by Laura Wilson
‘All the same age?’
‘I’d say so.’
‘How long did they stay?’
‘I know they was gone by quarter past eight,’ said Alf, ‘because we run out of fags behind the bar so I went out the back for more and I saw the clock in the passage. When I come back, the table was empty.’
‘They got into a van,’ said O’Driscoll. ‘Green delivery van, with the two doors at the back. They all piled in except the one that tripped me. I saw them through the window at the front there.’ Stratton noted this down. He hadn’t seen anything in the results of the house-to-house enquiries from Golborne Road about a green van, but that didn’t mean it hadn’t been there.
‘And Eddy Knight, where did he go?’
‘Came back inside.’
‘Did he?’ Alf looked surprised. ‘I never see him.’
‘He was in the corner there, sitting on the bench.’ O’Driscoll indicated an old-fashioned wooden settle with high sides.
‘Oh, then I wouldn’t. And,’ said Alf, excusing his lack of observation, ‘a whole crowd come in straight after – rushed off my feet, I was.’
‘How long did he stay?’ asked Stratton.
‘Closing time, almost,’ said O’Driscoll. ‘About twenty past ten a man came in and spoke to him.’
‘Did you recognise the man?’
‘Never seen him before. Older than the rest, and he’d be dressed in a fancy suit. Smart, and he’d a big car outside.’
‘What sort of car?’
‘A rich man’s car. Bentley, Daimler …’
‘Bentley, it was,’ interrupted Norris. ‘I’d gone upstairs for a moment and I saw it out the window.’
‘Colour?’
‘Black or dark blue,’ said O’Driscoll. ‘Hard to tell.’
‘Then what happened?’
‘The driver didn’t stop for a drink. He just talked to your man in the corner, and then they left.’
‘Together?’
O’Driscoll nodded. ‘In the car.’
‘Which direction?’
‘That way.’ He pointed to the left.
‘And when the main group left, before, which way did they go?’
‘The same.’
‘Did you hear them say anything about where they were going?’
‘The only thing one of them said was they were going to find some niggers.’
‘Which one said that?’
‘He’d be the dark-haired one – that modern style the young ones wear now.’
‘Did he – did any of them – say anything else about that?’
‘No, they just laughed.’
‘Probably a joke,’ put in the landlord. ‘They’re friendly enough, those boys.’
‘Did they have any weapons on them?’ Stratton asked O’Driscoll. ‘Knives, anything like that?’
‘Not that I could see,’ said the Irishman.
‘We don’t have anything like that here,’ put in Norris. ‘I wouldn’t stand for it.’
‘Do you ever have coloured people coming in?’
‘Not here. Got their own places, haven’t they? I’ve nothing against them, of course,’ he added hurriedly. ‘Live and let live, I say, long as they behave themselves.’
‘Sounds as if your customers wouldn’t like it if they did come in,’ said Stratton.
‘This is a friendly house,’ said Norris. ‘We never have any trouble – do we, lads?’
Alf nodded in vigorous agreement. O’Driscoll, Stratton noticed, wasn’t nearly so certain.
CHAPTER TWENTY
‘So,’ said Matheson, ‘we’ve got Eddy Knight, Ronnie Mills and Gordon Baxter, all from the White City Estate, in the General Smuts pub, along with Tony Pearson and Fred Larby and possibly one or two others. And then there’s the matter of whoever came to fetch them in the delivery van and the chap who came for Knight later on.’
‘Unlikely that he gave him a lift home,’ said Stratton, ‘seeing as it can’t be more than two minutes’ walk, and he’d been hanging around in the pub by himself for a couple of hours.’
‘But not drawing attention to himself by buying a drink or giving the Irish chap a hard time of it,’ concluded Matheson. ‘It’s not much to go on, but it’s a start, and of course there’s the matter of the witness who may have recognised one of them during the assault on Johnson.’
‘She denies it,’ said Stratton, ‘but according to the other girl, she may have said either “Johnny” or “Tommy”. Knight didn’t mention either of those names when I asked who was with him at the pub, but then he only mentioned four others – so that’s five including him – and the potman said there were six or seven of them. There’s a Johnny and a Tommy on PC Dobbs’s list of known troublemakers.’ Scanning the list of names again, he said, ‘Thinking about it, Ronnie sounds quite a lot like Johnny, so Mills might be a possibility, although the witness denies that she knows him … I’ll look into the other two first, though.’
‘Good idea,’ said Matheson. ‘Anything more on Hampton?’
‘Not yet, sir.’
‘Pity. The last thing we want is to give the impression that we’re concentrating on this case to the detriment of the other.’
‘I’m beginning to wonder, sir, if the two aren’t connected – tit for tat, as it were.’
‘One of ours, one of theirs, you mean?’ Matheson rubbed his chin wearily. ‘Bloody hell! That’s all we need. Things are bad enough at the moment without us stirring them up for no good reason, so for Christ’s sake let’s try and get a bit more corroboration before we start hauling people in. Just remember: we’re sitting on a bloody big powder keg and the last thing we want is for it to blow up in our faces.’
*
Mr Williams’s knuckles had a raw, purplish appearance, much like the skinned rabbits that hung from hooks on the rack behind his head and the scraps of meat he was feeding into the large mincer at the back of his shop. ‘Tommy?’ He straightened up and wiped his hands on the pink-stained front of his striped apron. He shook his head so that his florid jowls wobbled and a stub of pencil fell from its perch behind one large red ear and plopped into a bowl of liver on the counter. Retrieving it, he said, ‘He’s not here now.’ The accent was faintly Welsh, so that ‘here’ came out as ‘yere’.
‘Where is he?’
‘In Wales. His grandfather died, see, and we went to the funeral. I’m his uncle,’ he added. ‘He stayed behind – helping his grand-mother on the farm, see?’
‘When was this?’
‘Last week. He’ll be back on Monday. Not in trouble, is he? Tommy’s a bit of a tearaway, but he’s a good worker.’
‘No, you’re all right.’ Stratton made a hasty note in his book. ‘Can you tell me where Arthur’s Timber Yard is?’
‘Left out of the shop, and right at the end, and you’re there. After Johnny Andrews, are you? I’ve told Tommy to keep away from him. He’s been up on a charge before now – stole a car, see? But you’ll know all about that.’
*
Outside, Stratton checked PC Dobbs’s list. Against Johnny Andrews’s name, he’d written an address in Bramley Road and TDA, 6 months’ conditional discharge.
Andrews was a skinny youth of about seventeen with acne crusting his cheeks and chin. Stratton found him leaning against the freshly sawn ends of a pile of planks, smoking, his clothes covered by an oversized brown warehouseman’s coat. Clearly nervous, he reluctantly admitted that he’d been in the General Smuts with the others, and left with them in the car. ‘But they dropped me off, see?’
‘Who was in the van?’
‘All of them from the pub except Eddy.’
‘Names?’
‘Tony Pearson, Fred Larby, Gordon Baxter,’ Andrews counted them off on his fingers. ‘Ronnie Mills, me … I think that’s the lot.’
‘And who was driving?’
‘Tommy Halliwell.’
Stratton jotted down the new name. ‘Was he in the pub with you?’
Andrews shook
his head.
‘Does the vehicle belong to him?’
‘Dunno.’
‘What colour was it?’
‘Green. I never seen it before, though.’
‘Do you know where Tommy Halliwell lives?’
‘Near the pub, I think. Don’t know him that well.’
‘On the estate?’
‘That’s right. Heard him saying something about how he lives near Eddy.’
‘Where did they drop you?’
‘Silchester Road, near the Baths.’
‘Why did they drop you off?’
‘Wanted to see my fiancée.’
‘And did you?’
‘Yes. She lives round there. You can ask her, if you like. Ask her mum and dad, an’ all. Went to fetch her, didn’t I?’
‘What time was that?’
‘About half past eight. You ask Pat.’
‘That’s your fiancée, is it?’
‘Yes.’ Andrews felt in his coat pocket, produced a wallet and showed Stratton a photograph of a pretty, round-faced girl. ‘Pat Moorehead. They live on Treadgold Street.’ As Stratton was jotting this down, Andrews continued, ‘I don’t know where they went after, but I don’t want no more trouble.’
‘Why did you think there might be trouble?’
‘The niggers. They’re always taking liberties with us. The other day a pair of them done up one of my friends for no reason at all. I’m not going to get lumbered with that.’
‘You mean, if your mates were out to get their own back?’
Andrews pressed his weight into the wood. ‘Look, I don’t know nothing about it. But this is our place, right? My family’s been here for years. Me and Pat’ll get married in Saint Clement’s Church, just like our mum and dad did, and their mums and dads before them.’
*
Stratton walked past St Clement’s church, which was on the corner of Treadgold Street, on the way to see Pat’s mother. Mrs Moorehead, as round-faced as her daughter, with neat, pink-rinsed curls, stuck her head out of her front window, the white net curtain framing it like a bridal veil. She confirmed that Andrews had, indeed, come to fetch her daughter at about half past eight. Reassuring her that her potential son-in-law wasn’t in any trouble, Stratton made his way back to the station to find an address for Tommy Halliwell.
On the off-chance that Tommy’s parents might have a telephone, Stratton tried the book and was pleased to discover that there was a listing for Halliwell at Canberra House on the White City Estate. Dobbs, who was pensively chewing on one of PC Jellicoe’s rock buns as if it were a particularly solid form of cud, shook his head at the mention of Halliwell’s name. ‘Pretty sure I’ve not come across him, sir, but I’ll check.’ Levering himself out of his chair with a sigh, he shuffled out of the office.
Five minutes later he was back, shaking his head. ‘Must have kept his nose clean, because there’s nothing in the records.’ Sighing, he subsided back into his chair and, with an expression of grim determination, broke off another piece of the rock bun.
*
Twenty years ago, Stratton thought, Mrs Halliwell might have been strikingly attractive, but the passage of time had hardened her eyes and turned her skin the colour and texture of cuttlefish. Smoking irritably as she guarded her front door, she informed Stratton, with ill-concealed relish, that her son wasn’t in.
‘Do you know where he is?’
‘He’s out.’ Her mouth closed in a firm line. Give me strength, thought Stratton.
‘Out where?’
‘Out working.’ Eyes narrowed in suspicion, she added, ‘What you want him for, anyway?’
Ignoring this, Stratton said, ‘Where does he work?’
‘He’s a labourer for the North Thames Gas. Could be anywhere.’
‘When’s he likely to be back?’
‘Don’t know.’
‘Does he work Saturdays?’
‘Just the mornings.’
Making a note to come back early the following afternoon, Stratton said, ‘Does he have a van or a car?’
‘Nope.’
‘Does he have a driving licence?’
‘Yes. Got it two months ago, when he turned eighteen.’
‘Do you know where he was the evening before last?’
Without so much as a second’s pause, she shot back, ‘Here, wasn’t he?’
‘Was he?’
‘Yes, he bleedin’ was. Here, with me and his dad.’
‘Can anyone else confirm that?’
‘You saying you don’t believe me? Because we’ve had it up to here with you lot. Always had it in for him. First sign of trouble and you’re round here. “Where is he? What’s he been up to—” ’
‘Mrs Halliwell,’ said Stratton firmly, ‘this isn’t just a matter of a few broken windows. I’m conducting an inquiry into a serious assault on a man who later died, and it’s important you tell me the truth, because if we find out that—’
‘You won’t find out nothing! I’m telling you, he was here with us all the time. Now, if that’s all you’ve come for, you’ve got it, haven’t you?’
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
A burst of raucous laughter made Stratton look up from riffling through the station’s telephone book for Fenella Jones’s number.
‘Don’t I, though?’ The speaker, a thick-set type of around thirty whose name, he thought, was PC Brodie, had been regaling some of the younger coppers with tales of his sexual exploits, most of it, thankfully, in hushed tones. A group of them, centred around PC Dobbs, who didn’t seem to have moved since Stratton had gone out to talk to Mrs Halliwell, were taking the weight off their feet, slurping tea and lobbing bits of PC Jellicoe’s rock buns at each other. ‘Done my National Service in the Far East,’ Brodie continued, ‘and they had all sorts of girls there – Chinks, Eurasians, Wogs, the lot. Lovely, they were – dirt cheap and very obliging, if you know what I mean.’
‘When was that?’ asked Stratton.
‘Forty-eight, sir. Beginning of the Malaya emergency.’
‘Sounds as though you enjoyed yourself.’ Stratton looked pointedly at his watch before reapplying himself to the list of names and addresses. At this mild rebuke, the group got up, slowly and resentfully, and began buttoning up their tunics, talking among themselves.
‘Anyone know how Fleetwood’s doing?’
‘How do you think? You didn’t see the state of him – great gash all down his face, poor sod. I tell you, I’m bloody glad I’m going home.’
‘I don’t know – be a chance to get stuck in.’
‘We ought to leave them to it. Let them fight it out.’
‘If the Government would just do their job and stop them coming over in the first place …’
Deciding he’d had enough for one day, Stratton went to find the Duty Sergeant and see if anyone could be spared the following morning for a house-to-house enquiry about a green delivery van in Golborne Road at the time Johnson was attacked, then went home.
*
Hesitating outside the gate at Lansdowne Road, Stratton took the scrap of paper on which he’d written Fenella’s telephone number out of his trouser pocket. Several times, on the bus, he’d put his hand in to check that it was still there, and now he saw that the pencilled digits were faint and smudged. Still legible, though.
He looked at the house, imagining himself picking up the phone, talking to her … He put his hand on the gate, then stopped. Supposing she knocked him back? No, he’d save it for a bit. He needed to prepare himself – get a breath of fresh air and separate himself from the day. Besides, he’d been neglecting the allotment, and, what with the hot weather, the plants would be parched – if they weren’t dead already. He ought to go and see what could be salvaged. After all, there was still plenty of light.
*
‘Didn’t expect to see you up here.’
Stratton’s brother-in-law Donald was busy watering the rows of wilting leeks and spinach, the lowering evening sun glinting on the speckled dome
of his bald head and his shirtsleeves rolled up to show thickly freckled arms. Three-year-old Tim was tottering down the rows behind his grandfather, concentrating hard on what Stratton guessed must be an imaginary watering can.
‘Bit late for him to be out, isn’t it?’
Don straightened up, one hand rubbing his back. ‘He’s not sleeping. I thought I’d get him out from under Doris’s feet for a bit. It’s too hot, and he’s missing his mum.’
‘How’s she doing?’ Stratton asked, feeling guilty. His niece, Madeleine, was in hospital, having had her appendix removed.
‘She’s fine. Doris went to see her this afternoon – says she’ll be out in a couple of days. Geoff’s away on one of his business trips, so Tim’ll be staying with us till she gets her strength back.’
Tim lurched over to Stratton and, wrapping one arm round his leg, opened his palm to offer a very squashed raspberry. Judging by the state of his face, he’d already consumed quite a few of them himself. ‘That for me?’
Tim nodded solemnly. ‘They’re nice.’
Stratton popped the raspberry into his mouth. ‘So they are.’
‘Grandpa said the lettuces went wrong.’
‘It does look that way,’ said Stratton, glancing at the row of plants which had exploded upwards in a whoosh of skinny, pale leaves. ‘Never mind,’ he said ruffling the boy’s hair. ‘We don’t have to eat them.’
‘Thought you might be too busy to get here,’ said Don.
‘I am a bit.’
‘You look done in. Why don’t you sit down? Ground’s dry enough, and anyway, I’m nearly finished.’
‘Thanks.’ Stratton sank down gratefully. After weeks of no rain the earth around the plot was rock hard, the scuffed grass turning brown. Tim sat down beside him and began rummaging through his jacket pockets. ‘Remind me to buy you a pint.’
‘That’s all right – we eat the stuff too, don’t we? How’s it going?’
Stratton grimaced.
‘That bad, eh?’
‘Bloody awful.’
‘Go on.’
Stratton spent the next few minutes recounting the week’s events, while Don pulled up weeds and Tim amused himself by aligning Stratton’s notebook, wallet, handkerchief, cigarettes, matches and keys in a row at his feet.
