“Of course,” Pete said, remembering the two aids that had gone down as a sacrifice for Wesker's crimes, the magnitude of what he actually knew.
The car pulled into a little sidestreet, right beside Hammersmith Bridge. Bell opened the door. “Let's take a walk,” he said. “It's a fine night.”
Pete got out, looked up at the bridge, a fantastical construction of Victorian ironwork with towers like a fairytale castle, painted dark green and gold, illuminated now by the streetlights, the dark river rippling below. He remembered how much he had admired Sir Joseph Bazalgette's construction as a young copper, how he had read up as much as he could of the history of the place. But now, this stretch of the Thames was forever tainted by the stain of murder, the memory of Bobby Clarke's vacant eyes on that sunny morning, five long years ago.
As if reading his mind, Bell said: “I don't know about you, but when I want to get to grips with a case, I find myself walking back over the territory time and time again. Something always draws you back, the idea that you could have left something behind, forgotten to mark some important detail. That's what impressed me about you so much when we first met,” he led the way down the promenade by the river's edge, “not so far away from here.”
“I know what you mean, sir.” Pete looked across the river to the curve of woods beyond, how quickly London seemed to fall away from this point. They continued to walk in silence for a while, until they came to the end of the quayside.
“Sampson Marks,” said Bell, stopping to lean on the wall, look down at the depths below them. “A nasty piece of work all round. And now it seems that it was he who Wesker was protecting, which makes things nastier still.”
“Aye,” said Pete. “But at least we have the proof now, to connect Marks not just with Roberta Clarke, but Brownyn Evans too. We've got Steadman's statement that Marks procured Clarke from him on the night of the murder, he knew where to turn up to get her, the rendezvous she was supposed to be making with Steadman. And Evans at a table with Marks – plus everyone else Wesker fitted up being there. At least we know why Wesker did it all now. We just have to figure out who he did it for, but surely, you can't be far away from that now, sir?”
Bell frowned, drew deeply on his cigar, turned his face towards Pete's, his eyes running up and down him again, the way they had in the car.
“Wesker's out of bounds to us now,” he said. “It pains me to say it, but that's the way it is. We can't use him in this.”
“We shouldn't need him,” said Pete. “If I may say, I think we've got enough to lean on Marks and make him confess. If not for being the murderer, then at least for procuring the girls for the guilty party.”
“I see,” said Bell, nodding slowly. “Do you want to go through it as you see it, step by step. I'm not going to take notes, this is between us. But I need to have it all clear in my mind.”
Pete took a deep breath, tried to get his thoughts in order.
“All right,” he said. “So we have, in the room on the same night, Marks, Wesker and Francis Bream – we know their connection. Then there's six of the people that we know Wesker fitted up, let's put them all to one side for a moment as I think we can safely say that makes them all innocent.”
Bell nodded. “An accurate analysis. Go on.”
“Teddy,” said Pete, “who's going to be there anyway, it's his club, and Simon Fitzgerald, who often performed there. Roberta Clarke and Brownyn Evans, the first two victims. George Steadman, who confessed to me he had sold the services of Roberta Clarke to Marks while in an intoxicated state towards midnight on that night.
“Then we have Sir Alex Minton and Lord Douglas Somerset, Somerset being of particular interest to me for two reasons. One, that I nicked a burglar coming out of his house way back in the summer of 1959, an investigation that Harold Wesker suddenly came out of his jurisdiction to take over when it was revealed that what the man had been stealing was some kind of pornography. Two, that the burglar appeared to be in cahoots with Somerset's youngest son Giles, who was then nicked himself at the Greek riot by none other than Harold Wesker.”
“Good God,” muttered Bell, turning his face towards the river. “Continue, please, Bradley.”
“There are twelve other people in those photographs who I don't recognise and couldn't tell you of their significance. But we do know that Ernest Tidsall was the photographer, and that he kept one frame from that session hidden away in his ledgers, some kind of insurance policy, I would say. Tidsall also had photographs of the next two victims, Susannah Houghton and Margaret Rose Stephenson, girls that he used as pornographic models. We know that Marks had links to the filth trade and that racket is central to the work of CID at West End Central. Tidsall has been missing since April, since he was questioned in connection with the Houghton murder. No one's touched his bank account since, and it would be my opinion that he is no longer with us. That's why he left the insurance policy.”
Bell turned his face back towards Pete. His expression was grave.
“Go back a minute,” he said. “To the photographs.”
“Yes sir,” said Pete. “I'm not going to ask where you got them from, but surely, however you did, that must be the connection you need to lean on Marks. He can't deny it, can he? It's all there in black and white.”
Bell dropped the end of his cigar onto the floor and trod on it, sending sparks up into the air and along the edge of the quay.
“I'm going to have to ask you for them back now,” he said, “and I think you know what I'm going to say next.”
“That I never saw them.”
“Precisely,” said Bell. “Honourable Coldstreamer. You never showed them to anyone else, did you?”
“Of course not, sir.”
“Good.” Bell's pace quickened, eager to get back to the car now. “Where are they now?” he said, opening the door for Pete.
“Here.” Pete lifted them out of his briefcase, handed them across. As the Chief Inspector took the envelope, Pete was pleased to see that the relief in the other man's face mirrored his own.
“Bradley,” Bell said, “you are an exceptional detective. You'll always have my gratitude, even if no one else ever knows of this.”
“That's enough for me sir,” said Pete. “Just take care of them. I hope you've got the negatives safe and all.”
Bell looked up at him, his eyes steady and calm. “It won't be long now,” he said, tapping on the glass to his driver. “Back to Oxford Gardens, please.”
The next morning, Coulter was standing by Pete's desk, his face like a bowl of grey porridge. “I've just had a call from the governor at the Scrubs,” he said. “I'm afraid it's bad news.” He pulled out a chair, sat down wearily. “George Steadman was found hanged in his cell at 6.15 this morning. It appears he ripped his sheets up to make the noose. Left a note to his mother, saying how sorry he was.”
Something worse than prison.
Coulter put his head in his hands as Pete stared at him, dumbstruck.
“This is worse than I thought,” the old detective said. “Much worse.”
He looked through his fingers at Pete.
“Just what have we stumbled into here?” he said.
38 BABY LOVE
“Stella?” Dave stood blinking on his doorstep. It was the middle of the day, but clearly he had just rolled out of bed and pulled an old army greatcoat over the top of his pyjamas, his hair a wild cloud that just about hid the dark rings around his eyes. As I stared at his raggedy scarecrow frame, all the clever opening lines I had rehearsed dissolved into the greyness of a wet autumnal afternoon.
Dave hadn't managed to win a seat at the General Election, just as Stanley still hadn't managed to solve the case. The day of Harold Wilson's slim triumph over the Tories had dawned misty and grey, the end of a three-month long heatwave. Gloomy weather had persisted all week since.
According to Stanley, the atmosphere in Notting Hill nick had also turned much colder, since the discovery of Mavis. He feared that his
boss had been given orders to shelve all the evidence Stanley had been amassing on the case, or at least pass it over to his superiors for them to bury. The only way he thought they could bring the killer to justice now was to force something out into the open, something that couldn't be covered up. Seeing Dave was the only thing left I could think of that might help him, even if it had taken all this time to finally pin him down. But now it didn't look like I had caught him at a very opportune moment.
“Sorry,” I said. “Is this a bad time? I can come back later…”
“No,” he shook his head, “it's really nice to see you. Please, come in love.”
The kitchen looked like a hurricane had hit it – clothes, newspapers, leaflets and flyers all over the place. I picked my way through the carnage to the table, moved a rucksack off the nearest chair and sat down, while Dave rummaged about, finding the kettle, cups and matches.
“’Scuse the state of the place,” he said. “But I only just got back.”
Lying on the table was a newspaper with him on the front cover, the headline IS THIS REALLY THE FACE OF MODERN BRITAIN? in outraged capitals above it.
“Sorry you didn't win,” I said, staring at it. “But it looks like you had some success after all.”
He grinned, setting cups down around the general mess. “Yeah,” he said, “got right up their noses, didn't I? That's all you can do with these bastards. If you can't beat ’em, take the piss – they can't bloody stand it, can they?”
“No,” I said, taking a sip of the tea and trying not to wince at the industrial strength of it.
“What can I do for you, then, love? I'm sorry I ain't been in touch sooner, Chris did tell me you'd been looking for me, but this politics lark just takes over your life. Oh, and sorry to hear about Toby, too,” he added. “The arsehole.”
I laughed. “Don't be,” I said. “I'm beginning to realise that he did me a favour.”
“Oh yeah?” There was a knowing look in Dave's eye, but I didn't want to go down that road, I had to ask him the important things before the conversation got swept round to more sociable matters.
“Anyway,” I said, “it's about Jenny.”
His face changed instantly. The laughter lines mutated into a frown.
“Yeah?” he said. “Chris told me that, an’ all, about her getting married, having a baby. Don't worry, I won't be hanging round her new house bothering her and Sonny Jim if that's what she's worried about. Did she ask you to come round and tell me that?”
“No,” I said, “she didn't. Please don't be offended, Dave, it's not that at all.”
“Sorry.” The anger drained back out of his face as quickly as it had flared. “I didn't mean to come across so bolshy.” He reached a tobacco tin out of a pair of jeans from the heap beside his chair. “It's just, it's still a painful subject for me, even after all this time.”
He extracted a rolling paper and made a line of tobacco down the middle of it. “I tried everything to forget about that girl, you know,” he said. “Joining a band, running for parliament – every kind of distraction you could think of. Only it all keeps coming back to her in the end.”
He licked the edge of the paper, rolled up a skinny cigarette.
“I met Giles,” I said. “He is her brother, isn't he? It's so obvious when you see them together, only I never had before. Would you mind me asking, why is it such a secret that they're brother and sister?”
Dave gave a sharp laugh. “I would have thought that was obvious,” he said. “But then how could you know? I bet she never once invited you back to her house, did she? Never told you nothing personal in all the years you've known her?”
“No,” I said. “That was the first time I'd ever met anyone from her family.”
“Well her and Giles is,” he struck a match and inhaled deeply, blew a plume of smoke across the room, “a case of same dad, different mum. Jenny's old man, Sir Alex,” he pronounced the name with scorn, “cuckolded Giles's old man, Lord Somerset. It's one of the ripping wheezes these toffs get up to all the time. Somerset couldn't care less, he already had all his heirs at their posts, despatched his duty, as it were. Jenny reckoned he was queer anyway.”
I choked on the sip of tea I had taken, thinking about what Toby had said about his father.
“I know.” Dave leant over and patted me on the back. “It's a bleedin’ distasteful matter all round. But you got to understand: they live in a different world to us proles. Minton and Somerset had a good war together, that was all what counted. They're still having a good war now, as it goes. Only instead of plotting which bits of Jerry to drive their tanks through next, they use Somerset's grace and favour to plot which bits of London Minton can roll his bulldozers into instead. It won't surprise you to learn that they don't like the idea of poor people living around here,” he said. “Let alone darkies, wops, paddies, spics or any other form of Johnny Foreigner. So they've built a load of horrible concrete boxes to shut them all in, keep them in their place.
“And now there's this motorway – Connecting the Western suburbs to the heart of the City, yeah?” he quoted from the banners that fluttered from the construction site. “Ain't it beautiful. Driving their bulldozers right through people's houses, right past their windows, splitting this manor down the middle and changing it all forever. Like I said, Minton and Somerset have made a fortune from their wars. So what do it matter to them if one of them puts the other one's missus in the club? What do it matter what the resultant offspring think about it either?”
“When did Jenny find out?” I asked, my mind swimming.
“When she was about thirteen.” Dave screwed his cigarette into an old tin ashtray, as if he wished he was boring it into the side of Sir Alex's head. “Her old man reckoned the two of them were getting a bit too close for comfort. Which was bloody ironic, considering,” he turned his head away, “what he'd been doing to her.”
“Oh God,” I whispered, suddenly realising what it was that had always been missing from Jenny. The strange silences, the blankness. The careful way she always avoided revealing anything too personal about herself and how she had lost that ability the moment someone she really cared about was in danger. The illusion she gave of seeming too knowing for her years, yet too childlike for her pulchritudinous appearance. The way she had put her hand over her stomach to protect her unborn child as she thought about it all, that morning in her kitchen. Her own father…
“I think I need a drink.” Dave rummaged around in his coat pocket, extracted a bottle of brandy and slugged a load into his teacup.
“Want some?” he said as an afterthought, offering it over to me.
“I think I do,” I said, grateful for the burn of it down the back of my throat.
“Ugh,” said Dave, knocking back his. “Do you often take confessional like this, your Grace?” He tried to smile.
“No,” I said, “and I had no idea. But it makes sense of so many things…”
He nodded. “She hates him, Jenny does. I didn't realise the extent of it when I first met her, I thought a few pranks would sort him out.”
He poured the rest of the bottle between my cup and his. “He was building in Kensington then, making a right horrible old pile – civic architecture, he called it. Ugly was more like it. So we started a protest movement, No More Ugly. Had a demo right outside his site, got in all the papers. All them Fleet Street hacks fucking loved it, Minton's glamorous daughter protesting against him. We even knocked Princess Margaret off the Daily Mail's gossip column for a day. Worked a treat in pissing him off, so she told me.
“But then,” Dave took another, smaller sip, put his teacup down, “she had another bright idea, that we go one further. Old Somerset was getting a bit senile in his dotage, you see. Left his private library unlocked one day and Giles found some interesting things in there.” Dave's stare intensified. “Incriminating photographs, apparently, and a couple of reels of film, showing the sorts of things him and Minton got up to with all their influential f
riends. I wish I had actually seen them so I'd know for sure, but I'm pretty sure we're talking the same circles here as Profumo – another part of my largely fruitless mission to carry on this work.”
I started to feel light-headed and not just from the brandy.
“Jenny's idea was to sell them to the press, those same old bastards that had been drooling all over her at the demo.” His scowl deepened. “She thought she had some influence there, how naïve can you get? The pair of us were. It was only then that I found out how much power her old man really has.”
“Why? What did he do?”
Dave's almond eyes burned straight past me into the dark corners of the past. “There was this geezer I knew from Finches, Gypsy George they called him,” he said. “Irish fella, bit of a tinker and the best cat burglar in the Smoke, never been collared in his life. I reckoned we couldn't fail if he screwed the drum. How wrong I was. Not only did George get caught red-handed with all the loot, but Sir Alex then had some top copper come down from West End Central to take care of all the evidence. George got sent to Pentonville,” he shook his head, “where, supposedly, he hanged himself three months later. I might as well have rung his neck myself.”
“Oh God,” I said, shutting my eyes, seeing a ballroom full of people in tuxedos and tiaras, all laughing at Susannah Houghton, who lay naked on a bed, squirming beneath a man in a gorilla suit. Hearing Bernard Baring bragging about witnessing this spectacle to Pat Innes, the pair of them laughing.
“This copper from the West End,” I said. “He's not the same one…”
“That Chris was investigating? Yeah,” he said. “And we all know how that ended. Like a bad joke, ain't it?”
“It's worse than that,” I said, now knowing why Mya had always wanted me to see Dave, now knowing what the final connection was.
Me and Vera at the bar in the Warwick Castle, the usual Friday night larks. “A tanner says he gets me next.” Vera slams her money down on the bar along with the rest. The landlord sweeps it all up, puts it in the pot. Must be a lot in there; nae more bodies for months now. Auld Jack's been getting slack.
Bad Penny Blues Page 33