The Lighterman: The Kray Twins are out for revenge... (Charles Holborne Legal Thrillers Book 3)

by Simon Michael

  ‘’Allo, Mr ’Olborne, sir,’ he says in a strong cockney accent.

  Charles smiles. Barristers and clerks do not usually shake hands, but Charles disdains such hierarchical protocols and he likes the young man’s confidence. He places the accent as Plaistow, maybe Poplar, and it is one with which he is very familiar. He accepts the young man’s offered hand, and grips it firmly.

  ‘Charlie ’Olborne, at your service,’ he says with a mock bow and reverting to the cockney of his youth. Charles’s voice is not what the young man expects and Charles sees doubt and confusion cross his face. ‘No, don’t worry, Clive,’ reassures Charles in his normal voice. ‘Just teasing. I used to talk exactly like you, but these buggers eventually beat it out of me.’

  ‘Language please, sir,’ calls Barbara from across the room, without looking up.

  Clerks are not supposed to have favourites in Chambers. It causes the competitiveness between the barristers fighting for briefs to erupt into outright hostility and has been the cause of many a set of chambers splitting up. But if Barbara has a favourite, it is Charles Holborne. He’s easy to deal with, has none of the airs and graces of some of his colleagues, and he’s a good team player. If Barbara is left at five thirty in the evening with a difficult plea in Leeds for a pain-in-the-backside solicitor, she knows that she can always ask Mr Holborne to take the case. He has a safe pair of hands, he’s good at his job and pleasant both to the professional and lay clients. She also likes an underdog, and if ever there was a barrister underdog, it’s her guvnor, Charles Holborne.

  The door behind Charles opens and another barrister comes into the room. He is in his fifties, short and spherical in shape, the buttons of his waistcoat straining to contain a protuberant potbelly. He wears a black jacket, striped trousers with a razor-sharp crease in them and expensive cologne which, in Charles’s opinion, is applied too liberally.

  He interrupts the conversation and calls directly across to Barbara.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘I did say I would call if there was anything, Mr Knight.’

  ‘So, nothing then?’

  ‘I’m sorry sir, but no.’

  The man takes a couple of steps towards Barbara’s desk and points at her in a faintly accusatorial fashion. He looks about to say something, but thinks better of it. He spins on his heel and walks back to the door with that light dancing tread so often incongruously associated with heavy men. He’s about to disappear through the doorway when Barbara calls after him.

  ‘I know that Mr Hamilton-Rudd was looking for someone to devil those Admiralty papers for him,’ she suggests. ‘If you’re at a loose end?’

  ‘I’m not devilling for him. He’s ten years my junior!’

  Charles smiles at his colleague in what he hopes is a sympathetic way — he knows only too well what it’s like to be out of favour with solicitors — but it produces precisely the opposite reaction to the one intended.

  ‘I don’t know what on earth you’re smirking about!’ says Knight in a low voice, but heard by everyone in the room. ‘You … you…’ but it appears that an epithet fails him and he gives up, slamming the door behind him.

  There’s an uncomfortable silence in the clerks’ room, broken eventually by Clive’s hesitant question: ‘Devilling?’

  Charles answers. ‘It means working on papers for another barrister. The work will go out in the other barrister’s name after he or she’s checked it, and that barrister will be paid for it as normal, but they pay the devil an hourly rate for their work. It’s something we all do at the beginning of our careers, and sometimes later when things are quiet. I always take it if I can; you often learn something new in a field of law you don’t normally have time to study. Anyway…’ Charles cranes his neck forward to see if there is anything in his pigeonhole and is disappointed to find it empty. ‘After that interesting interlude, I shall leave you in peace. I have an Advice to draft.’

  Charles winks at Jennie, making her blush, as was his purpose, and climbs to the second floor of the building to his room.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  It’s ten in the morning and the Regal Billiard Hall, Eric Street, in the East End of London is in almost complete darkness and appears deserted. None of the lights over the fourteen billiard tables is illuminated and the bar area is dark, the little light that penetrates through the dirt-ingrained windows just picking out the optics and stacked glasses. The hall reeks of stale cigarette smoke and beer. It is possible to detect, faintly, the sounds of traffic outside on the Mile End Road.

  The one point of illumination in the room comes from a small desk lamp with an underpowered bulb in it resting on a small coffee table. In a comfortable but tattered armchair next to the table sits a fleshy man in his early thirties wearing heavy black-rimmed spectacles. He sports a clean freshly starched white shirt tucked into dark blue trousers held up by blue braces which he calls “suspenders”, in homage to the American film gangsters he emulates, and a red silk tie, held in place by a heavy gold tiepin which matches his cufflinks.

  Through his dark-rimmed glasses, the man’s heavy-lidded eyes appear almost completely closed as he focuses intently on what’s in his hands: in the left, the recoil spring tube of an Erma-Werke Luger semi-automatic pistol; in the right, an oily cloth which he has used to clean every part of the pistol. The recoil spring is the last component to be cleaned; the other dismantled parts of the pistol lie neatly spaced on a lint-free cloth on the coffee table awaiting reassembly, glinting dully in the yellow light of the desk lamp.

  By the side of the chair lies a large Alsatian dog, asleep with its head on its paws.

  There is no noise that a human might have detected but the dog’s ears suddenly twitch and it lifts its head, looking round towards the swing doors at the back of the hall. A few seconds later there is a thump as something heavy and metallic is deposited outside the doors. The man’s hands become still and he lifts his head.

  ‘Terry?’ he calls.

  There’s a pause and then one of the swing doors opens. The Old Bailey robing room interloper puts his head around the door. ‘Morning Ronnie. I’m just giving Stan a hand with the barrels.’

  The man in the armchair studies the young man from under heavy lids, noting the boyish features, the long dark lashes, the full lips and the sheen of sweat on the slightly flushed cheeks. His fisheyes travel dispassionately down the boy’s body.

  ‘Well, stop that and come over ’ere,’ he orders quietly.

  ‘Sure.’

  The door opens fully and the young man walks across and stops a respectful distance from the table. Like Ronnie Kray, one of the notorious twins warring for rule of London’s underworld, he’s in shirt sleeves and suit trousers, but he wears a brown storeman’s coat to protect his clothing. He stands off to one side, with only the bottom of his coat, his knees and shoes in the circle of light, awaiting orders.

  ‘Don’t stand there like that, it’s creepy,’ says Ronnie without looking up. ‘Get a chair and sit down so I can see you.’

  The young man does as he’s told and brings a hard-backed chair into the circle of light. He scrapes it on the floor, causing a sharp noise which echoes around the empty billiard hall, and sits, slightly higher than Ronnie but with his elbows on his knees, watching intently as the pistol is reassembled.

  Ronnie’s hands move deftly, demonstrating a skill born of repeated practice, and within a few seconds the pistol lies complete in the centre of the cloth on the table, as if waiting to be picked up and used. The young man’s handsome face is outwardly calm, but the nervous flicker of his eyes as he follows Ronnie’s hands and the shallowness of his breathing betray anxiety. Ronnie leans back, satisfied, and examines his fingernails for oil.

  ‘Now,’ he says conversationally. ‘What the fuck happened?’

  ‘I tried, Ronnie, honest I did,’ says Terry in a high tenor voice. ‘I told you, he’s never alone long enough. His gaff’s only a hundred yards from his office —’

  ‘Chambe
rs,’ corrects Ronnie.

  ‘Sorry, chambers. He’s always with other briefs as he walks to the Bailey. And he’s been prosecuting for the last few weeks so he’s surrounded by Filth. Plus, I think he’s wise to me, ’cos he’s started acting strange.’

  ‘Strange?’

  ‘Yeah. Like, last week, I followed him down Fleet Street, and he stops to tie his shoelaces, so I’m forced to keep walking past him. As I’m going past I see he’s wearing slip-ons! So after a couple of paces I turn, but he’s legged it down that alley, right? By the “Old Cheshire Cheese”? By the time I get back to the alley he’s disappeared altogether. Must have sprinted right to the end ’cos the pub was closed. I’m telling you, he’s as fit as a butcher’s dog, that brief.’

  ‘And yesterday?’

  ‘I promise you, Ronnie, I did just as you said. Kept an eye on his court and as soon as he left, followed him to the robing room. You were right, the place was deserted, and I got to him but some other briefs turned up before I could do nothing. So I scarpered, like you said: don’t get caught.’

  Terry finishes speaking but Ronnie Kray, known within the Firm as the Colonel, continues to stare just past his left ear, somehow looking at him but not looking at him. They say he can read minds, Terry reminds himself, and he freezes his face in a bland expression, pressing his sweating palms into his knees and holding his breath. Like many of the members of the Firm, he hates talking to Ronnie without Reggie present. Reggie Kray is no less hard, but you can usually reason with him; he’s a businessman at heart and will always look for the profit in the violence.

  But Ronnie … well, sometimes Terry thinks Ronnie’s unhinged even when not depressed and dosed up on booze and pills. Ronnie gets these ideas into his head and nothing can shake them. Sometimes he’ll go completely overboard, just lose it, and then even Reggie can’t restrain him. In fact, it’s in just those circumstances that Reggie’s most likely to back up his twin brother, even if there’s no profit or even logic in it. It’s as if that weird bond between them, a sort of competitiveness never to let the side down, will always trump Reggie’s business sense and his sense of proportion, whatever the cost.

  ‘OK,’ concludes Ronnie, his fisheyes sliding further off into the middle distance. ‘Fuck off then.’ Terry gets up. ‘Oh, yeah: what did you do with the shooter?’

  ‘I took it back to Fort Vallance for safe keeping.’ Terry takes two further steps towards the rear to the building, but then hesitates. He turns. ‘Do you want me to keep following him?’

  Ronnie pauses for a moment before answering, without turning round. ‘Give it to the end of the week. If you can get him by then, I’ll give you an extra monkey. If not, jack it, and we’ll think of something else. And remember: not a word to Reggie, got it? Now, go on, fuck off.’

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Charles opens an eye and focuses on the alarm clock beside him: ten past six. He groans inwards and slides carefully to the side of the bed, taking care not to wake Sally. His feet hit carpet and he sits up on the edge of the bed. He pulls to one side the net curtains covering the narrow floor-to-ceiling window and looks down into Fetter Lane. The road is usually quiet on Sunday mornings but at just past six o’clock it’s completely silent, with no traffic at all.

  Charles turns and looks across at Sally asleep next to him. Her face is buried in the pillow and her shock of shiny black hair in its short bob is splayed across the white linen. Her right shoulder is visible above the sheets and Charles finds the temptation to bend and kiss it, to wake her up and snuggle into that warm delicious-smelling body, to be so strong that he almost gives into it. He resists, looks again at the clock, and asks himself if he is likely to get back to sleep with the light streaming in. He’s had a bad night, counting the hours. He decides it’d be a waste of time, so he stands quietly and pads around the end of the bed, again resisting the temptation to tickle the single white foot sticking out of the covers.

  Charles pulls the bedroom door closed behind him and goes to the tiny cupboard in the one square metre space mendaciously described as an “elegant hallway” in the estate agent’s particulars. He reaches in and takes out a green army rucksack, a relic of David’s conscripted military service which ended in 1952. In it, Charles keeps a clean towel, shorts, socks, singlet and training shoes. The rest of his boxing kit, including his gloves, boots and head guard, he leaves in his locker at the gym.

  Charles changes into his sports gear and repacks the rucksack with clean underwear, a pair of slacks and a clean but un-ironed shirt taken from the laundry basket in the kitchen. He gulps down a glass of cold water from the kitchen sink and slips out of the apartment, closing the door with a faint click behind him.

  Charles steps onto Fetter Lane, and turns left and left again onto Fleet Street. He starts jogging, his spirits lifting in the cool morning air. It’s a mile and a half south to the gym at Elephant and Castle, a pleasant run over Blackfriars Bridge, and he can usually jog the distance in fifteen minutes.

  The Kennington Institute was built after the war on the site of another London boxing landmark, the Rupert Browning Youth Club. Over the years, the Rupert Browning had been responsible for training most of the East End kids who went on to have successful pro careers. Charles was taken by his father and uncle to join the club at the age of thirteen in 1939. He still remembers the day in 1943 when he was first introduced to the Kray twins, then still ten years of age, on the day they started training there. For a short time, he and the brothers even shared the same trainer, an ex-pro called Charlie Simms. Both twins were good lightweight boxers; Ronnie, brave to the point of foolhardiness and a bit of a slugger, and Reggie, equally brave but also a very good technical boxer, so good that most informed observers thought he had the makings of a professional champion.

  Having crossed Blackfriars Bridge, Charles jogs down London Road towards the roundabout at Elephant and Castle, breathing heavily but still comfortable. He squints to avoid the sunlight reflecting directly into his eyes from the windows of the newly-completed six-storey Castle House. He looks down and focuses on the small section of pavement before him, his feet entering and leaving his field of vision, with their regular thud-thud, thud-thud. A London bus sweeps past southbound, and in its diesel-fume wash a flotsam of grease-stained chip paper and other refuse is blown across his path. Charles extends his stride, leaps over the larger pieces and keeps running.

  Five minutes later he sprints the last hundred yards down a narrow service road, skirts a burnt-out Austin van, and pushes open large doors covered by greasy chipboard. He is welcomed as always by the gym’s familiar blend of stale sweat, mould and liniment. He walks down a short corridor to the changing room. Sweat-stained wooden benches line one wall facing a bank of grey-painted lockers. Above the benches is a rogue’s gallery of faded black and white photos of young men in typical boxing poses. Second from the end is one of Charles himself, aged fourteen, wearing around his neck the golden gloves of a London Schoolboy Champion.

  Charles opens a locker opposite his own photograph and takes out his boots and gloves.

  ‘’Ello, ’ello, ’ello,’ says a gravelly voice from behind him. ‘Couldn’t sleep again?’

  Charles turns. A man in his early sixties in stained jogging pants and a grubby T-shirt leans in from the corridor, a dripping mop in one hand. His nose is flattened and he has the characteristic cauliflower ears and scarred eyebrows of a former boxer.

  ‘Morning, Duke,’ replies Charles. ‘No. Don’t know what’s up; that’s four nights in a row. I could do with a few rounds. Anyone available?’

  ‘What, at this hour? Nah, I’m the only one in.’

  ‘OK, heavy bag, then.’

  Charles puts on the rest of his kit, clangs shut the locker door, and walks further down the corridor into the gym, pulling on his gloves. The room is in almost complete darkness, the only windows being inaccessible, pigeon dropping-covered skylights set in the asbestos sheet roof. Charles hits the lights and most of the fluoresc
ent tubes flicker and buzz into reluctant life.

  Still warm from his run, Charles starts work immediately on the heavy bag in the corner of the room. After a few minutes Duke enters carrying a striped mug of tea, and leans against the wall watching Charles punch, every now and then offering advice: ‘Use your full range Charlie; you’re just taking it easy!’ ‘Left your feet at ’ome ’av yer? Get back out of contact range, you lazy fucker!’ ‘Get that hand back up after the hook! You’re leaving yourself open — plus you’ll never get a third shot off!’

  Charles does six rounds on the bag, the first two on jabs and hooks while he works up a really good sweat, the third on southpaw, the fourth concentrating on head movement, and the last two at fight pace, fast combos while keeping his footwork fast and loose. By the end it is almost quarter to eight, and he knows that Sally will soon be stirring. He steps away from the bag, undoing his left glove with his teeth and just managing to catch the towel thrown through the air to him by Duke.

  ‘Not too shabby, Charlie, considering you don’t train enough, you’re ’alf a stone overweight and yer mind’s somewhere else,’ says Duke.

  ‘Thanks mate,’ replies Charles. ‘I’ve got to run. Someone waiting for me.’

  ‘Yeah? Is that Robeson’s girl?’

  Charles looks up, surprised. ‘You know about her, then?’

  ‘The ’ole fuckin’ East End knows about her. You can’t keep nuffink a secret round ’ere, you know that. You two still an item, then?’

  Charles walks towards the doors, towelling down his matted chest hair, bringing the conversation to an end. ‘Go to go, Duke. See you Wednesday.’

  Ten minutes later, hair still dripping from the shower and rucksack over one shoulder, Charles emerges onto the roundabout at Elephant and Castle. A bus that would take him to within a few hundred yards of Fetter Lane is approaching, but instead Charles hails a taxi. ‘Fetter Lane,’ he instructs the cabbie, ‘but via Old Compton Street.’