London Blues (33 page)

Don't forget, it was only a few months earlier in 1964, in April, that Nelson Mandela had been convicted of sabotage in Pretoria. Blacks and bombs were hot news.

This theory had a fair bit of plausibility going for it until I blew it out of the water. I was always proud of that. I was just turned twenty! What I found out was that the
landlords
in Albert Terrace – the landlords and two landladies – effectively ran a colour bar. There were plenty of blacks all over Bayswater and Paddington but none had ever kipped down in the Terrace. We made that the front-page lead story. This little old local paper shouted ‘Not true!'

So, it was back to the drawing board for Special Branch! Christmas came and went and other stories elbowed out the blast in Bayswater. I got a job on the old
Evening
News
and moved to Fleet Street. Then it was Churchill's funeral and that was the end of it. Nobody followed the story up. It died a death.

About ten years later I was reading Commander Melvin's memoirs. He'd been one of the top brass in the
Metropolitan Police in the sixties. He mentioned the
explosion
and said that the gelignite had been stored in Albert Terrace by some extremist supporters of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, the ‘Ban-the-Bombers', who had planned to blow up a number of top secret government fallout shelters. I believed him up to this point but when he went on to say that the police knew who was responsible but did not have sufficient evidence to bring a successful prosecution I thought to myself, pull the other one, squire! If you believe that, you'd believe anything! Not enough evidence! Not enough bloody evidence! They'd just sit back in the face of explosives and do nothing! Can you believe that? And written by one of the Yard's top bananas! Huh!

It's a mystery all right … a real mystery. And Melvin saying
that
was just part of the cover-up. We never got to the bottom of it. Just another Bayswater mystery.

BERNARD PROTHEROE:
My boss, Jim [Munby] was very bitter about being taken off the case. His attitude to the force changed after that. He just wanted to serve his time and leave … and he did. He took early retirement and moved out to the coast, to Frinton, with Edna his wife. I often used to visit them there. We used to sit out on the veranda drinking and talking about old times.

The odd thing was that after Special Branch took over the case from us they never ever contacted us to ask us
anything
. It was like we were a bunch of swedes who didn't know hay from bullshit. We sent the files over as a matter of routine but that was it.

I made routine inquiries into George Eric Purdom.
Established
who he was and what he did and so on. Just the basic stuff. At that stage we had no reason to go any further. He wasn't a known associate of criminals, didn't have a police record or anything like that. Didn't appear to be the sort of person who stored explosives under his bed. I spoke to a couple of people in the house who told me odds and sods. I think I even went to see some girlfriend of his out down in
Kent somewhere. She was a hairdresser. Recently got married. Didn't want to say much.

And then we had the rug pulled from under us.

Now, it's funny that you should mention the tramp. Jim was convinced that there was some connection between him and the explosion. Just a hunch, that's all. But how do you investigate something like that? You don't, by and large. You rely on a tip-off. You rely on some informant coming forward … but no one ever did. The café owner, the chap who had the newspaper shop, and a couple of others supplied good descriptions. We knew exactly what his movements were. But where do you go with it? Where does it lead you? It intrigued us. It intrigued Jim. And it led nowhere. I don't think it even made the papers. I floated it informally with one of the journalists from, I think, the
Kensington
Post
and he laughed.

We're talking history now, aren't we? It's nearly thirty years ago, a third of a century ago.

NICK ESDAILLE
: There was a big explosion all right, but who was blown up? Who was in the room when the
gelignite
(or whatever it was) went up, eh? The pathologist at the inquest said he couldn't positively identify the human remains as Timmy's or anyone else's for that matter, and I think it was the coroner who took evidence and said it must be him, Timmy. Couldn't be anyone else. But that was based entirely on circumstantial evidence.

The whisper that went round Soho was that it wasn't Timmy who went up but Charlie. Charlie was always staying over in Porchester Road in Tim's room and it could equally well have been him. Now if it was Charlie I can just see Tim being smart enough to figure out that it was him, Timmy, who was supposed to have gone up in pieces … and then, accordingly, making himself scarce. Perhaps Tim disappeared to South America, to India, to Australia? Perhaps he's living in Aberdeen? Who knows? Perhaps he's still here in London? You tell me.

Nobody's ever seen Timmy since then, but then again nobody's seen Charlie since then either. He disappeared at exactly the same time. You tell me what's going on. Who's dead and who's disappeared? If Timmy were alive now how old would he be? Mid-fifties? Getting on for sixty or thereabouts? I wonder if I'd recognise him?

The photographs? The stills from the films? The girls? And were they indeed from the Labour Party?

These questions are academic. It doesn't matter whether the girls were or were not connected with the Labour Party. The intention is what matters. They were to be
presented
as being connected with the Labour Party. That was the important thing. Whoever was behind this had a clear intention – fuck over the Labour Party at all costs. These are the people who make Peter Wright look like a bleating liberal.

Wright admitted that he and these other MI5 officers tried to fuck over Harold Wilson and destabilise the Labour Party. He admitted it. It's a fact.

If you are going to do something about this don't go around blaming MI5 or the other intelligence-security agencies … you know, like they blame the CIA for
everything
in the States. That's a trap that's set for you, one you're supposed to fall into. By concentrating on MI5 or the CIA you're taking the searchlight off the real culprits.

These agencies are dogs that do their masters' bidding.

That's a rather naive question! Just because they weren't splashed all over the front page of the
News
of
the
World
don't assume they weren't used. Do we know what went on behind all of the locked doors of the Establishment in the 1960s? Are we privy to every dirty trick of the last thirty
years? Do we know about every bit of midnight leverage and dead-of-night blackmail that's come to pass since then? Of course they were used, but how and when and where we can only guess. The big thing about the recent past in Britain, the post-war period, is that our history is shifting all the while. We've got an unpredictable past. New stuff is emerging all the time and changing our understanding and perception. The more that comes out the less we seem to know.

Let's just say … servants of the Crown … and leave it at that. And I've put the emphasis on
servants.

You get my drift?

GEORGE TREADWELL:
A couple of years ago, just before Christmas, I took the grandchildren to the castle over in Rochester. It was bitterly cold and we were the only people about. We were standing by the wall looking over the Medway at the boats and things and the bridges.

I was standing there watching them play and I had this funny feeling I was being watched. I turned around and looked across the grounds towards the keep. There wasn't a soul about. All I could see was a black dog sniffing about by that house that's built into the wall. Nothing else at all.

A little later, after we had walked along the wall a bit, I had the same funny feeling. I looked back and I saw this man standing right by the keep, near the steps that lead up. He had a long raincoat on and he was standing there with his hands in his pockets. Just standing there and staring across in our direction … at me, in fact. He wasn't moving. Just like a statue. Still.

I started walking towards him and when I was about halfway across the park I glanced back at the kids to see they were all right and then when I looked back to the keep the man had gone. Just vanished.

I carried on and when I got to the keep I looked all around it and couldn't see anyone. He'd gone. Just
disappeared
.
I couldn't make it out really because there was nowhere he could have got to without me seeing him.

Now you may not believe this, but I'll swear to the day I die that it was Tim there. It was. I know it was. Don't ask me what he was doing there because I don't know. Perhaps a little visit for old times' sake? I don't know. But it was him.

I stood there looking around but I realised he had vanished. It was very quiet. I looked across the grass and saw little Alex and Michael coming towards me, calling out.

I told my wife about this and she laughed. She reckons I imagined it or I'm going senile or something. Perhaps your mind does play tricks on you but this didn't feel like any trick.

When had I last seen Tim? It must have been about 1960 when he came down here to pick up a case I was looking after for him. Over thirty years ago.

That wasn't the last time I'd had contact with him because we spoke on the phone a few times after that. I was supposed to go up to London and stay with him some time but I never got around to it. Wish I had, but there was never the time. There wasn't much time for anything in those days, I was starting up the business and working all hours God gave.

Now another thing happened that same afternoon, about three-quarters of an hour later. I'd taken the kids for tea and scones down in the High Street and we'd come out of this place and I stopped. I just stopped and looked down the High Street to where Northgate crosses it. And then from up College Gate towards the cathedral and the castle a car appeared and silently drove across the High Street and down Northgate and out of sight. It was a Mercedes-Benz 450SEL from the late sixties or thereabouts – a nice big car, beautiful bit of design, with lots of gleaming chrome work. It looked like new, like brand new … in that lovely
nonmetallic
gold you don't see much any more. Somebody
had spent a good few bob on restoring it. Not many of them about. Very distinctive but not flashy or anything. The windows were all darkened glass so you couldn't see in. It glided across the High Street and didn't seem to make a sound.

Now, if that was Tim up by the keep … I
know
he was also in that Merc. It was him all right. I didn't see him, but I know it was … I just wished he'd said hello. There's so much we've got to talk about.

This
book
was
composed
in
PALATINO
–
a
face
designed
originally
by
Herman
Zapf for
the
German
typefounders
Stempel
in
1950.
The
roman
has
broad
letters
and
strong,
inclined
serifs.
The
italic
has
a
lightness
and
grace
that
reflects
its
calligraphic
origins.
MICHELANGELO
and
SISTINA
are
companion
titling
fonts.

Anthony Frewin was born in London and lives in Hertfordshire. He was an assistant to the film director Stanley Kubrick for over 25 years. He has written two other novels published by No Exit Press,
Sixty-Three
Closure
and
Scorpian
Rising.
He also wrote the original screenplay for the John Malkovich film
Colour
Me
Kubrick.