Sick of Shadows - M. C. Beaton [27]
“I have Detective Superintendent Kerridge’s permission to interview you,” said Harry. “I am Captain Cathcart.”
“I’ve heard about you,” said Barker. “Private detective, ain’t you?”
“That is correct. Now what sort of character was this Reg Bolton?”
“Brutal. He terrified a lot of the prisoners.”
“Did he say anything to you, anything that might give us a hint that someone might be paying him?”
“Well, these hardened criminals always like to brag, Captain. The day afore he was leaving, he was grinning all over his face.
“ ‘One more day to go,’ I says. He says, ‘I ain’t coming back here no more,’ he says. ‘Good,’ says I. ‘Mending your ways?’ He grins and says to me, ‘I’m going to be a gent. I got connections. Got a good job waiting for me.’ ”
“And what did you gather from that?”
“Villains never change. I thought maybe one of the other villains had put him in touch with a gang.”
“Did he have a particular friend?”
The warder shook his head. “The others detested him, even the real hard ones. He was a nasty bit of work. I mean, I’m only guessing one of them offered him a job. But I never saw him talking much to anyone all the time he was here.”
“How long he in here for?”
“Two years.”
“And no one visited him during all that time?”
“No, sir. Not a one.”
Harry turned to the governor. “Would it be possible to find me his home address?”
“I’ll get my secretary to look up the records,” said the governor. “Thank you, Barker, that will be all.”
Harry left and headed for Bermondsey and to the address the governor had given him. He changed his mind when he saw the attention his Rolls was getting from bunches of sinister-looking men on street corners. “Turn around, Becket,” he ordered. “We’ll leave the car somewhere safe and take a hansom.”
They returned later, told the cabbie to wait, and stared up at a rat warren of a building.
They entered a narrow hallway, edging around broken prams and soggy boxes of detritus. There was no reply on the ground floor and so they mounted the rickety stairs. The smell was appalling. Harry knocked at a door on the first landing.
A slattern of a woman answered it.
“I wondered if there was anyone living here who remembers Reg Bolton?”
“Never ’eard o’ ’im.” The door began to close.
Harry put his foot in it. “Is there anyone who has been living here for some time?”
“Try old Phil at the top and get your bleedin’ foot out o’ my door.”
Holding his handkerchief to his nose, Harry, followed by Becket, went on up the stairs. He knocked on one door and there was no answer. He tried the other one. There came the sound of shuffling feet behind the door and then it opened.
An old man stood there, or perhaps, thought Harry with sudden compassion, he might not be that old but aged by poverty. Behind him was a bare room with an iron bedstead.
“Are you Phil?” asked Harry.
“Right, guv. I’d ask you inside but there ain’t nowheres to sit down.”
Phil’s face was marked by scabs and his clothes were ragged.
“Do you remember Reg Bolton?”
“That’s over two years ago. Flash fellow, he were. Wouldn’t spend the money to get his missus out of this rat hole. She said she was leaving him and he beat her to death. But he got loads o’ villains to testify he was somewhere else at the time. Shame, it was.”
“Did he know any grand people?”
“Naw, only villains.”
“How old are you?” asked Harry.
“Fifty-five, come Tuesday.”
“And how did you come to land up here?”
“The wife went off and left me. I adored my Elsie. Went to pieces. Lost me trade as a joiner. Shut up in the asylum, and when I got out I was done for. Just existed here ever since.”
Harry could not bear to leave him. A voice in his head was screaming at him that he was surrounded by hundreds of other cases of dismal poverty and to leave Phil alone. But he found himself saying, “Come with me. I think I can find work for you. Have you belongings you can pack?”
“Got nothing but what you see.”
“Come along.”
Phil meekly shuffled down the stairs after them. Becket opened his mouth to protest and then shut