Dead Beat (7 page)

‘I had a trip up last week but I didn't have time to go to the Cavern. Your pictures'll be worth something if they really make it big, la,' Donovan said at last, grudgingly. ‘I wonder if Brian Epstein would take us on. I should have thought of that while I was back home. You're right, he's done great for the Beatles.'

‘All except Pete Best,' Kate said. ‘You wouldn't want anyone booted out the way he was, would you? And from what I heard, Brian Epstein was up to his neck in that.'

‘They're better off with Ringo,' Donovan said.

‘Not many of Pete's fans would agree with that,' Kate said. ‘I heard George Harrison just didn't get on with him, but he was popular with a lot of the girls I knew. Maybe that's why some of the others didn't like him.'

‘Flipping hysterical, some of them girls,' Donovan said.

‘You wouldn't object if it was you they were getting hysterical about,' Kate said, with no sympathy in her voice. ‘What are you doing for money anyway if you're not doing so well with the band?'

‘I've got a job in a bar, Stevo and Miffy are working in some warehouse near King's Cross. To be honest, I reckon we'll have to go back up north if we don't get a break soon. It's too expensive down here. We're paying three quid a week for a crummy place in Archway. Each.'

‘Archway?' Kate asked.

‘Somewhere on the Northern Line,' Donovan said. ‘You rattle up through Camden and Kentish Town. You don't want to know about it. It's not nice.'

‘I've got to find somewhere myself,' Kate said. ‘I'm sleeping on Marie and Tess's settee at the moment.'

‘Where's that?'

‘Notting Hill,' Kate said.

‘That's all right. It's quite pretty down there, trees and parks and things. A bit of life. Archway's a dump.'

‘No, it's not all right,' Kate said vehemently. ‘It's all right up by the underground station but not where I am. The house we're in feels as if it might fall down any time. It's like Toxteth, but with even more black people.'

‘They had those riots there, Teddy boys and Jamaicans or something, didn't they?' Donovan said thoughtfully. ‘But there should be some good music around down there. P'raps I'll come and see you girls some time, take you to a club maybe? Would that suit?'

‘Not really, Dave,' Kate said. ‘I think I've been to all the clubs I want to go to with you. But there is one thing. Have you seen Tom at all? My mum's desperate because she hasn't heard from him for months and I wondered if anyone from home had bumped into him.'

‘I'll ask around,' Donovan said. ‘He'll be working in the rag trade somewhere. You know Tom, always the latest gear – winkle-pickers before the winkles had washed up at New Brighton. I'll ask Miffy. He's always mooching around Oxford Street and Soho. He's got no money to spend but he hangs around with people who have.'

‘If you do hear anything, give me a ring,' Kate said, grateful for extra pairs of eyes. ‘You can get me at work. This phone's useless. It never gets answered half the time.' She gave him the agency's number, hoping Ken would have no objection to private calls coming into the office. ‘I really need to find him,' she said quietly, reluctant to beg but knowing she would have to grow a thick skin if she was to continue her search.

‘I'll put the word out,' Donovan said. ‘Scousers stand out around here like Mancs at the Pier Head. They look at you as if you've dropped in from the moon. Someone may have bumped into Tom. Don't worry, la, Dave's on the case. And I'm sure you'll think that's worth a few snaps, won't you? See you later.'

‘In a while,' Kate said numbly, knowing how easily she had fallen into Donovan's trap. Maybe it would be a small price to pay, if he or his friends really traced Tom on the Liverpool grapevine which she was sure must exist in this fragmented city which seemed to suck people in from all over the world, but she did not have high hopes. Knowing what she knew, she guessed Tom was lying low, quite determined not to be found. It would need more than the dubious detective skills of the Mersey mafia to track him down.

Detective Sergeant Harry Barnard sat in a corner of the lounge bar of the George on Dean Street toying with a double Scotch and a dried up ham sandwich and feeling considerably disgruntled. He had spent the morning trudging round the pubs of Soho as one by one they had opened their doors to let the chilly air clear the fug of cigarette smoke and alcohol fumes from the night before. In his breast pocket was a photograph of Jonathon Mason which the police had found in the dead man's flat, one of a number of glossy black and white publicity shots showing a good-looking young man with floppy fair hair unfashionably long, and the stamp of a theatrical agency stamped on the back.

Strictly speaking he was stepping beyond his brief, but the more he was thwarted the more he was determined to pin down some information on the dead man which DCI Venables had so far failed to elicit from anyone else after five days of trying. One of the advantages of swapping Ted Venables for Keith Jackson as a boss was that Jackson left his detectives much to their own devices. So long as a reasonable number of charges made the books, and everyone knew he was especially keen on gross indecency, he left the stew of Soho and his detectives to bubble undisturbed.

Barnard had no difficulty following up Venables' line of inquiry as well as his other cases. Mason was on the books of a theatrical agency, which had taken the photographs, and had told Venables that they had represented him for six months and had a record of auditions he had attended and one small non-speaking role he had taken in a comedy at Wyndham's which had proved so unfunny that it had folded ten days after it opened. But the only address the agency had for Mason was the flat where he had been found dead, and they knew absolutely nothing about his origins or background. He had walked in off the street one day, claiming some acting experience at school and at Cambridge, and had been put on the books as a result. The photograph had already been sent to the Cambridge police with a request to show it to the colleges to see if any firmer identification could be made that way, but Venables obviously did not have high hopes of a result from the ancient seat of learning.

‘D'you know how many bloody colleges there are in Cambridge?' he had asked Barnard, stubbing out his cigarette viciously in the overflowing ashtray on his desk and lighting another after flicking through the sheaf of photographs. ‘What do they all do there, for God's sake? If they send a DC round all of them it'll take him a week, at least. And that's if they can be bloody bothered.'

‘That's not a face they'll forget, though, is it?' Barnard said, glancing again at the smoothly handsome features and surprisingly dark eyes and long lashes under the softly falling fair hair. ‘He must have had every nancy-boy in the place panting for a bit. You know what these men's colleges are like and he's the original pretty boy. Must keep the vice squad up there busy.'

‘I shouldn't think they bother,' Venables had said. ‘They lock the college gates at night, don't they? That must keep it off the streets.'

‘But there are no college walls to hide behind round here,' Barnard said.

‘His picture's going in the
Standard
and the
News
this afternoon. Someone'll recognize him.'

Someone might, Barnard pondered as he peered thoughtfully at the shrivelled ham in his sandwich before pushing it away. But in the circumstances whoever did recognize Mason might not be someone who would want to rush to their local nick to identify themselves as a friend of the dead man. There were some kinds of friendship which could land you in gaol. He had wasted more hours than he cared to count in his early days with Vice lurking in men's public lavatories, at then mere Inspector Jackson's behest, waiting for someone to make a pass at him and sometimes making the pass himself. He ended up feeling sorry for the poor sods, he recalled, rather than wanting to haul them to the nick full of righteous indignation and with the law on his side. But he knew that was not a sentiment which was widely shared in the Job and he kept it, and his personal reasons for feeling that way, strictly to himself.

‘I'll keep asking around,' Barnard had said to Venables, helping himself to one of the photographs. ‘If he was known on the street, I'll suss him out.'

But on the day that had not proved so easy, he thought, as he relented and took an unenthusiastic bite of his sandwich, wondering how much longer Ray Robertson, the man he had arranged to meet at the George, would be. His first ports of call had been the known haunts of homosexual men, the pubs which would fill up later in the day with a wholly male clientele, hot, sweaty, posing and on edge. Every now and again, Keith Jackson in person, and his officers, raided them and hauled off any couples who were engaged in overt sexual activity, usually in the lavatories, but most of the time they left them alone, preferring to tolerate that kind of activity in one or two places they knew about and leave the rest of the warren of narrow streets to the heterosexual trade which flourished in the pubs and clubs, brothels and clip joints and porn shops from which most of the squad made a comfortable second income.

But neither landlords nor barmen in the ‘queer' pubs had recognized the photograph Barnard had waved under their noses, and the handful of customers who glanced anxiously at each other when the DS walked in had been similarly unhelpful.

‘Lovely boy, though, isn't he?' one of the more confident young men had commented enthusiastically, and had looked crestfallen only when Barnard told him in explicit detail how Mason had died.

‘You want to watch yourselves,' Barnard had advised. ‘We may have a psycho out there looking for your sort.'

‘I don't know what you mean, officer,' the young man came back quickly, with a brave attempt at looking offended, and not for the first time Barnard wondered whether queers ended up in the theatre because they had so much early practice at dissembling, or whether they chose the profession because they wanted to hone the skills they needed to succeed in a life of permanent subterfuge and pretence.

He finished his sandwich and went to the bar for a refill, and as he made his way back to his table Ray Robertson himself walked through the door, followed closely by two burly men in dark trench-coats and a much smaller man Barnard was much less pleased to see.

‘Harry, my son,' Robertson said, striding to Barnard's table and shaking his hand enthusiastically. He moved smoothly for a very big man, the buttons of his camel overcoat straining to contain the mountain of flesh within and his chins overlapping his crisp white collar and one of the many regimental ties he favoured. When mildly challenged once on his right to sport the colours of the Brigade of Guards, East End legend had it that Robertson had landed a crushing uppercut on his questioner's chin, knocking him to the ground. ‘I did my bloody National Service,' he had snarled, and no one ever asked him the question again, even more wary than they already were of a man who had gained a reputation in the boxing ring as well as the criminal courts, until an eye injury put him out of the ring for good and gave him more time and energy for his other passions, eating and building up his illegal empire.

This morning he seemed in an expansive mood, although the same could not be said for his companion, smaller, darker, and with a brooding air of menace about him which Barnard had never liked and became more wary of as the years passed. Georgie Robertson, Ray's younger brother, was becoming a serious threat, Barnard thought, violent, unpredictable and given to sudden outbursts of rage which verged on the manic. He had no doubt that Georgie was heading eventually for a long jail sentence, and just hoped that he did not turn out to be the one to arrest him. Whatever reservations Ray himself had about his little brother, Barnard guessed that he would protect him to the end.

Ray eased his bulk on to the bench beside Barnard and gave the sergeant's thigh a hefty pat while his brother took the seat across the table. The two heavies made their way to the bar and brought back double Scotches for all three of the seated men.

‘How's it going, my little cock sparrer?' Ray asked. ‘Long time no see.'

‘Fine,' Barnard said, taking no offence from the man who for a while, as a disoriented evacuee during the war, he had come to regard pretty much as an older brother. Barnard and the two Robertson boys had found themselves transported overnight from the tightly packed streets of Bethnal Green to a village in Hertfordshire where the three of them clung together in the tiny school, the only outsiders amongst country boys who regarded anyone from further away than St Albans as an alien species. These incomers, the locals decided on first sight of their dark hair and pale city skin amongst clans of weather-beaten blonds, must be gypsies, and their lives were made a misery accordingly. Ray had been handy with his fists even as an eleven year old, and he was prepared to use them not just on his own account but to protect his brother and Harry Barnard as well. The local lads quickly learned the hard way to leave the evacuees alone.

Ray glanced at the remnants of Barnard's sandwich. ‘Any cop?' he asked.

‘Lousy,' Barnard said.

‘Yeah, well, I've got a table booked at one of my clubs,' Robertson said. ‘So what can I do for you, Harry? You know I'm always willing to help an old mate.'

Barnard showed him the photograph of Jonathon Mason, and explained how he had been found.

‘Yeah, I heard there'd been some unpleasantness. A knife, was it?'

Barnard nodded. ‘We can't get any information on where he came from, who he was living with, friends, contacts. He'd been in his flat six months, went to Cambridge University apparently, but before that it's a complete blank. No background, no family we can trace, nothing. And I've not found anyone in Soho who seems to know him.'