Peter Turnbull - Deep Cover

He found his wife in the front room. She was sitting upright on the settee, quite still but not in any form of resting position. Her eyes were wide open yet she seemed to be registering nothing at all. Vicary groaned. She had been doing so well, so very, very well. They both had. The gin bottle lay on the floor at her feet. Empty. He took his wife and gently pulled her off the settee and laid her on the floor in the recovery position, lest she vomit in her condition, or later, when she had fallen asleep. He took off his coat and phoned his wife’s place of work, explaining that she had been taken ill and because of this she would not be at work tomorrow, and probably not the day after either. He placed a frozen pizza in the microwave and ate it quietly with a marked lack of enthusiasm. After he had eaten he searched their house. One bottle would mean, two, or three, or four. . and they would be somewhere she had not used before. Room by room, cupboard by cupboard he searched the house and found them: two bottles of Gilbey’s, as he had expected, in a place she had not used before. On this occasion he found them under the eaves in the attic conversion. Beneath the table by the wall was a small one-foot-square doorway used to access the wiring of the house. He opened up the door and one of the bottles fell into his hand; the other was to be seen lying on its side. Both were full and unopened. He emptied the contents into the sink.

Then, like Joseph Halkier, he went out to walk the streets, but unlike Joseph Halkier, he could not, would not, dared not, seek comfort and refuge in a pub.

Josie Pinder blinked and drew on the cigarette. ‘Sorry,’ she mumbled, pulling the Bakelite ashtray across the yellow Formica surface of the kitchen table. ‘This is a bit early for me.’ She pulled the towelling robe around her.

‘You’ll be able to get back to bed in a while.’ DC Brunnie spoke softly but firmly. ‘Tell us about the girl in Irish Mickey’s room, then you can snuggle up to your mate for a bit more sleep.’

‘No, not so lucky, sunshine, I’ve got to go and see the Gestapo this morning.’ She glanced at the inexpensive battery operated travel clock which sat on the narrow window sill. ‘In fact, it’s probably a good thing that you did bang on the door.’

‘The Gestapo?’

‘The dole office — if I miss an appointment, they stop my benefit. And they enjoy doing it. They’re the bottom of the pile, you see, so they need someone beneath them; that’s what Sonya says, you see.’

‘I see.’

‘So they’ll want to know what effort I have been making to find a job.’

‘Fair enough.’

‘Well, find me a job and I’ll do it, I say, but since I have never worked at all. . not one single job since I left local authority school with no qualifications. . I am not a good employment prospect.’

‘Never?’

‘Nope. . not ever.’ She drew heavily on the cigarette and exhaled the smoke through her nostrils. She was small, with short yellow hair. Brunnie thought she was barely over five feet tall and her pale complexion spoke of a poor diet. ‘Sonya’s the same, she’s never worked either, but we get by.’

‘Like the way Billy Kemp does? Cash in hand job at the Chinese eatery?’

‘Yeah. . but not proper work, we’re not paying National Insurance stamps and all that malarkey.’

‘So tell us about the girl.’

‘Not much to tell.’

‘Well that’s a damn sight more than we know right now. So tell.’

‘She moved in a few weeks ago. Irish Mickey brought her home and she lived in his room while he was at home in north London, Palmers Green, I think, with his family. Then he moved back here and shared the room with her. She was Welsh.’

‘Welsh,’ Brunnie repeated.

‘That’s a start.’ DC Ainsclough scribbled ‘Welsh’ on his notepad.

‘I had a little chat with her once. She was from the Cardiff area, she said. She had a Welsh accent. Very musical the old Welsh accent, and she used Welsh terms like “tidy” for “nice” or “good”. Once Billy came home and said he’d got extra hours at the Chinese restaurant and he’d be lifting more money that week, and she said, “Oh, there’s tidy for you”, and she also said “by here” instead of “just here” or “in there”, like “Is this your food cupboard by here?”’

‘OK. . Welsh.’

‘She was a runaway.’

‘From home?’

‘From a children’s home. Irish Mickey found her in King’s Cross; she was trying to sell herself on the street. He recognized what she was and he wanted to stop her becoming a brass, so he brought her back here.’

‘You mean he rescued her?’ Ainsclough could not help a note of surprise enter his voice.

‘Yeah, reckon you could say that. That was like Irish Mickey, he had a good old heart; not like him to get caught up with Pilcher.’

‘Did you see or hear anything the night she was murdered?’

Josie Pinder tapped the side of her nose. ‘I don’t mind telling you about her but I don’t want to end up like her.’

‘If you’re withholding information. .’

‘Hey, I’d rather withhold information and live, rather than give information and not live. This isn’t much. I am not much, but it’s better than being inside a block of concrete.’

‘Pilcher puts people inside concrete?’

‘So they say, and he was round here yesterday evening after we got back from the police station. We all got well warned not to go talking to the Old Bill or we’d be on the street. . or worse. He had a couple of soldiers with him.’

‘Soldiers?’

‘Heavies, ex-soldiers, fit and good at taking orders, all part of his firm. I’m listening to him, so’s Sonya and Billy Kemp. He’s off like a rabbit out of the old trap.’

‘Left?’ Brunnie reported.

‘Gone,’ Ainsclough added, ‘left his tenancy?’

‘Naw. . he left early to avoid talking to the Old Bill in case they came — and look who it ain’t. We should have gone with him I reckon, but try getting Sonya out of her pit. Billy will be sitting all day in the public library, just to keep warm. . sensible boy.’

‘You’re frightened of Pilcher?’ Brunnie remarked.

‘Oh, it shows does it?’ She flicked ash into the ashtray. ‘You hear things. He’s a nasty piece of work and you don’t mess with him, even if half of what is said is true. I mean, he owns property, buys up houses and does them up but. .’ she worked the cigarette butt into the ashtray. ‘Well, rumours is rumours, and all that concrete that goes into foundations can hide a chopped-up body easy-peasy, or a whole one. All those professional tenants in those done-up houses with their cellars — there’s lumps of concrete you don’t want to take an old pneumatic drill to. . so they say. I usually deal with J.J.’

‘J.J.?’

‘J.J. Dunwoodie, he looks after the office round the corner.’

‘Ah, yes, I’ve met J.J.’

‘He seems to like working for Pilcher for some reason, but Billy Kemp might know something that I don’t. He was frightened this morning, said J.J. had shot his mouth off about something and we’d better not do the same.’

Ainsclough and Brunnie glanced at each other, and Brunnie asked, ‘When did he say that?’

‘This morning, dark and early. I needed to get up and he was making himself some tea and was dressed to go out. . it was like he’d seen an old ghost.’

Ainsclough turned to Brunnie and said, ‘We’d better take a swift hike round there.’

‘Yes. We came to find out about the Welsh girl though.’ Brunnie turned to Josie Pinder, who was grappling another cigarette from the packet. ‘What was her name?’

‘Gaynor.’ Josie Pinder lit the cigarette with a blue disposable lighter.