Blood Brothers (2 page)

‘Here’s the doc,’ he said, his voice neutral as he indicated a figure descending warily, with the help of a uniformed officer, into the pit they were standing in and picking his way along the duckboards the police had put in place but which were already beginning to sink into the mud. ‘Not someone I know,’ he added quietly. ‘Dr Lockwood’s on leave, they said. This is Dr Jaffa.’

‘I hope he knows what he’s at,’ Jackson muttered, but in spite of his reservations he held out his hand to the muffled figure who approached and who flinched as much as the police had done when he saw what lay in its shroud of sacking.

‘There will not be very much I can tell you here and now,’ he said, peering at the bloodied mess which had been a human being. ‘I will need him – it appears to be him – on the table. And if you need an identification I can tell you now, it will be difficult. His own mother would not recognize that.’ Jaffa spoke precisely with only the faintest trace of an Indian intonation.

‘Have you been in the country long, doctor?’ Jackson asked with a hint of aggression. It was obvious that an Asian pathologist was not what he had been expecting or wanted.

‘I trained at St Thomas’s,’ Jaffa said, his voice cold and his accent impeccably English. ‘Some time ago.’ Gingerly he approached the body and made a cursory examination. ‘In this case it will be very difficult to give you any immediate information with any certainty,’ he said. He was obviously not going to accommodate Jackson’s obvious reservations about his competence. ‘I would guess he has been dead for a day at least before he was dumped. There still seems to be uncongealed blood but the wetness of the ground might account for that. Most of the major knife incisions could have killed him or could have been inflicted after death. But in this condition I can’t be sure. I can’t even be sure all the parts are here. All I can say is that he appears to have been stripped. There is no sign of any clothing, just the sacking he was wrapped in. I’ll arrange for him to be moved to the lab as soon as possible and report back as soon as I can.’

‘Some of the damage may have been done by the excavator which dug him out of the mud,’ Jackson said. ‘We’ll talk to the excavator driver and let you know exactly what happened.’

‘That would be very helpful,’ Jaffa said.

‘Somewhere someone must have dumped his clothes,’ Jackson said, turning back to Barnard.

‘Or burnt them, guv.’ the sergeant suggested.

‘Why bother if they obviously never expected him to be found,’ Jackson countered.

‘Well, judging by the state of him they’d be covered in blood. But I suppose they might have identified him in some way. But even if they did it’ll be like looking for a needle in a haystack. He could have been brought here from just about anywhere in London. Or even further away.’

‘He was dumped by someone who found out exactly what was going on at this site,’ Jackson said sharply. ‘I want every person working here interviewed to find out if anyone has been asking questions about when the concrete was going to be poured. That’s the only lead we have. Let’s get on with it.’

Kate O’Donnell sat at her desk at Ken Fellows’ photographic agency in the heart of Soho feeding new film into her precious Voigtlander camera and feeling surplus to requirements. Her boss, she knew, had flown in the face of convention by taking a woman on as a photographer but she could tell he still felt uncomfortable when he assigned jobs to his crew. Some, he evidently thought, though never admitted, were not suitable tasks for a woman, and especially perhaps, a woman as young and attractive as Kate with her dark curly hair smoothed precariously flat, her sparkling blue eyes and slim figure. This morning the assignments had all gone to the men on duty: a serious accident in the East End, a fire raging at a factory at Park Royal where the London Fire Brigade feared an explosion, and a secondment to one of the national papers whose picture editor needed some extra help.

Kate’s own recent foray into the rag trade, which Ken had hoped would enable the agency to penetrate the women’s magazine market, had ended in tears, and of the assignments on offer that day the one she most coveted this morning she knew she was the least likely to get. She yearned to put her foot over the threshold of one of the national newspapers which lined Fleet Street like impregnable fortresses on either side, with their provincial acolytes’ London offices squeezed into the narrow gaps and elderly offices in between. But Ken had merely raised an eyebrow when she had mentioned that ambition.

‘I’ve never heard of a woman photographer on a national paper,’ he had said. ‘Or a provincial one, come to that. There was too much heavy kit to lug about while they were still using plate cameras. They’re on the way out of course but I don’t see that anything’s going to change soon. The unions are very strong and very stroppy. The printers certainly wouldn’t like it. Even the lady hacks get a barracking when they get too close to the Linotype machines.’

‘But it might change now,’ Kate had insisted, waving her thirty-five mm at him, the small, fast item which was changing the face of photography. ‘With the smaller cameras?’

‘Maybe,’ Ken had said. ‘I shouldn’t hold your breath. I’ve seen no sign of it.’ He looked thoughtful for a moment and then seemed to come to a decision, though with some uncertainty in his eyes. ‘As it happens I’m due to have a drink with the crime reporter from the
Globe
some time soon. He’s an old mate from when I was a Fleet Street photographer myself. Come with me for a quick bevvy and he can fill you in on what goes on down there these days. I’ve been away from it too long. Maybe things are changing. Perhaps next time they want someone to fill in, cover for a holiday or something, I could put your name up. If they don’t like the idea they can always say no.’

Kate’s heart missed a beat and she tried to keep any trace of excitement out of her eyes. ‘Great,’ she said. ‘Let’s do that. I hate sitting here doing nothing.’

Kate had spent most of the unproductive day flipping idly through the morning papers, desultorily bringing her files of photographs up to date, and then reading the early editions of the evening papers which had been dropped off at the agency, but her mind was not on them. There was another problem which was keeping her awake in the small hours, and its name was Harry Barnard, the Soho cop who had charmed her the very first time she had met him and into whose bed she had eventually been lured. But the relationship flared and spluttered out again at intervals and Kate was never sure that she wanted it to survive. And nor, she thought, was Harry. Neither of us, she had confided sadly to her flatmate Tess after being stood up one more time, really wanted to be pinned down.

At the end of the afternoon, when the flurry of photographers on assignment had come back to the office and developed their pictures, and most of them had gone home, Kate waited for Ken Fellows to clear his own desk. At last he finished and nodded in her direction.

‘Get your coat on girl,’ he said. ‘It’s fixed. I’ll buy you a G and T at the French pub and you can have a chat with Carter.’

They walked together through the early evening lull as the West End workers straggled home and before the evening’s revellers poured in to the pubs and clubs, restaurants and clip joints which lined the narrow streets of Soho. Pushing open the door of the French pub’s bar, Fellows glanced round and raised a hand in greeting to a burly, red-faced man in a green tweed three piece suit which did nothing to hide his expansive belly, sitting on his own at a corner table with a half empty glass of Scotch in front of him. He was younger than Ken, Kate thought, but seemed to be deliberately cultivating an old-fashioned look. She held back as the two men shook hands.

‘It’s been a long time,’ he said. ‘Carter, this is my newest recruit, Kate O’Donnell. Kate – Carter Price, crime supremo at the
Globe
, a very old mate of mine and a Fleet Street star.’

‘Hello, my dear,’ Price said with an enthusiasm which surprised Kate. ‘It’s surprising we haven’t bumped into each other before,’ he said. ‘I’ve picked up on some of your adventures for my rag. You seem to believe in living dangerously.’

‘Not really,’ Kate said. ‘Most of what’s happened to me has been purely accidental.’

Price raised an eyebrow at that but did not comment.

‘Well, sit down, darling, and tell me all about it. What can I get you to drink?’

It was late when Kate got back to the flat she shared with Tess Farrell, her head spinning from the combination of one G and T too many and from listening to the endless stories from Fleet Street the two men regaled her with.

‘Kate fancies her chances as a snapper for one of the papers,’ Ken had said as the evening progressed, his voice becoming slightly slurred. ‘I told her that’s not on.’

Price laughed loudly, attracting attention around the now crowded bar. ‘They’d eat you for breakfast, petal,’ he said.

‘I’d like to see them try,’ Kate had snapped, filled with alcoholic bravado. ‘You forget I come from Liverpool.’

‘Ah, that’s where that accent comes from. I should have known now these bands are ruling the roost,’ Price said. ‘Knew them, did you? The Beatles.’

‘I was at art college with John Lennon,’ Kate said sharply.

‘Were you now?’ Price had said. ‘Well, I tell you what. I’ll set up a meeting with the picture editor at the
Globe
and give you a tour round the old Lubianka. How about that?’

‘And what did your boss say to that,’ Tess asked as they sipped coffee in front of the gas fire when Kate got home.

‘I think he was a bit miffed, but he couldn’t really say anything, could he? After all he’d introduced me to Carter Price in the first place. It’s only a visit anyway. From what they said I shouldn’t think anything will come of it.’

‘I wouldn’t be too sure,’ Tess said, laughing. ‘On recent form you seem to be able to talk your way into just about anything you want.’

After a gruelling afternoon working through the paperwork at the Centre Point site and supervising interviews with all the labourers who were there and making a note of those who weren’t, to be followed up later, Harry Barnard called it a day as the winter light faded. He signed off at the nick after telling DCI Jackson that nothing of significance had emerged, and made his way to his red Ford Capri in search of a final interview which he did not intend to tell anyone else about.

He drove through the City, where the streets were already emptying, and east towards Whitechapel where he parked outside the unobtrusive entrance to a gym in a side-street, checking his doors carefully, although he had little doubt that the safety of the car, his pride and joy, was more or less guaranteed anywhere so close to Ray Robertson’s property. He went inside and found even this early in the evening there were a couple of lads sparring in the ring, and more using the training equipment around the bleak hall.

‘Is he in?’ he asked the older man in grubby singlet and shorts who was watching the sweating pair in the ring carefully and shouting out advice as the slighter of the two began to flag.

‘In the office, on the phone,’ the trainer replied with barely a glance at Barnard, who had trained here himself when he left school, encouraged by Robertson to believe he had potential in the ring. He had known Ray since he and the two Robertson brothers had been evacuated together in the early days of the war, but their paths had diverged when Barnard went to grammar school and the other two boys had followed their family’s criminal traditions. But there were bonds that were never truly broken when Barnard put on a police uniform and as a detective there were occasions when the old links proved useful. Barnard came to the gym much less often now to help out the next generation of East End lads, black now as well as white, who saw the ring as a way out of dead-end jobs or crime. Followed by the monotonous thud of leather on flesh and the rattle of skipping feet, he made his way to Ray Robertson’s tiny office in the far corner of the hall, knocked and stuck his head round the door to be beckoned in with the wave of a cigar as Robertson ended his call.

‘Harry my boy, nice to see you. Have you come for a workout or is this just a social call?’

‘To pick your brains, Ray, as it goes,’ Barnard said, taking the only other chair in the cluttered room and accepting Robertson’s offer of a cigar which he tucked carefully into his top pocket for later. ‘We had something very nasty turn up this afternoon. It was too late for the evening papers but it’ll be all over the rags in the morning. With your contacts I thought you might have heard a whisper.’

Robertson’s smile faded slightly. ‘You’d better tell me all about it, Flash,’ Robertson said and drew deeply on his cigar, thickening the air in the tiny space into a fog. ‘So far as I know everything’s quiet at the moment on the West End front, which I assume is what we’re talking about as you were on the spot.’

‘The big building site at Tottenham Court Road, the one there’s been all the fuss about. Someone made mincemeat of some poor beggar and dumped him there, obviously expecting him to disappear under tons of concrete today if everything had gone according to plan. With brother Georgie safely locked up awaiting trial I couldn’t think of another psycho who might fit the bill.’

Robertson leaned back in his chair, eyes narrowed. ‘Can’t say I’ve picked anything up of that sort,’ he said. ‘What makes you think it’s not some loony tune like Jack the Ripper?’

‘Random killers don’t usually go to that amount of trouble to hide their victims,’ Barnard said. ‘Someone put a lot of thought into this poor beggar’s disposal. It was sheer accident that he didn’t disappear as planned. The contractors had a sudden change of plan and put an excavator back into the foundations. We’re waiting for the post-mortem report. That should tell us how he died.’

‘I’ll keep my ears open,’ Robertson said. ‘But I can’t say I’ve heard a whisper so far.’

And with that, Harry Barnard thought, he would obviously have to be content.

A
ssistant Commissioner John Amis, in full uniform, stood at the window of his Scotland Yard office gazing pensively across the Embankment at the turbulent River Thames in flood. He was a tall man, heavy but not obese in spite of his confinement to a desk job which, after army service which had not ended until after the Korean War, he occasionally chafed against. But at least, he thought, there was the prospect of some action ahead. He tidied the top of his desk, glanced into one or two drawers, one containing a heavy and strictly illicit old service revolver, before locking them and putting the keys in his pocket. He picked up his uniform cap and made his way through the Victorian building which had long ago become inconvenient and overcrowded for a modern police force. Perhaps soon the long promised new building would materialize on the site which had been selected near Victoria Station.