‘I don’t know what Sam Dexter and Bomber Barrett look like, though I can find out when I get back to the nick in London. But my guess would be that that was them and they have unfinished business with Jasper Dowd.’
He drove slowly through the town and parked close to the police station.
‘There you are,’ he said. ‘You can go in and ask the desk sergeant if Connie Flanagan is still in there. She shouldn’t be, unless they’ve charged her and are keeping her in to go to court tomorrow. But some cops bend the rules.’ He glanced at her and grinned. ‘Not in the Met, of course.’
Kate walked slowly up the steps and found a lone sergeant sitting at the front desk, seemingly more interested in a large mug of tea than in any members of the public who happened to come through the front door on a sleepy Saturday morning.
‘What can I do for you, petal?’ he asked after taking a hefty swig of tea. But his eyes narrowed when she explained her mission.
‘Friend of hers, are you?’ he asked.
‘Sort of,’ Kate said. ‘I just wanted to know if she and the children were safe.’
‘Well, as far as I know, they are. Social services are looking after her kids – except the one who’s gone missing, of course. And, as far as I know, Mrs Flanagan’s gone back home to the fairground. But here’s the man who can give you more details. This is DCI Baker and I don’t reckon he’ll be best pleased to be pulled off the golf course by those gyppos at the fair on a Saturday afternoon.’
Kate turned to find the DCI coming through the door, casually dressed but red-faced and sweating and with an angry gleam in his eye which turned to fury when he recognized Kate.
‘What the hell are you doing here?’ he demanded. ‘I thought I’d told you to keep out of my hair.’
‘She says she’s a friend of Mrs Flanagan, guv,’ the sergeant put in hastily. ‘Wanted to know if she’s still here.’
‘No, she’s not still here,’ Baker said. ‘She’s on bail and if you want to know any more than that you’d better talk to her bloody solicitor, who managed to talk me into letting her go against my better judgement. They’re slippery as eels those bloody gyppos from the fairground and I’ll probably regret it. I told Mrs Flanagan to stay close to her uncle and not leave Southend again. Now bugger off, I’ve got work to do.’
Kate shrugged and headed for the door but as she passed Baker he grabbed her arm, digging his fingers in hard.
‘How did you get here, anyway?’ he asked. ‘Are you with that beggar Barnard? Did he drive you down?’ Still gripping Kate’s arm, he pushed his way out through the swing doors beside her and glanced across the street to where Harry Barnard was lounging in the driver’s seat with his radio audible through the open window. Baker marched across the road and as he pushed his face through the window Barnard turned the radio off with studied slowness.
‘Sergeant,’ he said, ‘I thought I’d made it clear to the Met that I didn’t want you trespassing on my patch for any bloody reason whatsoever. Didn’t you get that message?’
‘Loud and clear,’ Barnard said quietly. ‘But you can’t dictate what my girlfriend wants to do in Southend, can you? I only gave her a lift down because the weekend trains are no good and she wanted to check up on Connie Flanagan. She’s worried about her.’
‘Connie Flanagan is fine and I’ll be wanting to question her again next week,’ Baker snapped. ‘So now you can give your nosy girlfriend a lift back to London, and I don’t want to hear about either of you interfering in my murder investigation again. Understood?’
‘Understood,’ Barnard said, adding with obvious reluctance ‘Sir’.
FOURTEEN
Barnard set off back to London at a sober pace, not saying much, although Kate continued to fume about the unanswered questions they had left behind. As they approached the south-eastern suburbs, Barnard suddenly slowed.
‘Of course!’ he said.
‘Of course what?’ Kate asked without much enthusiasm.
‘I’ve just thought where Ray Robertson might be holed up.’
‘You’re joking?’ Kate said.
‘No, I’m not,’ Barnard said with a slight grin. ‘Think about it. Ray’s a Londoner through and through. He was brought up in the East End, took to crime long before his father died, moved into Soho and flourished after the war when there was everything to play for. He’s been around a long time and is a well-known face. There’s no way he could disappear like this in the Smoke. He’d be recognized within days if he was in any of his usual haunts. He could have gone abroad, I suppose, but I can’t see Ray doing that. He’d be like a fish out of water.’
‘So where might he go?’ Kate asked, intrigued in spite of her reservations about Robertson and his relationship with Barnard.
‘He might have gone to the one place outside London where he lived for any length of time,’ Barnard said. ‘He might have gone to Hertfordshire, where we were evacuated during the war. And I guess that Georgie and I are the only people who would remember that. If you don’t mind a detour before we go home, we could have a quick look round.’
‘It’s a bit needle-in-haystack, isn’t it?’ Kate objected slightly wearily. ‘And what are you going to do if you find him? Arrest him? Isn’t that what DCI Jackson would expect?’
‘If I’m right – and I agree it’s a long shot – I’ll play it by ear, try to persuade him to talk to the DCI. I don’t believe he killed Rod Miller, but he may have information that would help nail the killer. After all, there are two reasons he could have disappeared. Either he actually killed him and is on the run. Or he didn’t kill him but, for some reason we don’t know about, thinks he might be next. If he’s scared of someone, we need to know who and why. It’s not like Ray to hide. He must have a very good reason.’
‘I think you’re taking a chance, la,’ Kate said. Barnard pulled into a lay-by and turned to face Kate.
‘If you don’t want to come with me, I’ll drop you at the end of the Tube line and you can go home. I don’t want to get you into anything you don’t want to get into.’ She stared out of the car window for a long time and finally shrugged.
‘All right,’ she said. ‘I’ll come with you. But to be honest, I hope this is just a very long shot. I hope you don’t find him.’ Barnard shrugged.
‘I need to give it a go,’ he said.
They travelled largely in silence as Barnard worked his way round the North Circular and then headed north, following signs to Hertford.
‘Where is it exactly?’ Kate asked in the end, as they kept turning on to narrower and narrower lanes and passing signposts marked with village names that she could barely read as they passed.
‘It’s called Little Radford,’ he said. ‘It’s only a hamlet really – a couple of farms, a church, a pub that lets rooms, and a tiny shop with a post office counter. There’s a river where we used to muck about during the summer, trying to catch sticklebacks. And cows in the fields that came in for milking twice a day. The school was in the next village. We had to walk a few miles there and back.’
‘Sounds like every boy’s dream,’ Kate said, as cottages began to appear at the side of the narrow lane. ‘Just William and all that.’
‘It might have been, if the farmer hadn’t been a bully and Georgie Robertson an evil little tearaway. Old man Green belted Georgie regularly until Ray stood up to him and made him stop. So he started on me instead. We were all glad to go home, in spite of the bombing and the V1 rockets.’
Kate could remember talk of the bombing of Liverpool, which had forced so many families out of their wrecked homes and set the docks ablaze, and knew that if Barnard was pleased to go home to something like that the country round here had been no idyll. Barnard pulled up outside the Green Man, which nestled close to an obviously ancient church with a low stone tower and an unkempt graveyard.
‘Come on,’ he said. ‘We’ll have a drink and see if they’ve seen any sign of a stranger. Ray’s not a man you’d miss in a place like this.’
>
The bar turned out to be empty of customers. When they pushed open the door as they went in, it creaked on unoiled hinges, attracting the attention of a stocky man with a thatch of long grey hair slouching behind the bar. He looked up from the Sunday Express propped up against the beer pumps and raised one eyebrow in interrogation as Barnard surveyed the ales on offer. Barnard thought he looked vaguely familiar.
‘I’ll have a pint,’ Barnard said, indicating his choice. ‘And my friend will have a half of shandy. They waited in silence while the barman dealt with their request. After a thoughtful pull on his pint, Barnard glanced at the notice behind the bar offering rooms.
‘We’re a bit too far from home to get back tonight,’ he said. ‘Do you have a room free?’
‘’Fraid not. There’s only the two and they’re both taken. One by a weekender here for a wedding who’s not leaving till the morning. The other’s been booked for a week. Funny chap. Goes fishing a lot, though I’ve never heard of anyone catching much round here in twenty years. Makes long phone calls. Business, he says, though he never lets me get close enough to hear what he’s on about. Trunk calls. Costing him a packet.’
‘Pity you don’t have a room,’ Barnard said. ‘I wanted to have a look round in the morning. I was evacuated down here during the war. Spent nearly two years on a farm.’ The publican looked interested.
‘You were one of the lads Tom Green took in, were you?’ he asked. ‘Some right little tearaways he ended up with. I’d have sent for the police if it had been me.’
‘Is he still around?’ Barnard asked.
‘No, he died a good few years ago. Must have been ’55, something like that. His wife moved away to live with her daughter, somewhere near Welwyn. There’s a new man farming there now, full of modern ideas, he is.’ The publican’s view of modern ideas was clear enough on his face. Behind them the door creaked open.
‘Here he is,’ the publican said quietly. ‘Did you have any luck today, Mr Roberts?’ he asked as Kate and Barnard turned to face Ray Robertson, dressed in heavy tweeds and boots and a hat decorated with miscellaneous flies, pulled low over his eyes. He was carrying a rod and bait box with what looked like supreme confidence, although Barnard was sure he had never caught so much as a minnow since they were boys.
‘Hello, Flash,’ Robertson said with a smile, though his eyes were angry. ‘I knew it must be you when I clocked the car. There’s not many of those around here, are there?’ He turned to the landlord. ‘Can your missus do us some sandwiches? We’ll have them in the snug. I don’t suppose my friends will be staying long, but they’ll need something to eat before they go.’ Robertson led the way into a small room with just a couple of tables and a few stools and an old fireplace full of ash. He took off his coat and hat and flung them on to a stool and put his tackle on the floor with a clatter.
‘I knew there were only two people in the world who could suss me out here,’ he said as he sat down. ‘You and Georgie. And as Georgie’s safely behind bars, it had to be you. Come to take me in, have you? Though if you’ve got your dolly bird with you, I don’t suppose you have.’
‘I didn’t seriously think you’d be here,’ Barnard said. ‘I thought you’d have melted away to Spain or South America by now, or somewhere else without an extradition treaty. Like some people we know.’
‘They were train robbers,’ Robertson said dismissively. ‘I’m a legitimate businessman.’
‘And a murder suspect,’ Barnard said flatly. ‘Don’t kid yourself DCI Jackson’s not serious about that.’ He glanced away as a dumpy woman in an apron came in carrying a plate of doorstep sandwiches, which she dropped noisily on to the table without ceremony and with a sour look.
‘I’ve only got cheese and a bit of ham,’ she said. ‘It’s Sunday night. We don’t cater on weekend nights.’
‘That’s fine, dear,’ Robertson said expansively, slipping a pound note into the woman’s hand. ‘It’s very good of you to take the trouble for my friends.’ The three of them watched in silence as she went out and closed the door behind herself.
‘Don’t you worry about me, Flash,’ Robertson said. ‘If everything goes according to plan, I’ll be out of here next week. This is only a temporary resting place, nice and quiet for a few days and well away from the Met.’
‘I’d have thought you’d have found somewhere a bit more comfortable than this,’ Barnard said, picking up a sandwich and examining it carefully.
‘I suddenly had a yen to see what became of that old bastard at the farm,’ Robertson said. ‘If I did turn to murder, he might be at the top of my list. But apparently he died years ago, so the landlord tells me. Pity. I went down there but there’s a young bloke running the place now. Looks a damn sight more businesslike than old man Green ever was.’
‘I didn’t realize you disliked him so much,’ Barnard said. ‘It was always Georgie who got the back end of his tongue.’
‘And his belt,’ Robertson said. ‘But I didn’t find out until much later what else he’d been doing to Georgie while we were there.’ The atmosphere suddenly froze and Kate shivered. They both waited for Ray Robertson to explain. He shrugged wearily.
‘I’ve never had anything against queers myself,’ he almost whispered. ‘But when anyone interferes with kiddies that’s different, isn’t it? I guess that bugger Green knew he’d get nowhere with you or me, Flash, but Georgie was still too small to stand up for himself against a man like that. Good job he died, isn’t it, or I might have been seriously tempted to help him on his way.’
‘Georgie didn’t give you a hint back then?’ Barnard asked, taken by surprise at this revelation.
‘He didn’t tell me till years later. But you saw him go doolally while we were there. You remember the business with the cats? Now you know what was going on. The silly beggar never breathed a word.’
‘No wonder he was such a pain in the bum while we were there. Sorry – not the best way of putting it,’ Barnard said.
‘And he’s been doolally ever since,’ Robertson said. ‘Anyway, never mind all that. It’s old history and there’s no mending it. Now tell me the state of play at your nick. Haven’t they found any other suspects for poor old Rod Miller’s killing? As sure as hell I had nothing to do with it. As I told you, I was in Scotland on business. But I’m not going to waste my time with witnesses and alibis. They can whistle for that. I’ve got bigger fish to fry.’
‘Well, DCI Jackson doesn’t believe that. Nor do the Yard. And because the whole thing down in Southend is escalating, he’s more convinced than ever that you’re involved. There’s been another killing and the Essex police are on the case now. When you took Rod on, did you know he’d been involved in armed robbery down there?’
‘I never thought Rod was any sort of a choir boy, but I was hiring him as a trainer not a bloody Sunday school teacher. And he was a star at that.’
‘He didn’t have any sort of a record? Adult, juvenile, army? He must have been old enough to have been in the forces during the war.’
‘Not that I was aware of,’ Robertson said dismissively. ‘Not that I’d have been bothered. You must remember what it was like after ’45. No houses, rationing, no bread, no meat, no sweets, nothing for kids like us to do except pick over the bomb sites and try and flog whatever we could find. You wouldn’t have thought we’d won the bloody war.’
‘And you had no idea Rod might have been involved in the robberies?’
‘The Essex police should have done a better job with those robberies in the first place,’ Robertson said dismissively. ‘I know one of the gang got off. What was his name? Flanagan? And if one of them got off, you can bet your life he’d be making sure he got his share of the loot if not all of it. And Dexter and that madman Barrett will be hopping mad if they can’t lay hands on it now they’re out. My guess is it was them who came looking for poor old Rod on the off-chance he’d been involved with Flanagan.’
‘Flanagan’s dead,’ Barnard said flatly. ‘They pulle
d him out of the mud on Maplin Sands. And his young son’s disappeared.’
‘Jesus wept!’ Robertson said. ‘Is your DCI talking to the Essex police? There’s no way I’ve been anywhere near Maplin bloody sands. I don’t even know where they are.’
‘Off Foulness Island,’ Barnard said.
‘Ah,’ Robertson said. ‘Right down there with all the gunners?’ He hesitated for a moment. ‘If Barrett and Dexter have knocked Flanagan off, it stands to reason they might have come for poor old Rod Miller as well. Word is they stashed the money away and haven’t seen a penny of it yet.’
‘But there was no sign of Miller having cash to spare? I don’t suppose you were paying him much.’
‘If he had cash, he kept it very well hidden,’ Robertson said. ‘Rod was living in a council flat in Poplar for years once he came to the gym from Southend. He didn’t smoke, hardly drank, and never had a bird that I knew of. He lived and breathed boxing and the lads he was training. You know that. You were there with him some of the time. Did he look like a man with money in his pocket? If anyone was divvying up the proceeds of those robberies, he wasn’t getting a share.’
‘You don’t think Barrett and Dexter might come looking for you?’ Barnard persisted. ‘They might reckon Miller told you something about the state of play in Southend back then. You’ve been working together for a long time.’
Robertson hesitated for a moment and for the first time looked seriously worried.
‘I told you. Only you and Georgie know about this place. I’m safe enough for a few more days.’
‘But you won’t be in the clear until you convince the Yard you weren’t involved in Rod’s murder,’ Barnard urged. ‘The Daily Express has you down as a wanted man and they don’t pull their punches. And the rest of the papers will follow.’ Barnard glanced at Kate, who was looking anxious. ‘You need to clear this up once and for all. Come in with me and talk to the guv’nor. They won’t call the hunt off without talking to you.’
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