War Damage (25 page)

To get away from it she ran back downstairs and out into the garden, but the Hallams had gone. She dashed out into the road, but there was no sign of them.

She had had nothing to drink all afternoon, and so was unusually aware of how drunk her guests had become. In the drawing room Jeannette was weaving up to Noel.

‘You're drunk.'

‘If you weren't so bloody boring—'

‘What d'you think you were doing, cradle-snatching – the boy's fifteen!'

Regine had never seen Noel lose his temper. He surely couldn't be in love with this horrible girl.

‘What am I supposed to do, then, when—'

‘You stupid bitch!' Noel slapped her in the face and grabbed her arm. The door banged behind them as he frog-marched her down the path.

Edith and Dorothy looked on, startled, from the sofa.

‘God!' said Alan. ‘Oh well, that'll teach him to pick up girls in Soho drinking clubs.'

Regine longed for nothing so much as to follow Noel's example and flee her own party. What on earth must Edith Blake think of it all! She escaped into the garden again.

She was standing forlornly in the damp dusk when Alan emerged. ‘I'm off,' he said. He hesitated. ‘Look, Reggie, I don't want to be officious or anything, but does Neville know what he's doing?'

‘What d'you mean?'

‘Before Noel lost his temper and flounced off with his tart he seemed to be quite exercised about that friend of yours, Ian Roxburgh. Something about him touting various works of art around. Noel said with things like that you really do need to be absolutely clear about provenance. He says a lot of things have gone on – still are going on – and people are getting away with a lot. But Neville should be very careful. He works for the museum after all, he's not just any old collector who could have the wool pulled over his eyes by someone like Roxburgh. Noel says he doesn't trust Roxburgh, thinks he sails very close to the wind. If the museum gets to hear about it – well, I just hope Neville doesn't do anything stupid.'

Regine and Phil washed up in the kitchen.

‘Until today, I was thinking your Sundays needed some new blood,' said Phil, ‘but now—' He didn't finish the sentence, but raised his eyebrows and pushed his glasses up his nose, leaving a drip of washing-up water on his face. ‘That frightful woman Noel brought along!'

‘I'm afraid Edith was offended.'

‘I shouldn't worry about that. I think Vivienne made up for everything so far as she was concerned. But I'm sorry about Cato. I was sure I'd shut the door. When I went to get him for his walk afterwards he was in the most terrible sulk.'

‘He was very naughty. I hope you refused to speak to him.'

‘You know, a funny thing happened on the Heath. There was a bloke hanging about just the other side of the road down there and when Cato saw him he went potty – jumping up, all over him. It was as if he
knew
him or something.'

‘What did he look like?'

‘Oh … well, it was dark, I couldn't see too clearly, but … odd, wasn't it.'

She leant against the draining board for a moment, but all she said was: ‘Oh, you know Cato, one friendly pat and he's anyone's.'

Vivienne paid off the taxi. Its metal for-hire flag went up with a clink. Charles watched the cab accelerate away and disappear round the curve of the wet road smeared with reflections of light. He looked up at the house, which was in darkness.

‘Is Dad out, then?'

‘He didn't say he was going out. He's probably in his study. I expect you'll want something to eat, won't you, darling?'

‘I'm not hungry.' There had been foreign chocolate biscuits at Regine's and he'd eaten too many. He felt if anything slightly sick, but that was perhaps from drinking three cocktails. Or from thinking about Carnforth all the time.

Vivienne switched on the hall light, which dangled, unshaded, from the high ceiling. From upstairs came John's voice: ‘Is that you?' Charles climbed the ladder to the first floor. Father and son met on the landing.

‘Is your mother downstairs?'

Charles nodded. The next flight of stairs was intact. He began slowly to plod up to his own room, but he was listening to the voices below. He could hear clearly, for sound carried up through the void at the centre of the half-restored house.

‘Where have you been?'

‘At Regine's.'

‘What – all day?'

‘I went to church first.'

‘To church! With Carnforth I suppose.'

Charles's heart raced. He was sweating. He stopped halfway up the stairs to his room, then crept back down to the landing where he sat on the bottom-but-one step.

‘He's trying to help.'

‘
Help
? What with?'

‘Freddie's death opened my eyes to so many things … I'd never realised, I was a fool—'

‘You were besotted with Freddie.'

Charles gripped the banister.

‘You were in love with him for years. You couldn't accept that he'd never … you, a beautiful woman in love with a man who—'

‘Shsh, don't shout,
please
, John, the boy—'

His father lowered his voice, but Charles could still just hear.

‘And now this Arthur Carnforth. He's got some sort of hold over you, hasn't he.'

‘John, you don't understand. You mustn't be jealous. It's nothing like that.'

‘I don't know what's the matter with you. I've given you everything you asked for – this house—'

‘This house! You don't even notice I'm here. It's like living in a morgue, this airless house, all on my own—'

‘
On your own
! I'm here, your son's here.'

‘Don't shout. Don't shout –
please
—' Vivienne was crying again.

‘Stop snivelling, Vivienne. You're hysterical.'

But Vivienne's sobs increased.

Though he didn't realise it, Charles's hand was clamped across his mouth as if to stifle a silent scream.

‘I might as well be on my own … and I blame myself so much. We stood by and let it happen. How
could
I not have known? But that was why – it was because I thought Freddie could do no wrong. But
you
should have known and instead you just did nothing. You didn't even notice. You notice
nothing
about your son.'

A door slammed. The silence was suffocating. Charles didn't know how long he'd sat on the stairs when he heard movements. His father was climbing the ladder. Charles leapt up the stairs to his own room and shut the door. He had just time to sit down at his desk, before his father came into the room without knocking.

He looked tired and spent as he sat down on the bed. ‘Your mother's a bit upset,' he said.

Charles sat rigidly in his chair. He stared at the desk.

‘You know …' His father hesitated. ‘Ever since you came back from America … I feel we've grown apart. Your mother feels we haven't … I haven't taken enough notice of you. But you seem to be getting along all right at school … I know I've been preoccupied. It's not been easy working at the hospital – there are so many shortages. And then there's the chaos of reconstruction. But she feels you've been neglected.' John Hallam was seated with his legs apart, his hands clasped between them as he stared at the floor.

‘Everything's fine, Dad.'

‘Perhaps we didn't take enough account of what a big change it would be for you – coming back here after years in America.'

‘It's okay. I'm all right.' But there was a tight feeling in Charles's throat.

‘Do you miss New York? Your mother's right, I suppose. We never talked about it much. We were so pleased to have you back.'

Charles swallowed. Yes, he wanted to shout. I wish I was back there all the time. The trees spurting green at the end of the street in the spring against the blue sky; the church nestling in the arm of the lofty skyscrapers; the housekeeper, Nell, and sitting with her and Lally in the kitchen eating cookies … the tomb-like somnolence of the drawing room on a summer day, boring and at the same time soothing, and the ice cream they ate at the end of almost every meal … oh, Lally … there was a lump in his throat, but he mustn't,
mustn't
blub.

‘Your mother –' Charles's father unclasped and clasped his hands. ‘The murder – of course it was unsettling – a terrible thing to happen. You must have been upset.' The words came out stiffly self-conscious.

Charles sat dumb.

‘Someone's given your mother the idea – I mean I … to be honest, I never hit it off with Buckingham, I don't care for that kind of man, but he never … did he ever – well –' and at the end it came out in a rush ‘– try to seduce you.'

Charles looked up. He looked his father straight in the eye. ‘No, Dad, never.'

‘Ah … I didn't think … I'm glad to hear it.'

‘But if you want to know, I do miss New York. I hate it here, I wish I'd never come back, I wish I could've stayed there for ever.'

The silence rolled back over them in a smothering wave.

twenty-six

M
URRAY SAID NOTHING
to Plumer about Ridley Road. McGovern's theory, that someone was leaning on Plumer, was alarming. He had to think of an excuse for bringing Pinelli in for questioning again without mentioning the blackshirt angle. And there
was
an obvious solution, he realised: Pinelli had killed Buckingham
and
Ken Barker. Okay, Barker was his mate, but thieves fall out, and so on.

The problem remained that with Plumer present questioning would be useless if Pinelli's connection to the Mosleyites couldn't be raised. But now Plumer was to be sent up to Yorkshire to talk to Buckingham's family. Normally Murray would have accompanied him, but this time Plumer was taking a colleague who knew all about forged wills and fraud.

To start with Pinelli took refuge, as before, in slightly cocky stonewalling.

‘You ain't got nothing on me.'

Murray did not actually believe Pinelli had murdered anyone, but he said: ‘Chief Inspector Plumer thinks you shot that queer on the Heath and if you didn't, he doesn't care, he's going to nail you for it anyway.'

Startled out of his confidence, Pinelli sat up. ‘I never! He can't do that!'

‘Tell us about your mates in the Union Movement, Stanley. It's not just a question of fights up the Ridley Road, is it. Who was the man you left the march with last week?'

‘I just met him, didn't I.'

‘But who is he? You walked all the way back to Whitechapel with him. You seemed to have a lot to talk about.'

A startled look from the prune-like eyes with their long lashes.

‘Did Kenny know him?'

‘Give us a cigarette?'

Murray passed him the packet. He said: ‘Ken Barker was murdered, Stan, you know that, don't you. That must have upset you. An old friend – somebody blew a hole in his head and dumped the body in a ditch. That's not right, is it. Don't you want that person brought to book, the bloke who murdered Ken? Or perhaps you know who it was already.'

Stan drew on his cigarette. The hand that held it was shaking.

‘Worried they might come after you too?'

Stan fidgeted about in his chair.

‘You see, Stan, Chief Inspector Plumer isn't here today. If he was, you'd be in dead trouble. He wants you fitted up for these murders. He said I should do whatever it takes. He wants a confession. Now as it happens,
I
don't think it
was
you. But I think you know something about it. You know something about someone called Carnforth, for instance, don't you? A friend of the man you left Ridley Road with.'

Stan shook his head. ‘That name don't mean nothing.'

Frustrated, Murray grasped for another key. ‘But you've been to Handel Street.'

Stan's eyelids flickered. He looked down.

Murray waited. He tried again. ‘Let's go back to what Ken Barker was doing in the days before he was killed. I want to know why there was blood on that shirt of yours he borrowed. You know all about it, don't you, and the more you refuse to talk, the more it's going to look as if you did it, Stan. Is it that you don't want to grass Ken up? But he's dead, it can't do him any harm now. It might seem disloyal, I understand that, but he'd want you to tell the truth now, wouldn't he. He wouldn't want you to go down for what he did.'

Murray almost invoked the idea of Ken looking down from heaven or up from hell and begging Stan to come clean. But that would destroy the atmosphere, reduce everything to farce. As it was, he had to bite his lip in order not to smile. He'd obviously guessed right, however. Some kind of thieves' honour had been holding Stan back.

‘D'you think so?' His expression changed to one almost of trustfulness.

‘Yes. I'm sure of it. He'd want you to come clean, to save yourself.'

‘It was a while back. Ken said he had a big job, he'd be well paid, he'd be in the big time. Someone important give him the job. He was supposed to do it on his own, but he said I could come in on it, he needed my help. He didn't say exactly what it was, but he showed me – he had a gun. I was scared, to be honest, I mean we never done nothing like that – shooters, firearms. But he just wanted my help afterwards, he said. I was to meet up with him at King's Cross and when I did Ken had the keys to this house – in Chelsea, he said it was – so we go over there. It wasn't to look like a robbery, he said, and there was only certain things we was to take. Some boxes, mainly from the back of the house.'

They'd nicked a few bits of silver and some loose cash as well, but Stan had no intention of mentioning that.

‘What was in the boxes?'

‘He said they was dirty pictures or something. We 'ad a look. Disgusting they was.'

‘What then? What did you do with them?'

‘We was to take them round to some geezer in King's Cross.'

‘Handel Mansions, Handel Street. That was it, wasn't it.'

‘Yeah, it was some old flats. I wasn't to come in, he was supposed to be on his own.'

‘So you went to this flat with Barker, but you didn't go in.'

‘Yeah, well not exactly. Ken wanted me there. He was nervous.'

‘He was frightened of the man who lived there?'

Stan frowned. ‘Not exactly. Dunno. But he said he was supposed to be alone, but I was to come up.'

‘What happened then.'

‘Well, I went up with him, but I stayed on the turn of the stairs. I could see the bloke, but he couldn't see me. He answered the door and soon as I saw him – I knew him.'

‘You'd met him? On marches? With Mosley's lot?'

‘Yeah – sort of. There was smaller meetings – I went along once or twice. Load of rubbish, I didn't understand half of it. He spoke at one of them. He was a preachy sort of bird.'

‘Arthur Carnforth.'

‘That's not the name – when I heard him speak it was … Peter James, Jameson, something like that.'

Murray remembered the pseudonym from before the war. He wondered why Carnforth still used it. ‘Peter Janeway,' he said.

Stan nodded.

‘And when you'd previously been to the house in Chelsea – are you saying you really didn't know how Barker had acquired this set of house keys? You didn't know the owner of the house had been murdered?'

‘No, no, I never.'

‘You want to be careful, Pinelli. You've just admitted to what amounts to being an accessory after a murder.'

Stan's mouth opened. He shook his head. Murray couldn't believe he was so stupid he didn't know the score. ‘You know, too, don't you, that when a murder is committed and more than one perpetrator is involved, all those present may be charged with murder.'

‘I wasn't on Hampstead Heath!'

So he did know! Murray smiled and leant forward. ‘How did you know this had anything to do with Hampstead Heath? I think perhaps you were there, Stanley, and that's very good news, because as you know, your friend Kenneth is no longer with us and so we can't charge him, but now you're saying you were part of a murder team, so we'll be able to charge you and there'll be a trial. We need a trial, Stan, because those people up in Hampstead don't take it kindly when someone gets murdered on their back lawn. They want to see someone brought to book, they want to see justice done. And as far as they're concerned, that means a conviction for murder, followed in short order by a hanging.'

Stan was snivelling now. ‘No! Don't get me wrong. I only met him afterwards. Honest. In Chelsea.'

Murray believed him, but it wouldn't do to show it. ‘But then Kenny was shot. And you must be frightened you're going to be next. That Arthur Carnforth will be coming after you. You're frightened of him, aren't you.'

Stan nodded. He stared at the floor. Murray thought he was going to say something, but instead he was violently sick.

Murray couldn't arrest Stan. Plumer knew nothing about the interview and wasn't going to like it when he heard about Stan's confession. Murray was unsure how to persuade his boss they had to take Carnforth in.

If the photographs were still in Carnforth's flat …

He was afraid Stan would just disappear, lie low, so he ended up by giving him money. He also threatened him that if he didn't stay in touch he'd be the number one murder suspect.

When he got to the office next morning, there was a buzz of talk about a big vice squad raid. Inspector Victor Ramsgate of the vice squad had visited Rodney Ellington-Smith, well-known author of books of essays and
belles lettres
and a highly regarded review column in the
Sunday Times
.

Murray knew how it went. The victim had reported the threats to the police. Ramsgate had visited the charming period mews house in Knightsbridge. The result had been not only the arrest of the writer himself, but further raids on friends of his, whose names had been found in an address book and diary.

Murray guessed that from Ramsgate's point of view it was all a great success. He decided to liaise with Ramsgate. If Buckingham's photos were only in Carnforth's flat …

He would have to see to that shortly.