‘Help me!’
They had made him stand on tiptoe on a brick set on its edge, and had pulled the rope so tight that if he’d lost his footing he’d have been finished. When Brock found him he’d been standing there for twenty minutes and was on the point of passing out. He refused to say who’d done it, but the style was obvious to Brock- the grim joke, choking off the talker, and the indifference as to whether he lived or died.The man never spoke to the police again.
Brock recalled that the last bit of information the man had given Brock at their previous meeting was that the Roaches employed children to take down the numbers of cars driving in and out of the secure yards of local police stations, and now had a comprehensive list of unmarked police cars operating in the area. Spider’s intelligence had always been depressingly good. And still was, obviously. They had known about Singh and Ferguson before Brock had made his move.Did they have a friend at the local station who had told them who had attended the identity parades? Or had they been shadowing Kathy and Bren, himself too, perhaps, as they made their way around the neighbourhood, asking questions? He recalled the blue Peugeot waiting across the street when they’d left Father Maguire’s presbytery.
He had been disturbed by Spider Roach’s unexpected appearance, but Roach had also been unsettled. The case had already collapsed,yet he had felt the need to warn Brock to back off.Something fragile, important, needed to be protected from blundering coppers. Brock wondered what it was.
SIXTEEN
Commander Sharpe was philosophical about the Roach case. It was unusual to see him in his office on a Saturday morning, and it was clear from the way he fingered his shirt cuff and the file set out ready on his desk that he had more important things on his mind.‘Good try, Brock, but the odds were stacked against us. Look at it another way, the three unsolved murders go into the 1981 results, not this year’s. So they make the current dismal figures look marginally better, by comparison.’
‘All the same, I’ll keep one or two people working on it for a day or two, tidying up loose ends.’
‘Mm.’ Sharpe’s attention had returned to the cover sheet on his file. ‘You’ll let me have a one-page summary, will you? The OCLG want it on record.’
Brock frowned, puzzled. The Organised Crime Liaison Group was a subcommittee of the Joint Intelligence Committee, the central body for interdepartmental intelligence, reporting directly to the Prime Minister’s office.‘Is the OCLG interested?’
‘Apparently there’s a standing brief on friend Roach. I’ve warned Penny that she’ll have to go elsewhere for her next motor, but it’ll be hard to avoid Paramounts. Have you seen their latest prices for Cote de Beaune?’
‘I didn’t know they had a file on Roach.’
‘Nothing that would have been useful to us.You know what their research office is like, Brock-hoarders of inconsequential trifles, stamp collectors.’ Then, as if changing the subject completely, Sharpe added,‘You mentioned that MP in your earlier report, Michael Grant. Has he been in touch again?’
‘He gave us some help in tracking down possible witnesses. Useful.’
‘Mm. Admirable fellow by all accounts. Very supportive of Trident,strong anti-drugs and anti-crime stance in his constituency and in the House. Bit of a fanatic, though, I’m told. Cuts corners, ruffles feathers. All right for him, of course, he’s protected by parliamentary privilege. For the rest of us, it’s best to be wary.’
Dismissed, Brock descended to the street and began to walk back to his office in Queen Anne’s Gate. There was a deceptively spring-like lift to the morning, pale sunlight sparkling off wet pavements, a feeling that heavy coats might soon be discarded. He picked up a cappuccino along the way and continued past the end of his street and across Birdcage Walk into St James’s Park, where he crossed the grass to an empty bench in the sun. A military band was playing in the distance, some children chasing along the edge of the lake towards Duck Island, groups of tourists drifting towards the palace. As he sipped at his coffee his phone burbled in his pocket.
‘Chief Inspector Brock? It’s Michael Grant here. How are you? Were my contacts any help?’
‘I was just thinking of you, Mr Grant. They were very useful, helped us put together good likenesses as well as personal information for all three bodies on the railway land.’
‘Yes, I’ve seen the posters.What about the killers?’
‘I’m afraid we haven’t been so successful in that area. Not yet, anyway.’
‘There’s talk in Cockpit Lane that one of Spider Roach’s sons has been charged. Is that not true?’
‘He was arrested yesterday morning, but released later for lack of evidence.’
‘Ah.’ Silence for a moment, then, ‘I can’t honestly say I’m surprised. Are you very busy today?’
‘I’m currently sitting on a bench in St James’s Park contemplating the ducks and envying their simple life.’
Grant chuckled. ‘How do you fancy lunch at my factory? I think I can offer you something better than stale bread.’
‘Sounds interesting.’
‘Do you know the Red Lion pub on Parliament Street? Behind it in Cannon Row there’s an entrance to Portcullis House. I’ll meet you there at twelve-thirty, okay?’
Brock made his way there at the appointed time and found the MP chatting to the security staff at the rear entrance to his ‘factory’, the Houses of Parliament. Further down the lane loomed the striped brickwork of the old Norman Shaw building in which the Metropolitan Police had once had their headquarters, and Brock recalled old photographs of his predecessors in that place, waistcoated, moustached and bowler-hatted men like Chief Inspector Walter Drew, snapped digging with his team in Dr Crippen’s garden in Hilldrop Crescent. A hundred years later, he thought, and we’re still digging.
‘You don’t need to worry about this one, Artie,’ Grant said. ‘He’s a copper.’
‘Seen you on telly, haven’t I, sir? Britain’s Most Wanted, was it?’ He chuckled.‘See you later,sir.’
Grant led the way down a corridor that came out into the glazed-roofed atrium forming the centre of Portcullis House, the modern annexe of Parliament across the street from Big Ben. The court was busy with people, groups talking at tables, individuals hurrying to appointments. Brock recognised famous faces among them, one of them stopping to say hello to Grant.
‘Charles, let me introduce you to Detective Chief Inspector Brock.’
‘Ah yes.’ The Home Secretary beamed at Brock, shaking his hand. ‘My wife’s a great admirer of yours, I assume because we both have beards. I hope Michael’s not wasting police time press-ganging you onto his committee, is he?’
Grant laughed.‘It’s not my committee, Charles.’
‘No, just feels like that sometimes.’ He clapped Grant on the shoulder and they moved on.
‘All chums together,’ Grant murmured as they reached the far side of the atrium and entered the corridor leading under Bridge Street to the Houses of Parliament proper. They emerged briefly into the watery sunlight to see a long queue of women in hats moving slowly across New Palace Yard.
‘Widows of war heroes,’ Grant said. ‘The Queen’s holding a reception for them in Westminster Hall. Have you been here before?’
Brock hadn’t.
‘I’ll give you a quick tour, if you like.’
He led the way again,through the Victorian Gothic splendours of the Palace of Westminster, its corridors and lobbies, chambers, libraries and committee rooms, pointing out its treasures with a kind of hushed glee that reminded Brock of a small boy taking a friend into the forbidden haunts of his father’s den.
‘The Death of Nelson, see? Never mind the quality, feel the width-all forty-five feet of it. Look at the ceiling above . . . Can’t show you the only really old bit,unfortunately,Westminster Hall. Can’t crash Liz’s party.’ He chuckled.
They finally arrived at the Strangers’ Dining Room, where they took a table by the window against the terrace overlooking the Thames.
‘This view is very important, very symbolic,’ Grant said.‘Over there is the real world.’ He nodded at the bulk of St Thomas’ Hospital across the river. ‘That’s where they took the boy who found the bodies, wasn’t it? And beyond that, a short ambulance ride, is Lambeth and Brixton and Cockpit Lane. The river is like the Styx, separating the living world from the beyond. Monet captured it perfectly. He sat over there on the south bank and painted the towers of Westminster across the river,glowing through the fog like the city of heaven. Over there people die violent deaths; over here we are immortal.Did you know that?’He grinned.‘Truly.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘It’s a tradition. Nobody dies in the Palace of Westminster. If one of us has a fatal heart attack or stroke, we remain, be we stiff as a board, technically alive until the ambulance crosses the river to St Thomas’, where we are pronounced dead.Whereas on the other side, the boy was found dead on the railway tracks and brought back to life in St Thomas’s. A nice symmetry.’
Grant leaned forward, lowering the volume of his voice a little, though not its intensity. ‘I’m not playing with words, David. This distinction is a living thing for me. It is what motivates everything I do. My mother and father met briefly in Kingston docks. She was a whore and he was possibly an American sailor,though she was necessarily vague about that. They exchanged infections-she gave him clap and he gave her me, which was worse for her. As soon as I was born she did what she’d done with my brother before me and gave me to our grandmother, who made some kind of an honest living from the Dungle in Riverton City,which I think I mentioned to you.I grew up on a rubbish dump,literally.It sounds like some Victorian fable, doesn’t it? But it’s true. So when I look at myself sitting here, when I show a visitor around my palace, when the Home Secretary jokes with me in the corridor, I am in a state of suspended disbelief, and it is very important that I should remain so.’
Their lunches arrived, fish and chips and a bottle of Paramounts’ white burgundy.
‘Old parliamentary joke,’ Grant said. ‘The Lord Chancellor hired a new research assistant called Neil. He told him to report for work in the Central Lobby-remember it? The one with the statue of Gladstone and the golden chandelier. Seeing him there the next morning, the noble Lord, resplendent in wig and scarlet gown, cried “Neil!” And all the tourists did.’
Grant grinned, pouring the wine. ‘You see my point? For a while I’ve joined the immortals, and while I’m here I have to do what I can for those people on the other side, in the world where people kneel to get a bullet in the head.’
‘Father Guzowski must be very proud of you.’
‘I like to think he would be. He died several years before I got into parliament, gunned down by a young kid stoned on crack. But I still feel him here, at my shoulder.When I get too big for my boots I feel him turning my head back, across the river.’
‘I’m told you have a reputation for cutting corners.’
‘That depends on where you stand. If you come from a comfortable background and believe the world is basically on track, give or take some minor adjustments, then yes, I take outrageous liberties. But if you grew up on a rubbish dump and know that most people are doomed to spend their whole lives in some version of the Dungle unless somebody does something about it, then no, my methods are painfully law-abiding and slow. And I do abide by the rules.When we arrive here, freshly elected and full of ambition, along with our security pass and our Parliamentary Intranet access, they give us a book, the Members’ Handbook, which tells us the rules of their gentlemanly game. I studied that book very closely, believe me.’
They ate for a while in silence, finishing their fish.‘Pudding?’ Grant offered. ‘Treacle pudding and custard for a cold February day? It’s extremely good.’
‘That sounds hard to refuse. I don’t know how you keep so lean, Mr Grant.’
‘Michael, please. I use the gym in the old police buildings across the road, and I don’t usually eat lunch.’
‘Then why am I so honoured?’
Grant laughed.‘Down to business,eh?’
‘You said you weren’t surprised that we hadn’t been able to press charges against the Roach brothers.’
‘Let me guess-obstructive tactics by the best lawyers money can buy, intimidation of witnesses, fabricated alibis, inside information on police moves . . . Am I right?’
Brock nodded.
‘It’s all happened before. So what do you do now? Are you giving up?’
‘As things stand, I have no hard evidence that any of the Roach clan were involved in the murder of those three men on the railway ground. But the case is open; I’m still looking.’
‘Another symmetry-three Roach sons and three victims. One side lives and flourishes, the other dies. But maybe there’s another way to even the score.’
‘You think so?’
‘Oh yes. I’m a very low form of life in this great institution, David. There are 659 MPs and I’m one of the youngest and most junior of them, but even so, I have important resources available to me. I have my own research staff and access to a remarkable range of information sources through the House of Commons Library. I am also a member of committees, in particular the Home Affairs Committee, which I mentioned to you when we last met. It is one of eighteen committees set up by parliament to scrutinise the work of government departments, in our case the Home Office, and we’re broadly interested in anything to do with public order, including organised crime and its impact on the community.We don’t investigate crimes,of course,but we can affect the climate in which they are investigated.We have the power to call witnesses and have them give evidence under oath.We can broadcast their evidence on live webcast and through transcripts, and we can do all this under the cover of parliamentary privilege-you know what that means?’
‘They can’t sue you.’
‘Exactly. Of course privilege mustn’t be abused, but what is permissible is open to interpretation. The chair of our committee is Margaret Hart.’
Brock knew of the veteran socialist politician and union activist, famous for her frankness.
‘Margaret gives me plenty of leeway, much to the disgust of the more conservative members, and I’ve had a few successes that have made people sit up.I don’t need the hard chain of evidence that you do in order to pursue Roach, but I do need solid information to persuade my committee that it’s in the public interest that his affairs should be brought out into the bright light of public scrutiny.That’s my primary interest. Not what Roach and his people may or may not have done twenty-odd years in the past, but what they’re doing to our community today.’
‘You said that before, but I thought the Yardies controlled the drug market in your area?’
‘They’re his partners. That’s the point. To begin with, they supplied him, but now it’s the other way around. The days of the Yardie mules and swallowers, the women coming over on free plane tickets with a few ounces of coke in their stomachs, they’re finished, David. Now it comes over by the hundredweight in containers, through legitimate import companies like those owned by Spider Roach. Roach sells it on to the Yardies, who turn it into crack and peddle it on the streets. I’ve been collecting material on this for some time, but I need more.’
‘I don’t think I have any information that would help you, Michael.’
‘You have access to the police files.’
‘As I say, I haven’t seen anything that would help you. The Trident people don’t seem to have anything on Roach.’
Grant looked disappointed and unconvinced.‘What about the JIC files?’ He saw the sudden attention in Brock’s eyes and went on, ‘The Joint Intelligence Committee gives us briefings from time to time, but they’re a cagey lot.’
‘What makes you think they have a file on the Roaches?’
‘I know that Special Branch, Customs and Excise, and MI5 have all taken an interest in them at one time or another. It seems inconceivable that they haven’t pooled their information, do
n’t you think?’
‘Even if it exists and I could access it, I couldn’t possibly pass on confidential JIC material to you,Michael.Can’t you approach them through your committee, or through the Prime Minister’s Office?’
‘I’ve tried that, but they’ve had their fingers burnt by Roach before. They say they have nothing of relevance to the Home Affairs Committee. Look, I’m not asking you to break any confidences,just to compare notes informally,give each other pointers. I’m willing to share what I know with you,and in the light of what you may know from JIC sources or wherever, you may be able to provide a critique,help me focus my arguments.We’re very much on the same side, David, approaching the same problem from different directions.’
Brock wasn’t sure about the consistency of that last sentence. ‘There is another difficulty. If you use police evidence on your committee, there’s a risk, isn’t there, that you could compromise a future criminal trial?’
‘Our guidelines cover that. The key phrase is “matters currently before a court of law”. At the rate the police have been going, how long will it be before that happens?’
Brock nodded.‘Point taken.’
‘But I appreciate the sensitivities, and in view of that I’d like to suggest that we don’t communicate directly on this. How about you nominate a member of your team to chat from time to time with my research officer, Andrea? Keep things at arm’s length.’
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