Riley stared him in the eye. “That’s where you come in, Frank. I do the digging — you watch my back.”
He returned her stare for a few moments, eyes blank. Outside, a van door slammed and a man laughed. It seemed to galvanise Palmer into a reaction. He shook his head. “Sorry. Can’t help you.”
Riley stared at him. “Why not?”
“I’m busy. Permanently.”
Chapter 6
It took Riley an hour on the phone to discover that London was suffering a shortage of willing, experienced men. She was down to three names and fast losing heart: two like Frank Palmer — one-man shows — the third an agency. So far, none had shown any great enthusiasm for the job. Only the agency had admitted any knowledge of the two dead men, and the man she had spoken to had hinted a warning about going ahead with the piece. He promised to get back to her after conferring with his colleagues.
She kicked off her shoes and jacket and padded around her Fulham flat seeking inspiration from the notes she had been given by Brask. The file on McKee and Cage was still depressingly thin and she felt an unusual lack of control; normally she had no problem in planning her strategy. Damn Brask and his warning!
There was a scratching sound at the door and Riley stopped prowling and let in the neighbour’s cat. The animal had decided she was worthy of his company a few days after she had moved in and took to calling whenever he was bored or hungry. Buying a tin of cat food hadn’t been her best ever idea, but it was cheaper than sharing her infrequent television dinners. Anyway, she had always been a sucker for strays.
She spooned out meat into a saucer and, as he ate, powered up her laptop and opened a new document. She typed everything she knew into the file, mind-mapping and adding a few random thoughts for expansion later, before running dry and closing down the machine in frustration. There were times when pushing too hard resulted in brain-fatigue and a blank screen.
“What am I going to do, cat?” she asked. The cat finished eating and climbed on Riley’s notes to clean himself. She hadn’t the heart to dump him off, so turned out the lights and got an early night.
Next morning she called Brask. He didn’t seem surprised at her difficulty in finding help, nor at Palmer’s lack of enthusiasm. “He’s still the best you’ll find,” he insisted. “Try him again, sweetie. I think he’ll change his mind if you talk nicely to him.”
Riley hung up and rang an agency she’d heard of in Luton. They were polite until she mentioned McKee and Cage, then found they had suddenly been awarded a big contract and couldn’t spare anyone. And they wouldn’t recommend anyone either. Better to forget the whole idea, their tone implied.
She rang two more. The wife of one said he was away on a long contract, while the other man’s answer machine seemed to mock her with its request to call back later. The industry workload suddenly appeared to have been given a boost, Riley reflected. Bully for the industry.
She got dressed and went to the local library where she began the task of dredging for gold dust. Her father, a beat copper, always said eighty per cent of activity was in research. It was a simple credo but one she found correct. It was a matter of knowing where to look. She concentrated on biographies of criminals from the fifties, trawling the indexes for familiar names that might give her a jumping-off point.
In the afternoon she drove out to the British Library at Colindale and waved her press card for admission to the reading rooms. She quickly found that between the strands of often lurid speculation, there was little hard detail about the activities of McKee and Cage, most of it from too many years ago to be of practical help. Whether through lack of criminal convictions or a greater press interest in the Krays and the Richardsons, the two men appeared to have enjoyed a remarkably low-profile existence. What few references there were seemed to have come from a reporter’s desire to pad out another story with speculation and name-dropping in the absence of solid facts. It relegated the two men to being little more than satellites in the outer atmosphere surrounding the bigger names. Maybe, she reflected, that’s how they had preferred it to remain.
She kept at it, slotting a few names into her memory for later use. Most had been connected with McKee and Cage at one time or another and were either beyond the grave or beyond reach in other ways. But someone somewhere must have a story to tell. All she had to do was to find them.
From the grainy pictures and the text cataloguing the times, Riley wondered why they had bothered. Most would-be gangsters of the time seemed to have been blessed with little skill or luck in their chosen profession, and had disappeared off the radar with no explanation or farewell. The smarter ones, she guessed, must have salted something away for their old age, and were probably now living quiet, respectable lives.
Cage and McKee seemed to be in this group, and the latest information had them living in comfortable seclusion on the south coast near Brighton. John McKee had been a member of an exclusive golf club, with his home described by one newspaper as an expensive block of flats near the beachfront, where he entertained friends and lived quietly. There was no mention of a family.
Bertrand Cage had not been so fortunate. Dogged by ill health, he had gradually withdrawn into a hermit-like existence. His sole companion was his chauffeur/handyman, Peter Willis, a stocky, neat man staring solidly into the camera. Riley checked her notes and found Brask had included a phone number but nothing else. She wondered what other skills Willis had apart from driving. From their latest reports, the police seemed satisfied that he had taken no part in the murder.
She went back to the reports of the killings. Both men had been shot with.38 calibre handguns. Cage died sitting on the beach with a single shot to the back of the head; McKee died in his flat — also with a single shot, but to the heart. Time of death for both men had been estimated at between 08.00 and 09.00 hours. There were no recorded witnesses.
Riley closed the files. Both shot about the same time. Close enough proximity for the same killer or two separate ones? She went back to the old reports and made a note of two names that appeared often enough in the files to be interesting. After cross-checking for addresses, she left the library. On the way back she tried the number for Peter Willis. No reply. It was already getting dark.
The rumble of traffic south of the river built up relentlessly as the last of the afternoon light faded, and cooler air began to float outwards through the streets of Newington as a tall figure arrived beneath a block of flats and waited in a doorway. A door slammed and angry voices bit into the gloom, and a thin drizzle of dirt fell to the ground, kicked out from beneath the railings by a scrape of feet on the balcony overhead. In the distance a dog barked and a dustbin lid clattered to the ground. Above the newcomer’s head the name of the block had been removed, leaving a grubby outline and a few twisted, rusted screws for those who needed reminding what this place was called.
The man had spent most of his life in places like this, and had learned the hard way to ignore whatever did not concern him. Everyone had their own problems, never mind listening to those of the people inhabiting cesspits like this.
A youthful figure appeared out of the darkness, cocky and strutting. As he passed under a lamp near a passageway, the watcher saw a familiar gaunt face topped by a harsh crew cut, with the dark patch of a tattoo on the side of his neck.
He waited until the figure drew level with the doorway, then reached out a powerful hand and grasped him by the collar, effortlessly cutting off any sound the other might have uttered. The youth struggled instinctively, but was spun round with his face pressed hard against the cold brickwork, a knee in the small of his back pinning him like a butterfly.
“You were told to stay put, Leech,” the watcher whispered in his ear. “Where have you been, you little runt?”
Leech wriggled ineffectively, straining against the powerful grip. “I only went for a bevvy, honest!” he choked. “You never said about not taking any breaks — it’s cold out here!”
The watcher released the
pressure a little, and leaned in close to breathe against the youth’s face. “I never said you could leave your post, neither,” he whispered. “Has anyone been near Cook’s place?”
“No — honest!”
“You better hope so. The moment anyone does, find out who they are and ring me. Right?” With that he let the youth go and walked away.
Behind him he knew Leech would be congratulating himself that his ugly little face wasn’t going to take any more punishment. He might even be feeling a little full of himself. He heard the youth running off into the dark. So far he hadn’t allowed Leech to see him face to face, giving him his instructions by mobile phone, which suited them both fine. Undoubtedly Leech would think himself well off: being paid to watch some old git who smelled of piss and booze and never went out would be a doddle. Even with the occasional bruising, it was probably a break for Leech from pushing pills and any knocked-off goods he could trade in the area.
The big man walked back to his car and drove away.
Chapter 7
Next morning Riley tried the phone number for Peter Willis again. There was still no reply, so she double-checked with Directory Enquiries and trawled the Internet. No number was listed. Maybe he’d gone to ground to escape the press. She had a feeling that as a driver/handyman — for which read minder — he would be a more reliable source of information than most. If she could find him.
She left the flat, pointing her Golf towards the Thames. The first address she had noted was Trinity Court, south of the river near Elephant and Castle. It turned out to be a block of flats set back from the road, and she cruised by to check the layout first before slotting into a parking space fifty yards away.
The block had been given a trial makeover, although there were still a number of gloomy walkways and alcoves typical of the design, with trees and flower tubs struggling to complement a garish fascia and buffed-steel handrails along the balconies. But what would probably once have been a breeding ground for scraggy dogs, doubling as a car-breaker’s yard into the bargain, was now gone. At least, on the surface.
Riley climbed a spiral stairway, following the numbers to the first floor balcony. Her progress was watched by a group of children, for the most part hooded and silent, and she wondered if anything had truly changed under the surface. Her suspicions were confirmed when she arrived at the door to number thirty-two. It was a carbon copy of those on either side, all three reinforced with sheets of aluminium or steel, daubed with paint and etched deeply with initials or symbols. Dynamite would not have dented them, and Riley wondered if neighbourhood watch schemes elsewhere couldn’t learn a thing or two around here.
She hammered on the door until it flew back without warning, revealing a tall, emaciated man in a string vest. He looked about eighty but could have been twenty years younger. Strands of grey hair hung limply from his forehead and rheumy eyes stared out in a dazed fashion, like an animal emerging into the daylight after a lengthy hibernation. Around his body hung the acid aroma of beer and stale sweat.
Riley swallowed hard. So much for her image of a gang member from the sixties. Reginald Arthur Cook, according to reports of the time, had been an enforcer — a strong-arm man — for Bertrand Cage and John McKee. In December 1968, one of his strong arms had put a bookie into a coma, resulting in a five-year prison sentence. Back then he had been bad news, a man to avoid.
“Reggie Cook?” she asked bluntly.
He blinked slowly. “Who wants to know?”
Riley handed him a card. He took it without looking at it. “You from the Social?”
She almost smiled at the irony; here was a man who had brought pain and violence to people and he was frightened of a visit from the DSS. She became aware of movement along the open corridor to her right. “Look,” she said quietly, “I’d like to talk to you. Can I come in?”
“No. What do you want?” His eyes began to look less vague, as if sensing there might be something he could gain from her presence.
“I want to talk to you about Bertrand Cage and John McKee.”
“Who?”
“They’re both dead. You used to work for them, didn’t — ”
“Fuck off.” As the door slammed in her face a stab of laughter drifted along the corridor. She hammered on the door again but Cook had obviously gone deaf.
As she walked back downstairs the kids appeared. A stringy boy in an oversized denim jacket pushed forward. “Cook’s mad. You wanna watch him!” The others laughed, jostling for support and egging each other on.
“Why’s that?” Riley asked.
“He talks to himself,” put in a podgy girl with short, streaked hair. “And he’s a perve.” She grinned and nudged her nearest companion, a slender girl with coffee skin, eyes glinting beneath a tracksuit hood.
“Would be, if we let him,” she muttered.
“Are you the filth?” a boy with a moon face demanded. He had an air of edgy tension about him that Riley had seen in kids where she had been born. Some grew out of it; some never lost it, ingrained from birth and carried through life like a badge.
“She’s a snoop!” crowed the podgy girl. “I bet old Cookie’s being watched by the Social!” She spat out a wad of chewing gum, deftly kicking it away before it hit the ground.
“I’m not a snoop,” said Riley. “Why do you say Cook’s mad?”
“She’s not the filth,” said another, deeper voice. “But she ain’t far off it.”
The kids looked round, their mood changing instantly. Two older youths had appeared out of nowhere. The one who had spoken jerked a thumb sideways and the group of kids melted away, their scuffed footsteps clattering off the walls.
Riley’s mouth went dry. These two weren’t that much older than the others, but it was time to leave.
“Why you calling on old Cook?” the first youth demanded. His stance was tense and full of aggression, and he had a painful-looking graze on one cheek. The other youth drifted off to one side, feigning disinterest. The move made the hairs bristle on Riley’s neck. Both were dressed in baggy jeans, trainers and hooded jackets, brand names colourful splashes against the drabness. Old faces in young bodies.
“That’s my business,” Riley said flatly. She glanced around and saw no movement, no sign that anyone else was aware of events happening here.
The first youth scratched at the graze on his face. “Yeah? Like, his aunt’s died and left him a fortune, right?” He was anywhere between fourteen and eighteen, with a thin, colourless face and a coarse crew cut. There was a crudely drawn tattoo of a bird on one side of his neck. He had maybe an inch of height over Riley, and did his best to stare down his nose at her. “Maybe we should have a chat about it.” He leered sideways at his mate.
A scraping sound came from the end of the block and a man appeared dragging a dustbin. He didn’t look at them but concentrated on tipping the contents into a large rubbish skip. The two youths shuffled their feet, caught momentarily off-guard.
It was enough to break the tension. Before they could say anything Riley stepped to one side and walked past them. They made no move to stop her, turning instead to watch her go. The second youth scuffed over to join his companion, and she felt their eyes boring into her back as she hurried away.
Chapter 8
Back in her car, Riley quickly locked the doors and let out a deep breath. She found her hands shaking and a cold shiver running between her shoulder blades. She cursed herself for being so careless. It had been stupid coming here alone; she was out of her depth and Palmer would be rightly critical of her. But for whatever reason she had got away without harm. Next time she might not be so lucky. She started the car and drove away.
As she negotiated her way out of the area and headed north, she mentally scratched Reginald Cook off her list of interviewees. Even if he were willing to talk about Cage and McKee, his story would probably change with every new drink. And there was nothing worse for a journalist than an unreliable source.
Her next call was very
different. Brambleside old peoples’ home, set in leafy Kenton, had no brambles that she could see, and was new, fresh and serene, a world away from the flats where Cook lived.
A tall, imposing looking woman appeared in response to Riley ringing the bell. Starched in uniform and manner, she announced herself as Mrs Marsh, the matron, and looked surprised when Riley explained the reason for her visit.
“Norman Page?” she echoed. “Goodness — it’s ages since we had anyone asking for him. I didn’t realise there was anybody. Are you family?”
“Not exactly,” Riley confessed smoothly, letting a touch of Kensington slip into her voice. “My name’s Riley Gavin. I’m a writer… You may have heard of my work…? Well, I was hoping Mr Page might be able to give me some background material for some articles I’m writing. Would it be possible to have a quick word?”
Mrs Marsh hesitated, then retreated behind her matron’s rulebook. “We normally expect at least two days’ notice for visits. And then only family. You’re not family,” she finished unnecessarily but with a smile, her tone clearly reflecting that this young woman was obviously well bred. Rules, however, were rules.
“Yes, I know, but-”
“And in any case, Mr Page is not allowed visits at the moment.” She glanced at the watch hanging from her chest. “And it’s late.”
“Is he ill?”
The matron pursed her lips in an authoritarian huff. “If you must know he’s been misbehaving again.”
Riley killed the grim thoughts that entered her head. “Seriously?”
“Serious enough,” the matron replied sourly, misinterpreting the meaning. “We don’t need to put up with his sort of carry on.” She began to move backwards, the subject closed.
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