‘So, they trafficked women,’ Mickey said.
‘It would seem so. There were enough women making their way to London, but if they were able to make their own way they were likely to be that tiny bit less desperate, less easy to control. A woman or girl who is already broken by her experiences, already destitute and desperate, would have been easy pickings. Bailey no doubt encouraged the plan and we know, from Sarah, that Clough was there to keep the girls in line.’
‘And Dalla, already angry, would be all fired up, no doubt.’ Mickey was thoughtful. He picked up his notebook and began to plot a timeline. ‘So, in the summer of 1918 Clough gets this idea. He is brought back to England and while recovering he tells Bailey of this business possibility. Manfrid Beaney, still in France, a man who from all accounts would do anything this Clough told him to, sets about procuring the merchandise. Clough had been on a merchantman; perhaps he used his contacts?’
‘And by the time the war ended this traffic was already established. The chaos that followed the armistice would have done nothing to restrict what had already begun.’
‘It seems that Malina was correct. Whatever got her father killed had its beginnings during the war and not after. So, what went wrong?’
‘Tommy Boswell claims he has only rumours to provide there. You remember what Malina said about that night at the cottage? That they could not be doing with liars? Tommy thinks that Manfrid had been accused of lying about the number of women brought in. That he’d been trading elsewhere – though with whom, Tommy could not or would not say.’
‘And so they had him disposed of,’ Mickey said.
TWENTY-SEVEN
Tommy lay on the hard, narrow bunk and stared at a cracked and greying ceiling.
He’d pulled the blanket up to his neck but he was still cold. It was the kind of cold that seeped straight into the core of a body, like he’d never feel warm again. It was a chill that had started when the constables had come to the boarding house in Brighton and he’d known they were going to take him back. They’d signed his death warrant, Tommy thought, just as sure and certain as if they’d brought the noose along with them and strung him up.
One thing he’d not told the inspector, and he wasn’t sure why he’d held it back when he’d told him everything else. Maybe he’d kept the secret for so long that it had become ingrained, but everything else he’d revealed had been part of that same story, so why hold this back?
He’d been there that night. They’d brought Manfrid in, struggling and yelling and screaming that he’d done nothing. Bailey, the younger Josiah, had been watching, had been standing at the bar and sinking pint after pint followed by a rum chaser. Bailey was the only man Tommy knew who could follow beer with rum and rum with beer. He’d tried it once and it left a nasty taste in the mouth, so Tommy thought. But that was Bailey all over, wasn’t it? A nasty taste in the mouth.
But what made it worse was when Manfrid had seen Cloughie standing there with the fid in his hand and he’d realized what was coming. Bailey had chosen his executioner. His closest friend was going to be the one killing him.
‘I did nothing!’ It was a scream of despair.
‘You lied to me. Ten girls, you said, but you brought in fifteen. Where are the other five? Tell me that and it might go easier.’
Bailey came close, rum bottle in hand. ‘I might be persuaded to give you a tot of rum first, ease the pain a little.’ And then he laughed and stepped away and Clough came forward with the fid and plunged it upward into Manfrid’s chest. They had decided he was guilty and nothing he could say would have changed that or saved him.
Tommy remembered the look of shock on Manfrid’s face. Right up to the final second, he’d not believed that he could die. That Clough would really go through with it.
Then Ricky Clough stepped back, tugging the weapon from the body with a sickening, sucking kind of noise that Tommy would remember for the rest of his life. That and the slap as Manfrid hit the floor.
Then the older Bailey had arrived. Josiah senior, looking at the body and then at his son with the same expression of distaste. Josiah senior believed in disposing of problems quietly and without a room full of witnesses. His son wanted the world to know what he could do.
Dalla did it, Grigor had said. It was Dalla Beaney. Tommy hadn’t been in the room when Bailey had taken his time over killing Grigor, and for that he was grateful, but he’d been told about it after. Bailey was scaring his people, now more than ever. He kept his streets tied up so tight no one could breathe and there were those who complained under their breath and those who had started to complain almost openly. Tommy had been told what Grigor had said but it was only now that he felt he could make sense of it.
‘Dalla did it,’ Tommy said softly. ‘Dalla spread the lie.’ She couldn’t kill Manfrid with her own hand; the risks were too great and she had her kids to think of. But she had no love left for the husband who beat her senseless and who would sell their daughter for the price of a beer, should Bailey or Clough even look like they wanted him to.
Dalla had found her own way to get rid, Tommy thought. Now he’d worked it out, he didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
And then there was Grigor. Trying so hard to get his life straight after he came out last time.
Tommy turned over in his bunk and stared at the cracked grey wall instead of the cracked grey ceiling. Grigor had been lodging with the clockmaker, Abraham Levy. A good man, Tommy thought, despite the disadvantages of not being an Englishman and a Christian. Grigor knew he couldn’t raise the rent that last week and he was scared that he’d be turned out, was going to go to Bailey to ask for work. Any work.
Abraham had known that. On the day before Grigor died Tommy had been with him and Abraham had spoken to Tommy, calling him aside.
‘He does not have the rent?’
‘No, reckon he don’t. Look, give him a day or two—’
‘Hush. Take this, tell him it is yours and let him pawn it. Let him bring the rent to me and next time, we will think of something else.’
‘Why?’
‘Why not? Our God tells us we must care for one another. Sometimes that caring must be silent, secret.’
When Tommy went with Grigor to the pawnbroker he realized that the man recognized the watch and when curiosity led him back there, to speak to the man again, he came to understand that every month it turned up in the pawnbroker’s shop, always with a different owner.
An act of kindness, Tommy thought. He wondered if that good deed would go unpunished. None of the others he knew about seemed to have done.
Another small act of kindness was about to bear fruit.
Eddy lay on his own bunk, a thin mattress with a threadbare blanket, and nursed his bruises. He’d come back to Clough and told him all he knew, but it had not been enough. But then, Eddy thought, this man was never satisfied. Never unless he was hurting someone.
The few coins that the sergeant had given him to pass on to his master had made a big impression on young Eddy, that and the family that had kept an eye on him at the corner shop. He’d known they’d been set to watch him, but he’d been well fed and had a warm place to sleep and even when he’d been set to work he’d been rewarded with a kind word and a coin.
It was the most kindness Eddy had encountered for as long as he could remember and the sudden contrast with the treatment that had been dealt out since he returned was stark.
Clough’s barge had been moored up where he could have easy access to Bailey’s streets and Bailey’s people and also to the man he called Clem, smartly dressed and smart mouthed, whom Eddy had encountered once. The only person he had known Clough show even a modicum of true deference to.
Eddy was used to being left alone at night and tonight was no exception. Clough had left and now the only sound was the slap of water against timber and the creak of boats settling for the night.
He waited. Counting to twenty and then to thirty and then slowly to a hundred before doing it all over again. Only when
he was sure the man had gone, only when he was certain he would not return, at least for a while, did Eddy move.
He had nothing to take, apart from the few coins the sergeant had given him and which he had wrapped in a grubby handkerchief and hidden in the lining of his coat. He hoped the Pritchards would take pity on him, or the woman who he knew was the policeman’s wife.
After all, Eddy could tell them more about Clough than he’d been able to tell Clough about them.
The police had been on Bailey’s patch all day and now into the evening showed no sign of going. He’d been pinned down all day, restless and angry, and those who brought him news were lucky to get off with just the sharp edge of his tongue.
Tommy Boswell had been brought back to London, fetched up on the train from Brighton, he was told. He’d spent the afternoon being questioned by the police and Bailey was convinced he’d squealed.
‘Traitors, the whole fucking lot of you,’ Bailey told his men. ‘You lot and Tommy bloody Boswell and Alf …’ His list grew longer with the telling. Paranoid and anxious and holding power by his fingernails, he was a shadow of the man he’d been six months before.
And he knew what they were saying. That every dog had its day; that he was losing his grip. That he was losing his mind.
Bailey was having none of it. Tommy Boswell was going to pay; inside or out, he’d not make it through another day. Alf Peterson … what was he, anyway? A nothing, a tick on a pig’s arse. And as for Timmins …
‘They ain’t done nothing. They’ve been banged up while all this is happening.’
But he would not listen now. The police had been into prison to see them, therefore they must have grassed him up, and Bailey had no time for traitors. For liars. ‘You know what we do to liars. You remember what we do to liars.’
Bailey seemed unconcerned that most of those he said this to had been kids when the incident had taken place, and still others had no idea what he meant – apart from one who left quietly without attracting notice, the list of those Bailey had named noted and remembered. Clem would like to hear about this; it would suit him if Bailey then took the blame.
The one thing wrong about his life was Clough, Bailey thought. Back then, Clough had been at his side, dispensing justice and execution, just as Bailey required.
The one thing wrong now was that Clough was back – but he was fighting for the other side.
TWENTY-EIGHT
The news that Nat Timmins had been found hanged in his cell reached Henry early the next morning. They were in Reading by ten and watching the police surgeon inspect the body shortly after.
‘Not a suicide, I would say,’ the surgeon told them, pointing to the neck. Timmins’ face was black, his tongue protruding and his eyes bulging. Henry would have made a bet on the cause of death being a bad hanging – one that did not break the neck. But the police surgeon thought otherwise. ‘The marks of hands,’ he said. ‘Bruising to the neck that has been hidden by the rope.’
‘You are certain?’
‘As certain as I can be until we can inspect the hyoid bone.’
‘He was apparently upset when you left,’ the governor told Mickey Hitchens. ‘He seemed troubled.’
He took them back to his office and sent for tea.
‘It’s not good for prison morale, a hanging in a cell.’ He seemed to be holding Mickey Hitchens responsible for this.
‘Especially if it’s proved to be murder,’ Mickey observed.
The governor glowered. ‘Timmins should have gone to the rope long ago. Saved us all the trouble.’
The telephone rang. It was for Henry. He listened for a moment and then set the receiver down.
‘We must leave,’ he said.
‘What’s going on?’ Mickey asked as they made their way from the prison.
‘Alf Peterson has been attacked in his cell. He fought off his attackers and they are now in the prison hospital.’
‘We are going there?’
‘No, I want to see Tommy Boswell. This is too much of a coincidence.’
‘All men we have questioned.’ Mickey paused. ‘What about the Cooper girl?’
‘There are public telephones at the railway station,’ Henry said. ‘She’ll be at work. We can get a police officer to her.’
‘She’ll not stand for that. She’ll send him on his way with a flea in his ear. You’ll need to call her, explain what is going on and hope that she then accepts help. Unfortunately, that young woman is not easily frightened.’
Henry strode on, his face creased in thought. He knew Mickey was right, but what to do? They reached the station and found a public call box and Henry did what he always did in times of crisis: he telephoned Cynthia.
‘Now,’ he said. ‘Tommy Boswell.’
Booth and Mowlem had been importing exotic items and exporting British-made textiles and woollen goods for close on fifty years. Theirs was an imposing building. Red brick, stained brown by the smoggy London air, with regular runs of sash windows on all three floors. A concierge stood by the main entrance doors – the staff entrance being in the side road to the left of the building.
Cynthia hoped that her charge had returned safely from her lunch break – always supposing she had one long enough to make it worthwhile leaving her desk.
She had deliberately decided to make a memorable entrance. The more attention she attracted, Cynthia thought, the less likely it was that anyone would challenge her, and the safer both she and the young woman she was going to collect would be.
And Cynthia was not about to take no for an answer.
Her car stopped in front of the main entrance to the building. She’d chosen the Bentley, with its custom Vanden Plas body, sure to impress and offering better shelter from the elements than the tourer her husband preferred. Cynthia alighted and paused for a moment, tucking her little blue leather clutch bag beneath her arm. Her cloche hat was new; she’d been saving it for a special occasion and figured this might be it. Her cocoon coat was trimmed with fox fur and she knew that her appearance alone would open most of the relevant doors. If necessary, her husband’s name would open the rest.
The concierge held the door for her and bowed her in and Cynthia sailed over to the reception desk.
‘I’m here to see Miss Cooper,’ she said. ‘I don’t have an appointment, but I’m sure she can be spared. I believe she is a secretary on the third floor. Working for Mr Jefferson?’
This was a made-up name but, as Cynthia had guessed would happen, the receptionist was quick to offer her a respectful correction. ‘That would be Mr Williams and Mr Harris,’ she said. ‘Which of the gentlemen would you like to see, Mrs—’
‘Oh, neither,’ Cynthia told her. ‘My business is with Miss Cooper.’ She glanced around the reception area and spotted a run of chairs set to one side. ‘I’ll take a seat, shall I? And it’s Mrs Garrett-Smyth.’ She glanced at her watch and then made her way to the closest chair.
‘Er, I’m afraid staff don’t … I mean …’
Cynthia raised an eyebrow. ‘You mean you wish me to go around to the staff entrance? My dear young woman, I really don’t think so. Now, Miss Cooper, if you please.’
The receptionist looked flustered but picked up the internal telephone and Cynthia removed a cheroot holder from her bag and fished around for the cheroots and lighter. She didn’t actually smoke, as such. As Henry said, she just waved it around and puffed occasionally, but Cynthia certainly found it a useful accessory. It was easy to pose with a long amber holder.
The woman was clearly having difficulty explaining to the managers that the lady in reception really did want to see Miss Cooper. And yes, Mrs Garrett-Smyth. She glanced across at Cynthia and Cyn could hear her delivering a quiet description, of Cynthia herself and of her car. It had gathered a crowd, as it always did; the deep red coachwork, paint so perfect you could have drowned in the reflections, always caught attention.
‘Mr Williams is on his way down,’ the receptionist told her.
&nbs
p; ‘And Miss Cooper? It’s Miss Cooper I have business with. Oh, and please tell her to bring her bag and coat.’
The telephone was lifted again and Cynthia puffed at her cheroot and waited, channelling impatience now.
A few minutes later the sound of a lift door opening caught her attention. An older man and a young woman got out. The man Cynthia recognized, though she was not sure from where. She assumed, correctly, that Albert had done business with him at some time and they had met. The girl, neat black skirt and white blouse with her dark hair pinned up, was carrying a coat and bag and looking very worried.
‘Mrs Garrett-Smyth.’ Williams was advancing on her, hand already outstretched. ‘And what can I do for you today. Is your husband—’
‘Oh no, Albert is out of town today, but I believe he arranged for me to borrow this young lady for an hour or two? If you recall, he spoke to you about it? When you last had dinner? I needed a little temporary help and you said you had this very efficient young lady …’ She trailed off, looked deliberately put out. ‘Oh dear, you have forgotten. Lady Fielding will be so disappointed. It’s for the refugee fund, you know. Both you and Miss Cooper will be recompensed, of course.’
She smiled and stood up, extending her hand again towards Mr Williams. ‘Never mind, she’s here now and we’re most grateful. I’ll remember you to Mr Garrett-Smyth.’
Williams looked baffled and a little guilty. Had they really drunk that much the last time he had seen Albert? He wasn’t even sure when that had been, but people like the Garrett-Smyths lived life by their own rules; it was better, more profitable, just to play along.
‘Well, go along, Miss Cooper. I’m sure we can manage without you today. Mrs Garrett-Smyth, it’s always a pleasure. Always.’
Cynthia sailed down the steps, a very reluctant and puzzled Malina in tow.
‘Excuse me, but what’s going on?’ she asked. ‘Why am I going with you?’
Cynthia dropped the half act she found so useful. ‘I’m to tell you someone called Nat Timmins was murdered in his cell and Alf Peterson was attacked, and my brother Henry – you probably know him as Chief Inspector Johnstone – is off to make sure Tommy Boswell is still in one piece. He’s asked me to look after you. I think he figured I could handle it better than a constable.’
Kith and Kin Page 20