The Brief: Crime and corruption in 1960s London (Charles Holborne Legal Thrillers)

by Simon Michael

  Charles turns his attention to Fylde’s story. Wheatley isn’t the sort to be interested in loose ends when he already has a nicely packaged prosecution, but even he can’t ignore the pimp’s evidence of another man posing as Charles. Of course, that assumes Fylde will give a statement — unlikely, given his profession. There’s the evidence of Dennis, but he just confirms that “Melissa” moved things into the flat, which is just as consistent with Wheatley’s case. To have any chance of persuading Wheatley to take his story seriously, Charles needs a description of the man posing as him and that means waiting until the blonde, Shirley, returns from the Costa Del Sol. If she’ll meet him and co-operate, which also isn’t certain. So he has to wait at least four days on the chance that Shirley can give a description, and is prepared to do it.

  It all feels too tenuous, and in any case Charles doubts he’ll last another four days at liberty before the police catch up with him. He won’t go back to Rachel’s flat; she’s already risked too much for him. There’s only one other place where he might turn, and that’s Izzy’s in Shadwell, but he hasn’t seen the lighterman in nearly fifteen years, and is embarrassed to ask for help now. Anyway, he’s not sure his formidable aunt Beatrice, Izzy’s mother, wouldn’t turn him in anyway.

  He’s at a loss to decide what to do next. In fact the only things of which Charles is absolutely certain is that, firstly, he’s famished and, secondly, courtesy of the Krays’ shooter, he’s flush. He glances at his watch. Where to get a decent meal in London at quarter to six in the morning? He smiles to himself, starts the engine and drives east, back towards the City of London.

  The streets are getting busier but it takes Charles only fifteen minutes to reach Smithfield’s meat market. He turns off Farringdon Road and parks in West Smithfield. Under the dome of the new market there’s a jam of unloading lorries, porters and men with bloodied overalls and carcasses hefted across their shoulders. Charles has to sidestep swiftly as he is almost run down by a man trotting across the cobbles carrying half a cow. Charles crosses the central courtyard to The Fox and pushes his way through the heavy doors. The pub is half-full of market traders and drivers. The smell of frying steak and beer makes Charles’s mouth water immediately.

  The Fox is one of half a dozen pubs that opens at 4 a.m., specifically for the meat market. Charles discovered it while on one of his insomniac walks around the city’s deserted streets, shortly after the rebuilding of Smithfield finished the previous year, and loved the slice of London underbelly it revealed.

  He pushes his way to the long wooden bar, attracting a few glances as he does. A man takes his order for a rare steak sandwich and chips and pulls him a pint of mild. Charles threads his way through the butchers and porters to a small wrought iron table in the corner of the bar. He sits facing into the corner of the room, pulls up his collar and tries to look inconspicuous as he focuses on his next step.

  He is stuck. He can think of nothing to do but lie low until Monday and then hope he can speak to Shirley. Perhaps, now he has money, he could check into a hotel, maybe outside London?

  A harassed waitress brings his steak and a large pot of mustard and hands him some cutlery rolled in a paper napkin. Charles is working his way through his wonderfully bloody steak sandwich when he looks up. In the mirror facing out onto the bar he spots a man staring at him. He’s middle-aged, with a few strands of sandy hair combed across a mottled pale scalp, and a day’s growth of stubble on a doughy chin. A rollup stuck to his lower lip bobs up and down like a conductor’s baton as he talks from the corner of his mouth to another man at his elbow. He wears a donkey jacket over a blood and fat-streaked knee-length apron and heavy Wellington boots.

  Charles considers reaching for the pistol in his inside pocket, but decides against: it would bring things to a head too quickly and, if possible, he wants to finish his breakfast. Instead, he alters his grip on the steak knife, ready to use it as a weapon if necessary. He manages to eat a couple more mouthfuls before a voice sounds above him.

  ‘All right if I sit down, mate?’

  It doesn’t look as if he’s about to be grabbed immediately so Charles mutters, ‘Free country,’ through a mouthful of cow, and indicates the chair opposite with the knife. The man pushes past the table and lowers himself onto the seat opposite Charles.

  ‘We’ve met before,’ says the man, keeping his voice low and not making direct eye contact with Charles.

  ‘We have?’

  ‘Coupla years back. You represented me brother at the Bailey. Del Plumber.’ He speaks through lips that barely move and Charles has to concentrate to catch the words over the hubbub in the bar.

  Charles tenses. There is no denying now that he’s been recognised.

  ‘You won’t remember me,’ says the man. ‘We only met the once, just before sentencing, and you was busy. But I remember you. And I know you’re in a spot of bother.’

  ‘I’m tooled,’ warns Charles. ‘And not just the knife.’

  The man looks Charles in the face for the first time. ‘Easy … easy! If I was gonna grass you, why’d I come over?’

  ‘What then?’

  ‘Del’s in trouble —’

  Charles interrupts. ‘Well, perhaps you’ve clocked that I’ve got problems of my own right now.’

  ‘I know that. But I wonder if they’re not connected. You hear about Robbie Sands?’

  ‘Sands? Derek’s co-defendant? No. Why?’

  ‘He’s out. Ten days ago. Started a ruckus with a nonce and did a runner on the way to hospital.’

  ‘What makes you think he’s connected to my … troubles?’

  ‘He’s been bothering Del. And your name was mentioned.’

  Charles’s hands cease moving. He studies the other man’s face. He hasn’t seen Plumber in two years, but there is indeed a similarity with the man before him; the same height, colouring and fleshiness, although this brother’s not turned to flab in the same way as Plumber. The man looks at him frankly, awaiting a verdict. Charles decides that he’s telling the truth.

  ‘What’re you going to do?’ asks Charles.

  ‘About seeing you? Nuffin’. Not my business. I keep straight, but I still don’t talk to rozzers. The family’d never forgive me. But go and see Del, eh? He’s in a right state. He wants to get away, but there’s no way.’

  ‘Why not?’ asks Charles, but the man doesn’t reply. He pulls a Rizla cigarette paper from a packet and starts writing on it with a stub of pencil taken from behind his ear. He slides it across the table.

  ‘That’s the address. Have a shufti.’

  Without another word he stands and brushes past Charles, causing the table to wobble and some of Charles’s beer to slop over the edge of the glass. Charles watches him in the mirror as he rejoins the man he’d been talking to, laughs and slaps him on the back and then disappears through the throng. Over the heads of the traders and butchers, Charles sees the door of the pub open and close again. He looks at the wafer of paper in his hand. The address is in Limehouse, only a mile or two further east. Charles pockets it and resumes his breakfast.

  Charles brings the Austin Healey to a halt outside a Georgian house in Narrow Street, Limehouse. He can smell the river on the other side of the houses, less than 100 yards to his right, and two seagulls screech, flap and squabble over something dead in the gutter opposite him.

  The pavements are quite full as people hurry to work, and more than one person notes the Healey and looks into its windows as they pass. Charles needs to move. The house he is looking for is two doors down from The Grapes pub. He approaches a faded blue door, tacked to which is a dog-eared index card with a message in block capitals: “PLEASE KNOCK AND WALK UP.” He knocks, flakes of peeling blue paint falling to his feet as he does so, turns the handle and opens the door cautiously. A narrow wooden staircase faces him. He climbs to a small landing from which a half-glazed door opens. A radio can be heard playing music through the door. He knocks on the glass and waits. There’s no answer so he
pushes the door open to be assailed by the sharp odour of urine. He wrinkles his nose. He’s in a large kitchen. This is a poor household but, despite the smell, it’s immaculately clean and tidy. The room was once rather elegant, with tall ceilings, a large intact plaster ceiling rose and an imposing fireplace now housing an electric two-bar radiator. The floor is covered in lino and there’s a scrubbed pine kitchen table. The previous night’s dishes, washed, sit on a metal drainer.

  Charles follows the sound of the radio which emanates from another room leading off the kitchen. He knocks on the door, twice, with no response, so he opens it slowly.

  The room beyond is in darkness and here the smell of urine is at its strongest. Charles pauses to allow his eyes to become accustomed to the gloom. There’s an unusually high narrow bed against the far wall, and a hoist attached to the ceiling hanging over it. The curtains are closed. Then Charles sees two dark shapes on the floor. He takes a couple of steps to the window and opens the curtain nearest him. Light enters the bedroom. Derek Plumber lies on the floor, unconscious, face down with his knees drawn up under him. His pyjama trousers are saturated with urine, and his right arm is outstretched, as if reaching for something on the dressing table. Beside him, on its side, is a wheelchair. Charles rights the wheelchair and bends to lift Plumber back into it. As he does so Plumber’s pyjama legs flap emptily and Charles realises with a shock deep to the pit of his stomach that the man has no legs below the knees. He holds Plumber under the armpits, a deadweight. He changes his mind and instead of putting him into the wheelchair from which he might simply slide back onto the floor, Charles manages to swing him partially onto the bed. From there he rolls the unconscious man into a more secure position. It’s only as he is straightening Plumber that Charles recognises another strong odour in the room. It takes him a moment to identify it, so incongruous does it seem, and then he remembers the smell from Henrietta’s dressing room: nail varnish remover.

  Charles looks round at the dressing table against the wall; it’s almost completely covered with bottles and boxes of medications, and Charles’s eye is immediately caught by half a dozen ampoules of clear liquid and an open box of disposable syringes. Charles picks up one of the ampoules: insulin. He looks back at Plumber.

  ‘You poor bastard,’ he says softly. ‘You couldn’t reach.’

  Charles returns to the bedside and tries to rouse Plumber, shaking him and slapping his face once or twice, but he knows he’s wasting his time. His come across this in several of his personal injury cases: Plumber’s in a coma from diabetic ketoacidosis, which explains the smell of nail varnish remover on his breath. He needs an ambulance, and quick. His breathing is fast and shallow and his face the colour of wet cement.

  Charles races to the door, across the kitchen and down the stairs. He scans the road — no phone boxes — and spins round to the shut door of The Grapes. He hammers on the door with increasing urgency. Eventually a sash window on the second floor is thrown up.

  ‘We’re closed!’ shouts a man in pyjamas.

  ‘I know. Call an ambulance, quickly! The man two doors up needs help.’

  ‘What, Derek?’

  ‘Yes!’

  ‘Righto!’ says the man, and his head disappears back inside.

  Charles retraces his steps to Plumber’s bedroom. The ambulance station is just around the corner and he has a couple of minutes at most. For the first time he examines more carefully the otherwise very tidy home and sees that the bedroom is the exception. All the drawers and cupboards are open, contents strewn on the floor. Someone’s gone through the room before me, thinks Charles. But what for?

  A sudden noise startles Charles and he whirls round to see a short young woman in nurse’s uniform enter the bedroom. She halts in surprise.

  ‘Who are you? What’s going on?’ she demands. Then she sees Plumber. ‘What have you done to Derek?’ she shouts, brushing past Charles and going to the bedside. ‘Oh, Jesus!’

  ‘I found him on the floor with the wheelchair turned over. I got him back into bed and asked the landlord of The Grapes to call an ambulance.’

  The district nurse is taking Plumber’s pulse. ‘Oh Jesus!’ she repeats. She turns back to address Charles. ‘Was it you on the phone last night?’

  ‘Me? No.’

  ‘One of his friends said he’d stay with him and that I needn’t come. Said he was a doctor and he could do the insulin.’

  ‘Not me. Was he a Scotsman?’

  The nurse frowns at him. ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘Educated guess. That Scotsman was no doctor, believe me. Did Derek have anything of value here?’

  ‘I doubt it, though he keeps his rent and housekeeping for the carers in the drawer over there.’

  Charles follows her pointed finger and opens the bottom drawer of a small chest behind the door. He finds assorted underwear and two spare pairs of glasses, but no money. ‘Not any more, he doesn’t.’

  The bell of an ambulance can be heard in the distance.

  ‘I’ll go and direct them up,’ offers Charles. He goes back through the kitchen. As he is stepping through the door onto the landing, he registers a notepad by a telephone fixed to the wall, and a pen hanging from a piece of string next to it. He’d noticed neither before this moment. You’d make a crap detective, he thinks to himself, but he breaks his stride and steps back into the room. On the notepad are the initials “CS”, a telephone number and an address in west London. Charles rips off the top page with the details and continues downstairs. As he emerges onto the pavement an ambulance is approaching from the far end of the street. He jumps into the sports car and speeds off in the opposite direction.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Detective Constable Sloane knocks on the door of Superintendent Wheatley’s office and is told to enter. The room is neat and tidy to the point of obsession. The desk has two files on it, positioned perfectly parallel to the desk edge. Four sharpened pencils are placed in a line, like a musical stave, above one of the files. The Superintendent’s coat is folded on a small table as if just unpacked from the cleaners, but Sloane knows that an hour ago Wheatley was wearing it when he came in. He folds it that way every time he removes it.

  ‘I thought you ought to know this immediately, sir,’ says Sloane, standing to attention in the doorway. He was once deemed to be slouching in the same doorway, and was bawled out for ten minutes.

  ‘Now what?’

  ‘We’ve just had a phone call from PC Blake, the local bobby at Putt Green. He’s been away on honeymoon. The police house was supposed to be monitored by someone from the adjoining village but…’

  ‘And?’

  ‘He just got back and found a note from Mrs Holborne, saying that her husband’s Jag had been stolen.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘The note’s not dated, but probably early last week. The note said something about the car not running.’

  Wheatley leans back in his chair and folds his hands across his stomach, staring at the ceiling. He shakes his head and opens his eyes. ‘Forget it.’

  ‘But it corroborates Holborne’s story.’

  ‘No, it doesn’t. He probably got the car fixed to use for his getaway after the murder.’

  Sloane frowns. ‘But that doesn’t make sense, sir. Why would he go to the effort of fixing a broken-down car? And surely he’d want to use a car that was not immediately linked to him. Doesn’t it look more like someone wanted us to think it was Holborne?’

  ‘I said forget it,’ repeats Wheatley. ‘We’re stretched enough as it is without running round chasing loose ends. We’ve a cast iron case; leave it that way,’ he orders.

  Sloane stares at his boss for a moment and then nods. ‘As you like, sir.’

  The DC closes the door behind him and walks thoughtfully down the corridor to his desk. He sits for a moment staring out of the window, ignoring the ringing phones and banter going on around him. Then he lifts the phone.

  ‘Ross? It’s Sean. What was the name of
that garage in Putt Green? On the other side of the green to the Holbornes’ place?’

  Charles pulls up at a telephone box. He opens the door — Urine again, he thinks, apparently a recurrent theme in my life — clears a space to stand amongst the cigarette ends, crumpled chip bags and other detritus on the floor, and dials the number torn from Plumber’s pad. After a couple of rings a Scottish woman’s voice announces that he has reached the Oaks Lodge Boarding House and Charles hangs up, satisfied. He returns to the car and drives the remaining couple of miles to the address, making a stop at a supermarket on the way.

  He parks the Healey in a space on the suburban road, shifts down in his seat and pulls his hat low over his eyes. From his vantage spot he can see the stone steps leading up to the “Oak Lodge Boarding House”, a large double-fronted house in need of maintenance. A faded sign swings gently from a post by the garden wall informing the world that there are still vacancies but not for Irish or blacks. You’ve forgotten the Jews, he thinks to himself.

  The weather has turned cold and blustery, and within an hour Charles has located half a dozen gaps in the roof of the Austin Healey where the wind whistles in. Sips from the half-pint of whisky snuggling in his jacket pocket, again courtesy of the Krays’ shooter’s donation, and two cheese sandwiches apparently made of cardboard keep him tolerably warm for the next few hours.

  Dusk gathers over the Edwardian houses and the pavements become busier as people return home from work. The Scottish landlady closes the curtains on her ground floor sitting room, and smoke begins to emerge from the chimney, but there’s no sign of Sands.

  By 7:30 p.m., the clip-clop of women’s heels has died away, their children have returned from school and their menfolk from work, and the streets are again emptying. Most of the houses now have lights in their rooms, some curtained, some shuttered and a few revealing the movements of their occupants as they go about their cooking, homework, television-watching and other domestic dramas.