‘Right,’ Barnard said, but she could tell he was not really convinced. He got up and paced around the flat anxiously until eventually the phone rang again.
‘Go into the bedroom and listen in on the extension,’ Barnard said quickly, his hand hovering over the receiver. Knowing she had failed to convince Harry to ignore the call, Kate hurried into the bedroom and picked up. Robertson’s voice was faint but he sounded as if he was trying hard to be cheerful.
‘Watcha, Flash,’ he said. ‘I spoke to your little bird earlier. Did she tell you?’
‘Where the hell are you, Ray?’ Barnard said, his voice sharp, not wasting any time on the niceties. ‘Where the hell are you? DCI Jackson’s got the whole of the Met out looking for you. Your mug will be on all the police noticeboards soon. You need to talk to him about Rod Miller. You can’t stay out of sight on this one for ever.’
‘Prime suspect, am I?’ Ray said. ‘Well, sod that for a game of soldiers. I thought it was time to take a little holiday for one reason or another, and if that’s what your boss thinks he can whistle for me. I didn’t kill poor old Rod. As it happened, I popped into the gym the other day and got the shock of my life when I found him dead. Poor bastard. And if the people who knocked him off are the people I think, it’s possible they’ll be looking for me too.’
‘So who the hell are these people?’ Barnard asked. ‘If you’ve got an idea who did it, you need to fill us in. Why do you think he was killed? And who by?’ There was a groan at the other end of the phone.
‘I don’t know, do I?’ he complained. ‘But long before I took Rod on at the gym he had a record. He lived down Southend way, did a bit of training on his own account, which is how I met him. But he was in with some of the local bad boys, a bloke called Sam Dexter among them. If the local cops thought Rod was the driver for the post office robbery they were probably right, though he managed to wriggle out of it. Anyway, by then I’d taken him out for a few bevvies and persuaded him to come to Whitechapel and run the gym for me. I knew he was good and by then I didn’t want to do all the training myself. I had other plans. But that was the end of it as far as I was concerned. And as far as Rod was concerned, I thought.’
‘But,’ Barnard asked, ‘clearly it wasn’t, as it turned out?’
‘Just recently Rod seemed to be getting edgy. I had a long talk with him in the boozer one night and he said he knew that Dexter and Barrett were getting out of the nick soon. I said, so what, that’s all old history. But he said no, it wasn’t. They’d be looking for their haul, and he reckoned they wouldn’t find it. He reckoned someone in the know had nicked it and they wouldn’t see a penny.’
‘Did he say who he thought had nicked it?’ Barnard asked.
‘Well, the obvious person apart from Rod himself was a bloke called Bert Flanagan, the member of the gang who was acquitted. If he knew where they’d hidden the cash, he might have helped himself. He’s Dexter’s brother-in-law. Might have found out more from his sister Delia than Dexter realized.’
‘Right,’ Barnard said cautiously. ‘But surely, if he’d got his hands on the cash he wouldn’t have hung around waiting for them to come out of jail? He’d be long gone.’
‘You’d think so, yeah,’ Robertson said.
‘I take it you want me to pass this on to the DCI? It’d carry much more weight if you came in and told him yourself.’
‘No way,’ Robertson said. ‘I’m not taking that chance. I know the Yard want me banged up with Georgie and I’m not taking that risk. If you can use what I’ve just told you, that’s fine.’
‘I’ll have to think about it,’ Barnard said. ‘But you’re too well known to hide for ever. The longer you stay out of sight the more likely the Yard is to think you are up to your eyes in this. One way or another.’
‘Don’t you worry about me, Flash. I can look after myself. But there’s no way I’m going to help your boss with his inquiries and finish banged up in a cell on remand just because he doesn’t like my face. Do they know exactly when Rod died? He looked to me as if he’d been dead a while. He didn’t smell very sweet.’
‘I’m not sure,’ Barnard said. ‘I told you, I’m not working on the case myself. Too close to you, Jackson reckons.’
‘Well, I dropped into the gym that Sunday afternoon. I was on my way back from Scotland, as it goes. I’d been catching a few salmon in the Highlands and talking to contacts about a boxing gala up there. All above board and legit, so if it’s an alibi they want mine’s rock solid. I was three hundred miles away that weekend and I reckon I can prove it easily enough. But I’m not rushing to implicate my business acquaintances in all this nonsense. You find out when Rod was killed and I might consider giving your boss an alibi. But I’d want to be very sure he wasn’t aiming to arrest me regardless. You can’t tell me that’s not easy enough if the mood takes the bastards.’
Kate heard Barnard sigh heavily.
‘By the way, I ran into your ex the other day, swanning across Regent Street all dolled up,’ Barnard said eventually. ‘She’d been to the Delilah looking for you, she said. Do you want to talk to her if she gets in touch again?’
‘No I bloody don’t! I won’t lose any sleep if I never see that woman again.’
‘OK, OK. I only asked. I gave her my number, so she may call me back.’
‘Don’t even tell her you’ve spoken to me, Flash. I need her around like a hole in the head. Do you understand?’
‘Well, as you haven’t told me where you are there’s no risk of her finding out anything from me, is there?’ Barnard snapped back. ‘How do I contact you if I need to?’
‘You don’t need to,’ Robertson said. ‘Leave it to me, I’ll do the contacting.’ And the line went dead.
Kate hung up and went back into the living room to find Barnard sprawled in his revolving chair looking shell-shocked.
‘You heard all that?’ he said.
‘Do you think what he said was true?’ Kate asked.
‘I haven’t a bloody clue,’ Barnard said. ‘It sounds plausible, especially as we know that this Bert Flanagan has scarpered. But who knows? Ray’s had years of sounding plausible enough to wheedle himself into high places. He’s as slippery as an eel, and I doubt Jackson’s going to believe a word he says.’
‘What about his alibi?’ Kate asked. Barnard gave a hollow laugh.
‘You can buy alibis, sweetheart,’ he said. ‘Scotland sounds a bit far-fetched to me. Do you think they really do boxing galas in kilts? Or that Ray Robertson could catch a salmon? In the meantime I’ve got to decide how much to pass on to Jackson. If I can convince him that Ray approached me I might get away with it, I suppose.’
‘I took the call,’ Kate said, but Barnard only scowled.
‘I don’t want you involved in this,’ he said. ‘It’s bad enough as it is. Anyway, if Jackson so much as suspects I’ve persuaded you to make inquiries for me, I’ll get the blame anyway. You, my love, have done nothing more than take a few photographs on Canvey Island for your agency. The rest never happened. OK?’
‘OK,’ Kate said. ‘I suppose.’ But she felt uneasy. Nothing to do with Ray Robertson was ever as simple as it seemed.
Barnard was not able to see the DCI until lunchtime the next day as Jackson had been called to a meeting at the Yard, which he suspected might be about the progress – or lack of it – being made on Rod Miller’s murder. When he was finally called into Jackson’s office, he found the DCI in an obviously unreceptive mood. Barnard’s stomach clenched.
‘You wanted to see me?’ Jackson snapped.
‘Yes, guv, something unexpected happened last night. It’s relevant to the murder case.’ Jackson’s expression darkened even further. He said nothing, clearly waiting for him to jump off the teetering chair and hang himself.
‘I had a phone call from Ray Robertson last night, guv. Completely out of the blue.’ Jackson steepled his hands in front of his face, as if praying, and waited some more. Barnard took a deep breath.
‘He knows you want to talk to him, but he doesn’t seem at all keen to talk to you. He thinks you’ll tar him with the same brush as his brother.’ Jackson’s face hardened.
‘Did you find out where he’s holed up?’ he asked.
‘No I didn’t, guv. There was no way he was going to tell me that.’
‘Did you not think we could have traced the call?’
‘I’d no way of doing that without hanging up on him and I doubt very much he’d have called back. He’s got away with things for years by being very, very careful—’
‘So what did he say? What did he want you to do? Help him in some way?’
‘No, guv,’ Barnard said firmly. ‘He didn’t want me to do anything except tell you certain things that Rod Miller had told him. He said Miller was obviously worried about something, and it seems he had reason to be. His past was catching up with him.’
‘Tell me,’ Jackson said and listened carefully to Barnard’s summary of Miller’s involvement in the Southend robbery before Robertson gave him a job at the gym, the convicted men’s recent release from jail, and the disappearance of the proceeds from the post office robbery and possibly others. The scepticism in Jackson’s eyes did not noticeably diminish as he listened, but nor did it obviously increase.
‘Write this all down,’ he said when Barnard had finished. ‘I want a full report for the murder team. If necessary, we’ll liaise with the Essex police. But it sounds to me like a bit of a fairy story which Robertson thinks might get him off the hook. Did he give you no clue where he was? No hint? You should have some idea where he might hide out, you’ve known him long enough.’
Barnard shrugged wearily.
‘I’ve absolutely no idea, guv,’ he said. ‘I know you think he’s my best friend, but he hasn’t been that since I was ten years old. We went our separate ways long ago.’
‘Have your report on my desk by three,’ Jackson said. ‘The Press Office at the Yard are keen to give Robertson’s details to all the papers. So far no one seems to have followed up on that squib the Daily Express ran. I’m not at all sure how they’ll react to what you’re telling me. I may get them to put their plans on hold for another day or so – or maybe not.’
Ken Fellows called Kate O’Donnell into his office that same lunchtime. He still had the prints she had brought back from Southend on his desk.
‘I’ve just had a call from the picture librarian at the East Anglian rag,’ he said. ‘He wanted me to know that he’s uncovered another batch of shots we might be interested in. I think maybe you’d better go down there again and have a look. You can take this bunch back with you, as he seemed a bit anxious about them. And tell him which ones we definitely want to buy. Here, give him a call and nip down there again this afternoon. You’ve not got anything else urgent on, have you?’
Slightly surprised, Kate shook her head and took the folder containing the prints that were to be returned. She called Frank Garside from the phone in the photographers’ room, which at that time of day was almost deserted. Garside picked up quickly but sounded slightly distracted.
‘Yes, you can pop in,’ he said. ‘Leave it until about four. I’m a bit busy at the moment. There’s some big story on the go at the fairground and I’m being asked for all sorts of pictures to illustrate it.’ Kate pricked up her ears.
‘I had a look at the fairground yesterday,’ she said. ‘It was very quiet then. What’s the problem?’
‘The police aren’t saying very much, but it looks as if a little boy has gone missing. I don’t know all the details. We’re a bit cut off down here in the library. But the final edition will be out soon, so I’ll know exactly what’s amiss.’ She heard the sound of urgent voices in the background.
‘See you about four o’clock then,’ she said. ‘Thanks again.’
She left the office just after two, slightly worried that Barnard had not called to suggest lunch, which he often did. But she pushed that anxiety to the back of her mind as she made her way to the train from Fenchurch Street that took her on the now familiar ride to Southend. It was a short walk to the offices of the News and she was soon back in the library, where Frank Garside was waiting for her. She filled him in quickly on which of the prints Ken Fellows was interested in buying and then flicked through the new folder of flood pictures that he had unearthed.
‘These are the ones we didn’t use at the time,’ Garside said. ‘Some of them are very dark, as you can see, and the news desk no doubt thought some of the pictures were too graphic. Like this one of the woman carrying the baby. That baby turned out to have drowned.’
‘Sad,’ Kate said, looking at the woman’s face frozen with cold and grief, the child limp in her arms.
‘I shouldn’t think Ken will want to use that either,’ she said. ‘This is supposed to be a celebration of the recovery of Canvey Island, a new beginning and all that. It’s not intended to upset people. I don’t think it’s going to be too explicit.’ She handed back the photograph. ‘What’s all this about a child missing from the fairground?’ she asked. Garside picked up the latest edition of the day’s paper and handed it to her.
‘Set off for school but never arrived,’ he said. ‘The police are saying privately that he’s probably been picked up by his own father. There have been some marital problems, apparently. Father walked out some time ago. They’re not exactly treating it as a kidnapping. More a family affair.’
Kate quickly read the story tucked away on an inside page about eleven-year-old Luke Flanagan with a feeling of foreboding which was quickly enough confirmed when she realized that the blurred photograph of the boy’s mother was undoubtedly Connie, looking distraught, with two younger children clutching at her hands.
‘Well, I don’t suppose he’ll come to any harm if he’s with his father,’ she said quietly although she already had a conviction, based on no more than a gut feeling, that that was not necessarily the case. ‘But when I went down to the fairground yesterday I happened to meet Mrs Flanagan and she gave the impression that there was more going on than just a bit of marital trouble. I only chatted to her because she said she’d lived on Canvey Island when the flood came.’ Garside looked at her curiously as she picked up the folder containing the new photographs.
‘There’s always trouble with the showmen’s families,’ he said. ‘It’s nothing new. People who live in houses don’t like them much.’
‘They’re very firm they are not gypsies,’ Kate said.
‘As good as,’ Garside said coldly. ‘Or as bad. There’s a big chap – Jasper I think he’s called – who rules the roost down there. The police are always hauling him in for threatening the young local lads, but he never seems to get more than a caution. It’s my belief they don’t mind him laying down the law at the fairground. It saves them having to do it themselves.’ Kate nodded and buttoned up her coat. She wouldn’t like to cross Connie’s Uncle Jasper, she thought, but if he was on her side he might be a good man to rely on.
‘We’ll get back to you if Ken wants to use any of these,’ she said. ‘Thanks again for all your help.’
Once outside she hurried towards the fairground, which was as empty and windswept as the previous time she had been there. There was no sign of life around the dodgems this time, so she headed towards the area where the show families’ caravans were parked beneath the shelter of the pier. The same tall man in the sheepskin jerkin and jaunty hat spotted her: Jasper Dowd, who Connie Flanagan had claimed was her uncle. This time he hurried over, putting out a heavily tattooed arm to prevent her continuing.
‘What do you want now, petal?’ his voice was soft but his eyes were hard.
‘It’s Connie’s boy Luke who’s missing, isn’t it?’ she asked.
‘So what if it is?’ the man said. ‘She doesn’t need the likes of you interfering, does she? We’ve told the police and that’s good enough. Though they won’t stir themselves more than they have to. They say if he doesn’t come home tonight they’ll start a proper search i
n the morning. We’ll have to see, won’t we? If they don’t do anything, we’ll have to start looking ourselves. We don’t need them.’
‘It seems very slow. Do you really think his father’s taken him?’ Kate persisted.
‘Most likely, it’s the sort of thing Bert would do if he was in the mood.’
Behind the man’s back she suddenly spotted Connie herself, standing beside a caravan with the two younger children, Sally and baby Liam, clinging to her skirts. She guessed that Connie had seen her, but she made no move in her direction. She could hardly push past the man who had obviously appointed himself Connie’s heavyweight guardian, but she could think of nothing that would persuade him to let her through.
‘Tell Connie I’m sorry for her trouble,’ she said quietly. ‘If she wants to talk to me, this is my phone number.’ She wrote Barnard’s number on the back of her photographer’s card and handed it to the man, who glanced at it sceptically and put in his pocket. The chances of Connie getting hold of it seemed remote, but Kate could do nothing except swallow her anger. She turned on her heel and made her way back through the amusements towards the road. No one seemed to be taking the disappearance of Luke Flanagan very seriously and she was sure that was a horribly big mistake.
EIGHT
After they had exchanged news of two very unsatisfactory working days, cooked a meal and drunk half a bottle of red wine in time to watch the television news, the evening stretched ahead and Kate could see just how uneasy Barnard was. He kept glancing at the phone as if expecting a call.
‘He won’t ring again,’ she said. ‘If what Jackson said about tracing the call was serious, they’re probably listening in by now. It’s not that difficult to tap the line, is it?’
‘It’s not that difficult at all,’ Barnard said. ‘They’re supposed to get permission, but I don’t think the Yard or Special Branch bother too much about that.’
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