Kith and Kin Page 7

  ‘They must have been held somewhere and then transported to where we found them,’ Henry said. ‘There is no way of telling where they might first have gone into the water.’

  Taylor shook his head. ‘But my guess would be fresh water rather than brine. There are injuries to the bodies, post mortem, as though moving water has bashed them against a wall or a boat keel or something of the sort, and of course there is some animal damage, but my personal opinion is that in brine I would have expected more damage from crabs and other nibblers. As I say, it is only a guess.’

  Henry thanked him and they left soon after. It was ten in the morning and the weather was reasonably bright. Henry, Mickey had noticed, had become very suspicious of the weather this winter, on the watch for snow. The January of 1928 had been a difficult one. Heavy snow followed by a sudden thaw in the first week had led to flooding and the Thames had broken its banks. Fourteen people had died and many thousands were made homeless and, if Mickey remembered right, there had been another death. A woman, a known prostitute, had been killed, not by the Thames, but by a stab wound strangely like that which had taken the life of Max Peterson.

  Mickey said, ‘The shape of the wound—’

  ‘Is similar to the one we found on Martha Howells’ body. Yes. And it’s unusual enough to suppose that the two are possibly linked.’

  ‘Martha Howells’ world was one of prostitutes and punters.’

  ‘And we still have no criminal record for Max Peterson.’ Henry nodded thoughtfully. ‘Mickey, there is little more to be done today. Go home to Belle and give her my best wishes and regards.’

  Only a few streets away, a man was running. His pursuers chased him down Commercial Road, through Saturday morning crowds. People paid very little attention to the man running and the two behind. Looking at the faces of all three, most considered it wiser not to see.

  The running man did not dare stop and ask for help. He knew he wouldn’t get it anyway. The men chased him into Myrdle Street and he dodged down an alleyway between two buildings and into the yard at the back of Willacy’s General Stores and Chophouse, grabbed the wall beyond and tried to swing over, but they were on him now. They never said a word, silent and efficient. Grabbing him, binding him, dragging him out of the yard and after a moment or two of waiting on the street – still no one taking notice of them; passers-by instead lowering their heads, shielding their eyes and hurrying away – they piled with him into the back of a van and drove him away. Grigor Vardanyan guessed that he was going to die. But for which of his crimes and misdemeanours he was going to die he was not yet sure.

  Home, for Mickey, was a little terraced house, modest but comfortable and with a bit of a yard out at the back where he could potter and grow vegetables. He had ambitions for an allotment one day, but he rarely spoke of this to anyone else. As ambitions go, it seemed a modest one, but it presupposed his having time to spend on an allotment and for Mickey that ambition – to have time to make things grow – was not only very private, but at times seemed unattainable.

  It took him close on an hour to walk back there. Mickey had little patience with public transport and, besides, he liked to walk, using the time to clear his head of the work and get into ‘home mode’, as Belle liked to call it. It was true that he did discuss his work with his wife. She was a good listener, sensible and concerned, and she also had a fine sense of what should be kept confidential so Mickey never had any worries on that score.

  He’d been walking for about ten minutes when the thought occurred to him that he was being followed or, at the very least, that he was being observed. Twice he crossed the road, just to give himself the opportunity to look both ways and back the way he’d come, but the streets were crowded and whoever it was, if it was anyone at all, was clearly being careful.

  He paused to look in shop windows, switched his route from the main thoroughfares to the less used back streets as he neared his destination and, once, was certain he caught a flicker of movement as someone dodged out of sight into an entryway.

  Mickey backtracked, walking down the centre of the road and looking this way and that, not troubled now that his pursuer might be alerted. He halted at the entry where he was certain he’d seen movement and then ventured a little way down. He could see that it led simply into a shared yard, a water pump and a privy block all there was to see. If there had been a follower, they could have gone in through any of the half dozen doors leading off it, and it was just as likely that Mickey had spotted someone simply heading for home.

  He turned slowly and walked back to the street, empty but for a couple of girls playing hopscotch and a group of boys, at the far end, kicking a somewhat deflated bladder against a wall.

  Frowning, Mickey continued on home, walking down the middle of the street all the way and pausing at each turn to look back. There was little in the way of traffic in these little roads between terraces. The occasional delivery van and a cart pulled by a piebald horse, carrying a man crying ‘anyragbone?’ and looking for scrap. Mickey knew him by sight and nodded as he passed, wishing him a fine day.

  Almost, Mickey dismissed the thought that he had been observed since parting from Henry. Almost, he decided that he had been mistaken, but Mickey’s instincts were good and that small, nagging doubt remained.

  He let himself in and called out, ‘Belle! I’m back sooner than I expected, love. I thought we might take ourselves out for a spot of lunch.’

  Isabella Hitchens came through from the kitchen where she’d been scrubbing and tidying and making herself at home again. Mickey was broad and solid and Belle was small and slight, with a mass of dark hair. She had not given in to the fashion for cropping and shingling, instead wearing it in a coil in the nape of her neck. Mickey caught his breath every time he saw her.

  ‘That sounds like an excellent idea,’ she said. She came close and wrapped her arms around him, kissing him with a passion that would have surprised his colleagues. No one really associated Mickey Hitchens with passion. Mickey Hitchens was associated with solidity and a job well done, not with being loved by someone as exotic looking as Belle.

  ‘Good to have you home, lass,’ he said. ‘Henry sent his best love. Now we have an unexpected afternoon of freedom, let’s make the most of it.’

  Grigor knew that he would never be free again. He hadn’t seen where they had taken him; a sack had been put over his head and pulled tight around his neck. After a while the van had stopped and he’d been hustled out, dragged down some stairs and into a space which echoed loudly. Through that space and into a smaller room beyond, and the door had been closed. When the sack had been removed he had seen Josiah Bailey sitting at a table. Josiah Bailey had a blackjack, loaded with lead shot, in his hand and was tapping it lightly against the table top.

  ‘I’ve done nothing.’ It was the first thing that came into Grigor’s head and he realized how pathetic it sounded.

  ‘Everyone’s done something, Grigor.’ Josiah pointed to a chair and Grigor was pushed down into it, one man pressing on his shoulders and another grabbing his right arm and holding him by the wrist, spreading his hand out flat on the rough, scarred wood of the table.

  Grigor screamed, knowing what was to come. Imagining the least of what was to come and fearing the rest, so overcome by fear that he pissed himself.

  Josiah Bailey laughed. ‘Nothing to worry about at all,’ he said, and brought the blackjack down hard on Grigor’s hand.

  There was no artificial light in the room and the only illumination was through a narrow window high up in the wall. As the afternoon wore on and the light faded, so did Josiah Bailey’s interest in the man he had been torturing. Grigor was unconscious now and Bailey had no particular concern about him waking up again. He tossed the blackjack on to the table and signalled to his men to take the body away. He was pondering on what might have been the one useful piece of information gleaned from today’s exercise.

  ‘Dalla did it,’ Grigor had said. ‘It was Dalla. Dalla Beaney.�
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  NINE

  1925

  Clement Atkins was pleased with his prize. Ricky Clough seemed less so, with his end of the encounter.

  ‘Clem Atkins. What the ’ell do you want?’

  He peered round Clem’s shoulder at the man sitting at the bar. An unprepossessing figure in a checked flat cap and black scarf, wound several times around his neck. ‘Sabini,’ Clough said. ‘What’s he doing ’ere? You doing business with the Eyeties now?’

  ‘I do business with whoever I like, Cloughie.’

  ‘Does Bailey know that?’ Clough grinned at him. ‘But I don’t suppose he knows anything about this, am I right?’

  ‘In time, Cloughie boy, Bailey will be a distant memory. Now, I’ve got a bit of a proposition for you, if you might be interested in such a thing.’

  Clough crossed to the bar and took the drink from Sabini’s hand, sniffed it, then gestured that Sabini should hand him the bottle. ‘What sort of proposition?’

  ‘A business proposition.’

  ‘I ain’t a fucking businessman. You want someone getting rid of, I’m yer man. That’s what I do.’ He swallowed the drink, topped up the glass. ‘Bailey, is it?’ He sounded keen.

  ‘No, not yet. We kill him now, we open us up to trouble. We weaken him first, slide ourselves into place, take over, job done.’

  Clough shrugged. ‘And how long’s that going to take?’

  ‘Long as it does. Sometimes you’ve got to have a bit of patience to get these things done. But don’t worry, Cloughie, you can still keep your hand in. I’m sure we’ve got a few names you can turn into bodies.’

  Clough eyed Clem and then cast a look at Sabini. ‘And him?’

  ‘Mr Sabini is a coming man, Ricky. One rises, so does the other.’

  Clough shrugged and emptied his glass again. ‘So, why bring me back from the dead?’ he wanted to know.

  ‘Because Bailey’s shit scared of you. And scared is where we want him to be. Weak is what we want him to be. Undermined, so his own people just let him go, and when we move in not a word will be said or a hand lifted.’

  Clough shrugged. ‘Whatever,’ he said. ‘It’s all the same to me.’

  TEN

  1928; Sunday

  Cynthia’s townhouse was lit up like a Christmas tree – though the tree itself would not be installed for another week or so. Henry always tried to be present for tree decoration evening. Cynthia insisted on keeping it as a family affair and she, the children, Henry and usually her husband, Albert, took part in the ritual.

  Henry felt she was probably compensating for the lack of celebration when they were both growing up. Apart from a sumptuous Christmas meal – for adults only, and those specially invited guests, certainly not Henry and his sister – there had been little celebration in the Johnstone household. Christmas and birthdays passed largely unacknowledged and one of the things that Cynthia had insisted upon when, at the age of fifteen, she had become responsible for both of them, was that they should ‘do Christmas properly’.

  ‘Properly’, that first year, had been a tree created of scavenged branches and hawthorn berries threaded on to a long piece of cotton for decoration and a meal cooked on a single burner. Presents of gingerbread and sugar mice – but Henry cherished the memory.

  He eased the collar beneath his bow tie and surrendered his coat to the maid. The inside of the house sparkled, illuminated and garlanded, the air heavy with the scent of food and spiced wine. Cynthia had developed a reputation for starting off the Christmas celebrations early and her December parties now marked the start of the festive season for many of her social set. Cynthia had survived and then thrived in the somewhat unforgiving world she had married into by becoming the perfect hostess, though it still rankled that there were certain ‘old money’ families who would never grant her an entrée.

  Taking a glass of champagne that he knew he would probably not drink, Henry glanced around the room, looking for his sister. His brother-in-law spotted him first and seized his hand.

  ‘Good to see you, old boy. So glad you could make it. We’ve had a houseful, all damned weekend; hope to scoot the last of them out the door by midnight, what?’

  His cheerful tone belied the disparaging words. Henry knew that Albert loved all the attention these gatherings brought. He loved Cynthia and the children too, and in view of this Henry would have been willing to make a great many allowances, but fortunately he quite liked his brother-in-law, even though they had little in common.

  ‘Walter,’ – Albert had seized upon a passing guest – ‘meet Henry. Cyn’s brother, you know, the murder detective.’ Albert’s grab at his guest’s sleeve had unbalanced him and he staggered a few steps sideways before righting himself.

  Walter eyed Henry over a glass of champagne. He looked as inebriated as his host. ‘Delighted,’ he said, extending his hand, and then abruptly withdrew it as his attention was drawn elsewhere. ‘I say, isn’t that the Mitchum girl?’

  ‘Oh, so it is. Cynthia’s through in the blue lounge,’ Albert told Henry. ‘Catch up later, old bean.’

  Henry was much too used to his brother-in-law to take offence and, in truth, rather relieved to have been spared the conversation with Walter – whoever he was – about crime scenes and lurid headlines that inevitably followed such an introduction.

  Passing through the main salon, he headed for the blue lounge, a pretty space with walls clad in Chinese wallpaper, furnished with the latest in what Cynthia told him was Art Deco. From the Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs, Cynthia had explained. She had attended the exhibition in Paris a few years before, when Albert had been there on business. Cynthia spoke excellent French and passable German – Albert’s business interests extended to both countries of late – and so she often went with him on business trips.

  Cynthia made sure that she was an asset in all kinds of unexpected ways.

  She was standing beside the buffet, in conversation with an older woman whom Henry did not recognize. Cynthia stood out from the sea of blacks and pastels in a silk dress of emerald green that went well with her dark red hair and pale skin. Her hair was bound with a ribbon that flashed and sparkled as she moved her head and the back of the dress was cut daringly low and held together, so far as Henry could tell, with a tie of the same sparkling fabric, finished with an ornately beaded tassel.

  She smiled with pleasure when she saw him. ‘Henry! Oh, I am so glad you could make it. Lady Fielding,’ she said, turning her attention back to the older woman, ‘may I present my brother, Henry Johnstone. Henry, this is Lady Fielding. She’s the patron of one of the refugee committees I’m involved with.’

  ‘And you must be the detective.’ Lady Fielding shook his hand. ‘And now, my dear, I must say my goodbyes. At my age, one reaches nine o’clock and bed begins to call. But call round tomorrow and we’ll discuss things further. It’s so nice to have a sensible head to converse with.’

  She hobbled off, leaning heavily on a black cane topped and tailed in silver.

  Cynthia pecked her brother on the cheek. ‘So, how the devil are you? It’s been weeks.’

  Henry smiled. ‘It’s been two, and we’ve spoken on the phone four times in between.’

  ‘It’s still too long. My God, these people can eat and drink. You’d think they’d been starving themselves for a month, the way they put it all away. You’ve seen Albert?’

  ‘Briefly. He and someone called Walter, whom I almost met, went off in pursuit of someone called the Mitchum girl.’

  ‘Ah. Walter would be Walter Prendergast, I imagine. He’s into coffee and rubber, I believe. The Mitchum girl is Lady Evelyn Mitchum. Just out this year and everyone’s falling over themselves to make sure she’s married before the season’s over. Poor chick, she’s never been so popular. I’m hoping she’s got the sense not to have her head turned too soon.’

  She took Henry’s arm. ‘So how are you, and how’s Mickey? And what dreadful crimes are you investigating this week?’


  Henry smiled at his sister. ‘Mickey is well and sends his best regards. As to investigations, you’ll no doubt read about it all in tomorrow’s papers. It’s taken a while for this one to be picked up by the press; the deaths of one known felon and his probable associate, found in the Kentish marshes, don’t attract quite so much interest as a victim who seemed more deserving might.’

  ‘Sounds wet and cold,’ Cynthia observed.

  ‘Wet and definitely cold. I was grateful for my coat.’

  ‘Which you’d have had a lot sooner if you hadn’t been so stubborn. That old one was practically worn through. A sister can give presents to her brother without him fussing, you know.’ She patted him on the arm. ‘I told Melissa that she could wait up for you. Young Georgie will probably be fast asleep, but she’ll be awake and reading. It seems funny not to have Cyril home, but he’ll be back soon. School finishes in another week.’

  Henry left her and went upstairs to find his niece and nephew. Melissa was ten and George five. Their elder brother, Cyril, had recently become a full-time boarder, a decision Cynthia had been reluctant to make. She had insisted at first that the boys should not go away. Cyril had been a day scholar and then boarded in the week, but since autumn he’d been away full time. His decision; at twelve, he had told his mother that he was old enough to shift for himself and that he was missing out on the fun to be had with his friends at the weekends.

  Cynthia had given in. Cyril was a capable boy. Outgoing, sporty and affable, and clearly thriving at school, so she had no real argument.

  Melissa had her tutors at home, shared with two other girls, the daughters of Cynthia’s friends, and showed no signs of wanting life to change. Young Georgie was already petitioning to go with Cyril, though both Cynthia and Albert were against him being away from home too soon. Albert had boarded from six years old and been thoroughly miserable for the first few years. He had, somewhat surprisingly, dug in his heels and sided with his wife when his father had suggested they were being too soft with the boys.