Soames, she happened to know, kept a garage in Cricklewood - an unwanted bequest from his old man, who’d been high up in the motor trade. It was empty, disused; visited once a month, if that, so Soames could check it was still standing.
She’d take the van there herself, late at night when there was no-one about; drive it inside, leave the pendant and the guns - the latter wiped clean of any incriminating fingerprints - in the cab, then lock the place back up and make her exit, heading back to Edgware by way of a phone box from which she’d dial the number of the Mapesbury Police Station switchboard.
That robbery in Woolwich, she’d tell the operator in a breathless voice that sounded nothing at all like her own - the one where that poor old gentleman was shot. I know who did it. Not all of them, not the whole gang, but the main one, the ringleader. And I know where you can find him.
“He’s known to the Bill, this bloke I want rid of,” she told King. “They’ve had eyes on him for a while, on what he gets up to, but they’ve never had much to pin on him, so they’ve had to stick to watching. They’d bloody love an excuse to take him in.”
This, she’d heard from Sita - who’d heard it, in turn, from a friend of hers, an Assistant Commissioner with the Met - was the gospel truth. Most of Soames’ marks, it was true, stayed quiet after the fact; kept their own, embarrassed counsel. But not all. And those ones who had spoken up had been convincing enough to induce at least one department to begin an informal investigation - an investigation, Sita had assured her, that was very much ongoing.
Des King lit another cigarette - his third of the morning, on Ruby’s count.
“If you were right about that job in Woolwich,” he said, cirrus clouds of smoke rising up from his palate as he spoke, “and it’s still an if: how would I know I could trust you with that hardware you seem to think I’ve got - that hardware you say could put me and my lads away for a very long time? Seems to me you’d be asking me to take a hell of a leap of faith. And that’s before I’ve even asked about whatever poor bastard it is you want sending down instead.”
“Him?” she said derisively. “You don’t want to worry about him. He ain’t worth your tears, I’ll tell you that. And as for the other thing… like I said, if I’ve heard about that Woolwich job, then other people will have an’ all. Word travels, don’t it? Whether you want it to or not. And I can see from your face that you know that as well as I do, that you been wondering yourself how long it’ll be before the hammer falls and there’s a knock at the door you don’t want to answer. So here’s a question for you instead, and I’m thinking it’s a better one for you to be asking yourself: other than packing your bags and taking your missus to the Costa Del Sol for a very long holiday… what choice have you got, except trusting me?”
El took a breath she didn’t realise she’d been holding while she’d been listening to Ruby talk.
“It worked, didn’t it?” she said, knowing the answer. “You did it, and it worked. Soames went down.”
Ruby nodded again.
“Even better than I thought it were going to,” she said. “The Bill turned up to his garage about an hour after I called ‘em. Arrested him at home the very next morning, bright and early.”
“It was the opportunity they’d been waiting for,” said Sita. “No-one cares for a vulture, not even the police. And I won’t pretend I’m sorry that those women he tricked were spared the ignominy of a trial, however foolishly they might have behaved.”
“How long did he get?” Karen asked.
“How long did he do, you mean?” Ruby replied.
“Isn’t that what she asked?” said Rose.
This time Ruby shook her head.
“He got life,” she said. “Twenty year minimum tariff. The Bill never found no-one else to charge with him, and what with the robbery and that bloke in the building society pegging it, it stood to reason he’d be looking at a long stretch if he got convicted. Which he did, I should say. The jury didn’t take to him any more than the Bill did. But as for how long of that he did…”
“He was at Hendon, as of the year before last,” Sita said. “We’d been doing what we could before then to monitor his movements, inasmuch as there were any movements to monitor, but I’m afraid he rather dropped off our radar lately, what with one thing and another.”
One thing and another, El thought, marvelling at Sita’s knack for euphemism. Then: twenty years. Twenty years, for a job you didn’t do. That’s a lot of time to nurse a grudge.
“And you think he’s out now?” said Dexter.
Ruby shrugged.
“It’s been more than twenty years, ain’t it?” she said. “And seeing as it were pretty obvious to begin with who had reason to stitch him up, and seeing as he’s had a quarter of a century to work it out if he hadn’t done to begin with, and seeing as someone’s been after your brother and your Auntie Sita with a knife I’d swear on your Dad’s life was his knife… I’d say the odds of it were good, wouldn’t you?”
Chapter 11
Herne Bay, Kent
July 1997
Satis House - that was El’s first thought, on seeing the derelict seaside mansion that, according to Dexter’s contact at the Home Office, had quartered Charlie Soames since his release from HMP Hendon. Satis House, and Miss Havisham inside, stalking the hallways in her moth-eaten wedding dress, a train of mice and rats and spiders dancing at her feet.
“It’s a little run-down, isn’t it?” said Rose, taking in the boarded windows, the crumbling brickwork, the tangles of weeds and rushes springing up to shoulder height on every side.
Karen’s preliminary digging had identified the house as an inheritance rather than a purchase, passed down to Soames in his father’s will along with the Cricklewood garage. Which made sense to El: it was big, and it was old - 17th century or earlier, on first glance - but she struggled to imagine anyone choosing to live in it, much less paying for the pleasure.
The narrow path that led from the road to the house was winding, the overgrown grass and nettles growing alongside and across it suggesting years, if not decades of neglect. They took it slowly, cautiously - El relieved that DI Gwen Sandhu’s work, unlike Angela Di Salvo’s, necessitated sensible shoes, a thick coat and a high street trouser suit that kept the mud from her legs.
Rose - DS Helen Layton, for today at least - was similarly dressed, but altogether more nervous. And as far as El was concerned, for good reason: she’d never played the inside before, not really. Not when there was anything much at stake.
“She’ll be absolutely fine,” Sita had assured her. “Better than fine, I would think. You forget, darling - she’s spent most of her life pretending to be somebody she isn’t. I doubt another half hour will tax her.”
El had her doubts. Had her doubts, in fact, about the entire undertaking, about the wisdom of going to see Soames at all, when so much of the information they needed to protect themselves - how long he’d been out of prison, whether he really was behind the attacks on Michael and Sita and what other surprises he might have in store for the rest of Ruby’s extended family if he was - could have been gleaned through safer, more covert channels. But Ruby had insisted.
“You’ll get more out of him face to face,” she’d said. “Especially you,” she’d added to El. “You pitch it right, push his buttons, and he’ll tell you a bleedin’ sight more than you’ll get from looking him up on a computer.”
Karen, receiving the observation as a personal affront, had muttered something indecipherable but vexed and stalked away to Sita’s bathroom.
Maybe this is what I deserve for thinking I could retire, El had thought, already weary at the prospect of what lay ahead.
“Do I at least get to take Karen with me?” she’d asked. “Nothing you’ve said makes me want to drop in on him solo.”
Ruby and Sita had traded one of the coded looks that she found so persistently infuriating - Ruby tilting her chin questioningly, and Sita replying with an almost-imperceptible sha
ke of the head.
“I ain’t sure she’s right for this one,” said Ruby cagily.
“And why is that?” asked El, well on her way to irritated.
Ruby had started to answer, but Sita - sensing El’s mood - had intervened instead.
“You won’t remember Leon Baxter,” she’d said, in the same even tone El had heard her use to mollify disgruntled marks, before they caught on that they were being conned. “He was long before your time, of course. But I wonder, have you ever seen him? In a photograph, perhaps, or a newspaper article?”
El tried to visualise Karen’s father’s face, the smile or the frown that might have briefly graced the inside pages of a local paper after his disappearance twenty years ago or more, and failed.
“No,” she said. “No, I don’t think so.”
“Ah,” Sita replied. Then: “In that case, you may have to take me and Auntie Ruby at our word. The issue, you see, is one of familial resemblance. Leon Baxter was rather well-known in our corner of the world, and Karen…”
“Is the spitting image of her old man,” finished Ruby. “Put her in front of Soames, even in a policewoman’s get-up or what have you, and he’ll smell a rat straight off, even if he can’t put his finger on why.”
“I’m not going on my own,” El had protested.
“Please don’t look at me,” Dexter said, before she could ask him. “We know he knows what I look like, and while I would share many things with Michael, I’d prefer that we didn’t end up with matching stab-wounds.”
Ruby and Sita exchanged another furtive look.
She’ll need someone with her, El imagined she could read in Sita’s pursed lips and raised eyebrow. Who knows what she’ll find there?
Who do you suggest? Ruby’s wrinkled forehead seemed to say in response. We ain’t exactly rolling in candidates here.
There was absolute silence for a beat or two. And then the eyes of both women fell, almost in unison, on Rose.
The young white man who answered the door was camp, slightly built and as friendly-looking as a cartoon piglet - nothing like the bent-backed butler El might have expected to usher them into a house so monstrously gothic. He wore the purple scrubs, blue plastic apron and disposable gloves of a home care assistant, and smelled strongly of lanolin and antiseptic.
He introduced himself as Jared, no surname.
“What can I do for you today?” he asked, his friendliness undimmed by the warrant cards they presented.
“We need to have a word with Mr Soames, if he’s in,” said El.
Jared’s open face looked momentarily conflicted.
“He’s in,” he said. “But I’ve only just got him out the bath. Is it urgent?”
“It is, I’m afraid,” El said.
Jared nodded understandingly, one overstretched key worker to another.
“You’d best come on through, then,” he told them.
Inside, the house was less dilapidated - dated but clean, its threadbare carpets vacuumed and its walls and ceiling surprisingly free of cobwebs.
“The cleaner comes in in the mornings,” Jared said, when he saw them looking. “Does all the surfaces, has a bit of a hoover round. There’s not much he can do with the garden, though - you must have seen for yourselves how wild things have got out there. And I don’t know one end of a lawnmower from the other, just between us, so I wouldn’t be much use even if I didn’t have my hands full with Charlie.”
“What is it you do for Mr Soames?” El asked.
“Oh, I do everything,” he answered. “His meals, his medication, his personal care… you name it. I’m not live-in, he’s not quite there yet, not while he can get himself in and out of bed, but I’m here every day but Sunday, 8 ’til 4.”
“Does he need a lot of care?” asked Rose - communicating, to El’s relief, no more interest than the bathing, dressing and toileting requirements of an elderly man would usually pique in the course of routine questioning.
“Not as much as some I’ve worked with. But he can’t walk very far, with his emphysema, and gets very out of breath when he doesn’t have his oxygen, so it can all get a bit hands-on. He’s still all there, though,” he added quickly. “No dementia or anything like that. He had a stroke two years ago, which means his speech gets a bit slurred when he’s tired or excited, but he’s as sharp as you or me when he has to be.”
Oxygen and late-stage emphysema, El thought - not exactly a winning formula for an attempted murderer. If it is him going after Ruby, then he’s got someone doing the legwork for him.
Jared seemed an unlikely candidate, on first impressions, though she wasn’t entirely willing to discount him as a possibility quite yet.
“Does Mr Soames get many visitors?” she asked.
“Just me and the cleaner, that I know of,” he said. “There’s a social worker who comes to check on him – not often though, maybe once a month or so? I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve seen her. He can’t really get out and about without lugging the oxygen tank around with him. I suppose it can’t be easy trying to keep in touch with people when you’re…”
He stopped himself, mid-indiscretion.
You know he was inside, then, El thought. How did you find out, I wonder? Did he tell you himself?
“Anyway,” he said, “no, is the answer. No visitors. I can ask the cleaner if he knows of anyone, if you want? He might have seen something I’ve missed.”
“Thank you,” said Rose. “That would be very helpful.”
They walked together to the back of the house, through a long oblong dining room and into the conservatory, its dirty glass walls opening out onto the untended grounds beyond. There, in a wicker armchair, a tartan blanket draped over his knees and an oxygen mask clamped to his nose and mouth by an elasticated strap sat an old man, scrawny and jaundiced in his pyjamas.
Jesus, El thought. If he was thirty five in ’72...
She’d heard that prison aged people; had seen the phenomenon close up in one or two acquaintances. But never quite this dramatically.
The man in the wicker chair, with his paper skin and drooping mouth, could have passed for eighty - but must, she realised, have been barely into his sixties. Younger than Ruby and Sita.
“Visitors for you, Charlie,” said Jared, in a loud, cheerful voice.
Slowly, the man reached a hand to the mask and prised it away from his jaw, letting it fall onto his chest.
“Visitors?” he wheezed. The lisp Ruby had described was there - vithitorth, the question had sounded like - but was subordinate to the gasp and whistle of his breath.
“Detective Inspector Sandhu, Mr Soames,” El said, flashing the warrant card a second time. “And this is Detective Sergeant Layton. We were hoping to have a word with you about an incident in Kensington last week.”
“In Kensington?” said Jared, with the same wide-eyed surprise he might have applied to Ulaanbaatar? or the Mississippi Delta? “You’re not local?”
“Can we have a few minutes, Jared?” said Soames. “In private?”
Jared looked from Soames to El and Rose, concerned but powerless to refuse.
“I’ll be cleaning up in the bathroom,” he told Soames. “You just call me if you need me, okay?”
He stepped back out into the hallway, leaving the door to the conservatory ajar.
“Would you mind closing that?” Soames asked Rose, when he’d left. “Sound travels everywhere in this place, and he’s got very big ears for such a little poof.”
Anger, then disgust passed over Rose’s face at the slur - not obvious but there, all the same.
Keep it in, El willed her. For God’s sake, keep it in.
“We won’t take up too much of your time, Mr Soames,” she said, when the door was shut. “But we were hoping to ask you a few questions about your whereabouts in the early hours of last Tuesday.”
It was a faintly absurd opening gambit, she thought - the most cursory look at him suggested that he hadn’t left the house in
weeks, let alone the county. But she had to start somewhere.
Soames smiled - an unpleasantly rapacious peeling back of the lips and revealing of the sharp yellow-brown points of his teeth that El would have found unsettling even without knowing his history, what those teeth had done.
“You can drop all that, now Jared’s gone,” he said, every other word punctuated by the wheezing rattle of air dredged deep from his failing lungs. “I know who you are, Miss Gardener. And you, Lady Winchester. To be perfectly frank, I expected to hear from one or other of you before now. But I won’t hold it against you. Age takes its toll on all of our faculties, even your Mrs Redfearn’s. I suppose I should be grateful that two visits from my friend with the knife were enough to grab her attention, at her time of life.”
He put the mask to his face and took a long, slow pull of air before continuing.
“Now,” he said, “I know you thought you were here on some sort of reconnaissance mission. But as I’m sure you’re fast beginning to realise, you were wrong. In fact, you’re here to listen. So I invite you both to close your mouths and take a seat. Because I have a lot to say, and I’m going to need you to keep up.”
Part II
September
From The Evening Review
8th March 1991
Wainwright, Guilty Of Perjury, Jailed For 18 Months
* * *
Edward Wainwright, chief executive of clothing giant Fine Cloth and presenter of the Channel 4 series MD SOS, was convicted at the Old Bailey today on perjury charges and jailed for 18 months.
Wainwright, 63, showed no reaction as he stood in the dock to hear the verdict against him.
The Push (El Gardener Book 2) Page 10
