Corrupted: Murder and cover-up at the heart of government (Charles Holborne Legal Thrillers Book 4)

by Simon Michael

  At first unable to watch or listen, he rested his elbows on his knees and stopped his ears with his hands but then, unexpectedly, curiosity prevailed and he snatched glances at the black and white movements on the screen. Did these young sex objects suffer the pain, shame and humiliation he experienced during his stepfather’s nightly visitations? Apparently not. These young men seem to enjoy being skewered and battered from behind. They pant and groan with delight and when, at the death, their partners withdraw to prove unequivocally to the camera that theirs at least is no counterfeit excitement, their faces too are rictuses of ecstasy.

  For six years, since the eve of his ninth birthday, Teddy endured his stepfather’s attentions in silence and shame. He spoke of it to no one, partly persuaded by Stan’s threats of retribution and partly because he had no context in which to place what was happening to him. He did not even know such things occurred.

  Until the year before he left primary school he was popular with staff and pupils, a happy, slightly mischievous child, always full of energy and pranks; one whose kind disposition and angelic looks were sufficient to charm his way out of serious trouble. By the end of his last year, there was a new distance between him and his peers. He became silent, his eyes increasingly downcast and distant as he turned inwards.

  By the time he started senior school the following September, following an unbroken summer of abuse during which his mother was largely confined to bed with some mysterious woman’s illness, his personality had changed. He became a silent loner, a boy who avoided eye contact whenever possible and who was frequently bullied for being beautiful, weird and different. And somehow the bullies seemed to have divined the problem, because the epithet most frequently hurled at him, as sand from the long-jump pit was stuffed into his mouth, rotting fruit was squashed into his satchel or he was simply punched in the face as he walked down the corridor from one lesson to another, was “poofter!”

  He was not a “poofter” — at least he didn’t think he was. But he was confused, often sore and always ashamed. Insofar as he had any sexual feelings, they made him feel sick and disgusted with himself, and he did all he could to suppress them. But then, in the vacuum left by his mother’s physical and emotional absence, Stan was the only person who ever showed him any tenderness at all. And that was the most confusing thing of all.

  Peeping through latticed fingers at the porn films leaves Teddy unsettled. What’s wrong with him? Why doesn’t he like it the way these men evidently do?

  With relief Teddy watches as the last movie ends. Maybe they can leave now. The projector screen becomes a flickering rectangle of brilliant white, and he hears the trailing end of the film slapping as it emerges, spinning, from the projector. The rest of the room remains in darkness, the sounds of sexual activity now suddenly louder in the absence of a film soundtrack.

  For a moment Teddy imagines that the lights have remained extinguished to permit the rutting men in the shadows a modicum of privacy to complete their present engagements, but he is wrong. Two young men climb onto the sturdy coffee table immediately below the projector screen. They are both naked and they start kissing and fondling each other.

  Teddy has had enough. He scrambles up and plunges across the darkened room, tripping and stumbling against furniture and bodies. He makes it to the door into the hallway when he feels a hand grab his upper arm and hold him fast. Without looking round he tries to wrench his way free.

  ‘Hey. Hey! It’s me,’ says Mo. ‘Don’t go yet,’ he whispers hoarsely.

  Teddy twists round in Mo’s grip. ‘Let me go, Mo, please!’ he begs. ‘I want to go home.’

  ‘Home? You mean my place?’

  For a second Teddy is confused and wonders if he hears some subterranean threat buried in Mo’s words. ‘Yes,’ he replies.

  ‘Well, I ain’t ready to go yet, and you can’t go back alone,’ replies Mo firmly. ‘Come with me.’ Although he has slackened his grip slightly he still has Teddy fast by the upper arm.

  ‘Not in there, please, Mo,’ pleads Teddy, his head jerking back to the room where the sex show is taking place. ‘I don’t like it.’

  ‘Sure, fine. Take my hand and I’ll walk you right through and we’ll go into the kitchen. All right? We can go home soon after that.’

  ‘But why can’t we go now?’

  ‘There’s someone important I want you to meet. Come on.’

  He drags Teddy back through the doorway and they walk, hand-in-hand with Mo leading, back across the living room carpet, creating fleeting silhouettes across the two naked, sweating boys as they pass in front of the projector.

  Mo opens the door on the far side of the room and pulls Teddy through it. They’re in a kitchen. Ronnie Kray sits at a table, a cigarette between his lips, in the act of pouring a drink into a tumbler. His shiny hair is slightly ruffled and his cheeks are red. He wears suit trousers, but his torso is covered only in a white vest that clings sweatily to his powerful pectoral muscles.

  Standing behind Kray’s chair, stroking his hair gently, is a young man. Teddy can’t see if the man is completely naked but he wears nothing on his top half.

  Mo turns to Teddy and speaks. The edge of compulsion that was present in his voice only a few seconds before is replaced by good humour and jocularity. ‘You remember Mr Kray, don’t you, Teddy?’ Teddy nods, looking out of the darkened window at the London night sky. ‘Well, this is Mr Kray’s apartment. He’s your host tonight. I thought you’d like to say thank you.’

  Teddy finds himself breathing more rapidly and his pulse has quickened. He doesn’t want to make eye contact with Ronnie Kray. He mumbles something.

  ‘What’s that?’ barks Kray. Teddy stays silent. ‘Look at me when I talk to you,’ he commands menacingly. ‘Can’t tolerate mumblers. It’s rude.’

  Teddy drags his eyes from the open kitchen window to Kray’s face. There’s something wrong with the expressionless fish eyes and the hooded lids. The gangster doesn’t seem to look directly at him but slightly off to one side. Teddy is suddenly afraid that the man is reading his thoughts.

  ‘Thank you, sir,’ he says, his voice barely more than a whisper. ‘It’s been a very nice party. But I’d like to go home now.’

  ‘Would you indeed?’

  Kray stands suddenly, the seat of the kitchen chair making a loud noise on the floor and causing Teddy to jump. ‘Follow me.’

  Kray walks out of the room through a door Teddy hadn’t noticed before. Mo prods Teddy in the back to get him to follow but Teddy’s feet remain rooted to the spot. Teddy turns to him, his eyes pleading. ‘Please, Mo!’ he begs. ‘Please can we go now?’

  ‘You know who that is, don’t you?’ whispers Mo hoarsely through gritted teeth. ‘You know how dangerous he can be, right? So don’t cross ’im!’

  Teddy looks up into Mo’s eyes. To his surprise he sees supplication, anxiety and fear.

  ‘Just do as he says, and everything’ll be cushty, OK?’

  Teddy shakes his head but Mo brings up a warning finger. He speaks even more quietly than before. ‘I ain’t kidding here, Teddy! You’re gonna have to do this, or there’s gonna be trouble. And not just for you.’

  Teddy’s eyes lock onto Mo’s for what seems an age. Then Teddy nods, not an expression of agreement but a dawning of realisation. Teddy turns on his heel and follows Ronnie Kray, who waits for him in a short dark hallway. He turns and leads Teddy into a bedroom. Dominating the large room is a king-sized four-poster bed with luxurious gold and red curtains tied at each post. Three of the four walls in the bedroom are covered from skirting to ceiling in mirrors.

  Kray turns to Teddy and leans forward, looming over him, so close that Teddy can smell the man’s sweat and aftershave and can feel flecks of spittle from the slack lips as he speaks.

  ‘There’s a man coming in here in a mo,’ says Kray quickly. ‘You will do exactly what he wants, or I will hurt you. You understand me? You don’t argue, you don’t even speak unless he wants you to. Look at me!’ He
grabs Teddy’s chin and forces his head up so their eyes meet. ‘Didja hear what I just said?’

  Teddy nods.

  ‘Good. I’ll see you all right at the end.’

  Something happens to Teddy then. His face, only a moment ago tense with fear, seems to relax and his pulse slows to its normal pace. His eyes lose their focus and the animation in his expression drains away. The angelic features are within seconds transmuted into a waxwork facsimile of Teddy and he sinks into a state of mind akin to a trance.

  Teddy has learned to recognise when there is no escape and, as with Stan, he knows that to survive, to prevent himself from being utterly obliterated, dissolved, he must disconnect and lock away in a quiet dark corner of his mind the spark of himself that remains.

  Teddy’s willed depersonalisation is halted briefly by the oddity of Kray’s final words.

  ‘Had anything to drink recently?’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘I’ll get Mo bring you a pint of water. Drink it now, okay? And don’t go to the lavvy till you’re told.’

  ‘Why?’ asks Teddy softly, puzzled and somehow knowing there’s a further horror to come.

  Kray grins, a stomach-churning leer which has nothing whatever to do with humour. ‘You’ll find out.’

  Mo stands silently in the dark hallway, head inclined to the locked bedroom door. Folded carefully over his arm are Teddy’s new shirt, now torn slightly at the shoulder seam, and his trousers, both of which Mo found discarded on the carpet just outside the door. He looks at the torn shirt and shakes his head sadly. He inclines his head to the door and listens. He’s unaware of Ronnie Kray creeping up behind him.

  ‘Well?’ whispers Kray.

  ‘Still at it, as far as I can hear,’ replies Mo. ‘Who is it? The Queen Mother?’

  ‘Watch yourself, Maurice. It ain’t your fucking place to call ’im that,’ whispers Kray menacingly.

  Mo holds his hands up in submission. ‘Sorry, sorry, Ronnie,’ he says quickly. ‘Didn’t mean to take no liberties. I just hear you an’ the others calling him that.’

  ‘Yeah, well, to you —’ he prods Mo in the chest with a large index finger — ‘’e’s fuckin’ Lord Robert Boothby, got it? Don’t you go forgetting your place.’

  ‘Course not, Ronnie. Sorry,’ he repeats.

  ‘Anyway, it ain’t ’im. It’s Driberg. So you’ll need to clear up afterwards.’

  Mo’s swallows back a wave of disappointment and revulsion. ‘I thought you wanted me to get Teddy out after.’

  Mo has no wish to clear up after The Honourable Thomas Driberg MP. All the guests at these parties know of Driberg’s scatological propensities, and none is ever keen to enter a room where he has indulged them, less still to be responsible for cleaning up.

  Kray thinks for a moment. ‘Yeah, okay. I’ll get one of the others to do it. Gimme a shout before you leave. And give this to the boy.’ Kray hands Mo two crisp new five-pound notes. He’s about to move off when a thought occurs to him. ‘You’ve heard about that Sicilian cunt?’

  ‘Mancuso?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Yeah, I heard. Look … I’m really sorry, Ronnie, I never meant —’

  ‘Sorry? Don’t be sorry! I’m proud of you, Mo. You’ve got guts. Still, best watch your back. They’ll be out for revenge.’

  Kray leaves Mo standing outside the bedroom door. Mo pockets the money and is about to move off when something glittering on the floor catches his eye. He bends and picks up a gold chain. He instantly recognises Teddy’s treasured St Christopher. He never takes it off. At first Mo thinks it might be broken but the catch has merely come undone and the medallion is still attached, caught by the fastener. He slips the chain around his neck for safekeeping and fastens it. He knows Teddy would be distraught to lose it.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Monday, 29 June

  Charles takes two or three deep breaths as he waits for the gaoler. He is at the foot of the stairs to the cells at Marlborough Street Magistrates’ Court. He hasn’t been to this court for over a year, but he knows very well the reek that awaits him behind the three-inch steel door, especially in the summer, and has learned to get a good lungful of fresh air before entering. With luck, and a minimum of conversation with the gaoler, that should see him through to the cells at the far end of the corridor used for interviews which, for some reason, usually smell fresher. The miasma — caused, supposes Charles, by a problem in the drains dating from the construction of the building in the early nineteenth century — has a meaty sewage flavour, and gathers at the foot of the stairs like Brown Windsor soup.

  The wicket in the door opens and a man in blue uniform peers at Charles.

  ‘Charles Holborne of counsel to see…’ he announces, looking down at his blue counsel’s notebook where a name is written on an otherwise blank page, ‘Roy Elrick.’

  Charles knows nothing at all about his client, and was in fact leaving the Old Bailey for home when he received a message to take a taxi to the magistrates’ court immediately. No information beyond the name of the client was given to him, but he looked at his watch and decided that the cab to Oxford Circus would only take twenty minutes, and so agreed. He could have refused — he was senior and busy enough now — but he tries to help out when he can.

  In Charles’s opinion, by and large, barristers are single-minded arrogant shits; entirely focused on building their own practices and giving nothing back. They are all, of course, independent practitioners, all in competition with one another and simply sharing chambers expenses, but Charles knows that a significant portion of his success is built upon being a team player. If he helps Barbara out by taking a time-consuming and inconvenient case when she is stuck for counsel, he knows that next time an interesting set of instructions arrives in Chambers with no specific barrister’s name attached she will be more inclined to give it to him than to one of his colleagues. For the same reason when junior members put their heads round his door to ask for a few minutes to talk through a difficult legal issue, he always puts his pen down and does his best to help.

  Accordingly, he’s taking one for the team by delaying his journey home to represent an unknown client on an unknown charge at a magistrates’ court. In this particular case he is also curious to learn what’s so urgent, or so unusual, that a barrister of his seniority has been ordered without explanation to Marlborough Street late on a Monday afternoon.

  The wicket clangs shut and Charles hears the jangle of keys as the door is opened to him.

  ‘You’re a bit late,’ comments the gaoler, closing the door behind Charles.

  ‘Why’s that?’

  ‘He’s already been up and got bail. The vans have gone and he’s the last one here. We’re just doing the paperwork now.’

  ‘Did someone else represent him?’ asks Charles, suspecting a miscommunication in Chambers and a duplication of barristers.

  ‘No. He did it himself.’

  Close to the end of his lungful and exhaling slowly, Charles is on the point of turning on his heel and leaving, but curiosity gets the better of him.

  ‘Well, I might as well meet my supposed client.’

  ‘Suit yourself,’ says the gaoler, unconcerned.

  ‘Which one?’ Charles asks, pointing at the cell doors.

  ‘Last on the right. The door’s open.’

  The gaoler takes himself off to other duties and Charles walks to the cell indicated. The door is ajar and he can hear humming from inside. Charles knocks on the metal door and pushes it further open.

  ‘Good afternoon,’ he announces. ‘My name’s Charles Holborne and I’ve been asked —’ Charles stops, his mouth open. Standing before him is an enormously fat man who he knows very well. ‘Percy?’ he exclaims.

  Percy Farrow, ex-copper and now chief crime correspondent for the Mirror, the largest circulation national newspaper, whirls round, sees Charles and puts his forefinger to his lips conspiratorially. He shakes his head vigorously to command silence and brushes past Cha
rles to close the door further.

  ‘Glad you could make it, Charles,’ he says softly, peering through the crack in the door at the stinking but empty corridor. ‘Although I think your services are probably no longer required.’

  ‘Who on earth’s Roy Elrick?’ whispers Charles.

  He and Farrow have been friends for over a decade, since the reporter covered one of Charles’s early cases at the Old Bailey. Charles has known the reporter pull some stunts, but being held in court cells under a false name is something new.

  ‘An uncle,’ whispers Farrow, ‘a vicar in Aberdeen.’

  ‘What? Another one?’ asks Charles, chuckling. Farrow’s late father was also a churchman, somewhere in the north of England.

  ‘God runs in the family. Dad used to claim Him as a second cousin.’

  ‘And there’s you giving a false name to the police,’ smiles Charles. ‘Tut-tut. And it’s not going to work. Even if they haven’t recognised you already, which I doubt, they’re going to notice you’re not a Scottish vicar before the next hearing.’

  Now he is in the cells and forced to breathe normally Charles can also detect, underlying the sewage, the sharply acidic whiff of sweat-saturated fear. The men to be found in these cells have often only just been taken off the streets, interviewed, charged and incarcerated. Many have had no access to a lawyer and most are afraid. They are the quarry at bay, and over the course of a hundred and fifty years that animal fear has soaked into the pores of the ancient pink brick walls.

  ‘I know that, you idiot,’ says Farrow, smiling. ‘We’re just playing a little game, me and my former employers. They’re never going to pursue the charges; I know it and they know it. This is just to make a nuisance of themselves and wind me up.’