In Vino Veritas

by Peter Turnbull

  ‘A bomb fell here,’ Victor Swannell remarked as he glanced up and down the length of the road.

  ‘You think?’ Brunnie replied with a smile.

  ‘I know …’ Swannell returned the smile, ‘in the Hitler war. You see how the line of the original Victorian houses is interrupted by a small pocket of post-war, more recent developments?’

  ‘Yes.’ Frankie Brunnie ran his eye along the length of the road. ‘Yes, I see that.’

  ‘Well, it’s always a sign that a bomb fell and destroyed a number of original houses. This is pretty classic; it’s a very good example of that having happened.’ Swannell knocked on the door. ‘In fact, it’s probably as good an example as you’ll find anywhere.’

  The door was opened slowly. A man peered out of the gloom of his house, blinking against the bright sunlight. ‘You’re the Old Bill.’ The man, who stood on the threshold, was short, had oily-coloured skin, narrow eyes and long black hair which did not, in the opinion of both officers, suit a man of his years, being, they guessed, late middle-aged.

  ‘Are you asking or telling?’ Brunnie replied.

  ‘Neither.’ The man scowled. ‘I’m guessing.’

  ‘Well, you guess correctly.’ Swannell showed his ID. ‘We are the Old Bill … Murder and Serious Crime Squad, New Scotland Yard, to be exact.’

  ‘Scotland Yard!’ The man gasped. ‘That’s premier league.’

  ‘Well, we’d like to think so.’ Frankie Brunnie also showed his ID. ‘We’re looking for a geezer called “Chinese Geordie Davy” … also known as David Danby. He’s known to us and this is his given address.’

  ‘That’s me.’ The man peered at Brunnie’s ID card. ‘What can I do for you?’

  ‘We’d like a chat, Davy,’ Swannell replied.

  ‘But I never did no murder … never done no serious crime.’ Danby became agitated.

  ‘Nothing to worry about then, have you, Davy?’ Swannell replaced his ID card in his jacket pocket. ‘So, let’s have a chat. We can do it inside, or here on the step, or down the Yard.’

  ‘Don’t know how I can help you.’ Danby spoke in a strong Newcastle accent. ‘I told you I never done no murder.’

  ‘So, like I said, nothing to worry about, have you?’ Swannell replied. ‘Do you like putting on street theatre for your neighbours or can we come inside?’

  Danby mumbled something unintelligible to both officers, turned and walked into the gloom of the hallway of the Victorian-era house in which he lived. Swannell and Brunnie followed him, shutting the door gently behind them.

  ‘Not much to show for a life of crime, is it?’ Danby shrugged his shoulders. ‘They always said that crime doesn’t pay, but would I listen? Mind you, I got to stay in bed all morning … all day if I wanted to, no running for the bus for me … so there is that. I have had a laid-back life … sometimes I had money, sometimes I was hungry. If I needed money I’d go crookin’; sometimes I’d go crookin’ to get remanded. If you did it on a Friday you’d get your cot and three until the following Monday morning … and if you boxed clever and did it just before the old Easter weekend you’d get clean sheets and hot food from Thursday until Tuesday morning.’

  ‘Got it all worked out, haven’t you, Davy?’ Frankie Brunnie glanced round him. It was true, he thought, ‘Chinese Geordie Davy’ did not have a lot to show for a life of crime. He saw a small, untidy, very cramped living room, an old TV set and clothing strewn hither and thither. The room smelled musty and damp.

  ‘Well, that was the advice given to me by the old lags when I was a young street turk, building up my street cred. Now I’m an old lag and I hand the same advice down to today’s street turks. So … you’ll not be calling on me social, like … what’s it about?’

  ‘Nope.’ Swannell also read the room and felt grateful that he and Brunnie would not be staying long. ‘You’re right, this isn’t a social call, Davy. It’s a little bit more serious.’

  ‘Well, I haven’t been a wrong ’un for a while,’ David Danby protested. ‘Not for a good few weeks.’

  ‘That’s “a while” for you, is it, Davy?’ Brunnie sighed. ‘A few weeks?’

  ‘Yes, for me that’s a while. I had a bit of money. I’ve still got about thirty sovs left. I won a hundred and fifty sovs on the horses so I haven’t had to go out crookin’. Mind you, if you set that against the bundle I gambled and lost over the years, well, all told, I’ve lost big time.’

  ‘Well …’ Brunnie smiled briefly, ‘that’s the old way of it, Davy. That’s why the bookmakers stay in business. If everybody saw it like that the bookies would go out of business.’

  ‘I dare say that’s the old truth.’ Danby sighed. ‘I mean, you get Gamblers Anonymous but you don’t get Bookies Anonymous. But I’ll be back at the bookies when the money gets low, chasing that big win – that’ll be me – or out thieving what I can … food to eat or stuff to sell.’

  ‘Only you can stop yourself, Davy,’ Swannell growled, ‘but let’s cut to the chase … ten years ago …’

  ‘Ten years!’ Danby scoffed. ‘Look, I can’t remember what I did yesterday. How do you expect me to remember what I did ten years ago?’

  ‘Few of us can, Davy,’ Brunnie pressed, ‘but we all remember incidents. So, ten years ago … one dark, rainy night … we have good information that about ten years ago you were involved in a murder.’

  ‘Murder!’ Danby held up both hands, palms outwards. ‘Now just hold on. I may never have been made the blackboard monitor but I never done no murder. I told you … never done no murder. That’s gospel, squire. I swear … I never stopped no one’s ticker. Never.’

  ‘Wait on, Davy,’ Swannell spoke calmly, ‘we didn’t say you actually did the deed, but we have information that you helped clean up the mess.’

  David Danby fell silent.

  ‘A young woman,’ Swannell continued, ‘a small, petite girl barely five feet tall. You arrived at a lock-up and found her as naked as the day she was born … sitting on the floor, terrified, and you stood there while some other geezer with a pig’s face mask on shot her in the head … twice … then once in the heart.’

  ‘As soon as he shot her he took the mask off,’ Brunnie continued. ‘Why did he do that? Why wasn’t he bothered about you seeing him, you and the other geezer? Yet he didn’t want the girl to see him, even though two seconds later she’d be dead.’

  ‘That puzzles us,’ Swannell spoke softly, ‘but I dare say we’ll get to the bottom of it. Then you drove her from the East End to the allotments in New Cross, you and the gunman in the front, and another geezer in the back with the girl’s dead body. The other guy carried her from the van into the allotments and dumped her into a hole in one of the allotments. Then you and the other guy drove away and the shooter and two other men stayed behind to cover up the body.’

  ‘Remember now, Davy?’ Brunnie pressed. ‘Is it all coming back?’

  David Danby sank into one of the armchairs in his dimly lit flat. ‘So who grassed me up?’ he whined. ‘Who do I have to thank for this?’

  ‘Can’t say,’ Brunnie replied, ‘and we won’t say … but do you remember now? Does it all flood back as clear as daylight?’

  ‘Has to be Cragg.’ Danby lowered his head. ‘It has to be. It could only be Cragg. I never did trust that big geezer. Never did. He had a reputation for having a loose tongue … always running off at the mouth.’

  ‘It didn’t have to be him; it didn’t have to be anyone, Davy,’ Brunnie towered over Danby, ‘but let’s just say for a minute it was Cragg … let’s just say you’re right and then let’s say he’s doing the right thing …’

  ‘Giving information to save his neck,’ Danby sneered. ‘He’d do that, all right … that’s not the right thing … Cragg … he’d shop his own mother.’

  ‘It might fly in the face of your code of ethics, Davy, but it is the sensible thing to do.’ Swannell stood beside Frankie Brunnie. ‘It’s what I’d do if I was in his shoes.’

  ‘And
me,’ Brunnie added, ‘without hesitation, it’s what I’d do. Help yourself or work against yourself. I’m sure some cozzer has given you that bit of advice before.’

  ‘Many times,’ Danby exhaled, ‘like about as many times as I have had a hot curry.’

  ‘So it’s time to decide what you’re going to do, Davy,’ Swannell pressed. ‘Work for yourself or work against yourself. We’ll be seeing the other geezer later today.’

  ‘Cragg!’ Danby spat the name.

  ‘Whoever … but the first one to give information helps himself the most,’ Swannell reiterated.

  ‘I reckon I’ll deny it all.’ Danby sat back in the chair, developing a smug expression as he did so. ‘I’ll do that, I suppose.’

  ‘You can’t very well deny it, Davy.’ Brunnie grinned.

  ‘Perhaps, but you’re not recording this and I haven’t signed anything.’ Danby spoke sourly.

  ‘It’s still a bit late, Davy,’ Swannell advised. ‘Now that we know you are the man, all we need to do is find some way of linking you to the crime … just one more witness will do … like the geezers who dug the grave. If we can find them and if they’ll testify that you drove the van that night, that will clinch it very nicely indeed.’

  ‘So what can I do?’ Danby rested his head in his hands.

  ‘We keep telling you, Davy … it’s time to start working for yourself,’ Brunnie urged. ‘Look, Davy, you’re in a real mess and you can either dig yourself in deeper … or you can begin to dig yourself out. So which is it going to be?’

  ‘I want to climb out,’ Danby replied wearily. ‘I’m too old for the pokey.’

  ‘No one’s ever too old for the pokey,’ Swannell snarled. ‘We have put geezers away for the first time who are in their seventies. There are geezers in the slammer who are serving whole life sentences and they’ll die in there. So right now, you appear to be an accessory after the fact … that could still get you five years … even ten.’

  ‘Ten years …’ Danby moaned.

  ‘Yes … think of it … the next time you walk into a pub or a betting shop you’ll be in your mid-sixties,’ Swannell continued. ‘No more beer or lucky wins on the horses for you for the next few years, but plenty of free food.’

  ‘You know, when I woke up this morning I had a notion it was going to be a bad day.’ Danby shook his head slowly. ‘I just did not think that it was going to be quite this bad. It’s like the bottom has fallen out of my life.’

  ‘That’s how it is sometimes, Davy,’ Brunnie commented. ‘The past has a way of catching up with us all. You know, we can see you are just a gofer … just a small cog in a huge machine. No big-time crook lives like this. You’ll have seen how the big-time crooks live: big house, flash cars, trophy wives and girlfriends …’

  ‘Yes, yes … I’ve seen all that.’ Danby ran his stubby fingers through his greasy hair.

  ‘Well, they are the geezers we really want to nail,’ Swannell added. ‘The big-time Joe’s … not the small Joe’s like you. You know we can even help you avoid prison altogether. We’ll drop all charges in return for a testimony … you know … witness protection … we can offer that.’

  ‘No.’ Danby held up his hand. ‘I don’t feel bad about anything I’ve done … not ever … all down the years, but I haven’t eaten well for a few days now and the money I won on that horse is practically all gone. Prison food isn’t good but it’s better than nothing … and I haven’t changed my bed linen for six months. I haven’t had a bath in the same length of time … just a strip wash in front of the kitchen sink each day. I keep my clothes clean, though, I do that. I always seem to manage to have enough coins for the laundrette.’

  ‘I confess, Davy,’ Brunnie observed, ‘you are a lot cleaner than we thought you’d be. You’re a lot cleaner than your old drum, so there is some self-respect there. It seems to us like you’re a man who’d want to do himself a favour or two. OK, Davy, on your feet, you’re coming back with us. We want to know who hired you and your van for a night’s work. You hired “Big Andy” Cragg to help you, but who hired you? Who bought your time?’

  ‘Enjoy the ride to Scotland Yard, Davy.’ Swannell took hold of Danby’s left forearm as he stayed quiet. ‘Look out of the car window during the drive … look at the streets, the houses, the people … look at the young women in their summer clothes and remember … just think that when you see the like again will all be down to you and the level of cooperation you offer.’

  ‘A detective inspector? I am honoured.’ Philip Standish inclined his head to one side. ‘Usually I get detective constables … once in a while a detective sergeant, but a DI …’

  ‘All my team are committed,’ Vicary explained, holding eye contact with Standish yet noticing the flattened boxer’s nose and the spider tattoo on the back of the man’s left hand. ‘So you’ve got me.’

  ‘I won’t complain.’ Standish sat in a large, high-backed armchair in the TV room of the Salvation Army Shelter. ‘So how did you find me?’

  ‘We have this as your last address, Philip,’ Vicary explained. ‘It was the obvious place to call.’ Vicary glanced around him; the TV high out of reach, the yellow and black floor tiles, men sitting in chairs, not talking to each other, staring into space, comfortably out of earshot of Harry Vicary and Philip Standish. ‘So, ten years ago you took an allotment in New Cross …’

  ‘I was told to,’ Standish replied.

  ‘By whom?’

  ‘Just a geezer … never knew his name. I think he was working for another geezer,’ Standish replied in a strong London accent. ‘I was offered two hundred sovs … that was ten years ago. Even today I wouldn’t sniff at two hundred sovs for digging an allotment.’

  ‘What did you have to do?’ Vicary asked.

  ‘I had to take an allotment in the name of Hill … Patrick Hill of an address I can’t remember but I had it written down.’

  ‘OK.’ Vicary nodded. ‘Then what?’

  ‘I had to dig it; I had to work the soil over. Go there two or three times a week and turn the soil over – just the bottom half of the plot,’ Standish explained. ‘Not plant nothing, just turn the soil and keep it turned … a hundred in advance, the second hundred when I was told to leave it.’

  ‘How long were you doing that for?’ Vicary asked.

  ‘A few weeks … winter and spring time. It was hard old work. I never was a fit man.’

  ‘Not even as a boxer?’ Vicary smiled.

  Standish touched his nose. ‘No … I got my nose smashed when someone tried to flatten my face with a spade. This was a lot of years ago when I was still a teenager. They could have rebuilt it today … those days … well, they just said “get on and live with it and think yourself lucky you’re not brain-dead or even dead”. If the flat of the spade had struck my forehead instead of my face I would have been either brain-dead or outright dead. He got six months’ youth custody and I got this life sentence.’ He pointed to his nose. ‘It’s made me a marked man all my days, like, “Can you describe the man who snatched your handbag?” and then I’m huckled. Bet that’s how you traced me.’

  ‘You had no luck,’ Vicary commented. ‘Anyway, did you do anything other than turn the soil?’

  ‘No … nothing else,’ Standish replied, ‘nothing else at all. Once in a while the geezer who hired me came to check I was working, just glanced at me from the other side of the privet, nodded to me and went away.’

  ‘Did you ever notice any other activity at the allotment?’ Vicary asked.

  ‘Only possibly once, quite early on,’ Standish replied. ‘I was still getting to know the plot … getting familiar with the soil, but I came one day and I thought “someone else has been here” – the soil was still turned but it looked different somehow. I was still only a few weeks in when I noticed that. I never noticed anything like it again … so I thought that’s just me imagining things … and carried on digging and kept on digging for the next few weeks, but towards the end I reckon I got to know that
little patch of London so well I could say definitely if someone had been at it when I wasn’t there.’ Standish took a deep breath, struggling as he did so as if suffering from a chronic pulmonary condition. ‘Then one day the geezer who hired me came to the allotment and gave me one hundred sovs and said, “Right, that’s you paid up.” Then I gave up the allotment and never returned.’

  ‘Thanks, Phil.’ Vicary took a ten-pound note from his pocket. ‘Go and buy yourself a beer. That’s been useful.’

  ‘You don’t want a statement?’ Standish took the note greedily.

  ‘Not unless you can tell me the name of the geezer who hired you?’ Vicary stood.

  ‘Sorry … I can’t do that … never knew him from Adam. I was drinking in a battle cruiser where a lot of guys will work for cash-in-hand drink … you used to go there to get hired as much as drink beer. The White Cock, it was called, down Whitechapel way. Last time I walked past it, it was a shop run by Asians selling halal meat.’

  ‘This time, it’s official, Andrew.’ Frankie Brunnie spoke solemnly. ‘It’s being recorded.’ He pointed to the wall of the interview suite. ‘See the tapes going round? See the red light? So for the record, and for the benefit of the tape, I am Detective Sergeant Frankie Brunnie of the Murder and Serious Crime Squad at New Scotland Yard. I am now going to ask the other persons present to identify themselves.’

  ‘I am Detective Sergeant Victor Swannell, also of the Murder and Serious Crime Squad at New Scotland Yard.’

  ‘I am Claire Highmore of Highmore, Highmore and Venning, solicitors and notaries public.’

  ‘Andrew Cragg.’ Cragg sighed. ‘Big-mouth Cragg of no fixed abode.’

  ‘All right, Andrew.’ Brunnie leaned forward. ‘Let’s cut to the chase, shall we? For the record, you told us a body had been buried, and you told us that you played a part in the burial operation. We found the body exactly where you said it would be, so you are at least an accessory after the fact. At the very least.’