Playing with Fire

by Patricia Hall

  ‘Of course not, Sergeant,’ Mercer said.

  ‘Well, I’ll leave you to press on with what you need to do while I go to talk to my boss. At the moment we’ve got this down as an unexplained death, quite possibly an accident. But one way or another it has to be explained and it could get a whole lot worse than that.’

  Barnard was back at the nick by mid-morning, leaving Hugh Mercer to trawl through his books and membership lists in no doubt that he would be hearing from the police again within a few hours. The sergeant had found no satisfactory lead into his inquiries yet but he was aware that the tragedy at the Late Supper Club was somehow meshing into a web of worries which had been bothering him for months. He knew as well as Mercer did that there had been drugs fairly freely available for years in the strip clubs and pubs and dubious entertainment venues and cafes of Soho. It had been the seedy bohemian centre of London since before the war with a cosmopolitan population which attracted outsiders looking for excitement and an element of risk and the chance to see the famous – or notorious – at play. It was one of the reasons why he enjoyed working there and he reckoned he knew how to take its temperature and keep its illegality within bounds without driving away the clients the bars and pubs and clubs and restaurants relied on and the relatively harmless entertainment they indulged in. What was new was the fact that the new celebrities patronizing the up-and-coming venues like the Late Supper Club were attracting followers much younger and more unpredictable than of old.

  And recently he had picked up another undercurrent which was not normal. It was not just that Soho was pulling in new clients from further afield looking for excitement they could not get in the suburbs and with money in their pockets to pay for it. There was also, he reckoned, a new reticence among the contacts he had relied on for as long as he had worked in the crowded narrow streets to tell him what was going on under the glittering, frenetic surface of the place. There were faces he did not know and who walked away quickly when he appeared, transactions which were concealed round corners when a uniformed officer walked at the regulation pace down Greek Street or round Soho Square on patrol, and an increasing number, not just of drunks later at night, staggering and falling down as they always had done for years, but of much younger punters who walked unsteadily in circles with glazed eyes looking for something they did not seem to be able to find.

  It was not just Barnard who was uneasy. The nick had been put on alert by Scotland Yard, who told them that the inflow of banned substances through the docks was increasing. And some of it, Barnard guessed, or even a lot of it, was reaching his manor. If the girl who had plunged out of the club window in Greek Street had been using drugs, then a simple accident was not necessarily the way to describe what had ended her life. She needed to be identified urgently and her route to the Late Supper Club checked out. In the end the suppliers needed to be found before any more victims ended up dead on the pavement. And for that to happen he had to persuade Mercer and the clients who were in his club last night to help him, and that might not be easy as a significant proportion of them might be involved themselves and more likely to try to pull strings at the Yard to keep their names out of the papers rather than cooperate with queries from the local nick.

  Time was, Barnard thought, that such a response was confined to a strata of society which regarded itself as a distinct cut above most coppers. But there were new and different aristocrats now with just as much money in their pockets as the traditional kind, who were often crippled by the debts and mortgages which hung around their family mansions. And the new young stars too might well expect, with a sense of entitlement that used to take generations to breed, that they would be able to remain above the law where ordinary mortals might expect to fall foul of it. It was time, Barnard thought, to consult the boss.

  He hung his coat and hat up as carefully as usual when he got back to his desk in the CID squad room, straightened his new Liberty print tie and smoothed his hair, which was widely regarded as too long by his senior officers, before reporting to the DCI along the corridor. Barnard and DCI Keith Jackson had never had the easiest of relationships. The precise, puritanical Scot, his person and his desk always immaculate and his manner unbending, did not hide his dislike of Barnard’s enthusiasm for swinging London’s fashion, music and lifestyle, something which Jackson evidently could not even begin to comprehend on aesthetic or moral grounds. He was like the ultimate parent watching a whole generation of wild teenagers and young adults chuck their lives away.

  ‘So what exactly have you asked the manager to do?’ Jackson asked sharply. ‘I don’t care how much his members value their privacy. A girl is dead, perhaps not as accidentally as we are being led to believe. I want the names and addresses of everyone who was in that club last night, not just when she fell but before that as well. I want to know who took her there and what she had to drink or smoke or inject or whatever else they get up to these days. You know the Yard want some progress on drugs in Soho. They’re so worried that they are halfway to setting up a special squad to concentrate on the trade. They know stuff is coming in but so far they don’t have a clue who’s distributing it or where. But from what I hear this is not just marijuana. There are all sorts of dangerous substances floating about that even the doctors don’t know the effect of yet.’

  ‘I’ll ask the pathologist to make sure we know exactly what she had taken,’ Barnard said. ‘I’ve got the manager going through all the paperwork and I’ll check it out later. I’ve told him I want details of everyone who was in that club last night. Someone who was in there must know who she was. Someone older must have taken her in.’

  ‘Right. Someone who should have known better,’ Jackson snapped. ‘You have to ask what the parents were thinking, letting a young girl out in Soho at that time of night.’

  ‘Sir,’ Barnard agreed.

  ‘And on another matter,’ Jackson ploughed on, and Barnard had a good idea what that matter might be simply from the expression of impatience on his face. ‘You haven’t heard anything about where your friend Ray Robertson has vanished to, have you? Anything on the bush telegraph, even after all this time? Anything from the Soho contacts you think so highly of? Now his brother is safely locked up he might be tempted back into the mainstream, don’t you think?’

  ‘To my knowledge, Ray Robertson never dealt in drugs,’ Barnard said carefully. He had hoped that Robertson’s disappearance would be the end of a long-standing connection which went back to the East End school from which they both had been evacuated during the war. But he was well aware that his bosses were still linking his own name to his old schoolfriend with depressing regularity as if the relationship had never changed.

  ‘I haven’t seen or heard from him since I last picked up his trail out in Essex. I thought he must have gone abroad after Georgie was sent down, but he wouldn’t have contacted me anyway. He must know I was furious with him for putting my girlfriend’s life at risk, leaving her there at that farmhouse without telling anyone.’

  ‘Well, that’s what you keep telling me,’ Jackson said, not hiding his scepticism. He glanced at his watch. ‘You’d better get over to the morgue. The post-mortem is due to start at eleven. We haven’t indicated yet that it might be more than an accident, so they won’t be treating it as urgent. If you’re convinced there’s more to it, make sure they prioritize the blood tests. And then chase the manager at the club again for all the information he’s got. I don’t care how well known some of his members are. Notorious might be a better word. Either way they’re not above the law and they won’t get any favours here. Get on with it, Sergeant. You’ve a lot of lost ground to make up after your last little adventure. You can be sure that the Yard are watching your every move, and probably the other lot as well. The spooks’ll be keeping a close eye. Once you’ve come to their attention they don’t forget about you. I don’t think they ever let go.’

  ‘Guv,’ Barnard muttered as he turned away, not bothering to hide his anger but too wary to make
any comment.

  ‘Don’t forget to see if you can track Robertson down either,’ Jackson added as Barnard opened his office door, and he knew it was not just an afterthought. Someone somewhere had the missing Ray Robertson, once his boyhood protector, in his sights, and he did not fancy becoming collateral damage.

  TWO

  Kate O’Donnell was having what passed for a quiet day at the office. She had slept late, only vaguely aware of Harry Barnard’s second early departure after which, she realized, she must have fallen deeply asleep again. That was hardly surprising, she thought with a satisfied smile as she had rolled out from among the tangled sheets. She had washed and dressed quickly, not bothered with more than a cup of coffee and had almost run down the hill from Barnard’s flat to Archway Road and the Underground station. Clutching a paper bag containing a couple of iced buns in lieu of breakfast, she had been relieved to find that the photographers’ room at Ken Fellows’ agency, where she remained the only female photographer on the staff, was still crowded with her colleagues while Ken’s office, behind its glass screen, remained unlit and empty.

  ‘Where is he?’ she now asked the half-dozen men who seemed to be milling about aimlessly.

  ‘Held up on the Central line apparently,’ one of the more approachable older men deigned to inform her. ‘He should be here soon.’

  ‘Right,’ Kate said, taking a bite of a sticky bun, settling at her desk and opening her file of recent pictures which she guessed she might as well make a start on filing. But she had hardly begun to make an impression on her chosen task when she was waved over to the phone at the end of the room and heard a voice on a crackly line which she barely recognized, although it had once been very familiar.

  ‘Kate?’ it asked urgently. ‘I got your number from Tess. I didn’t know who else to ring.’

  ‘Who’s that?’ Kate asked, not because she was not entirely sure, but more because she was not sure this would be a conversation she wanted to have. ‘It’s a terrible line.’

  ‘It’s Dave, Dave Donovan, la. I need some help, Katie.’

  ‘Where are you?’ she asked, trying to hide her surprise at hearing from a boyfriend she had finished with, to his intense discontent, soon after she had met Harry Barnard. ‘Are you in London again?’ she asked, her voice cautiously neutral.

  ‘No, no, I’m ringing you from my mam’s phone in Aintree. I’m ringing about my girlfriend, Marie Collins. Do you remember her, la?’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Kate mumbled.

  ‘You must remember her,’ Dave said querulously, as if Kate’s memory lapse, if that was what it was, was some sort of moral lapse as well. ‘Well, anyway, she’s in London and I can’t get hold of her. She gave me a phone number but no one ever answers. She went a couple of weeks ago and I’ve been trying for days to get hold of her.’

  ‘What’s she doing down here?’ Kate asked, relieved that Dave at least had a girlfriend, even if she was missing, and that he was not on some misguided mission to restart their own relationship.

  ‘I told her not to go – begged her, like – but she thinks she’s another Cilla Black and is sure she can make it down there. Singing with my band round Merseyside wasn’t good enough for her, so she took off to look for a manager who’ll get her a recording contract. Solo, you know? She tried Brian Epstein up here – the Beatles’ manager? – but he turned her down. I think Cilla’s the only girl he handles. And Marie was full of herself, full of plans, but I’ve not heard from her for weeks now. I’m getting really worried.’

  ‘Is she another Cilla?’ Kate asked. ‘Really that good? There must be hundreds of girls in Liverpool who think that.’

  ‘She’s pretty good,’ Dave said, but Kate could hear the faint reluctance in his voice. She could imagine how he would resent it if this Marie really did do well in London where he had failed.

  ‘But not that good?’

  ‘No, I don’t think so. But if she’s been turned down again she’ll be heartbroken. I really need to find her.’

  ‘London’s a big place, Dave. You know that,’ Kate said, feeling slightly panicked at the magnitude of what Dave was suggesting and remembering how the city had so thoroughly chewed him up and spat him out when he had brought his whole group south to try to make a name for themselves. ‘Have you no idea where she’s been staying? Or who with?’

  ‘I told you, no one’s answering the phone number she gave me.’

  ‘Do you have an address, and a photograph maybe? I could go round there and see if I can find out if she’s moved, and if so where to,’ Kate said doubtfully. ‘People move around all the time – you know that. It’s difficult to find decent places to live. The landlords rip you off.’

  ‘Yeah, yeah, that’s why I called you. I sent you a picture – one of the publicity shots she had taken to show Brian Epstein. And the address, though I don’t know where it is exactly. It doesn’t seem very detailed to me. A number and a road, that’s all. Anyway, I posted it to what I thought was still your place with Tess and when you didn’t get back to me I rang there and she said you weren’t living there any more. What’s going on, Katie?’

  ‘Never mind, it’s complicated,’ Kate said. ‘But Tess will have kept the post for me.’ There was no reason at all why she should account to Dave Donovan for anything after all this time. ‘I can go round to the flat after work and pick the photo up.’ She sighed. ‘I’ll see what I can do,’ she said. ‘But I don’t hold out high hopes. And if that doesn’t work I can’t think of anything else you can do apart from reporting it to the police.’

  ‘So you’re still with that smartie-pants London bizzie who fancied you when your brother Tom was in trouble?’ Dave asked aggressively, and in spite of the background noise on the long-distance line, Kate could tell that he still resented the fact that Barnard had taken his place in her affections. ‘Tess said that you weren’t really sharing the flat with her any more. Just paying the rent.’

  ‘I told you. It’s complicated. You don’t need to know. I’ll pick up your stuff and see what I can do with it,’ Kate said without, she hoped, much sign of enthusiasm and dodging the still slightly fraught issue of where she was living. She didn’t want anything more about that getting back to the sharp eyes of her zealous mother in Liverpool. But Dave did not seem to appreciate that maybe Marie was another girlfriend like she had been, with ambitions that had overtaken her affections and, like her, had run into Dave’s deep suspicion of women who wanted careers of their own. Reluctantly she gave him Barnard’s home phone number at the flat.

  ‘Better to catch me there than here at work,’ she said. ‘I’ll talk to Harry Barnard anyway when I see him later and see what he thinks.’

  ‘Do you have to?’ Dave asked, and she wondered how that touch of jealousy had survived so long if this Marie was such a serious girlfriend that she had slotted into Kate’s vacant place.

  ‘I told you. I don’t think the police will do anything unless someone reports her missing,’ she said. She wondered whether Donovan would actually use the number anyway if it meant involving Harry, who was much more likely to answer the phone than she was.

  ‘I’ll pick up the details from Tess and see what we can do,’ she said, although she knew that there was probably no way she could track down a missing girl who might have her own good reasons for leaving Dave Donovan high and dry on Merseyside. After all, he had just reminded her of those very good reasons she had had herself.

  Harry Barnard took his time on the way to the hospital for the post-mortem. He had just enough time, he thought, to call on a few of his contacts and try to uncover just why so many of the legitimate and less legitimate businesses which lined the relatively quiet morning streets were suddenly less willing to talk to him. But he got nowhere until he passed an Italian bar much like the one where he and Kate often shared lunch and found the proprietor sweeping broken glass from his doorway.

  ‘What happened?’ he asked the owner who he knew simply as Mario.

  Ma
rio shrugged massively and raised his hands in the air. ‘A car,’ he said. ‘Nearly came through the window. Didn’t stop. I didn’t even look for a number – it gave me such a shock. An accident, I suppose. These things happen.’

  ‘Did you call the police when it happened?’ Barnard asked, but he knew from the way Mario’s eyes slid past him to scan the street in both directions warily that he hadn’t and probably wouldn’t the next time either. And he was sure that there would be a next time if someone had really taken up where Ray Robertson had left off.

  ‘No point is there, Sergeant? You won’t catch him.’

  ‘And you really don’t know who “him” is?’

  Mario shrugged again, scooped up a shovel full of broken glass and pitched it into a bucket.

  ‘Didn’t you see the driver or get the car number?’

  ‘Just a passing car,’ he said. ‘An accident. Bad driving. Young men don’t concentrate. They watch the girls.’

  ‘But usually they stop when they hit something,’ Barnard said. ‘Do you have insurance?’ he asked, knowing the answer before Mario shook his head emphatically.

  ‘Nothing like that,’ Mario insisted, although they both knew he was lying. There had been a time not so long ago when the only ‘insurance’ around on some of the narrow, crowded streets of Soho was the criminal kind, and it was not only Mario’s situation which convinced him that maybe those days had returned. He just hoped that DCI Jackson’s suspicion that Ray Robertson might be relaunching at least one of his former enterprises was a nightmare too far to become a reality. For him personally, the implications would be seriously unwelcome. He sighed and glanced at his watch.

  ‘I have to be somewhere,’ he said. ‘A young girl died in Greek Street last night after a fall. But I’ll be back, I promise.’

  ‘Que sera, sera,’ Mario said, although he did not look as though he meant it any more than Barnard went along with the sentiment. What the sergeant wanted to know as he set off again towards the hospital was who was really behind the resurgence of a protection racket on these streets if it wasn’t Robertson? He did not believe this was just a few petty criminals riding their luck. Someone would be organizing it and whoever that was would be trouble. He knew his manor well enough to feel anxiety in the air as eyes slid away from him as he hurried away from the damaged bar. He was aware that since the Robertson brothers had been absent from Soho’s streets – one incarcerated and the other evidently keeping a very low profile for reasons of his own – the atmosphere had lightened. But this morning the fear was undoubtedly back and seemed to linger in every narrow lane and back alley and behind the unusual number of doors which were closed tight and, he guessed, locked and bolted by locals confused by what was going on.