Kith and Kin Page 10

  ‘Speaking of children, just after I’d arrived home a boy was spotted in our street, looking at the door numbers. A neighbour asked if he was looking for someone in particular and apparently he took to his heels.’

  ‘Description?’

  ‘Ten or twelve, skinny and underfed … nothing that might be useful. But it’s a common enough diversion: use a child to scout an area before his elders move in upon a victim or a house to be broken. A child can be of use, posted through a window.’

  ‘True, but as a method of operation it’s more commonly used in those parts of town where something would be gained from breaking a house. No offence, Mickey, but if anyone on your street has aught worth the effort, I’d be surprised.’

  ‘There’s always the rent money or the gas meter,’ Mickey reminded him.

  ‘True … but the child was poor enough at the task to be spotted – twice. Once by you and once by a neighbour. I’m reminded of our sailorman and his boy.’

  ‘It crossed my mind,’ Mickey agreed, ‘but how would the lad have found his way to me?’

  ‘I agree, it would be a stretch.’ He fell silent then, allowing the different threads of the case to unravel in his mind.

  Mickey, used to his silences, peered ahead through the thickening rain and sleety snow and let him be.

  Sergeant Frith had returned to the camp at Ash Tree Lane that morning and he and his constables had made a cursory search of the area, questioned Sarah again and generally made a nuisance of themselves as the daily life of the camp went on around them. Kids and dogs running here and there, horses tethered where they could graze. Some cooking in the camp still happened communally, over the fires dotted about the site. Others used the small stoves in the caravans. On such a cold and bitter day the heat of the fires was welcome and Sergeant Frith paused for a moment to warm his hands.

  ‘You finished here?’ Sarah asked him.

  ‘I may have done. Then again, maybe I’ve not.’ He studied her closely. About forty years old, he guessed, her hair starting to grey, but she had fine strong features and intense, intelligent dark eyes that always surprised him. Frith dismissed most of the ‘gypsy rabble’, as he thought of them, as little more than worthless but on occasion he was forced to make a reassessment. This woman carried herself with such pride, such authority, he was never sure whether he wanted to admire her for it or beat it out of her. Frith did not like to feel such confusion.

  The community at the camp, if you could call it a community – Frith was reluctant to do that, it sounded too civilized – consisted mostly of agricultural workers. A few still dealt in horses, but they were off travelling most of the year and only returned in the dead of winter, so that now there were few horses on the field. At this time of year, too, there were a few showman’s vans present; those with travelling fairs and circuses sometimes used this as a stopping point. It was more normal for that type, Frith thought, to show up after Christmas, when they rested up for a month or two before the spring season started.

  They’d done some house-to-house enquiries that morning and there were several reports of noise from the night before, but one was particularly interesting.

  ‘I heard it was more than a bit of a brawl last night,’ he said now.

  ‘And what idiot told you that?’ She was watching him as carefully as he was observing her. An uneasy truce existed between them. Frith was more decent than most of the officers she had encountered, but she wouldn’t have trusted him as far as she could spit (though she was far too well mannered to spit).

  ‘A witness tells me that there were three cars travelling in convoy. They parked a few hundred yards up the road. Around a dozen men, split up into three groups, got out of those cars, and what is more, they were carrying weapons. Guns.’

  She shrugged. ‘Well, they didn’t come here.’

  ‘And we both know you wouldn’t tell me if they did. My witness tells me that these men prowled around your perimeter fence and hedge and seemed prepared to force their way through. My witness could not see all of them, of course; he doesn’t have superhuman vision. Then there was a lot of noise and some shooting. A great deal of shouting and screaming, which went on for perhaps ten or fifteen minutes, and then a group of men broke cover and ran back to their cars. They took off like they had the hounds of hell after them, according to my witness.’

  This last part was an exaggeration. The witness had simply said that they had driven off at speed.

  ‘You can imagine how intrigued my witness was by all of this, and doubly intrigued to see a truck, one of yours, drive out only a few minutes after that. A funny time to be doing business, Sarah.’

  ‘Some people like to travel by night,’ she said. ‘Get a head start on the day. It ain’t no crime.’

  The two constables had finished their prowl and now came back to the fire. The sergeant could see from their faces that they had nothing much to report. No one had let them into their vans or their tents or their cabins. And though Frith could have forced the matter and bashed down a few doors, he knew there was nothing to be gained by that. Whatever was going on here, he would have to discover it by another route.

  ‘You’ll be going now, then?’

  ‘We’ll be going,’ Frith agreed, ‘but we’ll be back. You know that. From the sound of all of this there’s trouble, and there may be more trouble brewing, and I’m not having that on my patch. I’ll give you your due, you lot mostly behave yourselves, but you step out of line and I’m warning you, the whole weight of the law will come down on you.’

  She tilted her head on one side and gave him a look that she might have given a child who was telling tall stories. ‘You reckon?’ she said.

  He watched her as she walked away. Arrogant bitch, he thought. What did she have to be so proud about?

  FOURTEEN

  At mid-morning Malina was sent out on an errand and returning, she passed the local newsagent. Outside on the A-frame was a headline: ‘Three Men Dead in Gang Violence’.

  Sarah’s news fresh in her mind, she took the chance to slip inside the newsagent and buy copies of two of the daily papers, folding them small enough to slip inside her bag so that her purchases would not be noticed and she would not be accused of loitering. It was not until midday, and her legitimate lunch break, that she had time to look past the headlines. The name Max Peterson she did not know but she recognized Billy Crane, both by his name and from the photo – a police mug shot – at the side of the article.

  Malina felt her heart begin to race. Billy Crane had changed little since the night he’d come to the cottage and broken their lives apart. She had hated him for it ever since.

  There was a third man featured in a different story and this man Malina recognized and had once known well. He had been just a little older than Malina and Kem but they had played with him, and she remembered him most for his unusual sleight of hand. ‘Grigor,’ Malina whispered. ‘What have they done to you?’

  In growing dismay she read the reports and the speculation about his injuries – that he’d been tortured before he died. She had liked him; he’d made her laugh. Not the brightest button in the box, maybe, but he’d been kind and that counted for a lot as far as Malina was concerned.

  She wondered if Kem had seen the newspapers and how she could reach him. She had no idea where the sailing barge he crewed might be.

  Lunch over, she returned to her work somewhat distracted, forcing herself to concentrate on the shorthand as she took dictation, a little piece of her mind worrying at the problem all afternoon.

  Having dropped the luggage at the Crown at Upchurch, Henry and Mickey and the local constable they had met previously went back to where they had found the bodies. They drove as far as they dared and then walked the rest of the distance. The rain had stopped, but Henry could tell it was only a pause.

  They stood looking across the brown winter reeds at Otterham Creek.

  ‘Tell me about this place,’ Henry said. ‘Who uses this waterway, what for
, how busy might it get? What would bring a boat down here?’

  ‘Across this side, not a lot. The creek gets shallow, and the mud is unpredictable. You can see those jetties there, and there.’ The constable pointed with his right hand to two slender lines hugging the bank. ‘One of those is for the brickworks and the other for offloading in a more general sort of way. Either way you need to wait for the tide to be high and you need a boat with a shallow draft, like a sailing barge or a lighter.’

  ‘A lighter?’

  ‘A steel hull with a flat bottom. They are rowed by lightermen, though you won’t find any such out here. They work in the docks, moving cargo between vessels.’

  ‘Lightermen I have heard of,’ Henry said.

  ‘In that direction’ – he pointed with his left hand this time – ‘is Otterham Wharf. You can’t quite see it from this direction because there’s a curve, but there’ll be boats moored there. And there are buoys just offshore that the boats tie up to, usually when they’re waiting for the tide or the wind to change. Once you get out to the mouth of the creek, things get busy. You’re not far from the mouth of the Thames and the Medway, where the two rivers meet.

  ‘You’ve got to know the shoals and the mud flats and the reaches.’ He paused, then explained, ‘All of these narrow little creeks leading out, they can be unpredictable and dangerous if you don’t know the area. There are wrecks and there are shoals and there are shallows. It is not a kind land and it is not kind water. You must be hardy to make a living here, wet or dry.’

  ‘But what interest would there be for a man like Bailey? Is this a place known for smuggling?’

  ‘It’s been known.’ The constable nodded. ‘You show me a bit of water where it hasn’t. But this is not a place where there’s been much in the way of trouble, not for many years.’

  ‘Not for many years?’

  ‘During the war we had a few arrests of so-called spies. There was that photographer up at Sheerness who was deported in the August of 1914. Lived in Sheerness forty years he had, but you never know, do you? And then an artist chap, got spotted drawing where he shouldn’t. That was on Sheppey. I don’t know what happened about him, but if you ask me it was more noise and thunder than reality.’

  Henry nodded. If you took the Defence of the Realm Act to the letter, it could be read as technically illegal even to have pen and paper in a public place.

  ‘Then there was a farmer, out past Cooper’s place, killed his daughter because she got pregnant with the wrong man. That was a nasty business, but it was pure domestic, nothing criminal, apart from the killing.’

  ‘I’d like to look back through your records. Because we know the background, we might notice something that you would not realize was important,’ Henry said.

  ‘You’re welcome to look them over. I keep a good report of everything.’ The constable sounded slightly offended at Henry’s tone and Mickey was quick to say, ‘I’m sure you do, but you may only have part of the information.’

  ‘You can think of nothing more? It does not have to be recent,’ Henry said.

  ‘It would help if I knew what you were looking for, what sort of event you might be thinking about,’ the constable said.

  It would indeed, Henry thought. He felt as though he were feeling his way through thick fog. He knew that there should be firm ground beneath his feet, but was conscious that it could fall away at any moment and he could end up in mire and bog and deep water.

  ‘We should be heading back,’ Mickey said. ‘We are about to get very wet.’

  FIFTEEN

  It was just before four o’clock that afternoon when the captain of the Lady Bay went ashore to get their orders. They were tied up at North Woolwich and Kem was fidgety and ready for the off.

  At half past four, the captain returned and told him that they were to sail to Millwall to pick up a load from a ship just docked there, but looking at the tides he saw that they would not be able to enter the dock until about one in the morning and so there was no sense setting off yet. The captain had friends berthed up and went for a last visit before they left and Kem, second hand on the boat, made himself some tea and then settled in his cabin in the fo’c’sle to skim through the newspapers the skipper had brought on board.

  For some time he sat in his bunk, mug of tea growing cold in his hand as he stared at the headlines, the same articles that his sister had read earlier that day. Billy Crane was dead, Max Peterson too, and so was Grigor. Unlike his sister, he knew Peterson by sight, having seen him once or twice in company with Billy Crane.

  Working on the docks, Kem had more contact with the streets and people he’d known as a small child, and still saw a few of their mother’s old neighbours.

  Kem felt the colour drain from his face as he read the reports for the second time, scouring for detail that he might have missed. What was going on here? He looked for some reference to Tommy Boswell, but there seemed to be none, and Kem wasn’t sure what to make of that. By rights Tommy should be gone as well, and Grigor should be living.

  The captain returned and they turned in to try and grab a few hours’ sleep, knowing that the following day, from midnight on, would give them little time to rest. Kem could not settle. He thought about asking permission to go ashore, to find a phone box and call his sister, but that would lead to all sorts of questions that he didn’t want to answer just now. Nothing for it, he would have to wait.

  A little before midnight he went up on deck and lit the port, starboard and stern lamps and they eased out from their berth, pushing off from the buoy between close-packed barges and lighters. Once clear they set sail, tacking slowly down the river, reducing sail once the docks were in sight and then waiting in line outside the dockyard gates for the tide to turn.

  A little after one a.m. the lock gates opened and the loaded barges were towed out by a tug and then let free to trim sail and take off downriver. The Lady Bay waited her turn to be towed into the dock and the lock gates once again closed. The water was brought up to the level of the water in the dock and then the inner gates were opened and the barges towed through. All this time of waiting and slow movement and waiting some more chafed Kem in a way that it did not usually. He was used to the routine and the literal ebb and flow in both tide and work. But he was restless today, unable to think straight, unable to get the pictures of the dead out of his mind.

  His thoughts were briefly interrupted as they prepared to pull into their berth. There was the usual tugging and heaving of rope and line and boat hook before they were tied up beside the cargo ship and waiting to be loaded. Knowing that nothing would happen that night the skipper told Kem to turn in for a while. They made tea and he took it back to his bunk, knowing that he wouldn’t sleep. He wanted to talk to Malina; she must have seen these reports and be as worried as he was. The past always comes back to bite you, that’s what she’d always told him, and now he was certain she was right.

  Kem must have managed to doze because when the alarm went at six it found him sleeping. He made more tea and then checked the decks one more time for anything that would impede the loading, before he and the captain opened the hatches. It was then a matter of keeping out of the way as the stevedores brought their sacks across the Jacob’s ladder and into the hold.

  Kem went below and cleared away their breakfast things. He brought the newspapers back into the galley and was looking through them again when the captain came down. The captain sat and glanced through the newspapers and Kem found that he wanted to talk, but didn’t dare. What would he say? In the end he said, pointing to the article about Grigor, ‘We knew him, me sister and me, he were just a bit older than us growing up.’

  His captain glanced up, one eyebrow raised. ‘Sorry to hear that, lad. Close friends, were you?’

  Kem considered for a moment and then shook his head. ‘No, not close. But it’s still a shock. See someone you know in the papers and they’re dead.’

  The captain nodded sympathetically and then returned to his r
eading and Kem turned back to his tasks, getting the food on the stove that they would eat at lunchtime.

  A little later he wandered back up on deck to watch the loading until twelve noon sharp, when everyone broke for lunch. The stevedores returned to shore and he went back below. It was only when they were berthed up that he and the captain ate together, but his captain was not much for conversation and Kem often read a book. Today was no exception. But he found he couldn’t concentrate on the words. They seemed to dance around on the page and his gaze kept straying back to the newspapers. He hadn’t quite told the truth, he now realized. There had been a time when he and Malina and Grigor had been very good friends. A time when Grigor had been soft on Malina – not that she was having any of it. A lot of the boys had been soft on Malina, if Kem were honest. She was a good-looking girl, and nice with it. And, if she’d had a mind, she could have been married with children of her own by now.

  Kem figured that they’d both been put off that because of their mother’s choices and their father’s behaviour.

  Though he would like to find a girl, Kem thought. Someone to settle with. A bit of peace. That would be nice.

  At one o’clock the stevedores returned and the loading was completed in another couple of hours. The captain checked the tally on his list and, seeming satisfied, told Kem that it was time to pull away. Other barges were waiting to be loaded as they eased back away from the ship and into a quiet berth where they could clean the decks down. Kem swept and tidied and they replaced the hatches and tarpaulins and battened everything down. The captain got their papers signed, clearing them to leave the dock, and they made their way further downriver to berth up for the evening and wait for their turn to go back through the lock gates when the tides were right.

  It was evening before Kem got his opportunity to go ashore. He stocked up with provisions for the journey and then found a phone box and called his sister. He waited, impatient and frustrated, while she was fetched to the phone and there was no preamble in his conversation.