Whispers Under Ground (Rivers of London 3) (22 page)

I went left. Lesley went right.

Beyond my door was a room with bay windows, net curtains and bare floorboards. There was a smell of dust and machine oil. I spotted something green on the floor and retrieved a lettuce leaf – still crisp. The back wall was plastered, grubby and devoid of windows. It was a locked-room mystery – the case of the missing vegetables. I was just about to go and see if Lesley had had more luck when I noticed that a black iron ring had been inset into a floorboard. A closer inspection revealed that it was the handle for a trap door and, with a surprisingly easy lift, it opened to reveal a six-metre drop onto the tracks below. Carefully I lay down on the floor and stuck my head through the hatchway.

I was disconcerted to see that the two half-houses were held up by a series of wooden beams. They were old, black with soot and spanned the width of the trackway, bolstered at the ends with diagonal beams that had been fitted into the brick walls of the cut. Attached with iron bolts to the nearest beam was a long flattened contraption made of iron, dark-coloured wood and brass. It took me a bit of squinting but I finally realised that it was a staircase in the manner of a folding fire escape neatly concertinaed and stowed to the underside of the house.

Within easy reach of the hatch was a brass and leather lever with a clutch handle like those you find on vintage cars and steam engines. I reached out to see if it would move.

‘What’s down there?’

I turned my head to find Lesley staring down at me.

‘A folding staircase I think,’ I said. ‘I’m just going to see if I can unlock it. It should drop straight down onto the tracks.’

I reached once more for the lever, but as I did so a Circle Line train clattered directly beneath me on its way to Bayswater Station. It took about thirty seconds to go past.

‘Are you sure that’s a good idea?’ asked Lesley.

‘I think,’ I said slowly, ‘it would be better if we call BTP first. What do you think?’

‘I think you may be right,’ said Lesley.

So I got to my feet, closed the hatch and called Sergeant Kumar.

‘You know you said that the whole point about secret access points is that they weren’t secret from you?’ I asked. ‘Care to make a bet on that?’

He asked me where and I told him.

‘I’m on my way,’ he said. ‘Don’t do anything stupid.’

‘What did he say?’ asked Lesley.

‘He said not to do anything stupid until he gets here,’ I said.

‘We’d better find something to keep you occupied then,’ she said and made me call the Murder Team to let them know what we had found and ask whether they’d traced the owner of the warehouse on Kensal Road yet.

Three minutes later Lesley got a phone call. ‘That’s right,’ she said and then looked at me. ‘Not so far,’ she said and then. ‘I’ll tell him – bye.’ She put her phone away.

‘That was Seawoll,’ she said. ‘Stephanopoulos is on her way down and you’re not to do anything stupid until she gets here.’

You burn down one central London tourist attraction, I thought, and they never let you forget it.

Stephanopoulos arrived ten minutes later with a couple of spare DCs in tow. I met her at the front door and showed her around. She stared gloomily down the hatch as another train rumbled underneath. Despite the noise the room stayed remarkably steady.

‘Is this our case, your case or BTP’s case?’ she asked.

I told her that it was probably related to the James Gallagher murder, likely to have ‘unusual’ elements and had definitely spilled into the bailiwick of the British Transport Police.

Stephanopoulos looked abstracted. She was thinking about her budget – I could tell from the way she bit her lip.

‘Let’s say this is your case until we know for sure. Although CTC are going to have a fit if they think person or persons unknown have had unrestricted access to the Underground,’ she said. ‘You know how sensitive they get.’

Having hived her budget problems onto the Folly, Stephanopoulos gave me a grin.

While we were waiting for Kumar we got the finished pool check on the warehouse. Apparently it was owned by a company called Beale Property Services who, as a matter of interest, had owned it under one company name or other since the nineteenth century.

‘Is that significant?’ asked Stephanopoulos.

‘I’d like to know who’s been using it,’ I said.

‘See if you can’t set up an interview at Beale Property Services, the more senior the better,’ said Stephanopoulos. ‘I’ll come with.’

Before I could do that, a BTP response vehicle screamed to a halt outside and Sergeant Kumar came running into the half a house with two uniformed BTP officers. I showed them the hatch and they looked down it.

‘Bloody hell,’ said Kumar.

16

South Wimbledon

B
eale Property Services were located on a dreary industrial estate off the A24 in Merton. From the outside, the HQ was an equally dreary two-storey brick-built utility office enlivened by cheap blue cladding and festooned with security cameras. Inside it was surprisingly pleasant, with pastel-coloured sofas, glass-walled offices rather than cubicles and at least two articulated lorries’ worth of Christmas decorations hanging from every available hook.

There was also a great absence of people, including behind the mahogany-topped reception desk. Now, there’s a time when an unlocked premises is a positive boon to a police officer as in –
I was just looking to ascertain the whereabouts of the proprietor when I stumbled across the Class A controlled substances which were in plain sight in the bottom drawer of a locked desk in an upstairs office, M’lord
. Leave the police alone in a room for five minutes and we start looking in drawers, locked or otherwise. It’s a terrible habit

Stephanopoulos’ fingers were actually beginning to twitch when a short balding white guy in a chunky-knit pullover and khaki chinos bustled down the corridor towards us.

‘I’m afraid the office is closed for Christmas,’ he said.

‘Isn’t that a bit premature?’ asked Stephanopoulos.

The man shrugged. ‘Nobody could make it in because of the snow this week,’ he said. ‘So I told everyone to come back after Christmas.’ He had the sort of default BBC accent that a posh person acquires through trying to avoid sounding too much like they went to public school.

‘But it’s not snowing anymore,’ I said.

‘I know,’ he said. ‘It’s a bugger, isn’t it? What can I do for you?’

‘We’re looking for Graham Beale,’ said Stephanopoulos. ‘CEO of Beale Property Services.’

The man grinned. ‘Then you are in luck,’ he said. ‘For that is I.’

We identified ourselves and told him we wanted to ask a few questions about one of his properties. He led us into what was obviously a staff coffee area and asked if we’d like a Baileys.

‘We were planning a bit of a pre-Christmas drink,’ he said and showed us a cupboard stuffed with bottles. Stephanopoulos enthusiastically agreed to a large one but took it upon herself to decline on my behalf.

‘He’s my designated driver,’ she said.

Beale poured two measures of Baileys into a pair of mugs and we sat down around a round table with a white laminated top. Stephanopoulos sipped her drink.

‘That brings back a lot of memories,’ she said.

‘So,’ said Beale. ‘What do you want to know?’

He laughed when Stephanopoulos explained about the warehouse on Kensal Road.

‘Oh god yes,’ he said. ‘That place. The Unbreakable Empire Pottery Company.’

I got out my notebook and pen. Notes, like running after suspects and finding your own parking space, being one of the things Detective Inspectors don’t expect to do themselves.

‘It is owned by your company?’ asked Stephanopoulos.

‘As you can probably gather,’ said Beale. ‘We are that rarity in this modern age, a family-owned business. And the Unbreakable Empire Pottery Company was once the jewel in the crown. This was all before the war, you understand.’

When there was still an Empire to sell pottery to, I thought.

As the name suggested, the great selling point of Unbreakable Empire Pottery was that it was well nigh unbreakable, or at least it was when compared to ordinary china and stoneware. Thus it could be carried up the Limpopo by bearers or strapped to the flank of an elephant and its owner could still be confident that at the end of a long and arduous journey he would still have a plate to eat off and, more importantly, a pot to piss in. Chamber pots being by far the most popular item.

‘A commercial empire founded on poo,’ said Beale – it was obviously his one big joke.

‘Where were they actually manufactured?’ I asked.

‘In London, in Notting Hill,’ said Beale. ‘Most people don’t realise that London has a rich industrial heritage. Notting Hill used to be known as the Potteries and Piggeries because that’s what it was famous for.’

It also had a reputation for some of the vilest living conditions in Victorian England and – given the competition was Manchester – that was pretty vile.

‘Everybody knows about the kiln on Pottery Lane,’ said Beale. ‘But they think that was all bricks.’ Me and Stephanopoulos exchanged looks. Since we were both completely ignorant of the kiln or the bricks neither of us thought anything of the sort – but we decided it was best to keep that to ourselves. Apparently after six days baking pigs and herding bricks, the inhabitants would kick back with a spot of cock-fighting, bull-baiting and ratting. It was the sort of place an adventurous gentleman might venture only if he didn’t mind being beaten, rolled and catching an exciting venereal disease. All of this was imparted by Beale with the relish of a man whose family hasn’t had to shovel shit for at least three generations. Thanks to Graham Beale’s great-great-grandfather, an illiterate navvy from Kilkenny who founded the company in 1865.

‘Where did he get the money from?’ asked Stephanopoulos.

‘Well spotted,’ said Beale, unaware that ‘Where did the money come from?’ is one of the three standard police questions, along with ‘Where was you on the night in question?’ and ‘Why don’t you just make it easy on yourself?’

‘Where does an impoverished Irishman dig up the readies, especially back then?’ he said. ‘But I can assure you the source of his start-up capital was entirely legal.’

The answer was that navvies were actually very well paid by the standards of the Victorian labouring classes. They had to be, given the need to attract men from all over to do such back-breaking work in such dangerous conditions. In the majority of cases this largesse was pissed against the wall or swindled out of their hands by everyone from corrupt gang-masters, greedy subcontractors or just the army of camp followers that trailed the men around the country.

But if a man was clever and clear-sighted he could form with his mates what was called a butty gang, effectively cutting out the gang master and his cut of the earnings. And if that butty gang had a reputation for being good at, say, tunnelling, then they might strike a good deal with the subcontractor who, more than anything else in the world, wanted to get his section done on time with as little fuss as possible. And, most importantly of all, if that man could persuade his mates to avoid the demon drink and bank their wages in a real bank then that man might finish twenty years with a tidy sum.

Such a man was Eugene Beale, also known as Ten-Ton Digger, who left Ireland out of the inexplicable desire to avoid starving to death and ended up building Vauxhall Station.

‘They were famous as tunnellers,’ said Beale. ‘They built sewers for Bazalgette and the Metropolitan Line for Pearson – all the while keeping their money safe.’ They had lodgings just off Pottery Lane and everyone assumed that’s where they picked up the recipe for Unbreakable Pottery.

‘A secret recipe?’ I asked hopefully.

‘At the time yes,’ said Beale. ‘It’s actually a form of double-fired stoneware very similar to Coade Stone which I believe is still made to this day. Wonderful stuff, very tough and, most importantly for London in those days, resistant to damage from coal smoke.’

‘Do you still know how to manufacture it?’ I asked. Stephanopoulos gave me a sharp look which I had to ignore.

‘Personally?’ asked Beale. ‘Not me. I’m strictly business administration but I understand that these days with electric kilns and whatnot it wouldn’t be that hard. Keeping the temperature constant with those old coke-burning kilns was the real trick.’

‘So where did they have their factory?’ I asked.

Beale hesitated and I realised that we’d tipped over from ‘friendly chat’ to ‘helping police with their inquiries’. I felt Stephanopoulos straighten a fraction in her chair.

‘On Pottery Lane of course,’ said Beale. ‘Care for a refill?’

Stephanopoulos smiled and held out her glass. It’s always better if the person you’re interviewing doesn’t know that you know that they know that they have to be more careful.

‘What, all the way up to the 1960s?’ I asked.

Beale hesitated again as if thinking carefully about the dates.

‘No,’ he said. ‘The work went up North to Staffordshire to one of the potteries there.’

‘Can you remember the name?’

‘Why on Earth do you want to know?’ asked Beale.

‘The Arts and Antiques squad want to know,’ I said. ‘Something to do with stolen figurines on the internet.’

Stephanopoulos gave an involuntary snort but at least managed to suppress a laugh.

‘Oh,’ said Beale. ‘I see. I’m sure I can dig the information out for them – do they need it right away?’

I paused just to see his reaction but he was much smoother than his favourite-uncle-in-a-chunky-jumper persona suggested, and just looked blandly helpful.

‘No,’ I said. ‘After the New Year will be fine.’

Beale took a fortifying gulp of Baileys and explained that unbreakable pottery was all very well but Eugene Beale and the surviving members of his butty gang drew upon their phenomenal tunnelling experience to become engineering subcontractors in their own right. As the work became mechanised and the expendable masses were replaced by massive machines, each new generation of Beales was educated to meet the challenges of the new age.