Malice in London

by Graham Thomas

  Powell discreetly surveyed his surroundings as he took his seat. There was a closed door to his right. Mounted on the oak-paneled wall behind his host was a small glass cabinet, inside of which was displayed a pair of antique percussion dueling pistols in their fitted, baize-lined case. On the corner of the desk was a Christie’s auction catalogue of antique arms that one suspected had been strategically placed to look as if it had been tossed there casually.

  Atherton noticed Powell’s apparent interest. “You aren’t a collector, by any chance, are you, Chief Superintendent?” he asked.

  Powell smiled. “You should see my basement.”

  Atherton laughed unselfconsciously. “The desire to acquire things, whether one needs them or not, is an innate human characteristic, I fear. I’ve long ago given up trying to fight it.” His expression suddenly became sober. “Now, then, what exactly can I do for Scotland Yard?”

  “As I mentioned on the telephone, I was hoping you could answer some questions I have about your proposed development on the Thames in Rotherhithe. I’ll try not to take up too much of your time.”

  Atherton frowned. “Not at all, Chief Superintendent, although I can’t see that I’ll be of much help to you. I find it inconceivable that Richard Brighton’s death had anything to do with Dockside.”

  “I admit it’s a long shot, but if I can eliminate it as a possibility, my job will be that much easier.”

  Atherton seemed satisfied with this response. “What do you want to know?” he asked.

  “I understand that Dockside tends to arouse the passions of both its supporters and detractors,” Powell replied tactfully. “Perhaps you could begin by giving me a bit of background on the project.”

  Atherton shook his head ruefully. “It never ceases to amaze me how people who claim to have the best interests of their community at heart can consistently stand in the way of progress and not see the hypocrisy of their position. Times change—that’s the nature of things and it’s futile to deny it. At one time, London boasted the largest enclosed cargo dock system in the world. Each dock was surrounded by forty-foot-high walls and set up for a specific type of cargo. They even had their own police forces. With the advent of container ships in the Sixties, however, everything changed. Freighters that took a fortnight to unload using traditional methods were being replaced with container ships that could be turned around in twenty-four hours. In addition, much of the cargo that used to be transported by rail through London to the docks was now being carried on truck ferries plying to and from Europe. To make a long story short, the port moved downriver, and the docks closed one by one. One can mourn the loss of a way of life, but one cannot turn back the clock, Chief Superintendent.”

  Powell grunted neutrally.

  “Essentially, we’re talking about five thousand acres of land, seven hundred acres of water, twenty miles of riverfront, and hundreds of buildings that no longer served a useful purpose,” Atherton continued with growing enthusiasm. “In the Seventies and Eighties, Docklands, as we now know it, was a wasteland of abandoned warehouses with high unemployment and a dwindling population, but it was the development opportunity of a lifetime for those with the vision to see it. The renaissance, if I may put it that way, began with Canary Wharf. Despite a temporary setback due to the nineteen-ninety recession, which pleased the naysayers no end,” he added with a hint of contempt in his voice, “Canary Wharf alone now provides nearly five million square feet of high-quality office space, very little of it vacant. And there is a growing demand for residential properties as well. Prices here in Bermondsey, for instance, are presently increasing at a rate second only to Kensington.”

  “And how does Dockside fit into this architectural renaissance?” Powell prompted dryly.

  Atherton smiled. “I do get carried away, don’t I? Dockside is a rather modest development in the scheme of things—forty-four one- and two-bedroom flats in a converted warehouse on the Thames in Rotherhithe, with an adjacent shopping and recreation complex across the road. We’re rather proud of it, actually.”

  “I understand that part of the development is proposed on property presently owned by the borough …”

  Atherton sighed. “Therein, Chief Superintendent, lies the root of the controversy you alluded to. We have an option to purchase the warehouse from its owners, but as you say, the council owns the land across the road. As you can imagine, it’s difficult enough to put together a project of this nature without that sort of complication. Unfortunately, the commercial component is necessary to create a viable project, so we have made what we believe is a reasonable proposal to the council to purchase the property at the going rate. We’re still waiting for a decision.”

  “I’m trying to put this as tactfully as possible, Mr. Atherton, but isn’t the main bone of contention the fact that you’d be turning a number of council tenants out of their homes?”

  Atherton looked mildly surprised at the implication of Powell’s question. “One has to break a few eggs to make an omelette, Chief Superintendent. We’re essentially transforming a slum into a livable, world-class community. Please don’t misunderstand me—I don’t mean to sound callous—but the long-term economic benefits will far outweigh the negative impact on a few individuals.”

  “I don’t suppose they would see it that way,” Powell observed.

  “Richard Brighton understood the balance, and he was hardly what you would call a free-market fanatic,” Atherton countered.

  “How would you say that Brighton’s death has affected Dockside’s prospects?” Powell asked casually.

  Atherton’s brow furrowed. “As I say, I’m still waiting for planning approval from the council. Up until this point, they’ve been split about fifty-fifty. Richard was a strong advocate for the project. With him gone, there’s a bit of a vacuum, I’m afraid.” He left the rest unsaid.

  Powell met his gaze. “Mr. Atherton, is it possible that someone could be so opposed to your project, they might employ desperate measures to stop it—murder, for instance?”

  Atherton hesitated. “Anything’s possible, I suppose. But as I said before, I simply can’t believe that there could be any connection with what happened to Richard. We are, after all, dealing with what is essentially a political issue, and in this country we don’t normally go around murdering our politicians.”

  “Point taken, Mr. Atherton. But I’d ask you to give the matter some further thought and get back to me if anything occurs to you.” He handed over his card.

  Atherton nodded. “Fair enough, Chief Superintendent.”

  Powell hesitated as he considered the best way to broach a potentially delicate subject. “There is the matter of Clive Morton to consider,” he said offhandedly.

  Atherton looked startled. “What do you mean?”

  “I understand that Mr. Morton had an interest in Dockside.”

  “We had an arrangement whereby he would own and operate a restaurant on the quay. Something smart to give the place some ambience.”

  Powell scrutinized Atherton closely. “Clive Morton was murdered in a most unpleasant fashion earlier this week—the second person with a connection to Dockside to die in just over a month. I don’t wish to alarm you, Mr. Atherton, but you’ll have to admit it is a somewhat remarkable occurrence of events.”

  “What are you suggesting, Chief Superintendent, that I might be next?”

  “I’m not suggesting anything. At this point, there is no hard evidence connecting the two murders. I just wanted you to be aware of the possibility.”

  Atherton smiled grimly. “I wouldn’t be completely honest with you if I tried to tell you that the thought hadn’t occurred to me. However, Clive Morton was a person with large appetites, larger than life you might say. He had money, liked the wrong sort of girls, and was rumored to be a user of various, er, stimulants. I hesitate to speak ill of the dead, but it would be an understatement to say that he tended to rub people the wrong way. I only knew him as a business associate, but my guess is h
e ran afoul of some supplier or pimp and unfortunately paid the price.”

  “You’re probably right,” Powell rose to his feet. “Thank you, Mr. Atherton. You’ve been most helpful. Please don’t hesitate to call me if you think of anything else.”

  Atherton looked thoughtful. “Of course.”

  It occurred to Powell as he stepped into Shad Thames that not once during Paul Atherton’s discourse on the socioeconomic benefits of Dockside did he mention the millions of pounds that he personally stood to make from the scheme.

  CHAPTER 12

  Powell awoke on Saturday morning to a transparent blue sky full of birdsong and a garden full of trifidlike plants. He wasted no time in fleeing Surbiton, having made arrangements the previous evening to meet Tony Osborne at his flat in Soho first thing in the morning. After bolting down a bowl of something that tasted like little squares of cardboard, he drove in his Triumph TR4 to the train station and hurriedly secured the tonneau cover in the station car park. He only just managed to hop aboard the 9:54 to London Waterloo as it was about to pull away. The coach was packed with young couples off to London for a day’s shopping, each it seemed with a statistically improbable clutch of three or four small children, which made for a diverting if mercifully short journey.

  At Waterloo Station, he boarded the tube for Piccadilly amidst a crush of other travelers. Arriving at the last vacant seat in the coach at the same time as an elderly woman laden with shopping bags, he smiled and gestured for her to sit down.

  She smiled wearily “Thanks, love,” she said. “Me old dogs is killing me.”

  Powell held on as the coach hurtled through the darkness deep beneath the teeming streets of the city. The tube was not unlike a cosmologist’s wormhole, he supposed fancifully. Disappear into a black hole and pop up, as if by magic, somewhere else in space and time—or at least at Embankment Station, he thought as the train slowed to a stop. Mind the gap, came the familiar admonishment over the loudspeaker.

  He took a seat in the brief interval before the passengers getting on could fill the vacuum created by those leaving. As the train started up again, heads bobbed and swayed in unison with the rocking, lurching motion of the coach. A man intently perusing his Racing Post, another in a business suit with his eyes closed, and a young woman reading the Sunday Times Style Magazine, the tinny sound of an electronic drumbeat leaking from her earphones. No idle chatter here, just people immersed in their own affairs, quintessentially English and oddly comforting amidst these tatty surroundings. Powell felt a fond attachment to the aging, clanking Underground that was as much pragmatic as sentimental, since the alternative—driving anywhere in central London—was not a practical proposition.

  In a long, windowless room in the middle of Scotland Yard known as the Central Command Complex, a team of officers monitor video images from three hundred cameras fixed to lampposts and tall buildings throughout the city, enabling them to skip, at the touch of a keypad, unencumbered above the fray from Paddington to Piccadilly to Pimlico, assessing traffic flow and congestion. Various set computerized plans that control the sequence of traffic signals are implemented, depending on the circumstances, to try and keep things moving. They don’t like to use the American term gridlock—which implies an orderly grid system of roads that does not exist in London, where everything leads to the center—preferring instead a system of color codes, ranging from green (traffic moving freely) to black (bus driver with feet up reading newspaper). The reality is the average speed of London traffic is about ten miles an hour with vehicles spending a third of their time stationary.

  Powell’s reverie was interrupted by a subdued chuckle from the lady sitting next to him, who was engrossed in a dog-eared paperback. He tried to read the title at the top of the page nearest him without being too obvious about it. Malice in the Something-or-other. He couldn’t make it out. A crime novel, probably. He wondered how people could read such tripe. If real policemen operated the same way as fictional detectives, we’d all be in big trouble, he thought, feeling superior—

  “Ahem.” It was the merest suggestion of a sound.

  He looked up. A tall, middle-aged woman in a leather coat was standing over him, staring at him, or rather through him at his seat, no doubt imagining herself ensconced in it. He smiled benignly then looked away. It was probable from an actuarial point of view that, being a woman, she would live longer than he would anyway, so she could hardly begrudge him this small comfort for a few moments longer. Seconds later the train pulled into Piccadilly Circus Station.

  Powell walked along Shaftesbury Avenue then turned up Great Windmill Street into the heart of Soho, the longtime haunt of immigrants, prostitutes, and bohos. He had wasted a good part of his youth prowling the narrow streets and alleys of London’s unofficial red-light district looking for adventure, and although he tended to view life rather differently now, he still found Soho’s cosmopolitan and raffish air stimulating. There is nowhere else in London where one can find such a juxtaposition of clubs, peep shows, clip joints, foreign restaurants, delicatessens, gay bars, market stalls, and media production houses—where prostitutes and junkies rub shoulders with businessmen, theatergoers, and politicians. Louche and slightly sinister, Soho was perhaps a little blander and more sanitized than it used to be, but it still wasn’t a place to wander around alone at two in the morning.

  He crossed Brewer Street into Lexington Street where Tony Osborne lived in a basement flat in a late-eighteenth-century terraced Georgian house. He descended the steps and knocked on the door, surprised to see the colorful flower boxes under the curtained windows on either side. The door opened to reveal a bleary-eyed Osborne dressed in wrinkled khakis and a white T-shirt.

  “Morning, Tony,” Powell said cheerily. “I hope I’m not too early.”

  Osborne scowled. “Don’t just stand there, mate,” he said. “Come in.”

  The flat consisted of a small sitting room with an adjoining kitchen and dining area and a bedroom in the back. The furniture was Swedish and functional, and the walls were decorated with abstract prints. The place was surprisingly neat and tidy.

  “Have a seat,” Osborne growled. “I’ll get us some coffee.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Instant all right?” he called from the kitchen.

  Powell grimaced. “Lovely.”

  Osborne returned presently with two mugs and a tin of sweetened milk. He sat down, added half the milk to his mug, then took a prodigious gulp. “Just what the doctor ordered,” he said. “Now, then, first things first. My plane leaves at noon tomorrow.” He reached into his trouser pocket. “Here’s the key.”

  “Thanks again, Tony. I’m rather looking forward to a change of scene.”

  “Just don’t wreck the place. It cost me an arm and a leg.” He paused to drain his mug. “By the way, I checked with the Missing Persons Bureau, and no dead bodies matching Jill Burroughs’s description have turned up in the past week.”

  “No news is good news, I suppose,” Powell said soberly.

  Osborne shrugged. “You know as well as I do that people go missing all the time because of domestic arguments. She’ll turn up eventually.”

  “I expect you’re right. Still, it’s been nearly a week.”

  “Look, mate, just to put your mind at ease, why not put out a news bulletin? She may not even realize that people are concerned about her.” He looked at Powell. “Given the current state of your relations with the AC, it might be best if I put in the request.”

  Powell nodded. If Merriman ever found out that it was he who had made an inquiry at the Missing Persons Bureau about Jill Burroughs, the Assistant Commissioner would have his head impaled on a pike and prominently displayed atop the famous revolving sign in front of New Scotland Yard.

  “Which raises a related point,” Osborne continued. “I’ve written a memo to Merriman requesting your involvement in the Morton investigation because of a possible link with the Brighton murder.” He grinned slyly. “I’ve couched it
in terms of reducing duplication, better coordinating area and centralized functions, and more efficiently utilizing scarce financial and human resources. The little prig will have no choice but to agree, but it will no doubt piss him off severely.”

  Powell laughed. “I don’t know what I’d do without you, Tony.”

  Osborne grunted. “Anything new on Morton?”

  Powell summarized his conversations with Morton’s housekeeper and Paul Atherton. “It seems our Clive was quite a lad. If he was in fact involved with prostitutes and drugs, there may not be much of a mystery about what happened to him, except for the details.”

  Osborne thought about this for a moment. “There’s a bloke you might want to talk to. Les Wilkes. Small-time villain, basically harmless, knows just about everything that goes on in Soho in the vice line. We’ve used him as an informant from time to time. I’ll leave you his address and phone number … Oh, yeah, before I forget, your rhymer, Simon Snavely? He’s got a police record: intent to supply cocaine.”

  “Did your lads get round to searching his flat?”

  Osborne nodded. “Clean as a whistle. You must have put the fear of God into him.”

  “Thanks, Tony. I owe you.”

  “Just make sure you water my bloody flowers, mate.”

  Powell stopped in at the Fitzrovia for lunch and learned from Celia Cross that there was still no word from Jill. Over his ploughman’s he mentally organized his priorities for the following week. He needed to get on with interviewing Richard Brighton’s colleagues on Southwark Council, Charles Mansfield and Adrian Turner—political rivals of Brighton, but for different reasons—as well as Tess Morgan, the community activist who represented the council tenants opposed to Dockside. He decided it would be best to back off on the Morton investigation until he got the official word from Merriman. It was an encounter he was beginning to look forward to. And he must remember to ring Marion in Canada to let her know about his new domestic arrangements. Yes, love, I’ll be staying at Tony Osborne’s bachelor pad in Soho for a while—you know, the one I told you about with the black silk sheets on the bed. Don’t worry, the garden will be just fine. No problem, Bob’s your uncle, he thought fatalistically as he walked up to the bar to get another pint.