Against the Light Page 24

  The sun was shining when they arrived at the Tooley house in Prosser Street, and every curtain was drawn – though not, apparently, against the sun. They were taken aback to find also that the door knocker was wrapped in black cloth to muffle its sounds. This was disconcerting, but after a moment, Williams gave the signal to proceed. He didn’t much like entering what appeared to be a house of mourning, but even that couldn’t be allowed to deter them. He thought it was quite possible, anyway, that in this case it might be nothing more than a specially set up façade.

  Tooley himself greeted them, however, his tough bulk tightly encased in a black suit, and with a long face informed them that his mother, God rest her soul, had died the day before and they were making arrangements for her coffin to be sent back to Ireland for burial there among her kin. He scowled at Inskip, doubtless remembering their last meeting, but he made only token objections to them entering when he saw how many more were waiting outside.

  Although all the curtains were closed, the clocks had been stopped and the mirrors turned to the wall, the house was by no means hushed and silent. Neighbours and friends seemed to be coming and going all the time to pay their last respects, and family mourners had gathered there for Roisin Tooley’s wake. Williams had them all shunted into the front parlour where the coffin lay and a constable was stationed at the front door while the rest of the house was searched.

  The inspector’s face lengthened as no sign whatever of Daniel O’Rourke manifested itself in their search through rooms showing that most of the occupants weren’t particular about sharing their living space. There were more beds jammed into small spaces than anyone would have thought possible and the kitchen seemed to have been a communal affair. But at least they encountered none of the sort of violence they had been led to expect, which was just as well, unarmed as they were. Room after room, as well as the cellar and the two attics, was thoroughly searched, but without success. Gloom was beginning to descend on the searchers as they finished at last and stood outside the room of the old woman, Roisin Tooley, realizing they were facing another failure and wondering what next to do. Williams hesitated, then belatedly remembering that this room’s late occupant now lay downstairs in her coffin, finally gave the nod for them to enter.

  And that was where they found him. As the bedroom door swung open, they saw a foot protruding from under the bed that Roisin no longer had any need of.

  It was an ignominious capture. He was dragged out, half dressed, and emerged coughing, sneezing and covered in fluff. He and the man who had yanked him out faced each other. ‘And not before time,’ Inskip said, grasping his arm. Gaines’ hand reached out and locked on Inskip’s other arm like steel, but the sergeant made no move to hit O’Rourke. He just threw him a look of contempt, released him then stood back. Gaines relaxed his grip and gave him a satisfied nod.

  After O’Rourke had been taken away, they went to find Tooley. Technically, he hadn’t committed any crime by harbouring O’Rourke, but Gaines for one needed to speak to him. He was in the front parlour with those of the mourners still left.

  Watch over the body was being kept in the darkened room, where the coffin lay on a table draped with a cloth, lighted candles at either end, a statue of the Blessed Virgin at its head, but there were no gloomy faces. The wake was a cheerful affair and the relations and most of the mourners who had been ushered into the room while the search went on were allowed out and had dispersed themselves about the house, showing no disposition to leave. They had gathered there to pay their last respects to old Mrs Tooley, to talk and reminisce about the old lady and what a character she’d been, but they weren’t about to be deprived of this new source of gossip. There was a lot of laughter and joking, possibly not unconnected with the fact that every new arrival had a glass immediately thrust into their hands. Tooley had remained in the parlour and Gaines and Williams went in to speak to him.

  Of course he hadn’t known O’Rourke was hiding from the police, he protested indignantly. Wasn’t he just a friend who was ill and needed somewhere to get better? No, why should he ever have heard of a man by the name of Dudley Nichol? No, he knew nothing …

  ‘All right, never mind that just now. But we’re going to need a statement from you later,’ Gaines said, and looked to Williams to see whether he had any questions. He seemed to have his mind on something else.

  Williams wasn’t a Catholic, so he couldn’t have said for certain, but wasn’t the coffin usually left open while the mourners came in and paid their last respects? He couldn’t answer his own question, but what he did know was that the last time he and his team had been here looking for O’Rourke, Mrs Tooley hadn’t yet taken to her bed. A very little lady, he recalled, not reaching up to his shoulder, not weighing much more than a wet dishcloth. And very angry she’d been at having her house’s privacy violated. His ears still burned from her colourful Irish invective. Size didn’t enter into it when it came to outrage.

  ‘That’s a very big coffin for a very small lady, Mr Tooley,’ he remarked.

  ‘Sure, but isn’t she going back to be laid to rest in the oul’ country among her kin, and wouldn’t she be wanting all her precious treasures with her?’ Paddy replied, at his most Irish.

  ‘Like the Egyptians,’ Williams said.

  ‘What? What’s that, then?’

  ‘Grave goods, to see them through the afterlife,’ Williams explained, aware that offence could be taken, but not inclined to pander to the susceptibilities of somebody like Tooley, even in a situation like this. ‘We’ll just take a look at these treasures, eh?’

  Tooley paled visibly. ‘You can’t do that,’ he said, aghast. ‘That’s a dead woman in there!’

  One of the women crossed herself. Everyone else went silent.

  ‘I don’t mean any disrespect, ma’am,’ Williams said to the lady. ‘But we’ve just apprehended a wanted man and—’

  ‘And I suppose it’s another you’re hoping to find in the coffin?’ She laughed scornfully.

  ‘All the same.’ He walked towards the table and the coffin with its closed lid, and looked around for the means to open it.

  ‘Jayz,’ said Tooley to no one in particular. ‘The fat’s in the fire now.’

  Eighteen

  Roisin Tooley had been laid to rest in her coffin with the accompaniment of half a dozen rifles, an ancient flint-lock pistol, a Browning revolver, two sophisticated long-range Mausers and sundry other weapons of assorted sizes, ages and capabilities, with as many rounds of ammunition as could be packed into the space that was left. An array of lethal weaponry, a veritable cache that left Williams jubilant, in spite of the caustic comments he made about most of them. They’d forgotten the bows and arrows, he said.

  Removing them was a delicate business, requiring some tact. The mourners who still remained in the house had to be ushered out of the way while it was done, and while O’Rourke and Tooley were taken away, followed by Gaines and Inskip.

  O’Rourke looked dreadful, gaunt and hollow-eyed, still weak from his fever, but he was a normally fit and healthy man, Gaines judged, tall and broad-shouldered, and was quite up to facing any amount of questioning. He did the interviewing himself. Inskip, to his chagrin, was being kept away for now, but Gaines decided he had enough to deal with, without the prospect of having to keep an eye on his sergeant if things got sticky. When he had pulled O’Rourke from under the bed, he’d done well and kept the promise he’d made not to let his loathing of O’Rourke get in the way of his duty, but Gaines didn’t want to push his luck too far.

  After the sortie at Prosser Street, the weather had turned. It was a dreadful day, the weather mirroring the night of the murder, and rain beat incessantly against the windows, adding to the sense of gloom as Gaines faced O’Rourke across the table in an interviewing room, with DC Watts, elated at being allowed the honour of taking notes, sitting beside him.

  He very soon found out that O’Rourke was not so debilitated that he wasn’t also quite capable of deftly deflec
ting any questions addressed to him. He denied knowledge of anyone called Dudley Nichol, but admitted to meeting Lennie Croxton. Yes, he had called at Mrs Maclusky’s house with messages from her relatives in Ireland and been introduced to him. They had gone out for a drink together, parted about eleven o’clock, and that was the first and last he’d ever seen or heard of him.

  ‘Did you not hear he was dead?’

  He hadn’t heard that. ‘What was it that took him? He didn’t weigh no more than a ha’p’orth of humbugs, but he looked chipper enough to me. Very happy, too, when we parted. He could down a pint with the best.’

  Gaines didn’t bother to answer the question. ‘Where did you go for your drink? The Nag?’

  ‘Nah. Well, it might’ve been, but to tell truth, I don’t rightly remember. I’d had a few meself.’

  Daniel O’Rourke didn’t actually look as though he ever lost control so far as to allow himself to get drunk. He had watchful, deep-set eyes and an expression that was hard to fathom. Since it had been a fair cop regarding the armaments, both he and Tooley knew they were in for it. The illegal possession of firearms and the purposes for which they were intended was a serious matter indeed, regardless of other crimes the pair of them had committed to get money for the guns they’d acquired … thieving, extortion and God knew what else. They still had to face Williams after Gaines had finished with them, but as far as the murder of the man he had known as Lennie Croxton went, O’Rourke was keeping his mouth shut. He was sticking to the story that he had met Croxton for the first time that night, that he’d never heard of him being murdered.

  Tooley had not been so reticent. When Inskip questioned him, he admitted to knowing Croxton, who’d only gone to lodge with Orla Maclusky because there had been no room at Prosser Street at the time he had arrived in London from Ireland. He’d been living over there for a couple of years, but Tooley hadn’t the least idea what he’d been doing there. He’d heard he’d been murdered and he’d been sorry to hear it. Yes, Lennie had been hot on the subject of Irish independence, and why not? It was true he was always full of big talk about raising money to buy guns, but no, Tooley didn’t know anything about the kidnapping of any baby, he swore, looking shifty.

  ‘All right, O’Rourke, where were you headed for when you hailed that cab?’ Gaines asked now.

  ‘Cab? What cab?’

  ‘The one you got in with Lennie Croxton. The one where you knifed him.’

  O’Rourke stuck his hands in his pockets. ‘Can I have a cigarette? I talk better when I can smoke.’

  ‘No.’

  He sighed exaggeratedly. He was nervous, as well he might be in view of the serious charges he was facing, but he was not showing it. ‘I never went in no cab,’ he repeated. ‘I left him outside the boozer, as I said. It was tipping down, like now, I was soaked to the skin and I wanted to get home.’

  Gaines didn’t believe a word. He had never been more sure that O’Rourke had been the man in the cab with Nichol. He had used the knife on him, and he had laughed as he got out and left him there.

  He eyed him with disfavour and carried on with the questions, the rain beat against the windows and the clock ticked away the time, but they still weren’t really getting anywhere. Gaines was tenacious, but so was the man on the opposite side of the table. He terminated the interview for the time being and went to find Inskip.

  ‘Get Sheldyke in,’ he told him. He hoped the cabbie’s claim that he would recognize the killer again would hold up.

  An identification parade was hurriedly assembled, including Tooley as well as O’Rourke. Sheldyke arrived, cheerful and cocky, looking better than he had when they had last seen him, though he insisted it was more than a cold he’d had. It had been a right old dose of flu or something like it, and he still wasn’t feeling very clever. ‘I didn’t rightly oughter be out in this weather, but I know my duty,’ he said virtuously, wiping raindrops from his moustache. Perhaps it was he who had passed on his flu or whatever it had been to O’Rourke.

  Asked to pick out the man who had ridden in his cab with Nichol, Sheldyke took his time, but in the end he made a decision. ‘Seen that one before,’ he said, pointing to O’Rourke. Inskip let his face slip into a happy grin. ‘But he ain’t the one that was in me cab. That’s him we left standing there by the gas lamp.’

  Nobody said anything until at last Gaines found his voice. ‘There was someone else with them?’

  ‘I just said, didn’t I?’

  The parade was dismissed and they sat down with Sheldyke again.

  ‘You never told us there were three men when you stopped to pick up your fare, Mr Sheldyke.’

  ‘Why should I? Far as I knew, you was only interested in the poor sod what copped it and the one what did it.’

  ‘You’re sure they were together, the three men?’

  ‘Well, they was talking to each other, and they said goodnight when we pulled away so I should think so.’

  ‘Would you recognize the other man, the one who got in?’

  ‘I would. I’ve a good memory for faces. It pays in my line of business. Anyhow, I couldn’t hardly fail, could I? Seeing him plain as day under the gas lamp, and with a face like that?’

  Latimer.

  The man Sheldyke described could have been no one else but Edmund Latimer. He fitted the description like a glove. Big man, well dressed, with a posh accent. The cabbie had been certain his fare had spoken like a toff, and unless O’Rourke was a bloomin’ good actor – which he might well be, of course, given the performance he was putting on now – it certainly ruled him out. But above all, there was the only too recognizable birthmark, the port wine stain which Sheldyke swore he had seen very clearly.

  It was little use berating the cabbie for neglecting to mention earlier either that or the fact that there had been three men together when he had picked up his fares: the unprecedented happening had prevented the man from getting home to a hot toddy for his cold and a warm bed. He had clearly been feeling groggy, and in no position to think of every detail. In any case, it was highly unlikely that Sheldyke, unless he followed political gossip avidly, would have recognized his fare as Edmund Latimer, unlikely that he had ever seen him before, except maybe in a grainy newspaper photograph which would not have shown up his birthmark clearly.

  But – Latimer?

  There were links with Dudley Nichol, of course. Nichol had stayed under his roof for several weeks and it was not wholly inconceivable that some trouble might have arisen while he was there. But what the devil was he doing out at Bishopsgate, that time of night? And whatever had been between them, could it possibly have been enough to constitute a motivation for murder?

  Even supposing Latimer had somehow got wind of Nichol being involved in his niece Lucy’s kidnapping, it was scarcely enough for him to seek out and kill Nichol for it. And then to have shot himself, in remorse? Gaines didn’t think so, but could the truth of his suicide lie with something other than his political problems or the threat of blackmail over his affair with Mrs Fiore?

  ‘Are you absolutely sure he was the one who got into your cab with the man who was killed, Mr Sheldyke?’

  ‘We-ell.’ The cabbie was sounding less confident now. ‘I know he was one of them under the lamp, but whether he was the one as actually got into the cab – as to that, I wouldn’t swear on the ’oly Bible. It was raining cats and dogs, remember. But that’s what I thought.’

  He wouldn’t be moved from that. Gaines went back to O’Rourke and this time he decided to take Inskip with him.

  When faced with what the cabbie had said, O’Rourke eventually admitted that the three men had met and had a drink together. ‘I wasn’t told his name,’ he said. ‘Lennie only said he was his cousin’s husband. But I could see they was a bit edgy with one another. Turned out the two of them had had a row that morning. Some bust-up about the other bloke’s wife.’

  ‘Whose wife? Not Latimer’s?’ Inskip asked.

  ‘If that was his name,’ O’Rourke
answered cagily. ‘Well, all right then, this Latimer had told Lennie to leave his house – seems he’d been living with them lately.’

  ‘Latimer had told him to leave? Then why did he go to meet him again?’

  ‘Search me. Said he wanted to apologize, didn’t he? We had a few drinks together and he got a bit soppy over it, you know? Ready to burst into tears any minute. Said he’d thought there was something going on between Lennie and his wife, but he was sorry for thinking such a thing afterwards, so he’d come looking for him to shake his hand.’

  ‘How did he find Croxton? Latimer’s wife said he had left no address.’

  ‘I dunno. I think he’d just been looking around for him.’ O’Rourke looked vague.

  Alice Latimer had admitted to a slight fondness for her cousin, but the idea of anything more going on between them was patently absurd. But if O’Rourke was to be believed, that was not perhaps how Latimer had seen it. He was a middle-aged man with a much younger and attractive wife. And jealousy was a corrosive emotion Gaines had seen men hanged for. Humiliation that their wives or sweethearts had preferred someone else, rage that anyone had something which they regarded as belonging to them. Loss of control and power over what they regarded as their possession. Latimer was a man who was accustomed to both. But surely no one could seriously associate that sort of emotion with a level-headed, rational and shrewd politician such as he had been? And what about the double standards there? What had he to be jealous about, anyway, considering his ten-year relationship with Connie Fiore?

  It was far more probable that the row between the two men had nothing to do with that, especially given what they now suspected of Nichol and his involvement in the Irish troubles – and not forgetting the part he’d played in the kidnap. Obtaining money to buy guns for use in Ireland was what had ultimately been behind that, and Latimer had secretly been making heavy contributions to the fund. Supposing Nichol had threatened to make this public, and that was what the row had been about? And so Latimer had later gone to meet Nichol, armed with a knife? Forgetting the one thing which had so distinguished him from other men, his ‘trademark’, as it were, that made him so memorable? Drinking with Nichol and his crony and making up some cock and bull story about his wife and Nichol?