Denial of Murder (25 page)

‘So has Larry Ryecroft been taken to the lock-up as well,' Vicary asked, ‘because he's not at home either?'

‘No,' Bailey shook her head, ‘don't think so.'

‘Why not?' Vicary asked.

‘'Cos he toed it, didn't he,' Bailey replied. ‘Scarpered … done a runner … hopped it … cleared the pitch …'

‘And how do you know that?' Vicary pressed.

‘'Cos one of the heavy geezers, one of Pestilence's soldiers asked Davy where Larry Ryecroft was because they'd called on him and he'd fled.' Bernadette Bailey picked up the cup of tea from the table top. ‘So they gave Davy a good kicking to make him tell them where Larry Ryecroft was … but eventually they gave up when it was clear he didn't know and then they took him away all bloody and pleading for his life. I reckon someone must have tipped Ryecroft off, but Davy, his mobile was switched off, wasn't it, so no one could tip him off.'

‘That has probably cost him his life,' Yewdall observed.

‘Probably … but do I care? Like I said, I'm out of it now.' Bernadette Bailey shrugged her shoulders. ‘I'm not going to be no bottom of the ladder villain's chick no more, I've seen how they end up … no money … making a pair of tights last two weeks … visiting their men in prison. Na, me, I'm leaving the lifestyle, and I'm leaving the manor. I'm going where I'm not known and I'll start looking for an honest geezer who can hold down a job and bring in steady money. I'm making a fresh start.'

‘Well, good for you,' Vicary replied, ‘but right now we need your help, and Larry Ryecroft needs your help. You'll be saving his life. That's something you could do before starting your new life.'

‘Oh … oh … no …' Bernadette Bailey put her hand on her head. ‘Oh no …'

‘You've realized something.' Harry Vicary asked, ‘What is it?'

‘They'll be looking for Rita as well,' Bernadette Bailey panted.

‘Rita?' Vicary asked.

‘Rita Hibbert … I like her.'

‘Who is she?' Yewdall asked.

‘Larry Ryecroft's chick,' Bailey advised. ‘You see if Davy and Larry messed up, Rita will have messed up as well because she went on that job with them … whatever it was … Larry, Rita and Davy, the three of them. Oh, no … oh, no … Pestilence will destroy her face and she's a looker … he'll burn it with acid. That's what he does to chicks who cross him or who mess up. The boys, he'll likely kill them but he'll burn a chick's face off … like he'll let her live but wishing she was dead. One girl once skimmed fifty sovs … that's all she did, helped herself to fifty quid … but Pestilence found out and had her face burned off in front of the other runners.'

‘Runners?' Yewdall asked.

‘Women who work for Pestilence carrying money and stuff across London. They attract less suspicion than men so they say, or sometimes delivering it to places outside London. I used to be one of them. He gathered all the runners together in a field one night up in Hertfordshire and made them watch as his soldiers poured acid on her face. God … the screams … then they left her there, crawling about the grass while we got back into the cars and drove back to London. Pestilence doesn't like things being taken from him. Any other villain would have told the other girls to give that girl a slap or he would have told the girl to give him twice the money back, but not Pestilence … a runner took something from him so he destroyed her face. She was a looker too.'

‘So where has she gone?' Harry Vicary asked calmly. ‘I mean, Rita Hibbert. When we called at Ryecroft's drum this morning there was no one at home.'

‘If we find her she lives,' Penny Yewdall added, ‘even if you don't care about Davy Bootmaker or Larry Ryecroft, you obviously care about pretty Rita Hibbert.'

‘This didn't come from me … I'll never be able to hide from Pestilence.' Bailey's voice shook with fear.

‘Agreed.' Vicary nodded. ‘It didn't come from you.'

‘Just tell us,' Penny Yewdall pleaded. ‘We're under real time pressure if we're going to save her and Larry Ryecroft. Just tell us!'

‘Rita has a sister,' Bailey replied quickly. ‘I don't think Pestilence Smith knows about her. In fact, I'm sure he doesn't know about her. She's got a council flat in Hampstead, just down the hill from the Royal Free Hospital. I have the address in my address book,' she turned and opened her handbag, ‘but I didn't tell you …'

Harry Vicary thought the flat was a little cramped but also quite cosy, and he assumed that the flats must be sought after because they offered affordable accommodation in a fashionable part of London. The building which contained the flat, and the other flats like it, was a medium-rise inter-war development in red brick, with one of the suburban railway lines carrying traffic in and out of central London running behind it. To the front of the block of flats were delicatessens, fashionable pubs and a bus terminus. Inside the flat Larry Ryecroft and Rita Hibbert, both in their twenties, sat side by side on the two-person sofa clutching each other and shaking with evident fear. The tenant of the flat, Joyce Hibbert, sat in a posture of despair and indignation and annoyance at the table in the window, refusing to look at her sister. Brunnie and Vicary stood in the centre of the room.

‘I tried to warn Davy,' Ryecroft stammered, ‘but the idiot had left his mobile switched off and Bernadette Bailey hasn't got a landline. She didn't pay her telephone bill so they cut her off.'

‘So who warned you?' Vicary asked.

‘Anonymous text,' Ryecroft's voice shook with fear, ‘but I think I know who it might have been. One of Pestilence's crew owes me a favour, reckon he was paying it back. All it said was “get out … both of you … you've less than ten minutes” but that was all the warning we needed. We both know what Pestilence Smith can do and we didn't need to be told twice. I grabbed her and we toed it … out the back, over the fence, down the alley, along the street to the Tube station. Once we're in the Underground system we reckoned that we were safe for the time being …'

‘When I first started working for Pestilence Smith,' Rita Hibbert spoke with a shaking voice, ‘I was told to keep a bolthole in case he turns on you but I wasn't to tell anyone about it. It had to be a well-kept secret.'

‘Well, you told someone!' Joyce Hibbert turned to her sister and shouted angrily. ‘Thanks. So now I'm going to have half the gangsters in London at my door now, looking for you and him.'

‘We won't be staying,' Rita Hibbert attempted to placate her sister. ‘We'll be away soon.'

‘Damn right you won't be staying, but if they can find you here,' Joyce Hibbert pointed to Brunnie and Vicary, ‘if they can find you here, so can this Pestilence geezer. It stands to reason.'

‘So how did you find us?' Ryecroft asked meekly.

‘I can't tell you, but this lady's right,' Vicary replied. ‘If we can find you then so can Pestilence Smith and his soldiers. If you want us to help you, you have to help us.' He paused. ‘So, Davy “the Cobbler” Bootmaker – where have they taken him?'

‘The lock-up,' Ryecroft replied in a defeated tone of voice, ‘it's the only place they would take him.'

‘Address?' Vicary snapped. ‘Where is it … this lock-up?'

‘Copenhagen Street,' Ryecroft replied.

‘By King's Cross Station?' Vicary asked. ‘That Copenhagen Street?'

Ryecroft shook his head. ‘No … another street called Copenhagen Street. It's in the East End, off the Mile End Road … but he'll be brown bread by now.'

‘Not unless he's got information which Pestilence wants … like your whereabouts … and if we get a wriggle on we can save his hide.'

‘OK … lock-up … white painted door,' Ryecroft advised, ‘black letters on it saying “Beresford Removals and House Clearances”.'

‘That's just a front?' Vicary clarified. ‘I assume it is?'

‘Yes, the name was already on the door when Pestilence took over the lease. He kept the sign up.' Ryecroft nodded slightly. ‘But, like you say, governor, it's just a front. It's just to make it look kosher.' Ryecroft glanced out of the window at the blue, near cloudless sky over Hampstead, ‘I mean, he can hardly put “Pestilence Smith's Torture and Execution Chamber” on the door, can he? But that's what it is and that's where Davy Bootmaker will be.'

Frankie Brunnie took his mobile from his jacket pocket, turned and left the sitting room and stood in the short narrow hallway to make a phone call. He returned a few moments later and said, ‘They're on their way, boss.'

‘Thanks,' Vicary replied, ‘hope we are in time.' He then turned to the trembling Larry Ryecroft and said, ‘So what happened?'

‘It was Pestilence Smith, wasn't it; he'd got wind of it that a teacher geezer had got out after fifteen years of bird and was asking for a black street worker called Quoshie. Pestilence had it in for the teacher geezer … and so he had a young chick who lived in a rented house over in Acton strangled, the same house that the teacher geezer was living in at the same time.'

‘Who told you that Pestilence Smith had strangled the girl?' Vicary asked. ‘Or did you witness it?'

‘Dunno … and no, I didn't see it. I wasn't one of his soldiers then … all Pestilence's crew knew it was him – two of them were there, they saw it go down … but Quoshie was strung out, they said, desperate for a fix and Pestilence was her supplier. He made her put on a pair of gloves, rubber washing-up gloves, and take the sweat from the teacher's body … he was half undressed 'cos it was a hot day … and then wipe her hands all over the dead girl and especially round her neck, and then all over the room. They said that Pestilence had found out that someone's sweat will have their DNA in it and back then DNA was all that was needed for a conviction, so the teacher geezer was well fitted up.'

‘All right,' Vicary growled. ‘Then what …?'

‘So Pestilence heard that the teacher geezer was looking for Quoshie to get her to turn Queen's evidence against Pestilence. Like she was going to do that, some hope, you would think … I mean … this teacher was just not on this planet but Pestilence heard about it, and he also heard that Quoshie was actually thinking of doing what the teacher wanted her to do. She was feeling all guilty, you see, so Pestilence wasn't taking no chances. He had them both snatched and taken to the lock-up on Copenhagen Street, then sent for me and her and Davy Bootmaker.' Ryecroft once again looked longingly at the blue sky as if he was wishing himself to be somewhere else, somewhere a long way away.

‘Just carry on,' Vicary prompted.

‘Well, me and her and Davy Bootmaker got to the lock-up and those two, Quoshie and the teacher geezer, were well trussed up in the back of a van and we were given directions to a cottage in Hampshire. Pestilence rents it now and again … assumed name and hard cash. It's fairly remote. Sometimes Pestilence likes jobs done well out of London.'

‘We know,' Vicary remarked. ‘We have been there.'

‘How did you find it?' Ryecroft asked. ‘We cleaned up. Well …' he turned to Rita Hibbert, ‘she cleaned up.'

‘Not as well as she might have done,' Vicary remarked, ‘and you didn't keep Cherry Quoshie and Gordon Cogan very well supervised. You must have left them alone for a bit … even a short time. I dare say that it will all come out in the trial but let's just say for now that Cherry Quoshie left us a present where she knew we'd find it and where you wouldn't think to look, and that led us to the cottage where we found Cherry Quoshie's fingerprints and Gordon Cogan's fingerprints on the underside of a table … and also on the inside of a drawer.'

‘I cleaned all the surfaces,' Rita Hibbert protested, ‘like you told me to do. I never thought about the underside of the table or the inside of a drawer.'

‘You read the
Daily Mail
when you were at the cottage?' Vicary confirmed.

‘Yes.' Ryecroft nodded. ‘Davy Bootmaker likes it for the sports reports. So do I.'

‘We know.' Vicary smiled. ‘We found both your fingerprints on the sports section.'

‘I told you to get rid of that paper!' Ryecroft turned angrily to Rita Hibbert. ‘I told you to burn it.'

‘I did,' Rita Hibbert protested, ‘I took it outside and burned it on the fire on the back lawn.'

‘Not all of it, you didn't.' Vicary spoke calmly. ‘Cherry Quoshie must have seen you reading the sports pages and when you had finished and she was alone she must have taken out a page from the sports section and put it in a drawer underneath an older sheet of newsprint used to line the drawer hoping, even knowing we'd find it and hoping, even knowing that you would not check the newspaper to see whether or not all the pages were there. But we found it and we found Bootmaker's dabs and your dabs on it.' Vicary addressed Ryecroft. ‘And we found Cherry Quoshie's prints and Gordon Cogan's prints on the same page … and the date of the paper puts all four of you there at the same time.'

‘Can you put me at the cottage?' Rita Hibbert asked.

‘Not forensically but the keyholder, the lady in the village, she will be able to identify you as being the person to whom she gave the key for the weekend in question,' Vicary advised. ‘She remembers you well, Rita. All dolled up like you were going out to a night club, instead of hiking boots and a green jacket which is what all other people who rent the cottage wear for a few days of birdwatching. She remembers you well. She gave a good description of you, in fact.'

Rita Hibbert looked crestfallen. Her sister glared at her and mouthed, ‘Half-wit'.

‘It's enough to put all three of you away for murder, if Bootmaker is still alive, that is, and that remains to be seen. Murder times two, in fact.' Vicary emphasized the point. ‘So it's really time to start working for yourself, both of you.' Vicary paused. ‘The burn on Cherry Quoshie's leg; who did that?'