‘Oh no. He threatened Dougie and they fought, but he didn’t kill him. He’d never do that. The problem was that Dougie had changed. He had a new interest, I expect, outside the world of parties and fast cars. He’d found something. Something of his own. Something he cared about, I guess. Whatever it was, that caused friction because their whole adult lives and even in late childhood they’d stuck together like glue, not a hair’s breadth between them. There was trouble in paradise.’
Vesta put her head to one side. She was about to ask another question when the café door opened and a bell chimed. The young man who entered was unremarkable in every way. He headed straight for their table.
‘Miss Bevan?’
‘Yes.’
He reached into his pocket and slid an envelope on to the Formica tabletop. ‘If you’d told me there was a sting on, ma’am, I’d have come the other way,’ he said.
‘A sting?’ Mirabelle questioned him.
‘Round the corner. I spotted at least four policemen.’
‘In uniform?’
‘No. Plain clothes, but obviously trained by the Met, rather than us. There’s a van parked just off the main road with more men in it.’
Mirabelle’s eyes darted. She gestured him to sit down. ‘I better have a look.’ She got to her feet. ‘Would you stay with Mrs Lewis for a few moments?’
The man removed his hat and dropped into a chair.
‘Would you like a cuppa?’ Vesta offered.
‘Actually, I’m parched.’
Out on the street, Mirabelle walked smartly to the corner and hovered, taking in the scene. Most people would hardly have noticed but there were men placed at various intervals. One was casually smoking a cigarette in a doorway, another stood in a first-floor window, just far enough away from the glass, half hidden by a curtain. Judging by the way they had positioned themselves, they seemed focused on a jewellery shop halfway up the street. Mirabelle walked towards it. She loitered at the window examining a tray of diamond and emerald brooches. Her mother had a fondness for emeralds. Through the window, behind the display, the shop appeared empty of customers. A young girl sat on a high stool brushing a velvet pad before she arranged half a dozen gold watches on it. Velvet, Mirabelle thought. That was it. Of course. The story was slowly coming together. Small clues. Things she’d noticed but not understood. She clicked open the door and the girl jumped to her feet.
‘Good afternoon.’
‘Yes, miss.’ The girl came forward. ‘Can I help you?’
‘In the window there is an emerald and diamond brooch – might I look at it, please?’
‘Of course.’
As the girl went to retrieve the pad, Mirabelle peered towards the back of the shop where an open archway revealed a safe crowned with a couple of decorative porcelain clocks, a Sèvres vase and a pile of papers. To the side there was a set of steep stairs.
‘Is there more jewellery upstairs?’
‘No, miss. That’s just our workshop and the office.’ The girl placed the pad of brooches on the counter. ‘Which one was it?’
Mirabelle pointed to a modern geometric design. ‘That’s a beautiful emerald in the centre – nice colour,’ the girl commented as she pulled it out. ‘Would you like to try it on?’
Mirabelle was about to reach for the brooch when the door to the shop opened and McGregor strode in. ‘Darling!’ he sounded bluff. ‘We were supposed to have a bite of lunch before we went shopping.’
‘I couldn’t help it. This caught my eye,’ Mirabelle batted back.
‘I’m starving. Positively ravenous.’ The superintendent grinned. ‘Buying something like this takes time – we want to consider it properly. Why don’t we eat first and come back later?’
‘Well, we’re here now, Alan.’ Mirabelle pinned the brooch to the tweed of her coat. She wanted to see how desperate he was to get her out of there. ‘Of course, I’d probably only wear it in the evening,’ she said casually.
McGregor put his arm around her waist firmly. ‘I’m sure the lady will put it aside. Just for a couple of hours.’
Mirabelle handed back the jewellery. ‘Oh all right.’ She let him rush her out.
As the door closed, McGregor guided her sternly up the pavement, over the road and into a public house almost opposite. It was hardly the West End. Inside, there were no tables and the walls and ceiling were stained ochre with cigarette smoke. The barman sat sullenly smoking as he fidgeted with his pouch of tobacco and stared into the distance, only occasionally seeming to notice the policeman who was stationed behind the door.
‘We don’t serve women,’ he said gruffly.
‘She doesn’t want to be served,’ McGregor snapped, pushing Mirabelle into the snug. Inside, Charles Mayhew got to his feet.
‘What are you doing here?’ McGregor couldn’t contain himself.
‘Same as you. I’m on the trail of the Beaumonts. Or should that be Michael Crowe? When I realised there was a sting in place, I assumed it was you. I went into the shop because it seemed the easiest way to make contact. I didn’t know where you were watching from. It’s better we share information. Isn’t that what we agreed?’
McGregor snorted angrily.
‘Miss Bevan, isn’t it?’ Charles Mayhew offered his hand. Mirabelle shook it. ‘I saw you at the inn in Goodwood,’ he said. ‘Superintendent McGregor assured me that you had no interest in this matter.’
‘Did he? Gosh. I can’t imagine why.’
Mayhew checked his watch. Behind him, the etched window of the snug overlooked the jeweller’s. The shop could be easily viewed between the opaque strips of glass. ‘I’m afraid we can’t have you on-board,’ he said. ‘We’re all set up. We’ve put in months of work. Eighteen months in fact. What you did was very dangerous, walking into the shop like that. You might have spoiled our whole operation. If Mr Crowe arrived, even had he seen you in the street, he would have been suspicious.’
Mirabelle ignored this point. ‘When did the Beaumonts first come to your attention, Mr Mayhew?’
‘Almost two years ago and quite by chance. The Mount Pleasant sorting office came across a package Mrs Crowe had sent from Nairobi.’
‘Did it contain diamonds?’
‘Very good. It happens now and then – an upper-class woman buys luxury goods on holiday and posts them home. Mostly the women don’t even realise that there is tax due. We pick up the parcels coming in and bill them. In this case, it was careless of Mrs Crowe. When we realised how often the Beaumonts visited Kenya, we decided to keep an eye on them. The scale turned out to be rather astonishing. I still don’t understand, given how many diamonds her brother and husband have smuggled into the country, why Mrs Crowe bothered with that paltry packet. I’m just glad that she did.’
‘My suspicion is that she feels left out, Mr Mayhew. They don’t appear to let either Mrs Crowe or her mother in on much.’
Mayhew shifted, his eyes darting to the street. He ran his hand through his shock of blond hair. ‘Maybe,’ he said.
‘You’ll be glad to get Crowe in custody. I imagine it was his idea in the first place. He’s the one who is from Africa, after all.’
‘Yes. When Michael Crowe met Dougie Beaumont during their National Service, he must have realised the possibilities. Diamonds are readily available in Uganda and easy to bring into British Kenya. Over there it’s cheap, but here – the stones are worth between fifteen and twenty times the going rate if you can get them in to Europe. When Dougie established himself on the racing circuit they found a way to do that in. It took us a while to figure out how they were doing it. We searched the car covertly on two occasions and didn’t find anything. ’
‘How did they do it?’
‘In the sump oil. They’re clever, I’ll give them that. And dangerous. Crowe in particular.’
‘I’d say he met his match in Elrick Beaumont. He probably married Enid for good measure – to give him leverage.’
‘It certainly made it all very tidy. I must say. Quite some racket.�
��
‘It will be difficult for the ladies. Losing their men like this – at once. Beaumont and Highton dead and now you’re going to arrest Crowe.’
‘And Elrick Beaumont. Don’t leave him out. I have men on the way to the Commons now. We’ve been following the Beaumont clan for a long time, both here and abroad. Elrick kept his hands relatively clean – let his boys do the dirty work but we can make something stick. Some of the places Mr Beaumont went, he’d have been hard pushed not to realise what his sons were up to.’
‘Adopted son. Son. And son-in-law.’
‘Quite.’
‘When did you realise, Miss Bevan?’
‘About the diamonds? Half an hour ago when I looked at the map. Hatton Garden, you see. I mean, what else would you be selling if you based yourself near here? And then I remembered George Highton had a velvet tablecloth.’
‘What?’
‘Dark velvet – he’d have needed it to sort the stones.’ Mirabelle cast her eyes towards the shop over the road. ‘Is that where they make the sale?’
‘Yes. They arrive twice a year, as far as we can make out. Spring and autumn. Regular as clockwork.’
‘Do you have someone inside?’
‘No. It’s almost impossible. They’re all Jewish, you see.’
‘The dealers?’
‘Some of them don’t even speak English. It’s like a foreign country in the back rooms. You wouldn’t know you were in London.’
‘Mr Crowe generally brings a translator, I imagine.’
Mayhew nodded.
‘He has his chauffeur with him today, though. His regular guy seems to have let him down.’
‘Lucky for him, given the circumstances.’
Mayhew leaned forwards as finally there was a movement on the street and Michael Crowe turned the corner with his driver beside him. They must have abandoned the Rolls somewhere and walked. Crowe was wearing dark glasses and carrying a tan briefcase with a large brass lock.
‘They’ll get away with the money, won’t they? I mean the money they’ve spent?’
‘There’s no time to explain now, Miss Bevan. I’m sorry.’ Mayhew flicked the light switch on and off in the snug and the man in the doorway across the road fell in ahead of Mr Crowe just as another fellow appeared from nowhere and fell in behind the driver. McGregor turned to leave.
‘You’re supposed to be investigating a murder, Alan. Two murders, in fact. And neither of those crimes were about this. I mean, the diamonds. All this is incidental – you do realise that? Crowe has an alibi, doesn’t he? And so does Elrick Beaumont.’
‘We’ll get to that,’ McGregor said, as he made for the door. ‘Please, Mirabelle, just stay here.’
Mayhew followed him. She watched through the window as, across the road, Crowe paused at the entrance to the jewellery shop. The street was coming alive with plain-clothes policemen. One man grabbed the driver, who lashed out. Crowe realised what was happening too late and tried to run, but he was apprehended before he could make it as far as the other side of the street. Mirabelle leaned against the window as a police van rounded the corner and Mayhew grabbed Crowe’s leather briefcase and sprang the lock with a penknife. From his expression it was clear that he found what he had expected – a large consignment of diamonds, sieved from the sump oil of Dougie Beaumont’s car the day before in Harrison’s garage. Plain-clothes policemen were now pouring into the jewellery shop, disappearing through the arch at the back and heading upstairs to apprehend whoever Crowe had intended to meet. On the pavement, Crowe looked furious. Mirabelle didn’t like to think what he’d do if you crossed him – if you weren’t a policeman, that is. ‘They didn’t kill Dougie because of this,’ she said, low, under her breath. ‘Nor George either. This is money – that’s all.’ But there was no one to hear her. Outside, McGregor slipped handcuffs on to Crowe’s wrists, still miles away from solving either of the murders. There was no point in waiting. As Mirabelle left the snug, the barman looked up with a sneer.
‘Is there another way out of here?’ she asked.
He gestured towards the rear. ‘There’s a lane out there,’ he said, ‘past the outhouse.’
‘Thanks,’ said Mirabelle. ‘I hope they’re paying you well.’
Chapter 20
Give every man your ear but few your voice
It always amazed Mirabelle how contained trouble could be. Something might happen on one street and yet, round the corner it was business as usual, people unaware, going about their business. Even when alarm bells set off, pedestrians merely looked up as if the sound was falling from the sky. If they couldn’t see anything, they just carried on. Mirabelle slipped back into the café where the woman was still reading her book, the tramp was still nursing his cold coffee and Vesta was sitting with tears streaming down her face at the table with the man Mr Golding had sent with the parcel. The poor fellow looked embarrassed. In his line of work, people seldom showed any kind of emotion. Mirabelle removed a linen handkerchief from her bag and handed it to Vesta.
‘You opened it, then?’
Vesta nodded but couldn’t get out any words. A sob emanated from her lips. Mirabelle sat down and shuffled through the first few photographs. Her face betrayed nothing but she didn’t want to continue.
‘Thank you,’ she said to the man. ‘You better get on.’
He got to his feet gratefully and left, the bell attached to the door clanging behind him. Mirabelle deposited a few coins on the table to pay for the largely uneaten sandwiches. ‘We better get on too,’ she said gently.
‘Where?’ Vesta managed to get out with a sniff.
‘It’s not far.’
Back on the street, Vesta at least managed to stop sobbing. She followed as Mirabelle cut around the block and into Bleeding Heart Yard. The shutters on George Highton’s place were open and the lights downstairs were on. Inside, they could make out movement and it appeared that several of the books on the shelves in the sitting room had been removed. Mirabelle knocked on the door and Vesta hovered behind her. The girl’s fingers were quivering as she clung to the handkerchief, wrenching it between her fingers.
‘I don’t understand,’ she said.
Mirabelle turned. There wasn’t time to explain and besides she wasn’t sure where to start. ‘It’s just as I said, Dougie Beaumont changed. He found something else. Something important.’ She held up the envelope. ‘These pictures shook up everything, you see.’
Vesta was about to ask a question but the door opened and Reuben Vinestock stood in the frame. ‘Oh God,’ he said. ‘Not again.’
‘You haven’t found what you’re looking for,’ Mirabelle countered. ‘Which is because I found it earlier.’
Reuben eyed her. ‘Have you got it?’
‘Can we come in?’
Vinestock stood back to allow them to enter. He closed the door behind them.
‘Well?’ he said, uneasily.
‘I’m sorry,’ Mirabelle replied. ‘I didn’t unravel things until now. I still don’t understand it all. If I’d realised I’d have let you know straight away.’
Vinestock held out his hand and Mirabelle passed him the packet. He leafed through the photographs, the low sound of his exhalation punctuating the silence as he took in the images. ‘Thank you,’ he said, eventually.
‘Did they do this? The Beaumonts? Was it them?’ Vesta’s tone was insistent – she sounded angry. The photographs had shocked her.
‘The Beaumonts?’ Vinestock was incredulous. ‘No. The British Government is doing it. The British Army. This is what they are doing to Kenyans who want independence. These are concentration camps, Mrs Lewis.’ He pulled out one of the photographs. ‘Ten years after everyone said “never again” and the gates of Auschwitz were blown open.’ He proffered an image of a thin black woman, standing beside a barbed wire fence, her skin marked with wide sores. ‘The British are supposed to be the good guys. And we’re killing people. Starving the Mau Mau. Shooting them indiscriminately. Every day. Ri
ght now.’
‘Well, we have to do something about it.’ Vesta sniffed, trying not to look at the photograph.
‘I am,’ he said. ‘I’m going to use these photographs as evidence. I’m going to write an exposé.’
‘In the Telegraph?’
‘Don’t be ridiculous. The Telegraph is all for keeping the Mau Mau in their place. They think they’re just Untermensch. Scratch a Tory get a Fascist, remember. No. I’ll set up something under an assumed name with one of the left-wing papers. The Daily Herald, maybe. Someone will take it on. It’s a big story and now I can prove it. If there are photographs, they’ll have to run it.’
‘It’s evidence in the matter of Dougie Beaumont’s murder too, isn’t it?’ Mirabelle cut in.
‘Those bastards.’ Vinestock’s eyes blazed.
‘I don’t understand,’ Vesta said again.
Mirabelle’s eyebrows raised only a fraction as she deferred to Vinestock. His mouth was set hard.
‘Dougie had no idea what was going on until last Christmas when he was back in Kenya and he flew over one of the camps. None of us knew. When he found out, it horrified him, and he immediately wanted to expose what was going on. He was a decent person. The trouble was, George wasn’t. George didn’t think this was any of their business. He reckoned it was too dangerous to get involved and given what’s happened, maybe he was right. Anyway Dougie said if George didn’t want anything to do with what was happening to the Mau Mau, then he didn’t want anything to do with George. He’d made up his mind to go back to Nairobi and get evidence. These pictures. The two of them fought about it for weeks. Dougie said he’d changed. His old life wasn’t enough any more. They spent weeks around Monaco and the South of France bickering. A sunny place for shady people, isn’t that what they call it? The fighting went on and on. When they came back for Goodwood, Dougie moved out of here and then it really got vicious. I think he couldn’t believe George didn’t care, that he wouldn’t help. The two of them had always been inseparable. Last time I spoke to him, Dougie said George didn’t deserve the life he had, if he wouldn’t take responsibility for people like this, people who were in real trouble. They are going to wipe out the Mau Mau. That’s what they’re going to do. The poor buggers don’t stand a chance.’
Operation Goodwood Page 24
