Blood Brothers
Table of Contents
A Selection of Recent Titles by Patricia Hall
The Kate O’Donnell Series
DEAD BEAT *
DEATH TRAP *
DRESSED TO KILL *
BLOOD BROTHERS *
SINS OF THE FATHERS
DEATH IN A FAR COUNTRY
BY DEATH DIVIDED
DEVIL’S GAME
*
available from Severn House
Patricia Hall
This eBook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which is was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicably copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
First published in Great Britain and the USA 2013 by
SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD of
9–15 High Street, Sutton, Surrey, England, SM1 1DF.
eBook edition first published in 2014 by Severn House Digital
an imprint of Severn House Publishers Limited
Copyright © 2014 by Patricia Hall.
The right of Patricia Hall to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Hall, Patricia, 1940-author.
Blood brothers. – (A Kate O’Donnell mystery; 4)
1. O’Donnell, Kate (Fictitious character)–Fiction.
2. Women photographers–England–Liverpool–Fiction.
3. London (England)–Social conditions–20th century–
Fiction. 4. Detective and mystery stories
I. Title II. Series
823.9'14-dc23
ISBN-13: 978-1-78029-061-4 (cased)
ISBN-13: 978-1-78010-515-4 (ePub)
Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to living persons is purely coincidental.
This ebook produced by
Palimpsest Book Production Limited,
Falkirk, Stirlingshire, Scotland.
D
etective sergeant Harry Barnard looked in distaste at his Italian shoes which, after only a couple of minutes on the building site, were caked in yellowish London clay.
‘You can’t lend me a pair of gumboots, can you?’ he asked the site foreman in hard hat and mud-caked boots himself who stood beside him at the top of an excavation which looked more like the beginnings of a mining operation than the early stages of a controversial skyscraper, which would eventually dominate the southern end of Tottenham Court Road in the West End of London.
‘I’d’ve thought you’d come better feckin’ prepared,’ the foreman said in an Irish brogue. ‘I told you on the phone it was likely dumped in the feckin’ pit last night. It wasn’t far under the surface. Someone would have noticed if it had been there longer.’
‘Yes, well, you didn’t actually say it was definitely a body, did you?’ Barnard snapped, his irritation increased by the bitter north wind which seemed to swirl around the building site with malevolent intent. ‘Just a suspicious parcel. Could have been anything.’
‘To be sure, that’s all it looked like when the excavator brought it up. Whoever dumped it was unlucky. They must have known we were due to pour concrete today. It was only because some eejit surveyor got the depth wrong that we had to keep digging this morning. If everything had gone to plan it’d have disappeared beneath the foundations with thirty-two storeys to go up on top of it. It’d never have been found till twenty sixty-three, if this damn tower lasts a hundred years. Come on then, will ye? You’ll be needing a close-up.’
The builder nodded towards the cabin at the top of the excavation where he kitted Barnard out with a pair of wellingtons several sizes too large for him into which the sergeant carefully tucked the trousers of his suit before being led down the treacherously muddy slope which gave access to the bottom of the excavation. The builder grabbed his arm as he skidded on the shining wet clay before they plodded through the mud to where a uniformed policeman was standing guard. Close by, the excavator driver was leaning against the side of his machine smoking and did no more than wave the detective towards what looked like a pile of rags lying near to the business end of the machine. Barnard stepped carefully across the sticky clay to take a closer look but even from a distance he had little doubt that the bundle contained human remains.
‘You actually scooped it up?’ he asked the driver, who nodded. ‘You didn’t see it at first?’
‘Nah, I didn’t, mate,’ the driver replied. ‘Not that it’s that unusual in London, though it’s usually bones you find. A skull now and again. But this is new. That wrapping’s not rotted, just a bit torn up by the scoop. It looks fresh.’
‘Thanks be to God for that,’ the foreman said. ‘If you get lumbered with Romans or feckin’ plague victims everything stops to let the feckin’ archaeologists in for weeks at a time.’
Barnard nodded, wondering how many unidentified bones on building sites were quietly reburied to save time and money. He sighed and peered more closely at the package, which was stained with clay and also something browner. He poked gently with his foot where the sacking cover had been damaged and was not surprised when a stickier, redder patch oozed through on to the toe of his wellington boot. ‘You’re going to have to stop work for today at least,’ he said to the foreman. ‘I need to get forensics down here while we open it up. And the murder team. It hardly looks like a natural death, does it?’
The foreman scowled and glanced up to where the buildings in Oxford Street and Tottenham Court Road hemmed them in. ‘I swear it’ll be a miracle if this feckin’ building gets up on time,’ he said. ‘It’s a bloody stupid place to put it, right on the road junction and with the tube station underneath.’
Barnard shrugged. His only interest in the building boom which was sweeping the parts of London ravaged by German bombers, was focused on the armies of labourers who had been drafted in from all over the world to work on the new sites. Some of them would know where the concrete was being poured this morning and if this was indeed a body conveniently dumped where it could easily have disappeared forever within hours, he would need to know exactly who knew and who they might have passed that information to.
He clambered out of the pit with the foreman, closely followed by the excavator driver, all of them slipping and sliding on the shiny wet surface.
‘Keep everyone out of there,’ Barnard said. ‘I’ll report back to my boss and we’ll be back very soon. It’s more than likely we have a murder here. And we’ll need an up-to-date list of the people working on the site. Either one of them dumped it, or maybe they told someone the concrete was supposed to be coming today. I reckon we’ll need to talk to them all before we’re done.’
The foreman’s face dropped. ‘I’ll see what I can do,’ he muttered. ‘But a lot of the labourers are casuals – you know? On the lump. Here today and gone tomorrow.’
‘And no tax paid?’ Barnard snapped. ‘Well, if that really is a murder victim, and it looks like it, I’ll want to know about everyone who’s been here recently. It’s too convenient for them not to have known it was going to be set in stone within hours. I don’t buy that as a coincidence. And don’t let anyone touch anything down there, please. We’ll be back sharpish.’
After he had laboriously cleaned the mud off his shoes, Barnard reported back to DCI Keith Jackson, who sat behind his meticulously tidy desk, drumming his fingers on his clean blotter.
‘It’s not been there long, guv,’ Barnard said. ‘And it’s a good size, certainly not a child or even a small adult. It’s twenty feet below ground level and I guess it would have taken at least two people to get it there. I doubt it was just chucked in. There’d be too much risk of it bursting open. And the excavator driver said it was actually buried beneath the level they were working at yesterday, covered by sodden wet soil. It wasn’t very deep but he swears he didn’t see it before he scooped it up. There are six or seven concrete lorries lined up outside ready to fill the foundations but the foreman says they were required to dig a bit deeper this morning, unexpectedly. But for that, whoever’s down there would never have been found.’
‘You’re quite sure it’s a body?’
Barnard wondered for a moment if his years of experience counted for anything with this meticulous boss. ‘There are signs of what looks like blood,’ Barnard said carefully. ‘I’ve not touched it at all, of course, but I don’t think there’s any doubt.’
Jackson nodded slightly wearily, avoiding Barnard’s eye. He was a taciturn Scot who generally showed little emotion but today Barnard wondered why he was exceptionally disinclined to engage. ‘Very well, sergeant,’ he said. ‘We’ll get a murder team down there, and forensics. I expect the developers are totting up the cost of every minute we’re going to delay them already, so we’d better get a move on.’ He glanced at Barnard’s still smeared shoes with the glimmer of a smile. ‘Muddy down there, is it?’
‘Gum boot territory, guv,’ Barnard said hiding a grimace. He was known, and mocked, around the nick as a snappy dresser, an Italian suit and Liberty tie man, but Jackson too was never to be seen without an immaculate dark suit and highly polished shoes. Neither of them, Barnard thought, would enjoy the imminent prospect of watching a body unpacked in a sea of mud.
Standing later in the deep pit where Harry Hyams already controversial Centre Point tower would eventually rise, DCI Jackson stood fastidiously on duckboards beside Harry Barnard watching as forensic officers unwrapped the sacking parcel close by. It did not take long to satisfy themselves that inside the sacking lay human remains but nothing had prepared any of them for the horror which unfolded and to a man they flinched.
‘Jesus,’ Barnard said softly, while the DCI’s face blanched as they surveyed what could only be said to be the remnants of a man.
‘Pathologist?’ Jackson snapped, taking a deep breath before he spoke.
‘On his way, guv,’ Barnard said. ‘He’s going to have his work cut out. You might chop someone up to get them into a package but some of that happened before the poor sod died. Fingers and toes? What’s that for, for Christ’s sake?’
‘The amusement of some psycho, maybe,’ Jackson said grimly. ‘Or a warning to others?’
‘Buried under tons of concrete and thirty-two storeys?’ Barnard asked sceptically. In his experience most psychopaths relished the exposure of their handiwork. ‘But the state his face is in? That has to have been done to stop anyone recognizing him, surely. In the unlikely event he was found too soon, before he went under the concrete.’
‘I’m sure if someone wanted people to know what had happened to that poor beggar it could be arranged,’ Jackson said. ‘There are people in this city quite capable of that. You know only too well there are.’
Knowing exactly what connections of his had prompted that barb, Barnard turned away scowling. ‘There are also people who know that without a body we’d find it difficult to launch a murder investigation,’ he offered. He glanced over Jackson’s shoulder.