Brock ran across to the far side of the street and kept going through the crowd, barging his way down a side street and into Mayall Road. There he stopped, transfixed by the sight. Ahead of him the Windsor Castle was in flames. He could hear the crash of exploding spirit bottles, and felt the billow of scorching heat as the ground-floor windows blew out. He leaned back against the brick wall, catching his breath as he watched the silhouettes of dancing figures against the blaze.
‘The Brixton riots,’ Kathy said.‘I’d forgotten.’
‘You’d be too young to remember.’ Brock heaved himself to his feet and got them both another coffee from the pot he kept brewing.
‘And you didn’t find Joseph?’
‘No. I never heard of him again. The following days and weeks were chaotic. I filed a report but didn’t have a chance to follow up. The next time I saw Paul and Winnie at the markets I asked them if they knew what had happened to him, and they hadn’t heard from him either. They guessed he’d gone back home to Jamaica. I thought that seemed likely.’
‘And now you think we’ve found him.’
Brock nodded. ‘The second body, Bravo, six foot two, age nineteen and bow-legged. Never collected on the race that Celia’s Dream was winning for him at exactly the time that the Windsor Castle was burning to the ground.’
‘Did you suspect this from the very beginning?’
‘It was a possibility.’
‘But I don’t understand the secrecy.Why couldn’t I tell anyone about Celia’s Dream?’
‘It gets more complicated, Kathy. Until I know exactly where we stand, I don’t want any more information leaking out than I can help.’
She’d encountered this secretiveness in him often enough before. It was a deeply ingrained instinct, formed by years of stalking dangerous people while working in an institution of ambitious gossips. And there was always a good reason for it.
‘You think Spider Roach killed them,’ she said.
He raised an eyebrow. ‘Oh, I couldn’t say that. But he’s an obvious candidate. We should go and talk to Winnie Wellington again. She was his aunt, and she was the last person to see Joseph that we know of.’
As she drove them across Westminster Bridge, the sweep of the river sparkling in the crisp morning light, Kathy said, ‘Winnie spoke of two white men following him.’
‘Yes, although when Joseph first called me I assumed he was talking about being in trouble with some other Jamaicans,Yardies. You know about the Yardies?’
‘I’m learning. Last night Tom Reeves told me something about them-he’s been to Jamaica with Special Branch, did you know?’
‘Really? No I didn’t.When was that?’
‘I’m not sure. He made a bet with me that if the three victims were black, then they were murdered after October 1980.’
‘Smart lad.What else did he tell you?’
‘About Jamaican food, mainly. And drink.’
‘Aha.’ Brock nodded sagely, as if that explained many things.
Kathy drove first to the warehouse in Mafeking Road, where they went inside to check on progress. Bren was there.
‘Weather’s holding up, and we’ve got something interesting, chief. Remains of a bullet.’
‘Where did they find it?’
‘That’s the interesting part.’ Bren led them over to the gridded site plan, now covered with numbered pins and scribbled annotations in a dozen different hands. ‘C6.’ He pointed to an empty grid square. ‘We’ve just started excavating it. The bullet was on its own, embedded in the ground about six inches down. It’s not in good shape. Probably won’t help us match the gun. But it confirms what we assumed from the spent cases, that the victims were shot here on the site, not somewhere else and brought here for burial. This one presumably exited from either Alpha or Charlie and ended up a good ten or fifteen yards away.’
‘And we’ve got something for you, Bren.’ Brock told him about the betting slip and date.‘I’ll be releasing some of this to the press this afternoon. In the meantime, Kathy and I are going to start talking to people who knew Joseph.’
‘A photograph would be a help.’
‘And a surname.’
They walked back down Mafeking Road to the junction with Cockpit Lane. The Ship public house stood on the corner, as scruffy and unwelcoming as when Brock had gone there to meet Joseph twenty-four years before. They turned into Cockpit Lane, threading through the market crowd until they reached the pots and pans on the final stall.Winnie was there, George at her side. She saw them and made a face.
‘Oh no.What now.You want this boy again?’
‘Not this time,Winnie. It’s you we want to chat to. Nothing to worry about.’
‘I’ve heard dat before.You want a cup of tea? Come inside.’
As she led them through the shop door there was a loud clatter from the street behind them and Winnie yelled back over her shoulder,‘Clumsy boy!’She shook her head with disgust.‘He wears those thick gloves, so he drops things. I tell him he’s got to take the gloves off,but he complains,“Aw,Winnie,I’m so cold.I get frostbite.” He’s eighteen years old and he’s a baby, dat boy.’
They settled in the small kitchen at the rear. A shed had been built in the backyard right up against the window, and they could see racks and cardboard boxes piled inside.Winnie put the kettle on and they sat around the kitchen table.
‘You’ve heard that we’ve found some old human remains on the waste ground at the back here,beside the railway?’Brock asked.
‘The whole street’s talkin’about it.They say it’s a Yardie burial ground. Is dat fer true?’
‘We don’t know, Winnie, but you’ve been here a long time, and I wanted to tap your memory. Back to 1981, the time of the Brixton riots, remember that?’
Winnie nodded.‘I remember.’
‘I wanted to ask you about a nephew of yours-Joseph was his name. I used to see him in the Lane, all those years ago.’
‘Joseph?’ The old woman’s lined forehead wrinkled as she thought. ‘Yes, I remember Joseph. But . . .’ She looked horrified. ‘You don’t think dat’s him do you, lyin’ out there in the waste ground all that time?’
‘We’ve found a man who was tall, six foot two, and bowlegged from childhood rickets. He was about nineteen when he died, and he was black.’
Winnie put a hand to her mouth.‘Oh Lord above.’ She crossed herself quickly and felt in the pocket of her quilted coat for her rosary beads. ‘Was that 1981, when we met in dat pub in Angell Town?’
Brock nodded.‘You do remember. Did you ever hear of him again?’
‘No, I never did. I just assumed he’d gone back to the yard- to Jamaica-but I never knew for sure.’
‘The thing is,Winnie, there is a way we can be certain if it’s him. If you’re his aunt-his mother’s sister-and you allow us to do a small test . . .’ But Winnie was shaking her head.
‘No, I’m not his real auntie. Dat was just a figure of speech. I really don’t know who his baby mother was back there.’
‘Oh.Well, perhaps you could give us some details about him -his full name, his age, anything you know.’
‘But I don’t really know anything.When he arrived I gave him a room upstairs and some work on the stall, like George out dere. Just to get him started, you understand? I just always knew him as Joseph, dat’s all.’
‘The last time we saw him was the eleventh of April of that year.When did he arrive,exactly?’
She pondered. ‘It was before Christmas, I think.Yes, I’m sure he was here for Christmas . . . Unless I’m mixing him up with Bobby. He was next, I think. Oh dear, I’m not sure.’