Dead Beat

by Patricia Hall

  Kate laughed. ‘You’ve obviously not seen Scottie Road, la,’ she said. ‘That’s where I lived when I was a little kid, before we got a corporation house, and believe me, that’s rough.’

  ‘Have it your own way,’ Barnard conceded. ‘You want to go then? Or will you let me buy you a meal? If you don’t like Italian there’s a good little Greek place round the corner.’

  Kate finished her drink, shook her head and got to her feet. ‘I’m not hungry,’ she said. ‘And I’ll take the Central Line home, ta very much. It’s only ten o’clock. I’ll be fine.’ She turned away, her face still slightly flushed, leaving Barnard to ask himself what had happened to his normal lady-killing skills. He watched her go as he finished his drink and wondered not for the first time if Kate O’Donnell had ever slept with anybody. It was obvious she had been brought up a Catholic and he knew about their unbending priests and strict moral rules, and yet she seemed like an independent girl, independent enough to come south and make her own decisions about her own life in the sinful city – and not always wise ones, at that. He was sure that she could not be nearly as innocent as she looked. In his book, nobody was.

  But she had left him frustrated. The night was young, he was not tired, and he wanted to get away from the sleazy streets where he spent so much time. Suzie, or one of her colleagues, he thought, all of them willing enough to accommodate a copper, would not, on this occasion, fit the bill. He smiled faintly to himself, wondering if the stars were his way inclined tonight, went over to the bar to use the phone and dialled a north London number. The voice which answered sounded husky, although he did not think that it was likely to be sleepiness which caused it.

  ‘Harry, you’re taking a risk calling here,’ Shirley Bettany said.

  ‘Is he at home?’ Harry asked.

  ‘You’re out of luck, sweetie, he went to Rome for three days on business and he’s just back. He’s in the shower right now.’

  Barnard groaned. In his head, he had already taken the journey through Camden Town towards the Finchley Road, up Fitzjohns Avenue, through Hampstead village and on to the Heath, to the wide, tree-lined avenue where the Bettanys lived. It was a place where the large houses smelled of money and Barnard liked it very much, and liked even more the woman who occasionally came to his place and even more occasionally invited him there. The whole enterprise, he knew, was fraught with risk but he liked that too.

  ‘Very quickly then,’ he said, lowering his own voice almost as much as she did at the other end, as if Fred could overhear. ‘Does Fred ever tell you what’s going on between Ray and Georgie Robertson?’

  ‘Is that the reason you rang, you bastard?’ she asked.

  ‘You know it’s not,’ Barnard said, telling her in no uncertain terms what more he had hoped for. ‘But you know the brothers and I go way back, and it’s the first time I remember that Ray has been so seriously fed up with his little brother. And Georgie seems even madder than usual at the moment. What the hell’s going on?’

  ‘I hate Georgie,’ Shirley said with venom. ‘Every time I see him he has a grope. He’s an animal. And yes, you’re right. He and Ray are rowing. They were at each other’s throats at the party at the Delilah. I overheard a bit of it. Ray was telling Georgie not to do something, saying someone wouldn’t wear it. Some foreign name. I don’t know who he was talking about.’

  Barnard’s hand tightened on the receiver. ‘Foreign?’ he said sharply.

  ‘Falcon, something like that? I have to go. I think Fred’s finished in the bathroom. I’ll see you soon.’ She hung up, leaving Barnard leaning against the bar frustrated in more ways than one. He stubbed out his cigarette but stayed where he was for a moment thinking furiously. Falcon, Falzon, he thought. And if Falzon disliked something Georgie was up to while Ray was trying to get a deal with him, it explained a lot. But what was Georgie doing to cause such a rift? he wondered. It was undoubtedly time to find out.

  Halfway through the next morning, DS Harry Barnard stormed out of the nick in a fury. He had put his head round DCI Venables’ door with the intention of reporting on the very limited progress he had made with his inquiries, only to be summoned in peremptorily as the senior officer slammed his phone down.

  ‘Have you picked up any new leads on what the Robertsons are up to?’ Venables snapped.

  ‘I haven’t, guv,’ Barnard said. ‘Except that whatever it is, the brothers seem to be at each others’ throats. They’re having furious rows about something. And the only time I’ve seen Georgie recently – which was at the Delilah – he was certainly in a bit of a strop about something.’

  ‘So I heard, though I didn’t see much of either of them that night,’ Venables said. ‘You know you told me that some bloke had a row with someone who sounds very like Mason in the queer pub in Wardour Street a couple of weeks ago? One of my snouts is saying he thought the other bloke might be Georgie Robertson, though I don’t know how that can be right. You told me he wasn’t a nancy-boy.’

  ‘He’s not certainly not queer, as far as I know. Quite the opposite. Women are always complaining about his unwanted attentions. And the tom who was threatened with a knife certainly thought her john could have been Georgie.’ Barnard felt uneasy, wondering how far Ray Robertson’s plans had advanced without his knowledge. What was Georgie’s name doing cropping up alongside Mason’s at this late stage if it hadn’t been carefully planted in Venables’ way? Things, he thought, were slipping out of his control, and he did not like that. He regarded the Robertsons as part of his own personal empire. And while they had largely confined their activities to the East End, where they had been brought up and where their mother still held court over a criminal clan which seemed to go back generations, that had certainly held true. He owed his smart flat on the edge of Highgate to the Robertsons one way or another, he thought, but now they were expanding into Soho he felt his grip on their activities was slipping. He turned his attention back to Venables, who was obviously still furious about something.

  ‘What the hell’s going on?’ he snapped.

  Barnard shrugged. ‘I’ve no idea,’ he said. ‘Doesn’t your snout know?’

  ‘Not really,’ Venables said. ‘He just thought it was two queers sounding off at first, as they do. And he can’t remember exactly when it happened, except that it was obviously before Mason got his throat slit. But then this week, when he saw Mason’s picture in the Evening News, he says he realized there might be more to it than a pansies’ tiff. Can you use your contacts, Harry, and find out what’s going down? Find out who Mason was really having a row with, if you can. I can’t imagine it was Georgie and I certainly don’t want to tangle with the Robertsons if I don’t have to. Round a few of the buggers in the pub up for gross indecency if you have to and see what you can shake out of them. That’ll go down well with your boss too. See if you can get a more positive description.’

  ‘I’ll give it a go,’ Barnard had said cautiously. ‘But does this give us a new suspect then? Someone else Mason was on bad terms with. And what about Marelli? Have you got a result on the fingerprints in the shop?’

  ‘What fingerprints?’ Venables said. ‘No one found anything except Marelli’s own prints.’ Barnard hesitated for a split second but said nothing.

  ‘And what about O’Donnell? Have you given up on him?’ he asked.

  ‘No, I bloody haven’t,’ Venables snapped. ‘He’s by far the most likely killer. I think this is all a wild bloody goose chase, but we’d better check it out.’

  Which was all very well, Barnard thought, except that Jimmy Earnshaw had seen two men close to Mason and O’Donnell’s flat at the time he must have been killed, and he couldn’t finger either of them as Kate O’Donnell’s brother, or Georgie Robertson for that matter. But until he knew that Jimmy was safely out of London he didn’t choose to share that information with anyone. The boy needed to be kept safe until his evidence was needed, he thought. He was the one person involved in this mess who had no reason not to tell the truth.


  ‘I’ll do a trawl around the gay pubs, guv. See if we can pin down who was really rowing with Mason. That might give us a new lead.’

  ‘You do that,’ the DCI agreed. ‘And leave Georgie Robertson to me. You’re too close to those two beggars. I’ll talk to him myself if I think I need to.’

  ‘Right,’ Barnard said equably enough, relieved that if anyone was going to interview Georgie for anything at all it wouldn’t be him. If he needed to talk to Georgie, he wanted to pick his moment himself and pick his words very carefully indeed. He went back to his own desk but had only begun to flick through the paperwork which was beginning to pile up on top of the battered typewriter when the internal phone rang. It was Venables, with a note of triumph in his voice.

  ‘The Liverpool force have picked up O’Donnell,’ he said. ‘They’ll bring him down. He’ll be here in the morning. So now at last we might get somewhere.’

  ‘Great,’ Harry Barnard said, trying to inject some enthusiasm into his voice, but failing. He was surprised at how much, when it came to it, he did not want Kate O’Donnell’s brother to go down for this. Even worse, he knew Kate O’Donnell would have to be told and he guessed that he might be the best person to do it. He pulled on his coat, jammed his hat on to his head and flung himself angrily down the stairs and out into the street, heading across Regent Street into Soho and towards the Blue Lagoon, constantly glancing at his watch. Lunchtime was coming up and he guessed that would be where he would find Kate. And when he had broken the unwelcome news to her, probably making sure that the girl would never speak to him again, he would deliver a bit of sound and fury to the handful of pubs frequented by queers. It sounded far-fetched, but perhaps Ray Robertson, who clearly believed he was setting his brother Georgie up, was trying to frame him for a murder he had actually been involved in, in spite of Jimmy Earnshaw’s failure to identify him. And if that was so, who was the other killer? And what possible motive could any of them have for slitting Jonathon Mason’s throat, and quite possibly Pete Marelli’s as well? Could there be a connection between Mason and Marelli that no one knew anything about? And if there was, could he find it before Venables charged Tom O’Donnell and closed his investigation down?

  Kate O’Donnell sat on the sagging sofa beside Tess and Marie with tears running down her face. Tom, Barnard had told her, was on his way to London with two Liverpool detectives, and so far she had not been able to discover how the police had found him or even where they were taking him. She supposed she should have thanked Harry Barnard for taking the trouble to come and tell her what had happened, but she had turned on him when he did and beaten her hands against his sturdy chest until he had taken her wrists and held her still.

  ‘This is all wrong,’ she said. ‘You know it’s all wrong. He told me he went up there long before Jonathon was killed. Dave Donovan took him back up in his van.’ She had stopped then, realizing she had blurted out too much, while Barnard looked at her sideways.

  ‘I think DCI Venables is going to want a little chat with you,’ he said mildly. ‘And where can I find this Dave Donovan?’

  Kate looked mutinous for a moment but in the end she gave him Donovan’s address. ‘It’s somewhere called Archway,’ she said. ‘He’s sharing a flat with his mates.’

  ‘Yes, I know it,’ he said. ‘The guv’nor will certainly want to talk to Dave Donovan too. What does he do?’

  ‘He’s in a band,’ Kate said.

  ‘Jesus wept. Is there anyone in Liverpool who’s not in a band?’

  ‘Not many,’ Kate conceded. ‘Though Tom’s not. He did a bit of skiffle but mostly kept away from all that. He was more interested in clothes than music.’ She shuddered slightly and glanced at her watch. Barnard had caught her leaving the Blue Lagoon on her way back to the office after her lunch. ‘I’ll have to go back to work, though I can’t say I want to. Will you let me know where they take Tom?’

  ‘They’re not going to let you see him,’ Barnard said. ‘If DCI Venables seriously thinks he’s got enough evidence, he’ll charge him and take him to the magistrates’ court tomorrow morning and on a charge of murder he’ll be remanded in custody.’

  ‘Jail?’ Kate whispered. ‘He’ll find that hard.’ She could see from the look in Barnard’s eyes that she probably had no idea just how hard it would be.

  ‘I’ll try to keep you in touch with what’s going on,’ he had said. ‘If he’s going to appear in court I’ll let you know when.’

  She turned away and waved wanly to Marie who was watching the pair of them anxiously through the window, and made her way towards the agency, not wholly aware of where she was going.

  ‘After you’d gone, I told that detective what a fool he was,’ Marie said, putting an arm round Kate’s shoulder and handing her a grubby handkerchief. ‘He told me Tom had been arrested and I told him Tom’s as likely to be a murderer as St Teresa herself. And if you want to know something else for nothing, I told him he could stop making up to you while he’s doing his best to hang your brother.’

  Kate smiled faintly through her tears. ‘And what did he say to that?’ she asked.

  ‘He called me a little Scouse harridan,’ Marie said. ‘And that he’d have to keep right out of your way now, until it’s all over. And that’s the best bit of news I’ve heard for weeks.’ Marie smiled to herself as she recalled how she had flapped the dishcloth she had in her hand perilously close to the policeman’s silk tie before wiping down a table. ‘And good riddance,’ she had added for good measure, almost flinging two foam-flecked cups on to the counter, as he opened the door to leave. But the worst bit of news she kept from her tear-stained friend.

  ‘How long will all this take if they charge him?’ she had asked the departing detective before he closed the coffee-bar door.

  ‘Could be months,’ Barnard had said, slamming the door behind him.

  Kate had walked slowly back to the office and slumped down at her desk as she tried to absorb Barnard’s bombshell, desultorily picking up some of the pictures which had been disturbed by the burglars and now had to be painstakingly filed all over again. In amongst the heaps, she discovered a cardboard file of her own images from the charity evening at the Delilah Club to which someone – presumably Ken – had attached captions with a note asking her to file those under the various names of the guests. He couldn’t have found them of much interest, she thought, even though they were amongst the few negatives that had survived. She flicked through them idly, barely able to concentrate, wondering how far south Tom’s train had got by now. Or maybe he was being brought by car down the new M1. That would be an adventure he would enjoy in any other circumstances, but what if they kept him in handcuffs?

  She shook her head helplessly and tried to concentrate again, her eyes taken eventually by one image of a man she recalled from that evening, the man pointed out to her by his brother as George Robertson, one of the hosts for the evening’s events and, to judge by her own experience and others she had witnessed, a serious menace to women, with wandering hands that she had pushed away herself when he got too close at the end of the evening. In this photo, he appeared only in the background of a shot of Christine Jones, posing for the camera with obvious enthusiasm. Georgie was talking animatedly to a much taller and more well-built man, and was probably not even aware that he had been photographed, she thought. She wondered idly who his companion was, and why they were toasting each other with champagne, before she labelled a file ‘Robertson Brothers’ and slipped it inside.

  Somehow she hung on until the end of the day, glad for once that no one coming in and out of the office took much notice of her. Ken Fellows was preoccupied with the chaotic aftermath of the burglary and most of the other photographers had gone out on their assignments. Just before it was time to leave, the phone in the photographers’ room rang. Brenda was closeted with Ken, so Kate picked it up and was surprised to hear a familiar voice, very Scouse and slightly crackly.

  ‘Is that you, la? Can you hear me? It�
�s Dave.’

  ‘I can hear you,’ Kate said. ‘Where are you? Have you heard what’s happened?’

  ‘I’ve been rehearsing all afternoon, la, but yes, I heard. The bizzies came round to our gaff but no one knew where we were, or at least they said they didn’t, said we might be in Liverpool, so they went away again. D’you know what they want?’

  ‘They know you took Tom up to Liverpool,’ Kate said.

  ‘Oh feck,’ Donovan said.

  ‘You lied to me, Dave,’ Kate said angrily. ‘Why didn’t you tell me you’d taken him up north?’

  ‘I’m sorry, pet, really I am, but Tom made me promise not to tell anyone, especially his family. He didn’t want his mate following him and letting on about what they’d been up to.’

  ‘Well, if you ask me, the police will think you know where he’s been hiding all this time. And they won’t be very pleased about that, kidder.’

  ‘I don’t know where he was, la. I haven’t a clue. He gave me some cash for the petrol and I dropped him off on Lime Street, by the Adelphi. He said he was meeting a friend in a pub down by the river, was planning to stay with him for a while because he’d split with his mate in London. He looked pretty rough, if you really want to know. But it was nothing to do with me. He has his own mates, you know what I mean? I don’t like to get involved.’

  ‘But you must talk to the police,’ Kate said urgently, feeling slightly sick and trying to keep her voice from rising. ‘You can give him an alibi. Don’t you realize that? You know when you took him up there and it was long before his mate was killed. You can clear him, get him out of this mess.’

  ‘There’s nothing to say he didn’t come back, is there?’ Donovan objected.

  ‘What? What did you say?’ Kate shouted, sure she’d misheard. But she realized she hadn’t. ‘Dave, we need to talk. Where can I meet you? Not round here. It’s too close to the police station.’ Reluctantly he agreed to meet her in the refreshment room at King’s Cross station, which they could both easily reach on the Northern Line, and which would be busy enough, she hoped, to cover their movements. After she had hung up she sat at her desk for a long time feeling cold and close to tears. She had relied on Dave Donovan’s evidence to clear Tom if it were ever needed, but now she could see that by itself it was not enough. She did not doubt that Tom had gone to Liverpool and stayed there after abandoning Jonathon Mason, but there would have to be cast-iron proof of that from the friends he had been with that week, and she did not even know who they were. She would have to go back to Declan Riley and start again.