by JOHN YORVIK
“I...”
“No!” he said, grinning and nodding his head, his arms folded high on his chest.
“A haven’t asked owt yet, man,” I said switching over into dialect for a second, brushing the rain out of my hair with my hand. “Am ere to see Lillian Stewart.” I was careful not to lay it on too thick, but I wanted to show him I was local. The truth was I’d lost my Geordie as soon as I started university and it felt unnatural to put on the accent again. I blamed my mother for that; she’d always spoken with an Estuary accent.
“I know why you’re ere. And I know what ya are.”
“I’m a journalist.”
“Ha! So ya admit it? Game over!”
“I’m from here, not London and I work for a magazine not a tabloid. I write about music, art, cinema reviews that kind a thing. I went to school with Marty, Lillian’s son.”
“Can you prove it?”
I could tell by the change in his tone that he was prepared to give me a chance.
“Why don’t you ask Mrs Stewart?” I passed him my Free Press card.
“That might be difficult.”
“Why like?”
“Canna say.”
Then I remembered. “Look, she’s got a birthmark.” I whispered the location of the blemish into his ear. Lillian had been like a second mother to me and I’d often seen her in a bikini when she took Marty and me swimming.
He looked surprised, but finally agreed to let me see her for ten minutes and we both ran across the courtyard in the rain. Hers was a basement flat and I could already see her sitting in an armchair in the window, white as a ghost.
As he put the key in the door, he turned to me and said, “I don’t kna how much she knows. Understands. Ya kna, about Marty.”
When we got inside Lillian didn’t move from the armchair. She had the greyness and fragility of a woman far older than her 53 years. She didn’t acknowledge me. Instead she stared continuously at the television screen.
“She never gans out on her own. A have to put her in a chair and wheel her round the yard.”
I took hold of Lillian’s hand and told her who I was, but there wasn’t a flicker of recognition. I felt a deep sadness. She had been my mother’s best friend. They’d supported each other through thick and thin. Slaved to bring up their kids. And this is what she’d got in return.
“How long’s she been like this?” I asked the duty nurse.
“Five year.”
“How often does Marty come?”
“He came once as I remember. When she moved in. They had a huge argument. Lillian was a fiery one. Before it set in properly.”
“And who pays for all this?” I said, changing the subject a little. It was no use to get maudlin.
“I’m afraid I don’t know. And I couldn’t tell you if I did. Data protection.”
And then suddenly, Lillian came to life.
“Marty, is that you?”
“No, Mrs Stewart. It’s Jay. Remember?”
“Just go along with whatever she says,” advised the duty nurse. “We don’t want her upset.”
Just then Marty’s photo flashed up on the news. The newsreader mentioned the name Martin Stewart several times. Lillian stared at the TV screen photo of Marty. Then she intensified the grip on my hand and said:
“They’ll never catch him. Chip off the old block, that one.”
“Was Marty like his father? Was he like Jack Lewis?”
“Jack was a good man,” she said. “But he didn’t have much upstairs.”
She wasn’t speaking in real time so much as parroting old thoughts and opinions.
“What happened to Jack Lewis, Lillian? How did he die?”
A tear rolled down Lillian’s cheek.
“He was a good man,” she repeated.
Just then the lights and television went out and we were left in darkness. With the television silenced, I could hear a sharp banging noise and the sound of splintering plastic. Lillian let forth a piercing scream and began rocking in her chair.
“What the hell was that?” yelled the duty nurse.
“Where’s the fuse box?”
“The electrics are behind reception,” he shouted, as he attended to Lillian.
I ran out towards reception. When I got there, I saw that someone had attacked the fuse box with a hammer. There was black smoke rising off the molten plastic and wiring. It also looked like the reception door had been levered open; there was glass all over the floor. I ran out towards the Moor to try to catch a glimpse of the culprit. In the distance I saw the dark figure of a man running away through the quickly descending mist. It was no good. Whoever it had been was too far away to catch or identify.
When I walked back to tell the duty nurse what I’d seen, Lillian was being sedated by one of the carers and the duty nurse told me the police were on their way. So it was time I got on my way too.
“Who do you think it was?” I asked as I buttoned up my coat.
“Kids. They’ve knocked out the leccy to put the alarms down. They’ll be back tonight to rob wa.”
“Has it happened before?” I asked.
“No, but it’ll be kids from the Meadow Well Estate. I bet you anything.”
“Marty and I were from the Meadow Well.”
The duty nurse gave me a look, as if to remind me that Marty was a murderer. And as far as he was concerned I wasn’t necessarily any better.
On my way out, I gave him my mobile number in case Lillian ever asked for me. It seemed a futile gesture, but one I had to make. Then I walked across the Moor back to the road, keeping an eye out for someone hiding in the trees, mindful that Marty might be closer that I’d thought. I knew it was probably just paranoia. But maybe it was paranoia that was keeping me alive.
Standing at the roadside on the edge of the Moor I checked the time. It was only just gone four. And it was raining again. I saw a phone box and went inside. I called an old friend I’d kept in touch with and left a message on his answerphone to meet in the Jazz Cafe at five, if he was in town. Then I stood outside in the rain, flagged down a cab and got in.
“Where to, bonny lad?”
“The Tyne Library.”
* * *
We pulled up outside the Tyne Library, which was in a beautiful sandstone building on Grey Street. I tipped the taxi driver rather too much and he passed me his card and said if I ever needed a cab to call his number. On the card it said John Donkin, Discreet Driver. Before I got out he handed me an old newspaper, so I could see myself in to the library without getting wet.
I ran up the steps and into the foyer, dropping the rain-sodden newspaper into the bin. I rang the golden bell that was on the desk and was greeted a minute later by a librarian who had the same unhealthy indoor pallor as a sixteenth century cleric. She placed her glasses-on-a-string onto the bridge of her nose and asked how she could be of help, but managed to say it in a way that communicated that help was the last thing she wanted to offer. I smiled warmly and told her I was looking for books on British boxers of the 1960s. After some consultation with her computer she wrote down some reference numbers on a torn piece of paper and sent me away without so much as a look of disdain.
Following the number trail I found myself at a section marked ‘Sports History’. Down on the bottom shelf there were six books about British boxing. I took them off the shelf and carried them over to a table, disturbing the tramp who had fallen asleep on top of a broadsheet newspaper.
It was in a book called Boxing the East End Way that I found the first mention of Jack Lewis. There was a black and white photo of Lewis in the ring at the Chessington Gym, his trainer, Sam McCormick, pictured ringside. There was no mention of him in the text of the book and the index only referenced the photo, but that was a good starting point. There was a section in the book on boxing and the mob. It talked about allegations of corruption and match fixing. I took the book to the photocopier and made duplicates of the photo of Jack Lewis and the sections on the mob.
* * *
I headed down Pink Lane to the Jazz Cafe, but when I got there the Cafe was nowhere to be seen. In its place was an amusement arcade, the type frequented by sad addicts and teenagers. It was like travelling to see the Taj Mahal only to find a Tesco’s built in its place. Forlorn, I turned towards the station; my friend wouldn’t turn up to a place that no longer existed. But I only managed a few steps forward before a familiar voice stopped me in my tracks.
“Lishman, is that you?”
Surely no-one would recognise me with brown hair. But then the rain was a great equaliser. I must look the same as ever with wet hair. I turned to see a stocky man in a leather jacket and jeans, carrying a motorcycle helmet. I recognised him, but his once jet black curly hair was beginning to grey and his belly protruded over the top of his jeans.
“PC Riley, you got the message,” I said, taking his hand in mine and shaking it.
“Inspector!” he corrected, “but not anymore. I’m freelance now.”
“Freelance?”
“It’s a long story. See you’re still following fashion. Haven’t seen trousers like those since me dad was buried. He was wearing them.”
We decided to get a drink in a bikers’ pub on Westgate Road, where he explained how he’d been turfed out of the police for trying to implicate a high-ranking Freemason in the murder of a prostitute.
“And then, by coincidence the next day they just happened to find a bag of coke in my locker,” said Mickey shaking his head in disgust and then downing the rest of his pint.
“They planted coke on you?”
“No, it was my coke alright,” he said, the indignation showing in his face. “But I wasn’t the only one, ya kna? All the detectives had coke. We shared it out after a raid. It was common practice. We’d take half a dealer’s stash and then prosecute them for a lesser charge. It was win win.”
“Then what? Did you fight it?”
“They gave me the choice of resign or face investigation. I resigned and became a private detective. I’ve still got plenty of contacts from twelve years on the force.”
“You get much work?”
“Mostly divorce cases and industrial espionage.”
“Industrial espionage. What catching people at it?”
“No, doing the espionage. Pays well.”
After a few more bottles of brown ale, we got the Marty conversation out of the way. Mickey wasn’t surprised Marty was in trouble. But he was prejudiced; Mickey had once got on the wrong side of Marty when he was 19 and came off very badly in a fight. Ended up in hospital. I changed the subject.
“What happened to the Jazz Cafe?”
“Christ, have you been away that long? It burnt down five years ago. Arson.”
“Insurance job?”
“That’s what we thought at first. It benefitted a lot of people. Including the owners of Ransom Amusements down in London. But there was nothing to connect the arsonist with any of the interests.”
“They caught him?”
“He caught himself. Burnt to death.”
“Who was he?”
Mickey rasped his beard, searching his memory,
“Guy by the name of Jarp or Jarpy something like that. Local thug from the Meadow Well”
“Jarpy? Jim Sharpel?”
“Aye, that was him. Did you know him?”
“I used to live on his patch and I’ve got the scars to prove it. He put me in hospital for two weeks.”
“I guess you could call it karma then.”
I had a few more drinks with Mickey and then staggered down to the train station through the fog. I waited for the next London train with a cup of strong coffee in my hand and smoked a last cigarette before boarding the train. A football match had just finished and the station was full of fans and police with dogs. It was a mixed blessing. Marty was unlikely to show up with them around. But you could never be sure. I remained on edge until the train reached York and a dozen soldiers got on and sat next to me. I knew Marty wouldn’t show himself with so many potential vigilantes around. While they drank and told stories, I drifted off to sleep and dreamt of my father boarding the boat at Craster as the train pulled on to London.
Chapter Twelve
The fog had reached London too. A dense mass of grey cloud was choking the city. Through the mist and damp, Dani and I were on our way to meet the only living link to Jack Lewis we’d been able to find. Of course, Lillian Stewart had known him but she was unlikely to shed any light on his life in her state. It turned out that the man we were about to meet was of some significance in the boxing world, so I’d set up a faux interview at his apartment in the hope of gleaning some details of Lewis’s life. Or rather his death.
We were late, so we were now running along Oxford Street chasing the number 10 bus. I was carrying our pint-size cartons of hot coffee while Dani had her camera equipment in a metallic case around her neck and was holding our research file under her arm. We finally leapt aboard at the stop near Selfridges. I bought the tickets from the driver, making sure the bus was going via Kensington. Then we went upstairs and sat at the front to drink our coffees. Through the murkiness I could see the street was jammed with black cabs and red buses.
As we journeyed, Dani briefed me on her research:
“Sam McCormick O.B.E., born in Belfast in 1917, was a middleweight army boxing champion during the war. He never turned pro, but in the 1950s he opened the Chessington Boxing Club in the East End of London and trained local boys in the art of pugilism. The Chessington Club specialised in taking in and reforming juvenile delinquents, thus attracting donations from the great and the good, and over the years it was celebrated for producing numerous professional boxers. He is now retired and is honorary chair of two children’s charities.”
“Sounds like an exemplary life,” I said. “He must be hiding something.”
“Anything on Jack Lewis?” I asked.
Dani handed me her coffee to hold, pushed her long black hair out of her eyes and rifled through her notes until she found the right page.
“Jack Lewis, born in 1945, was a member of the Chessington Club from the age of 12. Trained by Sam McCormick himself, he was winner of several youth tournaments and became a professional boxer at the age of 18. Not much is known about his personal life. He died in unfortunate circumstances on January 15th, 1971, aged 26, an accidental shooting.”
I exhaled sharply. “A short and brutal life. And died in 1971, the year Marty was born.”
Dani pressed the bell and we got off the bus, dumping the empty cups in a bin. McCormick’s flat was in Pinehurst Court not far from Ladbroke Grove. It was a large Victorian housing block that had been converted into luxury portered flats. Not exactly the sawdust and jellied eels I imagined would have been the habitat of an old East End boxer, but I wasn’t about to judge a man for bettering himself.
I found McCormick’s bell and rang it. Almost immediately the intercom crackled and a calm voice with a slight Irish brogue asked who it was. I told him it was North London Free Press and we were buzzed in.
Before getting in the lift, we had to get past the doorman, an imperious man who made us show our press badges and sign a visitors’ logbook noting the time and date. The lift itself was a reproduction 1920s cage with mirrors. Dani was in love with it and took numerous photos of the ornate metal work and Arthur Mucha style swirls in the paintwork. But my concern was that the lift was as insecure as it looked. We got in and it creaked, chugged and spluttered its way up to the fifth floor where Sam McCormick was waiting for us on the landing.
For a man of 84, McCormick was surprisingly sprightly with a thick head of white hair above a rosy face. He was dressed in a neat grey suit, white shirt and bow tie. He showed us into the living room, which was decorated in leather and distressed wood. When we’d sat down and I’d got my Dictaphone ready, McCormick’s maid came out and served us coffee and biscuits.
Once we were settled, McCormick said, “So, what would you like to know?”
He had a very refined way of speaking. Not at all how I’d imagined a working class boxer would sound. But maybe McCormick was old style and prided himself on his elocution when speaking to the press.
“We’d like to share with our readers the story of the Chessington Boxing Club.”
“Sure. Go ahead. First question,” said McCormick, like a seasoned interviewee.
“Just tell us about when you first had the idea to open the club. And how did... I don’t know... a working class man, fresh out of the army raise the capital to buy a Victorian Bath House and convert it into a working boxing club?”
At that point Dani took a photo of a clearly taken aback Sam McCormick.
“Well, I like a man who comes to the point,” he said recovering his composure. Although I hadn’t intended to have him up against the ropes so early, I’d evidently touched a raw nerve. I would have to be more careful if I was to maintain the interview long enough to ask about Jack Lewis.
“Well,” I explained, “your achievement required not just boxing nous but business acumen.” He looked suitably flattered at this and we ploughed on into the history of the boxing club, carefully avoiding the subject of money for the rest of the interview.
After half an hour, at Dani’s prompting, we moved into McCormick’s snooker room on the second floor of the duplex, where he kept his boxing memorabilia. The walls were covered in black and white photos of his boxing days. Dani took photos of as many as she could.
At this stage I decided it was time to go in for the kill. I took the photocopy of Jack Lewis out of my file and showed it to McCormick.
“Ah, yes,” he said, “Lewis v Cullen, 1966. That was a great fight. Lewis KOed him in the eighth round.”
“Would you say Jack Lewis was a typical product of the Chessington Boxing Club?”
“Yes, I would say that. And a good example of the power of sport to reform. He was first brought to me by a local bobby when he was 12. His mother was a prostitute and his father, well, nobody knew who his father was. Young Jack was always in trouble, robbing and fighting, a ne’er-do-well. We took him in. Taught him discipline. Made a man out of him.”
