Deep Waters

by Patricia Hall

  When Barnard parked outside the familiar terraced house from which Mrs Robertson’s long-dead husband had run his East End empire for years, this time there was a light visible in the front room.

  ‘Looks like she’s at home,’ Barnard said to his companion in the passenger seat. ‘This is a bit of East End history, Pete. I was only a kid when Ray and Georgie’s father was running the place – extortion, illegal betting, a bit of this and a bit of that. But not girls. They didn’t go in for vice and Ray Robertson doesn’t either, as far as I know. I don’t know if that was where Ma Robertson drew the line. Her husband was technically the big man, but that didn’t mean she didn’t think she was in charge. The tragedy was that when the old man died Ma Robertson thought she could keep control, but the two boys wouldn’t have that. They were only teenagers but they both went their own ways, as pig-headed as their mother, as it goes. I don’t think she’s ever really forgiven either of them, especially Ray. He took himself off and built a new empire in Soho where she never got a look in. I can remember their father’s funeral, plumed black horses, a whole column of mourners behind the hearse, all in black, crowds lining the streets, hats off, respect. If ever there was a time I might have gone down that road, that was it.’

  ‘But you lived happily ever after,’ Stansfield said, with a sly sideways glance at Barnard.

  ‘I wouldn’t go as far as that,’ Barnard said. ‘But I guess it’s better than having the shadow of the Scrubs looming over your head all the time.’

  ‘And there’s me thinking you had that as well,’ Stansfield said, attempting a grin.

  He flinched as Barnard gripped his arm just a fraction too hard.

  ‘Don’t push your luck, constable,’ Barnard said. ‘I knew the Robertson boys when we were all kids. They went their way and I went mine. That’s it. Now come on, we’ll see what Ma Robertson knows about Ray’s movements. If DCI Jackson reckons I’m the right officer to do this interview, there’s no reason why you should have another opinion. Let’s get on with it.’

  Ma Robertson opened her door within seconds of their first knock and looked at both her visitors cold-eyed and stony-faced.

  ‘It’s you,’ she said to Barnard, glancing over his shoulder at DC Stansfield. ‘And who’s this? Your apprentice?’

  ‘Something like that,’ Barnard said with a smile that signally failed to melt Mrs Robertson’s icy suspicion. ‘Can we come in?’

  She led the way into the main living room, where a coal fire smouldered in the grate and a clothes horse of damp washing filled the air with steam.

  ‘You’d better sit down,’ she said ungraciously, waving them into chairs each side of the fire and moving her laundry infinitesimally so that she could face them from a hard chair on the other side of the room. Ma Robertson had always been renowned for refusing to move from the small terraced house where she had started her married life, however lucrative her husband’s criminal enterprises had become, and it was obvious that neither of her sons had persuaded her to change her mind since their father’s death. And as she aged, Barnard thought, she was becoming more set in her ways and the house was beginning to decay around her.

  ‘Have you seen Ray recently?’ Barnard asked. Ray Robertson’s mother pursed her lips.

  ‘Not since my birthday,’ she said. ‘He brought me a bloody great bunch of flowers, the silly sod. As if that would make any difference. I chucked them in the bin when he’d gone.’

  ‘Why was that Mrs Robertson?’ Peter Stansfield asked, all wide-eyed innocence.

  ‘Brothers are supposed to help each other,’ she said. ‘That bastard’s not lifted a finger to help Georgie for years. Why are you looking for him, anyway? He’s fallen off his pedestal at last, has he? The king of Soho, God’s gift to boxing, friend of Lord Muck and Lady No-better-than-she-should-be. His father must be turning in his grave.’

  ‘So this was when? Your birthday?’ Barnard asked.

  ‘Week last Sunday,’ she said.

  ‘And is that what he usually does? Sees you on your birthday?’ She shrugged.

  ‘Usually,’ she said reluctantly. ‘Yes, usually.’

  ‘But he’s not been round here since then?’

  ‘Nah,’ Ray’s mother said. ‘And he won’t be round no more. I gave him an earful, didn’t I?’ Barnard nodded, guessing that this could only be the truth. Legend had it that East End families stuck together through thick and thin, but this one had been spectacularly disintegrating for years.

  ‘But if he wanted to drop out of sight, have you any idea where he would go?’ Barnard persisted. ‘Does he use the house in Epping he bought when he got married?’

  ‘That was another silly thing Ray did, marrying that bloody gypsy from Essex. I told him no good would come of it. However she dolled herself up in silk and mink, she never had no knickers on underneath.’

  ‘You mean Loretta?’

  ‘Course I mean Loretta. Who do you think? She’s the only one he ever married and she had to have it done in a bloody great church in Southend. Claimed she was a Catholic. Even so, it didn’t last. I was expecting half a dozen nippers, but none appeared. A waste of space that woman was. Couldn’t even give me a grandson, could she? Couldn’t or wouldn’t, I don’t know. Anyway, Ray threw her out in the end.’ Ma Robertson had evidently brought the honing of grievances to a fine art. He wondered if the council that had had the temerity to threaten her home would meet their match here.

  ‘I saw Loretta recently up West,’ Barnard said. ‘Still all dressed up to the nines. Has she been to see you at all? She said she was looking for Ray.’

  ‘What does she want with Ray after all this time? He won’t want to set eyes on her.’

  ‘I’ve no idea,’ Barnard said. ‘She didn’t say.’

  ‘Has Ray ever been abroad, Mrs Robertson?’ Stansfield asked, obviously feeling left out of the interview.

  ‘He was in the army, National Service. Went to Germany, didn’t he? Don’t think he liked it much.’

  ‘But not on holiday or anything like that?’ Mrs Robertson shook her head.

  ‘Not as I know. What would he want to go abroad for? All those foreigners and greasy food. Southend was always good enough for us. Or sometimes Margate, if we fancied a change.’

  ‘Has he got a passport, do you know?’ Barnard persisted.

  ‘How the hell would I know that?’ Ma Robertson was losing patience and her voice took on a whining note which reminded Barnard that, however belligerent she liked to appear, she was an elderly woman who must be nearer seventy than sixty. He sighed.

  ‘So you’ve no idea where Ray might be holed up? No bolt hole he uses when it gets too much for him?’

  ‘When did anything ever get too much for Ray?’ she asked. ‘Or for Georgie for that matter. They ran me ragged when they were small, the little sods. And it looks like they’re going to run me into my grave, if the council doesn’t do it first. I’ve told them, they’ll have to carry me out of this house in a box.’

  ‘So Ray’s not giving you much help with that, Mrs Robertson?’ Stansfield asked, suddenly all sympathy. But the old woman was not for buttering up.

  ‘I told you,’ she snapped, ‘I’ve not seen him for two weeks. And if you’re that keen to find him, it can’t be for his own good, can it? Why would I tell you, even if I knew? Which I don’t. You always were a conniving little weasel, Harry Barnard. You never knew which side you were on, so you can sod off now and leave me in peace.’

  Kate O’Donnell got back to Barnard’s flat after a frustrating day spent in various picture libraries in central London looking for photographs of the flooding of Canvey Island dramatic enough to satisfy Ken Fellows. He didn’t say much as he went through her own pictures of the reconstructed island but she could see he was disappointed.

  ‘It’s a dreary-looking place, isn’t it, even when it’s not awash?’ he said eventually.

  ‘It was a very gloomy day, but it’s not very picturesque anyway,’ she admitted. Ken glance
d out of the window.

  ‘The weather looks like it’s settled now,’ he said. ‘I think you should go back there tomorrow and have another go at it in sunlight. And while you’re there, you could look at the picture library at the local rag. What is it? The East Anglia News or something like that? They’ll have an office in Southend I should think. Check it out anyway, and see if they’ll let you in. They probably took far more pictures than they used at the time and will be glad to flog some of them to us. These local rags run on a shoestring but they’re usually quite good at archiving stuff. I don’t suppose they have the time or the energy to sort stuff out and throw it away. I know the feeling.’

  ‘Right,’ she said. ‘I’ll check them out and get an early train down there in the morning.’

  When she had made the necessary arrangements it was time to fight her way on to the busy Northern Line to Archway in a subdued mood that was not improved by the sight of Barnard’s distinctive red Ford Capri parked outside the flat unusually early. She guessed that maybe he had had a bad day coming to terms with the fact that he had been excluded from the murder inquiry into Rod Miller’s death.

  She found him already in the kitchen, with a savoury smell coming from a large pan.

  ‘That smells good,’ she said. She was still slightly surprised every time she saw him toiling in the kitchen. Where she came from, that was strictly woman’s work and not very exciting work at that. Meat and two veg was all her father had ever demanded, on the table whenever he chose to roll in. Until eventually he had ceased to bother rolling in at all.

  ‘Just a sauce for some pasta,’ Barnard said. ‘There’s nothing like Italian food to cheer you up.’

  ‘Do you need cheering up?’ she asked, although she could hear the strain in his voice and see it in his eyes.

  ‘Jackson is really serious about keeping me off the case. I managed to persuade him to let me interview Ma Robertson today, but that’s as far as it’ll go. I told him she wouldn’t be likely to talk to anyone else, which is true enough. But he made me take a minder with me to keep me on the straight and narrow.’ Kate nodded, her own face glum.

  ‘I’m going to Essex again tomorrow. Ken Fellows wasn’t very impressed with the pictures I took on Canvey. Too dark he said. And after that he wants me to trawl through the archives at the local paper in Southend. They’ll probably have pictures we could use of the flood and of that new development.’ Barnard left his pan and picked up a bottle of Chianti in a raffia basket and waved it in Kate’s direction.

  ‘Want some?’ he asked as he got two glasses out of the cupboard.

  ‘Why not?’ she said. He sat down on a tall stool at the breakfast bar and looked at her consideringly.

  ‘You could do something for me if you’re going to the local rag,’ he said. ‘You could look up their coverage of the robbery Greenwood told us about, and any others that were connected. Jackson reckons that if Rod Miller was one of the suspects, Ray Robertson could well have been involved as well. And if that’s true, Ray might have had a motive for killing him, even after all this time. I think it’s nonsense myself, but there might be something in the reports of the robberies and the trial that would give me a clue. Could you bring me the cuttings?’

  ‘You’re not going to give up on this, then?’ She tried to keep her voice light but could not pretend she wasn’t worried. He shrugged.

  ‘I won’t step on the murder team’s toes,’ he said. ‘But if I can track Ray down, I will. The longer he stays below the radar the more suspicious it’s going to look. I don’t want to see his face on the front of the Globe. Ray was good to me when we were kids, kept that paranoid brother of his off my back. I owe him.’

  ‘It was a long time ago,’ Kate said.

  ‘I know,’ Barnard said. ‘I promise I’ll be careful. Will you help me, Kate? I don’t think I can do it on my own.’

  SIX

  Kate O’Donnell had finished taking her second set of photographs on Canvey Island by lunchtime, this time in fitful watery sunshine which she hoped would satisfy Ken’s demand for greater clarity. She strolled past the Red Cow, decided against indulging in one of their stale cheese sandwiches, and made her way back to Benfleet, crossing the bridge from the island with few regrets. As she stood on the station platform for ten minutes waiting for the Southend train, she smelled the salt on the breeze and thought nostalgically of the Mersey ferry that used to take Liverpool families across the water to New Brighton. She had made an appointment to meet the picture librarian at the East Anglia News and didn’t quite know what to expect.

  The library turned out to be a rambling warren in a semi-basement where issues of the paper were stacked in precarious-looking heaps held together by wooden clamps on broad shelves marked with inky labels according to the year of publication, the newsprint yellowing with age and the stacks looking more precarious with each year further back they went. Cuttings on specific subjects were packed into cardboard folders and she seriously wondered how anyone could find anything in the apparent jumble. She gazed around in search of assistance, but when a tall thin man with straggly grey hair, thick-lensed glasses and an expression of puzzlement glanced in her direction it was clear he was not expecting her. He ran a hand through his hair, which looked almost as dusty as his groaning shelves.

  ‘Are you Frank Garside?’ Kate asked.

  ‘No, dear, I’m not,’ the man said. ‘I’m Bob Little, the librarian. Can I help you? Are you here about the filing job? If so you should be upstairs, not down here.’

  Kate flashed him her most brilliant smile.

  ‘No,’ she said sweetly. ‘My name’s Kate O’Donnell. I made an appointment to see Frank about some picture research I’m doing. I’m a photographer with a picture agency in Soho. We’re working on something about the East Coast floods.’

  Little looked somewhat nonplussed by her explanation.

  ‘I’ve never met a lady photographer before,’ he said. Kate bit back a retort about life obviously being very sheltered in Southend and forced another smile.

  ‘Is Mr Garside here?’ she asked.

  ‘Not yet,’ Little said. ‘He rang to say he’d had a puncture and would be late in. Do you want to wait for him?’ Kate glanced at the stacked files.

  ‘I have to or my boss won’t be best pleased,’ she said. ‘Perhaps I could look at some of your editions from 1953? It would give me an idea of what pictures you had back then.’ Little looked slightly relieved at the suggestion.

  ‘That sounds like a good idea,’ he said, obviously keen to rid himself of any responsibility for her. He shuffled towards the back of the stacks and with slow deliberation began to assemble the unwieldy files for the year of the flood.

  ‘Of course it happened early in the year,’ he said, ‘so you won’t need to go too far through. Though there was a lot of activity for months afterwards, rehousing people who’d lost their homes, rebuilding the sea defences, all that. You have a browse, dear. I’m sure Frank won’t be long.’

  Kate set to work, glancing only quickly at the flood reporting and looking instead for any coverage of the armed robbery at the post office that the police believed Rod Miller had been involved in. It was not difficult to find. Both the robbery itself, in January, and the trial of three men in the autumn of the same year had been splashed across the front page of the paper. Sam Dexter, described as a farmer from Foulness, Sid Barrett – better known as Bomber and obviously something of a criminal celebrity in Essex – and a man called Bert Flanagan, described as a showman, had been arrested and charged soon after the robbery and tried after the flood.

  Bob Little took no further notice of her, pottering around in the further recesses of his dim and dusty kingdom and making himself coffee in a corner containing a kettle and a collection of grubby-looking mugs. Kate wondered if she would be offered a cup but to her relief no offer was forthcoming. It was another half hour before another person entered the library – as short and plump as Little was tall and thin, but the same
sort of age and with the same look of slightly harried anxiety. He bustled over to her as she closed the file she was looking at and put her notebook away in her bag.

  ‘You must be Miss O’Donnell,’ the new arrival said, holding out his hand. ‘Frank Garside. So sorry I’m late, so sorry. I had to mend a puncture. Some little hooligan is going around letting tyres down and running away with the valves as a bit of fun. It’s the third time this month. Bike locks don’t deter them, you know.’

  Kate took in this tale of woe, slightly taken aback at the revelation that he was talking about a bicycle rather than a car. Local newspapers were obviously run on a shoestring in Essex.

  ‘Come into the picture store,’ Garside said cheerily. ‘I’ve got better lights in there. But you’ve been looking at the files, that’s good. So you know what we were using back then. Of course there were very few pictures of the night itself. Too dark and no one had time to take photographs. It wasn’t until daylight that we got any real idea of what had happened. And some places were cut off for days. They had to go out to Foulness by boat, not expecting any survivors …’

  He led the way into his sanctum and handed her the files of the night of the surge and its devastating aftermath – black-and-white images of death and destruction, rescue and escape, almost every picture a frozen drama that she felt she would never forget. Kate spent more than an hour going through the prints and with difficulty selected a couple of dozen that she thought would interest Ken Fellows. She carried them over to Frank Garside tentatively, almost afraid of the power of the images she had selected.

  ‘Could you let us have copies of these?’ she asked. ‘Do you still have the negatives?’

  ‘It’ll be plates in most cases, we were still using those massive cameras back then. They might have moved on in Fleet Street and such by that time, but down here in the sticks we were way behind. You’d have had difficulty carrying one of those great things around. But the answer is yes, we should still be able to give your agency prints. Why don’t you take the ones that interest you back to London and get your boss to have a look, then let us know what he would like to use?’