The Art of Murder

Chapter 23

The rain had stopped by the time they left the Forensics Lab. Pendragon tossed the keys to Turner. 'You drive.'

They pulled out into the heavy traffic and almost immediately ground to a halt again.

'It's hard to imagine how anyone could actually have performed those murders,' Turner said, glancing over at his boss. 'I mean, to have a steamroller and nobody see you using it. And Berrick, you'd need some sort of electronic press to do that to his head, wouldn't you, guv?'

'Yes, I think you're right, Turner. I've been wondering the same thing and I've just thought of someone who might be able to give me some answers.' Turner dropped Pendragon outside the Blind Beggar on Whitechapel Road. The rain was coming down harder now and the DCI made a dash for it between two market stalls selling knock-off saris and pirated Bollywood DVDs. Inside, the pub reminded him of a cave. There was subdued light from cheap plastic chandeliers fitted with green bulbs, dark wood panelling around the bar, heavily patterned wallpaper, and a carpet that had so much beer rubbed into it, it was impossible to tell what colour it might once have been. The place stank of alcohol and detergent.

The pub had just opened and he was one of only three customers. The other two sat at separate tables, each nursing a beer and staring silently towards the windows on to Whitechapel Road. Pendragon ordered a pint of bitter and sat in the corner furthest from the other patrons and well out of earshot. These days, the Blind Beggar was something of a tourist attraction. It had once been a favourite of the notorious Kray twins, who had run the most powerful crime cartel in the district back in the sixties and seventies. It was in this pub in 1966 that Ronnie Kray shot dead George Cornell, an associate of a rival gang, the Richardsons.

Pendragon saw Sammy Samson pass the window and enter the pub. He gave him a discreet wave. Sammy smiled and strode over to the table, extending one hand as Pendragon stood up. He was wearing an ancient double-breasted suit with stains down the front, the shoulders and elbows shiny with wear. His shirt was off-white with a ragged blue tie keeping the collar almost closed. He had shaved, but badly, leaving lines of half-shorn stubble here and there and a trail of bloodied nicks.

'Pendragon, old boy,' Sammy said. 'It's been a while.' His voice was brandy-cracked and ravaged by tobacco and God knows what else, but Sammy still spoke the Queen's English like the old Etonian he was. Pendragon indicated he should sit and called Sammy's order to the barman before turning back to look at the man in front of him.

The Hon. Sammy Samson was the stuff of legend and Pendragon knew he should only take notice of a fraction of what was said about the man. What had passed through the DCI's filter was that Sammy was a genuine aristocrat, the son of an earl who had lost the favour of his family decades earlier and been cut off without a penny. Back in the late sixties he had fallen into the drug culture, survived a spell managing a couple of bands, and then become a full-blown junkie. His father had expelled him from the family and none of his siblings would talk to him.

By that time, he was already enamoured with what had to him become a charming alternate reality: the East End and the ordinary lives of ordinary people. Even in his early twenties, he had felt more at home enjoying a pint of brown ale and a knees-up at the local boozer than back on the playing fields of Eton or at Royal Ascot. Rejection by his own family had strengthened these feelings, and with surprising ease he had become part of the Stepney scene. Later, he had fallen in with the gang lords, worked as an accountant for the Krays, spent five years in jail, and then simply turned to a life of wandering around the East End, day after day, week after week, decade upon decade.

As a boy, Pendragon had seen Sammy Samson around Stepney. Even then, the lapsed aristocrat had been a local celebrity. So it was perhaps not surprising that when Jack took the job at Brick Lane, Sammy had been one of the first people he had asked after. When he discovered the man was very much alive and an active police snout, he had reached out to him. Sammy always kept an ear to the ground, and what he did not know about the goings-on in the East End crime world was not worth pursuing. Now in his mid-sixties, Sammy looked seventy-five. He was pretty much broken beyond repair, surviving from day to day. Pendragon liked him a lot.

'So what may I do for you, Pendragon?' Sammy asked, knocking back his drink in one. 'Might there be value in my enlightened observations on recent unhappy goings-on?'

'I think you've hit the nail on the head, Sammy. You always were an astute man.'

'Ah, my dear boy, flattery will get you everywhere.'

Pendragon signalled to the barman, and a few moments later another brandy appeared at Sammy Samson's elbow. 'Very gracious of you,' the old man said and raised the glass, downing only half its contents this time.

Pendragon looked around. They could not be overheard here. 'To be specific,' he said as Sammy eyed the rest of the brandy, 'we're trying to piece together a modus operandi for our local killer. I can't go into details, but the murders don't take place where we find the bodies. In fact, I'm looking for a large work space the killer is using. I don't think it's their home. I'm pursuing the idea our man is renting somewhere anonymous but near here.'

Sammy considered Pendragon with intelligent eyes. 'An office? Something of that nature?'

'No. Larger. More industrial.'

'A derelict factory or school?'

'Maybe, or a warehouse perhaps.'

'I see,' Sammy said slowly, leaning back in his seat and crossing his legs. Pendragon noted the holes in the soles of his decades-old handmade brogues. 'I will have to give that some thought,' he said. 'Ask around. What… er… what sort of remuneration are we thinking of, Pendragon? Only, you understand, I'll have expenses to consider.'

He gave the older man a brief smile. 'Don't worry, Sammy. I've always looked after you, haven't I?'

'Indeed you have, dear boy. Indeed you have. While we're on the subject of Mammon, I may already have some snippets of information concerning the case under investigation.'

'Snippets of information?' Pendragon gave him a crooked smile.

Sammy nodded and a glint came to his eyes. 'I should remind you I was once given the epithet "the eyes and ears of Stepney".'

Pendragon laughed and shook his head. 'Honestly, Sammy, you're worth every penny for the sheer entertainment value.'

Sammy's ravaged face broke into an indignant expression. 'Well, I suppose I must consider that a compliment.'

'What have you heard?'

'That depends. How entertaining have I been?'

Pendragon sighed, withdrew his wallet from his inside pocket and pulled out a?20 note. Sammy took it and pushed his glass forward an inch. Pendragon nudged it back. 'Let's hear it first, Sammy.'

'Well, how should I put this? Your first victim, the gallery owner… he was very friendly with the descendants of my former associates.'

Pendragon fixed the old man with his eyes. 'Kingsley Berrick had gangland connections?'

Sammy Samson nodded.

'What sort of connections?'

'That's the limit of my current knowledge on the subject, Chief Inspector.'

'Come on, Sammy.'

'God's honest… as my local friends would put it.' And he held his hands up, palms out.

Pendragon gave him a sceptical look. 'So you're telling me you've just heard it through the grapevine? No details?'

'You now know everything I do.'