Peter Turnbull: Deep Cover

‘Don’t worry.’ Ainsclough stepped over the threshold, followed by Brunnie.

Annie Dalkeith shut the door behind the officers and directed them to the living room of the house, which the officers found untidy and chaotic, but not at all unclean. Strangely, the curtains were half-closed, allowing just sufficient daylight into the room so as not to require the light to be switched on, but what light there was seemed to be admitted with a certain reluctance. Annie Dalkeith plucked a large plastic child’s toy off the settee and invited the officers to take a seat, while she sat in an armchair and shakily lit a cigarette. The children, still unseen in a nearby room, had stopped squabbling, as if hushed by the sudden presence of strangers in the house.

‘Mrs Dalkeith. .’ Ainsclough struggled, ‘we believe that your husband may be deceased.’

‘Michael. . oh. .’

‘Yes. The. . he has still to be identified. . so that will mean-’

‘So that’s what he meant?’ She sat back and drew heavily on the cigarette. ‘I did wonder.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, he left us in December, like I said. He did not say why. He and I hadn’t quarrelled. . nothing like that had happened. Ours wasn’t a perfect marriage but it was working. What happened?’

‘We believe he died of exposure in the recent cold snap.’

‘Oh. .’

‘On Hampstead Heath.’

‘On the Heath? Michael knew the Heath. He liked to walk on it. He was a good father but he would never take the children on to the Heath for some reason that he never would explain.’

‘Interesting. So tell us, why did you say “So that’s what he meant”?’

‘Just that he said that he had to leave us for our sakes. . he wouldn’t explain. He just said it was for “the best”. It wasn’t easy for him. He loved the children, loved his beer like any Irishman, but he loved his children more.’

‘He was Irish?’

‘Yes.’

‘With a name like Dalkeith? Sounds Scottish to me.’

‘Grandfather, maybe great grandfather was English, a Londoner, and seems he didn’t go a whole bunch on the notion of fighting the “People’s War” back in 1939 and went to live in Ireland — in the Republic — to avoid being conscripted. Went to Cork, married a local girl and started a family, the Dalkeiths. Michael is third or fourth generation and wanted to return to his family roots in London. . but he was Irish. . Irish parents, grew up in Ireland, thick Irish accent.’

‘I see.’

‘I’ve read about Irishmen who came over to volunteer for the London Irish Regiment, and others who joined the navy and the airforce, who pretended to be Ulstermen to join the forces, like Americans who pretended to be Canadians, but I didn’t know there was a two-way traffic,’ Brunnie commented.

‘Apparently, not a few Brits did the same thing in 1939, and Canadians went to live in the USA at the same time and for the same reason, but that’s history.’

‘Yes. .’ Ainsclough sat forward. ‘Was your husband employed?’

Annie Dalkeith shrugged, ‘Odd jobs. He had a bit of a record, but you’ll know that.’

‘Yes, just petty stuff and nothing recent, but you said he left “for the best”. Strange thing to say?’

‘Yes.’

‘He gave no reason?’

‘No. . but he’d been agitated for a while. . sleeping badly.’

‘So he was worried about something?’

‘Yes, but he never said what. Then, just out of the blue, he said he was leaving us. Oh yes, he said we’d be safe that way.’

‘Safe?’

‘That’s what he said. .’

At that moment two small mixed-race children, a boy and a girl, ran into the room, crying ‘Mummy, Mummy’. Annie Dalkeith smiled and gathered them into her arms. ‘He’s their stepfather,’ she explained apologetically, ‘but he loved them just the same.’ She stood and took the children back to the other room.

‘Can you accompany us to the London Hospital, please?’

‘Now?’

‘Yes. . we have to identify the body.’

‘The body. .’ Annie Dalkeith echoed the words. ‘The body. .’

‘Indelicate of me. .’ Ainsclough stammered. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘No. . no, it’s alright, it’s something I will have to get used to. I’ll get my coat. Let me go next door, I’ll ask Mrs James to watch my children.’

‘Could you let us have the address in Kilburn, the one your husband was using?’

‘One-two-three Claremont Road,’ she tapped the side of her head, ‘it’s lodged in here. . Kilburn where half of Ireland lives. Funny, when he came to London to look for his roots, he ended up in Little Ireland.’

When Annie Dalkeith had left the house to take her children to her neighbour’s, Ainsclough turned to Brunnie, ‘There’s more to this than misadventure. My waters tell me there’s a story here. I want to visit the address in Kilburn if it’s a positive identity. . which it will be.’

Brunnie nodded briskly. ‘Yes, it sounds. . well. . one copper to another, it sounds interesting.’

Annie Dalkeith declined the offer of a lift home and took the tube back to Palmers Green. She didn’t want to be above ground, the tube felt right, it felt correct, it felt appropriate to be rattling through a pitch black tunnel in a carriage where no one spoke — even good friends could not sustain a conversation on an underground train. The silence all around her and the pitch black outside the window seemed to provide the perfect atmosphere in which to contemplate widowhood at just thirty-one years of age.

She left the tube at Southgate and walked slowly home, not wanting to rush the journey, not wanting to collect her two children, not wanting to tell them that ‘Mikey’ hasn’t just gone for a holiday. He had gone, gone. . gone for good. . and not because he doesn’t want us. Identifying his body hadn’t been like it was in the films, it had been more sensitive. Seeing him as if sleeping. . at peace.

Lights were beginning to be switched on in the houses as she walked homeward.

Yes, he was at peace. It was a very pleasing last image of him. She would hold it in her mind’s eye for a long, long time.

A very long time.

Ainsclough halted the car outside the address on Claremont Road, Kilburn. It revealed itself to be a mid-terraced property in a line of neatly painted late-Victorian four-floored terraced housing, directly across from a cutting in which ran the overground railway line. The address was, not surprisingly to the officers, found to be a multi-occupancy house. Once housing the family for which it was designed, it now had six doorbells beside the front door, not named as such, but labelled Flat 1, Flat 2, etc. Ainsclough pressed them all in turn. ‘See what we wake up,’ he murmured sourly. When there did not seem to be any reaction from within the house, he banged loudly on the door and shouted, ‘Police. . open up!’ From inside the house there then came the sound of scurrying feet and then of a toilet being flushed. The officers grinned, and Ainsclough remarked, ‘That’s this week’s supply of dope gone down to the sewers.’

‘Aye. .’ Brunnie stopped smiling and said, ‘It also probably means some old lady is going to be robbed of her handbag tonight.’

‘No road round it.’

‘Nope. Have to give you that,’ Brunnie conceded. ‘No road round it.’

The door was eventually opened by a timid looking, pale, drawn youth. He had a thin face and unwashed hair. He held the door ajar and peered at Ainsclough and Brunnie through a three inch gap between the door and the frame. ‘Police?’ He had a thin, rasping voice.

‘Yes,’ Ainsclough replied, ‘but we are not interested in anything you have just flushed down the toilet.’

‘You’re not?’