Cover Up

by Patricia Hall

  ‘Who is Terry Jordan? Mr Jones doesn’t seem to like him.’

  ‘He’s a local builder who’s done well out of the reconstruction, very well in fact for a left footer from Scotland Road. Billy no doubt thinks he’s greased a few palms on his way, but that’s not unusual when big contracts are on offer, regardless of the religion of the people involved. I’m sure it was going on long before Bessie Braddock took over. There’s always an architect or a planner or a politician ready to help a contract along. Billy could probably give you chapter and verse – but he wouldn’t, of course, if Unionists are involved. On the other hand, if he could embarrass the present lot, or Terry Jordan, I’m sure he would.’

  ‘Sounds like a can of worms,’ Kate said.

  ‘Oh yes, it’s that all right,’ Minogue said.

  Kate looked at Minogue over her cup. She could see that he was older than she was: there were a few strands of grey in his dark hair and a faint sadness in his blue eyes.

  ‘Were you in the forces?’ she asked, wondering if he had seen more than anyone ought to see. But he shook his head.

  ‘Not during the war, I’m not that ancient. Just national service in the army afterwards. A pretty boring two years as it turned out. A lot of people got sent to Germany, but I spent most of my time in a desk job in Aldershot. I was quite relieved actually. There were enough ruins here without going over there to see even more.’

  ‘Do you think your Mr Jones can get me into the city archives?’ she asked. ‘I suppose I need to talk to some sort of planner to match up pictures of the wreckage with the new developments.’

  ‘Although he’s not superfriendly, he’ll do what he promises,’ Minogue said. ‘But watch his wandering hands. Are you sure I can’t help you with anything to do with the Beatles’ film? I could get you access to the four lads and Brian Epstein if you want.’ Kate shook her head.

  ‘No, that’s not what I want. The whole world will be taking pictures of them. I’ve seen the film, anyway. My boss got tickets and I went with a friend last week in London.’

  ‘What did you think of it?’

  ‘I thought it was good, very funny. And there’s lots of music if you like the Beatles.’

  ‘All right, I’ll take the chance to sit down and see it,’ Minogue said. ‘I wasn’t going to bother. Come back to the office with me and I’ll introduce you to the picture editor, then we can see where things go from there.’

  SIX

  During the rest of the day, Kate made better progress than she’d expected. The Echo’s picture files were full of images of the wartime devastation that she had been only barely aware of as a small child. For children of her generation, ruins were normal and the local boys and some of the girls used bomb sites as playgrounds and for the retrieval of shrapnel and other relics that were eagerly traded in the school yard. But seeing photos of acres and acres of the city reduced to rubble, taken from the air after the May blitz, brought tears to her eyes. The picture librarian was helpful and indicated which sites had been restored and in what way, and by lunchtime she had a list of suitable subjects for her own photographs. She hoped that with William Jones’s help she would be able to glean more information on what had been permanently lost and what rebuilt and who had done the rebuilding.

  She called at the town hall to try to locate Jones but was told he was still in the committee meeting, so she spent the rest of the afternoon roaming the city centre taking photographs of the buildings that she knew had been restored or rebuilt, such as the new Blacklers department store and Lewis’s, which had been damaged and restored and by the time she was old enough to be a customer had gained an Epstein statue on its façade so explicitly male that it became the butt of ribald Liverpudlian wit. She ended with a walk along the dock road, bereft of its elevated railway and most of its historic warehouses but still a functioning port. It looked bleaker than she remembered, and she wondered how much longer it would survive. She finished at St Nicholas’s, the city’s sprawling parish church, which had been almost destroyed by incendiary bombs during the war and later rebuilt. The Echo librarian had given her a print of the ruin in 1941 and she took several views of the modern rebuilding and the distinctive tower and spire, which had survived the flames.

  Feeling more than a little ambivalent about the regeneration which she had taken very little notice of as she grew up, she made her way back towards the city centre and stopped at the Echo offices to see whether Jones was back there. A phone call from reception brought him downstairs from the newsroom, pulling his jacket on over his obviously sweaty shirt. ‘Come over the road to the Schooner and have a quick drink,’ he said brusquely. ‘I’m parched. And I’ve one or two contacts you can talk to if it will help. Minogue says he’ll join us in ten minutes.’

  Feeling slightly surprised by Jones’s change of tone, Kate followed him across the road and into the lounge bar of the pub, where Jones was greeted by two colleagues huddled round a table in a corner so littered with used glasses that they must have been there some time. Jones pulled out a chair for Kate and with a raised eyebrow took her order for a half of shandy before going to the bar.

  ‘You must be the lady photographer,’ one of the men at the table offered. ‘How did you get into that, then? You must be the only one in the country, aren’t you?’

  ‘I trained here at the College of Art,’ Kate replied, ‘but I had to move to London for a job. You lot at the Echo wouldn’t have me. And don’t say it’s not a suitable job for a woman. I’ve heard all that before and the job suits me just fine.’

  ‘What did you say you were called?’

  ‘Kate O’Donnell,’ she said crisply, knowing that she was being slotted automatically into one of the still antagonistic Scouse tribes. ‘I was at college with John Lennon, as it goes, but he’s made rather more of an impression down south than I have. So far.’ They laughed and made space for William Jones, who delivered Kate her shandy with an ironic bow and squeezed on to a stool next to her.

  ‘I can’t stop, but I made some notes for you after the planning meeting. These are the details of the major redevelopments there’ve been since the end of the war – quite a number, as you can imagine having lived here back then – and what the new buildings replaced. Of course a lot of the housing development was on green fields, outside the city limits.’

  ‘Does it tell me who the builders were? I’m thinking they may have kept blueprints of their plans. Could make good illustrations for my feature.’

  ‘Down here at the bottom of this page,’ Jones said. Kate skimmed the list quickly.

  ‘What about Terry Jordan’s company?’ she asked, not finding the name. Jones glanced round the table and met raised eyebrows. It was obviously a question that surprised the three men.

  ‘He started off quite small,’ Jones said. ‘He got a few of the big contracts soon after the war and some of us wondered how he’d done that. We reckoned it must have been on the strength of being some sort of hero. But he didn’t really take off until his political friends took over the town hall. Funny that. He’s landed a few really big contracts since, and I hear he’s got contacts in London too. The company is called Macdonald-Jordan Construction. He bought into it and runs it as his own now but has kept the original name. He’s looking to get into the development of more new towns. There’ll be a lot of money in that. Quite apart from the bomb damage, the Corporation is keen to move people out of the slum housing in the city. There’s still plenty of that about. Tenements, outside lavvies, you name it. It’s a massive job. And money’s tight.’

  Kate nodded. She could still remember the worst of it but she was not going to share that with this group who, she guessed, were part of the ascendancy that had left the Irish immigrants to rot around Scotland Road for decades before the war. Just glancing through Jones’s lists, she could see that the Corporation had preferred to restore the city centre and build new roads rather than rehouse all the poor. She wondered if Mrs Braddock would do better, but these men would not
give her an objective view on that.

  ‘Thanks for all this,’ she said to Jones, who was downing his pint. ‘It’s very helpful.’ She saw Liam Minogue pushing his way through the swing doors and glancing round the bar and raised her hand in greeting as Jones got up and bade everyone goodnight. Her two contacts passed each other without any obvious greeting, which confirmed her impression that there was no love lost between them. She wondered why Jones had bothered to help her, and whether he had an ulterior motive.

  Minogue got himself a drink at the bar and slid into the seat Jones had just vacated.

  ‘I can report that the Beatles have arrived safely,’ he announced with a mock flourish.

  ‘The Adelphi, I suppose?’ a colleague asked.

  ‘More than my life’s worth to confirm or deny,’ Minogue said with a grin. ‘Security’s tighter than a duck’s arse. And the police say they’re on a war footing tomorrow. There’s already a pack of girls outside the Odeon. Presumably they’re planning to stay there all night. Little idiots.’

  ‘If a daughter of mine carried on like that I’d tan her backside,’ one of Minogue’s colleagues commented, getting up to leave. ‘The best thing that could happen is for there to be a massive thunderstorm tomorrow. That would cool their ardour and send them home to bed.’ His colleague joined in the exodus, leaving Kate and Liam Minogue to spread themselves more comfortably.

  ‘Haven’t you got a wife to go home to?’ Kate asked. Minogue shook his head and Kate was aware again of the shadow behind his eyes.

  ‘I did have,’ he said. ‘But we got divorced. She has custody of our little girl, so I don’t see her very often either. You can imagine how all that went down with the family and the parish priest. It was a mixed marriage, so she had no problem with divorce. And on my side they all shook their heads and said we told you so. So, sorry, maybe you think they’re right? I just assumed …’

  ‘You assumed right. One of the great things about London is that no one cares what religion you are, or even if you have a religion. And there are no parish priests breathing down your neck, telling you what you can and can’t do.’

  ‘Are you married?’ he asked. Kate shook her head. ‘I’ve a boyfriend. Though that’s a bit on and off at the moment.’

  ‘Come and have a meal with me, then,’ Minogue said. Kate looked at him and liked what she saw.

  ‘Thanks, it’ll be better than a stuffy hotel room for the evening,’ she said. They finished their drinks and Minogue led her back out, holding the door open for her.

  ‘Do you like Chinese food?’ he asked. She nodded.

  ‘OK, we’ll go to the Pekin. It’s supposed to be the best Chinese in town, though I can’t say I’ve had much to compare it with. There’re a couple of Indian restaurants opened recently, though I haven’t tried them. Someone told me the food was very spicy.’

  ‘I’ve been to the Pekin before,’ Kate said. ‘Our tutor took some of us there after we’d finished our assessments at college.’

  ‘Right then,’ Minogue said. ‘Let’s do it.’

  ‘I need to go back to the hotel first to drop my gear off and get changed.’ And make a phone call, she thought with a twinge of guilt which she pretended had not happened. But when she dialled Barnard’s number there was no reply, and telling herself that she would try again later she went downstairs to meet Minogue in the lobby, fresh in a crisp summer dress, and gave him a dazzling smile.

  ‘Let’s go,’ she said.

  Kate woke early the next morning and lay in her narrow bed gazing at the cracks in the ceiling, reluctant to get up so soon and confused by her own emotions. She’d enjoyed the meal with Liam Minogue, but as the evening went on and it became more obvious that his interest in her was far more than just professional she became increasingly uneasy.

  When they left the restaurant he’d put an arm round her waist, but after a moment she pulled away.

  ‘I need to go back to the hotel now,’ she told him. ‘I need to make a phone call. And I have to be up early tomorrow.’

  ‘I thought maybe we could have a nightcap at my place,’ he said. ‘I’ll see you safely back later.’

  ‘Now would be better,’ she replied. ‘I really enjoyed our night out, Liam, but that’s all it is. I told you, I’ve a boyfriend in London.’

  ‘An on-and-off boyfriend you said.’ He glanced at her quizzically.

  ‘And I’d rather he was on than off,’ Kate said, surprising herself with her certainty. ‘I’m sorry, Liam.’

  He had given up then and walked her back to her hotel, leaving her with a chaste kiss on the cheek. When she tried Barnard’s number again from the phone in the lobby and got no reply she went up to her room feeling even more confused than she had before.

  Next morning, after eating a more modest breakfast than she had the previous day, she ventured out into bright sunshine with that hint of water in the breeze that she remembered so well. This was the day of the film premiere and as she walked towards the town centre Kate avoided London Road and the Odeon, where the film was to be shown. But there were already crowds of people heading in that direction, hoping to find themselves a vantage point. It was not, she realized, a good day to be taking pictures of Liverpool’s landmark buildings. The Beatles had, it seemed, claimed the city centre as their own.

  She decided instead to go home and see if she could locate her father who, she thought, if he really was working for Terry Jordan would be able to tell her where the company was currently working and what it had recently completed. She took the bus out to Anfield and walked, past Liverpool FC’s football ground, to the small development of new Corporation houses that had replaced some Victorian terraces demolished by a stray bomb. Her mother opened the door and looked surprised to see her.

  ‘You again, la?’ she said. ‘Your sisters have gone to work already, if that’s who you wanted to see.’

  ‘No, I was wondering if you knew where da was working,’ Kate said. ‘I want to pick his brains about Terry Jordan and his building firm. Terry Jordan must have been involved in some of the reconstruction after the war, and my contact on the Echo says he’s still doing well.’ Her mother shrugged.

  ‘Last I heard Frankie was working for Jordan on a site for new flats up near the hospital. If you want to see him, you might catch him there. If not, I think they finish about four o’clock. He’ll then head for the pub, no doubt. Or the betting shop. He comes home occasionally, but he doesn’t generally stop long.’

  Kate sighed. ‘It doesn’t sound as if he’s changed much,’ she said. ‘I’ll see if I can track him down. If not, I’m sure there are other ways I can find Mr Jordan. If he’s running a big company now, he’ll have offices I expect.’

  ‘Will you not stop for a cup of tea?’ Bridie asked, making Kate feel guilty. Her mother had struggled all her life, she thought, and tried to do her best for her four children through the hardest of times with little or no support from Frankie. And when push came to shove and Kate, the only one to make it to grammar school, had insisted that she wanted to go to college, Bridie had scrimped and saved to make that possible.

  ‘Put the kettle on, mam,’ she said. ‘I’m not in that much of a hurry.’

  She took a bus back into the city centre then made her way towards the hospital, avoiding London Road where crowds were milling around the Odeon in increasing numbers. To one side of the hospital buildings, she eventually located a building site displaying Macdonald-Jordan Construction’s name and a picture of a sunlit block of flats that was obviously being built on the site, with scaffolding up to what she guessed was about sixth-floor level. It looked normal enough apart from a crowd of workers outside instead of inside the perimeter fence, milling around aimlessly and most of them smoking and talking, if at all, in subdued tones. Suddenly the atmosphere changed as a police car arrived, closely followed by an ambulance, and the crowd gave a muted groan.

  ‘What’s happened?’ she asked one of the men on the edge of the crowd.

  �
��Accident,’ he said. ‘Some beggar’s come down under a pile of scaffolding. Nasty. They’re trying to get him out. The fire brigade are round the back.’ Almost instinctively Kate got her camera out and wriggled her way to the front of the crowd to take some shots. A couple of uniformed police and two ambulance men carrying a stretcher pushed their way through to the gate and disappeared behind the skeleton of the building. Concentrating on her viewfinder, Kate was surprised to be seized in a tight grip as the crowd shifted. She pulled away and turned round to find her father beside her, with a far from friendly look on his face.

  ‘What are you effing doing here?’ he asked, his eyes angry in a way which reminded Kate only too clearly of the erratic temper that had blighted her childhood. ‘Your mam told me you were about because of the Beatles’ film, so what are you doing up here? Shouldn’t you be at the Odeon with all those effing hysterical lasses?’

  ‘Mam told me this was where you were working,’ Kate said. ‘It’s not the Beatles’ film I’m interested in, it’s how the city put itself together again after the Blitz. Everyone says Terry Jordan built his business on that. I thought you could maybe help me track down some of the new buildings that I want to photograph and tell me something about Terry Jordan. He sounds an interesting character.’ Frank O’Donnell drew a sharp breath and Kate realized that, although in his work overalls and heavy boots he looked the part of a builder, his weathered face was hollow-cheeked and his eyes not just bloodshot but faintly yellow. He looked sick and far older than his years, but she knew him too well to comment on that. If she wanted his help, she would have to tread very carefully.