Dead Beat (21 page)

Evie shrugged and rolled herself back under the blankets. ‘Professional hazard,' she said. ‘Violent men. I don't worry about it unless girls are getting their throats cut. And as far as I hear it, it's a nancy-boy that's happened to recently. Am I right, Harry?'

‘You're right, sweetie. By the way, is this a girl you know?' He handed Evie the piece of paper Venables had given him, but again she shook her head.

‘Don't think so,' she said. ‘Is that her real name or the name she uses on the street?'

‘Her real name, I think. It's the name she gave at the nick when she made a complaint.'

‘Yeah, well, she may call herself something else, to confuse you buggers, you know how it is? Now, can you piss off and let me get some sleep? Make sure you close the front door behind you. We don't want any old sod walking in. We need to see the colour of his money first.'

Barnard grinned and stood up. ‘Sweet dreams,' he said, though he doubted that was likely. He strolled further up Dean Street and then turned right to cut through towards Soho Square. Almost on the corner he stopped at a door very similar to the one he had just closed firmly enough behind him for Evie to hear the thud, and again rang a bell. This time it was opened promptly by a smartly dressed young woman in a tight-fitting dress with a skirt above the knee, and very high heels, fully made up and attractive enough to stop Barnard momentarily in his tracks.

‘Are you Sue Heddon?' he asked. She nodded and Barnard pulled out his warrant card. ‘You made a complaint about a punter,' he said. ‘Is that right?'

‘Well, you're a turn-up,' Sue Heddon said. ‘I didn't think your man at the nick gave two flying hoots for my complaint.'

‘If he pulled a knife on you, we'll take it seriously, whatever the desk sergeant led you to believe.'

‘You'd best come in then,' she said and for the second time that morning Barnard found himself settled in a tart's boudoir, cigarette in hand and looking entirely at home while the mugshot of Georgie Robertson was being studied carefully.

‘That's him,' she said. ‘He seemed OK to start with. He phoned first. I've got cards out and about. I don't work on the street any more. So that was fine. He was well-dressed, obviously not short of a bob, so I let him in when he turned up. But he wanted me to do some stuff I didn't fancy, and then he turned nasty.'

‘What sort of stuff?' Barnard asked.

‘He wanted to tie me up. I won't do that sort of thing. I know you can charge more, but I don't like it. So I said no, and we've got a sort of alarm system here, sounds a bell in the hall if there's any trouble, so I showed him that, and that's when he pulled his knife, so I did set the alarm off and he went pretty quickly after that. Nasty bit of work, I thought he was. Vile temper on him. It's the first time I've ever had to set the alarm off. And it worked like a dream. He was out of the door like a shot. Will you charge him?

‘I'll get back to you on that,' Barnard said, not sure whether arresting Georgie for a threat which ended up hurting no one would be a help or a hindrance in the larger scheme of things. But knowing he carried a knife and had threatened to use it could well be useful later, if not now. His next step would have to be very carefully considered, he thought, if Ray was to succeed in getting rid of his younger brother in a way that old Ma Robertson would accept and a jury would buy. But there was no doubt that Jimmy Earnshaw's evidence was an awkward stumbling block in Ray Robertson's way. The boy might have seen two men hurrying away from Jonathon Mason's flat, not one, but while he was definite that neither was Tom O'Donnell, which was good news for Tom's sister, he wasn't sure he was Georgie Robertson either. As far as Ray's plot to put his brother away was concerned, Jimmy Earnshaw might turn out to be a powerful witness for the defence rather than the prosecution.

One way or another, the kid had seen too much for his own safety and he had to be got out of London quickly, Barnard decided. His long-term survival might depend on him staying away for good. Barnard might go along with Ray's schemes just so far, but leaving an inconvenient witness, who was little more than a child, directly in Ray's path was not included in the deal. And it was still essential, he thought, to find Tom O'Donnell, who might turn out to be another loose cannon. He must catch up with his pretty sister again, he thought, and he could think of more than one good reason for that.

Halfway up Greek Street, heading back to the nick, he turned into the alleyway where ABC Books was situated, with Mason's flat above, and pushed open the shop door. What he found inside hit him like a kick in the stomach. Pete Marelli was lying on the floor surrounded by tumbled heaps of his blood-soaked merchandise while beyond him his German shepherd Hector lay on his back, his tongue lolling between his teeth, his head almost severed from his neck.

‘Jesus wept,' Barnard muttered, leaning over Marelli for no more than a second to confirm what was entirely obvious. Like Jonathon Mason, who had died in the flat above the shop, the Maltese had also been killed by slashing blows to his neck. Barnard glanced behind him and moved to close the shop door with his shoulder and twist the sign to Closed before he leaned against the barred glass and surveyed the carnage, breathing heavily. Moving carefully so as not to leave any traces of his own presence, Barnard took a careful look round but found nothing unusual except a couple of bloody fingerprints on the glass counter which had been smashed as the Maltese had fallen. They might be useful, he thought, if only to calm the tension which he was sure would erupt with this death. The chess game being played in the Soho underworld by Ray Robertson and the Maltese, Frankie Falzon, had been overturned and the pieces scattered all over the floor. For once in his life, Harry Barnard felt slightly afraid.

THIRTEEN

D
S Barnard had found nothing unusual amongst the pornography in Pete Marelli's porn shop except for a single crumpled copy of a magazine which surprised him. He stared at the photographs for a long time before he realized that one of the young boys involved looked suspiciously like Jimmy Earnshaw and one of the men in another shot was undoubtedly Jonathon Mason. Before he had used the dead man's phone to call DCI Venables and pass on the news of the shopkeeper's violent demise, he had folded the magazine carefully and put it in his inside pocket. The fewer people who saw a photograph of Jimmy, he thought, the safer the boy would be.

‘What the hell's going on?' Venables snapped in obvious disbelief.

‘I wish I knew,' Barnard said. ‘But I'm completely baffled by this. If the Robertsons' mob's involved, it makes no sense at all. I thought they were trying to get some sort of deal with the Maltese but this will put the kibosh on that. It's likely to start a war.'

‘Get out on the bloody street, and see what you can pick up, Harry boy,' Venables said. ‘This is really going to muddy the waters with the other case. I'll get over there with the murder team straight away.'

Barnard shrugged and hung up thoughtfully before leaving the shop more or less as he had found it, stepping carefully around the two bodies, human and canine, and around the pools of blood and scattered books and magazines which surrounded them. Marelli, he knew, was no more than a foot soldier in Frankie Falzon's private Maltese army, but his death would undoubtedly be avenged, unless it was a punishment by his boss for some infringement of the mob's perverse moral code, maybe even possession of the queer magazine Barnard had picked up. As he left the shop, he glanced around the immediate vicinity and spotted a newspaper seller on the corner, but the rheumy-eyed vendor claimed to have seen nothing at all, and Barnard guessed that he could ask the same question any day of the week and get the same answer.

He made his way back slowly to Frith Street where he knew the very attractive Kate O'Donnell was probably at work just a couple of blocks away. This new killing would probably let her brother off the hook, he thought, but it was far too soon to pass on that opinion to her, especially as he would not put it past DCI Venables to continue that particular manhunt for as long as it suited him. Abruptly he spun on his heel, furious to be so at a loss on what he regarded as his own personal turf. He headed west, weaving his way towards Berwick Street and a pub in the bustling market where he knew that some of the Maltese loosely attached to Falzon's mob hung out. It was still early and while the fruit and vegetable stalls which almost blocked the narrow street were doing good business the bar was almost empty. He glanced around the tables which were only just being washed down after the previous night's business and would have gone out again until he noticed Joe Inglott sitting in the far corner of the room, nursing what looked like a double Scotch. He looked up as Barnard approached and the sergeant could see the fear in his eyes.

‘Not here, Mr Barnard,' Inglott said, his eyes flickering around the empty bar.

‘Round the corner in the coffee bar,' Barnard said curtly, waving a hand towards D'Arblay Street. ‘You know it?'

Inglott nodded and took a gulp of his Scotch. Barnard went ahead, sure Inglott would follow. The man owed him too much to disobey. And sure enough, within minutes of his ordering a cappuccino from the bored Italian boy behind the counter, Inglott sidled through the door and took a plastic chair opposite him.

‘What the hell's going on, Joe?' Barnard snapped, without preamble. ‘There's another corpse in Greek Street, killed the same way as the first lad. And this time your man's not going to be best pleased. What have you heard? You're obviously scared witless. Who's the knife man, Joe? And why the hell was Pete Marelli picked on?'

Inglott licked dry lips. ‘I can't go on talking to you like this,' he said. ‘Is too dangerous.' Barnard sighed dramatically and put a hand on Inglott's arm, gripping more tightly than was comfortable. ‘Joseph, Joseph, you really don't have much choice, do you, let's be honest. You're in this up to your eyes already. What's your man's reaction to this? Is he behind it himself, or is he hopping mad someone has almost sliced the head off one of his men? That bookshop must be making him a fortune, the stuff Marelli had stashed away in his back room. I thought I'd pretty well seen it all but . . .' He shrugged as expressively as any Maltese and Inglott scowled.

‘I don't know anything about what happened there,' he said. ‘And I think the man is not happy. That is what I hear. I think Marelli was close to Mr Falzon, good friends, same village, you know how it is?'

‘So are we looking at a turf war here?' Barnard asked, feeling queasy. ‘Do you know who he's blaming?'

‘I know nothing, I hear nothing,' Inglott said. ‘I only a tiny sardine in this sea. You must look for much bigger fish, shark maybe.'

Barnard gazed at his informant but was forced to the conclusion that the frightened man playing nervously with his teaspoon was very probably telling him the truth. All of a sudden, out of a clear blue sea, something very like a shark had invaded the relatively calm lagoon that Soho had become recently, and it was impossible to predict just where the bloodstained ripples caused by Marelli's death would wash up. He finished his coffee and passed Inglott a couple of crumpled pound notes.

‘Keep me in touch, Joe,' he said harshly. ‘Absolutely anything you hear, right?'

The Maltese nodded miserably. ‘OK, OK, Mr Barnard,' he agreed. ‘Anything I hear.'

Barnard was walking slowly back to the nick, furiously dissatisfied with his morning's investigations, when he became aware of a sleek black car pulling into the kerb beside him. The back door opened wide and Ray Robertson beckoned him in.

‘Good morning, Flash,' Robertson said as the car pulled slowly away in the direction of Regent Street. ‘Come down to the club and have a drink. I'm getting some strange reports this morning, all sorts of unpleasant whispers, and I want to know what the hell's going on.'

Barnard was not used to being in the dark and Ray was the last person he was going to admit to that he was, for the moment, floundering. He kept his own counsel as the Jag glided effortlessly the half mile to the Delilah and he followed Ray into the bar where he accepted a Scotch as large as the gangster's own.

‘Cheers,' he said, slugging the drink back quickly, although it did not make him feel much better. He glanced around the half-lit bar, the Delilah being a place which only came to life in the late evening as serious drinking and illicit gambling took over. He lit a cigarette. ‘That was a good bash you had last week.'

But all Ray Robertson could manage was a faint smile of acknowledgement. ‘Don't beat about the bush, Harry. What the hell's going on with this new killing in Greek Street?'

Barnard shrugged. ‘I hoped you might be able to tell me something about that,' he said.

‘You're joking,' Robertson said. ‘You know that's not my style. Was he one of Falzon's mob?'

‘He was Maltese, yes,' Barnard said. ‘Ran the bookshop for them. But who cut his throat, I've no idea. Or why.'

‘But your man Venables might just think it was down to me,' Robertson said heavily. ‘And so might Falzon, though he should know better. Just between us, I'm talking to Falzon just now about some other stuff, not porn, you know I don't like that, but a big deal is on the cards. Anything which messes that up could be a serious inconvenience.'

‘I'm sure,' Barnard said drily. ‘But if you're sure your hands are clean . . .' He realized immediately that he had rashly let a note of doubt insinuate itself into his voice as Robertson's face darkened angrily.

‘Persil-white,' Robertson snapped.