Dead of Winter

18

The market wasn’t hard to find. Though it had no address as such, the piece of waste ground on which it was located, fronting a derelict warehouse by the Thames, in the shadow of Southwark Cathedral, was visible from some distance off.

‘You’ll see it upriver to your right when you cross London Bridge,’ Billy had told Madden when he’d learned that his old mentor was planning to travel down from St John’s Wood on the Underground. ‘It’s only ten minutes’ walk from Monument.’

In the event, the light rain that had been falling when he set off from Aunt Maud’s house had turned to driving sleet by the time he emerged from the tube station, and crossing the bridge, at first he caught only a glimpse of his goal as he clutched at his hat, turning his face away from the stinging pellets of ice, harbingers of more bad weather that was moving in from the Atlantic, according to a forecast he had heard on the wireless that morning.

But even before he reached the further bank the squall passed and he was able to pause and take stock of the scene. Being near the docks, it was an area that had suffered heavily in the Blitz four years earlier, and while Madden could recall the dramatic newsreel footage of the destruction wrought by the bombing and of the damage left in its wake, it was the first time he had seen for himself the gutted buildings lining the river, their walls charred by the nightly rain of incendiary bombs, and the near-mystical sight of the great dome of St Paul’s, floating calm and serene above the devastation surrounding it, miraculously untouched.

It was not a part of London he knew well — he had never been posted to Southwark during his time as a policeman — but on the journey down he had found his thoughts straying to an episode from his past, before the Great War, when as a young detective he’d been assigned with a more senior colleague to investigate a double murder that had taken place in the borough. Two bodies had been found in a house not far from the river, one of them that of a postman who had gone missing. Like the second victim, a drayman’s wife, he’d been battered to death, and detectives later discovered he had called at her house the day before with a registered letter and, finding the door ajar, had stepped inside — no more than that — most likely announcing his presence as he did so, only to be struck on the head with a heavy lamp stand swung by the already dead woman’s enraged husband, who had just beaten his wife to death after a furious quarrel.

Although the case had been easily resolved — the husband had tried to drown himself in the Thames, but lacking the nerve, finally, had struggled ashore and lain sprawled on a stretch of bank exposed by the tidal ebb until he was spotted — Madden had never forgotten it. The casual manner of the postman’s death — the terrible power wielded by chance in human destiny — had struck a chord in him that was to sound over and over again in the years ahead when his own life had hung by a thread in the charnel house of the trenches while those of so many others around him had been blown away.

Only that morning he had put the same thought into words while relating to Helen what he had learned from Sinclair about Rosa’s tragic encounter in Paris with the man who would later kill her.

‘They might so easily have missed one another in the Underground. He wasn’t stalking her. He had no idea she was here. But he saw her by chance and her fate was decided in a moment.’

The market site, when he reached it, proved to be a stretch of muddy ground cobblestoned in places and crammed with stalls whose owners were still busy removing the protective strips of canvas and other makeshift coverings they had used to shield their goods from the rain. One of many that had sprung up all over the country in response to the shortages that were now a part of everyday life, it had the air of a temporary encampment hastily pitched and liable to vanish at any moment, an impression heightened by the chestnut vendors whose mobile braziers, glowing like campfires, had been set up at whim about the site.

‘Between you and me, we tend to turn a blind eye to them,’ Billy had told him that morning. ‘A lot of the goods on sale are black market, and then there’s the stuff that’s been pilfered from bomb sites. We come down hard on looters when we catch them, but once the stuff they’ve lifted has been put back in circulation, there’s not much we can do about it. And there are always people looking for household goods these days — stoves, pots and pans, cutlery — folks that might have been bombed out themselves and lost everything. So as I say, we tend to look the other way.’

Whatever else, there seemed to be no lack of customers, Madden noted wryly as, despairing of finding any easy way through the tightly packed stalls, he chose one of the roughly marked avenues between them and started to forge a path through the dense throng of shoppers, most of them women, and some of whom were still in their dressing gowns and slippers, suggesting they must live locally. The row he had picked was devoted to kitchenware and the trestle tables lining it on either side were heaped high with crockery, little of it matched, as well as an assortment of second-hand cooking utensils and mounds of cheap-looking cutlery. At the end of the line were some smaller tables where a variety of goods were on display: cigarettes, lipstick, pocket combs. One bore a stack of American magazines beside a bottle of men’s hair oil.

‘There are blokes really scraping the bottom of the barrel down there,’ Billy had told him. ‘And Alfie was one of them. I was told he had the odd bottle of scotch for sale and sometimes a few bars of decent soap. But mostly it was cigarettes and tinned food. It’s a mystery how he made a living at all.’

During his slow passage along the crowded avenue, Madden had been scanning the faces behind the banked tables. What he could see of them. With a cold wind still gusting up the river, most of the stallholders, both men and women, had wrapped themselves in heavy coats with scarves that were not just wound about their necks but in many cases pulled up to cover their mouths so that few of their features were visible. Having reached the end of the row, he paused, and as he did so his eye fell on some wooden planks that were lying stacked one on top of the other near to where he was. Stepping up on to the low platform they provided, he stood still, scanning the whole expanse of the market, letting his gaze move slowly up and down the rows of trestle tables, studying the faces of the stallholders. Towards the edge of the market, not far from the river, was a section where clothes were being sold, and as his glance wandered along the row, his eyes narrowed and he began to stare hard at one stall in particular, a long trestle table piled high with various articles of clothing, behind which a woman stood stamping her feet and slapping her gloved hands together. Clad in a coat and scarf like others, she also wore a knitted woollen cap pulled down low over her forehead, but even so there was something familiar about her stocky figure, and Madden smiled in recollection.

Two minutes later, having ploughed his slow way along another avenue packed with shoppers, he approached the stall where Nelly Stover was busy with a customer, a housewife by the look of her: she had a shopping bag not unlike the one Madden himself was toting, which she had parked on the table in front of her. He paused a short way off — now that he was closer he could make out Nelly’s craggy features more clearly, the jut of her lantern jaw — and waited patiently while the prospective purchaser chose a dress from a number hanging on a rail behind the stall. Holding it up to her body, she examined her reflection in a mirror which Nelly had produced from beneath the table, and, having nodded her approval, paid for the garment with a banknote and some change. As she moved away, Madden edged forward until he was standing in front of the stall. Nelly had bent down to return the mirror to its place under the table and he waited until she stood up before he addressed her:

‘Hello, Nelly,’ he said.

The slate-blue eyes beneath the woollen rim of the cap narrowed with suspicion. She gave him a long hard look. Then, without warning, a harsh cackle of laughter burst from her lips.

‘Well, strike me pink!’ she declared. ‘If it isn’t Officer Madden!’

‘I heard about you,’ she told him later. ‘Cos I asked, see. That sergeant at the station in Bethnal Green, what was his name — Callahan — he said you’d left the force. That you weren’t a copper no more. That was before the war. The last war. And I told him it was a pity. That we could do with a few more like you.’

‘I came back afterwards,’ Madden told her. ‘I rejoined the police. But not for long. I’m a farmer now.’

‘Garn …’ She was disbelieving.

‘It’s true. I got married and my wife and I bought a farm in Surrey. I’m hardly ever in London any more.’

By good fortune he’d arrived shortly before Nelly shut up shop for the day.

‘It’s too bad I have to close early. I lose a bit of business. But the kids come first.’

She left the market every day at half-past three, she told him, so as to collect her two grandchildren from the woman who looked after them during the morning and gave them their lunch.

‘They’ve been living with me for the past three years, them and their dad, when he’s here. Bloke called Denny Miller. He married my Margie. You never knew her. She was just a nipper when you was in Bethnal Green.’

‘I remember your son, Nelly.’

‘You mean Jack?’ She smiled. ‘Him that you kept out of stir?’

‘He wouldn’t have gone to prison. Not at his age.’

‘Maybe not, but they’d have sent him to a borstal for sure, and I’ve seen many a boy come out of there after a year or two and never the same again. Anyway, he turned into a good bloke, my Jack, thanks to you. Got himself a proper trade — he’s a fitter and turner. Works in an airplane factory up in Birmingham.’

She had glanced at Madden as she spoke: he was helping her clear her stall. They were loading the clothes into card-board boxes and the boxes on to a trolley — the kind used by railway porters to shift luggage.

‘What happened to Margie, Nelly?’

‘Copped it in the Blitz, that’s what.’ She bit her lip. ‘I heard their house had been hit, they were living just down the street from where we were, her and Denny, only he was often away, being a merchant seaman, so I ran down there and when I saw the house, what was left of it, I thought it was all up with them. Margie and the kids. Both floors had caved in. But when the firemen dug down they found them in the basement, Tom and little Sally. Covered in dust, they were, but not a scratch on them. Margie must have taken them down there when she heard the sirens and then gone upstairs to fetch something. Anyway she was in her bedroom when the bomb hit, so that was that. And then a month later I got the telegram …’

‘The telegram?’

‘About Bob … you remember him? My old man?’

Madden nodded. He had put his own bag on the trolley.

‘I was told he was lost at sea. I’m sorry, Nelly.’

She grunted something and was on the point of turning away when a thought seemed to strike her and she paused to peer at him; more keenly now.

‘Told was you? It wouldn’t have been by that copper who was down here the other day, asking questions about Alfie Meeks?’

‘Yes, I heard it from him.’ Madden nodded. ‘Billy Styles. We’re old friends.’

Nelly Stover absorbed the information in silence. Then she cocked an eye at him.

‘So you turning up here — it’s not just a coincidence then?’

‘Hardly.’ Madden met her glance and she guffawed.

‘Fancy that.’ She chuckled to herself. ‘Well, if you’ve come down here to ask me about Alfie, you’re wasting your time. I told that copper everything I knew, which wasn’t much. And you’ve left it a little late, what’s more. I’ve got to go off now. I can’t stay here.’

‘I know. But I thought I might come with you, Nelly.’ Madden smiled. ‘I’d like to meet your grandchildren.’

‘Oh, you would, would you?’ She produced the same harsh, cackling laugh. ‘Well, if you like … I’ve got no objection.’ But she shook her head as she turned away. ‘My grandkids … my eye!’

Still chuckling to herself, she grasped hold of one of the handles of the trolley, Madden the other, and together they set off, pushing the clumsy vehicle over the cobbles, skirting the market and the line of chestnut vendors, pursuing a course set by Nelly that took them away from the river and up the side of the ruined warehouse into a street lined with houses, several of which were only bomb sites now, yawning holes from which the debris had long since been removed. It was in front of one of these that Nelly paused, and at her direction they steered the trolley down a narrow alley into what must once have been a small back garden where a potting shed still stood undamaged.

‘I managed to get hold of the key for this,’ she told Madden after she had unlocked the door and they had begun to move her goods inside. ‘Bloke who owned the house sold it to me for a fiver. It’s been worth its weight in gold.’

Inside the dark, unfloored structure there was a suitcase lying on the ground, and Nelly gave it a kick.

‘I don’t have to tell you who that belonged to, I reckon,’ she remarked. In fact, if ‘I’m not mistaken you knew Alfie when he was a lad. Back in Bethnal Green. Him and his family.’

Madden nodded. ‘I was talking to Billy about him the other day.’

She digested his statement in a silence that lasted for several seconds.

‘And you’re still telling me you ain’t a copper no more?’

‘That’s right, Nelly.’

His words produced another cackle of laughter from her.

‘Well, if you say so …’

What light there was in the sky was already dying as she locked the door behind them and they set off through the deepening dusk. In the distance the faint wail of an air-raid siren sounded, but faded quickly into silence. Across the river a searchlight probed the darkening sky. Paying no heed to either, Nelly plodded on, talking as she walked, offering Madden a brief account of her life in the years that had passed since they had last seen one another.

‘We left Bethnal Green, Bob and I, back in ’20, after the war. He’d been at sea since he was sixteen and he was in one of the first ships that was torpedoed — bet you didn’t know that. When this lot started he told me not to worry: said it couldn’t happen to him twice. Anyway we came over here, south of the river, and we never went back. I told that friend of yours, that copper, I hadn’t seen Alfie since he was a lad. But I heard he’d got himself sent to a borstal. Poor little sod. Never had a chance in life, not with a father like that.’

‘When did you go into the clothes business, Nelly?’ Madden paced along beside her.

‘A year ago come Christmas. With Bob gone I had to do something, and then I thought of these markets that had started up all over. I get hold of old clothes and do ’em up. Sell ’em like new. Well, not new, but you know what I mean. That’s what I did when I was a lass. Sewed. I was a seamstress. Bet you didn’t know that neither.’ She chuckled. But then who would have guessed you’d turn into a farmer. Officer Madden …’

They had been walking through narrow streets in a darkness so dense Madden had been able to make out little more than the dim outlines of the terrace houses on either side. Here the full blackout was still in force and only the occasional faint glow at the edge of a blind or curtain signalled the presence of life inside. With little sense of where they were any longer — he knew only that the river lay to their left — he had allowed Nelly to guide them, and when she came to a halt outside a front door he checked his own stride.

‘Wait here. I’ll just be a sec.’

She knocked on the door, was quickly admitted and in less than a minute was back again with two small figures who tumbled out into the dark of the street holding on to her hands.

‘This one’s Tom.’ She indicated the taller of the two figures. ‘And this here’s Sally. Say good evening to Mr Madden,’ she commanded them and they mumbled some words. ‘Our house is just down the road. I’ll have to give these two a bite of supper before I put them to bed. Then you and I can sit down together and have a quiet cup of tea.’

Her smile glinted in the darkness.

‘And maybe then you’ll tell me the real reason you came down here.’

Nelly Stover’s kitchen shone like a new pin. Though there was nothing in it — nothing Madden could see — that wasn’t old and well used, every surface from the rough pine table they were sitting at to the enamelled sink and the glass-fronted cabinet that housed Nelly’s best china showed the effects of repeated washing or polishing. Even the linoleum-clad floor had a sheen to it.

‘We bought this house twenty years ago, Bob and I,’ Nelly had told him when they came in off the street. She’d gone ahead to the kitchen, which was at the back, to fix the blackout blinds and switch on the light before inviting him to follow. ‘Lucky we didn’t lose it in the Blitz. There was three others in this street that copped it.’

Stripped of her coat and scarf and the woollen cap, her face was revealed as more bony than Madden remembered it, the craggy features accentuated by the shedding of what little surplus flesh had once covered them, and seen in repose her thrusting jaw combined with a flinty gaze gave her the look of someone to be reckoned with. But when her tight-lipped mouth broke into a smile, which it did at the sight of the crayon drawing of a cat which her little granddaughter had been clutching, waiting to show to her, her face took on a quite different aspect.

‘I don’t know what I’m going to do when the war’s over,’ she had confessed to Madden while the children were out of the kitchen for a few moments washing their hands. ‘I’ve got used to taking care of these two: I won’t fancy giving them up. But I dare say Denny’ll get married again one of these days and then he’ll want a home of his own.’

Before long the smell of frying bacon filled the kitchen as Nelly bustled about preparing supper for her two charges, who on returning had been urged by their grandmother to take their seats at the table. Tommy, a wiry six-year-old with straw-coloured hair cut close to his scalp, placed himself opposite Madden, obliging his little sister, whose own fair hair hung in ringlets, to clamber on to a chair beside him, where she seemed uncomfortable, her chin barely clearing the rim of the table, until Madden, with a smile, scooped her up and placed her on his lap. ‘There — isn’t that better?’

‘Well, look at you,’ Nelly said, seeing the beaming smile on her granddaughter’s face as she brought their plates from the stove and then set about spreading margarine on the slices of bread she’d cut earlier.

When the two children had munched their way through their sandwiches, Madden reached for his shopping bag, which had been resting on the floor at his feet.

‘What’s this, then?’ Nelly demanded, her eyes sparkling, as four bars of chocolate appeared from its depths as if by magic. They were followed by a tin of biscuits and then three oranges which Madden produced from the bag one by one with the air of a conjuror drawing rabbits from a hat and laid on the table in front of them. ‘Bribery and corruption?’

She caught her granddaughter’s eye.

‘You’ve never seen an orange, have you?’

The little girl shook her head. She gazed in wonder at the fabled objects.

As her brother reached for one, Nelly checked him.

‘Not so fast.’ She seized the orange herself. ‘One’s enough for the two of you. The others’ll keep for later. But who’s going to peel it — that’s the question?’

She made a show of looking around the table.

‘I know — Mr Madden!’

She passed him the fruit, then sat back with folded arms to watch as he plucked at the rind.

‘Now you see what you’ve let yourself in for.’

Tommy, too, had been eyeing him from across the table.

‘Was you a copper once, mister?’ he asked, bolder now that he and his sister were getting used to the tall stranger’s presence.

‘Yes, I was, Tommy. But that was a long time ago. I’ve got a farm now. It’s not far from London.’ He caught Nelly’s eye. ‘You must bring them down,’ he said. When the weather gets warmer. Let them come and spend a week with us. Helen’s always saying the house seems empty without children.’

‘Well, we’ll have to see about that.’ Nelly was at pains not to show any undue pleasure at the invitation, but the flush in her cheeks betrayed her true feelings.

‘Have you got a horse, mister?’ Tommy had been paying close attention.

Madden nodded. ‘An old mare called Daisy. I use her for getting about the farm.’

‘Can I ride ‘er?’

‘You certainly can.’ He nudged the small figure on his lap. ‘What about you, Sally? Do you want a ride on Daisy?’

She shook her head, still too shy to speak.

‘We’ve got other animals. Rabbits and dogs and cats …’

‘What about piglets?’ She spoke up at last.

‘Oh, we’ve got lots of those.’

His task complete, Madden divided the orange in two and handed half to Tommy. Then he began to separate the other half into individual lobes, popping them one at a time into Sally’s open mouth. She chewed luxuriously, oblivious of the juice running down her chin. Nelly watched for a minute, shaking her head, then got up and went to the sink, returning with a damp cloth which she handed to Madden.

‘Here — you’re going to need this.’

She studied him while he mopped the little girl’s face and then took care of her hands, one finger at a time.

‘You’ve done this sort of thing before, Officer Madden.’

‘We’ve got two of our own, Nelly. They’re grown-up now. Rob’s in the navy. He’s serving on a destroyer. Lucy joined the Wrens this year.’

Madden bent his head to look at the small face below his.

‘There now. Is that better?’

Nelly guffawed. She clapped her hands.

‘Right, now. Off to bed, the two of you. I’ll be up in a minute to say goodnight and if you’re good there’ll be a piece of chocolate for each of you.’

Tommy scampered off obediently, but Sally lingered on, leaning back against Madden’s chest, head tilted to look up at him.

‘She wants you to carry her upstairs. That’s what her dad always does when he’s here.’

Madden rose at once and, hoisting his small giggling burden on to his shoulder in a fireman’s lift, he bore her up the narrow stairway to the children’s room at the top of the house, which he found papered with daffodils and decorated with a poster of a Spitfire speeding through a sky darkened by the smoke of exploding anti-aircraft shells, its guns blazing. Tommy had already slipped into his pyjamas — he was lying beneath the bedclothes — but it quickly became apparent that the process would take longer with his little sister, who was in no hurry to dispense with the services of the willing slave she’d acquired.

‘What? Not in bed yet, young lady?’

Nelly had dallied in the kitchen to clear the table before coming up. She stood in the doorway now with a fierce frown.

‘Someone doesn’t want their bit of chocolate.’

Sobered by the threat, Sally abandoned her delaying tactics and, helped by Madden, who was sitting beside her on the bed, struggled to push her hands through the narrow sleeves of her flannel pyjamas.

‘Come on,’ he coaxed her, as he’d once coaxed Lucy when she’d been little. ‘Let the dog see the rabbit.’

‘What rabbit?’ Tommy shot up in bed.

‘Now see what you’ve started.’

Laughing, Nelly shooed him out, and a few minutes later she joined him in the kitchen downstairs.

‘They’ll be looking for that rabbit all night.’

In her absence Madden had emptied his bag on to the table.

‘That’s a bit of home-made cheese, Nelly, and some butter, too. And I can vouch for this pork pie. Nobody makes a better one than May Burrows.’

Nelly Stover ran her hands over the greaseproof-paper parcels. She sighed.

‘I reckon it’s time we had that cup of tea.’

Silence fell between them as she busied herself with the kettle. At the table, Madden sat lost in thought. Nelly glanced at him over her shoulder.

‘I used to wonder what happened to you,’ she said. ‘After you left Bethnal Green. After I heard you’d quit the force. I’ve never forgotten what you did for my Jack. It might have seemed a small thing to you, bringing him home to me instead of taking him down to the station. But it’s small things like that can make a difference to a boy’s life.’

She poured boiling water into a teapot, emptied it, spooned tea-leaves into the heated interior and then refilled the pot.

‘Take Alfie Meeks now. He never had a chance, poor lad. Not with a father like that. Jonah used to hit him with his belt, and he made a point of using the buckle end. You could hear Alfie yelling up and down the street. But Vera couldn’t do nothing. She was too scared.’

‘Vera-?’

‘His step-mum. Jonah used to beat her too. I’d see her down the high street often enough with a black eye or a cut lip. Once he broke her arm. It all came back to me when I heard about Alfie and that business at Wapping. I couldn’t understand what he was doing there. A bloke who never amounted to nothing. Scared of his own shadow, he was. Mixing with the likes of Benny Costa. It didn’t make sense.’

She brought the teapot over to the table and sat down. Madden waited while she filled their cups.

‘The police thought the same,’ he said. ‘They’ve been wondering how Alfie came to be there. Who got him involved.’

He was watching her expression closely. But she seemed to take no special note of what he’d said.

‘And what about you, then?’ she asked. ‘What are you doing down here? You still haven’t said.’ She peered at him over the rim of her teacup. ‘Did the Old Bill ask you to come and talk to me? If so, you’re wasting your time. Like I said, I told that other copper everything I know. I hadn’t seen Alfie for years till he turned up at the market that day. I’d forgotten he even existed.’

Madden sipped his tea. He hesitated, choosing his words.

‘I came on my own account, Nelly. I wanted to talk to you. But not about Alfie. Not directly, anyway.’

‘Oh …?’ She sounded wary. ‘What then?’

‘I’ve got a question for you. It’s about something that happened thirty years ago, and I’m not even sure you know the answer. But if you do you’re going to have to decide …’

‘Decide what?’ She paused with her cup at her lips.

‘Whether or not to tell me.’

He met her gaze with his own steady glance.

‘Go on then,’ she said.

‘Who was it cracked Jonah Meeks’s skull and pushed him into that tank? That’s what I want to know. Who murdered Alfie’s father?’

‘Crikey!’

She stared at him.

‘You’re asking me that?’

Madden nodded.

‘Now? After all this time?’ She seemed bemused. ‘Why?’

‘There’s a killer loose in London. He’s murdered several people: not just Alfie and those others at Wapping. Two women besides. I think it may be the same man.’

‘Same bloke as murdered Jonah?’

‘So you know about that?’

‘I didn’t say so.’

Nelly scowled and Madden saw he’d caught her off balance. She sat staring at the cup which was clutched in her fingers. He spoke again:

‘Nelly, I think you know the answer.’ He paused. ‘Won’t you tell me?’

She kept her eyes from his, refusing to meet his gaze.

‘I seem to recall the law saying it was an accident,’ she muttered.

‘That was how it looked at the time. But I’ve begun to wonder. And remember …’

‘Remember what?’

‘How the people down there behaved afterwards, some of them. Ones I talked to. Oh, they didn’t say anything, but I saw it in their faces.’

‘Saw what?’

‘Satisfaction. Only I didn’t know then what it meant. I thought they were just pleased to have seen the last of Jonah. But now I’m not so sure. I think they knew something. Or they’d heard it … a story maybe …?’

Madden cocked his head to peer at her.

‘A story …?’ She laughed harshly. ‘Well, you hear plenty of those.’

‘Yes, but did you hear the one about Jonah?’

There was a long pause. Then at last she looked up.

‘I might have …’

Madden warmed his hands on his teacup. He saw from her face that she was still undecided and he waited patiently.

‘This feller … the one you say topped Jonah. What makes you think it’s the same bloke as killed Alfie?’

Her flinty gaze had hardened; she challenged him to reply.

‘We know Alfie was working for someone; that’s why he quit his stall at the market. He had money in his pocket when the police found his body and with no explanation of how it had got there. Even before he went down to Wapping that night he was in deep, and that could only have happened through someone he was familiar with. Someone he trusted, perhaps. Someone who was also a killer.’

‘Which didn’t leave too many possibilities. Is that what you’re saying?’ Her voice was toneless and Madden nodded.

‘There’s nothing in Alfie’s record to suggest he’d ever mixed with violent criminals; that he was acquainted with anyone like that. You said yourself he was a nobody. So it had to be someone from his past … his childhood even.’

‘Someone who only had to lift a finger for him to come running? Is that what you mean?’ She looked at him bleakly

‘I suppose so.’ Madden shrugged, and as he did so saw a shadow pass across her rugged features.

‘Someone like his brother?’

‘Alfie Meeks had a brother?’

Madden was thunderstruck.

‘Not really, no.’ Nelly grimaced. ‘Not a proper brother. He was Vera’s son by some other bloke. She had him before she married Jonah.’

‘So he was Alfie’s stepbrother?’

‘I suppose …’ She shrugged. ‘But he only lived with them, with Jonah and her, for a little while. Then Vera had to send him away. She parked him with a sister of hers who lived out Romford way.’

‘What was his name?’

‘Raymond. Ray, Vera called him.’

‘Ray …?’ Madden scowled. ‘I don’t recall ever hearing that name.’

‘No reason you should have.’ Nelly smiled bleakly. ‘Especially after Jonah copped it. Anyone who knew what had happened wasn’t going to breathe a word. Like you said, they was all that pleased to see the last of him.’

Still shaken by the revelation, Madden paused for a moment to order his thoughts.

‘You said Vera had to send him away. Why? Jonah must have known she had a child when he married her.’

‘Oh, he knew, all right. I told you: at first Ray lived with them. Alfie’s mum had died a year or so before — pneumonia it was — and Vera took care of them both. But it didn’t last. After a few months she had to send Ray away. Vera told me herself. It was when I had that fish-and-chip shop. She used to come in of an evening to get their supper. She said those two — Ray and Jonah — they couldn’t live under the same roof. Jonah had started out trying to treat him the way he treated Alfie; knocking him about when he felt like it; clipping him round the ear. But that soon stopped. Ray wasn’t the sort you could do that to. Once when Jonah hit him he grabbed a kitchen knife and went for him, Vera said. Jonah threatened to wring his neck, but that was just bluff, she reckoned. The fact was he was scared and so was she. She was afraid Ray would take a knife to Jonah one night when he was asleep. Cut his throat maybe. That’s what she told me.’

‘Good God!’ Madden was appalled. ‘How old was he then?’

‘Ray?’ Nelly screwed up her face as she searched her memory. ‘Thirteen, fourteen …? I couldn’t say for sure. A couple of years older than Alfie, anyway.’

‘You’re telling me Jonah Meeks was afraid of a fourteen-year-old boy?’ Madden shook his head in wonder.

‘All I’m telling you is what his mum told me. Mind you, if you’d met that boy you might think different. Sometimes he’d come over from Romford when Jonah was away; when he was off working on the coal barges, which was the closest thing he ever had to a job. I was there once or twice when Ray turned up — by then he was older, sixteen maybe — and I remember how he’d sit in Vera’s kitchen, not saying a word while she kept chattering on; smiling to himself as if there was some joke only he could see. Thinking his own thoughts. He had this way of staring at you, staring through you, like you weren’t there. It gave me the shivers.’

‘Would Alfie have been present?’

‘Oh, yes. He was there, looking at Ray with these big eyes. I reckon Ray was who he wanted to be himself. Someone who wasn’t afraid. Not of Jonah, not of anything.’

‘He hero-worshipped him? Is that what you thought?’

‘Maybe.’ Nelly shrugged. ‘But what he couldn’t see was that Ray didn’t care for him one bit. He didn’t care for anyone. Not even his own mum. She knew it, Vera did, poor soul. I reckon it broke her heart.’

Nelly shuddered involuntarily. Clasping her elbows, she hugged herself tight.

‘Still, if Ray had suddenly turned up now, after all these years, Alfie might have been pleased to see him?’

‘He might.’ Again she shrugged. ‘Like I said, he never understood the sort of bloke Ray was. Mind you, he’d have been surprised. We all thought he was dead.’

‘Why?’

‘Well, he went off to the war, didn’t he, like all the other lads?’ Nelly gestured with her hands. ‘That was the last I heard of him. Mind you, by then Vera had moved away — she went to live with her sister in Romford after Jonah copped it — so we didn’t know for sure what had happened to Ray. Only that he never came back.’

‘What about Alfie? What became of him?’

‘Vera took him with her, but he got into trouble quickly, ended up in a borstal, I heard. By then Bob and I had left Bethnal Green, we’d come south of the river, and I didn’t hear any more about them, except that Vera had caught the flu soon after the war and died. After what she’d been through, I reckon it was a blessing.’

In the silence that followed, Madden heard the faint sound of a clock striking in the distance. He counted seven chimes.

‘Tell me about Jonah,’ he said. ‘What happened that night? How did he die?’

Nelly ran a hand across her brow.

‘I don’t know nothing for sure. All we heard was a story. Bloke who told it to us — and this was a while afterwards, maybe a year later — was a pal of Bob’s, someone he’d known since they were boys. He’d heard Bob was back ashore for a spell and he dropped in to see him.’ She laughed shortly. ‘You probably remember him. Feller by the name of Charlie Mort.’

‘Charlie Mort, the burglar? I helped send him up.’

‘Not for long, you didn’t, because he was fresh out of stir when he came to see us. Him and Bob had been lads together and Bob always liked him, though he thought he was a fool for doing what he did and told him so often enough. Not that it made any difference. Anyway they went down the pub, the two of them, and when they came back Charlie had had a few and he told us about Jonah. What he’d heard. He’d got the story from a bloke he knew in stir, he said.’

Nelly paused. A crease had appeared in her forehead.

‘Now you’ll also know who I mean by Seamus Slattery?’

Madden nodded. ‘That Irish thug. He was responsible for most of the crime in the borough. He and his gang. They went in for thieving mostly, and extortion. But they had a tie to one of the big race-course mobs, I remember. They’d go down to Newmarket to lend a hand whenever there was a fight in prospect.’

‘That was them, and they reckoned Bethnal Green was their patch. Their manor. No one was allowed to take liberties.’ Nelly laughed. ‘Except they forgot to tell Jonah, or maybe he wasn’t listening. He’d worked for them early on; Seamus had him as his bodyguard for a while. But it didn’t last. Jonah never took orders from anyone and when he got drunk he was a holy terror. He’d been inside twice for assault, and that’s not counting all the other times he got into fights. Nor the time Seamus sent two of his boys round to a bookie who hadn’t paid his insurance and they found Jonah there and for some reason, or maybe no reason at all, he took against them and gave one of them a cracked skull and threw the other out of a window. Lucky it was only the second floor, but the bloke still ended up with a broken leg.’

‘I remember that …’ Madden nodded his head in recollection. ‘We heard about it. But there were no charges pressed.’

‘Well, you wouldn’t expect any, would you, not with Seamus Slattery. But you can imagine how it looked. There was him saying it was his manor and nobody was allowed to step out of line, and there was Jonah tossing his blokes out of windows. It couldn’t be allowed to go on.’

Nelly bit her lip.

‘Course, what would have happened normally was he would have sent some of his fellers round with orders to make a right mess of Jonah. But they’d already tried that, and each time he was given a seeing to he’d find the blokes who’d done it later on and give it back to them, only worse. So Seamus decided enough was enough and one night when they were all at the old Ship’s Bell, which was the pub they used, he laid a hundred quid in notes on the table and said it was for whoever got rid of Jonah for him.’

‘He wanted him killed?’

‘He never used the word, according to Charlie — though Charlie wasn’t there — but everyone understood what he meant. And it seems the news got out. I didn’t hear it, but some must have, because by Charlie’s account there were bookies taking bets on how long Jonah would last, while others were offering odds on him turning the tables on Seamus and topping him. But less than a week later, while people were still thinking about it, Jonah’s body turned up in that tank.’

Madden grunted. ‘I was there that morning. At the soap factory. We’d heard about him getting drunk the night before and staggering off home. The detectives were already thinking it was most likely an accident. What really happened?’

Nelly gave a sigh.

‘What happened was that Seamus and his lot were sitting in the back room of the Ship’s Bell around lunchtime drinking toasts or what have you to the news when Vera’s Ray shows up and says he’s come to claim his hundred quid. Well, of course they just laugh at him, but then he tells them he’s got proof, and before they know it he’s pulled out a set of false teeth with a nick in one of them from his pocket and dropped it on the table in front of Seamus. “There you are,” he says. “That’s your proof.”’

‘Jonah’s missing bridge?’ Madden shook his head. ‘We noticed it was gone. We thought it must have fallen out of his mouth and sunk to the bottom of the tank. And I remember now — one of the teeth was chipped.’

‘You’d run into him, had you?’ Nelly was curious.

‘Several times. Twice to break up disturbances in pubs.’ Madden laughed. ‘I used to look at him and hope to heaven he wouldn’t take it into his head to have a go at me. He was a big brute and he had hands like shovels. All of which makes me wonder …’

‘Wonder what?’

‘How that boy got the better of him. Did Charlie tell you that?’

Nelly nodded. She paused to refill their cups.

‘The bloke he’d got the story from had been in the Ship’s Bell that day and had heard what Ray had to say for himself. Seems he’d learned about the hundred quid and come over from Romford. Either he knew where Jonah would be drinking or he followed him to the pub, and he must have guessed what route he’d take home because he was waiting for him in the soap factory. Right by the tank, in fact. It was the only way through the yard; you had to walk past it.’

‘I remember it well. The path narrowed at that point. There was a wall running alongside it.’

‘There was and all.’ Nelly bared her teeth in a grin. ‘And guess who was up on top of it when Jonah came by. With a bleeding great rock in his hands.’

‘Ray dropped a rock on his head?’

‘So Charlie said. Knocked him out cold. Then he hopped off the wall, hit him a couple more times with it just to be sure, then rolled him into the tank, not forgetting to take his teeth out first.’ She shook her head. ‘And him all of sixteen years old.’

Madden sat silent. He was staring into his teacup.

‘But here’s the bit that really surprised Charlie; not me though.’ Nelly’s thin lips parted in another bitter smile. Seamus paid him! He gave Ray the money. Charlie said he couldn’t believe it. Here was this lad, this boy who was still wet behind the ears, trying to get a hundred quid out of Seamus Slattery! Even if he’d done what he said he’d done there was no reason Seamus shouldn’t have just given him a kick up the backside and told him to bugger off. But instead he paid him like he’d promised.’

‘And why weren’t you surprised?’ Madden was still gazing into his teacup.

‘Because I knew him, that Ray, and Charlie didn’t. I’d looked into his eyes the same way Seamus Slattery must have done. I’d seen his smile. I never exchanged a word with that Irish pillock, not in all the years we lived in Bethnal Green, Bob and me, but I can tell you what he was thinking. He knew Ray had done what he’d said he’d done, and just by looking at him he knew that if he didn’t pay him it was odds on he’d be next, and he didn’t want to spend the rest of his life looking over his shoulder.’

She put down her cup.

‘So now you know. But that still don’t explain why it’s you that’s come asking me all these questions instead of the law. Is it because we used to know each other? Did you tell them I owed you a favour because of what you did for Jack?’

Madden shook his head. ‘No, it’s not like that, Nelly, though I did think it might be easier if you and I talked alone. But I was already involved in this business. I told you this man had killed two women here in London. One of them worked for me on the farm. She was a Polish girl, a refugee.’

‘Why’d he kill her?’

‘At first we didn’t know. There seemed no explanation for it. But now it appears she saw him kill a man in Paris. That was years ago, just as war was breaking out, but then he ran into her here by chance a few weeks ago …’

‘And topped her? Just like that?’ Nelly shuddered.

‘Whoever did it — and whoever murdered Alfie and those others, because it was the same man — has made a living out of it. He’s an assassin, Nelly; killing’s his trade. The French police know all about him, though they never found out his real name, or even where he came from.’

‘And you reckon it’s Ray?’

‘I do now.’ Madden’s nod was final. ‘The man I’m talking about never worked in this country. He plied his trade in Europe and you’ve just told me Ray didn’t come home after the war. Other things seem to fit, too. The early contact with Alfie Meeks. Jonah’s murder. But mostly what you said about him.’

‘What I said?’

‘The feeling you had.’ Madden met her gaze. ‘What you sensed about him. What you saw in his eyes.’

She shook her head; her distress was plain.

‘I always knew he had a black heart. But killing people for a living …!’

Madden waited until she had collected herself.

‘I’m going to have to tell the police what you’ve told me, Nelly. I’ve no choice. I’m going to give them his name. He’s been living in Europe all these years under aliases. But it’s likely he’s using his own name now because he’s kept it clean. The police can start looking for a Raymond Meeks.’

‘That’ll keep ’em busy,’ Her bleak grin had returned. From now until Judgement Day, if you ask me. Seeing as how he never called himself that.’

‘What do you mean?’ Madden stared at her.

‘He wouldn’t have taken Jonah’s name, that boy, he wouldn’t have called himself Meeks, not for anything. Vera never married his dad, so it was her name he used always. Ash. That’s what he called himself. And that’s who you should be looking for.’

She shook a finger at Madden.

‘Raymond Ash.’