Penny Yewdall and Tom Ainsclough turned to each other and smiled.
‘I see you smile,’ Dafne Zipes observed. ‘Have I said something that has caused you some amusement?’
‘No.’ Tom Ainsclough turned to Dafne Zipes. ‘No, no, you haven’t, but you did say something that is a little relevant. You see, this whole investigation started last week, a week ago on Monday, in fact, when I was standing in a pub in Notting Hill and I was working as an undercover officer … wearing old, worn-out clothes with three days’ growth on my chin and looking very unlike a police officer, when a man who was well in his cups ambled up to me and confessed to once having been part of a murder, and even told me where the body was buried. He was tortured by guilt and the drink made him want to confess to the crime, or his part in it. The drink made him want to talk to a stranger, you see.’
‘He must have been tortured,’ Dafne Zipes observed.
‘We investigated because he told us where the body had been buried and said body transpired to be that of Victoria Keynes.’
‘Well, well, well.’ Dafne Zipes’s mouth fell open. ‘An amazing story.’
‘Yes, so not funny, but relevant,’ Yewdall added. ‘And so we are here, all because a drunken man talked to a stranger.’
‘I see why you smiled now,’ Dafne Zipes commented. ‘So, I suggested that Victoria might try to drink a bottle of wine when alone so she might think and not be distracted by company, so that the alcohol might release the inhibitors that were causing her to black out her teenage years. She took the advice and when she came to see me for her next session she just blurted out that she thinks her father did “some things” as she said, to her. And I said, “Yes, I too think he did some things to you.” She asked what she should so. She asked if she should keep drinking alcohol, to which I said “no”. I told her that the wine has done its job. I told her that her memory box has been unlocked and the whole story would start to seep out a little at a time. I also told her that she should let it come out and that she was not to push it back into the box. I advised her to tell me what she remembered when she remembered it. By then I knew where to lay the focus and so I asked her to tell me about her family, just to get a little background, you see.’
‘Yes.’ Yewdall ran her fingers through her hair. ‘Quite interesting, I would have thought.’
‘Oh … it was.’ Dafne Zipes nodded. ‘It was and still is, really. The really interesting thing was that her father took her mother’s name when they married. It is only convention, not law, which makes the woman take the man’s surname upon marriage. Her father’s surname was Lis. But she didn’t know why he did not want to keep his own surname. I said that I might be able to shed light there because I have a Polish background, like her father, and told her that his Lis in Polish can mean “sly” or “fox-like” being of “low cunning”. It would be like being called Mr Sly in the English speaking world.’
‘That is interesting.’ Yewdall wrote ‘Lis’ on her notepad. ‘There won’t be many Lis’s in the London telephone directory.’
‘He was also remembered by Victoria as being something of a “house husband”. Initially he was a teacher like Victoria’s mother, but then was at home all day looking after the house while her mother went to work and brought home the bacon. Her mother taught at a school some distance from the home, left very early and returned mid-evening. Victoria’s school, on the other hand, was quite close by and so there was a significant time at the beginning and the end of the school day when Victoria and her father were alone together and he also insisted that she return home for her lunch every day, further increasing the time he was able to take advantage of her. She reported in later sessions that he had some strange hold over her which she was unable to resist, and which is often the case. Some people have a very manipulative nature. It is very common amongst psychopaths. She recovered the memory of inappropriate touching and fondling but not of full penetrative sex – that was most probably still blocked out, I thought, rather than because it did not happen. I asked her if she wanted to report her father to the police. I volunteered to go with her to offer some emotional support, but she was reluctant … she was reluctant to “plough up the past”, as she put it, and she also said that the revelation of what her father had done would destroy her mother, for whom she had a strong sense of loyalty. I told her that “digging up the past” would be the only way she would bring closure to it all, the only way she would ever feel comfortable to let men touch her and that, I regret to say, was the last I saw of her.’
‘She stopped attending?’ Yewdall asked.
‘Yes,’ Dafne Zipes replied calmly. ‘I offered her a course of ten sessions and she attended for eight … I think it was eight … I can go over my records, but it was all left hanging in the air and so I never knew if she reported her father to the police or not. It seems now that she did not report him.’ Dafne Zipes paused. ‘You know, Victoria told me that she recalled her father teaching at a school … St Aiden’s, yes, that was it … The name registered because I have a friend of that name. It is, or it at least was, close to their home. The staff there might be worth chatting to.’
‘St Aiden’s.’ Yewdall wrote on her pad. ‘Yes …’ She glanced at Tom Ainsclough, who nodded. ‘Yes, we’ll pay them a visit.’
‘You know I wrote up the case for the National Journal of Psychotherapy, making particular reference to my suggestion that the patient use alcohol to unlock the memory. The article generated a lot of correspondence which the journal published over the next few months, with about half condemning my approach and half subscribing to the notion that you can’t make an omelette without breaking a few eggs. Some harm has to be risked, even done, to achieve a greater good. The end justified the means, in a nutshell. Anyway, the inescapable truth was that it worked.’
Driving away from Dafne Zipes’s home, Penny Yewdall commented, ‘There won’t be a lot of Lis’s in the London telephone directory; there won’t be many in our database either.’
Tom Ainsclough reached for his mobile phone. ‘That’s what I was also thinking.’ When his call was answered he said, ‘I’d like to do a criminal records check, please.’
St Aiden’s School in Selhurst revealed itself to be a slab-sided, flat-roofed, brick-built 1950s’ building. Yewdall and Ainsclough parked their car outside the main entrance, climbed the short flight of wide concrete steps and entered the foyer where they found two boys about twelve years of age sitting side by side and both looking very worried. Ainsclough asked them directions to the headmaster’s office, upon which one of the boys raised an arm and indicated a corridor which led away from the foyer. Ainsclough and Yewdall followed the directions, walked down the corridor and came to a door marked ‘Headmaster’.
‘Before my time.’ The headmaster, a large, serious-minded man who appeared to be in his sixties, had instantly invited Yewdall and Ainsclough into his office upon them tapping on his door, and had then invited them to sit down rather than employing an imperious waiting time. ‘But it was a name I heard often. I arrived shortly after Keynes left the school amid mysterious circumstances and rumours were rife. But you know you should ask Margaret Debenham about Mr Keynes. She knew him though there was no love lost between them. She is recently retired after giving her working life to this school, and she has clearly bonded with it because of what it meant … and still means to her on an emotional level, and so she has chosen to retire locally. Me, I have no such plans. I have enjoyed my career and I am looking forward to my retirement, but my wife and I will be living in Norfolk in our declining years … up in Hunstanton on the Wash. We both started out there and we’ll both finish it all there. But anyway, Margaret Debenham … I have her address here … it’s very close. I’ll phone her and let her know you’ll be calling on her.’
‘Please do,’ Yewdall replied as she and Tom Ainsclough stood. ‘Please emphasize we are seeking to pick her brains and nothing more. People tend to get agitated if they know the police are going to cal
l on them. We don’t want her having a heart attack.’
‘It’ll take more than the police calling to give Margaret Debenham a heart attack.’ The headmaster grinned. ‘She might give you one though.’
Margaret Debenham’s house on Edith Road was a late-nineteenth century semi-detached house painted white and built of pale London brick. The small area in front of the house, originally grassed, had been concreted over as if to provide off-street parking, although no car or evidence of one was to be seen. Margaret Debenham was a short, finely built lady whose grey hair was close cropped. She wore a pale green dress and sensible black shoes. She instantly demonstrated to Yewdall and Ainsclough that she had a strong, almost fearless personality, and Yewdall had no difficulty imagining Miss Debenham silencing an entire class with a raised eyebrow or crushing a misbehaving pupil with a glare.
‘There was always something weird about Keynes,’ Margaret Debenham told the officers as the three of them sat in her living room which held furniture from an earlier era. ‘I never did like him. He had a controlling way about him. Even young teachers found themselves doing things for him which they knew were wrong, like standing in for him so he could nip out of school for an hour or so … and if he could make adults do that then a child would have no chance at all, and there he was with a whole building full of them. I kept well out of his way, and he sensed hostility from me and kept out of my way. Anyway, to cut a long story short, I caught him red-handed … him and a fourteen-year-old pupil together in a stock room. He had her stripped to the waist. I reported it, of course, but the headmaster at the time was a spineless cretin called Martin “I run a tight ship, Margaret” Skidmore. He always called me by my given name even though he knew I preferred to be addressed as “Miss Debenham”. He said, “The girl wasn’t harmed and no damage was done.” All right, she would have been a virgin on her wedding night, which would please the staunchly Roman Catholic family she belonged to and the staunchly Roman Catholic family which she no doubt married into … but what about the damage in here?’ Margaret Debenham jabbed her finger at the side of her head. ‘What about the emotional scarring? What about the confusion, the sense of being used? What about that? Today they would have made more of an issue of it but in those days things tended to be played down. So the upshot was that he was handed the pearl-handled revolver in the form of being allowed to resign for “personal reasons”. He collected his personal possessions from his shelves in the staff room and walked out of the building that same day. Me, I would have stood him in front of a firing squad in the form of notifying the police. I never knew where he went and I didn’t care. But I do know he had a daughter. I seem to remember her name was Victoria. I confess I found myself fretting for her welfare when she reached her teenage years.’
As Yewdall and Ainsclough drove away from Margaret Debenham’s house, Ainsclough’s mobile phone vibrated. He listened for a moment and then said, ‘I see. Thank you.’ He pocketed the phone and turned to Penny Yewdall. ‘That was Criminal Records; they have no trace of any felon called Lis.’
‘Well, it was worth a try,’ Yewdall replied as she slowed at the junction with the main road. ‘Those stones have to be turned over. But we’ll record it as being a name of interest. We’ll flag it up.’
It was Monday, 14.40 hours.
EIGHT
Tuesday, 10.10 hours – 12.25 hours to Wednesday, 11.46 hours – 16.50 hours
‘Well, it really was quite a stroke of luck, Milkie.’ Swannell relaxed in the chair in the interview room. ‘You don’t mind us calling you Milkie?’
‘No, I’m used to it.’ Raysin turned his head away. ‘I used to mind but not any more.’
‘We thought that we’d have to search every tap room in every pub in the East End of London.’
‘That’s a lot of tap rooms,’ Brunnie added. ‘It could have taken us years.’
‘But what do you do, Milkie?’ Swannell grinned. ‘What do you do but walk right into our front parlour?’
‘Milkie’ Raysin showed himself to be a short, round man with a red face who breathed with difficulty, as if living with a serious chest condition. A man Brunnie had once met and who suffered with emphysema had presented a similar impression. ‘That copper had no right to arrest me; I was just walking home.’
‘Just walking home at three a.m. makes a man look suspicious and beat officers are allowed, even encouraged, to act upon suspicion.’ Brunnie relaxed in his seat. ‘Because it is the case that if something doesn’t look right, it invariably isn’t. So he stopped you, you gave a name … Malcolm Christopher Raysin, and he phoned his control to check if you were wanted and lo and behold, you’re wanted for questioning in connection with a murder. He had every right to have you huckled. So, Milkie, how are you going to help yourself, I wonder?’
‘I’m not grassing anybody up, and no, I don’t want to go into witness protection.’ ‘Milkie’ Raysin sat with his arms firmly folded, his head permanently turned to his left. ‘I like the East End of London … it’s my home. I belong in the East End; they’re my streets, my back alleys. So I’ll do time, I’ll take what’s coming to me, but eventually I’ll be released, and when I’m released I’ll be able to walk down any old street in London, you name it … any old frog and toad … with my head held high, and I won’t be frightened of meeting anybody, and I mean anybody. I’ll be able to walk into any battle cruiser, and I mean any battle cruiser, and folk will say that geezer is Milkie Raysin. He did time and he never grassed up a soul – that geezer is all right. You get street cred for that … real street cred … and that’s worth some porridge. There’ll be work for me when I get out. Some big man will want a gofer who can keep his north and south well shut. It’s all about keeping your north and south zipped up nice and tight and me, mine’s as tight as they come.’ Raysin paused. ‘But grassing up another geezer, giving evidence from inside the witness box … I don’t care what you say, no one is safe in witness protection, no one. If the big man can’t get at you he’ll get your family … and I have relatives. OK, some I haven’t seen for years, but they’re still family.’
‘You’re looking at five years, Milkie,’ Brunnie advised. ‘That’s more than you’ve done before and you haven’t been inside for a long time. And you’re quite a small guy – small guys need to watch their backs all the time on account of big guys who live with a sense of injustice and need victims.’
‘Dare say that you could go into the Vulnerable Prisoners Unit,’ Swannell suggested. ‘You’ll have some safety in there.’
‘I’m not a beast,’ Raysin replied with clear indignation. ‘You won’t get me among all those kiddie molesters, having to check my porridge for ground glass each morning. That copper took a right liberty stopping me, a right liberty.’
‘You’re still likely to be charged with conspiracy to murder,’ Swannell continued. ‘You approached “Chinese Geordie Davy” Danby when you were in the Scrubs together about renting two lock-ups in his name, for a drink each month. One lock-up was used to store firearms; the other was an execution chamber. Five years. Minimum. It could even get you ten. You’re not a young man anymore, Milkie, and you’re clearly not a fit man. You might not live to be released, unless it’s to be released to hospital for terminal care.’
‘You won’t be walking into any battle cruiser at all.’ Brunnie spoke softly. ‘And you won’t have no street to have any cred in.’
‘I can’t see no road round it,’ Raysin answered equally softly as he wheezed for breath. ‘I’m not a grass … I never was … I never will be.’
‘Well, supposing we help you?’ Swannell suggested.
‘How?’ Raysin turned his head and looked at Swannell. ‘How can you help me?’
‘There are ways,’ Brunnie added. ‘There are a number of ways – quite a few, in fact.’
‘How?’ A glimmer of hope flashed across Raysin’s tired-looking eyes. ‘How can you help old Milkie?’
‘What we’re … who we are interested in is the man
who “Chinese Geordie Davy” Danby rented the lock-ups for, the guy who used them. You and Danby are co-conspirators. Somebody must have approached you to ask you to find a gofer who was not known to be a crim to use to rent the lock-ups,’ Swannell pressed. ‘You were the intermediary, the go-between, between the gunsmith, the snuff man and Danby. Who did you feed Danby’s name to?’
Raysin remained silent.
‘Look, Milkie.’ Brunnie sat forward in his chair. ‘We keep all the evidence relating to unsolved crimes, and right now our firearms experts are test firing all the shooters we found in the lock-up in Stratford, and if one can be matched to a bullet taken from a crime scene where shooters were used or someone was murdered … then … that is ten years for you, Milkie. The clock’s ticking. You know Danby made the same sort of noises as you about not being a grass and all the rest of it, but now he’s accepted witness protection.’
‘He has?’ Raysin wheezed.
‘Yes, he has,’ Swannell added. ‘You might do well to take a leaf out of his book.’
‘He hasn’t any family,’ Raysin protested. ‘I have, so no witness protection for me, even if I die in the slammer. I’m not doing it.’
‘So how about giving us a name on the QT? If you do that, and we get a result, we won’t charge you. We’ll let you walk and nobody will even know you’ve been in the police station. But we’ll need as much information as you can let us have,’ Swannell explained. ‘The more you scratch our back then the more we’ll scratch yours.’
‘I get the idea.’ Raysin took a shallow breath and the action caused him clear discomfort. ‘You’re right; I’m too old for the slammer. Old Milkie is on the downward slope … well on.’
‘So do you warm to the idea?’ Swannell asked.
‘Well …’ Raysin took another difficult breath. ‘Let’s say I don’t get cold; old Milkie don’t feel cold to the idea.’
‘So who do we need to look for?’ Brunnie pressed. ‘Name a name.’
In Vino Veritas Page 19