The Black Mile (29 page)

 
53

FIVE MONTHS OF WAR. Pentonville looked battered,
bruised and tired. The bombers had done their worst and the capital had
survived, but the long drudge of conflict had sucked the life away. Most
districts still bore the evidence of the battering they had endured––plenty had
empty patches where buildings had been hit and the wrecks pulled down,
weed-choked spaces where children played. Here was no different. Every street
had suffered some sort of indignity: houses flattened by direct hits; windows
smashed by shrapnel and boarded up; shop fronts scarred and tatty with no paint
to freshen them up. There wasn’t the money or time or will to start to make
good the damage.

 
Protestors
had gathered at the gates of the prison. Frank looked straight ahead as he
waited for the gates to open, ignoring their chants and hymns. Liberal
nonsense.

Frank knew what he thought.

 
An eye for
an eye.

 
You got what
was coming to you.

 
He drove
through the archway and parked the car next to his father’s. The old man was
waiting for him, sitting in the passenger side, smoking his pipe through the
open door.

 
“Francis.”

 
“Father.”

 
“How are
you?”

 
“Not bad.”

 
“Your leg?”

 
He had
winced as he put his weight down. “Getting better.”

 
“Doesn’t
look it.”

 
“It’s a bit
sore, now and then. But I’m fine.”

 
They set off
towards the main block.

 
“What about
Eve?”

 
Frank shook
his head.

 
Eight months
now, and all they had had of her were scraps and whispers, street rumours from
prostitutes and snouts, unreliable witnesses who would tell a bogey anything if
they thought he could grease the wheels for them. The picture on the crumpled
handbills was a dagger to the gut; a snapshot of a happy girl in a gingham
dress, an ice cream, the penguins at London Zoo. HAVE YOU SEEN THIS GIRL? He
wondered: she was at that age where they grew up fast. The cusp of womanhood.
It changed the way they looked. Would he even recognise her if she passed him
on the street? He didn’t know.

 
“We’ll find
her, son.”

 
Frank
nodded. People had always said that––but he knew they were starting to doubt
it.

 
“What time
are they weighing him off?”

 
“Midday.”

 
“Press here
yet?”

 
“Plenty. Not
that he’s said anything. Still denying it.”

 
“He’s still
saying it’s a fit-up?”

 
“The same
old story.”

 
“You’d think
he might want it off his conscience.”

 
“You’d
think.”

 
They went
inside, passed through security and into the main wing.

 
William
Murphy looked at his pocket watch. “He’s got fifteen minutes to unburden
himself. After that, it’s between him and God.”

o         
o          o

THE EXECUTION PARTY GATHERED OUTSIDE THE CELL DOOR
just before twelve. There were seven of them: the hangman and his assistant;
the governor; the prison chaplain; two guards; Frank and his father. The
hangman waited until the clock tower’s final chime before giving a single nod;
one of the guards unlocked the door and they all followed inside. Johnson was
sitting with his back to them, reading a newspaper. He got up suddenly at the
commotion, turned around, took a step backwards.

 
“Oh God,”
Johnson muttered.

The hangman moved quickly, with
a firm authority born of practice; he took Johnson’s wrists behind his back and
pinioned them with a leather strap. Johnson’s eyes bulged, darting around the
room, from face to face. “Help me,” he said. He fastened on Frank. “I didn’t do
it. On my mother’s grave. I swear it wasn’t me.”

Frank thought of eight dead
women, choked and sliced.

 
He thought
of his daughter.

 
Johnson
disgusted him.

 
The guards
lifted a bookcase away from the wall to reveal a hidden door.

 
They opened
it.

 
A noose hung
down beyond it.

 
Johnson saw
it and started to babble: “I didn’t do what they said I did, I know I’ve done
bad things but I never did that, I swear on my life, please, sir, you have to
help me, help me, please, I didn’t–– I didn’t––”

 
He was so
panicked Frank didn’t even know if he recognised him. Johnson was a different
man now. He’d been at Death’s door for two weeks after Charlie had shot him,
the surgeons saving him so that they could kill him at a time of their
choosing. Physically, he was a shell of his former self. Mentally? The sass,
the braggadocio, the contempt; the terror had sucked it all away. He was like a
lost child.

 
The hangman
went into the execution chamber. The guards, one on either side, nudged Johnson
forward. He staggered, his legs weak. The guards took an arm each and held him
upright.

 
They moved
him into the centre of the room, standing him on a white painted T.

 
Right over
the drop.

 
“It was a
fit-up. My gas mask, someone must’ve nicked it off me, I’d never even worn it,
never took it out of the house, so how could it have been where they said it
was, and that stuff they found in the house, I’d never seen it before, I swear
I hadn’t, never in my life, I don’t know how it could’ve been there unless
someone put it there, I swear, oh God, please––”

 
The hangman
took a white hood from his pocket and draped it over Johnson’s head.

 
“Please God,
please God, please God, please God.”

 
He put the
noose over his head and tightened it.

 
“Please,
please, please, please, please, please, please––”

 
He yanked
the handle.

 
The trapdoor
opened.

 
Johnson
disappeared through it.

 
The body
jerked, the legs kicking.

 
Once.

 
Twice.

 
Stopped.

 
The body
swung beneath the gallows.

 
The only
noise was the creaking of the rope.

 
It had taken
less than twenty seconds. 

 
Frank stared
at the rope, swinging to and fro.

 
“Good
riddance to bad rubbish,” his father said.

 
54

A PICTURE ON A STAND AT THE FRONT OF THE CHURCH:
George Grimes graduating from Detective School at Hendon, in uniform, a big
boyish grin on his face. Charlie sat on a pew at the back, the vicar
instructing them to open their hymn books, the opening bars to “The Lord is My
Shepherd” rising from the organ. He mouthed the words, not really
concentrating. The memorial service was well attended. The parents were at the
front with an older brother and younger sister. A dozen other relatives––grandparents,
aunts and uncles, cousins––were behind them. The remaining pews held friends
and acquaintances. A quick headcount said sixty people liked George well enough
to mark the two years since he died. Charlie had only ever seen him as an abstract
problem for him to solve: a bent slip who died in circumstances that didn’t
make sense. But Grimes had a family, and plenty of friends. The human side of
things. He thought back to the interrogation: the young D.C. he’d expected to
play the tough guy, the façade slipping when he realised he was bang to rights.
Career over, life in ruins. For the first time, Charlie thought about what that
really meant.

Charlie had been there when they
put him in the ground, had stood at the graveside as the cheap pine coffin
crested with a cheap bouquet of flowers was splattered with wet clay. It
couldn’t even begin to compare to the funerals of the lads who died at Savile
Row. No Bishop of Westminster to read the eulogy. Not even the Force chaplain.
No brass––Grimes had died in disgrace, the inquiry Charlie started convicting
him of extortion. A handful of lads from the nick were there but suicide was
nothing compared to death in the line of duty. Laurels for the poor bastards
who got bombed, ignominy for Grimes. They died as heroes; he was buried as a
crooked slip.

 
The
anniversary was today. A date on Charlie’s calendar, double-ringed in red:
September 6th, the day he found George Grimes with his brains blown out. Five
months and he’d never got that scene out of his head. A copper with a hundred
reasons to talk, who said he wanted to talk, putting a service revolver to his
head and pulling the trigger; it hadn’t made sense then and it didn’t make
sense now.

 
He hadn’t
been able to forget about it. It lurked at the back of his mind, too many
unanswered questions for him to consider it solved. For a time he had been busy
enough to ignore it. He’d settled into his Inspectorship and had been
distracted with making his mark. Another couple of months down the line and he
was established. Case after case after case, his reputation was being defined
and then underlined: London’s smartest Detective, the man the crooked policeman
feared. Newspaper reports were fawning, his annual report borderline hagiographical.
Even his inability to fit in with the others was now seen as a strength––he was
independent, aloof, an untouchable.

 
But George
Grimes was still there, an itch he needed to scratch.

 
Five months
down the line and he couldn’t use distractions to ignore him anymore.

 
He called
the file up from storage and went through it again. Albert Regan had been put
in charge after Charlie’s transfer to the Murder Squad and the Ripper case––the
investigation had been short-shrifted. Charlie’s notes were full of detail.
Bert added three scanty reports, recommended suicide and closed the file. No
follow-ups with the men at the station. No checks into Grimes’ background.
Nothing. Bert’s final report was so brief it would have been laughable if it
wasn’t so desperate: Grimes was obviously depressed by the investigation into
his Soho dealings, it was obviously a suicide. There wasn’t even a little
scraping below the surface.

 
Unsatisfactory. Not nearly good enough.

 
Alf
McCartney had signed everything off.

 
But he
couldn’t leave it like that.

 
So he
changed tack. A call to A Department secured Grimes’ records.

 
He went
through his Personnel File with a fine-tooth comb. Born, 1915. Father worked on
the docks, mother was a char. Joined the Force in 1935. First posting on M
Division; he showed promise, enough to bag a switch to plainclothes. Trained
under McCartney in 1940 and obviously made an impression: Alf took him to West
End Central when his six-month tour at Hendon was over. A strong record quickly
went spotty: arrests went down, suggestions of an incipient booze problem,
minor disciplinary infractions that Suits smoothed over. Something was going
on: previous fitness reports suggested a strong, efficient bobby. He scored
well in the detective exams. But six months at Savile Row had made him go bad.

 
Charlie
thought: that doesn’t happen on its own.

 
He went
through his notebooks from the time until he found the conversation with Jackie
Field: Grimes and another copper had been extorting him.

 
Another
copper.

 
Two of them.

 
He hadn’t
had the time to follow it up.

 
What if
there were more bad apples?

o         
o          o

A SMALL AFFAIR HAD BEEN ARRANGED in the function
room of the local boozer. Charlie followed them upstairs, put a sausage roll
and a scotch egg on a paper plate. Photographs had been pinned to corkboards at
both ends of the room, George beaming out from all of them: George with his
football team; George in an apron with a paper hat on his head, carving the
Christmas bird; George in a running vest; half a dozen of George as a boy.
Charlie scanned the room and found the parents: an old boy and girl, her working
on a G&T, him a pint of IPA. He bought one of each from the bar and an
orange juice for himself and took them over.

“I’m detective Inspector Charlie
Murphy,” he said, putting the drinks on the table and shaking hands. “It was a
lovely service.”

 
“I’m Nancy,”
the woman said. “George’s Mum. It’s very kind of you to come. Did you work with
George?”

 
“Yes,”
Charlie lied, feeling bad about it. “Cracking bloke. Very popular.”

 
“I was
hoping a few of his other colleagues might come. He was fond of them.”

 
“I’m not
sure how many of the men knew this was happening.”

 
Nancy
sniffed. “They knew. I sent a letter to Mr. McCartney. George was always on
about him, how he was learning so much. Didn’t even have the courtesy to reply.
Still, I shouldn’t be surprised. I know what they said about him. You know––in
the end.”

 
“You mean
the investigation?”

 
“I know he
got into trouble.” The second corkboard rested on a table behind them. She spoke
straight to her son, a picture of him grinning with a rugby ball. “You weren’t
a bad boy, Georgie. No worse than anyone else.” She turned back to Charlie: “I
didn’t raise a thief, Inspector. He just lost his way.”

 
A mother’s
perspective. “I understand.” He nodded to the board. “Lovely pictures.”
       

 
“These ones
are my favourites. Look.”

 
Charlie
scanned the board. His eye caught on one: Big George and a blonde, arms linked,
backs against Waterloo Bridge, Big Ben behind them.

 
The other
pictures faded away.

 
His skin
prickled.

 
“Who’s the
girl?”

 
Nancy
squinted. “His lady friend. They’d been courting for a few months before he
died.”

 
“Do you
remember her name?”

 
“Constance
something. What was Connie’s second name, Joseph?”

 
“Began with
W. Wilson?”

 
Nancy shook
her head. “No.”

 
“Watson?”

 
“Worthing.
Like the place. Constance Worthing. Pretty little thing, but I never took to
her. Bad egg, I thought. Didn’t I, dear––didn’t I always say she was no good?”

 
“You did say
that.”

 
Skin
prickles became goose bumps, up and down his back. He recognised the girl and
the name confirmed it.

 
The Ripper.

 
“She was a
gold-digger, Inspector. You can tell, can’t you, the ones who are only after
money. I told George tactfully, as best I could, said she had expensive tastes
but he wouldn’t hear it. I believe he told me to mind my own business. His own
mother. What can you do in a situation like that? You do your best, that’s all;
you hope they come to see the way things are before it’s too late.” She wiped
tears, took a pull on her G&T, a little unsteady on her feet. “If you ask
me, I’d say it was her who pushed him towards the funny business. George was
telling me how she had expensive tastes: fancy restaurants, new clothes,
jewellery, what have you. How could a lad like him afford that kind of
extravagance? You’ll know––a policeman’s salary only stretches so far, doesn’t
it?”

 
“Do you know
where they met?”

 
“Can’t say I
do. But it was after he started working in the West End.” She emptied the glass
and started looking for another one.

 
“Her and
George seemed to get on ever so well,” the old man said, shaking his head.

 
“Not here
today, though, is she? Never came to the funeral, neither. What do you make of
that?”

 
“That
certainly is strange, madam.”

 
He thought:
she was probably already dead.

 
“We had some
of her things at the house but she never came to collect them.”

 
“What
things?”

 
“It was
after the inquest. The bank wanted to sell George’s house––the lawyer said
anything left there was ours so we went and cleared it out, put everything in
boxes and took it home. I remember some of her things were there.”

 
“What?”

 
“Some
clothes.”

 
“Do you
still have them?”

 
“Do we,
Joseph?”

 
“I believe
so. We gave George’s things away but I didn’t feel we ought to get rid of hers,
in case she came back. I put it in the loft, I think. For safekeeping.”

 
“I don’t
suppose I could have a look?”

 
“Why ever
would you want to do that?”

 
Charlie
squeezed the old girl’s shoulder. “I know it was a long time ago, but it might
help answer some questions. About why George did what he did.”

 
She
brightened. “Well then you must. You must.”