One Fight at a Time

by Jeff Dowson

  Arthur Morrison nodded. Ellie leaned against him for support

  “Suzy will set that in motion,” Zoe said. “I’ll leave her to explain how all this is going to work. I need to go back to chambers, clear my diary and introduce Ed to the team. I will talk to you again tomorrow.”

  *

  The chambers of Fincher Reade and Holborne were situated in All Saints Yard, a small cobbled square off Clare Street, behind the Guildhall. A couple of minutes’ walk from the Assize Courts. The yard was ringed by regency buildings the Luftwaffe had failed to hit.

  Grover had Neil Adkin’s suit over his left arm and he was holding the shoes in his right hand. He stood on the cobblestones and marvelled at the solidness of his surroundings. People walked in and out of the buildings dressed in dark suits, carrying briefcases and envelope files and boxes of envelope files. There was a palpable aura of importance about All Saints Court. The processes of law were going on in these buildings. He located a door with Fincher Reade and Holborne’s brass plate on it. He stretched out the be-suited arm and rang the bell. Ten seconds or so later, the door was opened by a slim redhead with green eyes and a smile that would match Daniel Zampa any day. She stared at the man in front of her, standing at the door like a gentleman’s gentleman about to suggest a change of clothes to his employer. Grover introduced himself. The redhead took the shoes from him and shook the freed hand.

  “We were expecting you,” she said. “I’m Melanie Davis. Please come in.”

  He followed Melanie upstairs to the first floor, admiring her backside in the calf-length tight skirt. She was wearing nylons with seams. She opened a door at the head of the stairs and ushered him into a room dominated by a heavy mahogany table, surrounded by matching armchairs.

  “I’ll take the suit from you,” Melanie said. “I’ll be back in a moment. Sit wherever you like, we don’t stand on ceremony here. Would you like a drink?”

  Grover ordered coffee and Melanie left the room.

  He wandered round behind the chairs, estimating the room to be twenty-five feet, or thereabouts, by fifteen. The senior partners of Fincher Reade and Holborne, going back to 1836, looked down from the walls in substantially carved, gilded frames. There was history here. Clients and adversaries alike could not fail to appreciate it. He surveyed the table. He figured that the most important people sat in the two large armchairs at the head and the foot. So he picked one of the smaller armchairs midway along its length.

  As he sat down, Melanie returned carrying a silver tray. On it a note pad and biro, a silver coffee pot, a silver milk jug, cubes of sugar in a sliver bowl, two cups and saucers and a plate of bourbon biscuits. She walked around the table, nudged the chair opposite Grover backwards with her right leg, put the tray down in the space between them, pulled the chair back into position and sat in it. She smiled again and raised the milk jug. Grover said ‘please’. Melanie dispensed milk and coffee, pushed the tray to her left, took the plate of bourbons from it and placed them in front of Grover.

  “I’m the outdoor clerk,” she said.

  Grover was pleased to know this and he smiled at her to prove it. He tasted his coffee. It was good. Freshly brewed. Probably from freshly ground beans too.

  “Zoe is on her way,” Melanie said. “She’ll be five minutes at most.”

  *

  The Crime Scene Team was the same outfit which had done the work at 5 Blenheim Villas. With a Firearms Officer added. Baldwin, his name was. He held the gun up in a cellophane envelope for Bridge and Goole to see. Black, short barrelled, with a textured handgrip. He produced the ejected magazine, sealed in another bag.

  “It’s a semi-automatic MAS-35. French. Manufactured in thousands from the mid-thirties. Has an eight round single stacked magazine, using 7.6mm cartridges.” He held the two packets side by side. “It unclips from the base of the grip. One shot has been fired.”

  “Where would he get that gun from?” Goole asked.

  Baldwin dropped his arms.

  “They’re all over the place. They were issued to everybody but the Germans and the Soviets after D Day. And like all handguns at the end of the war, two thirds of them never went back to the armourers who issued them. He could have picked it up on the black market for thirty, forty quid.”

  “And the cartridges?” Goole asked him.

  “Just the same. Boxes of them around.”

  The SOCO stepped to Bridge’s shoulder and held up a third cellophane bag, this one smaller than a packet of ha’penny chews. There was a bullet in it.

  “This went into his chest, through his heart in all probability and out of his back, below his shoulder blades. We dug it out of the back of the car seat.”

  He passed the envelope to Baldwin, who held it up at eye level and scrutinised it. The SOCO remembered something else.

  “This belonged to the deceased,” he said and handed Goole a wallet, crafted in soft Italian leather. “Expensive, I would say.”

  Goole looked inside the wallet. He found a driving licence and took a long look at it.

  “Now that’s interesting,” he said.

  “What is?” Bridge asked.

  “Surely he couldn’t afford a Triumph Mayflower and a pocket full of Italian leather?”

  “And Oxford shoes,” said the SOCO.

  Bridge looked at them both.

  “Who couldn’t?”

  “Robbie McAllister couldn’t,” Goole said.

  “Christ. Is that who it is?” the SOCO asked. “I thought he looked familiar.”

  Bridge was not finding the double act the slightest bit interesting.

  “Gentlemen. Who is Robbie McAllister?”

  Goole turned to him.

  “He’s a welterweight going nowhere. He gets hurt easily and his last three outings are best forgotten. He fights at the bottom of the card. No money in that whatsoever.”

  “I saw his last bout,” the SOCO said. “He won on points. Just.”

  Goole handed the wallet to his boss.

  “McAllister belongs to Roly Bevan’s stable.”

  “Does he now?”

  “Two bodies within four days,” Goole said. “Both victims associated with Roly Bevan. Is there a pattern here, do we think?”

  Bridge gave the wallet back to Goole. Stuck his hands into his trouser pockets and stared at the Triumph.

  “There’s not much more we can tell you here Chief Inspector,” the SOCO said. “In fact we’ll be away in ten minutes or so.”

  Bridge de-pocketed his left hand and looked at his watch. 11.25.

  “Okay,” he said. “Thanks.

  *

  In the meeting room, Zoe and Melanie had finished briefing Grover on procedures and rules. He had insisted that any work which needed to be done was on his dime. No chambers or solicitor’s bills were to go to the Morrisons. In turn, Zoe had agreed to work off the books, until Harry’s Assize Court appearance. And that Melanie’s hours would be billed to miscellaneous chambers expenses.

  “We can get as far as nine days from now under this arrangement,” Zoe said. “But if we go to trial, then every hour’s work will have to be accounted for. Our mission therefore, is to ensure that we don’t go to trial. Or if we must, we have built a case we can win. Quickly.”

  There was a long silence in the room. Then Zoe stood up.

  “Okay,” she said. “Now, I have to go and square all that with Neil.”

  She closed the door behind her. Melanie looked at Grover.

  “So, in a nutshell... However this pans out, stay out of the clutches of Messrs Bridge and Goole.”

  Grover nodded. If he transgressed without result, he would be back in Wisconsin long before Harry appeared at the Assizes. And probably in handcuffs.

  They remained in the meeting room. Melanie ordered lunch. Coffee and sandwiches; the coffee once again freshly roasted, the sandwiches neatly presented in quarter slice sizes. Brie sandwiches and smoked salmon sandwiches. Grover wondered where the brie and the salmon came from. There
was obviously no iron fist of austerity clamped around Fincher Reade and Holborne.

  “The police believe they have their killer,” Melanie said. “Which means they have no reason to continue their investigation. Which in turn clears the field for you, as long as you don’t provoke them into reviving their interest. So, if I may I repeat?... Don’t stray and don’t poke about unnecessarily. Do you want that last sandwich?”

  She nodded at the big oval trencher on the table.

  “Knock yourself out Melanie,” Grover said.

  She reached for the smoked salmon sandwich.

  “Please call me Mel,” she said.

  He watched her eat for a moment or two, then picked up the coffee pot and shared what remained in it between his cup and hers. Something occurred to him.

  “We don’t know anything about Nick Hope, except that he’s dead and he was a friend of Harry’s.”

  Mel dropped the sandwich onto her plate, wiped her fingers on her serviette, rifled through a file of papers and handed a sheet of A4 to Grover.

  “All we know so far,” she said.

  She finished off the sandwich while he read the notes about Nick Hope’s mother and the boy’s years in St Christopher’s orphanage.

  “Not much is it?” Grover said. “But it’s somewhere to start.”

  “Do you know where the orphanage is?”

  “I’ll find it.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Grover’s street recce forty-eight hours earlier paid off. With minimal help from the street map, he found his way to St Christopher’s without getting lost. It was a monstrous, gothic edifice, originally built in 1846 as a City Workhouse; all archways and narrow, leaded windows and a motto above the front porch God’s Providence is our Inheritance.

  A man in a dark blue boiler suit was washing the steps underneath the legend with a long handled mop. He swept it across the top step, lifted it, dropped it into the cradle in the tin bucket, rotated the mop to squeeze it dry and slapped it down onto the step again. He finished with a left and right flourish.

  Grover drove Salome into the courtyard in front of the building and climbed out. The man in the boiler suit swung round and stared at the jeep with some interest. Grover switched off the ignition and looked at him. He was five feet ten or eleven and broad shouldered. He had no hair to speak of. What was left, was cut short round his ears and long at the back. It made him look as if his neck had stretched. He had dark blue eyes, matched by dark blue five o’clock shadow. He obviously needed to shave twice a day.

  Following his examination of the jeep, the man turned his attention to Grover. Looked him up and down, without a smile or a welcome. Grover gave the man time to complete his assessment, then explained that he wanted to talk to the person in charge.

  “I thought all you Americans had gone home.”

  He sounded like he was short of breath. Grover offered his best smile.

  “Not all of us, not yet.” He nodded at the shiny steps. “You must be the caretaker.”

  The man put the mop back into the bucket and leant the handle against the stone door frame.

  “You’ll want the Manager then,” he said helpfully.

  “Where will I find him?”

  The caretaker pointed into gloom of the hall.

  “The Reception Office is the first door on the left.” He looked down at Grover’s shoes. “Please do your best to avoid making marks where I’ve just cleaned.”

  Grover cleared all three steps in one stride and moved into the hall. It was around forty feet long, with a herringbone pattern of brown and green tiles running along the floor towards the huge window at the end. There was a row of chandeliers hanging from the cream coloured ceiling and running in the same direction. And a row of big cast iron radiators, painted to match the green on the floor, sitting at intervals along the right hand side wall. Sunshine slanting through the floor to ceiling window at the far end, created a chequered pattern on the floor, which in spite of the caretaker’s industry, failed to make the hall look bright and welcoming.

  The office door was like all the others he could see. Seven feet high and three feet wide, heavily panelled in dark mahogany. He knocked on it and was invited to enter by a cheery female voice.

  Mrs Holland rose from behind her desk, big and wide in a floral patterned dress. She smiled and lit up the room, which was a considerable step forward. Grover told her who he was. She waved him to a bentwood armchair with a battered leather seat and asked what she could do for him.

  “I want to know all you can tell me about a boy who came here during the war. Nicholas Hope.”

  The smile faded, the light in the room dimmed and Mrs Holland sat down again. Not even an ‘oh you’re an American’ this time.

  “Ah,” she said. “Nick yes. The police have already been here. I’m not allowed to tell you anything of course. I will have to pass you on to Mr Baines. Wait a moment if you would.”

  Mrs Holland stood up again and rustled florally to a door in the left hand corner of the room. She knocked, opened the door, stepped into the connecting office and closed the door behind her.

  Grover waited.

  The room was just like a hundred other admin offices he had encountered at home and in Europe. Nothing to exercise the imagination. He shuffled in the seat, tried to get comfortable, decided that was a lost cause and stood up. Just as Mrs Holland returned.

  “Mr Baines will be happy to talk with you,” she said. “This way please.”

  She ushered Grover into the connecting office, stepped back and closed the door behind him.

  Mr Baines was standing in front of his desk. Long and thin and weary. With grey hair and dark eyes framed by dark rimmed spectacles. He looked familiar. Why the hell was that? Grover wondered.

  “Mr Grover,” he said.

  He pointed to what looked like a slightly more comfortable bentwood chair. Both men sat down in synch, and put an end to the office choreography.

  “I was sorry to hear about Nicholas,” he said.

  “What can you tell me about him?” Grover asked.

  “You’re an American I see.”

  Grover let that pass and simply nodded. Baines attempted a smile but did not quite make it.

  “I really shouldn’t tell you anything,” he said. “However, I can confirm what you already know. Nicholas was in our care for a while and is no longer.”

  “He’s no longer anything, Mr Baines.”

  Grover watched for a change in Baines face. There was none. Not the slightest flicker. Grover changed tack.

  “I appreciate your reluctance to talk about him,” he said. “So, I will give you some information to start the ball rolling. Then perhaps we can trade.”

  Again there was no reaction from behind the desk. Grover waited. After some internal consideration, Baines nodded a response.

  “Very well.”

  “I work for the law firm, Fincher Reade and Holbourne. Perhaps you’ve heard of them.”

  Now some interest from Baines. Something which could be interpreted as the source of some admiration. Almost.

  “Yes indeed.”

  Grover was up to speed now.

  “We are representing the man the police have arrested for the murder of Nick,” he said. “Turns out he was a close friend.”

  Baines managed to look a little perturbed at this.

  “Did he do it? The murder.”

  “He says he didn’t and we believe him.”

  “Ah…”

  “I would like you to tell me about Nick’s background. There may be something in there, somewhere, which will help us to learn more about his relationship with our client.”

  “I see...”

  “And as you no longer have any duty of care for Nick, I’m hoping you can agree to help us.”

  Baines suddenly became animated. He stretched out his arms, pressed the heels of his hands on the edge of his desktop. He extended his fingers and began drumming with them on the inset leather. Grover observed
all his. Then Baines stopped, decision made.

  “Nicholas came here, long before I did. In December 1938. When he was nine years old. After his mother was killed in a road accident.”

  “No father?”

  “None.”

  “Grandparents?”

  “In London. As I understood the situation, Nicholas was born illegitimate. His grandparents refused to recognise the child and washed their hands of their daughter. She moved to Bristol after he was born, to stay with a friend. She found a flat and set up home. One night she left Nicholas with her friend to go dancing. She was knocked down by a car outside the Clarion Hall in Old Market, while she was looking for the man who had said he would take her home.”

  “And Nick came here?”

  “A week or so later. We found out about the grandparents when we talked with the friend. We contacted them and they did not respond. We got in touch with Barnardos in London. They sent a charity worker to see the grandparents. They refused to accept responsibility.”

  “And that was it?”

  “Yes, I’m afraid so.”

  Baines had no more to say, but he leaned forward across his desk as if he expected Grover to go on.

  “What sort of child was Nick?”

  Baines sat up straight again.

  “Unruly,” he said. “Difficult. And angry.”

  “At what?”

  “The world, Mr Grover. He was deeply unhappy. No surprise about that of course, but...”

  The narrative tailed away. Grover waited for Baines to continue, but he seemed to have closed up. He dropped his chin and stared down the front of his jacket. The silence began to fill. He was obviously struggling with some issue. Grover waited, leaving Baines with his problem. Suddenly Baines wound into action. He got to his feet, walked over to the big leaded window and looked across the yard at the building next door. With his back to the room, he dropped his head again. Grover decided to make him more uncomfortable.

  “Still here Mr Baines. Not going anywhere.”

  Baines sighed and turned back to face the room. At which point, Grover realised why the man was familiar. He had seen him at El Paradis. Baines stood stock still, keeping the distance between himself and his visitor.