Blood Brothers (12 page)

The drive down the A40 took slightly longer than Barnard had promised in spite of his expert weaving through the rush-hour traffic and Kate found herself becoming as anxious as Barnard evidently was about Jimmy Earnshaw’s safety. Just beyond RAF Northolt, where fighters had taken off during the war, they took a right turn at traffic lights and made their way through a suburban landscape of tree-lined roads and semi-detached houses.

‘Where are we?’ Kate asked.

Barnard pulled into the kerb and consulted a map. ‘This is Ruislip,’ he said. ‘Commuter-land. The tube comes right out here so people can use it to get to work in the centre of London. Now if we take a left here we’re almost there.’

Within minutes he pulled up outside one of the many identical pebble-dashed semis, and switched off the engine. He looked at Kate, his face sombre.

‘I think it would make sense if you knocked at the door,’ he said. ‘It won’t do me any good at all if I’m recognized out here. The Yard will be furious. You can say you’re a friend of Jimmy’s and you’ve got permission to pay him a visit. Give them any name you like, so long as it’s not your real name. And just see if you can be sure he’s there and safe. That’s enough for now. It’s number twenty-two, just a few houses back.’

Kate sighed. ‘Are you sure I won’t get into trouble doing this?’

‘No, but I’m sure I would if they found out. Come on, Kate. We need to know he’s safe.’

‘All right,’ she said. ‘I’d be devastated if anything happened to that boy.’ She got out of the car and walked slowly back to the gate with twenty-two on it, and went up the short garden path to the door and rang the bell. There was silence inside and Kate was about to ring again when the door was opened quite suddenly by a man in jeans and shirtsleeves who looked half asleep and unshaven.

‘Yes?’ he said, his eyes unfriendly and the door held firmly only a quarter ajar.

‘I think you have a friend of mine staying here,’ Kate said. ‘Jimmy Earnshaw. Can I see him?’

‘Who told you that?’ the man asked in even more unfriendly tones. ‘Who the hell told you that?’

‘I asked if I could see him and they said yes. Didn’t they tell you?’ Kate improvised. ‘It’s very important. I’ve got a message from his mother.’

‘I don’t care what you’ve got, miss. Nobody’s told me to let anyone in.’

‘He is here, then? Surely I can see him for just five minutes. That won’t do any harm,’ Kate insisted.

‘Who are you?’ the man asked, angry now and reaching out for Kate’s arm.

She dodged back down the path slightly but still stood there, her arms folded. ‘Jimmy,’ she shouted, hoping her voice would carry through the half-open door. ‘Jimmy, are you there?’

‘Shut up, you little cow,’ the man yelled back. ‘Half the street will hear you.’

‘Good,’ Kate said and yelled again, taking care to back towards the gate where she knew Harry Barnard would be able to see her.

There was no response from the house and the man advanced threateningly down the path. ‘He’s not here, you stupid bitch. He’s gone. Now bugger off. I’m in enough bother already without you blowing my cover completely. Scarper!’

Back in the car, feeling hot and breathless, Kate told Barnard what had happened. ‘He lost his rag,’ she said. ‘Told me more than he should have done, I guess. Jimmy’s not there, though obviously he has been. He knew exactly who I was talking about and that I really shouldn’t have tracked Jimmy down.’

Barnard nodded. ‘We’d better go,’ Barnard said. ‘If he reports back to the Yard they’ll send all the hounds of hell to track you down.’ He started the car and drove back to the A40 without passing in front of the house Kate had visited. As they joined the main road a police car with lights flashing turned towards Ruislip at speed.

‘Maybe nothing to do with us,’ Barnard said as he accelerated towards Northolt. ‘But it could be.’

‘So what do you think has happened to Jimmy?’ Kate asked, feeling slightly sick.

‘What did the bloke say exactly?’

‘He just said he’s gone. But he certainly didn’t seem pleased about it. He said he was in bother himself, whatever that means.’

‘It probably means that Jimmy’s either run off by himself or someone’s taken him,’ Barnard said.

Kate felt tears behind her eyes. ‘That’s not good, is it, either way?’

‘No,’ Barnard said. ‘It’s not good at all.’

K
ate had spent an almost sleepless night in her own narrow bed after beginning to tell her flatmate Tess Farrell about her trip to Ruislip the previous day. She had rejected Harry Barnard’s invitation to a meal and a night at his place out of hand, made tetchy by her anxiety for the boy. Yet she began to regret her decision as she saw her best friend becoming more and more anxious as she went on, until she stopped herself from spelling out her worst fears for Jimmy Earnshaw who had disappeared from supposedly safe police custody.

‘You can’t be sure he’s run away, can you, la?’ Tess asked, twisting her hands together in anxiety.

‘It looked pretty certain to me,’ Kate said quietly. ‘And Harry’s very worried.’

Tess hesitated and Kate decided she would not spell out for Tess all the details she knew about exactly why Harry was so worried.

‘Is Harry dragging you into another adventure which could turn out badly?’ she asked.

‘Not really,’ Kate had reassured her. ‘He just needed someone with him to knock at the door. But it’s very odd that if the boy really has gone the police themselves don’t seem to be trying very hard to find him. Harry says there’s been no word from Scotland Yard asking the local police to look in his old haunts in Soho. He’s asked around himself but no one seems to have seen him or heard from him or even knows he’s missing. He’s only a kid, Tess, and he’s fallen into a river full of crocodiles as far as I can see. Something very strange seems to be going on.’

‘Could he have gone home?’ Tess asked. ‘Back to the north?’

‘I don’t think he has a home as such, la,’ Kate said gloomily. ‘As far as I can remember he said he’d been in a children’s home in Doncaster or somewhere. That usually means trouble with the law or with his parents – if he has any. Anyway, he said he ran away because he was being molested and then got into even worse trouble when he arrived in London. People pick kids up at the railway stations, apparently, and put them on the streets. Or worse. He was lucky to get out of that mess alive to give evidence and now it looks like a frying pan and fire job. From bad to worse.’

‘Holy Mother,’ Tess said, looking appalled although Kate did not know whether it was on Jimmy Earnshaw’s behalf or hers. Tess had always tended to mother her, both back in Liverpool and when they had come to London as an adventurous threesome with their friend Marie.

‘But there’s nothing you can do about it, is there?’ Tess asked. ‘It’s up to the police to find him and make a better job of keeping him safe. Surely the trial must be coming up soon, isn’t it?’

‘At the Old Bailey but not for at least a month yet, Harry says. If it comes up at all. If they’re really losing witnesses it may never get to court and Georgie Robertson will get away with murder.’

Tess’s eyes widened but she had no sensible advice to offer her friend. The world Kate had fallen into was a foreign country to her. ‘Sleep on it,’ she had advised, with a helpless look.

‘I’ll try,’ Kate said, without any optimism at all.

And although she had gone to bed early sleep had not come at all till the small hours and even then her dreams were disturbing, full of anger and shouting which she could not understand. She woke early and opened the curtains on to a pale London morning, a grey dawn just breaking, in which some people were already hurrying towards the underground station at just after seven. She decided to have a bath after she persuaded the huge grumbling gas geyser in the bathroom to spurt out some hot water and she was sitting in the kitchen in her dressing gown when Tess eventually emerged from her room fully dressed for school.

‘Are you seeing Harry today or going off again with your reporter?’ Tess asked, her face anxious as she made herself toast.

‘More photographs for the
Globe
,’ Kate said without enthusiasm. ‘I can’t really see what we’re trying to prove with all these pictures but Carter Price seems pleased with progress so that’s all that matters really. As far as I’m concerned it’s the most boring assignment I’ve had so far, sitting in a car all day waiting for something to happen.’

‘Well, at least I suppose you’re pretty safe sitting in a car,’ Tess observed quietly. ‘I do worry about you, you know.’

Kate smiled wanly. ‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘But at least I can tell Carter Price today that Harry’s visit to Blackheath was official, part of his murder investigation. And he was with the new sergeant he’s working with who’s certainly not his best friend. I don’t want to be stuck in the middle if Carter decides to chase after him.’

When Tess had stuffed her bag with exercise books that she had marked the night before and set off to catch a bus to Holland Park, Kate made herself another cup of coffee and rang Harry Barnard’s home number. He picked up quickly and sounded faintly disappointed by the sound of her voice.

‘I’m just going to work,’ Kate said huffily. ‘I thought I’d check if you had any news of Jimmy.’

‘Not yet,’ Barnard said. ‘I’ve asked my contact at the Yard to make discreet inquiries. I thought this call might be her.’

‘I’d better get off the line then,’ Kate said. ‘I’ll be out with Carter Price most of the day I think, but I should get back to the agency this afternoon to print up my pics. You can get me there if you want to talk.’

‘Fine,’ Barnard said and hung up.

‘I think we’ll just have a little mosey around this morning,’ Carter Price said. ‘See if Reg Smith is at home again and follow him if he goes out.’

Price was driving a white Mini this morning, the first time Kate had got anywhere close to this new model which had caused a sensation for the first few months of its life. He looked bulky and slightly ill at ease in the confined space.

‘It’s quite tiny, isn’t it?’ she said, feeling vulnerable as Price twisted his way through the heavy traffic on the New Kent Road, the lorries looming above them like whales beside a shrimp. ‘They won’t catch on, will they? It feels as if you’re almost sitting on the road.’

‘Not enough power,’ Price said, tailing behind a double-decker bus impatiently. ‘I’ll be very surprised if they sell many of them.’

They parked again a discreet distance from Smith’s gates and waited – and waited. Price occupied himself reading the
Globe
from cover to cover while Kate could do nothing except stare out of the windscreen, her camera on her lap and her frustration steadily mounting.

‘Cheer up, darling,’ Price said. ‘I’ll treat you to dinner tonight, if you like. I know this is as boring as watching paint dry but if we can pin this beggar down it’ll be worth every minute. Here.’ He passed her his paper and she began to read steadily through it without even bothering to react to his invitation.

It was not the first time he had made the proposal and so far she had persistently declined, but after this morning she thought she might take him up on it. There had to be some sort of reward for this dreadful assignment and it would annoy Harry Barnard, who deserved some sort of reaction to his brusqueness earlier this morning. An evening out with Carter Price might be an appropriate punishment. She guessed a good meal would go on his claim as a business expense somehow. She had watched her photographer colleagues filling in their expenses with an astonishing degree of imagination and knew that Fleet Street would – and did – trump them at every turn.

Kate’s patience had begun to seriously fray when, just before twelve, Reg Smith’s car emerged from his gates and he set off as before down the hill towards Lewisham, without apparently even glancing in their direction. A new Mini might be an object of interest to most people but not, evidently, to someone who drove a Bentley.

‘The Angel again, do you think?’ Price said as they followed. But this time Smith headed for central London, past the Elephant and Castle and over Waterloo Bridge before turning right into Fleet Street.

‘Where the hell is he going?’ Price asked as they passed Temple Bar into the City of London.

The answer was not long in coming. Smith swung his car to the kerb and parked immediately outside the
Globe
building, got out amid furious hoots from a black cab, and went inside. Price pulled up behind him.

‘Can you see where he’s going?’ he asked Kate.

She peered out of the passenger window and through the glass doors of the newspaper office into the extensive marbled foyer. ‘He’s talking to someone in there,’ she said. ‘They’re coming out I think.’

‘They both watched as the two men left the building and got into Smith’s car.

‘Mitch Graveney again,’ Price said, evidently amazed. ‘What the hell is going on?’

He swung the Mini into the traffic stream again but the road was busy and by the time they had reached Ludgate Circus there was no sign of the car they were following. Price waited at the traffic lights and peered left and right but Smith and Graveney had effectively disappeared.

‘Damn and blast,’ Price grumbled. ‘He could have gone back south of the river over the bridge, or north towards Smithfield or straight on to St Paul’s and God knows where after that. We’ve lost him, I’m afraid.’

‘It’s not turning out to be a very productive day, is it,’ Kate muttered.

‘Did you get a shot of the two of them coming out?’ Price asked.

‘Of course.’

‘Well, I think I’ll go back to the office, and see if I can get a clue as to why one of the
Globe
’s
union officials is swanning round London with a major gangster. You, my dear, might as well go back to the agency. We’ll call it a day on pictures for now.’ He swung the small car in a tight U-turn and headed back towards the Strand. ‘I’ll drop you here,’ he said, stopping outside Somerset House. ‘You can pick up a bus back to the West End.’

‘Thanks a lot, la,’ Kate muttered as she opened the car door, but Price seemed oblivious to her sarcasm.