Grave Passion

by Phillip Strang

‘Any reason for us to get involved?’ Larry asked.

  ‘Not yet. I was expecting it. They wouldn’t have trusted him after two days in the station, no matter how much he denied. It’s one thing to thumb your nose up at the police, to spend a night in the cells, but Preston got out without a charge.’

  ‘Which means?’

  ‘He was guilty of murdering Hector Robinson, the same as they all were. In their ignorance, they would have been certain that he had struck a deal, a plea bargain, and that he’d turn Queen’s evidence for a reduced sentence.’

  ‘Rough justice.’

  ‘Don’t look to me for sympathy. I’ve got to deal with the paperwork, try and find out who killed him,’ Ross said.

  ‘Who? You must know that,’ Larry said.

  ‘It’s the proving that’s the hard part. His so-called former friends will keep a low profile for the next week. I’ll try and find Waylon Conroy, but if I do, he’ll have an alibi, and he’ll come the sob act, deprived childhood, absent father, the usual.’

  ‘Evidence at the site?’

  ‘I’ll know later today, but I don’t expect much. He was meant to go in the water, which means our jogger friend missed them by minutes. There’s an APB out for them already.’

  Chapter 16

  The death of Warren Preston didn’t faze anyone at Challis Street and few more in Canning Town. One more low-life wasn’t going to be missed, although Bill Ross had to deal with a grieving mother in the station – telling him what a good child he had been, never forgetting her birthday, always looking out for her, especially after his father had done a runner.

  Always the same after the event, Ross thought. Where had been the parental guidance, the discipline needed, the push for their child to attend school, to better himself? But he knew that was harsh. These were marginalised people, largely ignored by government services, dismissed by the police as a criminal element, condemned by poverty. Ross knew that you didn’t need to go far to find the third world; it was close to his police station, and the violence and the poverty were not getting better. It was a losing battle.

  Warren Preston had soon been processed, the victim of a gang conflict; a gang that was maintaining a low profile. Crime was marginally down on account of the gangs keeping their heads down, and any that poked them up soon enough found themselves at the police station and in the interview room.

  Not that it gave the police any concern, although social services would soon be around, as would legal aid, including the female lawyer that had represented Preston before. All of the do-gooders, heads up high, vocal in their condemnation of the police and their heavy-handed tactics in dealing with the deprived and the disadvantaged.

  Bill Ross wanted to say to them come out with me of a night, see the truth of it, where they live, but he didn’t.

  As if somehow it was him and the police that were to blame, not the society that left them isolated, the government that had seen the short-term gain in cheap labour from overseas, the unwillingness to resolve the mess they had created.

  But it was, he knew, the human condition. The cream rises to the top, the milk settles just below, and those who don’t make the grade are condemned to purgatory. That had been Warren Preston, from a council flat in a fifties red-brick monstrosity where the lifts smelt of urine, and in the area outside a few swings for the children, most of them broken, and graffiti on the building and inside the lifts and the common areas. A war zone that the police only visited in groups of four, with another two outside in a locked car, ready to call for backup if needed.

  Waylon Conroy, the leader of Preston’s hoodies, lived in a similar monolith honouring depravity. Bill Ross had made the climb up eight floors – the lifts were not working, no one willing to repair them, knowing that soon enough they would fail again.

  Bill Ross had banged on Conroy’s door, the bell no longer working. After a couple of minutes, it opened, a child of ten standing there. A pretty little girl, Ross acknowledged.

  ‘Waylon?’ Ross said.

  ‘He’s not here.’

  ‘Your mother? father?’

  ‘Not here.’

  A child conditioned to lie, Ross knew. He entered the flat, the child following him. Inside was as expected: clean, basic and unloved. He placed the child on a chair and called over to one of his constables. ‘See if there’s any food in the house, otherwise go out and get her something to eat,’ he said as he handed over a twenty-pound note. ‘McDonalds if there’s nothing else.’

  ‘How long since you ate?’ Ross said to the child.

  ‘Not today.’

  ‘How long have you been here on your own?’

  ‘I’m not. Mummy’s in the other room, on the bed.’

  Ross gestured to a uniformed sergeant to check around. He soon found the woman unconscious underneath a bear of a man. Two other uniforms went into the room and wrested the black man off the grossly-overweight woman, the mother of the small child and of Waylon Conroy.

  The naked man lay flat on his back on the bed, a female constable administering assistance to the woman. ‘She’s not dead. Paralytic drunk, that’s all.’

  The young child entered the room. ‘He’s not my father,’ she said. ‘That’s Ernie.’

  ‘He lives here?’ Ross said as he shepherded the child out.

  ‘He’s mummy’s boyfriend. I don’t like him. He hits Mummy.’

  Generational, parent to child, Ross could have told social services. Waylon Conroy, beaten as a child by a succession of his mother’s men; the sister of Waylon, neglected at the age of ten, inured to domestic violence, almost certain to be abused by a drunken friend of the mother once she reached puberty, the cycle repeating itself ad infinitum.

  Preston and Conroy, along with the young girl and the vast majority of young criminals in the area, were not the cause, they were the symptom.

  The mother, semi-conscious, sat in a chair in the living room; her gentleman friend remained in the bedroom, his hands cuffed behind his back. A couple of uniforms had managed to put a pair of trousers on him. He was bare-chested and bare-footed; he would remain that way when he was taken to the station for further questioning. The man was known to police, and Bill Ross intended to throw the book at him, first questioning him about the little girl. She would be checked out by a doctor for malnutrition, neglect and abuse, and subject to his findings, social services would take the child into care, or return her to the mother, who would be carefully supervised; not that it would do a lot of good in the long run.

  A uniform handed Waylon Conroy’s mother a hot drink, which the woman clasped with both hands as she lifted the cup up to her mouth.

  ‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘My head, it hurts.’

  She wasn’t an attractive sight, even after she had put on some clothes, an ill-fitting top too tight for her ample bust, a skirt too short for her age. Once, Ross could see, she’d had a pretty face, reflected in the young daughter, but time and multiple lovers had rendered the woman haggard. Black, as were her children, although the daughter was a couple of shades lighter than the mother.

  The young girl sat in another bedroom munching a hamburger, grabbing the french fries with her small hands.

  ‘Waylon?’ Ross said. ‘We need to find him.’

  ‘He comes and goes.’

  ‘Your daughter?’

  ‘Gladiola, what about her?’

  ‘Neglected.’

  ‘I do my best, but it’s not easy. I can’t find work, and Waylon doesn’t help, other than to come here and shout at me.’

  ‘Hit you?’

  ‘Not Waylon, not that.’

  ‘The man in the other room?’

  ‘Sometimes, when he’s angry, but I love him.’

  Ross felt like vomiting. He had heard it before, but he never got used to it. Next, it would be how the government had let her down, never given her a chance; and as for Waylon and Gladiola, her treatment of them similar to what she had experienced as a child.

  ‘Did you know Warren
Preston, they called him Wazza?’

  ‘I don’t know. If he came here, I wouldn’t have been introduced.’

  ‘He’s been killed. We need to ask your son some questions.’

  ‘I could do with another drink, something to eat.’

  ‘Later. Your son?’

  ‘I’ve not seen him, not for two months.’

  ‘Anywhere we might find him?’

  ‘He’s got a cousin, lives in Croydon.’

  ‘Address?’

  ‘I don’t know. Jayden Conroy. My sister’s son, he made good. He and Waylon grew up together as children before his mother found herself another man and moved away, something I should have done.’

  ‘We have a concern about your daughter.’

  ‘It’s not the first time. I do my best, but it’s not easy, you must know that.’

  ‘Social services will advise, but I suggest you pack a bag for her, a change of clothes. She’ll need to be examined, probably at the hospital.’

  ‘I’ll go with her. Waylon?’

  ‘We need to ask him questions relating to the death of Warren Preston.’

  ‘Not my Waylon, not him. I know he can be dangerous, but he’d not kill anyone.’

  Ross knew that Conroy’s mother did not believe one word of what she had just said. He felt sorry for her. It wasn’t an emotion that he would hold for long; he had a job to do, and sentimentality didn’t figure in it.

  ***

  Larry Hill remembered his last encounter with Spanish John. It had been eighteen months previously, a homicide, a man by the name of Bevan Harris, a minor criminal adept at cracking safes, getting into any locked building and disabling the alarm.

  Larry had known Harris by sight, a Geordie from Newcastle, in the north of the country, easily recognisable by the cartoon figures tattooed on his arms. He was neither charismatic nor agreeable, with a sour look and a foul mouth. Apart from his unique skills, he was a man that had few friends, other than Spanish John’s brother and an ugly mutt of a dog.

  Akoni was the brother’s name. Larry had googled it and found that it meant someone who is a brave warrior and has excellent leadership qualities. Neither attribute could be accorded to the small weasely black man when he was hauled into Challis Street Police Station on a Tuesday night.

  Harris and Akoni had argued vehemently in the morning, a dispute over money, although nobody who had witnessed the affray could remember the details, and if they could, they weren’t about to tell them to a police officer.

  Even Larry had to see the humour in the two men fighting. The tattooed white man, over six feet tall, with a long dark beard and with an accent and a choice of words that sometimes left others looking for a translation, and the five-feet-six inches Akoni, skinny and shaven-headed.

  According to those that had been there, why they were fighting wasn’t apparent, but Akoni had acquitted himself better than expected, getting in under Harris’s guard, a flurry of punches to the stomach before retreating. In the end, the two men tiring, the anger appeased, they had embraced and gone into a pub for a pint, Harris’s ugly mutt relegated to sitting outside, looking at its master through an open door.

  As Akoni had sat in the interview room, stating his innocence, a dissolute friend of the deceased from Newcastle, a man who had a genuine grievance in that Harris had stolen his woman from him and brought her south, was arrested for the murder. Harris, for all his faults, could draw women to him, whereas Akoni, small and agreeable to talk to, a good patter in chat-up lines, couldn’t.

  Then, when Akoni left the police station, he was approached by two uniforms and asked for the registration papers for the top-of-the-range BMW that he was driving.

  He was detained once again, although Larry wasn’t directly involved, not that Spanish John would listen to reason, as it was Challis Street where Akoni had been arrested.

  The BMW and other luxury cars were being stolen off the streets in London, put into a container and shipped off to Africa, to countries that drove on the left. With sufficient bribes, they would reappear a continent away.

  Akoni acquired the vehicles, delivering them to an industrial estate to the north of the city. Spanish John was investigated, but nothing was ever proven. Larry always thought that the smarter brother wouldn’t have risked dealing in stolen cars; drugs were more his style, easier to conceal, easier to sell, a higher profit margin.

  The three men met at a restaurant in Kensington; Spanish John was paying, not out of courtesy to the police, but because Larry was accompanied by Gus Vincent.

  Spanish John, taller than his brother, carrying more weight, not only in fat but in gold jewellery, his fingers bedecked with rings, a heavy gold chain around his neck, a Rolex on his wrist, embraced Vincent, scowled at Larry.

  ‘What do you want, Hill?’ the criminal said.

  ‘Two women, one man murdered,’ Larry said. No reason to mention Preston, he thought. A gang member in Canning Town wouldn’t interest a man to whom violence came easily.

  ‘My brother?’

  ‘If he hadn’t driven that car over to Challis Street, we wouldn’t have caught him.’

  ‘Not too smart, Akoni. I was angry, angry enough to have done something about it.’

  ‘You wouldn’t have. Spanish John, let’s not pretend here. I know what you are, and you know who I am.’

  ‘What I am is an honest businessman, just you remember that. You’re right, I can trust you. What do you want from me?’

  ‘We need to find someone.’

  ‘The two women, the man?’

  ‘An unknown woman at Kensal Green Cemetery, Janice Robinson and her father, Hector.’

  ‘I knew her father, not well. He was a nobody, why kill him?’

  ‘We don’t know. We’re fairly sure who knifed him, but we can’t prove it.’

  ‘Janice?’

  ‘Did you know her?’

  ‘I paid her the occasional visit, not in that dreadful bedsit, before she reached the end of the road, before the drugs destroyed her.’

  The drugs you sell, Larry thought but did not say. He looked over at Vincent, studying the menu. Their eyes met. Vincent did not approve of what his former pupil had become, but he wasn’t a man to make waves.

  ‘I’ll have fish,’ he said.

  Spanish John signalled the waiter, Italian by his halting English and appearance. ‘A bottle of your finest red,’ he said.

  ‘Steak for me, heavy on the chips,’ Larry said to the waiter.

  ‘Make that two,’ Spanish John said.

  ‘We’re not certain that the murders are over.’

  ‘Assuming I can help, what do you want?’

  ‘We have only one firm lead, a woman who I met at a house in Holland Park. Subsequently, we found out that she had been at the first murder site.’

  ‘You’ve lost her?’

  ‘Initially, we couldn’t do anything when we first came across her, and we were forced to believe that she wasn’t important, but now…’

  ‘Scratch your back, you’ll scratch mine, is that it?’

  ‘I’m with Homicide, not narcotics. That’s not my concern, not now, but murdering people is. Janice and Hector make no sense.’

  ‘You reckon there could be more?’

  ‘We don’t know. I’ve got eyes out there looking for one woman. I could do with some help.’

  Spanish John saw himself as Godfather to his community, a benevolent figure who supported the local charities, gave money to a homeless shelter, helped out the occasional family down on their luck. A man who weighed his misdeeds with the good he did, a man that the police regarded with suspicion, but little proof.

  The gangster took a sip of his wine, clinked glasses with Vincent and Larry. ‘Give me the photo. If she’s around here, we’ll find her.’

  ***

  Gwen Pritchard stood outside the house in Holland Park, the photo blown up and on a large board secured to the front gate. It wasn’t the first time that a police officer had been in the
street, but before the picture had been an identikit based on Larry’s recollection, and there wasn’t any shortage of women who matched Analyn’s description.

  It was a thankless task, and it was cold, so much so that Gwen was looking forward to a break from standing outside the house. She decided she’d stop after talking to the first twenty people, mainly retirees with nothing better to do, and school pupils off to the first lesson of the day: the females looking up at the tall constable, pleased to talk to her; the adolescent males taking the opportunity to speak to her, some of them misbehaving, one getting a rebuke for getting too close, another for a smart comment.

  Nobody knew anything, which wasn’t surprising as the house hadn’t been occupied for more than a few weeks, and there was a rear entrance down a lane at the back, a remote control to open the sliding gate.

  ‘I remember her,’ the next-door neighbour said when Gwen, tiring of the street, knocked on the door. ‘I could see her from my bedroom window, not that I could hear. I don’t make a habit of looking in other people’s backyards, seeing who’s who, but these days, you can’t be too careful, can you?’

  The lady was in her seventies, obviously very well off financially judging by the antiques in the house, the oil paintings on the wall. Gwen had studied art and had once considered a career in the restoration of paintings, soon discounted as it had only been a fad brought on by her parents who saw the police force as a dead-end job, only suitable for the lower echelons of society. Her parents were snobs, she was not, but she could act the part if required.

  ‘New money, singers, we’ve had them all down here. No breeding most of them and some of the parties…’

  ‘Next door?’ Gwen glanced up at a Matisse, his blue period, a caricature of a nude female. It was genuine from what she could see, worth a fortune.

  ‘I can’t say I approved of the two of them, but they were quiet, hardly ever saw them.’

  The story had already been told to other police officers, Gwen knew, having read the reports.

  ‘Cavorting?’

  ‘The two of them in that house together.’

  ‘Ian Naughton, the man in the house, said that his wife was away, and the young Asian woman was a housemaid, looking after the children. Not that we’ve ever found proof of that.’