. ‘What have you found?’

  ‘I’ll give you three guesses as to who disappeared at about the same time that Rosemary Halkier disappeared.’

  ‘Not Tessie O’Shea?’

  ‘Yes . . . got it in one . . . the one and the same. We’re getting thin on the ground. We’ll have to follow this up, as well as Mrs Ponte
fract.’

  ‘Well, Mrs Pontefract isn’t a suspect, and I can visit her alone.’

  ‘If you could – I can drive to Virginia Water, also alone.’

  ‘I’ll let Harry know what we are doing.’

  Ainsclough took off his overcoat and hung it on the coat rack, and sat at his desk. He glanced sideways at Penny Yewdall. ‘Is Frankie out?’

  ‘Yes.’ Yewdall glanced out of the window and smiled as she saw a sliver of blue sky appearing amid the grey cloud. ‘Yes, he’s just gone to Virginia Water. Well, that is to say he’s gone to Sunninghill police station, being the local nick down that neck of the woods, chasing up an old case that might have some bearing on Rosemary Halkier’s murder. I am about to go and visit her old workmate, one Miss Pontefract. Hoping I can do that before Mr and Mrs Davies from Pontypool arrive at the London Hospital . . . time . . . day . . . not . . . enough.’

  ‘I see.’ Ainsclough sat at his desk and logged on at his computer. He tapped the keyboard. ‘Rusher’, he said absent-mindedly.

  ‘Sorry? As in the Soviet Union, as was?’

  ‘No; mind you, it could be spelled that way. I am assuming it’s spelled as in one who dashes about as if in a rush, as in “rush hour”. It’s a nickname but it’s at least a name, and as a nickname it’s a damn sight more useful than a “Nobby” or a “Charlie”.’

  ‘Yes . . . I once ran a felon to ground by chasing his street name of “Dogheaver”, not many “Dogheavers” in London. Well none now, he collected life and is in Durham E Wing.’

  ‘A hit . . . a hit . . . a palpable hit . . .’ Ainsclough clenched his fists at shoulder height. ‘I think there is no need to check the spelling, R-u-s-h-e-r seems correct. One “Rusher” aka Oliver Boyd, thirty-one years . . . form for GBH, assault with a deadly weapon . . . dishonourable discharge from the army for organizing a post office robbery. We need this man in the quiz room . . . need his mate also.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Yes, Oliver “Rusher” Boyd sounded to be the real hard case, he did most of the work in J.J. Dunwoodie’s murder. His oppo seemed to want him to ease up.’

  ‘Try known associates,’ Yewdall suggested.

  Ainsclough tapped the keyboard. ‘Just one,’ he announced, ‘a geezer called Clive Sherwin, aka “The Pox”.’

  ‘“The Pox”?’ Yewdall smiled.

  ‘Yes, doubt you’d call him “The Pox” to his face, but yes. Let’s look at him.’ He continued to tap the keyboard, ‘Yes, he’s well known: GBH, handling stolen goods, driving offences . . . one short stretch in the slammer. You know it’s really only the Grievous Bodily Harm that puts him in the same league as Rusher – seems a much gentler guy really, all in all. You know if it was Sherwin in the alley with Rusher that night, he’s the one to lean on, not Rusher, that will be a two-hander.’ He paused. ‘Me and Swannell it seems . . .’

  ‘Seems . . . unless you hang fire.’ Yewdall stood. ‘I have to go out.’

  Penny Yewdall signed out and drove out to Barking, and then to Bower House, off Whiting Road. The address revealed itself to be a complex of medium-rise inter-war council developments; clearly part of the ‘Homes fit for Heroes’ movement after the war to end all wars. Rachel Pontefract lived on the third floor of the furthest block of the Bower House Estate. She was short, had a round face, steely eyes, and was not keen to have Penny Yewdall in her home. The interview was thusly conducted with Rachel Pontefract standing on the threshold of her flat and Penny Yewdall standing on the windswept outer landing.

  ‘Can’t really tell you much. Yeah, me and Rose did have a few nights out together but I didn’t know her well at all.’

  ‘What did she say about her boyfriend at the time she disappeared?’

  ‘Just she wanted away from him but couldn’t find the old door marked “exit”.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘She was a good girl and she’d found that her man was a blagger, that he’d done time, and folk who got in his way tended to perform the old vanishing act.’

  ‘Is that what she told you?’

  ‘Not using those words darlin’ but you know, the gist is still the same. She was a good girl who had just found out her man was well out of order and known to the Old Bill. In the early days she thought he was as sweet as a nut; by a few weeks in she was not well impressed no more. She said she must have been a right pillock to have got so far in. She said she had to get out or she was certain to get bumped . . . take the short cut out the door through a high window . . . or maybe just vanish . . . but she couldn’t see no old door with “exit” in big red letters on it – no, she couldn’t – and it all started because he had a fancy jam jar . . . Rolls Royce, Bentley, Merc . . . it meant something to her that did after she walked out on her last old man who could provide nothing but a damp little place in Clacton. Swapping dodgems for a Roller, well, that was climbing the right way.’

  ‘Did she mention his name?’

  ‘Curtis. No last name. Just Curtis, me old china, just Curtis.’

  Frankie Brunnie sat down in the chair opposite DC Gerrard in the interview suite at Sunninghill police station in Surrey. Brunnie found it a light and airy room, decorated in pastel shades, with armless easy chairs in which to sit round a low coffee table. It was a room designed to make victims of crime relax and speak as freely as possible, rather than to interrogate suspects. It also clearly doubled as a room in which visiting officers could be welcomed and accommodated. Brunnie glanced out of the window as a sudden but short rainfall splattered on the pane and saw a small stand of cedars swaying in the zephyr. ‘Winter’s not giving in without a fight,’ he commented.

  ‘Seems so.’ Gerrard too glanced out of the window. ‘But in fairness, this isn’t bad for January, too early to expect spring yet.’

  ‘Yes, reckon I’m impatient.’ He turned to Gerrard who seemed to Brunnie to be elderly for a detective constable, a man who most probably had just not made the grade when his grey hair was black. ‘So, Mrs O’Shea?’

  ‘Yes, I have the file here,’ Gerrard patted a manila folder, ‘foul play.’

  ‘You think?’

  ‘Well, just take a squint at the profile . . . fifty-five years old, comfortably married . . . children off her hands . . . six grandchildren to rejoice in – just a gentle soul who lived in a council house on the edge of Virginia Water. The sort of person who would likely describe herself as “just a simple person”. If folk like that are reported missing they very rapidly turn up, or their corpse is very soon found – they do not remain missing for ten years. Not in densely populated north Surrey.’

  ‘Rather suspect you’re right.’

  Gerrard scanned the missing persons report. ‘Went to work as usual, humbly cycling on her old black bike, and just did not return home that afternoon. Her employer said she left at the usual time, about half past midday, having prepared the food for lunch and left it on a hotplate. So why is New Scotland Yard interested in her?’

  ‘We are . . . well . . . how to put this . . . we are more interested in her employer, Curtis Yates, who is using the name Pilcher.’

  Gerrard’s jaw dropped. ‘Pilcher is Curtis Yates!’

  ‘You know the name?’

  ‘Do I know the name? Do I know the name? He’s a real villain, the Drug Squad have been interested in him for a long time. My brother is a detective sergeant there. He has mentioned that name a few times . . . fly . . . and slippery. We never had cause to suspect him.’ Gerrard glanced at the file. ‘You see, he gave his name as Pilcher and it was a mis per enquiry. All we can do is take statements until the person or the body turns up.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Well, well . . . so now we know where he lives. That’s been a puzzle for a while. He has an accommodation address but he doesn’t live there.’

  ‘We are interested in talking to him about a number of folk who go missing or are murdered in his orbit of influence.’

  ‘Including a middle-aged cook?’

  ‘Including a mid
dle-aged cook.’ Brunnie stood. ‘I’ll go and pay a call on her husband, if he is still with us. He’ll be late-sixties now, possibly older. I’ll also let my governor know of the Drug Squad interest in Yates.’

  ‘I’ll phone my brother—’

  ‘No!’ Brunnie said sharply, sensing then why Gerrard had not risen in the police force. ‘We must keep the communication within official lines.’

  ‘Mrs Davies?’ The woman was much older than Yewdall had anticipated. She was also alone, and not, as Yewdell had expected, accompanied by her husband. She hoped the shock did not show on her face.

  The woman stood. ‘No, I am Mrs Owen – Gaynor’s grandmother and her closest relative.’

  ‘I see, thank you for coming.’

  ‘Her mother is in Jamaica. She went off with a West Indian seaman she met in the docklands of Cardiff. She left Gaynor with me . . . just dumped her on me. I did my best, I wanted to be a tidy parent but she was a difficult girl.’ Mrs Owen was short and frail, with curly silver hair. ‘You know she would sit on the kerb looking lost and forlorn, telling the neighbours I wasn’t feeding her, and I would have my lifelong friends hammering on my door telling me to feed Gaynor. It’s like that in Quakers Yard you see, everyone knows everyone else and their business. Eventually the Social Services took her into care because she was stealing from shops – out of my control. Well, if your mother dumps you on your granny when you are just five years old what can you expect? First they tried to foster her with younger adults but that didn’t work out. Eventually she went to live in a specialist children’s home in Pontypool. Then she ran away to London.’

  ‘Any contact?’

  ‘A postcard or two and a letter – she said she was working for the “big man” with a big house in the south of London, but Gaynor, you could never believe anything she told you.’

  ‘Did she mention a name?’

  ‘Just the location of the house. It was like an American state. It has slipped my mind . . .’

  ‘Virginia Water?’

  ‘Yes.’ Mrs Owen smiled. ‘Yes, that was it, Virginia Water.’