Dead Beat (15 page)

There was a cold wind off the water, and the ferry coming into the landing stage was pushing a bow wave and rolling slightly. She used to be seasick on the ferry, she recalled with a faint smile. Her sisters, scampering around unaffected, had laughed at her as she had curled up in a tight ball in a corner, miserable at the start and end of a rare day out over the river. Away to the right she could see the towering shapes of a couple of liners in the docks and across the water the cranes of the Birkenhead shipyards, all so familiar and yet slightly foreign now, even though her stay in London had been so short. She did not feel that she belonged here any more.

With a sigh she walked across to the bus terminal and jumped on to a bus to Anfield where her mother had been given a corporation house when the old Scotland Road terraces had begun to be pulled down. They had called Scottie Road a slum and condemned it, but she had been sorry to leave, more aware than her sisters of friends left behind, new schools to adjust to, a strange neighbourhood, in spite of the attractions of an indoor lavvie and a patch of garden for the younger ones to play in. It was then that she had decided to get out and begun to work hard at school, determined to go to college. She had already worked out for herself that the door marked Exit was there.

Her mother opened the front door to her knock, looking pale and tired, and gave her a peck on the cheek. ‘You got a job down there then?'

‘I wrote and told you,' Kate said, dropping her bag in the hall and making her way to the kitchen where she put the kettle on.

‘I thought the letter was from our Tom,' Bridie O'Donnell said. ‘Your writing looks the same. Have you heard anything from him at all?'

Kate could imagine the excitement her mother must have felt before she realized her mistake. Kate knew she had always played second fiddle to Tom.

‘London's a big place, Mam,' she said non-committally. She had already decided not to elaborate on what she knew of Tom's predicament, although she knew the police had been round seeking information.

‘The bizzies were here,' Bridie said, as if reading her mind, and it was obvious that this was what had knocked the stuffing out of her usually combative mother. ‘I couldn't believe what they were saying, as if our Tommy would kill anyone. I told them to feck off.'

‘I don't think that'll do any good. They're not going to stop looking for him,' Kate said, pouring boiling water into the teapot which was standing ready. ‘He may have run away because he was scared, but they're going to want an explanation. They won't give up.'

Bridie took her cup of tea and sank into a chair at the kitchen table. ‘You know what else they were saying about him?' Bridie would not meet Kate's eyes.

‘I do,' Kate said.

‘Is it true?' Bridie asked.

Kate nodded bleakly. ‘It is,' she said.

‘Holy mother of God,' Bridie whispered. ‘And I brought him up a good Catholic boy.'

‘He probably still is,' Kate said, knowing that Tom had pretended to take his religion more seriously than she had, one reason he had remained the apple of his mother's eye.

‘Not if he's doing that sort of thing,' Bridie said. ‘It's a mortal sin, so it is. And they'll put him in jail for it.'

‘I think it's something people can't help,' Kate said. ‘Did you really not know?'

‘Of course I didn't know,' Bridie said angrily. ‘I'd have had him round to Father Reilly before his feet touched the ground. Do you think he was like that before he went away then? This isn't something he's learned in London?'

‘No,' Kate said slowly, thinking back to the brother she had known as a teenager and realizing how little he had been like most of the other boys she knew. ‘No, I think he's been that way inclined for a long time. He met the friend he was living with up here, any road. He just never told us, never talked about it.'
Never trusted us enough
, she thought to herself, though the fearful wrath of Father Reilly hanging over all their heads probably made that inevitable.

‘Anyway, I think that's the least of Tom's problems just now,' Kate said, feeling a wave of depression sweep over her and tears prick her eyes. ‘He needs to talk to the police about his dead friend. They'll catch up with him in the end and the longer he leaves it the worse it'll be for him. Could he have come back up here, do you think? Have you heard anything from him at all, or from his other mates?'

‘His friend in London was killed with a knife, so the bizzies said,' her mother said dully, clearly not listening to much that Kate was saying. ‘Surely to God they don't think our Tom did that, do they?' Bridie had gone even paler than she'd looked before. ‘They didn't exactly say that, but—'

‘They don't exactly say anything much,' Kate said bitterly, thinking of her encounters with the importunate DS Harry Barnard. ‘But yes, I think he's a suspect.'

‘But they could hang him . . .' Bridie looked sick and the cup in her hands began to shake. She put it down carefully.

‘I don't think so,' Kate said, her mouth dry. ‘They changed the law. Don't you remember? I think it's only robbers and people with guns who get hanged now.' She put her hand over Bridie's. Her mother had never been a very demonstrative person, seldom given to hugs and kisses, even when they were all small, and Kate felt awkward offering even that level of comfort, but to her surprise Bridie clutched her hand tightly.

‘Your brother's friend, Declan, came round yesterday, asking after him,' Bridie said. ‘The bizzies had been asking about Tom round his place an'all. I couldn't tell him anything, could I, because I didn't know anything?'

‘I'll go round and see Dec later,' Kate said. ‘And any others I can think of. But I've got some work to do, too. I want to get some pictures of the Cavern Club and see if I can track down John Lennon's girlfriend. You know? Cynthia Powell? She was at art college when me and John were there. The Beatles look like making a name for themselves in London now and people are interested in where they came from.'

‘I heard that,' Bridie said. ‘Up here it's still Gerry and the Pacemakers the kids seem to like best.'

‘Them and the Beatles are in the Hit Parade,' Kate said. ‘It's all beginning to take off for them. Who'd have thought the Mersey Beat would go national, Mam? It's quite something.'

‘I heard Cynthia Powell's pregnant. John's baby, they say. Did you know that?'

‘Is she?' Kate said, surprised. ‘It's incredible, you know, that those two are still together. John was such a scruffy Teddy boy when we started at college, and she was a real stuck-up little Hoylake miss. Even when they got together they seemed to fight all the time. I can't imagine John being a dad, I really can't. Are they married? You hear different tales.'

‘I think so, though the
Echo
says they're not. There seems to be some sort of mystery about it. But someone told our Annie Cynthia'd moved in with John Lennon's auntie to wait for the baby. I dare say her parents aren't best pleased.'

‘The place is still a gossip mill, then?' Kate said with a grin. She could guess why John Lennon, darling of thousands of hysterical teenage fans who packed out every local venue the band played at, wanted to keep his marriage quiet. She had never much liked him and she did not envy Cynthia her lot. But she hoped that she was married. The life of an unmarried mother would not be easy for the nicely brought up girl from the Wirral she remembered turning up at college in her twinset and pearls. She was not the only one who had been astonished when Cynthia had latched on to the anarchic Lennon with his talent for drawing, his sometimes cruel wit and his apparently vain musical ambitions.

‘I'll take my stuff upstairs,' Kate said. ‘I need a bath after tea. I'm hot and sticky after the train.'

‘I'll put the immersion heater on, pet,' her mother said.

DS Harry Barnard parked his car outside a gym in Whitechapel and locked it carefully, checking every door out of habit as much as any real fear that it would be nicked in this street where Ray and Georgie Robertson's writ ran more or less unchallenged. He went inside and was hit by the familiar smell of sweat and the sounds of gasping breath and monotonous thud of leather on punchbag and, softer but even more deadly, splat against unprotected flesh. Ray himself was standing by the ring watching intently as two well-muscled young men, one black and one white, wearing helmets for protection, sparred energetically with each other until one put up an arm to deflect a blow and sat down heavily in his corner, gasping for air. Robertson had noticed Barnard come in.

‘Leave it at that now, lads,' he told the sparring partners as he turned away to greet his visitor. ‘Harry, my boy, nice to see you. Good of you to come down. Come into the office, it's a bit quieter in there.' The two young boxers scrambled out of the ring clutching towels, the black boy still dancing on his toes on the way to the dressing rooms while the white boy, who had obviously come off worst, and was still panting heavily, took a detour to put a glove on Ray Robertson's arm.

‘He hits low, that nigger,' he said, his face pinched with rage.

Robertson pushed the boy off. ‘He's better than you,' he said. ‘Don't come moaning to me. Bloody work at it.' He led Barnard away, glancing back only briefly. ‘Funny thing,' Robertson said. ‘I thought that lad had the makings but he's fading already. You can never tell, can you?' Barnard shrugged. Robertson had thought Barnard had the makings himself when he was about sixteen but he had not lived up to his older friend's expectations in the ring and now only came to the gym occasionally to work out and do a bit of training with the younger boys. Robertson took over the tiny office, dismissing the burly man in grubby vest and shorts who was occupying it, and shut the door.

‘Ta for coming over, Harry,' he said. ‘I've got a bit of a problem you might be able to help me with.'

Barnard took the only remaining chair in the narrow space and accepted the cigar that Robertson waved in his direction. As he went through the ritual of lighting it and making sure that it was burning satisfactorily, and Robertson did the same, the silence only broken by their furious puffing, he felt a slight sense of unease. He had done Ray and Georgie countless favours over the years, but he had felt recently that the need for his back-up had begun to fade away with the brothers' success in courting friends in high places. He was becoming surplus to requirements.

‘So what can I do to help?' he asked, hoping that he was keeping any buried reservations out of his voice.

‘It's Georgie-boy,' Ray said. ‘I think he's going a bit mental.'

Barnard had a sudden vivid recollection of Georgie Robertson hurtling out of the Delilah Club evidently in a rage and being driven off fast. ‘What makes you think that?' he asked carefully.

Robertson did not reply directly. ‘Do you remember that time, when we was out in bloody Hertfordshire, when Georgie took against that old witch who lived next to the Post Office, the one with half a dozen cats?'

Barnard nodded. The village where the three boys had been evacuated to a farm had consisted of a modest cluster of houses on a narrow lane with a pub, a church and a post office cum village store as its only amenities. The boys, ranging in age from Ray, moving into his teens when they were delivered to the care of Farmer and Mrs Green, to eight-year-old Georgie, with Harry in the middle, had suffered a massive culture shock on their sudden translation from the crowded streets of East London to a landscape of woods and fields and not much else. They had, Harry thought, been knocked sideways for a while and Georgie perhaps the most seriously affected. He gazed at Ray who seemed to be as lost in thought as he was himself.

‘The old witch with the cats? Yes, I remember her. What about it?'

‘Georgie hated her with a bloody passion. She had a go at him one time when she caught him nicking apples from her back garden. Falling off the tree, they were. I saw them meself, lying on the grass. But she didn't want him helping himself to those rotten old apples.'

Barnard nodded and waited, knowing that there was more to come. As incomers from the big city the village had treated all of them with unrelenting suspicion. Worse, Georgie had been a wild child, given to unpredictable screaming fits when he couldn't get his own way, and he seldom got his own way with old man Green, the farmer, who expected children to be seen and not heard, and to get on with the chores they had been allocated without complaint, and who gave them a sharp clip round the ear when they failed to meet expectations.

‘Georgie went a bit doolally down there, I reckon,' Ray said. ‘Especially over those cats. He fucking detested them.'

Barnard nodded. ‘So he did something to the cats?'

‘It was after your ma came to collect you. After you'd gone home.' Robertson's tone still gave the impression that he had regarded it as a personal affront that Barnard's family had whisked him away as soon as he reached the age of eleven to take up a place in the local grammar school which had itself been evacuated to Norfolk. ‘The cats started disappearing, didn't they? One at a time. I don't reckon he could manage more than one moggie at once. I saw the scratches he got. It went on for months. We had the police round asking questions because I reckon the old bat must have known who it was. But there was no evidence. She put 'em out at night and every now and again one of 'em didn't come back. Old man Green reckoned the foxes was getting them. But I knew it was Georgie.'

‘What did he do with them?' Barnard asked, his mouth dry.

‘You know there was an incinerator thing at the back of the barn?'