Kith and Kin

by Jane A. Adams

  ‘Sorry. I have no idea.’

  ‘Do you recall your father having particular friends and associates?’ Henry asked. ‘Perhaps your mother mentioned—’

  She was shaking her head. ‘Once we knew he was dead she didn’t mention that part of her life ever again, and we were too young to really know about anyone. Mam kept us clear of the adults. She wasn’t too sure about Grigor, not once he was grown. If Dad started talking about anything or if anyone came to the house, she’d send us out.

  ‘It made him mad, he said she thought she and us were too good for all of that. And remember, he’d been away fighting, and we’d moved to be away from it all.’

  ‘We should be going,’ Tilly said. The waitress, black clad, with her neat white headpiece and apron, was hovering, waiting to see if they would order again and hinting that if they did not then they had perhaps outstayed their time.

  Malina looked relieved. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘We should.’

  ‘We will want to speak again,’ Henry told her. ‘On Sunday, perhaps. Your brother may recall something that you do not.’

  She looked unhappy about that but she nodded. Mickey checked that he had the address of Kem’s lodgings. ‘Does he not live aboard the barge?’ Henry asked.

  ‘He needs a place to stay when he’s ashore,’ she told him, fastening her coat and gathering her bag. ‘He and another three lads, they rent a room so they have a shoreside address for letters and a place to lay their heads when they need it, and it’s rare all of them are back at the same time. They share and share about. Come on, Tilly. We’d best be off.’

  Mickey followed Henry out of the tearoom.

  ‘And how much truth do you reckon she’s telling us?’

  ‘I think what she’s told is true, but what is she not telling us? I think she has a story, probably concocted between brother and sister and their mother, a story that has become acceptable, maybe that they even believe. That makes it easy for them to move on rather than look back and acknowledge that they know more than they are telling us. And what they have come to believe may not be the truth.’

  Mickey was silent for a few moments, untangling that, and then he said, ‘Mothers tell their children what they need to hear and later, when the children are grown, it’s not easy to go back on what they’ve come up believing. So family history changes, and the truth with it. I think the mother must’ve known what got her husband killed, but she wouldn’t have told the children everything, she’d have wanted to protect them. A false step here or there and the whole family could be gone.’

  ‘And this overheard conversation about the women and girls. She seemed reluctant to speak of it, and yet—’

  ‘Many women were brought in after the war. Lured with promises. We both know how many foreign nationals there are involved in the sex trade in this city. It could be that Manfrid Beaney was involved in that side of things. It seems too that perhaps he threatened to let his daughter be used. Any mother worth the name would want to protect her child. It could be that the woman did for the husband and set this other story in motion to protect herself.’

  ‘Which would imply a very close and trusting relationship between the mother and Billy Crane and probably Max Peterson – about whom we still know very little. And why get them to act a role in front of the children? She could just tell them that their father had left and that they were now on their own – and they would probably be too relieved to question that.’

  ‘True,’ Mickey conceded. ‘Have we moved forward, do you think?’

  ‘Have we hell,’ Henry said.

  TWENTY

  Henry had returned to his flat and made himself coffee and sandwiches, more because Mickey had made him promise that he would remember to eat than because he felt any real hunger. He sat in his favourite leather chair looking out at the river, his supper on a small table beside him, and he opened his journal.

  Something Malina had said about the chaos at the end of the war had struck a chord.

  She was right, Henry wrote. The politicians would have everyone believe in the myth of the orderly ending. What did she say? A whistle blew at eleven o’clock on the eleventh of November and it all ended. Everyone went home. I always felt that the powers that be wanted the general public to view events as though the match had ended and the winning team would celebrate with a beer before returning to peaceful beds.

  But no, it was not like that. Not like that at all.

  He could recall the straggling procession of refugees, stumbling off the road as the soldiers returning to the ports came by. The women who were willing to offer anything, just for a dry night in a warm bed. The children crying because they were hungry and had been hungry for days. His own sense of dislocation. Yes, the whistle had been blown, the fighting continued until the last moment, the last second of that last hour, and he knew he was not the only one who had simply fired into the air and kept his head down. He had not wanted to kill and had certainly not wanted to be killed. And yet …

  I can’t even recall wanting to live. I can’t recall wanting anything except to be away from that place. I don’t think I even had a desire to be at home because I could no longer remember what home felt like. It had been too long and the change had been too great and I don’t think I felt that I could ever belong anywhere, ever again.

  The police had put out a call for Tommy Boswell to be brought in for questioning again but it seemed that bird had flown and no one knew where he was or when he had gone. Constables knocking on doors looking for him alerted Bailey to the fact that another of his people had gone AWOL. Tommy was not the first, but Bailey put out word that he was to be the last.

  ‘You tell them, scum, the lot of them. Next person to let me down and it’ll be their families that will suffer. Every last one of them, man, woman or child, I don’t give a damn. The bloody lot of them will be wiped out like a stain. You hear me, you tell everyone.’

  Bailey stood alone in the centre of the boxing gym. The ring rose above the level of his shoulders, canvas floor stained and damp where the blood had been wiped away. It was all that woman’s fault. ‘Fuck you, Dalla Beaney, fuck you to hell.’ And she was dead and buried and he could do nothing about that. But he could make others suffer for it, and he could bide his time.

  The day had passed slowly. Henry had found out the details of the case at which Spilsbury had been testifying when the photograph was taken. Mickey had looked into the record of Nat Timmins and arrangements had been made to go and speak to the man. Mickey had been allocated that task and Henry was to visit Alf Peterson, Max Peterson’s younger brother, who was also inside. He was the last remaining Peterson sibling.

  The marriage certificate that they had sent for was on its way, but the local police who had been sent to check on the last known address of the couple had reported that they had moved away and no one seemed to know where they had gone.

  At four o’clock in the afternoon, a phone call came through to central office which surprised Mickey greatly. It was Belle, and she had never been known to telephone him at work.

  ‘You need to come home,’ she told him. ‘There’s someone here you should speak to. I know who followed you, Mickey. He’s in our kitchen drinking tea.’

  She didn’t sound troubled, but Mickey’s first concern was for her safety. Belle laughed and reassured him. ‘It’s just a boy, Mickey,’ she told him. ‘And I’ve got Mr and Mrs Briggs here helping me keep an eye on him. It was Mr Briggs who grabbed him for me, but he’s settled down now, knows nobody is going to hurt him, and he wants to talk to you.’

  Mickey and Henry left immediately and arrived at Mickey’s home within the hour. The boy still sat at the kitchen table and looked up expectantly when they came in. Henry was not entirely surprised to find that it was the boy from Otterham Creek.

  Since the tiny kitchen was now becoming a little crowded the neighbours left, with Mickey’s profuse thanks. Belle put the kettle on for the next round of tea. ‘Now you talk to the man,’ she told th
e boy. ‘You tell him everything, and no lying, right?’

  The boy nodded obediently and then turned his attention to Mickey. ‘I can’t stand it no more,’ he said. ‘All he does is beat up on me. I work hard, I do everything I can, but I just get another beating. So I ran when we came up to town.’

  ‘And how did you find me?’ Mickey asked.

  The boy looked pleased with himself. ‘He said you were policemen. He said you were detectives, from Scotland Yard. So when I run away from him at the docks I asked a policeman where Scotland Yard was. He clipped my ear for me. Then I asked somebody else and they told me. And finally I found it, and I watched across the street for close on two days. I knew you’d have to come out sooner or later.’

  Henry raised an eyebrow and looked across at Belle, who shrugged. ‘Shows a degree of sense,’ she said.

  ‘Quite the little detective, you are,’ Mickey said.

  The boy looked pleased.

  ‘So how about you start from the beginning and tell me about this man who beats you, and why you’ve come running to me and what you want from me. And tell me what really happened with those two bodies down at Otterham Creek.’

  It took a little time to prise the boy’s story from him. He told it piecemeal and out of order and Mickey lost track of the times he had to halt and backtrack, just to make sense of it.

  Henry made little contribution to the conversation, content to let his sergeant talk to the lad. Instead, he stood by the kitchen door and loomed – as Belle called it – watching the boy’s face as he told his tale.

  ‘And so,’ – Mickey consulted his notebook once again – ‘you are telling me that your name isn’t Garth, but that the man’s might be, although you’ve heard someone call him Clough and so that might be who he really is? And that you really are Eddy but your family name is Mitchelson. Now, are we right so far?’

  The boy flicked a glance at Henry and then he nodded. ‘I ain’t lying this time,’ he said sulkily. ‘I came to help you, didn’t I?’

  ‘Well, that remains to be seen,’ Mickey told him. ‘And who commissioned you to place the bodies in Otterham Creek for us to find?’

  ‘Who what?’

  ‘He means, who paid you to put them there,’ Belle said. She was sitting at the small kitchen table – it would seat four, at a push – leaning back in her chair with her arms folded. Her posture, Henry thought, oozed scepticism.

  The boy shrugged at that. ‘He told me to wait for him outside this pub and he went inside and I waited on the step. He came out with this other bloke and they shook on something.’ He took a swipe at his nose with his sleeve and sniffed loudly. ‘I never heard the conversation, did I?’

  He had emulated Mickey’s slightly superior tone and looked well pleased with himself. ‘Man said we’d a job to do. We were taken in a car.’ He sounded impressed. ‘I sat in the back and he sat up front with the driver. We wuz dropped off at the side of the road, and we went to get a wagon. He drove.’

  ‘And you got the wagon from where?’

  ‘Dunno. Some farm or other, I suppose. But we din’t go to the farm, it was parked up, like, at the side of the road where the car dropped us off.’

  ‘All right,’ Mickey said. ‘So you took this wagon and, I presume, a horse?’

  ‘Of course, a horse. Two horses. I forgot, it was two horses.’

  ‘You’re a lying little toad,’ Belle said.

  ‘I am not!’ He glared at Belle, who glared back.

  ‘I’m inclined to agree,’ Mickey said, ‘that you are a thoroughgoing liar. Now, shall we try again? Or shall I take you down to Scotland Yard and hand you over to a couple of my less civilized colleagues?’

  ‘He means, shall he give you to the constables and let them beat it out of you,’ Belle added, helpfully.

  ‘He ain’t allowed to do that,’ the boy told her sharply. ‘You ain’t allowed to do that.’

  ‘You ain’t allowed to lie to your elders, but you still are.’ Belle imitated his voice this time and the boy looked even more offended.

  ‘Truth now,’ Henry said.

  His voice seemed to startle all of them. Belle got up to make more tea, just to give herself something to do, and Mickey turned to a clean page in his book.

  ‘Shall we begin again?’ he said.

  And so it went on, the interrogation continuing step by step. Belle resumed her seat at the table and Henry was silent by the door, Mickey questioning, wearing the child down by slow degrees until, a full six hours after they arrived, Henry was satisfied that they had something useful from him.

  For the last two hours the child had been wriggling in his seat and threatening to wet himself if he wasn’t allowed to use the privy. Too much tea was taking its toll.

  ‘Not on my floor,’ Belle told him sternly. ‘Or you’ll be cleaning it up.’

  Mickey escorted him to the outside toilet. Mickey and Belle had indoor plumbing but there was no way Belle was going to admit the child further into her house. Mickey stood outside while the boy relieved himself and then brought him back into the kitchen.

  ‘And now what do we do with him?’ Mickey asked. ‘A night in a cell would seem appropriate. Keep him out of harm’s way.’

  Belle appeared to resist that idea. ‘He is still a child,’ she said. ‘I’d hate to think of him locked away with the fleas and the rats and, of course, the other prisoners. He reckons he’s twelve, so he’d be put in with the adults, wouldn’t he?’

  It was the first time the boy had shown any real emotion, Henry thought. He grew pale beneath the dirt on his face and began to protest.

  ‘You may be right,’ Henry said. ‘But we need to keep him confined, and I don’t suppose you want him here.’

  ‘What? This little toad? He’d rob me and probably worse, soon as look my way.’

  ‘How about we ask the Pritchards?’ Mickey said.

  Belle nodded. ‘A very good plan. They’ll keep him in order and no mistake. I’ll go and have a word.’

  ‘Who are the Pritchards?’ Henry asked.

  ‘He used to be a drayman,’ Mickey said. ‘Fists like hams. When he retired from that trade he set up shop on the corner, down the road. Got six strapping sons, all with fists like hams too, and the weight to use them. No doubt they can make use of a boy like this, while we’re working out what to do with him.’

  Henry nodded wisely, not entirely sure what Mickey had in mind, but willing to play along.

  Belle arrived a few minutes later with two very large men in tow. Father and son. Mickey went with them when they took the boy back to the shop.

  Henry looked enquiringly at Belle.

  ‘Malc Pritchard is soft as tripe,’ she said. ‘So are the boys, but they know how to put on a good act. They’ll put the lad up in the attic room so he can’t climb out and run – at least not until you and Mickey are ready for him to.’

  Henry took what had been Mickey’s place at the table. ‘And whose idea was that?’ he asked. ‘Not that I really need to ask.’

  Belle smiled at him. ‘I know kids like that. Damn it all, Henry, I was one a long time ago. Someone’s using him to get to Mickey and to you, you both know that.’

  ‘It’s a fair guess,’ Henry agreed. ‘I can’t see any little urchin like that running to find a Scotland Yard police sergeant he’s met only once. The coincidence is laughable.’

  ‘Unless it’s true, of course,’ Belle laughed, ‘and we’ve all misread this. Stranger things, Henry. Stranger things. Now, how is that sister of yours, and will I get the opportunity to see her before I go away at New Year?’

  ‘So,’ Henry said as he and Mickey headed back to work – it was going to be another long day, it seemed – ‘what do we think we really know?’

  ‘That his name is Eddy and the man was probably called Clough or Gough – those facts, if we can call them that, remained consistent throughout. That they were probably hired to put on this show for us, probably driven close to Otterham and then dropped off to stage the
scene. The rowing boat was probably for show too, and I doubt either of them ever served aboard anything that floats, never mind a sailing barge. And the boy has now been sent to put us off track – not that I thought we were ever on track. Or to discover what we know.’

  ‘Which is not a lot.’ Henry almost laughed. ‘Though it suggests that we may have poked a tiger or two, even if by accident. I’m assuming your friends will watch the boy closely.’

  ‘Yes, and will follow him closely, when we decide it’s time for him to run away. The Pritchards are a resourceful bunch.’

  ‘I’m not sure I like bringing civilians into this.’

  ‘Think of them as informants. We do it all the time when we call them informants.’

  That was true, Henry thought. ‘And the name Gough or Clough, I can’t say it rings any bells.’

  ‘No, nor with me. I’ve been thinking about that strange wound.’

  ‘I’ve asked for all files from the last five years involving unsolved stabbings to be brought up.’

  ‘We’ll be busy, then.’

  Henry laughed. ‘I’m having them filtered for cases of single stab wounds; that should cut it down to a manageable number. But you’re right, we will be busy.’

  ‘And we’re off to see Alf Peterson and Nat Timmins tomorrow,’ Mickey said morosely. ‘That should be cheerful. I encountered Alf Peterson only once and I’m not keen to renew the acquaintance. He’s a snaky little bastard.’

  ‘And he’s the only sibling left,’ Henry observed. ‘Now Max is gone. Have they parents still living, do you know?’

  ‘Not that will own them.’

  The night was heavy with the threat of rain. The sort of night that seeped deep into bone and chilled feet, even in good boots. Their footsteps echoed on the cobblestones and the only other sound was the burst of laughter as the door to a public house opened and then closed, briefly spilling light and life on to the pavement.

  They turned the corner, heading now towards the Victoria Embankment and back into busier thoroughfares. Henry paused at the entrance to the building and looked across the road to where the boy claimed he had waited for Mickey to emerge. It was possible, of course, but for anyone to stand there for any length of time and not be noticed, or even challenged, was unlikely.