Dead Beat

by Patricia Hall

  She met Dave Donovan in the steamy murk of the British Rail refreshment room, but as Kate expected, he offered little comfort beyond a brief squeeze of the hand as she sat down opposite him at the littered table. He bought her a cup of tea and sat facing her looking gloomy.

  ‘The bizzies are looking for me,’ he said. ‘You’re right. I’m going to have to talk to them.’

  ‘What are you going to say?’ she demanded. ‘What did Tom say to you on the way up? He must have told you something about what happened between him and Jonathon. Did he really give you the impression he would go all the way back and kill him?’

  ‘He didn’t talk much, la. If you must know, most blokes don’t want to talk about that sort of thing. It’s not something we want to know about, is it? We keep well clear. He just said they’d split. That’s it.’

  Kate looked at him in despair. ‘This is Tom you’re talking about. You’ve known him since we were all at juniors.’

  ‘Doesn’t matter,’ Donovan said. ‘I don’t really like queers. I didn’t really want to take him with me. I did it for you, if you really want to know. I thought you’d be pleased.’

  ‘I am pleased,’ Kate snapped. ‘Thank you. But now we have to try to keep him out of jail. Whatever you think about his life, there’s no way he could have cut someone’s throat.’

  ‘Kate,’ Donovan said. He hesitated while she waited impatiently. ‘I’ll do my best to help him with the bizzies,’ he said. ‘I promise. But I’ll be doing it for you, you know what I’m saying? Now you’re down here in London, I thought . . .’ He trailed off and Kate put her hand briefly on his. She should, she knew, turn him down flat but some uncharacteristic caution held her back.

  ‘Let’s wait until this is all over. I’m sure the bizzies won’t keep him long. They just want to ask him some questions and then it’ll be finished. Give me a ring when you’ve been to the police, la. And then we’ll see where we are.’ Soon, she thought, this nightmare must surely be over, but she had a sick feeling that it might only get worse. After studying the tube map, she ventured on to the Circle Line and walked slowly back to Marie and Tess’s place from Notting Hill Gate. Finding Marie waiting for her in the tiny living room, she collapsed, sobbing, into her arms.

  SIXTEEN

  DS Harry Barnard did not often use the police canteen but today he had wanted some information which he was unwilling to seek out officially. He pushed open the door to be met with a wall of steam reeking heavily of chip fat and acquired a mug of bright orange tea while surveying the crowded tables intently. After a couple of sips he spotted his quarry, Bill Sanderson and Derek Pratt, both DCs in Ted Venables’ murder team and both tucking into heaped plates of fried food which would keep them occupied for some time. He made his way through the tables and pulled up a chair alongside them.

  ‘I hear you got a result, lads,’ he said. ‘Well done. I didn’t turn up much useful myself around my patch. Close as clams, these nancy-boys.’

  Sanderson and Pratt sniggered over their sausages.

  ‘Bloody thick scousers pulled their fingers out in the end,’ Sanderson said. ‘Dead slow and stop, they are. But old Ted rattled their tree somehow and out dropped our laddo in the end. Easy’

  ‘Has he charged him?’ Barnard asked.

  ‘Don’t think so. He came in a bit the worse for wear, apparently,’ Pratt said, mouth full of food. ‘Serves the little pervert right. Had to see the doc before the guv’nor could question him. He’s with him now.’

  ‘Got him sewn up then, has he?’

  ‘You know Ted,’ Sanderson said. ‘If he wants someone sewn up they get sewn up.’

  ‘And stay sewn up,’ Pratt added, sprinkling more ketchup on his chips.

  ‘Funny. I heard a whisper Robertson might be involved in both the killings. The lad from Liverpool’s hardly likely to have offed Pete Marelli. And weren’t there fingerprints in the shop? I thought I saw some when I found him.’

  ‘I don’t know anything about that,’ Sanderson said. ‘But the guv’nor doesn’t buy that idea anyway. Why would a serious player like Robertson kill some little ponce pretending to be an actor? There’s no motive, is there? He reckons Marelli was in on their little games and the Liverpool lad came back to see him off too.’

  ‘Aren’t you eating, Harry?’ Pratt inquired. ‘These bangers are good and that little blonde bird’ll give you extra chips if you smile at her nicely.’

  Barnard glanced at the food in distaste. ‘Not hungry,’ he said.

  ‘Want to keep your figure more like,’ Sanderson sneered. ‘Bloody pin-up boy with your fancy suits and flowery ties. The birds don’t care, you know.’ He patted his belly contentedly. ‘I never have any trouble.’

  Barnard drained his tea without further comment and made his way back upstairs to Vice where, to his surprise, he was met by Venables himself, sweating in shirt sleeves and looking, for him, slightly flustered.

  ‘Can you spare me half an hour, Harry?’ he asked. ‘Sit in on the interview with this pansy from Liverpool. You interviewed the sister, didn’t you? I reckon we could get him to cough quite easily if we put a bit of pressure on with the family angle. Are you up for it?’

  Barnard barely hesitated. ‘Right, guv,’ he said. He turned his back on his desk and followed the older man back downstairs to an interview room where they found a uniformed constable minding a figure slumped across the table in the centre of the room. Venables waved the uniformed officer out and shook the shoulder of the man at the table.

  ‘Come on, come on, you great big girl, you’re not really hurt. We need to talk to you.’ The man at the table looked up and Barnard struggled to conceal his shock. Both Tom O’Donnell’s eyes were blackened and half-closed, and he was clutching a bloodied handkerchief to his mouth. Yet in spite of that, the resemblance to his sister was uncanny. They could almost have been twins, he thought.

  ‘You didn’t tell me he’d been hurt,’ Barnard said mildly to Venables.

  ‘He’s seen the doc,’ Venables said. ‘No major harm done. Happened on the way down from Liverpool, didn’t it, Tommy? They stopped for a slash and he tried to scarper.’

  O’Donnell looked at them with pure hatred in his eyes but he said nothing.

  ‘Sergeant Barnard here’s been talking to your sister,’ Venables said, and that did attract the prisoner’s attention, his bloodshot eyes swivelling in Barnard’s direction with fear in them now. It was a look Barnard had seen dozens of times before when men arrested and facing a charge of gross indecency had realized the effect the trial would have on their families. Tom O’Donnell was in the same place with knobs on, he thought, and if Venables proved his case he faced an even worse fate than the poor bastards who were routinely picked up in pubs and clubs and public lavatories and locked up for months or years. For O’Donnell it would be life.

  ‘Kate was very worried about you, Tom,’ Barnard said. ‘You know that? And I think the best thing you can do for her now, and for all your family, is tell us what happened the night Jonathon Mason died.’

  ‘I wasn’t there,’ O’Donnell muttered. ‘I told the bizzies back home. I got to Liverpool with Dave Donovan on the Monday, three days before Jon died, apparently. I was two hundred miles away. Dave’ll tell you.’

  ‘I’m sure he will, but you’d plenty of time to get back again,’ Venables broke in, his voice harsh. ‘So far as I know, there’s still trains running between Liverpool and London.’

  ‘But I didn’t get a train,’ O’Donnell said. ‘It was finished with Jon, it was all over. Why would I have come back? I wanted to put as much distance between him and me as possible.’

  ‘Even at the risk of your family finding out about what you’d been up to?’ Barnard asked. ‘You didn’t want your mother to know, did you? A good Catholic boy like you?’

  O’Donnell did not answer and Venables suddenly banged his fist on the table, making him flinch. ‘So if you stayed up there you can tell us where you were and who you were with. You’l
l have a cast-iron alibi for the night Mason was killed, won’t you? We can go and interview all your little pansy friends and you’ll be in the clear? Isn’t that right?’ But Barnard knew from O’Donnell’s face that it was not right at all. ‘Take a strong line on gross indecency, do they, the Liverpool coppers?’ the sergeant asked.

  O’Donnell nodded imperceptibly and Barnard was suddenly certain that he would not be asking any of his queer friends to back up his alibi, in which case he would not be walking away very soon.

  ‘A full trial could last weeks,’ Venables said. ‘And you’ll have a long wait for it. It’d be all over the News of the World. Much easier to plead guilty and get it over with quick. Much better for your ma and your sister.’

  ‘What’ll happen to me?’ O’Donnell whispered.

  ‘They won’t hang you, if that’s what you’re thinking,’ Venables said airily. ‘More’s the pity. A life sentence is all you’ll get now. You’ll probably be out in ten years or so, still have a life ahead of you.’ Venables was not just downplaying what would happen but grossly deceiving O’Donnell, Barnard thought, and bit his tongue. An attractive young man convicted of such a murder would be fair game in one of Her Majesty’s prisons for dozens of frustrated men. His life inside would be made hell.

  Venables lost patience then and slapped O’Donnell hard across the face, before putting his hand around his throat and pushing him back in his chair. ‘I’m going to put you back in a cell now, Tommy, to have a little think. When you’re ready to make a statement about the night you slit Jonathon Mason’s throat just tell the custody sergeant and I’ll be ready for you.’ He marched out of the interview room without a backward glance leaving Barnard sitting opposite Tom O’Donnell waiting for the uniformed constable to return.

  ‘I don’t believe you did this but you must get your mates to back up your alibi,’ Barnard said quietly. ‘There’s no other way.’

  O’Donnell stared at him for a moment, the side of his face reddening where Venables had hit him. Then he simply shrugged and buried his battered face in his arms and Barnard realized that he had effectively given up. There was no more fight left in him.

  DS Harry Barnard stormed across Soho in a fury. It was gone six o’clock and the lights were already coming on in the coffee bars and cafes and he guessed he was probably too late to catch Kate O’Donnell as she left work. He would have to follow her home to west London, he thought irritably. He desperately needed to catch up with her to tell her that the only chance she had of extricating her brother from Ted Venables’ clutches was to go to Liverpool herself and persuade Tom’s mates to take a risk and vouch for his whereabouts the night his former lover had been killed.

  He turned into Frith Street, but before he got to the Ken Fellows Agency he was aware of a dark car pulling up beside him. Without much sense of surprise, he found himself facing Ray Robertson again, beckoning him through the open rear window of the Jaguar.

  Reluctantly he pulled open the door. ‘I’m in a hurry, Ray,’ he protested.

  ‘So am I, Flash, so am I,’ Robertson snarled and hauled him into the back seat beside him. ‘What the hell’s going on, Harry? We don’t seem to be getting anywhere with the little scheme we discussed. And Georgie’s becoming a serious liability. I want him off the streets, and I wouldn’t have thought that would do your career any harm either. I’ve given Venables a sighting of Georgie and the dead nancy-boy together having an argy-bargy. What more does he want?’

  Barnard shrugged. There was no point prevaricating. If Venables charged O’Donnell tonight, he would appear in the magistrates’ court tomorrow and the news would be in the evening papers when the late editions hit the streets.

  ‘He still seems to favour the boyfriend for it,’ he said. ‘He’s had him hauled back from Liverpool and seems to think he’s got it all sewn up. And when Ted Venables thinks that, it generally turns out that way.’

  Robertson flung himself back into the car’s upholstery and sucked angrily on his cigarette. ‘Has he got this lad down for the Pete Marelli killing as well? he asked. ‘Because that’ll really piss the Maltese off. He was one of their own.’

  ‘Not that I know of,’ Barnard said. ‘But I wouldn’t put it past him to add it to the charge sheet just to tidy up the loose ends. You know how it is.’

  Robertson took a deep breath. ‘You don’t know where you are with these bloody bent coppers, do you, Harry?’

  Barnard could only offer a weak grin. ‘Venables has his own priorities,’ he said. ‘Maybe someone else is pulling his strings. I wouldn’t know. Or maybe he just wants to get his pension with his record looking good.’

  ‘Stuff his pension,’ Robertson said. ‘See what you can do, Harry, will you? What we need is a witness who’ll swear he saw Georgie come out of that flat that night all covered in blood. No one will be able to argue with that, will they?’

  ‘I think you’re more likely to be able to set that up yourself, Ray,’ Barnard said. ‘There’s only so far I can go or I’ll get some busybody from the Yard looking at what I’m up to myself.’ And there is the small problem, he thought, that a witness exists who is pretty sure that neither Tom O’Donnell nor Georgie Robertson came away from the murder scene that night but someone else entirely. And the more people there were who did not want to hear what Jimmy Earnshaw had to say, the more precarious his position became. This whole affair, he thought, was turning into a nightmare. And as he slid out of Robertson’s limo, right outside the Fellows Agency which was, as he suspected, shuttered and in darkness, he felt an urgent need to check up on Jimmy’s safety. In these shark-infested waters, tiddlers like the homeless boy were unlikely to survive long if someone did not look out for them.

  So instead of heading back to pick up his car, which was parked outside the nick, he turned north towards St Peter’s. The heavy doors were unlocked and he could hear the laughter of young people even before he pushed them open. Once inside, he found the residents around the long dining table eating bread and jam and drinking mugs of tea, loosely supervised by two motherly-looking women in flowery aprons whom he had met before.

  ‘Is the Rev Dave in?’ he asked, but they both shook their heads.

  ‘He’s gone off with that new lad, Jimmy, Sergeant. Said he wouldn’t be back tonight.’ Barnard nodded, feeling slightly reassured.

  ‘That’s fine,’ he said. ‘He told me he’d found him somewhere to stay.’

  ‘What’s so special about Jimmy?’ the other woman asked. ‘There’s lots of these kids need somewhere to stay.’

  ‘Oooh, he says he saw a murder, miss,’ one of the boys sitting at the table said, full of contemptuous disbelief. ‘He wakes up in the night shouting about blood and knives and stuff. If you ask me, he’s nuts.’

  Barnard struggled to keep the alarm he felt out of his face. If the kids here knew this much it was only a matter of time before the information leaked out into the wider world. It was no wonder, he thought, that David Hamilton had spirited his charge away so promptly.

  ‘Do you know where Dave has gone?’ he asked quietly, without much hope. If Jimmy’s secrets had leaked out so comprehensively, Hamilton would have been extra careful not to tell anyone where he was taking him.

  Both the women shook their heads in unison. ‘He never said,’ one of them said. ‘Just went off without a word. Someone else was looking for him as well. Someone said they had a boy needed a roof over his head. I told him we were full up but then with Jimmy gone I wasn’t even sure about that. I told him to come back tomorrow and there might be a place.’

  ‘Funny bloke,’ the other woman said. ‘Got quite shirty. Kept looking around as if we were hiding something.’

  ‘Had you seen him before?’ Barnard asked, suddenly anxious.

  ‘I had,’ one of the boys at the table said suddenly. ‘I saw him talking to Jimmy yesterday outside in the graveyard. He was asking Jimmy to do something and then he shoved him away and the bloke looked like he was going to hit him but he didn’t in
the end. Jimmy came back indoors then and went to see the Rev Dave.’

  Barnard reached into his jacket pocket for George Robertson’s mugshot. ‘Was this the man?’ he asked.

  The two women and the boy studied the photograph for no more than a couple of seconds before they nodded.

  ‘Little bloke,’ one woman said.

  ‘Evil-looking,’ the other added.

  ‘Do you know what he wanted Jimmy to do yesterday?’ Barnard asked the boy.

  ‘Nah,’ he said. ‘He was talking quiet like. But Jimmy didn’t want to, whatever it was. Jimmy was really scared after. Terrified.’

  The sergeant turned to the women. ‘You’re quite sure Dave took Jimmy away? He didn’t go off with anyone else?’

  ‘’Course not. He said he was going to the station, though he didn’t say which one. Very mysterious, he was.’

  Barnard sighed. He wasn’t going to get any further here, he thought. ‘I’ll just leave a note on his desk asking him to ring me in the morning when he gets back,’ he said. ‘I need to talk to him.’

  At least partially reassured that Jimmy Earnshaw was out of London, he walked back to the nick to pick up his car. There he found an unusual amount of activity outside the station, mainly uniformed officers piling into squad cars and vans with anticipatory gleams in their eyes.

  ‘What’s going on?’ he asked a grizzled sergeant well known for keeping his head down while he put in the last handful of statutory months to his pension.