Blood Brothers (17 page)

‘I rang you earlier,’ he said as he crossed the road. ‘I was worried about you. Tess said you didn’t come in last night.’

‘I don’t see what business that is of yours,’ Kate snapped. ‘As a matter of fact I did come in. It was just very late. Tess was fast asleep. She’d gone to school when I got up.’

‘He invited you back for coffee, did he? As the saying goes.’

‘He did as a matter of fact, la. And that’s what I had. Coffee, a brandy and a coffee. As I say, it’s none of your business.’

‘Did you know Price is notorious for picking up pretty girls?’ Barnard persisted.

‘Is this the pot calling the kettle,’ Kate said. ‘I’m working with Carter Price, Harry. I work with men all the time because there aren’t any women to speak of in the sort of thing I do. So you’ll have to live with it.’ She glanced at her watch. ‘I’m late,’ she said. ‘I have to get on.’

She turned away with half a smile. His jealousy amused her and, if she was honest with herself, secretly pleased her, but she was not going to let him see that.

‘I’m supposed to be meeting Carter in ten minutes,’ she flung over her shoulder before opening the door and pounding up the stairs to Ken Fellows’ agency to do little more than pick up fresh film for her camera.

When Price appeared, on time and looking keen, driving a Ford Anglia this time, she was ready and Harry Barnard was nowhere to be seen. ‘So where are we going this morning?’ she asked.

‘Well, I’d dearly like to know where Mitch Graveney and Smith went yesterday, but I think we’ll have to follow them a bit more closely next time to work that out. I know Graveney’s at work this morning, working on the evening paper, so he’s not going to be able to get away from the
Globe
before lunchtime, so I thought we’d have a look round his local neighbourhood, visit a few pubs, see what we can discover. He’s a well known boozer so he must have a local. He lives in Lee Green, a couple of miles from Lewisham and Blackheath, so we’ll have to brave the traffic again.’ Kate sighed.

‘It sounds a bit like looking for a needle in a haystack,’ she said.

‘Never fear,’ Price said as he headed to Piccadilly Circus and then swung along the Strand to Waterloo Bridge. ‘I’ve done my homework. I’ve chatted to some of Graveney’s mates. A lot of them live down there because the trains come in to Charing Cross or Holborn and then it’s a short walk to Fleet Street. Graveney apparently has a wife and a couple of kids. So we’ll go and have a look at his home territory.’

The Ford stopped and started its way through the heavy traffic heading out of London towards Kent. Eventually Price turned off the main road and threaded his way through increasingly leafy streets on the incline back towards Blackheath and pulled up at the end of a row of well-kept modern houses with garages and flourishing front gardens.

‘Very nice,’ Price said. ‘Just confirms what I told you. The printers do very well for themselves. He quite likely gets two pay packets, one in his own name and one for Bing Crosby or Frank Sinatra.’

‘So if he’s doing so well for himself why would he want to get involved with Reg Smith?’ Kate asked.

‘In my experience people who are doing well for themselves never turn down an opportunity to do even better,’ Price said. ‘You can do a little recce for me. Go to number sixteen and knock at the door. If someone answers, say we’re lost and want to get to the centre of Blackheath. And while you’re there just have a little scan at what you can see inside and out. Don’t appear too nosy. Use your common sense.’

Kate shrugged and got out of the car before strolling down the street to number sixteen, opening the gate and ringing on the doorbell. The garden was neat, with the first signs of spring bulbs appearing in the flower beds, and a small car parked outside the closed garage doors. At first she thought there must be nobody at home and she peered round the side of the house to catch a quick glimpse of an extensive garden beyond, with apple trees and a greenhouse behind the long stretch of lawn before she heard someone call out behind her. She turned to find a middle-aged woman in coat and hat looking at her with a suspicious expression on her face.

‘What do you want?’ she asked, her voice sharp with suspicion.

‘I’m sorry, I thought I’d try the back door,’ Kate said quickly. ‘I’m sorry to bother you but we’re a bit lost. We’re trying to get to Blackheath and I think we’ve taken the wrong turning. I’ve tried a few doors but no one seems to be at home.’

‘You can’t cut through this way,’ the woman said shortly. ‘It’s a dead end. You’ll have to turn round and go back to the main road. I’m sorry, I’m in a hurry.’ She hesitated for a moment. ‘You can follow me if you like. I’m going in that direction. I’m going to my daughters’ school. They’re both at Blackheath High, you know.’

‘That’s very kind,’ Kate said. ‘We’ll turn around and follow you if you don’t mind.’ She spun round and hurried back to Price’s car. ‘Follow her,’ she said as the woman she assumed was Mrs Graveney reversed out of her drive and drove past them with an impatient wave of the hand. ‘She’s going to Blackheath High School. Sounds a bit posh.’

‘Not just posh, bloody expensive,’ Price said. ‘Even if he’s claiming for two jobs, I’m gobsmacked Mitch Graveney can afford the fees. On top of what that house must have cost. Houses round here aren’t cheap.’

‘So you reckon he’s into something beyond the job at the
Globe
?’ Kate asked.

‘Up to his neck, I should think, though what it is I can’t begin to guess. But if he’s thick with Reg Smith whatever it is is unlikely to be legal.’

When he left Kate at the agency, Harry Barnard made a call from a phone box and immediately went back to his car. Shirley Bettany had picked up the phone quickly but she did not seem quite as enthusiastic to hear from him as she usually was when he proposed a meeting.

‘Fred’s at home this morning,’ she said quickly. ‘He was with Ray late last night and decided to sleep in.’

Barnard smiled faintly at the thought of the bed he had occupied himself so often being taken over by its rightful owner for once. No wonder Shirley didn’t sound warmer. ‘Sorry, sweetie, it’s actually Fred I want to talk to,’ he said. ‘Ask him if I could come round to your place in …’ He glanced at his watch. ‘In an hour?’

The line went quiet and Barnard amused himself by wondering if Shirley was wearing the blue satin negligee she favoured after sex with him. Thick and silky, she pulled it tight round waist and hips and left it loose at the top, more often than not provoking Barnard to pull her back into bed when she had planned to get up.

She came back on the line quickly. ‘That will be fine, Harry,’ she said, her voice chilly. ‘See you shortly.’

Barnard hung up regretfully and walked slowly back towards his car, stopping for a coffee in Camden High Street before heading up the hill towards Hampstead. He did not need to park anywhere today except immediately outside the Bettanys’ gates, and he was not surprised when Fred himself opened the door. Fred looked haggard and grey and was wearing casual slacks and short-sleeved shirt. He nodded him into the sitting room without a word.

‘Shirley’s gone out to get her hair done,’ he said as he waved Barnard into one of the comfortable armchairs. Fred flung himself into another chair and gazed at Harry for some time without speaking, steepling his hands beneath his chin. ‘How long’s Ray got, Harry?’ he asked at length. ‘Everything tells me he’s on the edge and likely to topple off at any moment. Shirley’s nagging me to bail out before the balloon goes up.’

‘He still seems to be dithering about Reg Smith,’ Barnard said. ‘That’s what I came up here to ask you. Why the hell doesn’t he just tell him to bugger off south of the river where he belongs?’

‘He keeps saying he will and then changes his mind. He’s still feeling annoyed that he didn’t get into Notting Hill,’ Bettany said. ‘You know he doesn’t like to be thwarted. But if he lets Smith into Soho he’ll be mincemeat. Smith’s as ruthless as they come.’

‘Was the poor beggar we found on the building site one of Smith’s men?’ Barnard asked. ‘That’s what the Yard seem to think but we’ve found no evidence for it. I even went down to Blackheath with one of my colleagues to ask him but he just laughed at us. Personally I think the body is one of the witnesses against Georgie but that idea doesn’t seem to hold water with the brass.’

Bettany leaned towards a shelf under the coffee table and handed Barnard a couple of colourful travel brochures. ‘I fancy Spain myself, but Shirley has a yen for Bermuda.’

Barnard’s heart thudded and he struggled to keep his expression neutral.

‘She’s on at me to make a decision.’

‘You’re serious?’ he asked.

‘Oh, yes,’ Bettany said. ‘I’ve had a good run with Ray, salted plenty of money away but I can’t see a future in it any more. I want out before the balloon goes up. If he hooks up with Smith I don’t want to be a part of it. I suppose you could say it’s time to retire before your mates at the Yard come looking for me. There’s no way I want to spend the rest of my life in Pentonville when all I did was look after Ray’s books.’

‘No, that’s not a good thought,’ Barnard said. ‘Personally I’m trying to keep well clear of Ray myself. There’s another purge going on at the nick and I need to keep myself squeaky clean.’

Fred Bettany smiled, an unusual reaction from him. ‘The best of luck with that, Harry,’ he said.

Harry Barnard drove back to town, his thoughts in turmoil. He hesitated for a moment at Oxford Circus, wondering whether he dare call in on Ray at the Delilah, and then swung the car back towards the nick as the safer option. DS Vic Copeland was at his desk, looked ostentatiously at his watch and grinned wolfishly.

‘Late night, Flash?’ he asked. ‘Was she worth it?’

Barnard shrugged non-committally, hung up his jacket and slumped down at his desk, still obsessed with what he had learned from Fred Bettany. It was maybe time, he thought, for him to break decisively with Ray Robertson too. Their relationship had always been ambivalent ever since he had decided as a teenager to join the police, by which time Ray and Georgie had decisively headed off into the East End underworld. And yet he could not rid himself of the knowledge that Ray, when the three boys were flung together as wartime evacuees on an unwelcoming farm in Hertfordshire, had been the one who had protected him from the unfriendly village lads and, more importantly, from the rampagings of his already unstable brother Georgie. He could still remember exactly what it was like to be on the floor with Georgie pressing his face into the mud until he was sure he would suffocate. And the relief when Ray took Georgie by the scruff of the neck and pulled his brother off, giving him a vicious cuff around the ear for good measure. He sighed and jumped slightly when Vic Copeland, who had come up quietly behind him, put a heavy hand on his shoulder.

‘Come on, Flash, it’s time for a wander round our patch isn’t it?’

Barnard got up.

‘Aren’t we supposed to be looking at this dead shirtlifter’s lifestyle? We’d better go through the motions at least. There was nothing at his flat that helped so we’d better trawl the queer pub again, press a bit harder, maybe.’

‘I suppose,’ he said, without enthusiasm.

‘By the way, are you doing anything tonight?’

‘I don’t think so,’ Barnard said warily.

‘There’s a knees-up at my old nick in the city I thought you might like to come to. Six o’clock till you have to be lifted into a cab. Do you fancy it?’

‘Yeah, why not,’ Barnard said, wondering whether cultivating Copeland might get him off his back. ‘Let’s do that, mate.’

By the end of a fruitless day, Harry Barnard had hoped that Vic Copeland might have forgotten his promise to take him to his old nick’s party, but he underestimated the former City officer’s memory or his determination, or maybe both. At five thirty Copeland wandered back into the CID main office with his coat on and waved a hand in Barnard’s direction.

‘Ready, mate?’ he asked. Barnard nodded and slipped into his trench coat and pulled his trilby on carefully at what he considered to be the most fetching angle.

Copeland laughed. ‘There’ll be no tarts there,’ he said. ‘Except possibly a couple of old boots from uniform you wouldn’t want to pass the time of day with. This’ll be strictly a lads’ night out – or in, in this case, the entire nick. The super down there’s one of the lads himself most of the time. Doesn’t stand on ceremony out of hours. In fact most of the time he’s the life and soul of the party. Not like your miserable old sod of a DCI here. Have you got your car?’

Barnard nodded.

‘You can leave it down by Smithfield and take a cab home if you need one. Pick it up tomorrow.’

‘Fine,’ Barnard said. ‘Let’s go.’

The noise when they finally arrived at Copeland’s former nick hit the two men like a blow. The party had evidently started well before the advertised time and raucous groups of shirt-sleeved officers, some still partially uniformed, met them with a generalized welcome for Copeland which seemed to be seamlessly extended to his companion from the West End and instantly plied them with tumblers of Scotch. Copeland was obviously still a popular visitor to the nick where he had come within an ace of being charged with murder, which said all Barnard needed to know about the notorious solidarity of the City force. He hoped, though without much confidence, that when AC Amis had completed his revamp of the Met things might change in the City as well. Taking the odd backhander was one thing, he thought. Beating someone to death in a cell was quite another.

Losing Copeland in the crowd Barnard accepted a top-up from a tall, red-faced plain clothes officer with a cheerful smile.

‘Welcome to the City of London,’ he said, his words slurred. ‘Vic tells me you’re trying to do something about Ray Robertson at last. About bloody time, too.’

‘Well, we did succeed in pinning down his brother Georgie,’ Barnard countered. ‘He’s a much more dangerous proposition than Ray.’

‘So they say,’ his new-found friend agreed. ‘But I reckon Vic’s right when he says the mother’s not to be sneezed at either. And she’s got two sons. Vic reckons there’s damn all to choose between them.’