Kith and Kin Read online

  Contents

  Cover

  Recent Titles by Jane A. Adams from Severn House

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Epilogue

  Recent Titles by Jane A. Adams from Severn House

  The Naomi Blake Mysteries

  MOURNING THE LITTLE DEAD

  TOUCHING THE DARK

  HEATWAVE

  KILLING A STRANGER

  LEGACY OF LIES

  SECRETS

  GREGORY’S GAME

  PAYING THE FERRYMAN

  A MURDEROUS MIND

  FAKES AND LIES

  The Rina Martin Mysteries

  A REASON TO KILL

  FRAGILE LIVES

  THE POWER OF ONE

  RESOLUTIONS

  THE DEAD OF WINTER

  CAUSE OF DEATH

  FORGOTTEN VOICES

  Henry Johnstone Mystery

  THE MURDER BOOK

  DEATH SCENE

  KITH AND KIN

  KITH AND KIN

  Jane A. Adams

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  First published in Great Britain 2018 by

  SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD of

  Eardley House, 4 Uxbridge Street, London W8 7SY

  First published in the USA 2019 by

  SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS of

  110 East 59th Street, New York, N.Y. 10022

  This eBook edition first published in 2018 by Severn House Digital

  an imprint of Severn House Publishers Limited

  Trade paperback edition first published

  in Great Britain and the USA 2019 by

  SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD

  Copyright © 2018 by Jane A. Adams.

  The right of Jane A. Adams to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

  A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

  ISBN-13: 978-0-7278-8827-3 (cased)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-84751-953-5 (trade paper)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-4483-0162-1 (e-book)

  Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to living persons is purely coincidental.

  This ebook produced by

  Palimpsest Book Production Limited,

  Falkirk, Stirlingshire, Scotland

  PROLOGUE

  December 1918

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, though he sounded anything but apologetic, ‘but we had to kill your husband. We can’t be doing with liars.’

  The woman faced him across the scrubbed wooden table. She didn’t speak but her hands, resting on the back of a chair, clutched at the rail so tightly that her knuckles blanched. Her husband’s chair, he guessed, set at the head of the table and the best piece of furniture to be seen in this small but immaculately clean kitchen.

  ‘No reason you should be blamed, of course. Boss knows you had nothing to do with it. Your old man was always a bit of a—’

  He paused as she lifted a hand to silence him and seemed about to speak.

  He waited, but she had obviously thought better of it and he continued as though there had been no pause. ‘So long as you and the young ’uns clear out tonight, pack your things and leave without a fuss, no more’ll be said and you can go and start again somewhere else. Boss has provided for you and there’s a cart waiting outside to take you into town.’

  ‘But this is our home.’

  He glanced briefly at the young girl who stood beside her mother, eyes round and scared but indignant too. He’d spied her younger brother standing uncertainly in the kitchen doorway when he and his men had come in.

  ‘You be quiet when your elders are talking,’ he told the girl. She looked to her mother for support, but the woman, older and wiser, had more sense than to answer back.

  ‘You’d best go and pack,’ he said. ‘I’ll wait in here. Tommy will go with you, carry your bags.’ And make sure you behave, he could have added.

  For the briefest moment she looked up and met his gaze, her expression carefully blank, but he could feel the simmering hatred behind the cold control and for a fleet second he felt the threat of it.

  He shifted his weight and gestured to Thomas to go with the woman. ‘Best be getting on with it, then,’ he said. ‘Done is done and no sense in waiting for it to change.’

  She did not move immediately, not liking to be bossed around in her own home, now that the only person she acknowledged had the right to do that was gone, but then she went off quietly enough, taking the boy and girl up the stairs with her. He stood in the kitchen, listening to the sounds of cupboards opening and the rough note of Tommy’s boots on the wooden boards, heavier than either woman or child; all three of them went soft shod in the house. He’d noted their boots set in a row by the door of the back porch when he’d arrived. Noted too that there was space for a fourth pair: those of the man now gone.

  They loaded the bags and baggage into the waiting cart and Tommy lifted the boy up to sit beside him on the bench. Mother and daughter sat on their bags in the body of the wagon. All three had blankets, draped like cloaks over their winter clothes.

  Tommy set off, following his boss’s car. A cold December wind blew in across the Medway, carrying the first flurries of snow. Until now the season had been wet and miserable, but the temperature was falling and promised a drier cold.

  The woman sat like a statue, unmoving, staring out into the dark, but the girl gazed back the way they had come and the boy craned round in his seat on the driving bench as they watched their cottage burn.

  ONE

  December 1928

  The two bodies lay about twenty feet apart on the mud flats. The receding tide had dropped them unceremoniously on the shoreline further up towards the mouth of Otterham Creek and, according to the sailorman who had spotted them and dragged them to this end of the creek, beyond the reaches and the tidal flow, it was likely that they’d been dumped in the Medway further upriver. The ebb and flow of several tides had probably brought them to rest on that bend, in the shallows at
the edge of the water. The man gave his name as Frederick Garth. He and his boy, he said, had been unable to haul them safe to shore where they had first been spotted. They had used their tiny boat and, with the man handling the single oar and the boy keeping tight hold of the boat hook looped and twisted into clothing, brought them laboriously further into the creek. Eventually they had found a spot where they could bring the bodies ashore and had hauled them out with boat hooks; the mud showed clearly their passage through the stinking silt. But, the skipper told the silent and rather austere looking policeman, he’d tried not to disturb them more than he had to, grabbing the dead men by their belts and pulling hard in to shore. He’d touched nothing else and neither had the boy. He’d spotted them floating, he said, adding more detail in a vain attempt to elicit a response. He and the boy had dropped anchor, got themselves into the boat, and the boy had caught hold with the boat hook while he’d hauled in to shore. Then they’d gone back for the other. Two trips they’d made in as many hours, the bodies dragging in the water something fierce and the boy, not having the strength of a grown man, had struggled with the task.

  ‘And no blame on him for that,’ the man said fiercely, the lack of response rousing him to anger. ‘He almost lost hold, so we drifted a little off course on the second run.’ He spread his arms wide to indicate the distance between the two bodies on the foreshore. ‘But he did his best, the lad did.’

  Getting very little response from the man he understood to be a detective inspector, he turned to the shorter, broader and more forthcoming companion.

  ‘It was hard to hold our course. You c’n see that for yoursen. So one ended up there and the other over yon.’

  ‘You did a fine job,’ Mickey reassured him. ‘I wouldn’t have known how or where to begin. Neither of us would, not having your skills.’

  The sailorman clearly had no doubt of that. He nodded rapidly. ‘Then we had to go to the farm for help. They sent to the constable and he had a telephone and brought you here, but if you’ve done with us, suh, we’ll be going. I’ve got the load to deliver and the wind is shifting. I’ll be losing pay.’

  Mickey Hitchens, detective sergeant with His Majesty’s Metropolitan Police, nodded agreement. ‘You’d best be going.’ The man had already been delayed for too long, waiting for Mickey and his boss to make their slow way from London to Rainham and then from Rainham to this godforsaken spot.

  The man stomped off and the boy, about ten or twelve years old, Mickey judged, made to follow. Mickey beckoned him over. He slipped a few coins into the boy’s hand. ‘Give these to your master,’ he said. ‘Compensation for his lost time.’

  The boy clenched his hand around the coins and ran off to join his elder. Mickey watched him go and then turned his attention back to the two bodies.

  His boss, Chief Inspector Henry Johnstone, had bent from his great height and crouched over the closest of them. ‘You should have told him to fill out a compensation form,’ he said wryly.

  ‘And have them wait six months just to have the claim rejected? They say no good deed goes unpunished. He could have left well alone and we’d have been none the wiser. As it is, he’s lost time, and time means pay.’

  Henry considered and then nodded slowly. He stood, drawing his heavy coat, a recent gift from his sister, tightly across his chest. The hem had dragged in the mud and Henry flicked at it ineffectually with a gloved hand. A damp and bitter wind blew in across the water, loaded with moisture from way out at sea, and the gathering clouds, Mickey thought, presaged an equally cold and bitter rain.

  ‘We should get them moved,’ Mickey said. ‘Soon as we can before the weather turns. If they’ve washed down from upstream, there’s not much we can learn from here.’

  ‘If,’ Henry said, but he nodded. The boatman knew the river; chances were he was right. Henry too looked up at the sky, black clouds roiling and twisting into thunderheads. ‘We’ll get them packed up and into the wagon and we’ll head back. You recognize him?’ He gestured towards the body he had been examining.

  ‘I do indeed,’ Mickey said. ‘Billy Crane, one of Bailey’s men. I’m guessing the other will have a similar provenance.’

  He extended a hand to his boss and hauled him back on to the firmer ground of the bank. They had brought wellington boots with them and Henry’s were caked in foul smelling mud, almost to the tops.

  Mickey beckoned to the local constable and gave instructions for the removal of the dead men. The man looked worried.

  ‘You need extra hands,’ Mickey told him. ‘We’ll gladly lend them.’

  The constable looked even more troubled at the thought of his superiors helping out. ‘Thank you, sir, but my lads can manage that. Trouble is, if we load both bodies into the cart, I’m not so sure the horse can handle them as well as your two good selves, not over such sucking ground. I can send one of the lads to rustle up some extra transport?’

  Mickey shook his head. ‘It’s only a mile or so back to the road, Constable. The inspector and I, we’re well used to walking. You see to the dead; the living will make shift for themselves.’

  The constable looked from Mickey to the senior detective and then back again. A more direct glance from Mickey prompted Henry, reminding him that he ought to make a response.

  ‘Walking back will do us no harm, Constable. But you and your men had best make shift before the weather closes in.’

  The constable, finally reassured, nodded and made off back to where the bodies lay, his three associates in tow.

  ‘Best move ourselves, sharpish,’ Mickey observed. ‘We’re in for a soaking, that’s for sure.’

  Henry nodded and turned away from the scene of activity by the river, settling his hat more firmly on his head. Over their serge uniforms the uniformed officers wore heavy oilskin capes which would hamper their movements in bringing the bodies to the cart but stand them in good stead for the walk, escorting the wagon back to the settlement of Upchurch where it had been arranged to lodge the bodies in the church overnight until proper transport could be arranged to take them to the railway. The farmer whose cart they’d borrowed would have a longer journey and the sacking he had used to swathe his head and shoulders would be soaked through by the time he reached home. They’d best give him something for his trouble as well, Henry thought.

  A car, the one and only allocated to the Kent Constabulary, had been sent to fetch them from the station and had brought them to a point a mile outside Upchurch, but it had been obvious it would be of little use thereafter and they had left it and the driver back on what passed for a main road. Mickey, feeling the first drops of heavy rain sliding down the back of his neck, was relieved to think they’d not have to walk the entire way back. He fell into step beside his boss. His friend.

  ‘So what are two of Josiah Bailey’s men doing right out here, in the back of beyond?’

  ‘Not so far from his usual ground, I suppose,’ Henry argued. ‘This might feel like the back of beyond but we’re only a scant few miles from Rochester and Sittingbourne and Rainham, and those towns are only a train ride from the East End. Josiah Bailey has contacts and probably family hereabouts. Besides, we still don’t know where they went into the water. The Medway is a powerful river.’

  ‘And one I don’t know so well. If they’d fetched up in the Thames, I could make a guess as to where they might have been pitched into the water. Bailey’s not going to be too happy about it.’

  ‘Unless he ordered it. He’s known to have a short fuse, even with his own people. Even with his own kin, for that matter.’

  Mickey nodded. Josiah Bailey had ordered his own cousin killed not six months before, or so the rumour mill had it. And over a woman … though Mickey was inclined to take that part with a pinch of salt. New women were two a penny to a man like Bailey and anyone else who fancied their chances, so it was said, just had to wait in patience until Bailey grew tired of his latest. Bailey and his family had been ruling over their little bit of the East End since before the war.
Gambling, women, protection money all added to the family wealth and, Mickey supposed, a kind of prestige. They certainly ruled their little kingdom with tight fists. Mickey and Inspector Johnstone had engaged in several run-ins with the Bailey family; the latest, only the previous autumn, had resulted in their taking Josiah Bailey briefly into custody. Now he was in the wind and neither Henry nor Mickey had heard news of him in several months.

  The rain had started to fall and Mickey glanced back towards the river. From the look of it, they had one body in the cart and were bringing up the other. He turned up his collar and settled his hat more squarely on his head as the cold and heavy drops began to fall in earnest.

  ‘Crane had a blow to the head, though that could easily have been post mortem, and a stab wound to the chest. I thought I discerned a bullet wound in the chest of the second body but there is so much mud it’s difficult to tell. We will have to see if your photographs can tell us more.’

  Mickey nodded. He glanced back once more towards the river. The rain was falling so viciously now that he could only just make out the cart and the constables moving up the path, heads down and shoulders hunched. Flat land, Mickey thought. Flat and bleak and sodden and, no doubt, dangerous too. They’d been warned to keep to the path. It was getting toward dusk and in the heavy rain it was easy to miss your footing and stumble into one of the many creeks and inlets that criss-crossed this landscape. It was definitely not to Mickey’s taste.

  At last, through the gloom, Mickey sighted the shape of a car. Spotting them, the driver leapt out and hurried to assist them. They stripped off wellington boots and dumped them in the duffel Mickey had used to carry them from London. This and the murder bag and his camera were laid hastily in the rear footwell and the two men scrambled to get out of the storm.

  ‘So,’ Henry picked up their earlier conversation as the driver sought to keep the car on the narrow and increasingly treacherous track. ‘Two of Bailey’s men, or so we assume. Both dumped in the river, so possibly some effort at concealment. Bailey has a tendency to display his dead, let them serve as a warning to others not to cross him. That, in my mind, lessens the likelihood of them being dead by his orders.’