The Return of Captain John Emmett (31 page)

Laurence ordered two pints of beer. It came from a single unmarked keg. He handed over a shilling for the two. He doubted anyone else in there was paying the going rate. The landlord's unease might have been because the pub was open before drinking hours.

As if to read his mind, the man said defiantly, 'We keep to pre-war drinking in here, now it's not an official house.' Surprisingly, he had a London accent.

'I'm sorry to bother you,' Charles said firmly, 'but we're looking for an acquaintance.'

There was a snigger from the woman in the window.

'Tucker, Tucker's the name. Knew him in the war.' Laurence got out the photograph and put it on the bar. 'Used to live in Florence Place.'

The silence continued. Nobody looked at the photograph. Laurence looked round. No one met his eye.

Finally the landlord spoke.

'And you think your old army mate drinks in here?'

'So we've been told. Him or his friends,' Laurence said.

'Lots of Tuckers.'

'He was a sergeant.'

'
Sergeant
Tucker.' The landlord looked amused. Anybody know this
Sergeant
Tucker?' he said and without waiting for an answer asked, 'What makes you think he comes here?'

'Well, he said he used to live over there.' Laurence gestured to the derelict plot of land.

The woman in the window snorted again.

Laurence looked at her. She was small, probably not more than twenty. Her face, as she gazed at him frankly, was pinched and either bruised or dirty.

'You knew him?' he asked her.

'Nah. Jest he came from a stinking rotten place. Gone now. It's all going now. Even this home from home.' She grimaced at her own surroundings.

The landlord looked irritated. 'We're providing a service. Just for the last weeks,' he said. 'No point wasting the building before the wrecking ball calls time. After all, there's no sign yet of all their municipial improvements out there.' Although he mispronounced the word, he sounded angry as he gestured towards the door. 'They can take the houses away but where are people supposed to live? Even now they've had the exterminators in and taken out a few of our lads. Germans got the wrong people if you ask me.'

'You and the Bolshies,' a man muttered as he got up. As he wrenched the door open, a cold draught knifed in. The door banged shut behind him.

'Do you happen to know a pub called the Woodman?' Laurence asked in the silence that followed.

For some reason this seemed to amuse the group at the table.

'You could say so,' said the landlord. 'There's ten or so Wood-mans around. God knows why. Munitions Man, Metal-Rolling Man, Lime-Kiln Man, or even No-Fucking-Chance-of-a-Job Man, you'd understand. Not much call for woodmen in good old Brummagem. Still, what's in a name?' He picked up the dirty mug on the bar, dipped it in a bowl of murky water, pulled it out and rubbed it with a rag. 'This used to be the Royal Oak.' He looked up towards the men at the table. 'Fred, Ivor, you were soldiering men. Did you know this Tucker?'

One man was shaking his head before he even got to the end of the sentence, as if to deflect any involvement with strangers. The other appeared not to have heard at all.

'Sorry. Can't help you,' the landlord said. 'Me, I got a chest.' He thumped on his sternum. 'Missed the chance of a scrap. Was in stores. Never left the country. But good luck to you. Though I doubt you'll find him.'

They stepped out into the fresh air. A man stood against a boarded shopfront opposite, rolling a cigarette. Otherwise the street was empty. Charles was feeling in his pocket, obviously intending to return to his map. Laurence felt heavy after a pint of unfamiliar ale.

'What made you think that place was still in use?'

'Grey cells.'

'Grey cells?'

'That's what Mrs Christie's little Belgian has.'

Laurence thought Charles was fearless, reliable and like a child in some respects. He wasn't sure whether he was useful or a liability.

'And I saw a thread of smoke coming from the chimney. So somebody was in there. And there are two jugs hanging on a hook outside. That's a sign of a place to drink in these parts—and I imagine they'd have been long taken if they were simply there as ornament on a ruin.'

'I forgot you were the Sir James Frazer of local customs. They'd heard of Tucker all right, don't you think?'

As Laurence spoke, the man across the road detached himself from the wall. As he came towards them Charles looked momentarily puzzled but Laurence recognised him from the bar a few minutes before. He'd been the first one to leave.

As he reached them he said, 'This Sergeant-as-was Tucker you're after? What's he worth to you?'

Charles and Laurence briefly exchanged looks.

'My cigarettes?' Charles said, holding them out. The man looked doubtful. He rubbed his nose with his hand and pushed his cap back.

'Looks to me like you'se come a long way,' he said. 'Not from these parts, anyway. So you must be wanting this Tucker a mite more than a Frenchie fag or two. Price of beer's enough to turn you temperance around these parts.'

'You're right, of course,' said Charles. 'So what do you think would be fair payment, assuming you actually know where our man is, or have some pretty solid information as to where he lives now?'

'Oh, I know where he is right enough,' the man replied. 'I'll take you to him toot sweet. Mind you, can't guarantee he'll welcome you with open arms.'

'A shilling. How does that sound?' asked Charles.

Laurence thought of the fold of pound notes in Charles's inner pocket. The man looked doubtful but nervous, as if he didn't want to see Tucker but wanted more money. Finally he seemed to decide on tactics.

'Look, I'm out of work, three babbies at home. Wife's about to drop another. I did my bit in France and all and I reckon you did too, sir, so you know what I'm talking about. It in't easy. So how's about two bob? Something for the wife an' a bag of suck for the little'uns? For that I take you right to him. Nasty bit of work he is and all. Though not the scrapper he was, you'll find. Mind you, I'm not hanging around while you try and talk to him.' He barked—something between a laugh and a cough.

'Done,' said Charles. Laurence was surprised; he'd expected him to drive a harder bargain.

'This now'—he held out a florin—'and sixpence when we get there.'

The man tucked the coin away and pulled his cap forward.

'It's not far. 'Course, they all knew Bert Tucker,' he nodded back towards the Public House, 'though it was his ma's address you had and she's been dead since for ever. But landlord barred Tucker a year back and he don't do that easy. Would serve Dr Crippen if he dropped by with small change. Same at the Woodman. Barred.'

He was walking slowly and obviously enjoying himself.

'But that lot don't like strangers even more than they don't like your man.'

They took a mean-looking street to the right and then, swiftly, a second, which passed under an archway into an alley so narrow that Laurence couldn't imagine it ever got sunlight. The cobbles beneath their feet were dark and damp. At small, irregular intervals, there were shallow doorways. Washing was strung across the street; despite the lack of light or warmth, people obviously lived here. A woman stood at a single water pump, talking to a young girl with a grizzling baby on her hip. They all fell silent as the men passed. Laurence hoped they weren't being led into some kind of dead end where the man or his friends would swiftly relieve Charles of the rest of his money, but eventually the alley came out in a wider, cleaner street with a neat row of small villas on one side.

They crossed over. To their left a cemetery spread out, covering a sizeable area of ground. Whilst there was no sign of a church, an apparently abandoned mortuary lodge stood at the entrance and beyond it sooty stones were arranged in tidy rows, with the occasional rusting iron cross or hefty stone angel. The man looked pleased with himself and pointed through the open gateway.

'There you are,' he said. 'There he is. And not likely to be leaving.'

'He's dead?' said Laurence, after a split second's confusion. 'You're telling us he's dead?'

He felt irritated but largely because it had never entered his head that Tucker might have died. All his reasoning needed Tucker alive. The man stepped away slightly as if nervous one of them would take a swing at him, yet still hoping for the sixpence.

Laurence was lost in thought. Somehow he felt the unknown Tucker would always have been protected by his own opportunism. He was trying to recalibrate every assumption he'd made. Even if Tucker wasn't directly implicated in John's shooting, he had associated him with the other violent deaths. Tucker's malevolence had been a fixed point in the story Laurence had built up.

Finally he asked, 'When?'

'Bert? Back last winter. December? January? February mebbe?'

'So where's his grave?' said Charles, looking towards the dismal rows of stones.

The man looked at them, almost amused. He waved towards the left of the grounds. 'Resting in the arms of Jesus. Bert's hardly one for a fancy stone. Not the type and not the money any more. He was peddling his own wife the last months.' He looked momentarily uneasy. 'Offered her to me once but you never knew with him what was a joke. But no way she was about to get him all the fancy trimmings when he copped it. No, there he is and there he'll stay, but I expect even she doesn't know exactly where he is. No change there.'

'How did he die?' Laurence beat Charles to it.

'Drowned.'

'Drowned?' said Laurence. 'What,
here?'
It seemed unlikely.

'In the canal. Down by the basin. Beyond the Tap and Spile. Near the Mission. He'd been drinking. Fell in or pushed in. Depends who you talk to.' He looked pleased at the effect of his information.

Laurence looked at Charles.

'Which?' Charles asked.

'Well, the police says fell. Drunk and drowned. They don't give a farthing. He was a bit of a villain and so, likely, was the man who done for him, so what should they care? Bert was a mean bastard, begging your pardon, but he knew the area and he looked after hisself. When he'd had too much—when he could afford to have too much—other people came out of it the worse. He didn't. More likely, somebody had enough of his schemes. His wife, mebbe?' He coughed. 'No, she's had all the nerve beaten out of her as well as her teeth. Would never have the guts to do him in. Besides she was wailing all night, they say, and what's she going to do now with her little 'uns?'

'So it's just you who thinks he was murdered?'

'Nah. Everybody knows it round here. For starters the killer was seen by a local. Police weren't having it because the man—bloke called Victor—was on the job with a part-timer, a girl called Betty Carew, and they'd been drinking half the evening. But not so drunk they don't remember a man hanging about. They were round the back of Mathieson's warehouse and they saw this stranger looking like he was up to no good, they tell it. A bit later they heard Bert singing as he went home. He was drinking in the Tap after he'd been banned from his usual. It was a pretty miserable night, they said—raining on and off. 'Course they didn't recognise him spot on—he had his cap and scarf on and head down, but it was him. He was a great man for a song, Bert. Few minutes later, Betty, not quite as occupied as old Victor, if you know what I mean, says she heard a cry and then a splash. Police said if she did, why didn't the two of them go see, but she was earning and it was a bad night and too cold not to get on with it.' He leered. 'Old Bert didn't look his best when they got him out.'

'These two found his body?'

'Some bargee the next day shifting pig iron. He was down by the lock. Face mashed up a bit. His own mum wouldn't hardly of known him if she ever did, but who knows whether he'd been thumped before he went into the water.'

'Was there any idea who did it?' Laurence interrupted.

The man shrugged. 'Like I said, there was plenty was glad to see him gone. That's not the same thing as knocking him off, though.'

'Had there been any trouble beforehand?'

Always in trouble was Bert since the war. Never the biggest but he was the toughest before the drink started to get to 'im.' The man beamed—his pleasure in Tucker's malignity was obvious. 'Even 'is own officer hated him.'

Charles and Laurence looked at each other.

'He come up here, just like you, and gave him a drubbing. Williams—in the pub today but knows to keep his mouth shut—was in the same regiment, recognised the man. Bloke asked around like you have. One of the reasons no one's speaking: we aren't after more trouble. Specially after Bert's gone and got himself killed. Found him in the Woodman, the stranger did. He weren't barred then. Talked for a bit. Shouting the odds. Bert tells him to fuck off for a coward, 'scuse my French, dragged him outside. The landlord shouts he's barred. The gent calls Bert this and that and lays one on him. He's good.' The man's eyes sparkled in recollection. 'Time was, Bert would have put up a fight but he just goes down. Blood everywhere. The gent gets a bloody nose but Bert comes off worse. 'E's spitting teeth and tells him he'll get him. But as it turns out someone gets him first. I'm not saying it was him, though. This officer wasn't the only one had grudges against Bert, and him sorting out Bert was months before somebody sorted him out for good.'

'Did you actually see him get in the fight then?'

''Course I did. He didn't look much, the officer, but he laid Tucker out right and good. Some old grudge from army days, like I says. Friend of yours, was he?'

'He might have been. Can you describe him?'

'Middling height. Middling looks. Dark hair. Gent, like I said. Would've sorted out Bert right and proper if a copper hadn't been passing, nosing about, heard the racket. Bert was too pissed to fight proper. This bloke calls Bert a blinkin' murderer but he looked fit to do Bert in hisself. Made a mistake laying one on the copper, though, because then they took him in.'

Briefly Laurence wondered whether there was any way to check the truth of the story, although it felt real enough. The description of Tucker's first assailant fitted John but then it fitted him too, come to that. Yet Mary had spoken of an assault that had led to John's arrest.