Playing with Fire

by Patricia Hall

  The gym was still standing, though only just. It had never been anything other than a barn of a place with little spent on maintenance apart from the boxing rings and equipment, but now it was almost derelict, clearly abandoned and bearing official notices that it was to be demolished along with the rest of the street in a redevelopment scheme, one of many being completed by the local council to, as they saw it, complete the modernization of East London after the war. Ray Robertson might have hung on to the Delilah Club even after his apparent disappearance, but had evidently not been able to hang on here. The fight posters still hung outside, torn and tattered and fluttering in the wind. They were all that was left not only of Barnard’s unfulfilled teenager’s dreams, but those of dozens of other East End lads who had hoped to fight their way out of the slums by skill rather than crime. Ray Robertson had evidently abandoned this long-cherished project and did not look like coming back any time soon, if at all.

  The sergeant eased the car back into the busy Whitechapel Road and headed further east, parking close to Bethnal Green station where, the last time he had visited Ma Robertson, a couple of streets of pre-war terraced houses had still been standing, looking determined to ignore the natural dilapidation of pre-First World War homes thrown up for the dockers and then the additional sideswipes of the Blitz, which had left gaps like rotten teeth on both sides of the street. He crossed the main road and made his way down Alma Street, immediately aware that the place was seriously more ruined than the last time he had been there. Most of the houses were plastered with the same sort of notices that had been attached to Ray Robertson’s gym and some were already vacant with their windows and doors securely boarded up. The green paint on the door of Ma Robertson’s home was faded and streaked and there were signs that the ubiquitous demolition notice had been ripped away. Barnard smiled faintly. Ma Robertson had promised to fight for her house to the bitter end the last time he had spoken to her and it looked as if that was exactly what she was going to do. But at the very least a light showed through the front window, obscured by net curtains, and when he knocked the door was quickly opened. The old woman looked a little greyer, a little more bent, but still with the implacable expression and the unforgiving cold eyes he remembered, still in control and obviously still as determined as ever to remain in her home.

  ‘Oh, it’s you,’ she said without even the faintest of smiles. ‘You’d best come in, duck, although unless you can get the council off my back I’ve not much use for you or anyone else right now.’ She led the way into the living room, which looked to Barnard much the same as it had fifteen or twenty years ago. Ma Robertson must have pocketed substantial sums of money over the years she had been active as a guiding hand in East End crime, but she had always refused to move house. How she had avoided prosecution herself Barnard had never understood, but he supposed it was largely because there had never been anyone among her friends and relations who would give evidence against her. She had been well protected and no doubt still was.

  ‘The houses are finally coming down then?’ Barnard asked.

  ‘So they say,’ Ma Robertson said. ‘I’ve told them it’ll be over my dead body.’

  ‘Haven’t they offered you a new place? They can’t put you on the street, surely?’

  ‘A place in an old folks’ home,’ Ma Robertson almost spat. ‘Not even a flat in one of the new blocks. A bloody home to wait to die in. My old man would be spitting tacks. Those two sons of mine have as much idea about family as a bag of rotten fish from Billingsgate.’

  ‘Surely Ray can do something better than an old folks’ home for you,’ Barnard said, surprised. ‘He built that massive house out in Epping for his missus. Hasn’t he still got that?’

  ‘How should I know?’ Ray’s mother said.

  ‘Really,’ Barnard said, genuinely surprised, ‘I thought he would have kept in touch. Actually, it was Ray I was looking for. You don’t know where he is, do you? I need to talk to him.’

  Ma Robertson shrugged. Her older son, never her favourite, was obviously seriously out of favour, and Barnard guessed he would not get much help here.

  ‘He doesn’t tell me anything these days,’ she said. ‘I haven’t seen him for months. I might as well not have sons the way Georgie and Ray have turned out, one in jail and the other vanished off the face of the earth.’

  ‘You may not have seen Ray but have you heard from him?’ Barnard came back quickly. ‘There’s still some official interest in his whereabouts and I don’t think it’s going to go away.’

  ‘I reckon he’s gone abroad,’ Ma Robertson said just a bit too quickly. ‘He always said he wanted to travel.’

  Barnard tried to hide his scepticism at that. He had never once heard Ray Robertson exhibit the slightest interest in ‘abroad’ and as far as he knew none of the family had ever had a holiday any further away than Margate or the well-appointed house in Epping Forest that Ray had built for himself and his former wife when his empire was flourishing. He was quite sure that whoever at the Yard wanted to interview Robertson would be keeping a close eye on whether that comfortable mansion was being used or not, although he also knew that if Ray needed to leave the country he would not trouble the passport office to help him.

  ‘Georgie’s lodged an appeal,’ Ma Robertson said suddenly, switching back to the incarceration of her favourite son.

  ‘Yes, I knew that,’ Barnard said, his face closing suddenly. Georgie Robertson’s violent criminal career had ended far too close to himself and Kate O’Donnell for him to wish for anything other than an abject failure for that thankfully slow legal exercise.

  ‘I suppose you’d throw away the key?’ she snapped.

  ‘Something like that,’ Barnard said flatly. ‘It’s all over, Ma,’ he added. ‘Georgie, Ray, the family firm, even your street, by the sound of it. The East End the way you knew it is finished. But if Ray does pop up one day, tell him I want to talk to him. It’d be in his interest.’ And with that he left the house, slamming the door behind him, feeling he had probably left it loose on its hinges and that when push came to shove that was exactly what it deserved.

  Kate got back to Barnard’s flat before him that evening and began to prepare a meal. It might look a bit like bribery, but she wanted a favour and was not entirely sure that he would be keen on offering it. When they had finished eating she cleared the table and then sat beside him on the sofa.

  ‘I need a bit of help,’ she said. ‘I want to go to this road in Wimbledon where I think Marie Collins is staying. I looked at the Tube map but I thought it would be much quicker to go by car. Would you take me over there? Please?’

  Barnard looked at her without much enthusiasm.

  ‘You’re keeping this up then?’ he asked. ‘I’m sure you’re wasting your time. If this man Mansfield has never seen her again the chances are that she came to London for something else entirely and she wants nothing more to do with Dave Donovan. She’s probably met a new bloke in Wimbledon. Donovan will just have to get his head round that.’

  ‘You may be right,’ Kate said. ‘Mansfield did say he thought she’d met someone from one of the more successful groups, but I won’t be able to convince Dave that she’s moved on unless I’ve actually talked to Marie. Anything less and he’ll be on the next train down, and I really can’t be doing with that.’ And nor can you, she thought, although she didn’t want to spell that out. ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘It’s not that far in a car and I thought Wimbledon was an attractive place. Doesn’t it have a common, or something? And tennis?’

  ‘All of that,’ Barnard admitted reluctantly. ‘Though the tennis is a one-off thing in the summer. It’s long over for this year. I suppose we could go to one of the pubs on the common after we’ve tracked this girl down.’

  ‘That would be good,’ Kate said. ‘It sounds quite like country. Let’s do it and then we can get Dave off our backs.’

  Barnard sighed. ‘Come on then,’ he said. ‘A quick knock on her door and then we’ll explore
the pubs on Wimbledon Common. It’s a good evening for a bit of fresh air. The clocks will change soon and then it’ll be dark before we finish work. But if she’s not there that’s the end of it, Katie. Donovan can’t expect you to organize search parties for this girl all over London. It’s an impossible task, believe me. The Met itself would find it hard to track her down with the information you’ve got. We’re finding it impossible to identify this kid who fell out of the window at the club in Greek Street and she’s young enough to have a family somewhere.’

  The road Marie Collins was supposedly living in was not at the smart end of Wimbledon at the top of the hill close to the common. They drove over the river at Putney, across the wide expanse of green space and down the hill past the railway station and the shopping centre before turning left and following the District Line and mainline railway towards Wandsworth and Tooting. The houses became smaller and terraced with tatty strips of front garden more often no more than a foot or so from the pavement. This was not the Wimbledon of the All England Tennis Club and substantial houses worth tens of thousands close to the wide-open spaces at the top of the hill. It was a south London suburb of working-class families reliant on low-paid jobs, squeezed into small houses where children slept packed two or three to a room. There was less dilapidation here than in the Liverpool inner city which Kate knew so well, but not much more space, she thought. She watched the house numbers carefully.

  ‘That’s the house,’ she said as Barnard cruised slowly close to the kerb. He pulled up.

  ‘You go,’ he said. ‘I don’t want my fingerprints anywhere near this. I’m well out of my comfort zone.’

  Kate got out of the car and knocked on the front door. It was some time before a man in shirtsleeves opened it and looked anxiously behind him to where she could hear the Z Cars theme tune playing on television. She pulled Marie’s photograph out of her bag and thrust it towards him quickly before he had time to close the door in her face.

  ‘I wonder if you can help me,’ she said with what she hoped was her most appealing smile. ‘I’m trying to track down this girl from Liverpool. It’s for her boyfriend, actually. He’s not been able to contact her and he thought she was staying here a few weeks ago. Do you know her, by any chance?’

  The man glanced at the picture and shrugged. ‘Not a clue, duck,’ he said. ‘Me and my missus have lived here for years and we’ve got three kids. There’s no room for lodgers, sorry.’

  Kate put out a hand to stop him closing the door on her. ‘Is this your phone number?’ she asked hastily.

  ‘We don’t have a bloody phone,’ he said angrily and closed the door firmly in her face, keen to get back to the telly. It was, she thought, an awful long way to come for nothing. She got back into the car and slumped back in her seat with a sigh.

  ‘That was a waste of time,’ she said. ‘They’ve lived there for years and don’t know who she is. I think it’s time to go and find something more interesting to do. I’ll ring Dave again tomorrow and break it to him gently. I think she’s been telling him porky pies. She’s never been down here at all. She’s made it all up, including the phone number. I guess you were right. She’s dumped him and doesn’t want him to find her.’

  ‘Well, you know the man better than I do,’ Barnard said. ‘From what you told me about him it must be a possibility. Especially if she’s as ambitious as he says she is. If she wants to be the next Cilla Black she’s not going to want a loser like Dave Donovan hanging round her neck, is she?’

  ‘I asked about the number too, but he said he didn’t even have a phone,’ Kate said. ‘You said you could try to trace it for me. I wouldn’t make a very good detective, would I?’

  ‘Oh, I wouldn’t be too sure about that,’ Barnard said, slipping the car back into gear and out into the traffic stream again. ‘You don’t do too badly whenever I’ve seen you poking your nose in where it’s not wanted. You bring DCI Jackson out in a rash.’ He threw her a smile to take the sting out of his words, although she knew he was not entirely joking.

  ‘Will you see if you can trace the number so I’ve got something to tell Dave when I call him again? Please?’

  ‘After the weekend,’ he said. ‘Though it’s always possible she just invented it to keep him quiet.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ Kate said.

  ‘Now let’s go and have a drink in Wimbledon Village. It’s supposed to be a smart suburb, though I can’t say I’ve seen much sign of it yet. They always say if you’re a Londoner you’re either a north of the river person or a south of the river person. It doesn’t look like much of a contest so far to me.’

  FIVE

  DS Harry Barnard had not even got his coat off and his new tie aligned to his satisfaction in the CID room on Monday morning before he got a summons from DCI Jackson.

  ‘There’s been some trouble at the queer pub,’ Jackson said. ‘Someone’s been taken to Casualty at death’s door apparently. You’d better get over there. Fred Watson’s gone down with some uniforms in case we need a murder team but you know those poofs better than anyone. Go and lend a hand and check with the hospital. First report was that the victim was male and unconscious but see what you can find out. And if he’s not unconscious, get a word with him if you can. It’s probably no more than a lovers’ falling out. They tell me these people can be a bit temperamental.’

  ‘Sir,’ Barnard said, his stomach tightening. He had been sure that the tensions which had built up over the last few weeks would eventually bubble to the surface and he hoped that whoever had been hurt was not anyone he knew. He had not been entirely joking when he had told Vincent Beaufort to keep a low profile. Prejudices always seemed to ebb and flow unpredictably and there was violence swirling in the Soho air just now, quite possibly made worse by the approaching change in the law.

  ‘And, Sergeant,’ Jackson said as Barnard turned to go.

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Have you made any progress on the girl who fell from the window?’

  ‘Not really,’ Barnard said. ‘I was going to follow-up today on some of the people who were in the club that night. Someone must have taken her in …’

  ‘Well, I think we should prioritize the attack on the pub for the moment. It’ll make a bigger impact than an accident and a girl whose name we don’t even know yet. The Yard keep telling me that they are setting up some sort of specialist unit to deal with drugs so I’ll see if I can push them into action on the Late Supper Club business themselves if you think drugs were involved. A raid on the place could sort them out, I should think. We know drugs are a growing problem but a turf war over protection will be much worse and frighten the locals and the punters far more. Are you quite sure Ray Robertson isn’t trying to stage a comeback?’

  ‘As sure as I can be, sir,’ Barnard said, his hand still on the door handle.

  ‘Right, carry on then, Sergeant. See if this man is still alive. If he’s not we’ll have to pay him some attention even if his morals leave something to be desired.’

  The pub was no more than a ten-minute walk away and Barnard could see uniformed officers outside and a gaggle of bystanders watching what was going on in a sullen silence. Some of the bystanders he recognized; others were strangers and he wondered whether some had been attracted to the scene because this was the queer pub and there were some people around who objected to its very existence. He elbowed his way through the throng, pushed the closed door open and shut it behind him. DI Watson flashed a look in his direction but said nothing. Watson was coming up to retirement and was one of the officers who looked most critically in Barnard’s direction when their paths crossed. From his flamboyant clothes to his flash car, the sergeant offended his sense of what a detective should look like and how he should conduct himself. Barnard guessed that when they got back to the nick he would do his best to persuade the DCI that he could cope very well without the sergeant’s help.

  ‘Guv,’ he said by way of greeting. ‘Do we know who the victim is?’

  ‘The b
arman, apparently,’ Watson said, with a significant look. ‘Friend of yours, was he?’

  ‘I know him,’ Barnard said. ‘Goes by the name of Len Stevenson. He’s worked here for a while. Couple of years maybe.’

  ‘Poofter, is he?’

  ‘Almost certainly,’ the sergeant said, thinking that he could end his career very fast if the DI sneered at the victim and he lost his own temper. He took a deep breath, glanced around the bar with close attention for a moment and realized even in the relatively dim light that it had been comprehensively trashed, bottles smashed, glass scattered across overturned chairs and tables and a strong smell of spilt liquor permeating everything.

  ‘Looks as if he might have been lying here all night,’ Watson said. ‘Judging by the state he was in I don’t think he was beaten up this morning – more likely after closing time. He wasn’t bleeding, more congealed. Could be a lovers’ tiff maybe. You can check out the regulars later. I’m sure you know them all. Is there any regular antagonism to the existence of this place? They’re not very discreet, are they?’

  ‘We get occasional complaints, the odd punch thrown at closing time as people come out of other pubs,’ Barnard said before he took a deep breath and changed the subject.