Another few moments passed and fresh customers colonised the vacant bar space, the figures of Rodge and one of the bouncers were seen crossing the shot and heading back to their places behind the bar, Rodge talking animatedly on his mobile, and normality resumed.
“I was calling the cop shop,” Rodge explained. “I’m not having that shit going on in my pub and kicking them out doesn’t always end the punch up, so I wanted the pros here to handle the outcome. I’m not having a death on my conscience,” he explained.
I nodded my understanding. “Okay,” I said, “so we have Carlton in a pub brawl at – what time is this, Dash?”
“A quarter to ten,” Dash answered, checking the date and timestamp on the top of the screen.
“Which is some time before Jimmy turned up outside Ali’s house, so we know he’s still alive at this stage. Shame we don’t know where Carlton went from here.”
Dash smiled and tilted his head at me. “Would I have called you over here to see a pub brawl if it didn’t get better?”
My pulse sped up. “What else you got?”
“Rodger,” Dash said, nodding at our host, “has had some trouble in the past with dealers setting up shop outside the pub.”
“This is a great area,” Rodge rumbled, “people are decent, they care about each other. They have to – most of the people up the road think they’re all low-lifes, so if they don’t take care of each other, who will? But not everyone in this neighbourhood is so decent. The scumbags would turn the whole thing into a crack warzone if they had their way.”
“So,” Dash continued, tapping on the keyboard of the laptop that was controlling the monitor, “he set up a camera outside the pub.”
As he spoke, the scene switched from the now normal bar to a shot of the street outside, the angle suggesting that the camera was mounted high in the eaves of the pub. A moment passed and then Carlton staggered into shot, pursued by the shell suits.
Fat shell suit threw an approximation of a kung fu kick, catching the boy in the small of the back and hurling him forward so that he fell onto the ground, his face banging into the concrete.
Carlton was climbing back onto his knees when Skinny ran around, pulled back his foot and prepared to launch a kick straight into the face. Only he was delayed by something that happened off-screen, his head twisting slightly as something – a beer can or a bottle? – flew across screen.
He turned as Carlton continued to stagger upwards and, even on the flickering screen, it was possible to see the sneer that appeared on his face, as a woman – her short skirt exposing what looked like miles of shapely legs ending in six-inch stilettos, her upper body encased in a shaggy fun-fur jacket – walked calmly into frame.
Carlton got to his feet and, still dazed, fled from the shot as the two shell suits squared up to the newcomer, their sneers developing into triumphant grins as they exchanged glances and began moving apart as though to encircle her in a pincer movement.
But the newcomer wasn’t allowing their plan to fall into place so easily. Words were exchanged –how I wished the feed had sound as well as visual – and she stepped back, her hands coming up in a placatory gesture as she retreated slightly so that they had to widen their pincer even further, which – in hindsight, I believed this was a deliberate action on her part – widened the space between the two thugs.
Skinny’s mouth moved and the woman’s head, her glossy dark bob shining in the light from the pub windows, turned slightly towards him, at which point fat pounced, barrelling towards her.
This, I suspect he realised almost immediately, was a mistake.
In an instant, the woman’s hands came down, her body twisted at the hips towards fatso and he – partly masked now by her fun-fur covered back – seemed to stop dead and jerk backwards before falling to the ground.
Skinny, who had also been in flight towards the woman, paused; she turned her head towards him and, as his friend lay writing in agony on the ground, he stared in horror into her face, the horror suddenly being replaced by a mask of disgust. He mouthed some words at her, hawked a wad of phlegm up and spat it full in her face; then, turning on his heels, he fled into the night.
The woman, wiping her face with the sleeve of her jacket, looked down on the still shaking figure, said something to it and then walked off screen.
A few minutes passed, during which fat shell suit rolled onto his belly, pulled himself to all fours, managed to regain an upright position – the shadow on the front of his nylon trews showing that at some point in the altercation he had pissed himself – looked around as though in search of his mate and slouched off out of frame.
“Jesus,” I wondered aloud, “how does so much stupid make it to adulthood?”
Rodge chuckled. “I’m watching out for these two. They cross my door again, I’ve got a few of the boys’ll make sure they don’t come back.”
“Right,” I said, “so this helps fix Carlton’s whereabouts up till – what time is it now, Dash?”
“Hold off,” Dash held up his hand, “there’s more.” He gestured at the screen, and I returned my attention to the relatively static shot of the pavement outside the pub.
A few more minutes passed and then the figure of the woman re-entered the frame, one arm under Carlton’s armpits as she propped him up.
They paused outside the pub, and she seemed to be talking to him, though his head hung down and the fight seemed to have flown from him.
He said something to her and she nodded, her face still hidden from us, before hoisting him up from his slumped position and, straightening her back, leading him from shot.
“That’s it,” Dash said, turning to me. “He goes off with the woman, and I can’t find any more traces of him on any of the pub cameras round here.”
“So if he didn’t go on drinking,” I surmised, “he went home with her.”
“Or, if not home with her, somewhere with her.”
“Which means she might be his alibi. Good work, Dash. Now, all we have to do is find her.”
“Well that’s easy,” Rodge said from behind me, and Dash and I turned towards him. “Well, it’s Tara, innit,” he said, as though Tara was someone that Dash and I simply had to know.
I looked at Dash.
He looked at me.
“Tara?” we both asked.
“She’s a regular. Sort of,” Rodge explained. “I think one of the barmaids might have her address, if you want it.”
“That,” I said, smiling at Rodge, “would be most appreciated.”
THIRTY
I pressed the doorbell and stepped down from the step onto the brick paved drive, Caz – shivering slightly in a short, belted mac – standing beside me.
“Lord,” she moaned, “it wasn’t supposed to get this cold this quickly.”
I cast a jaundiced eye over her ensemble. “That thing’s built for style rather than comfort, as my mother would say,” I noted dryly.
“It’s vintage Givenchy,” she said, turning her head to glance at the monolithic motor car filling the entire driveway. “And speaking of comfort over style…”
My eyes travelled over the hulking Range Rover, its metallic green paintwork just visible under the crusted muck spattered all over it.
The front door opened, framing a middle-aged woman of middling height, wearing a selection from the Boden catalogue – a pair of pillar-box red patent pumps, midnight-blue stretch jeans, a billowy top with artfully applied paint splatters and a selection of chunky beads strung around her neck. Her hair was done in an ash-blonde bob that looked as though it had been warned – on pain of death – not to, quite literally, move a hair.
“The ad said you should call to arrange a viewing,” she said, in a Home Counties accent, all nasal entitlement with a medium-sized dollop of droit de seigneur on top.
“I’m sorry,” I said, switching my best little-boy-lost smile on and stepping forward, my hand extended, “you must be Mrs Stewart.”
Eve Stewart recoiled sligh
tly, before bristling, stiffening her back and staring down her nose at me.
“And who might you be?” she asked, channelling her best Dame Maggie.
“Lady Caroline Holloway.” Caz pushed past me and extended her hand. “And this is Mr Bird.”
Eve Stewart’s eyes widened, and she glanced at the hand as though unsure whether to shake it, kiss it or use it to steady herself as she attempted a deep curtsey.
In the end, she sniffed, turned her back on us and said, “Well you can come in, but it’s as good as sold already to be honest.”
I glanced at Caz, who waved me on through the front door.
The hallway was almost bare, save for a couple of bland watercolours on the wall and a side table on which an empty vase sat.
“You can make a counter offer if you like,” Mrs Stewart said as she continued to sail on down the length of the hall. “I’ve got all the stuff in here, if you want to take a look.”
We followed her into a basic suburban kitchen – plain-fronted cupboards and melamine worktops, with a view out onto a small but tidy garden made somewhat unwelcoming by the grey skies and generally unkempt state of the lawn.
In the corner of the room sat a small oval table and four chairs.
“I’m asking fifteen for it,” Eve Stewart said, waving distractedly at a pile of paperwork on the tabletop, “but it’s worth at least twenty-five. Would you like some tea?” she asked, as though finally remembering her manners.
“Not for me,” Caz responded immediately, barely managing to suppress a shudder.
“I’ll have one,” I said jauntily, “if you’re having one yourself.”
“I’m not,” Mrs Stewart answered flatly.
My jauntiness dispersed. “In which case,” I said, “I suppose I’m not either.”
“It needs a clean,” she said, gesturing again at the paperwork, “and I’m sorry about that. I’ll ensure it’s fully valeted before sale, but I had to use it at the weekend and it got rather muddy.”
“Ah,” the light dawned, “the car.”
“Well of course the car,” she frowned. “What did you think I was talking about?”
“I’ll be honest,” I answered, “I didn’t really know.”
She frowned. “Who are you, again?” she asked me, and I repeated my name. “And, if you haven’t come about the car, why are you here?”
“We’re here about your husband,” I said, and she rolled her eyes.
“Take a look around you, love,” she said, suddenly dropping the Lady Muck act. “This place is rented. The car’s up for sale. The house – my beautiful house with eight bedrooms, seven en suites, a heated indoor swimming pool and a four-car garage – is up for sale and most of the proceeds will go to the bloody building society. I get to go and walk around it nowadays but as soon as the market picks up it’ll all be gone.
“So whatever he owes you, you’re just going to have to get in the queue. Even my boy’s had to sell his car to pay his college fees this year.”
This last one – as though being unable to pay school fees was the final indignity – caused her to choke back a sob. “So you know where the door is,” she said, pointing back along the hallway.
“You’re still paying off his debt?” I asked, wondering what debts Billy the Brick could have left behind if they were still causing grief two decades after his demise.
Eve Stewart looked at me like I was simple. “Well of course I am,” she said. “That bastard left me in so much shit I’ll probably be paying his debts off till the day I die.”
She clicked the switch on the kettle, indicating that she might, after all, be having that cup of tea, and took two mugs from one of the cupboards above her head.
“I’ve never had much luck with men,” she sighed.
“I’m confused,” I said as she poured boiling water over two tea bags, scooped each of them out and into the sink, and handed me a cup, nodding to a milk jug and sugar bowl on the table. “Billy’s not been around for twenty years. How are his debts still causing grief now?”
Eve Stewart paused in the act of adding milk to her cup, and looked at me in confusion. “What’s Billy got to do with this?” she asked.
“Well we were talking about your husband,” I said as Caz removed a penny from her purse and let it deliberately drop from the fingers of her left hand into the open palm of her right.
“Yes, she nodded, Frank. Frank Stewart. He died two months ago, and that was when I discovered he’d been bankrupt for years and robbing from his business and anyone else who was stupid enough to lend him money. I’ve had everyone from pensioners to bailiffs turning up at this door, and half of them threatening menaces if they don’t get what’s owed to them.”
The penny dropped. “Hence why you’re selling everything off.”
“Is he always this bright?” she sarcastically enquired of Caz.
“Only on every second day of the week,” my best friend responded.
“And anyways,” Eve said, “Billy?” She shook her head, “Billy was never my husband.” She snorted humourlessly. “Marriage wasn’t exactly Billy’s thing. Listen,” she suddenly perked up, frowning, “how’d you find me? Only, I haven’t exactly publicised this address.”
“Tim Boyle told us where you were,” I admitted, and her lip curled in disgust.
“That prick. I went to that holier-than-thou bastard when I realised what a mess Frank had gotten us in to. D’you know what he said to me?”
I didn’t, but before I could admit this fact, Eve answered her own rhetorical question. “‘I’ll pray for you.’ Like prayers ever put bread on the fucking table.”
I looked around the room. There was a loaf of bread on the worktop. This was hardly on the doorstep of the workhouse.
Eve Stewart, I guessed, had lost more than a husband when Frank Stewart popped his clogs. She’d lost a house, a lifestyle and a sense of perspective.
“They were all bastards, that lot. Either tight or violent, and Tiny Tim was both when he wanted to be.”
“And what was Billy?” Caz asked quietly.
“Billy?” She sipped from her mug. “Billy and his mob, they liked to call you their missus, make it clear to you and to everyone that they owned you, that you were untouchable and shouldn’t even think of looking at another man. But actually make a commitment themselves?” she shook her head. “Frank was the best thing that ever happened to me,” she said, her eyes taking on a faraway look. “I suppose I should have known it was too good to last.”
She sipped her tea again, came back to the present and turned to me. “I often wonder where he is now,” she said.
“Frank?” I frowned, figuring that he was, surely, in one of only two places. I was wrong.
“Frank?” She repeated the name incredulously, shooting Caz the ‘is he for real?’ look once again, and shook her head once more. “Frank’s in Putney Vale,” she said. “I wonder what Billy’s up to. Where he’s got himself to.”
I glanced at Caz, who glanced back at me with a look that can only be described as confused.
“That’s a two-parter,” I said, “but, and not wishing to shock you too much, the answer to the first question is – not much.”
Caz pushed herself away from the worktop she’d been leaning against. “The thing is, Mrs Stewart,” she said, approaching the woman, readying, I assumed, to catch her should she fall into a dead faint, “Billy’s dead.”
“Dead?” Eve Stewart frowned. “What d’you mean? Billy did a runner. Everyone knows that.”
“It’s complicated,” I said, “but basically it looks like someone shot him and bricked him up in the cellar of a pub in Southwark.”
“Well, the Southwark-Borough borders,” Caz corrected me on my geography.
“They did what?” Eve dropped into one of the kitchen chairs. “Why?”
“We don’t know,” I said, “though I’d hazard – because they wanted him dead and undiscovered.”
“And what’s it got to do with yo
u two?” she asked, suddenly turning her beady eye on us. “You’re not police, are you? Only you never showed me a badge.”
“We’re not police,” I said, a glance at Caz making me wonder if Eve Stewart had had many rozzers in vintage Givenchy turning up at her door.
“So what’s it got to do with you?” she demanded again.
“It was his pub,” Caz explained, gesturing at me.
Eve Stewart shook her head, the faraway look coming back into her eyes. “I thought he’d just done a runner,” she said. “Billy was always up to no good. When he never came home, I thought he’d just bitten off more than he could chew and had had to go on the lamb.”
She turned her face to me. “So what exactly happened?”
“Truth is nobody really knows yet. We can’t even prove it’s him right now, but Jimmy Carter— ”
She flushed at the mention of the name. “What the fuck’s Jimmy Carter got to do with any of this?” she demanded, the cup of tea being unceremoniously dumped on the table beside the now forgotten Land Rover paperwork.
“Yeah,” I paused, unsure how, exactly, to tackle that question.
“Jimmy’s also dead,” Caz explained. “Only more recently.”
“Someone drowned Jimmy in the river,” I explained patiently, as Eve’s head turned from Caz to me, her eyes growing larger with each statement.
“And what does any of this have to do with me?” she finally asked.
“I’m not entirely sure that it has anything to do with you, to be honest,” I said. “Except that we’re trying to track down the members of the Old Kent Road Massive.”
“The Massive?” She chuckled. “Do I look like I’ve had any dealings with those scumbags lately? I married a respectable businessman. He was going to go into politics. Until he died,” she finished lamely, and I couldn’t help silently reflecting that his death had disclosed the fact that he wasn’t anywhere near as respectable a businessman as she’d assumed him to be.
“There was a diamond robbery,” I explained, “about twenty years ago. The thieves got away with a fortune and none of the stones have ever been recovered. The current thought is that the robbery went well but then one of the gang double-crossed the rest.
Death Of A Devil Page 20
