by Paul Charles
‘Hey, sis, don’t speak about me as if I’m not here.’
‘You…’ Tor turned to her left to face Yeats. She found she couldn’t finish her sentence and shook her head instead. ‘Just keep quiet, Paul, you’re in enough trouble already.’ She then turned back to Kennedy and Coles on the opposite side of the table. ‘I’m a little to blame as well, I suppose. I was pushing Paul to get me involved in Esther’s publishing, telling him I wouldn’t look after his publishing unless he could get me Esther’s as part of the deal. I suppose I’ve always been trying to punish him for coming between me and an old flame, many years ago.’
‘Must we get into all of this now, Tor? How much dirty washing am I going to have to air in public?’ Yeats said, holding his hands up in a ‘Stop, please!’ pose.
‘Look, what I’d like to know,’ Kennedy began, growing increasing annoyed by the brother/sister squabbling, ‘is why you can’t remember exactly what you were doing or where you were on Sunday evening. A sleep after a few drinks is just too vague.’
‘If I’d known I was going to need an alibi…’ Yeats started.
‘Oh stop that television-detective tosh, Paul, and tell the inspector where you were on Sunday. Tell him exactly where you were on Sunday afternoon and Sunday evening.’ Tor was behaving like a schoolmistress now. She was comfortable in this company, a comfort that came from the fact that she knew she had nothing to fear from Kennedy, or perhaps, Kennedy thought, the comfort was coming from the fact that she knew exactly where Yeats had been last Sunday. In a strange way she seemed inwardly happier about something than she had in the morning.
‘I can’t, you know I can’t.’
‘You don’t have a choice, Paul,’ Tor said, her impatience growing. It was as if she needed the information released as much as her brother did. ‘If you had told the police the truth at the beginning of the week, you’d have saved them and yourself a lot of trouble. So tell them before I do.’
What on earth could this great revelation be, Kennedy wondered? A revelation that Tor obviously felt would get her brother off the hook.
‘I…I was with a married woman,’ Yeats admitted.
Now there’s a surprise, Kennedy thought.
‘There’s more. Tell them it all Paul. It wasn’t just any married woman, was it?’
‘I spent the afternoon and evening with Mrs Tracey Walker’
At first the name didn’t mean anything to Kennedy. The family name was faintly familiar and when he saw how much Tor was floating he suddenly realised why.
‘Isn’t she the wife of…?’ Kennedy started.
‘Exactly. You’ve got it in one. My big brother was committing cardinal sin with his best friend Roger’s wife.’ Tor filled in the details, beaming from ear to ear.
That wasn’t exactly what Kennedy had been about to say. He was going to ask if she was the wife of the man Tor had been having an affair with for years. But Tor had beaten him cleverly to the quick, diverting the focus of attention on to her brother’s infidelities and away from her own.
‘Yes inspector,’ Tor continued, obviously she’d got way to go yet, Kennedy thought to himself, ‘and I’m sure if you’d care to check this alibi with Mrs Tracey Walker, she’d confirm all of this.’
‘Oh, I’m sure they won’t need to check personally with her, sis. Surely they can take our word?’ Paul Yeats said. He was in deep water and sinking fast, and he needed a lifeline of some kind.
‘No, no, Paul, in a case this important they’ll most definitely need to check it out personally with Tracey,’ Tor said, rubbing her hands.
Yeats looked at Kennedy. If it wasn’t a lifeline Kennedy threw to him, at least it was a party balloon.
‘Well, sir,’ Kennedy said raising from the desk and terminating the interview, ‘we’ll try to be discreet.’
Chapter 38
KENNEDY THOUGHT it was amusing, as in hilarious, that Paul and Victoria Lucas had used two halves of the same couple for both horizontal recreation and alibi purposes. He didn’t, however, find it quite so amusing that one of his two prime suspects had removed themselves from his list. That left only Josef Jones, who seemed to have vanished into thin air.
The man with the high-pitched voice was still missing in action, or at least, missing in Camden Town. A big place, full of numerous warehouses, shops, pubs, clubs, railway sidings, areas of parkland, derelict buildings and offices, canals, locks, street trading stalls, not to mention railway and underground stations.
Kennedy recalled his recent adventures in the basement of the Roundhouse at Chalk Farm and the wealth of potential hiding places he’d found there. But the question was, where would Josef Jones go? He’d a connection with the Jazz Café, but maybe that was too obvious. Even so thought Kennedy, it’d be a good place to start.
The detective inspector sent Coles and Irvine to check the local pubs for any trace. He recalled Jones stating that he and his mates had a fondness for The Lansdowne in Gloucester Place. That would be their starting point, whilst Kennedy headed off to the Jazz Café at the bottom of Parkway.
Due to open at seven, the Jazz Café was a hive of activity, preparing for another busy evening. Eric Bibb was in the middle of a week-long run, and was on stage, putting his extremely tasty band through their paces. Eric’s golden voice served to encourage the best from his musicians. The Jazz Café staff tided, cleaned and polished glasses, washed bar tops, restocked shelves, and washed and vacuumed floors, creating an ambient noise that surprisingly fitted in perfectly with Mr Bibb’s cool sound. Kennedy was surprised at how clean the club smelt, a scent somewhere between ocean waves and pine forest. He couldn’t identify it exactly, but he did know it came out of a bottle and was far from the fag ash and stale beer aromas he’d been expecting.
Kennedy struck two bits of luck at the Jazz Café; one good, one not so good. The good was that Josef had dated one of the waitresses there for a time. The duty manager informed Kennedy that he thought she, Amanza, was quite struck on young Mr Jones. The bad luck was, sadly Amanza wasn’t on duty that night. The ever-helpful manager gave Kennedy her address: 121 Gloucester Avenue, fifth-floor flat.
Ten minutes later, Kennedy was in her apartment.
‘He was obsessive about that singer Bluewood. I got the chills when I heard she’d committed suicide,’ Amanza told Kennedy. They were standing on the staircase leading up to her rooms, with Kennedy four steps below her. She seemed reluctant to invite him right in, but she didn’t mind talking to him. ‘He used to make some really wild claims about her.’
‘Like what, for instance?’ Kennedy asked.
‘Oh, at the time we were falling out he kept claiming he was going to move in with her, which I found quite amusing as he’s terrible with children. He’s totally awkward around them, just doesn’t know what to do. When I asked him about her kids, he seemed convinced the husband would take them.’
Kennedy wondered why this connection hadn’t been made before now. This Eastern European, mid-twenties girl didn’t seem at all reluctant to talk about Jones. He supposed the team would have got around to her eventually, especially now there was only one name on their suspect list. The main point of the investigation was to ensure that the detective and his team knew as much about the suspect – in this case Josef Jones – as Jones knew about himself. Kennedy thought back to Esther Bluewood and the demons she’d had to wrestle with in her earlier years, and he wondered whether it was possible for someone not to know, or perhaps not want to know, everything about themselves.
‘We’re looking for Josef at the minute,’ Kennedy said, trying to move his fact-seeking mission on.
‘Why? Has he done something wrong?’ Amanza asked, starting to look nervous. ‘He hurt Esther Bluewood, didn’t he?’
‘We have reason to believe he may be able to help us with our enquiries into the death of Esther Bluewood and…’ Kennedy was also going to mention Judy Dillon but at the last second thought better of it. No reason to frighten her too much. By the way she
was reacting to him now, she was already in third-degree jitters. ‘I was wondering if you’d any idea where he might be hiding? Anyone you know he might be staying with?’
‘You’ve obviously checked out his flat up in Kentish Town?’ Amanza said, moving one step down the stairs towards Kennedy.
‘Yeah. We’ve also tried the Jazz Café. They gave us your address.’
‘Oh gracious, I’ve just remembered. He once took me to this really weird place, it’s not very far from here. If you go down to The Engineer, take the steps down to the lock and turn left towards Camden Lock. About a bridge or so down there you’ll see this large black iron door.’
‘What’s in there?’
‘It’s a storage cellar or something. I think it must have something to do with the railway, cause it backs on to the track. Josef seemed to think it was a place where they stored stuff they were taking between the railway and the canal. Anyway, I have to admit I wasn’t really paying much attention – it was very spooky. I got the impression he considered it to be his own private place. He told me I should have been flattered he’d taken me there. He was trying to take me there for a bonk, but on the way in I saw a couple of rats and I can tell you the last thing on my mind was making love. I ran back to the door and stood and screamed my lungs out until he helped me unlock the gate and get out. Afterwards I kind of saw the funny side of it, but he didn’t ever. It was like it didn’t happen. But God, with Esther’s death and everything, can you imagine what might have happened if I’d stayed there with him?’
‘Don’t worry, you’re safe now, but I really need to dash off. I’ll send someone round to talk to you in the morning,’ Kennedy said as he began his exit taking a couple of steps down the stairs.
Kennedy opened the apartment door and stepped out on to the landing. He turned around to say goodbye but, before he’d a chance to blink, she had closed the door. He could hear her securing locks and rattling the safety chain as he made his way down the stairs and out on to the street. He knew it was only a matter of time before she’d be recalling the many intimate moments she and Jones had shared together. Then she’d have a flash of Esther Bluewood, and that was when her real troubles would begin.
He couldn’t imagine where along the canal Amanza had been talking about. He knew the route well – it was on one of his regular (recreational) walks around Camden Town, Primrose Hill and Regent’s Park – but he couldn’t for the life of him pinpoint exactly where she was talking about. He radioed North Bridge House to have Irvine and Coles meet him on the Regent’s Canal bank, beside the access point for The Engineer.
By the time Kennedy had walked that very short distance, Irvine and Coles were already there and waiting for him. As they hurried down the steps to the towpath, Kennedy explained to them what the waitress had told him. It took them all of three minutes to reach the black iron door Amanza had described. It was locked with a padlock bar across the six-inch gap to facilitate opening the lock from both sides of the door. Kennedy peered through the gap.
He saw a steep brick corridor, curved at the top and turning to the right about twenty yards away. Somewhere beyond the turn, there seemed to be a light shining. Kennedy could see its reflection glistening on the wet brickwork. Irvine, showing off one of the talents of his teenage years, picked the lock. It took him less than twenty seconds, during which time Kennedy reflected on what might have been Irvine’s career if he hadn’t chosen the straight and narrow of the police force.
The ever-resourceful Coles had a torch with her, and the three detectives set off down the brick corridor, the sound of their footsteps echoing all around them. Kennedy put a finger to his lips in the classic pantomime hush signal, and they did their best to muffle their footfalls. But there was still sound all around them. The brick-lined tunnel was filled with its own symphony of watery sounds. Similar, Kennedy thought, to those you’ll hear in Victorian men’s public toilets where the distant rush of water working its way through the pipes provides a constant soundtrack. Occasionally, these sounds would be interrupted as the fountains in the urinals erupted, jetting forth a fresh flow of water. To Kennedy, it was somewhat like the sound of numerous balloons suffering slow punctures.
In the tunnel, the metallic rhythms of a train passing overhead answered Kennedy’s call for hush. It was either on its way to Birmingham or returning home to London. The original line was built for the Euston to Birmingham service. In total contrast to the ferocious sound of the train, there came the gentle tug-tugging from a canal barge engine, as it passed only twenty yards behind them.
Kennedy had prepared his nostrils for the inevitable foul smells but unusually none were present. Aside from a damp odour, the predominant smell was that of a strong disinfectant mixed with something sickly sweet Kennedy couldn’t quite place.
None of them spoke. Around the first bend of the corridor they spied a second tunnel veering to the left, with a kind of indentation on the right side, just by the bend. By the time they reached that point, Kennedy and his colleagues had worked out that it was a door. Kennedy signed for Irvine and Coles to stay there.
He followed the other turn, which moved up a steep incline. At the end of this corridor was a door. It was identical to the one they’d first come through, with beams of natural daylight spilling thought the padlock holes and sharply defining the gaps between the door and its frame. Kennedy approached it cautiously. As he was about to take a peek, he was thrown back by a combination of sheer volume and by the air-flow of a train as it whooshed past within a few feet of the door. His heart missed at least a beat or two. That close, the sound was deafening. In a matter of seconds it was gone, leaving only the whisper of the wind on the railway lines and the drip-drip of water on brick. One of the tunnel’s functions was obviously to provide a direct connection between the railway track and the canal.
As he walked back to where Coles and Irvine were waiting, Kennedy felt instinctively that something was not quite right. If his suspicions were correct, Josef Jones had murdered twice and here they were walking unprotected into his… The detective didn’t really know what it was they were walking into. Could it be a trap, wired with explosives? Or could he be waiting for them with a knife, a gun or even – Kennedy flashed – a lethal KitKat Chunky? He decided not to share this thought with his colleagues.
By the time Kennedy reached them Irvine had successfully picked the lock to the only internal door in the brick corridor.
The door creaked like it was a prop in one of the old ‘Hammer Horror’ movie sets. Irvine gave the door one energetic tug, hoping to get all the alarm-raising noise over in as quick a time as possible.
The underground chamber they discovered was constructed entirely of nine-inch red brick. Even the curved roof and the four support pillars were red brick. It reminded Kennedy of the original Cavern Club in Liverpool, where the Fab Four had made 292 appearances.
Unlike the entrance corridor – and unlike the Cavern Club, for that matter – the internal walls were incredibly dry. The four columns symmetrically divided the thirty-foot square chamber into nine open-plan units. The central one appeared to be some kind of living area, with two sofas and a couple of easy chairs (all mix-and-match), arranged in a circle around a long, deep wooden chest that served as a coffee table. Various cups and saucers, a sugar bowl, milk carton, and a plate of chocolate biscuits were positioned on top of the chest, as if the inhabitants of the chamber had been disturbed during afternoon tea.
The cups were empty, so another explanation could be that Jones was a lazy sod who just hadn’t bothered to clear up. The ceiling was nearly twice the height of the corridor, hence the need for a steep slope down from both the canal and the railway track.
The chamber had obviously been built as a holding area for goods of some kinds. They would have arrived by barge and would have been stored here until collected by train, or vice versa. Kennedy was aware that there wasn’t much of a crossover between the rail and water routes. The railway system pretty much
saw off the barges, relegating them in a matter of years to carrying tourists.
The unit immediately on the left as they came in was walled off with hardboard, and the others were pretty much open-plan, although six foot high bookshelves did partition off much of the right-hand corner unit. This, Kennedy supposed, was a study area. There were plenty of books on the shelves and about the floor. They were mostly about music and the music business. Also scattered around the floor were piles of magazines; Q, Mojo and Music Week seemed to predominate. In the central area of the study was a rather cheap pine desk and chair and, on the wall, a cork noticeboard.
The noticeboard was crammed with photos, CD jackets, record sleeves, newspaper cuttings, all related to Esther Bluewood. The noticeboard had recently been updated displaying the current press reports on Miss Bluewood’s death. Lined up, pride of place and in the centre, were obituaries of the artist.
One of the back shelving units seemed to buckle under the strain of Esther Bluewood memorabilia; posters, photographs, publicity handouts, display units for shops, even a four foot high cardboard cut-out of Esther Bluewood holding a copy of her Resurrection album jacket. This was a one-off and stood against the unit. Apart from this the collector – and Kennedy assumed Jones was the collector in question – had several copies of each item, suggesting that he was a dealer, as well as a collector.
The cardboard cut-out of Esther looked quite eerie because, although she was smiling and lively in her pose, she seemed a prisoner in these surroundings. It brought home to Kennedy how such an innocent pose could be the launch pad for someone less innocent’s fantasy. In the case of Silly Spice and the mobile she used to launch her career, it just didn’t bear thinking about…