by Gary Bell
Her feet were full-on drumming now, sending her whole body into a quivering frenzy. I could feel the vibrations from a metre away.
‘Cheating,’ she quietly relented. ‘He’d spent the night with another woman. I’m pretty sure it was a prostitute.’
And just like that, a whopping piece of the puzzle came slamming down into place, and I felt Zara stiffen in response like a wave through the cushion beneath me.
‘Did he tell you that?’ I asked.
‘Eventually …’ She fumbled through her pockets for a bobbled scrunch of tissue and wiped her nose clean. ‘That’s what they do, those lads he hangs out with. Go to the footy at the weekend, take a load of gear, and then go and stick it up some slag. Billy came home at about ten o’clock in the morning one Sunday. I caught him stuffing his clothes into the washing machine. Managed to wrestle his underwear away from him and it was … stained. It was fucking disgusting. So, I started hitting him, and hitting him, and he retaliated, and …’
Zara was bobbing alongside me, still mortified, but clearly unsure whether to cross the room and offer an arm.
My own sympathy was, perhaps, stifled by the excitement of the revelation itself.
‘Do you know who it was, and if he had any further contact with her?’
She shook her head, wiping her cheeks carefully as if to preserve the make-up she’d stopped wearing, and slumped forward.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said into the tissue. ‘I’m sorry but I just can’t talk about this any more. I don’t want all this dragged up in court. In the papers. I don’t want to prove to the world that it was right about us after all.’
16
We ended the day in the Welfare Scheme Social Club, three blocks away from the Barbers’ flat.
The last place The Girl was seen alive.
It had changed a lot in thirty years, and was almost unrecognisable from the Miners’ Welfare as I remembered it, with thick patterned plush and carpets adding a softer, nineties feel throughout. I was fairly confident that the decades would give me enough cover to get into the building without being hassled, but didn’t fancy my chances in the sports bar, where I could see moderate crowds gathering around the pool tables and dartboard.
Instead, I took Zara into the quieter lounge; here, I could sit with my back to the room and its white-haired patrons, who were too busy reading newspapers, sipping mild and playing cards to notice.
For all its lack of opportunities, there were things I’d missed about Cotgrave. London might have been the greatest city on the planet, but it didn’t have the same sense of community that had endured in such small villages across the rest of the country, places proud to keep the civility in the civil parish. As a lad, I’d known not only every employee in the corner shop, butcher’s, greengrocer’s and Miners’ Welfare, but their families too, and could send my regards along with them after every brief encounter. Things were different in the city. I didn’t even know the names of my upstairs neighbours.
‘Thoughts, Miss Barnes?’ I asked, after we’d been up to the bar and then collapsed into one of the booths in the back corner of the lounge.
She shrugged, all the morning’s excitement beaten out of her, and sipped her Coke. ‘Feels like a lot of effort for no real progress, doesn’t it?’
‘You were hoping for answers after one day?’
Another shrug. ‘I just thought things might’ve been a bit clearer. All we’ve really learned is that there’s not going to be any point in asking his wife to stand up in court, if all she’s going to do is give the prosecution a perfect opportunity to ratify Barber’s proclivity for violence towards women.’
‘Maybe,’ I agreed, ‘but she can also confirm his use of prostitutes, and that could provide us with the answer to where he went and what he got up to on that night.’
‘You really think Barber would be willing to lose the past six months, and potentially the rest of his life, for a murder he didn’t commit, if he could just get out of it by admitting he’d spent the night with a prostitute? Seems a bit of an extreme alternative …’
She wasn’t wrong, but it brought another trial to mind.
‘You know anything about George Ince and the Barn Murder of ’72?’
She undid her knot of hair, rolled it back over her ears, and leaned forward on her elbows. ‘I don’t think so …’
‘Well,’ I said, trying to recall the finer details, ‘as I remember it, the Barn was a restaurant in Essex, and the site of a botched armed robbery. A woman was killed, and George Ince, an acquaintance of the Kray Twins, was charged with the murder.’
‘OK …’
‘Thing is, the cops knew that Ince had an airtight alibi, but they also knew it was one he’d never use … He’d been in bed with the wife of Charlie Kray, the twins’ older brother, at the time.’
She gasped, slapping her palms down onto the table, looked around the room, and hissed, ‘You’re saying that the police are fitting Barber up?’
‘No! No, I’m absolutely not saying that. But I told you that Sean said there’d been migrant girls working around the country park area, didn’t I?’
‘Sean?’
‘Inspector McCarthy,’ I swiftly revised. ‘If that were the case, it could explain why Barber’s being so cagey about coming out and admitting it, considering his personal politics. I’m betting he wouldn’t want his skinhead mates finding out about him sleeping with migrant girls, would he?’
She frowned, and I wasn’t sure if I’d used the most sensitive terminology.
‘Surely losing the respect of your peers is a small price to pay for freedom?’
‘Maybe he’s optimistic,’ I suggested. ‘He seems arrogant enough to believe that he’s going to get off with the indictment anyway. He might just be waiting to have his cake and eat it, too. I once represented a man charged with drug dealing, and part of the evidence included cocaine recovered from his wife’s coat pocket. He claimed it was his, for personal use, and told me, off the record, that he was a cross-dresser, but he would never admit to that in court. You’d be surprised what punishments people will seek, if it allows them to hide a truth.’
‘Maybe … But, what if we submit that theory, that he was with a prostitute or whatever, and the prosecution turns it around on us anyway? What if they argue that the victim was the working girl, and that Barber followed her into the park for, you know, business, only he lost his temper, and this time he didn’t stop at breaking walls?’
I shook my head. ‘There’s no evidence to suggest that the victim was a prostitute. The autopsy says she died a virgin. No drugs. But if we could only find out where he did spend the night, we could find an alibi, and that’d be enough to –’
‘Rook?’
I froze. The voice hit me from behind like a smack to the back of the head.
I turned round, slowly, and there was old Geordie Yates, dressed in a greasy striped apron, balancing the food we’d ordered on huge oval plates. I couldn’t believe he still worked there.
‘Said you’d be back,’ he gloated. ‘They all come back. Now, I’ve got one steak and kidney with chips, one vegetarian, extra gravy.’
‘Vegetarian here …’ Zara said, scratching her head.
He placed the pies on the table between us and then walked back behind the bar and out of sight into the kitchen.
I didn’t say a word. Just swallowed a mouthful of lager, reached for my cutlery from our shared basket of condiments, and pretended I hadn’t noticed a thing.
Zara, on the other hand, was staring after him, trying to work it out.
‘Well,’ she said eventually, lifting her eyebrows, ‘now I know where you came last night … Thought you might’ve had a rough one when you picked me up this morning, but I didn’t want to say.’
‘Oh yeah?’ Relieved, I broke through the pastry with my fork, sending a plume of rich, beefy, home-made goodness up into my face. ‘What made you think that?’
‘Smoking. You’ve hardly smoked all day.’<
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‘Huh …’ She was right, though I’d barely noticed; cigarettes were a one-way ticket to nausea on a hangover.
‘You drink every night?’
‘Not every night …’ I lied around a mouthful of steak. ‘Now, that upstairs neighbour. If she’s a proven liar, we can move to discredit her statement, submit a bad character application like the prosecution is doing for Barber.’
‘Hmm …’ She poked at her own food. ‘It’s not great though, is it? When we know that he really did hit his wife. Feels sort of … underhanded, I guess.’
‘You’re not having second thoughts about the job, are you?’
‘No! Absolutely not! It’s just a little more … visceral than I’d expected.’
Another mouthful and I agreed that, yes, sometimes it was.
We ate in silence for a few minutes after that.
I realised, glumly, that sitting there, sharing dinner with a young woman, talking about the brutal death of another, was the closest thing I’d had to a date in years. Sarah Barber wasn’t wrong. Marriage was complicated.
‘Hey!’ Zara suddenly perked up. ‘What about that dead brother she mentioned? What’s up with that? Could explain the bitterness Barber might have for the collapse of the mines or whatever. Pains me to say it, but it might even make the jury empathise with him, don’t you think?’
‘No,’ I said, shooting the idea down. ‘I don’t think that’s relevant.’
It was also a story I didn’t want to get into.
More silence. The rhythm of bass from the jukebox on the other side of the wall.
‘The old Miners’ Welfare club,’ Zara whistled, eyeing the room. ‘I suppose you didn’t see anything like this at Eton?’’
My knife skidded across ceramic. ‘Eton?’
‘Yeah. Everyone at my last chambers was always talking about the place like it was the only school that mattered, or else it was Cambridge this or Oxford that … Did you see that report about Oxbridge universities offering more places to Home Counties applicants than the whole of northern England put together? They reckon the bias is actually getting worse.’
I nodded, polishing my plate clean. ‘If it makes you feel any better, I went to Bristol University.’
‘Really?’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘I assumed you were an Oxford man.’
‘Don’t ever assume.’
She leaned back, resting her cutlery neatly across the plate with almost a quarter of her meal uneaten. ‘It’s weird, isn’t it? This was the last place she ever came. I mean, why here?’
I couldn’t say.
She gazed from corner to corner, absently wiping her mouth with the edge of her paper napkin, and then a thought caused her pupils to flare behind her glasses.
‘I’ve just realised something!’ she whispered, leaning closer across the table. ‘If Barber didn’t do it, and I’m not saying that he didn’t, but if that was the case, then that’d mean the killer is still out here, wouldn’t it? He might even be in this building!’
I nodded stiffly and seriously, more to flatter the possibility than because I actually believed it, and lowered the brim of my hat before peering back over my shoulders. We were the youngest in the room by twenty to forty years respectively. Everybody else seemed to be wearing the same brand of fleece and stretch-waist trousers, and one table had moved on from cards to dominoes. Killers indeed.
Zara checked her phone and groaned loudly, instantly abandoning her suspicions. ‘I should probably start heading back to the centre soon. Train’s at half eight. Not that I need to see another track for a long time after today.’
I slipped my arms into the coat on the back of my chair, and patted through the pockets for my cigarettes and car keys; the jangling fobs included a battered Heineken bottle opener, a Tesco Clubcard I’d never redeemed, and a telephone number encased in plastic for O’Malley’s, the small, family-run garage I’d got the Jag from, which had been absorbed by a Subaru dealership shortly afterwards.
I sparked up outside the automatic sliding doors, leaned back against the dated, boxy building as I had countless times in my youth, and looked up at the evening sky and the stars beyond, lost in the heady rush of nostalgia. I tried to imagine Billy standing in the same spot, under the same stars, on a night not so different. The Girl coming out from behind, only to disappear into the dark.
Why had he followed, if not for malice?
She’ll be lucky to make it through the night.
Was it unfortunate prophecy, or genuine intent?
‘Don’t your family live in Notts?’ I asked, trying to shake the thought and his words from my mind. ‘If you can’t face the train, I can always take you there tonight, and then drive you back down tomorrow?’
‘Really?’ She was gazing off in the same direction, following the path of the ghost with her eyes. ‘That’d be ace, but I’ve already bought the return ticket …’
‘Your call,’ I shrugged. ‘I won’t tell Percy if you don’t.’
Instead of going home, Zara asked me to drop her off at the Horn in Hand on Goldsmith Street in the city centre, just round the back of Rock City, to meet some friends.
I watched from the kerb to make sure she got into the pub safely. Then I watched for a moment longer to see who she was meeting there. They were all so bloody young.
I was old enough to be their dad, I realised, and that stung as I drove back to the hotel.
It’s not that I hadn’t wanted children. In fact, the mulish part of me wanted to become the type of father I hadn’t had, just to prove how easily it could be done. But there was another part, a quieter part, that worried I might end up becoming precisely the type of father I’d had. I convinced myself over and over again that it wasn’t a good time, until there was simply no time left at all.
Jenny wanted to be a mother, and for somebody who spent her life arriving late to every date, meeting and event, she kept a damn close eye on her body clock. I ended up a thief, in her eyes. My career had robbed her of the chance.
As soon as I got back to the Ibis, the receptionist flagged me down; the key card must’ve sent some sort of room alert to the computer beside her, because she called out to me by name the moment I entered.
‘Mr Rook?’
‘Yes?’
‘There was a call for you this evening.’
‘To the reception?’
‘Yes, a gentleman telephoned at –’ she checked the Post-it attached to the bottom of her monitor – ‘six thirty-five and asked if you were on the premises.’
‘Did he leave a name? A number?’
She shook her head. ‘The number was withheld.’
‘All right,’ I muttered. ‘Very helpful, thank you.’
Back to the bed, back to the bottle, trying to focus on the events of the day, too tired to concentrate, too keyed up to sleep. My eyes were feeling scratchy and raw. The room stretched out like an empty hall around me.
Alone again.
I tried not to dwell on it, which wasn’t too difficult with everything else that was already clattering around in my head. I turned the television on for background noise, any sort of presence, but hardly gave it a glance.
It was well after midnight and I was half cut on the whiskey when I decided to go in search of the hotel’s smoking area. I left my hat by the bed but took my coat and a handful of the case papers along with me to read. I left my phone in the room. I wasn’t going to need it.
After padding back and forth through the corridors on every floor, I realised that the hotel didn’t have a designated area for smokers, and I’d have to brave the street outside. It never occurred to me to go back for my phone. I’d only be a minute.
The reception was empty by then – the receptionist having gone home for the night – so I let myself out into the cold, pocketing the key card.
The road was just as empty as my room. Fog had started to roll in, a million fine droplets suspended in the air swallowing what little light there was.
I stood close to the outside of the hotel and blew smoke up towards the tram lines that run back and forth above Fletcher Gate. It was too dark to read, so I shuffled a few metres over to the right, nearer to the lamp post, leaned back, and turned to those CCTV stills of The Girl once again.
If it hadn’t been for that cup of coffee, I thought, then it would’ve been as if she’d fallen right out of the sky and onto those tracks.
If she’d only talked to the cashier. To anybody.
That’s when I noticed the car mounted askew on the kerb a little way off, directly outside the Lace Market car park where my own Jaguar was sitting.
It was a black Mercedes. Disturbingly familiar.
Then I heard the flurry of movement closing in on me.
Instinct afforded me one good swing at the nearest of the three. My cigarette burst into orange sparks against his head, sending him back into the road, but it wasn’t enough to stop the other two, and all of a sudden, fists were raining down like bricks, smacking me onto the pavement in a heap, and scattering my papers into the empty road.
17
I balled myself into a tight coil, shielding myself against the toecaps swinging in from every side, and tried to hold the wind in my lungs. Alcohol could only desensitise me to the impacts for so long.
Wet grit spattered my lips, my teeth, in the hyper-awareness that comes with a good kicking. I managed to roll, snatching a glance up through the frenzy and the hoods and scarves, and still had enough breath to splutter:
‘Nelson!’
Everything stopped.
Nobody moved.
I heard a car drive down a neighbouring road, too far away to help, and then there was nothing but the noise of animal-panting in the low light.
Exposed, the tallest of the attackers yanked the scarf down from over his face, revealing a thin jaw, mottled skin, and a panic-stricken gawp at being identified; I’d finally recognised the passenger from the black Mercedes earlier that afternoon.
Though Barber was unique in his use of extortion to acquire my counsel, he was not the first to have crawled out from my past in search of aid. There had been others, rolling back around like bad pennies or venereal disease, and Nelson’s father had been one of them. A well-known villain of the West Indian community that had been allocated some of the worst housing on the slum in which I was born, he’d been a friend of my father’s, or rather, a financier to my father’s addiction to gambling, and had remembered my name when fate saw our paths eventually cross in the courtroom years later.
