Dead Beat

by Patricia Hall

  Barnard got into the driver’s seat and started up, wondering what on earth attracted him to this girl who was so utterly out of her depth in London. So far he had had no more luck tracking down her brother than she had had herself, but maybe, he thought, if he played his cards carefully, she would lead him to the wanted man in the end. But he knew there was more to it than that. Neither of them said much during the short drive down Oxford Street and Bayswater Road to the tall, crumbling house close to Notting Hill where Kate was staying. But when he pulled into the kerb, careful not to switch the engine off, he put a hand lightly on her knee, and felt her tremble under the silky fabric of her dress.

  ‘There you are,’ he said. ‘Safe and sound.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Kate said, fumbling for the door handle. Barnard leaned across and opened it for her.

  ‘I shouldn’t really tell you this, but I think the DCI in charge seems to be cooling on the idea that your brother had a row with his flatmate and killed him,’ he said. ‘He’s working on other leads which may involve other people. So maybe in a day or so, when it’s all a bit clearer, you’d like to come out for a drink with me. I could show you some of the sights.’

  Kate slid out of the car and shivered slightly again in the night air. ‘Perhaps,’ she said. She glanced at her watch. ‘I have to get to bed. I’ve got a load of work to do in the morning.’

  ‘Do you have the phone number for your house now?’ Barnard asked.

  Kate hesitated for a moment and then gave it to him. She didn’t doubt that he could find it for himself if he really wanted to. ‘It’s on the ground floor and I’m at the very top, so we don’t always hear it,’ she said.

  Barnard gave her a flashing smile. ‘I’ll keep trying,’ he promised, closed the car door and watched her make her way up the steps to the front door and close it behind her. As he eased the car away from the kerb he grinned to himself and began to whistle Cliff Richard’s latest hit. ‘Softly, softly, Harry,’ he said to himself but he was confident that all sorts of things were looking promising. Even so, when he got back to his own flat, gazed at the gleaming parquet and the smart Scandinavian furnishing, and dropped into the bright orange revolving chair where he sat to watch TV or listen to his collection of records on the teak radiogram, he felt a slight niggle of dissatisfaction.

  He had married early while still a uniformed copper on the beat and he and his wife had shared a rented two-room flat in Kentish Town for as long as the marriage lasted. Joan had slipped out of his life without much regret on either side, and like most officers in Vice he was not short of sex when he wanted it. But now he had what he considered a proper home, and one which from its vantage point close to Hornsey Lane looked down, literally and metaphorically, on the smoky, teeming expanse of the East End where he had grown up, still pock-marked with derelict bomb sites, he was increasingly aware that there was something missing in his life. He spun round and got to his feet again, tossed his sheepskin jacket on to the tweed sofa, poured himself a large Scotch from the small cocktail cabinet, and put a record of the Shadows on the turntable, more to avoid the question than to seek an answer. He glanced round his carefully furnished living room as the spirit warmed him, every last cushion and glass ornament paid for by the sex trade he was paid to police, and knew that this was not enough.

  The boy sat in an armchair in a corner of the room, swamped in a sweater that the man who called himself Les had loaned him. When he had gone round to the flat again, Les had stripped him, in spite of his protests, and thrust him into the bath, washing him all over, shampooing his hair and re-dressing him in fresh clothes. He had stood for a moment looking at the stitches in his head wound and the shaved patch in the blond hair before covering it with a plaster.

  ‘There,’ he had said. ‘You see? You scrub up quite nicely. You’re a pretty boy, aren’t you? You’ll do fine.’

  ‘I need twenty quid,’ the boy said, his voice breathless and small, his heart thumping uncomfortably.

  ‘Of course you do, and you shall have it, I promise,’ Les said. ‘More, maybe. You’ll be able to go wherever you like then.’

  The boy nodded doubtfully, trying not to think about what would come before, but knowing he had even more to fear from other men at the party Les would take him to than he did from this particular man, even with his soft, probing hands.

  Outside the flat, Hamish hovered in the shadows, huddled in his new duffle coat, one hand buried in his pocket and the other clutching a bottle of cider. He swayed slightly on his feet, and propped himself up against the wall, determined, in spite of the grey mist which seemed to clog his brain, to find out exactly where the boy was being taken. He knew the boy was not doing anything he had not done before but he had seen a new fear in his eyes since he had run away from the hospital and felt a new urgency in his determination to get out of the city and go somewhere new. Somewhere deep in his fuddled head he knew that something dangerous was happening which he had not encountered before. The boy had been spooked for a week and his panic was growing. Tonight, he had determined he would keep an eye out for him. Tonight, for once in the chaos that was now his life, he would try to do the right thing.

  It was not long before he saw the boy come out of the flat with his companion and head in the direction of the Euston Road with its busy traffic, and the tube and railway stations. If they went far, Hamish realized, he would not be able to keep up. He had no money for fares and his pace was considerably slower than the two fitter, younger people he was following. But just before the main road they turned again into a side street and he watched as they stood for a moment on the doorstep of a tall terraced house, with all its windows lit up, before the door opened and they disappeared inside.

  Hamish grunted in frustration and then settled down with his bottle at the top of the area steps of a house several houses down the street. In spite of being so close to the main road and the stations, the street was quiet, and no one disturbed him as he sank into a doze, huddled in his new coat. He eventually woke with a start, with no idea how long he had been asleep or what had broken into his dreams. But when he worked out where he was, and why he was there, he became aware of movement close by and the sound of the boy’s voice. He stood up cautiously and noticed a car parked outside the house where the boy had gone. He was there, with two men who opened the car doors, put the boy in the back seat and got into the front themselves. Before Hamish could react in any way the car had pulled away from the kerb and headed east.

  ‘Where’ve ye gone now, ye stupid wee fecker?’ Hamish asked himself, trying to dull the pain he could scarcely bear to acknowledge with another gulp of cider, draining the bottle as he went. Slowly he trudged his way back to his hidey-hole on the railway embankment, only to find as he turned into Farringdon Road that the street was lined with police cars and vans, blue lights flashing, into which the inhabitants of the encampment were being herded. Hamish hesitated for a moment too long as a couple of uniformed officers spotted him and came running.

  ‘Here’s another of ’em,’ one shouted. ‘Come on, grandad, there’s nothing for you here. This place is being bloody fumigated. Get in the van.’

  Hamish shrugged and did as he was told. Even in his new duffle coat he was cold and stiff. A night in a cell would not be too bad an option, he thought. It was only as he was being bundled into the van he noticed that one of the officers was clutching a crumpled piece of white fabric which looked like a nurse’s cap.

  Hamish slept only fitfully in the cell he had been put in after arriving with the rest of the vagrants at Sun Hill nick, and he was awake immediately when the duty sergeant opened the door the next morning.

  ‘Did ye bring a young laddie in last night, a boy about fourteen?’ he asked, taking the mug of tea he was offered greedily.

  ‘A boy?’ the sergeant came back, surprised. ‘Not that I know of. He’d have been taken to a juvenile home, anyway, wouldn’t he? We’d not have kept him here.’

  ‘A home?’ Hamish whispered,
thinking of the homes the boy had mentioned during the brief time he had known him. ‘He’ll nae stay in one o’them.’

  The sergeant looked at him strangely again, several stray items of information coming together in his head. ‘I heard something about a boy running off from Bart’s in a nurse’s uniform. Is that why one of our lads found a nurse’s cap down by your camp last night – lacy thing, white, would that belong to your boy?’

  Hamish gulped his tea and handed the mug back without saying any more, flinging himself back on to the bunk and turning his face to the wall. ‘Gae tae hell,’ he muttered.

  The sergeant shrugged and left him there, banging the cell door behind him. ‘You’ll be in court at ten,’ he said through the cell peephole. ‘Vagrancy and drunk and disorderly.’

  Hamish did not move, cursing himself bitterly under his breath. He knew he should not have mentioned the boy, and he was not surprised when the door to his cell was opened again and a tall, dark-haired man in civilian clothes came in, pulling a face in distaste at the sour smell in the tiny room.

  ‘I think you and I need a little chat, Hamish,’ DS Harry Barnard said.

  NINE

  Kate O’Donnell stood for a moment outside a steamy Lime Street station and took a deep breath of salty air as she looked across at the familiar scene. The Adelphi Hotel with a cluster of taxis outside, St George’s Hall and the art gallery away to the right, and a glimpse of the huge hole in the ground, which still shocked her, where St John’s market had recently stood. Then, as she slowly crossed the road, there were all the familiar shops, Lewis’s, Owen Owens, and the rest. She only had a light weekend bag with her and she did not feel like going home yet, so she made her way down through the shopping crowds in Dale Street and followed Water Street to the Pier Head, where she stood gazing across the choppy grey Mersey, as she had done so often as a restless teenager. Sometimes Tom had been with her, as ambitious as she was, but never so explicit in his dreams, both wondering then how they could get away and now whether she could succeed in staying away and whether her brother would ever come back.

  There was a cold wind off the water, and the ferry coming into the landing stage was pushing a bow wave and rolling slightly. She used to be seasick on the ferry, she recalled with a faint smile. Her sisters, scampering around unaffected, had laughed at her as she had curled up in a tight ball in a corner, miserable at the start and end of a rare day out over the river. Away to the right she could see the towering shapes of a couple of liners in the docks and across the water the cranes of the Birkenhead shipyards, all so familiar and yet slightly foreign now, even though her stay in London had been so short. She did not feel that she belonged here any more.

  With a sigh she walked across to the bus terminal and jumped on to a bus to Anfield where her mother had been given a corporation house when the old Scotland Road terraces had begun to be pulled down. They had called Scottie Road a slum and condemned it, but she had been sorry to leave, more aware than her sisters of friends left behind, new schools to adjust to, a strange neighbourhood, in spite of the attractions of an indoor lavvie and a patch of garden for the younger ones to play in. It was then that she had decided to get out and begun to work hard at school, determined to go to college. She had already worked out for herself that the door marked Exit was there.

  Her mother opened the front door to her knock, looking pale and tired, and gave her a peck on the cheek. ‘You got a job down there then?’

  ‘I wrote and told you,’ Kate said, dropping her bag in the hall and making her way to the kitchen where she put the kettle on.

  ‘I thought the letter was from our Tom,’ Bridie O’Donnell said. ‘Your writing looks the same. Have you heard anything from him at all?’

  Kate could imagine the excitement her mother must have felt before she realized her mistake. Kate knew she had always played second fiddle to Tom.

  ‘London’s a big place, Mam,’ she said non-committally. She had already decided not to elaborate on what she knew of Tom’s predicament, although she knew the police had been round seeking information.

  ‘The bizzies were here,’ Bridie said, as if reading her mind, and it was obvious that this was what had knocked the stuffing out of her usually combative mother. ‘I couldn’t believe what they were saying, as if our Tommy would kill anyone. I told them to feck off.’

  ‘I don’t think that’ll do any good. They’re not going to stop looking for him,’ Kate said, pouring boiling water into the teapot which was standing ready. ‘He may have run away because he was scared, but they’re going to want an explanation. They won’t give up.’

  Bridie took her cup of tea and sank into a chair at the kitchen table. ‘You know what else they were saying about him?’ Bridie would not meet Kate’s eyes.

  ‘I do,’ Kate said.

  ‘Is it true?’ Bridie asked.

  Kate nodded bleakly. ‘It is,’ she said.

  ‘Holy mother of God,’ Bridie whispered. ‘And I brought him up a good Catholic boy.’

  ‘He probably still is,’ Kate said, knowing that Tom had pretended to take his religion more seriously than she had, one reason he had remained the apple of his mother’s eye.

  ‘Not if he’s doing that sort of thing,’ Bridie said. ‘It’s a mortal sin, so it is. And they’ll put him in jail for it.’

  ‘I think it’s something people can’t help,’ Kate said. ‘Did you really not know?’

  ‘Of course I didn’t know,’ Bridie said angrily. ‘I’d have had him round to Father Reilly before his feet touched the ground. Do you think he was like that before he went away then? This isn’t something he’s learned in London?’

  ‘No,’ Kate said slowly, thinking back to the brother she had known as a teenager and realizing how little he had been like most of the other boys she knew. ‘No, I think he’s been that way inclined for a long time. He met the friend he was living with up here, any road. He just never told us, never talked about it.’ Never trusted us enough, she thought to herself, though the fearful wrath of Father Reilly hanging over all their heads probably made that inevitable.

  ‘Anyway, I think that’s the least of Tom’s problems just now,’ Kate said, feeling a wave of depression sweep over her and tears prick her eyes. ‘He needs to talk to the police about his dead friend. They’ll catch up with him in the end and the longer he leaves it the worse it’ll be for him. Could he have come back up here, do you think? Have you heard anything from him at all, or from his other mates?’

  ‘His friend in London was killed with a knife, so the bizzies said,’ her mother said dully, clearly not listening to much that Kate was saying. ‘Surely to God they don’t think our Tom did that, do they?’ Bridie had gone even paler than she’d looked before. ‘They didn’t exactly say that, but—’

  ‘They don’t exactly say anything much,’ Kate said bitterly, thinking of her encounters with the importunate DS Harry Barnard. ‘But yes, I think he’s a suspect.’

  ‘But they could hang him . . .’ Bridie looked sick and the cup in her hands began to shake. She put it down carefully.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Kate said, her mouth dry. ‘They changed the law. Don’t you remember? I think it’s only robbers and people with guns who get hanged now.’ She put her hand over Bridie’s. Her mother had never been a very demonstrative person, seldom given to hugs and kisses, even when they were all small, and Kate felt awkward offering even that level of comfort, but to her surprise Bridie clutched her hand tightly.

  ‘Your brother’s friend, Declan, came round yesterday, asking after him,’ Bridie said. ‘The bizzies had been asking about Tom round his place an’all. I couldn’t tell him anything, could I, because I didn’t know anything?’

  ‘I’ll go round and see Dec later,’ Kate said. ‘And any others I can think of. But I’ve got some work to do, too. I want to get some pictures of the Cavern Club and see if I can track down John Lennon’s girlfriend. You know? Cynthia Powell? She was at art college when me and John were
there. The Beatles look like making a name for themselves in London now and people are interested in where they came from.’

  ‘I heard that,’ Bridie said. ‘Up here it’s still Gerry and the Pacemakers the kids seem to like best.’

  ‘Them and the Beatles are in the Hit Parade,’ Kate said. ‘It’s all beginning to take off for them. Who’d have thought the Mersey Beat would go national, Mam? It’s quite something.’

  ‘I heard Cynthia Powell’s pregnant. John’s baby, they say. Did you know that?’

  ‘Is she?’ Kate said, surprised. ‘It’s incredible, you know, that those two are still together. John was such a scruffy Teddy boy when we started at college, and she was a real stuck-up little Hoylake miss. Even when they got together they seemed to fight all the time. I can’t imagine John being a dad, I really can’t. Are they married? You hear different tales.’

  ‘I think so, though the Echo says they’re not. There seems to be some sort of mystery about it. But someone told our Annie Cynthia’d moved in with John Lennon’s auntie to wait for the baby. I dare say her parents aren’t best pleased.’

  ‘The place is still a gossip mill, then?’ Kate said with a grin. She could guess why John Lennon, darling of thousands of hysterical teenage fans who packed out every local venue the band played at, wanted to keep his marriage quiet. She had never much liked him and she did not envy Cynthia her lot. But she hoped that she was married. The life of an unmarried mother would not be easy for the nicely brought up girl from the Wirral she remembered turning up at college in her twinset and pearls. She was not the only one who had been astonished when Cynthia had latched on to the anarchic Lennon with his talent for drawing, his sometimes cruel wit and his apparently vain musical ambitions.

  ‘I’ll take my stuff upstairs,’ Kate said. ‘I need a bath after tea. I’m hot and sticky after the train.’