Blood Brothers (27 page)

‘I think Georgie is capable of anything,’ Barnard said. ‘And his mother seems to have turned into a malevolent old bat. I guess we’re on their little list too. I wasn’t kidding when I said you should get out of London. I mean it. You’re not safe at your flat and you’re probably not safe here either. I’m sure you can square some time off with Ken Fellows, in the circumstances. Ring your mother and tell her you’re coming home for a while. Ring her now.’

‘She’s not on the phone, la,’ Kate said, laughing. ‘Where I come from we use the call box at the end of the street. People like my ma don’t have phones.’

Barnard did not smile. ‘Find out the train times, then, and just turn up. I’m sure she’ll be pleased to see you.’

Kate looked at him for a minute, her expression serious. ‘I’m not sure I want to leave you on your own,’ she said quietly. ‘We’re in this together, aren’t we? I’ll stay here tonight at least and then we’ll see.’

Barnard put his arm round her shoulder and kissed her on the cheek. ‘You’re very sweet,’ he said. ‘But I don’t want you to get hurt.’

‘And I don’t want you to end up in jail,’ she said. ‘It seems to me that if you can find out what’s really going on with Georgie and Reg Smith you’ll do yourself a lot of good. With what Carter Price and I discovered and what we’ve found out since Carter was attacked we’ve got a good chance of stopping something big. So let’s do it.’

‘You are amazing,’ Barnard said. ‘Are you sure?’

‘I’m sure,’ Kate said.

‘OK, let’s take a spin round to the
Globe
and see what we can dig up about Mitch Graveney,’ he said. ‘He’s the odd one out in all this. And then we’ll go and see Ray and warn him he may be in danger. I’m quite sure Georgie is capable of killing Ray if the mood takes him. And it’s quite possible Ray has a pretty good idea of what’s really going on. He may not have wanted to tell me before, but if he thinks Georgie’s on the rampage he may be more forthcoming.’

Kate nodded. ‘Let’s do it,’ she said again.

The
Globe
building turned a glassy face towards Fleet Street but its business end was at the back, where huge doors opened on to a back street usually packed with delivery vans during the day, ready to carry off the various editions of its sister evening paper
The Star.
When Barnard drove south from Holborn he found it difficult to park close to the building and they ended up walking towards the print shop entrance, which Barnard reckoned was a better approach than the front doors where they would be lucky to get past reception. He felt the loss of his warrant card acutely.

The huge delivery doors were fully open and dozens of men in blue overalls were milling about inside. They could see the mighty presses inside linked by roller belts to the point where the papers were tied into bundles by hand and the vans backed up, filling the air with fumes. No one seemed to even notice their arrival or, if they did, they were regarded as interested spectators rather than significant visitors.

‘We’re looking for Mitch Graveney,’ Barnard said to one of the printers. ‘I’ve got a message for him.’

The man glanced inside and waved in the direction of a man wearing earmuffs. ‘That’s Mitch,’ he said. ‘But he’s very busy. We’re about to roll.’ Kate nodded, recognizing the man whose photograph she had taken several times. But before they could approach him, Graveney turned away and moved towards a separate loading bay where another van with security marking was manoeuvring into the narrow parking space.

Barnard put a hand on Kate’s arm. ‘Watch,’ he said, as Graveney himself seemed to be watching the back doors of the van being opened and various metal boxes being unloaded. Inside the van it was possible to see more of the same. A security guard positioned by the entrance was taking a close interest in Barnard and Kate and Harry pulled her away round the corner out of sight.

‘Looks like cash, for wages probably,’ he said.

But before Kate could reply a klaxon sounded followed by an enormous roar which shook the building around them and even the ground beneath their feet. The presses had begun to print the next edition of the
Star
.

‘Let’s go and see your mate Carter Price again,’ Barnard said. ‘He’ll know what goes on with the wages deliveries.’

‘He did tell me he was paid in cash,’ Kate said. ‘It seemed a bit odd for someone in his position but he said because so many of the workforce were always paid that way they lumped the journalists in as well. A lot of the newspapers do it he said.’

‘So a hell of a lot of cash must go in and out every week.’

‘I guess so,’ Kate said.

They picked up the car and drove to Ludgate Circus and cut through to Holborn and Bart’s where they found Carter Price still confined to bed, but looking considerably more cheerful than the last time they had seen him.

‘You’re looking better,’ Kate said. ‘Are you feeling it?’

Price nodded, though without great certainty. ‘A bit,’ he said. ‘I’ll be here for a while though, they reckon. A fractured skull’s not to be taken lightly.’

‘We want to pick your brains again, in spite of the cracks,’ Barnard said, slightly impatiently. ‘We went down to the
Globe
this morning to see if we could get close to Mitch Graveney, but they were printing the
Star
and we couldn’t get close. But what we did see was a security van pulling into the back of the building close to the print shop and we wondered how often that happened. We wondered if that was the link between Graveney and Reg Smith.’

Price gave a faint whistle. ‘Jesus wept,’ he said. ‘You’ve no idea how much cash that van delivers. It goes round on a Wednesday so that people can be paid on a Thursday. But it doesn’t just come to the
Globe.
It does a circuit of half a dozen papers, maybe more. There’ll be hundreds of thousands of quid in that van when it starts off.’

‘Does it vary its route?’ Barnard asked.

‘I don’t know,’ Price said. ‘It certainly varies its time of arrival at our place so it probably does. But someone has to be told what time it’s going to drive in so that the payroll staff can meet it at the back entrance. That’s why Smith could have been schmoozing Mitch Graveney. He’s very often in charge of the presses. He would need to know. I should have worked that out. It’s not exactly the Great Train Robbery but it would be a substantial haul if anyone managed to hijack it at its first call.’

‘And if the presses were running no one would hear a thing,’ Kate said feelingly. ‘No wonder they wear earmuffs.’

‘Are you going to your boss to fill him in on all this?’ Kate asked as they walked back to the car.

‘Not yet,’ Barnard said. ‘I want to be one hundred per cent sure of the facts before I do that. I still don’t understand who got Georgie off the hook and why. I can’t see how even Reg Smith could swing that without some help from the law. Ruth Michelmore couldn’t understand it either. The case was watertight even without the old tramp Hamish’s evidence. I really don’t believe his mother could have shifted the legal system like that. If she was involved she must have had some pretty powerful help.’

He swung the car east on to Holborn and skirted St Paul’s.

‘We’ll go to see Ray again. He might have some idea who swung that for Georgie. And we need to tell him what his mother said. He won’t take Georgie’s threats seriously, of course. I reckon he still thinks of him as a nasty little brother whose ears he used to clip if he strayed too far out of line. He never did take on board just how vicious he was even when he was a kid.’

Kate shuddered. ‘I shouldn’t think he thinks that any more, after what he was charged with,’ she said. They travelled in uneasy silence until Barnard pulled up outside the Robertson’s gym. Barnard glanced around but could see no sign that they had been followed. Copeland seemed to have given up on his surveillance which only told Barnard that the sergeant believed he did not need any more evidence in the case and that his goose was well and truly cooked. Looking grim he led Kate inside where they found Ray Robertson ensconced in his office as usual in a thick cloud of cigar smoke. He looked up as they worked their way between the boxing ring and training equipment but this time there was no welcoming smile.

‘I tried to get you by phone,’ Barnard said. ‘Where were you?’

‘Oh, round and about,’ Robertson said airily. ‘Is there any word of where my blasted brother is? I’ll swing for that bastard yet.’

‘Or he’ll swing for you,’ Barnard said quietly. ‘We went to see your ma this morning. She reckons he thinks you were involved in his arrest, though how he works that out I’m not sure. Anyway, she says he’s out to get you. I thought you’d better know that.’

Ray said nothing as he lit a fresh cigar. ‘I’ve never been a grass in my life,’ he said. ‘You know I’d never have been involved in what Georgie was up to. Not in a million years. But I wouldn’t shop him.’

‘But now?’ Barnard whispered, watching the mixed emotions flit across Robertson’s heavy face. ‘Now it’s a question of survival?’

‘My own kid brother,’ Robertson whispered.

‘He was always a maniac,’ Barnard said. ‘I thought we’d stopped him for good and now we seem to have to do it all over again.’

Robertson blew a cloud of smoke in their direction and seemed to come to a conclusion. ‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘I’ll tell you what I know, which isn’t everything, by a long chalk. But it should help. Reg Smith wanted me in on his latest scheme. I told you. I said no. That sort of heist isn’t my scene. Too violent. Too risky. I reckon he was thinking of getting Georgie involved as well and when I said I wasn’t interested he went for that big time.’

‘Do you know what Smith is planning? What sort of heist?’ Barnard asked, almost holding his breath as he waited for Robertson to break the habit of a lifetime and become a grass.

‘There’s a security van goes round all the newspapers around Fleet Street once a week delivering their wages. Its huge moolah, according to Reg, enough to set us all up for life. He knew I’d been spouting off about the train robbers. Thought I’d be interested. More fool me, I suppose. I should keep my big mouth shut.’

‘You certainly frightened Fred Bettany,’ Barnard said.

‘Yeah, yeah,’ Robertson said. ‘He chickened out. He wouldn’t believe I wouldn’t go for it. Tooled up as well.’

‘Guns?’

‘Oh yeah. You know how Georgie would love that.’ Kate saw Barnard’s face harden.

‘Do you know when?’ he asked.

But Robertson shrugged. ‘Reg didn’t tell me that. The van varies its time and route, apparently, but from what he said I think he’s got an inside man who’s going to give him the nod. He was making a big thing of being ready at a moment’s notice, like the bloody commandos he said. As if. He wouldn’t have made it in the bloody Home Guard.’

Barnard glanced at Kate and she nodded. ‘Mitch Graveney,’ she said. ‘At the
Globe.’

Barnard leaned back in his rickety chair and looked at Robertson. ‘You’re in trouble, Ray,’ he said. ‘Reg will realize you know too much
and Georgie hates your guts anyway. They’ll come after you. I should get out of London for a while if poss. I’ll set the wheels in motion if I can and try to stop this in its tracks, but even if I can – and I’m in the doghouse already remember – it will be much harder to keep Georgie off your back.’

‘That little bastard,’ Robertson snarled. ‘I knew he’d be trouble the first time I saw his evil, wrinkled little face. I should have strangled him then.’

DCI Jackson put the phone down irritably. The call had come from the City of London police and had, in effect, been a complaint about interference on their patch by DS Harry Barnard. He had turned up at Grays Inn Road station this morning, Jackson’s opposite number there had complained, with some cock and bull story about a planned heist of a wages van doing the rounds of the newspaper offices.

‘What the hell is going on?’ DCI O’Rorke had demanded. ‘We’ve not had a whisper. And your man didn’t seem to have any evidence that was remotely credible. Do you know anything about it?’

Jackson had had to confess that he didn’t, and admit that Barnard had been suspended.

‘What’s he trying to do?’ O’Rorke asked. ‘Gain some brownie points to get himself off the hook? If so I really don’t want him trampling around on my ground. If anything big was going down we’d have heard about it. We’re not complete fools, whatever the Met thinks.’

‘I’ll haul him in,’ Jackson had said, his voice tight with anger. ‘Find out what’s going on.’

‘Well, we’ll keep an eye on Fleet Street but I reckon it’ll be a waste of manpower I can do without. Reg Smith and Georgie Robertson are involved, he claims. As if. Georgie Robertson should still be banged up, by rights. How the hell did he get out? What is he, bloody Houdini?’

Jackson’s complexion, already flushed, turned a darker shade of puce. ‘You’ll have to ask the Yard about that. I’m as pissed off as you are about it.’

‘Right,’ O’Rorke said. ‘I’ll leave it with you then. Get this man Barnard back under control. He’s a loose cannon. I don’t care how you do it, I just don’t want him messing up on my patch.’

Jackson sat drumming his fingers on the desk for a moment and then picked up the phone again. Assistant Commissioner John Amis responded quickly and listened quietly while Jackson outlined the complaint from the City force. Not until Jackson had finished did he explode.

‘What’s he playing at?’ he asked. ‘We know Barnard’s in Ray Robertson’s pocket so this must be something he’s put him up to. It must be some ploy, a distraction maybe, while they fit Georgie into whatever scheme his brother’s set up for him. I’m quite sure Ray Robertson was involved in getting rid of the witnesses so the case collapsed. No doubt with Barnard’s help. He knew that case inside out.’

‘Barnard was heavily involved in that case,’ Jackson agreed, though not without a hint of uncertainty.

‘If the evidence – or in this case the witnesses – aren’t there, there is no case to answer,’ Amis snapped. ‘Pull Barnard in. It was a mistake not to charge him straight away and get him remanded. I want him banged up. And then get Copeland working on Ray Robertson. I want him banged up for a very long time too. Do it now.’ And he hung up.