by Jim Kelly
‘You’ll not be alone?’ asked Brooke. ‘Mr Flynn, perhaps?’
She didn’t answer.
Brooke nodded anyway, adding that she could also visit the school and the church if she wished. He reminded her, finally, that any funeral arrangements would have to await the coroner’s decision to close the inquiry, and that that might take some time.
They shook hands, and Brooke said again that he was sorry to have brought such sad news. He watched her climb the steps into the church, past a life-size wooden Christ, bleeding on a crucifix.
Turning away, lighting up a cigarette, he was struck by the degree to which the loss of the boy seemed to be the mother’s alone. The absent father, the slightly calculating Bobbie, seemed peripheral to her grief. The age gap between Sean and his older brothers also begged questions. On Saturday he’d undertake more searching enquiries, but for now his duty was done.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
The sun was setting over Cambridge by the time Brooke unpacked himself from a crowded compartment and set out down Station Road towards ‘The Homecoming’; but this evening the striding victorious soldier-scholar seemed to mock Brooke’s inability to unravel the death of a five-year-old child. That was one of the certainties of war on the battlefield: you knew your enemy, and you knew when he was beaten. The art of detection was a subtler affair. The family of the dead child might be dysfunctional and oddly distant, but he’d discerned no motive for murder. Which left the IRA bombers. Tonight, time would run out for Patrick O’Leary. The Irishman’s Honey Hill rooms would be raided by the Borough. The questions he would face ranged from his role in the S-Plan to the death of an innocent child.
Brooke contemplated the snow which had collected on ‘The Homecoming’, particularly in the German upturned helmet, which was amongst the victor’s spoils. It reminded him that it was at this spot that the children had encountered the mysterious, patriotic Irishman, handing out welcoming flags and reading labels. It had been young John McQuillan, Sean’s new-found friend, who’d recalled the encounter. McQuillan seemed a nervous child, alternatively garrulous and tongue-tied. Had he told the whole truth?
Brooke checked his notebook: he’d asked the efficient Mrs Aitken to phone the Spinning House with the address of the family looking after the boy. The house was in New Town, a cluster of working-class streets which lay beyond the soaring spire of the Church of Our Lady and the English Martyrs; lowly St Alban’s mother house. Saxon Street was so close to the church the shadow of the spire cut across it like a knife. Brooke encountered a throng of children and teenagers playing with home-made sledges in the road. The din in the narrow, damp street was hellish. The door of No. 57, ajar, opened into a carpet-less corridor. Three children, two boys holding fast to a toddler, pushed past him on the doorstep, screaming that they were off to join in the fun.
In the back kitchen a woman sat at a table watching a man eat a plate of mince and mashed potatoes.
Mrs Harper shook Brooke’s hand and said her husband, Sidney, had just got home from a long shift at the sugar beet factory and so she’d let the children out for fresh air.
‘Does ’em good,’ she offered, putting on a kettle. Mr Harper worked his way steadily through the mince, helping himself to a bottle of beer which he decanted by the inch into a tin mug.
‘How’s John?’ asked Brooke.
Mrs Harper set him a chair close to the coal fire.
‘He’s upstairs with my youngest,’ she said, with obvious pleasure. ‘That kid deserves a good home.’
Mr Harper grunted, pouring more beer. He caught Brooke’s eye. ‘A drink?’ he said.
They got him a glass and a bottle, and he sat, enjoying the heat and listening to the distant hubbub of the children in the street. The light was almost gone, so the relative brightness of the fire grew by the second.
‘Hasn’t he got a good home back in London?’ he asked.
‘He’s not happy. I think he misses his mate – the boy that’s been taken. Cruel that. They met on the train and just clicked. It happens when you’re that age. Ron, my youngest, tries his best, but you can see Johnny’s lonely.’ She thought about that. ‘Well. More lost, really.’
She took a breath, as if deciding. ‘Back home there’s just his mum, by the sound of it. There’s something wrong, but we can’t get to the heart of it. He keeps asking how long he can stay with us. I’ve got five nippers. It’s like a travelling circus in ’ere. It breaks my heart that he doesn’t want to go home.’
Mr Harper nodded.
‘I want to know if young Sean said anything to him he hasn’t told us yet,’ said Brooke. ‘We found the body, you see. So it’s murder now.’
‘Go on up,’ said Mr Harper. ‘I’m gonna throw a snowball,’ he said, lumbering towards the front door.
Mrs Harper shook her head happily. ‘Grow up, do, Sidney Harper.’
Then they heard steps on the stairs and two boys fell into the room. The bigger, presumably young Ron, fled after his father. Mrs Harper said John was to sit, and she gave him a mug of tea, announcing that she’d take her chance and make the beds upstairs, leaving them alone.
‘It’s pretty cosy up there,’ she confided. ‘Least they keep each other warm.’
Brooke could see the boy was still terrified. He was sure now that the haunted look betrayed more than an unhappy home life.
‘I’ve just been to London to see Sean’s mum,’ he said. ‘She can’t think who would have wanted to hurt him. Did he say anything to you, John? I know I asked. But it’s difficult standing up in front of everyone. Mrs Harper says you’re unhappy. She thinks you’re unhappy about home, but is it really about Sean? Is there something you wanted to say? You can tell me.’
‘What’s going to happen?’ he said.
‘Nothing’s going to happen to you. Should it?’
He studied his cup of tea. ‘We played games on the train. He liked games. I love ’em. We had a ball, so we dribbled up and down the corridor. We got the girls to scream. We broke a window in a door. That’s what I didn’t say. The guard, when he came round, said we’d cop it, lock us up, throw the key away. When he went, Sean started a fire.’
‘A fire?’ said Brooke.
‘Yeah. There was rubbish in a bin and he had a box of matches.’
‘Where’d he get those?’
‘Kitchen drawer at home.’
‘But you didn’t burn the train down, did you?’
‘It went out.’
‘Shame.’
‘He stole stuff too.’
There was, for the first time, a sly note in the story.
‘Chocolate at the station from a counter. I had to point at something on a shelf – the sherbets – and he took two bars: Fry’s. We had ’em on the walk down.’
‘Bit of a crime spree. Was it all his idea?’
‘Yeah. He said he did it lots. Maybe he took something and that’s why the bloke came and took him away? Maybe it was small. D’you look in his case?’
‘Just clothes, John. Bits and pieces. A box of Owzthat.’
‘We played Owzthat on the train,’ said John. ‘I was England, Sean the Aussies.’
‘The man with the flags, did he speak to you, or Sean?’
The boy looked up for the first time. ‘He said we were to wave the flags. He looked at our labels. He said he had family in London, too. A place called County Kilburn, or sumfink.’
Brooke smiled. ‘That’s right. So many Irish they think it’s an Irish county. It’s a grown-up’s joke.’
The boy looked more relaxed now that he’d confessed to vandalism and petty theft. Had this been the root of his obvious anxiety? Perhaps going home represented the threat of retribution for past crimes. Brooke doubted Sean was really the chief instigator of their spree.
Brooke put his tea mug on the hearth. ‘Sean didn’t mention the IRA, did he? You know who they are?’
‘Sure. I’m not stupid. We talked about football. Talkin’ about the IRA isn’t polite. My mum sa
ys that if you hear anything you best forget it.’
They sat in silence for a moment, then Brooke stood. ‘I’m sorry you’ve lost your friend, John.’
‘I don’t want to go home,’ he said. ‘I want to stay ’ere. It’s fun.’
‘I’d take one day at a time,’ said Brooke. ‘I’m sure your mum loves you a lot. But she’ll want to keep you safe. That’s why you’re here. If the Germans send planes over London she’ll not want you back too quick. Who knows … it might be a long war.’
CHAPTER THIRTY
The slush had frozen on Honey Hill, creating a series of miniature crevasses and arêtes, so that the short, cobbled street seemed to ooze out into Pound Hill like a miniature glacier tumbling from a microscopic alp. At some point during the day the temperature must have risen above freezing, because a series of small streams had sprung from the crushed snow, but they were solid now, arrested in the act of flowing down the hill to join the river below. Brooke noted this was full again, but strangely sluggish, the gleam of the surface clouded with layers of thin ice. By dawn a perfect frozen surface would run through the city like a silver thread, a paradise for skaters.
The Stuke was quiet, the bar below long shut, the steward in bed, although Brooke doubted he was sleeping, given that his snooker room was currently occupied by half a dozen uniformed police officers and a bloodhound. The radio car had crept up Pound Hill and was now parked in the rear yard. Patrick O’Leary was not a suspect Brooke intended to let slip. The time had come to pop him in the bag. Another detective sergeant, a late addition from the County force, was also present, and armed. His orders were clear: to stay in the rear of the advance party, led by Brooke, but to be available if O’Leary appeared and was armed himself or threatened to use a gun. Constables were to draw their nightsticks.
Bells marked midnight as Brooke left the Stuke by its front door. Edison followed in his footsteps, leading the uniformed constables. The presence of armed officers had set Brooke’s nerves on edge. He approached the front door of 49 Honey Hill with caution but reminded himself that his suspect was almost certainly sound asleep on the third floor, room five. Many of the residents of Honey Hill had come and gone in the last twenty-four hours, but most certainly not O’Leary – a giant of a man, according to the local constable, at six feet, with a donkey jacket stretched across sideboard shoulders. And the head: everyone mentioned the head, a cannonball, with eyes sunk in pudgy flesh.
Brooke called for light, and the torches swung wildly as nightsticks were transferred from hand to hand. Edison signalled for a constable to step forward with an iron ram and without a word he took the lock out with the first blow, the door with the second, kicking splinters from the threshold. A dog started barking and birds’ wings rose from the roofs above, precipitating an avalanche of snow.
Led by Brooke they stormed the stairs; by the second landing, lights had begun to appear below doors, and one was open by an inch, revealing a woman’s frightened face. Bare boards led them up the last flight to O’Leary’s door, which they took out with the ram, standing back to let Brooke enter first, the armed officer on his shoulder. A blackout board was against the wall, so starlight lit the mean space before someone found the light switch.
‘This is the police, Mr O’Leary. We have a warrant and we are armed.’
The sentence was out before Brooke had fully comprehended the scene.
It was impossible to look at anything but O’Leary’s body, one leg still up on the bed, his torso on the bare boards, his head thrown back – or rather, the mass of bone and flesh, blood and brains, which had been his head. The first image which came to Brooke, and which would be indelible, was of some animal dead on the road: a fox perhaps, or a badger, reduced to offal. The dead man wore long johns, heavily stained with sprayed blood.
‘Christ,’ said one of the constables and staggered back out into the corridor to vomit.
Brooke threw the sash window open and looked down, then up.
‘Nothing,’ he said.
The room had an empty grate and was icy cold, so there was very little smell from the corpse, just the red-meat tang of a butcher’s shop. Otherwise the room was unremarkable: a wardrobe, a bed, a table, a sink and a draining board, all quite neat and clean. The walls, once papered, were now a collection of various remnants, and held a single framed picture of a young boy with boxing gloves, both hands held to his chin in a defensive pose. On the bedside table was a battered slim volume of poetry, the back broken so that it lay open.
Brooke felt the dead man’s hand. The flesh was still warm.
‘Sir.’ A constable stood by the bed, his boots carefully placed just beyond the pool of blood which encircled the crushed head. He was pointing up at an open attic hatch above the bed.
They stood for a moment listening, but the noise from below, as the residents gathered on the landings, was raucous. A drunken, slurred voice demanded to see a warrant card, while a dog barked erratically.
They moved the bed, carefully lowering the dead man’s leg to the floor, discovering a small suitcase, which held old newspapers, largely the sporting pages, and a complete change of clothing, including a pair of new black brogues. A chair placed on the table allowed Brooke to get head and shoulders into the attic space. A torch revealed a room which stretched the entire length of the short street – about sixty yards from end wall to end wall, running over all the upper floors. With a boot on a constable’s shoulder Brooke hauled himself up the last few feet so that he could stand astride the trapdoor, his torch beam almost too weak to penetrate the distant shadows. Various bays beneath the roof beams had been used for storage: rolled carpets, a stack of tiles, cardboard boxes of books, a pyramid of drainpipes laid against the end wall.
In the torchlight something glittered on the floorboards. Kneeling, Brooke examined, but didn’t touch, a lump of yellow waxy material, a slightly luminous teardrop, the colour of onyx perhaps, or clarified butter, about two inches long. He unfolded a handkerchief and picked it up, slipping it into his pocket.
Below he could hear the rooming house still in uproar, tenants being dragged out of bed to give statements, a woman screaming in a perfunctory way, as if to ward off a persistent wasp. Boots tramped up and down stairs.
On his knees at the trapdoor he saw Edison below.
‘I want silence,’ he ordered.
His sergeant disappeared and issued calm but terse orders.
Gradually the official silence spread down through the house, leaving the dog barking, until it too was quiet. In the street a car engine spluttered and died. The house took over the principal soundtrack, the timbers ticking and cracking.
Brooke heard a footstep above his head, almost exactly at the apex of the roof. The second footstep was as distinct, a further stride towards the end wall. Then he ran for it, the footsteps multiplying, swift but sure along the roofline. Brooke tracked him until at the far end he found a single skylight, which was open so that he could stand within it, his head outside. A metal ladder ran from the side of the sill up the incline of the roof, which he scaled on hands and knees.
He reached the apex, where a flat walkway ran the length of the building. Nothing moved. Casting a glance below he saw a yard, the remains of a metal fire escape petering out about ten feet below, to be replaced with a dangling rope. He had no fear of heights, but the scene below seemed to drop away, then come back into focus.
The view across the chimney tops was vividly Dickensian; dark roofs, in confusion, linked by stairways and ladders amid a forest of stacks and pots, out of which smoke drifted. Brooke stood, eyes wide for movement, but the scene remained static save for a cat sauntering across a wooden walkway high above the yard. A constable appeared below, his torch swinging from side to side like a lighthouse beam.
He saw the fleeing figure once, a fleeting second – maybe two – caught in silhouette fifty yards away, moving between two chimney stacks and then dropping from sight. A man, almost certainly, a jacket perhaps, certain
ly no great winter coat. Brooke was struck by a sense of a body in fluid, rapid movement, an indication of the brutal power, perhaps, which had crushed Patrick O’Leary’s prodigious skull.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Two murders within three days, and a bomb attack, demanded a rapid public response from the Borough. Despite the distractions of war, the city expected its streets to be safe, even after dark, unless the sirens wailed. O’Leary’s brutal killing rang alarm bells. Would the violence spiral out of control? Was the second bomb attack now inevitable? A constable had been despatched to the Spinning House to alert Chief Inspector Carnegie-Brown of developments. She, in her turn, would no doubt call the chief constable. The downward weight of bureaucratic pressure for action would be intolerable by dawn. Not for the first time, Brooke’s insomnia was a positive boon.
With Father Ward’s permission, he commandeered St Alban’s Church in order to set up an incident room close to the scene of the crime, with the added bonus of a fixed telephone, an office and heating, thanks to the caretaker, who had been woken and dragged out of bed to stoke up the boiler. Within minutes hot air was rising from the Victorian gratings, enveloping the nave in a warm fug laced with the lingering aroma of incense.
Constables came and went, reporting to Edison and taking tea from Mrs Aitken. She duly delivered a mug for Brooke to the office, taking the seat on the opposite side of the priest’s desk. He sensed that the lowly designation of ‘housekeeper’ failed to catch Aitken’s status at St Alban’s. At times she appeared to outrank Father Ward.
‘They say a man’s dead, up on Honey Hill. An Irishman? Is this right, Inspector?’ she asked, meeting him eye to eye.
She’d brought her own cup with her, which she held, finely balanced on its saucer, in one hand. There was something about the accent, to Brooke’s untrained ear, which set it apart; it lacked the musical note and had a sharp urban edge.
