by Jim Kelly
A child, a girl of five or six, lingered beside the priest, holding on to his cassock.
‘Can you tell the adults that we’re going to take this opportunity to ask them some questions about the recent murder. No details, please. Just that.’
Ward nodded and fled. Brooke scuttled back upstairs to collect the uniformed constables from the yard.
The adults had been asked to bring their stools down with them from the hall, and they sat now in groups in the other rooms, talking and drinking tea, leaving in ones and twos when their names were called by Edison to answer questions at a table set by the coke boiler. Vital information was recorded on clipboards.
The scene was strangely biblical. Brooke imagined the early Christians in their caves and tunnels below Rome. If Cambridge had catacombs, they’d be like this: ordered and geometric, with functional light bulbs and little signs on the doors for STORES, or POWER, or DRAINS. The dangers from which these Christians fled were very different – the long-feared air raids, rather than the horrors of the Coliseum – but there was a dim echo of a persecuted community, which added an edge of fear to the holiday mood.
Brooke checked Edison’s list and said he’d interview the head teacher and his wife himself. He found them, alone, in a small room whose door bore the sign ACADEMIC SUPPLIES. Boxes of chalk, blackboards and exercise books were piled neatly on wooden shelves. They sat touchingly close, hand in hand.
Mrs Walsh was flushed, and Brooke’s arrival seemed to prompt a crisis, because she turned to her husband with an imploring look.
The head sprang to his feet. ‘One moment,’ he said to Brooke. ‘I need to get Kathleen a glass of water. There’s a child coming.’
‘Not tonight!’ said Mrs Walsh, laughing. ‘I just feel faint. A glass, Liam, that’s all.’
They shared a knowing look, recognising a nervous, over-attentive father.
‘We can talk tomorrow,’ offered Brooke.
She shook her head. ‘It’s fine. I’m fine. Ah—’
Walsh was back with water.
Brooke had brought his own stool and took a moment to settle. He offered again to postpone the interview, but the Walshes had recovered themselves.
‘You recall Hendrie,’ said Brooke. ‘What kind of man was he?’
‘I knew him well,’ said Mrs Walsh simply.
Her husband nodded in agreement.
‘A huge man, but very gentle. He’d stand at the back for midday Mass on a Sunday, and I thought – you know – a lost soul.’ She shook her head. ‘I made sure he got a cup of tea afterwards. He said he had children himself, back in Ireland.’
‘Where?’ asked Brooke.
She looked at her husband, as if the answer lay there, then at Brooke. ‘Galway? I think it was Galway. A boy and a girl, I certainly remember that. And so I asked if he’d help at sports day in the summer and he said he would. We don’t have the space here, the playground’s tiny as you know and all that glass … So we go out onto Parker’s Piece.’ She’d got lost in the recollection, but now the reality of Hendrie’s death seemed to overwhelm her and she held both hands to her lips.
‘Did he seem to know anyone else in the congregation?’
‘No. He was interested in the papers. Wasn’t he, Liam?’
The head teacher was nodding. ‘The diocese pays for the Catholic Herald and the Irish Times. I bind the copies up for Father Ward and he was always there, Colm, after the service, reading away.’
‘Did he talk about politics, about the Republicans? You teach the children some Gaelic, is that right? Did he take an interest?’
‘Never.’
‘Perhaps he had the language already,’ offered Brooke. The labourer’s private interests seemed far removed from the world of the navvy. Had he provided the educated hand required to leave the Fenian slogan at the site of the bomb blast?
Walsh shook his head. ‘Seemed more interested in the sport. Gaelic football. And the rugby, I think he said he’d played. In the scrum of course. A one-man scrum himself.’
‘Did he support a club?’ pressed Brooke.
‘We didn’t pry,’ said Walsh primly.
Mrs Walsh plucked at a memory, her hand fluttering. ‘Yes. I know. You should talk to Joe. He’s sports mad too and they always had their heads together. And’ – Mrs Walsh held up her hand, taken away with the excitement of the enquiry – ‘he had a car – a van, I think.’
‘You saw it?’
‘No, no. He said if we ever needed anything shifted he could help. So a van. I said in the spring we always took the children to the coast, to Suffolk, on the train, and he said if I hired a charabanc he could drive it because he had the licence.’
The idea of Hendrie behind the wheel was difficult to dislodge. Had he driven to the river, thrown the child into the water, on the night of the murder?
‘This van, did he ever say where he kept it? There’s nothing outside his rooms on Honey Hill.’
‘No, but he mentioned it several times.’
‘Is the mother coming to see the poor child’s body?’ asked Walsh. ‘And to the school?’
‘We don’t know. She’s here Saturday. And the father, I hope. I’ll let you know as soon as we do.’
Walsh set his hands on his knees, nodding, as if assessing the responsibilities this entailed.
Distantly they heard the all-clear sound above. The children, disappointed, were roused and herded to the stairs. Smith, the caretaker, appeared through a door at the end of the corridor, switching off the lights; but beyond, fleetingly, Brooke had seen that the corridor ran on, under the church, illuminated by a series of light bulbs. Smith locked the door behind him.
Brooke saw it then in his mind’s eye: the church’s parquet floor, the brass grilles set in a line, the heat rising. He’d been stupid to push the thought aside. How was St Alban’s kept so warm without a cellar? Ward had insisted there was no crypt: the parish was too poor. Or had Brooke become disorientated below ground? Did the corridor run under the presbytery, not the church? He stood back, watching a crocodile of children press past, trying to map in his head the plan of the basement to the building above.
Smith hung his keys by the boiler and helped shepherd the children up the stairs, leading the way. Something about the caretaker’s hidden world: the fire, the cot, the single picture, made Brooke decide on action. He borrowed Edison’s torch, helped himself to the keys and set off down the central corridor. Looking back, he saw that the caretaker had returned for his coat, which he shrugged on, before carrying a small child up the stairs and out of sight.
A heavy iron key – the fifth Brooke tried – opened the door.
Beyond, the lights were out but the torch revealed the corridor. If Brooke’s mental map was correctly aligned, then he was standing below the altar of the church. In plain terms the priest had told the truth; there was no crypt, or even a simple cellar, just this narrow corridor along the walls of which ran heavy iron pipes – too hot to touch, pumping out the heat which rose to the ceiling, and the perforated iron grilles.
At the end of the corridor a set of brick steps rose up, so that he could touch the end grille above his head. There was light in the church above, a flickering candlelight warmth. Threading his fingers through the brass grille he pushed up, and the plate lifted without complaint, so that he was able to slide it across. He could get his head through the gap, but no more. A clear view of the altar revealed the glint of gold, the dull light outside making the stained glass just visible above. Three candles guttered in their holders by the door. The trestle tables and tea urn, set out for Brooke’s incident room, lay in the shadows of the side aisle.
Was this the answer to the riddle? Had Sean been taken down? Was the half-opened window in the toilet a well-timed misdirection? The last pew, in which the boy had slept, was almost within reach. Here was another mystery. The child could have squeezed through the gap, but no adult abductor. Had he gone of his own free will?
It took Brooke less than a minut
e to get back to Smith’s billet by the boiler. Not only was the caretaker’s coat gone, but also the small framed photograph. Upstairs the children were being bundled into coats, the enactment of the Epiphany abandoned. Mr Walsh said the caretaker had gone outside to clear snow from the path to the gates. Brooke pushed the door open and walked out into the yard. The snow was thick, and a fresh fall had filled in most of the footprints, except the caretaker’s, which led to the gate, where he’d neatly set aside the spade, and gone.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Brooke killed the light to his office and for a moment stood in the dark, noting the slatted moonlight which came in through the old blinds, catching the gilded paintwork on the Nile bed and the paperwork on his desk. The concept of an office job had always appalled him. As a student he’d dreamt of a career spent observing natural science; in Egypt during the Great War he’d hire a car to take him out into the desert, on the lookout for the fabled Barbary lion. There would have been laboratory work after the war, but even that held the excitement of discovery, the rewards of painstaking experiment. Notes to be taken, certainly, and records to keep, but not just pushing paper.
Joining the police, he’d envisaged days spent on the beat, or later, at the scenes of crime. The office was easily avoided. As his rank rose, his time at his desk had grown, but he’d discovered, by way of compensation, the power of the telephone and the intrinsic value of files and documents. In small doses this was exhilarating. The last hour had been a case in point. The sinews of the crime he was trying to solve now lay exposed, at least in part. Unless he moved quickly and surely, he thought it probable they’d never see Joe Smith again.
He shut his door, descending the Spinning House steps two at a time, and strode out into the night at pace. It was too late now for further calls, but progress had been rapid. Joe Smith had not only disappeared, he had apparently never truly existed. Aitken, distraught at the discovery she’d been harbouring a felon for six months, confirmed that the young caretaker had not eaten in the school canteen, so there had been no need for a ration book. It was clear she’d taken a motherly interest in the young man’s welfare, and his flight had left her in tears.
Father Ward, equally appalled at the thought the young man he’d taken under his wing had been complicit in the kidnap and murder of a child, promptly handed over all the paperwork related to Smith’s appointment, including his excellent references. There was also an ID card number and a previous address. Brooke rang the reference numbers provided. The first was a dockside haulier in Bermondsey, working late at his own desk, who recalled Smith and vouched for his work ethic and his honesty. The second was a bricklayer in Tottenham, a man who lived over his own builder’s yard. The reference was again glowing, and Brooke was about to put down the phone when the brickie added, ‘Joe was a good lad. They all are, the Irish boys. They know how to work.’ Smith, it transpired, had exhibited a crisp, clear Ulster accent. His former boss thought he’d talked of Belfast.
Smith’s disappearance and his contrived identity pointed clearly to the conclusion that he was a comrade of the butchered Hendrie, and the second of the three bombers seen by Dr Bodart. (Slim and dark?) He also bore a fleeting resemblance to the killer Brooke had spotted on the rooftops of Honey Hill. The discovery of the narrow heating grille, and the access to it from the caretaker’s basement billet, further suggested his involvement in the abduction and murder of Sean Flynn. But even the athletic Smith could not have inveigled himself through the narrow opening. Had he relied on an accomplice inside the church? Which left Brooke with the apparently blameless priest and his diligent housekeeper.
Catching Smith might solve all their problems. Brooke had alerted the railway station and set a constable on surveillance. Buses and trams had stopped for the night, but in the morning he’d have the depots covered. A school photograph of sports day on Parker’s Piece had given them a decent image of the wanted man. Copies would be made, and enlarged, and sent to the ports – especially Liverpool, Glasgow and Holyhead. Brooke harboured two additional fears: first that Smith had access to Hendrie’s mysterious vehicle, and second that he could lie low in the yet undiscovered bomb factory, wherever it was. And there was a sharper edge to Brooke’s anxieties. The Ulsterman’s ability to disguise his accent, to reinvent himself as an honest East Ender, eager to join the British in France, hinted at something more than a rough-and-ready revolutionary.
It was too early to even think of sleep, and there was no chance he could pick up the measured steps of the regime outlined by Aldiss. Instead of turning towards Newnham Croft and home, he slipped down an alleyway which decanted out onto Parker’s Piece. A few fires smouldered between the serried ranks of army tents. Brooke showed his warrant card to a guard and zigzagged across the encampment to the far edge, where a series of public shelters had been dug to offer safety in air raids. Each night the siren sounded hundreds took refuge here in the damp concrete cells. With every false alarm the numbers dropped, but Brooke knew that when the first bomb fell, and the city shook, thousands would head for Parker’s Piece.
Grandcourt, Brooke’s former batman from the desert campaign, was at his post outside Shelter 6. Like the rest it comprised a half-buried, reinforced concrete box, the entrance to which was through a pair of iron doors sunk in a long trench. Here the diminutive Grandcourt had constructed a perch, as he would have called it in Palestine, a seat, with a shelf for his pipe, a small fire burning in a neat brazier. He jumped down, and like many of those short in stature, seemed to diminish in height as a result.
‘Time for a break, Grandcourt?’ said Brooke.
The former corporal packed away his tobacco and stowed his gear in the shelter, locking the door.
When Brooke had been discharged from the sanatorium at Scarborough he’d discovered that Grandcourt, transferred to France after the victorious Fall of Jerusalem, had survived six months on the Western Front. The batman had returned home to find his job in the shipyards at Chatham had gone to a younger man. Brooke had secured him a post at the university’s engineering department, running the stores. Grandcourt’s extreme practicality and manic neatness had seen him flourish. His family had moved with him to a small house in Romsey Town, the working-class district half a mile north of Parker’s Piece.
Grandcourt had volunteered for Civil Defence night work, guarding the shelters, but was always on hand for a drink in one of the many pubs clustered in the Kite, the maze-like district of terraced housing just north of the park, set between a parallelogram of roads. Brooke had quickly enlisted Grandcourt’s company as a regular nighthawk, often relying on his practicality to help prise open a tricky case. Grandcourt was a touchstone of common sense and worldly know-how.
They cut down a tunnel between grand houses into the heart of the Kite, past a series of corner pubs, until they were able to slip into the public bar of the Elm Tree.
Grandcourt had just taken the first inch off his pint, wiping the head from his moustache, when Brooke placed the lump of golden wax he’d found in the attic above Hendrie’s room on the table between them. The exact nature of the material had defied the combined expertise of Dr Comfort and the reliable Edison, not to mention the switchboard girls at the Spinning House.
Grandcourt smiled, and sniffed the gem, as Brooke called it. The pub was full, the general buzz of conversation providing a cloak for their own.
‘It smells of cedar – am I right?’ asked Brooke.
Grandcourt nodded. ‘I’ve heard it called many things, Mr Brooke. One of the officers at Arras called it the “tears of Chios” – but he was showing off. He said it was once worth its weight in gold. Chew it and it’s a breath freshener, he reckoned. So good it was used in the sultan’s harem. That got the boys laughing.’ He sniffed it again. ‘Used for incense, perfume, that sort of lark. It’s a resin from a tree, out in Cairo they’d call it “Arabic gum”. Not gum Arabic, mind, that’s different.’ Grandcourt set it down. ‘I’d call it mastic. Mix it up right with some oil and
it’s the best glue in the world. Stick anything to anything. A kid in Cairo got some between his fingers and ended up losing a yard of skin.’
By way of illustration, Grandcourt put down his pint and interlocked the fingers of both hands, then struggled to pull them apart. ‘Perfect bond.’
Brooke briefly told him where he’d found the golden teardrop and the news that Hendrie’s killer could well have been the caretaker Smith, now on the run.
Grandcourt filled his pipe. ‘Most bombs you place, Mr Brooke, concealed, if you will, even if it is in plain sight. A package left in a busy place. Or slipped under a bench. With mastic you can defy gravity, that’s the trick of it.’
A brief discussion produced three possible generic targets: the underside of a car or lorry, a ceiling, or the underside of a bridge.
With the second pint Grandcourt, prompted by a question Claire always made him promise to ask, launched into a brief review of the current state of his family, a wife and three boys. Brooke, half-listening, found it impossible to forget the golden teardrop. The river was frozen now, offering access to each of the city’s bridges. If a bomb, concealed beneath, went off at night casualties would be light – possibly zero – but the strategic impact might be considerable and the propaganda effect startling. A daylight explosion could kill dozens. The bridges needed to be surveyed at dawn and dusk each day. Another drain on the meagre resources of the Borough.
Outside the icy stillness had given way to a fresh blizzard, which cut visibility to fifty yards. Grandcourt’s distant shelter was lost to sight, the air thick with feathery flakes. They parted company with a sharp handshake.
Walking towards town, Brooke watched the bulk of the city’s grand hotel – the University Arms – loom out of the falling snow, its Moorish lead-green turrets dusted now with icing sugar. Inside, Brooke recalled, from a childhood memory, a soaring octagonal reception hall, the plasterwork astounding even to a six-year-old. His mother had taken him there to meet a friend, the wife of another academic. It was the clearest picture he had of her. She’d died the next year of some whispered disease. He recalled red lipstick on a cigarette filter, and a cocktail glass with ice.
