‘Not just posh, bloody expensive,’ Price said. ‘Even if he’s claiming for two jobs, I’m gobsmacked Mitch Graveney can afford the fees. On top of what that house must have cost. Houses round here aren’t cheap.’
‘So you reckon he’s into something beyond the job at the Globe?’ Kate asked.
‘Up to his neck, I should think, though what it is I can’t begin to guess. But if he’s thick with Reg Smith whatever it is is unlikely to be legal.’
When he left Kate at the agency, Harry Barnard made a call from a phone box and immediately went back to his car. Shirley Bettany had picked up the phone quickly but she did not seem quite as enthusiastic to hear from him as she usually was when he proposed a meeting.
‘Fred’s at home this morning,’ she said quickly. ‘He was with Ray late last night and decided to sleep in.’
Barnard smiled faintly at the thought of the bed he had occupied himself so often being taken over by its rightful owner for once. No wonder Shirley didn’t sound warmer. ‘Sorry, sweetie, it’s actually Fred I want to talk to,’ he said. ‘Ask him if I could come round to your place in …’ He glanced at his watch. ‘In an hour?’
The line went quiet and Barnard amused himself by wondering if Shirley was wearing the blue satin negligee she favoured after sex with him. Thick and silky, she pulled it tight round waist and hips and left it loose at the top, more often than not provoking Barnard to pull her back into bed when she had planned to get up.
She came back on the line quickly. ‘That will be fine, Harry,’ she said, her voice chilly. ‘See you shortly.’
Barnard hung up regretfully and walked slowly back towards his car, stopping for a coffee in Camden High Street before heading up the hill towards Hampstead. He did not need to park anywhere today except immediately outside the Bettanys’ gates, and he was not surprised when Fred himself opened the door. Fred looked haggard and grey and was wearing casual slacks and short-sleeved shirt. He nodded him into the sitting room without a word.
‘Shirley’s gone out to get her hair done,’ he said as he waved Barnard into one of the comfortable armchairs. Fred flung himself into another chair and gazed at Harry for some time without speaking, steepling his hands beneath his chin. ‘How long’s Ray got, Harry?’ he asked at length. ‘Everything tells me he’s on the edge and likely to topple off at any moment. Shirley’s nagging me to bail out before the balloon goes up.’
‘He still seems to be dithering about Reg Smith,’ Barnard said. ‘That’s what I came up here to ask you. Why the hell doesn’t he just tell him to bugger off south of the river where he belongs?’
‘He keeps saying he will and then changes his mind. He’s still feeling annoyed that he didn’t get into Notting Hill,’ Bettany said. ‘You know he doesn’t like to be thwarted. But if he lets Smith into Soho he’ll be mincemeat. Smith’s as ruthless as they come.’
‘Was the poor beggar we found on the building site one of Smith’s men?’ Barnard asked. ‘That’s what the Yard seem to think but we’ve found no evidence for it. I even went down to Blackheath with one of my colleagues to ask him but he just laughed at us. Personally I think the body is one of the witnesses against Georgie but that idea doesn’t seem to hold water with the brass.’
Bettany leaned towards a shelf under the coffee table and handed Barnard a couple of colourful travel brochures. ‘I fancy Spain myself, but Shirley has a yen for Bermuda.’
Barnard’s heart thudded and he struggled to keep his expression neutral.
‘She’s on at me to make a decision.’
‘You’re serious?’ he asked.
‘Oh, yes,’ Bettany said. ‘I’ve had a good run with Ray, salted plenty of money away but I can’t see a future in it any more. I want out before the balloon goes up. If he hooks up with Smith I don’t want to be a part of it. I suppose you could say it’s time to retire before your mates at the Yard come looking for me. There’s no way I want to spend the rest of my life in Pentonville when all I did was look after Ray’s books.’
‘No, that’s not a good thought,’ Barnard said. ‘Personally I’m trying to keep well clear of Ray myself. There’s another purge going on at the nick and I need to keep myself squeaky clean.’
Fred Bettany smiled, an unusual reaction from him. ‘The best of luck with that, Harry,’ he said.
Harry Barnard drove back to town, his thoughts in turmoil. He hesitated for a moment at Oxford Circus, wondering whether he dare call in on Ray at the Delilah, and then swung the car back towards the nick as the safer option. DS Vic Copeland was at his desk, looked ostentatiously at his watch and grinned wolfishly.
‘Late night, Flash?’ he asked. ‘Was she worth it?’
Barnard shrugged non-committally, hung up his jacket and slumped down at his desk, still obsessed with what he had learned from Fred Bettany. It was maybe time, he thought, for him to break decisively with Ray Robertson too. Their relationship had always been ambivalent ever since he had decided as a teenager to join the police, by which time Ray and Georgie had decisively headed off into the East End underworld. And yet he could not rid himself of the knowledge that Ray, when the three boys were flung together as wartime evacuees on an unwelcoming farm in Hertfordshire, had been the one who had protected him from the unfriendly village lads and, more importantly, from the rampagings of his already unstable brother Georgie. He could still remember exactly what it was like to be on the floor with Georgie pressing his face into the mud until he was sure he would suffocate. And the relief when Ray took Georgie by the scruff of the neck and pulled his brother off, giving him a vicious cuff around the ear for good measure. He sighed and jumped slightly when Vic Copeland, who had come up quietly behind him, put a heavy hand on his shoulder.
‘Come on, Flash, it’s time for a wander round our patch isn’t it?’
Barnard got up.
‘Aren’t we supposed to be looking at this dead shirtlifter’s lifestyle? We’d better go through the motions at least. There was nothing at his flat that helped so we’d better trawl the queer pub again, press a bit harder, maybe.’
‘I suppose,’ he said, without enthusiasm.
‘By the way, are you doing anything tonight?’
‘I don’t think so,’ Barnard said warily.
‘There’s a knees-up at my old nick in the city I thought you might like to come to. Six o’clock till you have to be lifted into a cab. Do you fancy it?’
‘Yeah, why not,’ Barnard said, wondering whether cultivating Copeland might get him off his back. ‘Let’s do that, mate.’
By the end of a fruitless day, Harry Barnard had hoped that Vic Copeland might have forgotten his promise to take him to his old nick’s party, but he underestimated the former City officer’s memory or his determination, or maybe both. At five thirty Copeland wandered back into the CID main office with his coat on and waved a hand in Barnard’s direction.
‘Ready, mate?’ he asked. Barnard nodded and slipped into his trench coat and pulled his trilby on carefully at what he considered to be the most fetching angle.
Copeland laughed. ‘There’ll be no tarts there,’ he said. ‘Except possibly a couple of old boots from uniform you wouldn’t want to pass the time of day with. This’ll be strictly a lads’ night out – or in, in this case, the entire nick. The super down there’s one of the lads himself most of the time. Doesn’t stand on ceremony out of hours. In fact most of the time he’s the life and soul of the party. Not like your miserable old sod of a DCI here. Have you got your car?’
Barnard nodded.
‘You can leave it down by Smithfield and take a cab home if you need one. Pick it up tomorrow.’
‘Fine,’ Barnard said. ‘Let’s go.’
The noise when they finally arrived at Copeland’s former nick hit the two men like a blow. The party had evidently started well before the advertised time and raucous groups of shirt-sleeved officers, some still partially uniformed, met them with a generalized welcome for Copeland which seemed to be seamlessl
y extended to his companion from the West End and instantly plied them with tumblers of Scotch. Copeland was obviously still a popular visitor to the nick where he had come within an ace of being charged with murder, which said all Barnard needed to know about the notorious solidarity of the City force. He hoped, though without much confidence, that when AC Amis had completed his revamp of the Met things might change in the City as well. Taking the odd backhander was one thing, he thought. Beating someone to death in a cell was quite another.
Losing Copeland in the crowd Barnard accepted a top-up from a tall, red-faced plain clothes officer with a cheerful smile.
‘Welcome to the City of London,’ he said, his words slurred. ‘Vic tells me you’re trying to do something about Ray Robertson at last. About bloody time, too.’
‘Well, we did succeed in pinning down his brother Georgie,’ Barnard countered. ‘He’s a much more dangerous proposition than Ray.’
‘So they say,’ his new-found friend agreed. ‘But I reckon Vic’s right when he says the mother’s not to be sneezed at either. And she’s got two sons. Vic reckons there’s damn all to choose between them.’
‘She’s an old woman,’ Barnard said.
‘There could still be a big bad wolf under grandma’s pinny. Vic seems to think so anyway. Says he’s going to stake her out.’ Barnard spluttered into his whiskey and tried to turn it into a cough. That was not something Copeland had chosen to confide in him and he was sure that was deliberate. If DCI Jackson and Vic Copeland between them did succeed on pressing major charges against Ray Robertson, he thought, or even his mother, they wouldn’t stop there. He would be in their sights too. He drained his glass and made for the door, but before he got there he felt the weight of a heavy arm across his shoulders.
‘Not going, are you, Flash,’ Copeland said. ‘Come on, you’ve hardly met anyone yet. Come and talk to my old guv’nor. He wants to persuade you to join his lodge.’
Barnard sighed. There was no way he wanted to join the superintendent’s lodge, one of those which he knew recruited mainly police officers, or anyone else’s lodge for that matter, but he knew that this was not a good place to annoy Vic Copeland. It would be noted and speculated on and filtered back to the Met and Copeland would take whatever advantage of it he could. He followed the sergeant back into the increasingly noisy throng with a distinct sense of his vulnerability. Maybe Fred Bettany had the right idea, he thought. Get out now while the going’s good.
He allowed himself to be steered towards the bar area where a paunchy man in plain clothes, sweating heavily, his face flushed and the hand holding the whiskey glass not entirely steady, was holding forth to an admiring group of younger officers who appeared to be hanging on his every word. He spotted Copeland and waved an expansive arm.
‘Vic, my old mucker,’ he said. ‘How’s it going in the big bad Met?’
‘Not too bad, guv,’ Copeland replied. ‘Interesting times in Vice.’ He waved in Barnard’s direction. ‘This is one of my new mates. Harry Barnard. The one who pinned Georgie Robertson down, remember? He’s interested in joining the brethren and I thought maybe you would give him a helping hand.’
The superintendent’s bleary gaze fastened on Barnard and he nodded cheerfully. ‘We’ve a full complement here now,’ he said. ‘Apart from the girls, of course, but I don’t rush about recruiting them in the first place. Let’s face it, it’s a man’s job. Any copper who tells you anything different is a bloody fool.’ There were nods of agreement all round. ‘Anyway Harry,’ the superintendent said putting a brotherly arm around Barnard’s shoulder and giving Copeland a conspiratorial wink. ‘Anyway, let me buy you a drink and we’ll have a little chat about the craft.’
TWELVE
Harry Barnard woke late after his trip to the City, bleary-eyed and with a thumping headache. He could not remember exactly how he had got home in the small hours although when he glanced out of his bedroom window he could see his car was parked askew in the car park below so he assumed he had driven. Not, he thought, the most sound decision he had ever made. The phone began to ring before he had finished making the coffee which he hoped would help restore him to some sort of normality. It was DS Vic Copeland, who did not sound in the best of moods either.
‘Where the hell are you?’ Copeland demanded. ‘I thought we were supposed to be talking to Ray Robertson’s accountant this morning. He’s due here in ten minutes.’
‘Were we?’ Barnard asked. ‘I won’t be in for a while. I’ve the mother and father of all hangovers.’
‘I’ll go ahead on my own then,’ Copeland snapped and Barnard heard the phone slammed down at the other end.
He groaned. He knew that being interviewed by Copeland would be the last straw as far as Fred Bettany was concerned. Shirley was probably booking their flights at that very moment. He wondered bitterly who had won the argument over Spain or the Caribbean. He could not imagine buttoned-up Fred enjoying life in a Hawaiian shirt in either destination. He made his coffee and sniffed the aroma gratefully. Perhaps the morning had not turned out so badly after all if Vic Copeland was closeted with Fred Bettany for an hour or so. He could, he thought, take advantage of that.
He showered and dressed quickly and by nine thirty was exceeding the speed limit down the Holloway Road in the direction of the East End. He pulled up outside Robertson’s gym, not very optimistic that he would find him there, so was not surprised when the sole occupant turned out to be one of Ray’s long-time trainers Rod Miller, in grubby singlet and shorts.
‘Long time no see, Rod,’ Barnard said enthusiastically. ‘Do you know where the boss is?’
Miller shrugged. ‘Not expecting to see him today Harry,’ he said. ‘He said something about going to see his ma.’
‘Really?’ Barnard asked, surprised. Since Georgie Robertson’s arrest he did not think relations between Mrs Robertson and her other son had been anything more than frigid. As he heard it, the old lady did not think Ray was doing nearly enough to help Georgie escape the several serious charges he was facing, not realizing – or choosing not to realize – that Ray was more than content to see Georgie go down for life.
‘That’s what ’e said,’ Miller said. He seemed to have shrunk since Barnard had last seen him, he thought, and he looked distinctly anxious. ‘Did you know he wants me to give evidence at the trial?’
Barnard shook his head. ‘What does he want you to say?’ Barnard asked, knowing that whatever the trainer was supposed to testify to would probably bear little relation to reality. Miller flushed slightly and glanced at the floor.
‘That he made a pass at me,’ he muttered at last.
‘And did he?’
‘Nah,’ Miller said. ‘I’m not a bloody nancy boy, and I don’t think Georgie is either. It’s just something Ray dreamed up to make sure Georgie goes down, innit? Juries don’t like queers.’
‘They don’t,’ Barnard agreed. ‘But I’d duck out of that if I were you, Rod. It’s a dirty trick too far. And Georgie’s brief will make mincemeat of you if you can’t make it sound kosher. You know what they’re like.’
‘He told me to tell Mr Copeland that I’d do it, not you,’ Miller said, his eyes shifty.
‘And did you?’
‘Last Monday.’
‘Well, next time I see Vic Copeland I’ll tell him you’ve changed your mind. Will that do?’ Barnard demanded. ‘In the meantime I’ll catch up with Ray at his mother’s place and tell him not to be so effing stupid. That’s a favour too far, that is.’ Barnard felt genuinely angry at the hapless trainer but even more annoyed with Ray Robertson for thinking that he might get away with such a blatant interference in the case. Barnard could not count the number of times he had warned Ray not to interfere in the judicial process, obviously to no avail, and he wondered now just what else he had got up to in the interests of putting Georgie away.
He went back to his car and headed east towards Bethnal Green and the densely packed streets he and the Robertson brothers had known
so well as boys. Barnard had met them both at primary school before they were thrown together irrevocably by being sent to the same farm in Hertfordshire as evacuees to escape the German bombing, the scars of which were still visible in parts of the East End. Georgie was already running wild and revealing a seriously vicious streak before they arrived in the country and Ray had continued to protect Barnard from the younger boy’s attacks and the hostility of their local schoolmates, who had resented the arrival of these outsiders when they arrived in their rural village. Ray had always regarded Harry Barnard’s decision to join the police as inexplicable and deeply regrettable and Barnard was sure that if he had not followed that path after grammar school he would have become as inextricably involved in crime as the Robertson brothers. They had not been thrown together much during Barnard’s early years in the force but once Barnard graduated to the vice squad in Soho they inevitably came face-to-face again and Barnard seriously began to wonder if his career could survive their closely entwined history.
It never ceased to surprise Barnard that Ma Robertson still lived in the small terraced house where she had brought the two boys up, a couple of streets from where the Barnards had lived. Unlike Barnard’s father, her husband had not survived the Normandy landings and by the time Ray and Georgie were fully grown it was their mother who played a crucial role in East End crime, taking over and building on what her husband had started, and expecting her sons to succeed her.
Barnard parked in an anonymous car park near Bethnal Green station and walked slowly down to one of the few pre-war terraced streets which had survived the bombing and post-war redevelopment. He glanced up and down the street before he knocked on the neatly painted front door but could see no one on foot and only a few parked cars at the far end of the road near the local shops. The door was opened quickly by Mrs Robertson herself and Barnard had no difficulty in recognizing the Robertson brothers’ formidable mother, a little shrunken, a little greyer and slightly stooped but still with the sharp, steely eyes he had always known and a face which had only hardened over the years into an expression of complete implacability. She stared at her visitor for a moment as if scanning it for changes too and allowed a hint of a smile to dominate her features for no more than a second.
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