Blood Brothers Read online

  Kate’s heart missed a beat and she tried to keep any trace of excitement out of her eyes. ‘Great,’ she said. ‘Let’s do that. I hate sitting here doing nothing.’

  Kate had spent most of the unproductive day flipping idly through the morning papers, desultorily bringing her files of photographs up to date, and then reading the early editions of the evening papers which had been dropped off at the agency, but her mind was not on them. There was another problem which was keeping her awake in the small hours, and its name was Harry Barnard, the Soho cop who had charmed her the very first time she had met him and into whose bed she had eventually been lured. But the relationship flared and spluttered out again at intervals and Kate was never sure that she wanted it to survive. And nor, she thought, was Harry. Neither of us, she had confided sadly to her flatmate Tess after being stood up one more time, really wanted to be pinned down.

  At the end of the afternoon, when the flurry of photographers on assignment had come back to the office and developed their pictures, and most of them had gone home, Kate waited for Ken Fellows to clear his own desk. At last he finished and nodded in her direction.

  ‘Get your coat on girl,’ he said. ‘It’s fixed. I’ll buy you a G and T at the French pub and you can have a chat with Carter.’

  They walked together through the early evening lull as the West End workers straggled home and before the evening’s revellers poured in to the pubs and clubs, restaurants and clip joints which lined the narrow streets of Soho. Pushing open the door of the French pub’s bar, Fellows glanced round and raised a hand in greeting to a burly, red-faced man in a green tweed three piece suit which did nothing to hide his expansive belly, sitting on his own at a corner table with a half empty glass of Scotch in front of him. He was younger than Ken, Kate thought, but seemed to be deliberately cultivating an old-fashioned look. She held back as the two men shook hands.

  ‘It’s been a long time,’ he said. ‘Carter, this is my newest recruit, Kate O’Donnell. Kate – Carter Price, crime supremo at the Globe, a very old mate of mine and a Fleet Street star.’

  ‘Hello, my dear,’ Price said with an enthusiasm which surprised Kate. ‘It’s surprising we haven’t bumped into each other before,’ he said. ‘I’ve picked up on some of your adventures for my rag. You seem to believe in living dangerously.’

  ‘Not really,’ Kate said. ‘Most of what’s happened to me has been purely accidental.’

  Price raised an eyebrow at that but did not comment.

  ‘Well, sit down, darling, and tell me all about it. What can I get you to drink?’

  It was late when Kate got back to the flat she shared with Tess Farrell, her head spinning from the combination of one G and T too many and from listening to the endless stories from Fleet Street the two men regaled her with.

  ‘Kate fancies her chances as a snapper for one of the papers,’ Ken had said as the evening progressed, his voice becoming slightly slurred. ‘I told her that’s not on.’

  Price laughed loudly, attracting attention around the now crowded bar. ‘They’d eat you for breakfast, petal,’ he said.

  ‘I’d like to see them try,’ Kate had snapped, filled with alcoholic bravado. ‘You forget I come from Liverpool.’

  ‘Ah, that’s where that accent comes from. I should have known now these bands are ruling the roost,’ Price said. ‘Knew them, did you? The Beatles.’

  ‘I was at art college with John Lennon,’ Kate said sharply.

  ‘Were you now?’ Price had said. ‘Well, I tell you what. I’ll set up a meeting with the picture editor at the Globe and give you a tour round the old Lubianka. How about that?’

  ‘And what did your boss say to that,’ Tess asked as they sipped coffee in front of the gas fire when Kate got home.

  ‘I think he was a bit miffed, but he couldn’t really say anything, could he? After all he’d introduced me to Carter Price in the first place. It’s only a visit anyway. From what they said I shouldn’t think anything will come of it.’

  ‘I wouldn’t be too sure,’ Tess said, laughing. ‘On recent form you seem to be able to talk your way into just about anything you want.’

  After a gruelling afternoon working through the paperwork at the Centre Point site and supervising interviews with all the labourers who were there and making a note of those who weren’t, to be followed up later, Harry Barnard called it a day as the winter light faded. He signed off at the nick after telling DCI Jackson that nothing of significance had emerged, and made his way to his red Ford Capri in search of a final interview which he did not intend to tell anyone else about.

  He drove through the City, where the streets were already emptying, and east towards Whitechapel where he parked outside the unobtrusive entrance to a gym in a side-street, checking his doors carefully, although he had little doubt that the safety of the car, his pride and joy, was more or less guaranteed anywhere so close to Ray Robertson’s property. He went inside and found even this early in the evening there were a couple of lads sparring in the ring, and more using the training equipment around the bleak hall.

  ‘Is he in?’ he asked the older man in grubby singlet and shorts who was watching the sweating pair in the ring carefully and shouting out advice as the slighter of the two began to flag.

  ‘In the office, on the phone,’ the trainer replied with barely a glance at Barnard, who had trained here himself when he left school, encouraged by Robertson to believe he had potential in the ring. He had known Ray since he and the two Robertson brothers had been evacuated together in the early days of the war, but their paths had diverged when Barnard went to grammar school and the other two boys had followed their family’s criminal traditions. But there were bonds that were never truly broken when Barnard put on a police uniform and as a detective there were occasions when the old links proved useful. Barnard came to the gym much less often now to help out the next generation of East End lads, black now as well as white, who saw the ring as a way out of dead-end jobs or crime. Followed by the monotonous thud of leather on flesh and the rattle of skipping feet, he made his way to Ray Robertson’s tiny office in the far corner of the hall, knocked and stuck his head round the door to be beckoned in with the wave of a cigar as Robertson ended his call.

  ‘Harry my boy, nice to see you. Have you come for a workout or is this just a social call?’

  ‘To pick your brains, Ray, as it goes,’ Barnard said, taking the only other chair in the cluttered room and accepting Robertson’s offer of a cigar which he tucked carefully into his top pocket for later. ‘We had something very nasty turn up this afternoon. It was too late for the evening papers but it’ll be all over the rags in the morning. With your contacts I thought you might have heard a whisper.’

  Robertson’s smile faded slightly. ‘You’d better tell me all about it, Flash,’ Robertson said and drew deeply on his cigar, thickening the air in the tiny space into a fog. ‘So far as I know everything’s quiet at the moment on the West End front, which I assume is what we’re talking about as you were on the spot.’

  ‘The big building site at Tottenham Court Road, the one there’s been all the fuss about. Someone made mincemeat of some poor beggar and dumped him there, obviously expecting him to disappear under tons of concrete today if everything had gone according to plan. With brother Georgie safely locked up awaiting trial I couldn’t think of another psycho who might fit the bill.’

  Robertson leaned back in his chair, eyes narrowed. ‘Can’t say I’ve picked anything up of that sort,’ he said. ‘What makes you think it’s not some loony tune like Jack the Ripper?’

  ‘Random killers don’t usually go to that amount of trouble to hide their victims,’ Barnard said. ‘Someone put a lot of thought into this poor beggar’s disposal. It was sheer accident that he didn’t disappear as planned. The contractors had a sudden change of plan and put an excavator back into the foundations. We’re waiting for the post-mortem report. That should tell us how he died.’

  ‘I’ll keep my e
ars open,’ Robertson said. ‘But I can’t say I’ve heard a whisper so far.’

  And with that, Harry Barnard thought, he would obviously have to be content.

  TWO

  Assistant Commissioner John Amis, in full uniform, stood at the window of his Scotland Yard office gazing pensively across the Embankment at the turbulent River Thames in flood. He was a tall man, heavy but not obese in spite of his confinement to a desk job which, after army service which had not ended until after the Korean War, he occasionally chafed against. But at least, he thought, there was the prospect of some action ahead. He tidied the top of his desk, glanced into one or two drawers, one containing a heavy and strictly illicit old service revolver, before locking them and putting the keys in his pocket. He picked up his uniform cap and made his way through the Victorian building which had long ago become inconvenient and overcrowded for a modern police force. Perhaps soon the long promised new building would materialize on the site which had been selected near Victoria Station.

  The AC’s objective was a small unit dedicated to the protection of witnesses which he knew would not be looking forward to his visit. He burst into the office without warning causing the three plain clothes officers working inside to jump to their feet in alarm.

  ‘Sir?’ the senior sergeant said, his face blanching slightly. Amis had lost none of his military certainties and could spread dread amongst his subordinates who had been known to be demoted and sent to the farthest reaches of suburban London after crossing the assistant commissioner in some entirely unexpected and often minor way.

  ‘Your bloody Scotsman,’ Amis snapped. ‘Have you found him yet?’

  ‘No sir,’ the sergeant said. ‘We’ve got the local nick in Reading searching. Best bet is that he’s gone AWOL looking for a drink. He was strictly rationed at the safe house.’

  ‘And what has his nursemaid got to say for himself?’

  ‘Not a lot, sir. He checked that he was asleep before midnight and then went to bed himself. Heard nothing untoward during the night but by morning the bird had flown, the back door unlocked and left open. No sign of a break-in, apparently. They’re still looking.’

  ‘Any evidence someone’s got to him?’ Amis asked.

  ‘None at all, sir,’ the sergeant tried to sound reassuring. ‘It’s not as if he had any connection with the accused. He just happened to be in the right place at the right time, as far as we were concerned. An independent witness.’

  ‘I remember the circumstances,’ Amis snapped. ‘It’s a great pity that there’s only one defendant, not two. I’ve never been totally convinced that DCI Venables drowned. Why has no body ever been found, I wonder? There’s still enough crooks on our side of the fence in Soho to make the whole situation suspect. Has anyone from there been asking questions? Ted Venables must still have mates over there. Most of them are as bent as a three-pound note.’

  ‘Sir,’ the sergeant said non-committally. It was not that he did not agree with Amis’s assessment but he knew as well as he did that efforts to clean up CID in the square mile of Soho had constantly run into the sand. ‘Venables must be out of it, one way or another. He’s probably abroad if he’s still alive. He’ll keep his head well down. If anyone’s got to our witness it would be Robertson’s own mates, most likely his brother Ray. But there’s no sign of that, according to the local CID in Berkshire. Nobody reported loitering near the safe house. They reckon he’s wandered off on his own, looking for booze, most likely, and they’ll have him back as quick as you like.’

  ‘I certainly hope so,’ Amis said irritably. ‘I’ll be having another look at the other aspects of that case shortly. In the meantime, find that bloody Scotsman. And check up on the other witnesses. We don’t want the case falling apart before it’s even got to court. Keep me in touch with developments.’

  ‘Do you want us to have words with anyone connected? Ray Robertson maybe?’

  ‘Not yet,’ Amis said. ‘We’ll keep the whole thing under wraps for now. But if he doesn’t turn up soon we’ll have to turn up the heat in Soho. I’m not going to end up with egg on my face over this one. It took long enough to pin that bastard down, and we still haven’t got a handle on his brother. We’ll have him too before we’re finished.’

  ‘Sir,’ the three officers chorused, glad to have escaped a more serious dressing down. But they knew even better than Amis that if their witness had really disappeared, the case he was involved in would be seriously weakened when it reached the Old Bailey. And if Georgie Robertson got off that would do none of their careers any good.

  DS Harry Barnard disliked post-mortem examinations and he guessed that DCI Jackson, with his fastidious personality, disliked them even more. He was not surprised then when the senior officer made his excuses and left the mortuary even before the bodily remains had been completely disentangled from their sodden, muddy and bloody packing.

  ‘How soon can you let me have a report?’ Jackson asked Dr Jaffa as he opened the door, not bothering to disguise the relief on his face at finding a credible excuse to depart – an upcoming visit from Assistant Commissioner Amis from Scotland Yard. Barnard had raised a sceptical eyebrow at that but said nothing. But on past form, Jackson would add little to the proceedings except some heavy breathing.

  ‘A preliminary report later today,’ Jaffa said. ‘Unless something unexpected occurs. Of course, there will be tests that take longer, toxicology and so on.’

  Barnard, wrapped in a green surgical gown, leaned with what he hoped was nonchalance against the wall near the head of the table as the doctor began to rearrange what looked like little more than a pile of meat into something that more closely resembled a human body. The head was easily identifiable as a skull and as Jaffa placed it gently at the top of his operating space Barnard took the opportunity to study it carefully. Beneath the coating of grime and blood and several vicious wounds which he guessed where inflicted by a heavy weapon it was just about possible to discern the face of an elderly man, with traces of facial stubble and strands of wispy red hair clinging to the skull. A slightly red aquiline nose survived beneath smears of mud and the shattered lips were drawn back over a depleted set of yellowing teeth. But the flesh was bruised and cut and had been bleeding heavily and it would have taken the victim’s mother to identify him with any certainty, Barnard thought.

  ‘He looks like nothing so much as a tramp,’ he said to Jaffa, puzzled. His own expectation, which he had not shared with anyone, was that this was a gangland killing but the emaciated body which was beginning to emerge from the macabre jigsaw puzzle on the table looked nothing like he anticipated. London gangsters generally were much better fed than this human wreck. He watched as the doctor, his face impassive, meticulously counted out severed fingers and toes and placed them beside what was left of hands and arms. What worried him most was that he had a suspicion that the face, battered as it was, looked vaguely familiar.

  ‘Whoever did this took pleasure in it,’ the doctor said curtly. ‘But the body is not as old as I thought. Taking account of the fact that it has been wrapped and protected from the outside temperature since it was dumped, I think he was killed in the last twenty-four hours. Not more than that.’

  ‘So it was carefully planned,’ Barnard said. ‘They’re unlikely to have been able to suss out the possibilities of the building site very quickly. They must have found the burial site and then killed the victim.’

  Jaffa nodded non-committally, his dark eyes giving nothing away. ‘I assume nothing,’ he said. ‘I look only for scientific evidence.’ But as the dismembered body gradually took shape and he recorded his comments, the doctor began to look puzzled as he studied the torso. ‘There is no obvious defining cause of death,’ he said. ‘No major stab wound entering any major organs. It is possible that if a knife was used he simply bled to death. He looks in poor physical condition generally. He would not have much resistance.’ Delicately he picked up the skull and turned it over. ‘Ah, here we have it. Look.’


  Swallowing his distaste, Barnard studied the traces of matted red hair, but could see little of significance until Jaffa pulled strands away from a small dark indentation.

  ‘A bullet entered here,’ he said. ‘Downward into the brain. ‘The neck and jaw are so damaged by the ragged post-mortem dissection that the exit wound is invisible. Or it may be that there wasn’t one. That the bullet simply lodged in the jaw or spine. If it’s there, I’ll find it. I promise you that.’

  Barnard gritted his teeth and swallowed hard but kept watching as the serious part of the examination began and the doctor opened up the torso on the table and removed the internal organs. He could see that Jaffa was paying particular attention to the jaw and neck and eventually he gave a grunt of satisfaction and removed something from the severed head with forceps.

  ‘There you are,’ he said. ‘The bullet they finished him off with, lodged against the vertebrae in the neck. It never left the body. What do they call it: the coup de grace?’

  ‘Something like that,’ Barnard muttered. ‘Can I take that back to the nick? Forensics are quite good at matching bullets to guns these days. We may find a match.’

  Jaffa washed the small piece of metal under a tap before Barnard could protest and placed it in the evidence bag which Barnard handed him. ‘I wish you luck,’ he said.

  To her surprise, Kate O’Donnell received a call from Carter Price at the office the next day. She had not really imagined that he was serious when he had talked in his cups of introducing her to his colleagues at the Globe.

  ‘I’ve fixed it with Ken to let you go early this evening, petal. I’ll give you a tour of the old Lubianka, as it’s not so fondly known, the proprietor doing a good impersonation of Genghis Khan most of the time. When he comes on the phone the editor and news editor jump to attention, believe me. Anyway, you can see us gearing up for the first edition print run, and I thought then we could have an early dinner. Would that suit you?’