by Paul Charles
“I heard you were back in the building, sir. Bit of good news on our side of things, sir. We’ve found the mystery man - you remember, the chap who was drinking with John B. Stone last evening in the Spread Eagle - and guess who he is, sir?” Irvine gushed.
“Ah now, let me see…”
“I’m sorry, sir. Of course you couldn’t guess. It’s just…” Irvine cut in, trying to save his soul.
“No. No, please don’t tell me. Just concentrate, Sergeant. I’ll get it. It’s coming to me. Just a minute, I’ve got it. It’s OJ Simpson!”
Yeah, okay, silly question I know,” Irvine managed to get out through Coles” hearty and sensual laughter. “It’s Hugh Anderson!”
“Hugh Anderson?” said Kennedy, somewhat taken back. “Yes, Hugh Anderson.” “God, the suspects are dropping out of the trees like flies on thiscase. First the property developer, Kevin Burroughs. Then the younger brother Brian Stone, who has in turn implicated the older brother Stephen, and now a professional criminal, Hugh Anderson.”
“Who’s Hugh Anderson?” asked Coles.
“One of the old school. He’s been on the manor a long time. Used to be a member of the O’Griffiths firm over in Islington in the fifties and sixties. They were mighty powerful then, probably second only to the Krays, but they were clever enough to keep out of all the other firms” way. However, in the late sixties when the drug thing was starting up they made a mistake and went to war with a south London outfit called the Cheneys, and the police just stood back and watched them literally blow each other out of the water. A couple of members on either side, including Hugh Anderson, went to ground and resurfaced a couple of years later when the dust had settled.”
“Didn’t he go to Spain, sir, until it all died down?” Irvine suggested.
“Didn’t they all, though. No, seriously, that was one of the stories floating around, but there was another one which had credence which had him going to Dublin. I think I’m more likely to believe that one. Someone was over there in the early seventies helping them get the drug thing started up. I also heard he had to leave there in a hurry, something to do with getting involved in politics.”
By now they’d all arrived at his office and he opened the door and led them in.
“But I’d have to say I’d be surprised, very surprised, if he was involved in this. Not his style. No, he’s been keeping himself clean for a good while now. Hasn’t been in any trouble since he took up with that Scottish singer Ginger Buchanan.”
“Except, that is, for the GBH thing a few weeks ago,” Irvine reminded the DI.
“True, but the charges were dropped on that one and you would have thought that even if he were involved, the skirmish with the courts would have been enough to remind him the next time he goes down he needn’t bring a suitcase. Let’s get him in for a chat, shall we?” Kennedy rubbed his hands.
“He’s already in, sir. I put out an all ports on him, word got around we were looking for him and he walked into the station himself bold as brass and as sharp as sixpence about five minutes ago. Of course he was with his brief, sir.”
Kennedy smiled. “Okay. I’ll have a chat with him. But do me a favour first, have someone put a bowl of fruit, you know, a few apples, bananas, oranges, in the interview room. And then while I’m talking to our man you and the WPC can go along and interview Kevin Burroughs at National Properties. It will be very interesting to see what kind of story he has to tell. Make sure he’s aware that we know all about his kickbacks to John B. Stone.”
As Kennedy left Irvine and Coles to their chores he was thinking about how easy some cases seemed to fall into place for you. This John B. Stone definitely had the knack of troubling the waters of his life. Kennedy also realised that his day was nearing an end and he hadn’t up till now given a thought to ann rea. He found it somewhat ironic that the first time he thought about her was because he had found himself not thinking of her.
Chapter Seventeen
Meanwhile, down in West Sussex, ann rea was in fact sparing the occasional thought for Christy Kennedy, even though most of her time was being spent with her friend and former landlord Daniel Elliot.
ann rea pondered a considerable amount of her time on the difference between the magnificent man she had met on the door of his home in Belsize Avenue all those years ago and this poor specimen lying on the bed fading away before her very eyes.
Could this be the same man who had first met his wife in an orphanage when he was sixteen and she fifteen? He had left her, and the orphanage, promising to return, and walked from Antrim in Northern Ireland to Dublin in order to join the Irish Guards. By the time he reached Dublin he looked desolate, his feet were bleeding, his clothes were torn and he was in bad need of a bath. Daniel Elliot, as he himself had fondly recalled on many occasions, was about to be turned away by the barracks guards, who had listened to his story and informed him he was not what the Irish Guards were looking for.
Fortunately for Daniel, a sergeant major had been passing the gate at that time and had interceded on his behalf, saying that this poor specimen had exactly the kind of spirit the Irish Guards sought. Even though the SM didn’t believe Elliot’s claim to being seventeen years young he enrolled him immediately. Daniel Elliot did the sergeant major proud and impressed everybody with his honesty, natural ability and enthusiasm for hard work.
Three years and many letters later, Daniel Elliot returned to the orphanage in Antrim to claim young Lila as his wife. They lived happily in Dublin from 1942 to 1967 when Elliot was decommissioned. He moved to London, too young to die and too old to change. He became a commissionaire at various buildings around London until 1979, when he retired for the first of many times.
At the end of the seventies the Elliots had a comfortable little nest egg and their own (unmortgaged) London house. This was the house ann rea rented a room in when she first came to London in 1981. The Elliots also had a small cottage in Climping. Climping, as ann rea was now discovering, was on a small undeveloped part of the south coast between vibrant Brighton and vulgar Bognor Regis. Their cottage, number 3 Ryelane Cottages, was a two-minute walk from the stony beach. The very beach ann rea was walking on last evening at near enough the same time John B. Stone was being battered to death in Camden Town.
She was still high from the relief of escaping London, this relief was somewhat tempered by how poorly Elliot was looking. This saddened ann rea immensely, not least because Daniel Elliot and Lila had always treated her, she thought, like the daughter they never had and she had grown genuinely attached to them.
“You know,” Daniel said weakly the previous evening, “you think it’s going to last forever, all of this, don’t you? You don’t think it’s ever going to end. Yes, you can see your body fail you, and how the paunch is coming and the hair is going. But inside my mind I’m still having conversations with myself the way I did when I was eleven years old.”
“Of course you’re going to be around forever, you old warhorse, you’re going to outlast all of us,” ann rea had enthused.
“You’re so kind, you’ve always been good to Lila and me. Why couldn’t she have been as good to us as you were? I hope that policeman is taking good care of you, he’d better had or he’ll answer to me. He’s a Northerner isn’t he?”
“Yes, he’s from Portrush.” “Ah, you’ll be okay then, he’s a good Derryman, they’ll never let you down.” “I don’t know, Daniel,” ann rea cut in. She wasn’t sure she was happyto go along with the thing of Kennedy taking good care of her, about anyone taking good care of her come to that. Hadn’t she been taking great care of herself all these years? She certainly wasn’t going to creep under some man’s wing. “I mean I know he won’t let me down,” she went on, “I know he’s a good man and all that but I’m not sure he’s the… I’m not sure I want him not to let me down. You know, if he let me down I’d have an excuse not to feel bad about how I’m feeling.”
“Why? How are you feeling?” the old man inquired, seemingly h
appy to withdraw himself from the spotlight.
They were in his bedroom. A bedroom littered lovingly with the memories of his wife and their rich life together. Daniel now looked tiny in the bed he had once dominated. ann rea felt quite heartened that Daniel had been happy to leave the bedroom styled as it had been by the femine touch of Lila. As she leaned him forward to puff up the pillows behind him she thought, here I am down here to comfort him and now he’s turning the tables on me and he’s comforting me. Guilty though she felt about it, she wanted to talk to him about this. She desperately needed to talk to someone about all these bad feelings and for sure there was no one excepting Daniel whom she felt comfortable talking to about all this stuff.
“Well,” she continued as she sat in the easy (very) chair beside his bed. ann rea was sipping red wine and Daniel was enjoying a pint (ann rea had fetched one from the Black Horse pub next door as she returned from her walk on the beach), “It’s just that it feels like a trap. Like there we are together and I want to know am I doing it because I love this kind considerate man, or am I doing it because I don’t want to end up alone and if I don’t take him now someone else will take him from me for sure, or am I being hesitant because I think, “No this isn’t love - there is someone out there waiting for me whom I will love and will love me,” you know? And I don’t want any Tom, Dick or Hari Krishna and it might even be Kennedy, it’s just that I don’t know and if I don’t know is that some kind of sign for me?”
“Well, lass, all easy questions, but sadly you are the only one who will have the real answers. I only know that I can tell you that I knew Lila was for me the first time I set eyes on her and we had to wait for four and a half years to be together. A couple of kisses and lots of letters and that was it, no hanky panky till we were married.”
“Yes, Daniel. Things were different then,” ann rea replied feeling tears starting to rise from somewhere deep within her.
“Yes, darned right they were different then. And have you ever thought that this just might be part of the problem today. Look: two things. None of us had se… were intimate - I believe that’s how you refer to it these days - with each other until we were married. And we found out if we liked each other during our courting days. The courting time was long, sometimes years, and always painful, particularly for the man when he had to walk home after a date. So by the time we were wed and tasted the ultimate pleasure we were sure, for we had to be sure. Do you know why we had to be sure?”
ann rea knew it was a rhetorical question so she didn’t upset his flow.
“I’ll tell you why we had to be sure. We had to be sure because marriage was marriage and a commitment for life. Separating was never an option, never a consideration. We had to deal with each other. If it’s not broke don’t fix it, which is exactly what you appear to be doing at the minute. Equally if it is broke then fix it. There’s always a way to fix it. Oh, I’d loved to have been a carpenter; carpenters can fix absolutely everything.”
“But it’s not as simple as that, Daniel,” ann rea complained, not altogether sure about her friend’s new tangent.
“Oh but there’s where you’re wrong. Of course it’s as simple as that. Be sure, and once you are sure, know that you can take on anything together. I mean for heaven’s sake I hear stories and read in the papers about everybody, including royalty, sleeping around and sleeping together, sometimes even on the first date. What on earth do you know about each other on the first date. I mean a man and a woman seeing each other’s naked body for the first time, that’s such a beautiful spiritual thing and shouldn’t be wasted on a flippant encounter. I knew I wanted to be with Lila from the first minute I saw her. Now perhaps that could be described as infatuation, because I didn’t know her at all when I first saw her. But I got to know her and I did like her as a person and as a friend and I loved her and that was it, we were set for life.” Daniel paused for another sip of beer using his grey moustache as a filter, leaving some of the white foam stuck there, froth he would lick off after he had swallowed, creating a sweet aftertaste to compliment the bitterness of the beer.
ann rea was about to say something, anything, to take the conversation away from herself and Kennedy, when Elliot swallowed, licked his lips, smiled and continued:
“Now lass, my fear is this; you might, with your doubts, take a bit of the romance out of your relationship. When you feel you know what’s happening it’s so much more enjoyable. But now you are having doubts, even though your doubts may eventually turn out to be unfounded or ungrounded, but you will still have done some damage to the relationship. Mind you that’s not a major problem. If the relationship is solid you will make your way through these troubled waters. But just questioning something, someone, yourself, just for the sake of it, is unhealthy and certainly unwise.
“That’s certainly told me off, then,” ann rea smiled, wanting desperately to let the subject drop. “You said earlier when we were talking, you said, “`Why couldn’t she have been as good as you?”“ I’m confused, surely you didn’t mean Lila?”
“No. Of course not for heaven’s sake, she never had a bad thought in her body. I meant Anna, our daughter Anna, you know her don’t you?”
“What?” ann rea said in disbelief, “Daughter? What daughter? Daniel, I never knew you and Lila had a daughter, come on, we’ve never ever discussed it before.”
“Oh, sorry, yes. Lila was so embarrassed she didn’t like people to know about her, felt we’d failed her, failed her so bad. I just thought you would have known because you lived with us; I thought Lila might have discussed her with you,” Elliot replied.
“No, never, Daniel. What on earth happened? I can’t believe you had a daughter. What happened to her? Where’s she at? What did you mean when you said you failed her?” ann rea hoped she wasn’t gushing too much. This was definitely a bombshell. She thought it was like a movie script, only if it were, the old man would die at this point before he could tell her any more.
“Well,” began the old man, taking in a large breath, “she was raped when she was young and I think Lila felt we let her down then, felt that Anna never forgave us.”
Elliot started to gaze off into the distance, just above the flowery red-and-white curtains around the small window which proudly showed a cornfield taking seed several months shy of the harvester.
ann rea followed his stare and drank greedily the rich Sussex scene and a little of her wine. The next thing she was aware of was Elliot’s gentle snoring. She took his half-empty beer glass and placed it quietly on the bedside cabinet, removed his glasses, stroked back his long grey hair and stared at the man, this man she thought she knew, and wondered what other secrets he might have.
Chapter Eighteen
By the time Kennedy entered the interview room those in attendance were PC Gaul, Hugh Anderson with his brief, the nattily dressed Leslie Russell, and the bowl of fruit placed on the table in front of Anderson and Russell. Kennedy removed his jacket and placed it over the back of his chair opposite them. They were like two teams squaring up on a pitch not over a football but a couple of ripe green Granny Smiths, a banana and a few excuses for oranges.
Kennedy switched on the tape recorder and announced all present and the date and time.
“I would like to put on record at this point,” Leslie Russell began in his usual friendly manner, “that my client Mr Hugh Anderson came in to the police station of his own accord and is happy to help the police with their inquiries. He will try to answer any and all questions.”
“Noted,” was Kennedy’s reply.
Kennedy could not help but admire this specimen of the old school criminal. Crime was their business. Indeed, that had been their motto and when people who got in their way were upset over their not so gentle methods of persuasion, the firm would state “It’s not personal, it’s business.” Equally there was the legendary honour amongst their own; everyone on the firm was taken care of, including the relatives of the unfortunates sent down. They behaved and dr
essed like regular businessmen; the only difference was that their business was crime in general and thieving in particular.
Hugh Anderson was solidly built, built like a roadhouse in fact. The trouser creases of his black pinstripe suit were keen enough to sharpen your pencil on. His black shoes, Kennedy could tell, were spit-and-polished every day to the extent that you could see the reflection of the interview room lights in them.
Anderson rose from his seat and he too removed his jacket, revealing a pink shirt, and placed the jacket carefully on the back of his chair. Beneath his arms the shirt was a darker and damper pink. He sat down on the chair, which was taxed to the limit of its support. He smoothed out the ice-blue tie, magnificently done up in a Windsor knot, down the front of his shirt with large, but gentle and unmarked hands.
The criminal’s thinning, greying hair was parted with a line so straight you could have lined up the Queen’s Guards to it. His brown and challenging eyes were protected by bushy grey brows. His clean-shaven face proudly displayed a nose obviously well versed in the Glasgow handshake, and his celebrated scars testified to long forgotten but frequently discussed skirmishes. He fixed Kennedy with a stare, his head tilted slightly to the right, and willed the detective to ask his questions.
“Well, Hugh, long time no see.”
Hugh Anderson moved restlessly in his chair, not taking his eyes off Kennedy’s. “You know me, Guv. The firm’s gone legit, there’s never much need for me to be in the cop shop. Not unless it’s like this of course - a respectable member of the community happy to help the police with their inquiries.”
