Dead Beat (20 page)

‘Mason?' Venables said, his eyes narrowing.

‘The very one,' Barnard said. ‘The gist of what he said was that Mason was in the queer pub about a week ago – he wasn't told exactly when, but it could have been the night he was killed. Anyway, he started chatting up a bloke my snout's mate had never seen in there before. Whatever Mason said to him seemed to annoy the other bloke and they went out of the pub together having what seemed like a blazing row. Could be significant, don't you think? Do you want me to follow it up?' He would, he thought, play Ray's game very cautiously indeed.

‘Mmm,' Venables said thoughtfully. ‘May tie in with something someone else told me this morning, as it goes. You know Ray Robertson, don't you, from way back? How well do you know his brother Georgie?'

Barnard took a deep breath, trying to conceal his surprise. Ray hadn't wasted much time, he thought, and he wished he had taken the trouble to tell him exactly what he might be going to say directly to Venables. ‘I knew him when I was a kid,' he said. ‘I must have told you. We were all evacuated together. But I always thought he was a bit of a nutter, to be honest.'

‘Is he queer as well?'

Barnard shrugged, surprised by the question. ‘Not as far as I know,' he said. ‘I never saw any sign of that. He's got a rep as a bit of a ladies' man. He'd have had a tough time in Bethnal Green if he'd been bent. Nancy-boys weren't favourite in that neighbourhood. Why d'you ask?'

‘Right, well, that figures,' Venables said. ‘Some tom said a john refused to pay her and flew into a rage and pulled a knife when she objected. Her description might fit Georgie Robertson.'

‘Could be our Georgie,' Barnard said, without a qualm on that score. ‘Though I'd be surprised if he has to pay for sex. But he's always had a temper on him. I saw him coming out of the Delilah in a fury after the Robertsons' do there last week. You were there. Maybe you know what that was all about?'

Venables looked blank and shrugged. ‘I didn't really speak to him that night,' he said. ‘Just passed the time of day in the bog. You were there, weren't you? I don't think we need to take this tom seriously, but we are looking for a knife-man for the Greek Street job, so we'd better cover our backs, just in case. Would you like to have a word? It's your patch, after all. She's working just off Soho Square. Not out of your way, is it?' He scribbled a name and address on a piece of paper and handed it to Barnard. ‘And while you're at it, get some mug shots up to the queer pub if you reckon Mason's been seen in there, rowing with someone. See if you can pin someone down, though if what you say about Georgie's right, I can't see him darkening that door.'

‘Unless there's money in it,' Barnard said. ‘But it does sound like Georgie's losing it, one way or another. Did the john use the knife on the tom?'

‘I don't think so. The desk sergeant sent her away with a flea in her ear. If we listened to every aggrieved tom in Soho we'd never finish. You know what they're like. But he did mention it to me in passing. And he made a note of her description. See what you think. Let me know.'

‘Give me the address,' Barnard said. ‘I'll have a word later. I'll be out and about over there this morning.'

‘And don't forget to keep an eye open for that young lad I want to talk to. He's a possible witness in another case I'm on, and I want him found,' Venables said.

‘Right,' Barnard said, suddenly intensely curious about what Jimmy Earnshaw might have been a witness to if it wasn't the Mason murder.

Later that morning, Barnard went back to St Peter's, and walked into the twilit nave where an animated group of young girls were gossiping and laughing amongst the surviving pews. There was a light on in David Hamilton's cubicle of an office and he tapped on the door before going in.

Hamilton glanced up from the pile of paperwork on his desk with a look of relief. ‘I'm glad you came,' he said. ‘You need to talk to this lad, Earnshaw. He seems to have stumbled into something really nasty and he needs more protection than I can give him.'

‘You got him to talk, then?' Barnard asked.

‘A bit, late last night. I went downstairs to look at the lads late on, as I usually do before I go back to the vicarage. We just have one person on duty at night to keep an eye on the little devils. We don't want them jumping in and out of bed with each other or we'll have the newspapers leaping on us from a great height, won't we? There's a few of our neighbours don't like us, as it is. Not much Christian charity around in Soho, is there?' Hamilton gave a short, sharp bark of laughter. ‘Shouldn't expect it, I suppose. Anyway, Jimmy was restless, and seemed very nervous, and I brought him up here for a chat. And eventually it all came tumbling out: how men were using him for disgusting photographs, and something else, something he says he saw, someone who invited him back to his flat but got his throat cut by the time he got there. Sounds far-fetched, I have to say, but Jimmy swears it's true and that's why he's so desperate to get out of London, why he wants your twenty quid which he says you've promised him, to get away in case the killers saw him in Greek Street.'

Barnard's mouth felt dry and his palms sweaty. ‘Killers?' he asked sharply. ‘No one's suggested there was more than one person involved. Do you think he'll talk to me? Or will he just clam up again?'

‘You'll have to take it gently,' Hamilton said. ‘He'll run again if he's frightened.'

‘I can't have him on the loose if he's got information about a murder,' Barnard said flatly. ‘On the other hand, I can't arrest him as a witness. I just need him kept safe, and preferably not in Soho. It's too damn close to the scene of the crime.'

Hamilton gave Barnard a long look. ‘It's a real crime then, is it? He's not just inventing it?'

‘A young homosexual bloke was found with his throat cut a week ago in a flat just off Greek Street. I'm surprised you haven't heard about it, though to be fair the papers didn't give it much coverage. They knew he was queer, so they didn't bother. Anyway, we've been looking for his flatmate, who's disappeared, which doesn't look good. But maybe we've got it wrong. I need Jimmy Earnshaw to tell me what and possibly who he saw. Perhaps he's closer to the truth than we are.'

‘I could maybe find him somewhere safe out of town, if that would help,' Hamilton said thoughtfully. ‘I've got a colleague who's vicar of a parish in Surrey who's interested in the work we do here. He might just possibly take him for a while.'

‘That might be an answer,' Barnard said. ‘But first I need to get a proper statement out of him. Do you think you can persuade him to do that?'

‘I don't see why not,' Hamilton said. ‘Let's go down and see him.'

He led the way down a narrow stone staircase to where Jimmy Earnshaw was sitting on his bed in the gloomy crypt, well apart from a group of boys smoking and laughing in a corner. He gave both men an anxious look as they approached. He looked pale and tired and had blue-black circles under his eyes as if he had not slept properly for a week which, Barnard thought, was quite likely, given that he seemed to have been at the scene of a murder and had been abused since. His sweater barely covered the bruises around his wrists and neck.

‘Can I have my twenty quid now?' he asked Barnard in a low whisper as he sat down on the bed beside him. ‘I don't like the other lads here.'

‘Soon,' Barnard said. ‘When we've had a little chat about what you told Mr Hamilton last night, and tried to sort you out with somewhere out of London to stay where you'll be safe for a while. Would that suit you?'

The boy tried to stand up but Hamilton gently pushing him back down.

‘You're not going to lock me up?' Jimmy said, with the eyes of a frightened animal.

‘No, of course not,' Barnard said. ‘But it sounds as though you witnessed a serious crime and I need to know a bit more about what you saw that night.'

There was, in the end, little enough to tell, although all of it grim as the boy described, in a halting whisper, the pick-up in Piccadilly, the walk through Soho with his companion, lagging behind a little as they approached the flat and then going upstairs only when the coast seemed clear and a couple of men in the alleyway had hurried away down Greek Street.

‘You knew what you were letting yourself in for?' Barnard asked, horrified by how matter-of-fact the transaction obviously seemed to the boy.

‘'Course,' Jimmy said. ‘Any road, I knew the bloke. I'd been to his place before.'

‘So tell me about the men in the alley. Did you get a good look at them?' Barnard asked.

The boy shrugged. ‘I weren't that far behind my mark,' he said. ‘But when I got to the corner these blokes were coming towards me. Looked like they were in a hurry. I stood in a doorway in Greek Street and waited till they'd gone. They didn't see me, at least I don't think they did. I can't be right sure. Any road, when they'd gone, I went upstairs and found my bloke dead.' He shuddered slightly at the memory.

‘Can you describe these men for me, Jimmy?' Barnard said. ‘They may have nothing to do with the murder but they could be useful witnesses if they were there at the same time Jonathon Mason got home that night. I need to know everything you can remember about them.'

Hesitantly the boy dredged his memory, his eyes flickering between the two men facing him. ‘One were taller, the other shorter,' he said. ‘One had a coat on, and a hat, the big bloke, but the other didn't. He were just wearing a jacket, leather, I think, even though it were right cold that night.'

‘Did you see their faces? Would you recognize them again?' Barnard asked.

‘I thought I did the day I had the accident. I saw a man who looked a bit like the big bloke, in one of them camel coats and a brown hat, and I ran away, not looking, like, and got hit by a car. Stupid. There were lots of blokes in coats like that.'

Barnard produced a mugshot of Georgie Robertson which he had pulled from the files after he had left DCI Venables, and laid it on the table alongside the snapshot of Tom O'Donnell.

‘Could either of those two be one of the men you saw?' he asked.

The boy studied the photographs carefully but seemed unsure. ‘Nay, I don't think so,' he said. ‘I can't be right sure. I didn't get a good look at the smaller one's face. He had dark hair, and he were younger and skinnier than the big bloke with the hat, but tough-looking. I don't think this is him.' He pushed the picture of Tom O'Donnell away. ‘This might be,' he said, looking again at Georgie Robertson. ‘But I'm not right sure. I got a better look at the big bloke. I might know him again if you've got his picture.'

Barnard smiled slightly. The boy was right. Georgie Robertson had always seemed puny beside his brother, who had fought as a heavyweight, a small volatile boy and a small volatile man, always in the shadow of Ray one way or another, and resenting every minute of it. If it was Georgie Jimmy had seen, was it perhaps Ray he was with that night? If so, Ray's game might be even more devious than Barnard had guessed.

‘So you think you might recognize the taller man again?'

‘Maybe,' the boy said.

And that, Barnard thought, was a pity. For the moment, he'd put a formal statement from Jimmy Earnshaw on hold until he was sure how Venables' investigation was panning out. He glanced at Hamilton. ‘I'll get some more mugshots for him to look at in case he can identify the taller bloke,' he said. ‘In the meantime, Jimmy, I think we should get you out of London until we catch up with these men, don't you?'

Leaving David Hamilton to make the arrangements to transfer Jimmy to the care of his colleague in Surrey, Barnard walked slowly from St Peter's towards Soho Square. Halfway up Dean Street, he paused outside one of the many doors with peeling paint and multiple doorbells in a side alley and pressed the lowest bell, marked Evie. He waited impatiently for several minutes before it opened a crack and a blonde head and grey face peered out.

‘Jesus, Harry, this is early. What the hell do you want at this time of day? I didn't stop work till three,' Evie said.

‘Not what you think, sweetie,' Barnard said. ‘Just a chat. Can I come in?'

Reluctantly, she opened the door wider and he followed her into a ground floor room, where it was obvious she had just got out of the rumpled double bed. She pulled her pink robe more tightly around herself and sat on the edge of the bed, waving Barnard into a corner armchair where he perched on top of her abandoned underwear. He offered her a cigarette which she took gratefully, accepting his proffered light and drawing the smoke eagerly into what sounded like congested lungs.

‘I've not been well,' she said.

‘The same trouble?'

‘No, but I got a bad cough after that little episode. Can't seem to shake it off.'

‘You should get off the street, Evie,' Barnard said. ‘It's no good for you.'

‘That's easy for you to say,' the girl snapped. ‘Not proposing, are you? Anyway, what do you want, if it's not the obvious?'

Barnard reached inside his jacket again for the mugshot of Georgie Robertson and handed it to Evie. ‘Have you ever seen him around?'

Evie studied the picture for a moment but shook her head. ‘Not one of mine,' she said. ‘He looks an evil bastard. What's he supposed to have done?'

‘Not sure yet,' Barnard said dismissively. ‘But if you do see him, can you give me a bell? Don't let him through your door, though, sweetie. We've had a complaint from one of the girls on the street which could be about him.'