Playing with Fire

by Patricia Hall

  ‘I think I’m all partied out,’ Kate said with a shudder.

  ‘Your photographs were brilliant by the way. They’ll make or break the case, DI Jamieson says.’

  ‘That’s good,’ Kate said.

  ‘Get dressed, sweetheart, and I’ll take you over to Shepherd’s Bush.’ He put his arms around her, kissed her with a sense of profound relief and struggled to let her go again. ‘I’m sorry I have to go to work but if I don’t get these bastards off my back I’m finished.’

  By eight thirty Barnard was at the nick and found DI Jamieson had taken over his desk and had Kate’s photographs spread out in front of him. He looked up as Barnard hung up his coat and thrust a bundle of photographs into Barnard’s hand.

  ‘Look for anomalies,’ he said. ‘We need more than we’ve got so far. People of interest are Destry, DS Cotton, Minelli and Mercer. Who are they talking to? Are they carrying anything that might contain drugs? Who is behaving as if they might have taken drugs? If drinks are being spiked have we got a picture of that going on? We weren’t there but this is almost as good as.’

  Barnard pulled up a spare chair and they worked slowly through every picture that had been developed from Kate’s film. The pictures taken at the Late Supper Club came first and then those taken at the party with her venture into the tower first where there was plenty of evidence of the top floor being used as a store, to a series taken back in the main rooms where the partygoers could be seen beginning to enjoy themselves. He wondered how she had concealed her camera so effectively but realized she had taken most of the shots close to the windows where the light was better, and a lot of them were taken at oblique angles at which it was sometimes difficult to recognize faces.

  Ten minutes in, Barnard whistled between his teeth. Among the pictures taken at the party, Kevin Dunne had been caught on camera carrying a heavy punchbowl into the room where the food was laid out. In the background it was obvious that the firework display was about to start outside and while most people had their backs to him at the windows, Jason Destry had been caught by the camera pouring something from a small bottle into several glasses and then topping them up with punch. He and Dunne were laughing in the next shot as they carried the glasses to willing drinkers in the crowd including, Barnard was gutted to see, Donovan and he guessed Kate as well, no doubt with her camera well hidden.

  ‘That’s when it happened,’ he said. ‘And she only took a couple more shots after that. It must have hit her almost straight away.’

  By mid-morning DI Jamieson was a relatively happy man. ‘So, we’ve got them on drug charges at the party, and supplying, with the picture Kate took of the boxes in the tower, before the fire started, and we know what we’re looking for at the Late Supper Club. The fire brigade say not everything was completely destroyed in the Surrey fire so we’ll start taking the place apart later today. We know that Mercer at the Late Supper Club was on good terms with Minelli and Cotton and Destry. What we don’t know is who Minelli is and where he’s getting his supplies from. Is that a fair summary?’

  ‘I think so,’ Barnard said. The phone rang on his desk and he picked it up thinking it would be Kate, but the line was poor and he only identified the voice with difficulty as the elderly Maltese boss, Frankie Falzon. He grabbed Jamieson’s arm and indicated that he should listen.

  ‘Mr Falzon?’ he said. ‘Can I help you?’ Both of the detectives could hear Falzon laugh and his attempt to speak ended in a fit of coughing.

  ‘You wanted to know about Minelli,’ Falzon said. ‘Not Maltese, I told you already. Not Italian either. He is from Corleone.’ There was more coughing at the other end of the line before he was able to speak again. ‘Corleone is in Sicily.’ Barnard thought the line had gone dead but after a long pause Falzon spoke again. ‘Evie Renton was one of my girls years ago,’ he said. ‘She told one of my people a few weeks ago that Minelli was threatening her.’ And with that the line went dead.

  When Barnard passed that message on to Jamieson the horror on the DI’s face told Barnard all he needed to know about the implications of that. If he had begun to wonder if Soho was sliding imperceptibly into a war, it had now been openly declared.

  EPILOGUE

  Kate had pleaded with Harry Barnard not to go to Ma Robertson’s funeral. He had come home from the nick the previous night grim-faced to tell Kate that the mystery of the girl who had plunged out of the Late Supper Club window had been resolved at last. DI Brian Jamieson had been with Barnard when a middle-aged couple from south London had called at the nick’s front office. Their local police station where they had reported their fifteen-year-old daughter Jackie Greenwood missing had suggested they talk to the police in Soho where an unidentified girl still lay in the morgue. She had been at school with Jason Destry, who had been a few years older than her, the parents said, but they had no idea that she had been in touch with him again. The morning paper reports of Destry’s arrest had made them wonder. Life had been difficult with Jackie for some time, her parents said, and when she had stormed out of the house the night before she died, she had said she was leaving for ever. It was not until they had identified her battered body that they realized that this time she had probably meant it.

  ‘It looks as if she tried to renew her friendship with Destry,’ Barnard told Kate. ‘We think she maybe waited outside the club until she saw him go in. He seems to have been lying about her from the beginning. When I questioned him about her he insisted she was a stranger and that he had merely told her to go home. He claimed he had left the club before she fell out of the window, something the manager confirmed readily enough.’

  ‘That’s very sad,’ Kate said. ‘Destry seems to damage everyone he touches. Like Ray Robertson. You really don’t need to go to his mother’s funeral,’ Kate said, putting a hand on his arm. ‘Please, Harry. You know Mr Jackson will be furious. Forget Ray Robertson, for goodness’ sake. He’s over.’

  ‘It’ll be fine,’ Barnard said as he tightened the knot on his black tie and pulled on his black jacket. ‘She was around all the time I was a kid. You don’t know how close those relationships were during the war. The place had been blown to bits. Ray Robertson’s dad had died in Normandy. We were just beginning to believe we might be winning the war when Ray and Georgie and I finally got back to the East End after being evacuated. It didn’t matter that Ma was probably keeping half-a-dozen of her husband’s illegal enterprises going. I didn’t know about all that. I was only a kid, but I did know that she was keeping that half-wrecked community going as well. I have to go to the funeral.

  ‘There won’t be any trouble,’ he said to Kate as he left the flat. ‘I checked whether they were letting Georgie out but the Home Secretary turned the request down apparently. It’ll be a traditional East End funeral but with only one son there. Nobody there will care about me. They won’t even remember who I am. And Falzon has said he will behave. There’ll be no trouble.’

  The streets had been lined with spectators as the black horses pulled the traditional hearse slowly through Bethnal Green to the church. But the crowds had largely dispersed by the time the coffin had been lowered into the grave and the ritual handfuls of earth dropped on top. Barnard had kept well back because he could clearly see Ray Robertson himself among the family group into which Ray had evidently incorporated Frankie Falzon, his former rival in Soho, accompanied by a phalanx of stocky, dark-haired minders. It was all, Barnard thought, out of time, a reminder of when men like this dominated East London, but this was the sixties and their time was over. They were reduced to burying an old woman and she would certainly be the last of the family to gain even this faded recognition.

  But as the mourners moved away from the grave back towards the limousines which would carry them to the funeral meats, Barnard was horrified to hear a shot ring out. There was no doubting what it was and Ray Robertson seemed to stumble for a moment before recovering, taking Frankie Falzon’s arm and leading him away quickly while his minders spread out looking f
or the gunman.

  Further down the street, making it impossible for the cars to move away, Barnard could see a group of uniformed police in some sort of a tussle and moved quickly himself to join the departing mourners. He put his hand on Robertson’s arm.

  ‘Ray Robertson, I’m arresting you for perverting the course of justice. You don’t have to say anything but anything you do say may be used in evidence …’

  Falzon’s minders surrounded him very quickly and hustled him away, and Barnard and Robertson were left alone for a moment until the police reinforcements moved closer, DI Jamieson among them.

  ‘At least you waited till Ma was laid to rest,’ Robertson said, not making any attempt to move away. But he looked, Barnard thought, defiant as they watched the approaching officers and he knew he was not going to be easy to convict.

  ‘I think it was Minelli with the gun,’ Jamieson said. ‘I caught just a glimpse of him but he had a car waiting. Difficult to know if he was aiming at Robertson or Falzon or you, but no doubt we’ll be seeing more of him.

  ‘He’s not holding back then?’

  ‘Did you think he would? He’s not playing games, he’s trying to take over.’

  ‘Falzon thinks he’s to blame for Evie’s death. Maybe he didn’t kill her himself but he wanted her dead to keep the rest of the women in order.’

  ‘Could be,’ Jamieson agreed. ‘Did DCI Jackson know what you were planning for Robertson?’ Barnard shook his head.

  ‘He’s got questions to answer. I thought if I’m going to join you in the drug squad we’d better have a clean start. No baggage, guv.’

  ‘Good,’ Jamieson said. ‘Let’s make it work then. OK?’