A Lesser Evil

  For the first time since his arrest Alfie looked stricken with fear and an animal smell wafted from him. His mouth opened and shut again. Clearly he realized he’d dropped himself right in it.

  ‘It’s okay, Alfie,’ Wallis said calmly. ‘Molly told us about this ages ago. We haven’t questioned you about it before because we were waiting to get Trueman in custody. Molly said it was you who killed him, but we don’t believe that. It was Trueman, wasn’t it? It’s safe to tell us, he can’t get at you now.’

  Alfie was gulping so hard his Adam’s apple looked likely to burst out of his throat. ‘’E never meant to kill’im,’ he blurted out. ‘One of the blokes said they thought’e just accidentally broke the kid’s neck while’e was’olding him.’ Alfie stood up, miming bending forward over someone and holding on to their neck. The mime made Roper cringe because it was clear Alfie had been an avid observer at this gang bang.

  ‘One minute the lad were crying, the next he went all limp. He were dead.’

  Roper felt sick, and even without looking at Wallis he knew he was in the same state. But they had to continue what they’d started now. A body along with a statement would keep Alfie and Molly in prison and hopefully Trueman would hang.

  ‘And you were made to get rid of the body? Where did you take it?’

  ‘I dunno exactly, it were dark and I don’t know me way that far out in the sticks. It were way beyond Lewisham, I know that much. Trueman told Chas to drive us.’E knew the way.’

  Roper closed his eyes for a second. He felt he ought to be elated, for everything was falling into place. He was certain the place Alfie was referring to was the same place the two women were taken to. He also felt absolutely certain it would transpire that Trueman or one of his associates had bought that land when the farmer died.

  Harry Brown had put forward the suggestion that one of the men at the building site where Dan Reynolds worked might have something to do with Fifi’s abduction, and Roper had checked some of the men out. Charles Bovey, better known as Chas, didn’t have a criminal record, but he was a well-known thug. And there were two complaints on record that he had sexually assaulted young girls, but in both cases the complaint had been withdrawn. Roper hadn’t felt able to pull him in for questioning because there had been nothing concrete to tie him into Fifi’s disappearance.

  ‘Does Chas Bovey drive a black Daimler?’ he asked almost in a conversational manner. He knew perfectly well that Chas had a green Consul, but two separate people had claimed to have seen a black Daimler in the street on a couple of Friday nights and he hoped to get the name of the owner.

  Alfie shook his head. ‘No, he’s got a Consul.’

  Roper feigned surprise. ‘Molly said it was a Daimler!’

  ‘She wouldn’t know a Morris Minor from an’earse,’ Alfie said with a wolfish grin. He didn’t even seem to be aware that he’d admitted being part of crimes that were beyond the pale. ‘Maybe she’s got mixed up with Trueman’s mate, Tony Lubrano,’e’s got a Daimler, she were always asking’im to take’er up West in it.’

  Both police officers pricked up their ears at the name Tony Lubrano. Like Trueman, he ran several shady businesses in Soho and was another man they’d been taking a keen interest in for several years.

  ‘You could be right there, Alfie,’ Wallis chimed in, lying with as much flair as Roper. ‘Molly was talking about Tony being there that night, and we thought she said you went off in his car.’

  ‘Yeah,’e was there all right, but not’is car. We went in the Consul.’

  ‘When did this happen, Alfie?’ Roper said.

  Alfie looked at him suspiciously. ‘Didn’t Molly tell you that an’ all?’

  Roper gulped. He had started to think Alfie was a complete fool, and that was a mistake, for what he lacked in real brains, he made up for in low cunning. He had to keep the man sweet for a little longer, until he’d signed a statement.

  ‘She did, but as she’s lied about mostly everything, I just wanted you to confirm it,’ Roper said in honeyed tones. ‘My God, Alfie, I feel for you, she’s trying to lay all this on to you. What on earth did you do to her to make her turn against you? I always thought you were rock solid.’

  ‘I dunno.’ Alfie shook his head sadly. ‘But I ain’t gonna let’er blame me for all this. The gloves are off now. I ain’t even begun to tell you yet what she can be like.’

  Roper felt that he’d had more than enough for one day. He was sickened in a way he’d never been in his whole career as a policeman. The lad who died in such a brutal and horrific manner would probably turn out to be some young kid turned loose from a care home without any supervision. Unloved from birth, and with no one to mourn him now he was gone. And those other youngsters, what had happened to them after their ordeal? He could bet it had marked them for life.

  But Roper couldn’t stop now. They still needed the finer details, names and dates, to ensure Trueman, Alfie and Molly would never walk free, and the other men involved could be brought in and charged. He just hoped he could get through it without throwing up.

  Two hours later, once outside the prison gates, the two policemen lit up cigarettes and stood silently for a moment gathering themselves.

  They felt they had the truth at last, and a statement to go with it, but what they’d heard had disturbed and revolted them so badly they could barely look at each other. Wallis had said as they came away from Alfie that he doubted he’d ever be able to walk down Dale Street again without seeing the hideous images of what went on in number 11.

  ‘I think it’s time for me to retire,’ Roper sighed. ‘It just gets worse all the time. When I joined the force we nicked men that were just thieves. You could understand why because they were born into nothing, jobs were hard to come by and they had families to feed. But now you get stuff like this!’

  ‘Did you see his face when he said they buried the body just before Christmas?’ Wallis asked incredulously. ‘He was so bloody gleeful that it snowed at New Year and it stayed around for weeks. He thought he was talking to men that had the same sick mentality as him!’

  Roper shuddered. He felt he needed a bath in disinfectant to make sure none of Alfie’s sickness had transferred to him. ‘I’m not so sure I can feel proud of myself,’ he admitted. ‘I only got all that filth by lying to him. Now we’ve got to do the same to Molly. But I don’t suppose she’ll be such a pushover.’

  ‘Were they both as evil as that when they met, or did they make each other that way?’ Wallis mused aloud as they walked to the car.

  ‘I don’t even want to think about that one.’ Roper half smiled. ‘If I did I might feel tempted to collect up all their children and grandchildren and kill them off to make sure the Muckle genes don’t spread any further.’

  Chapter twenty-one

  ‘Your mum’s watching us from the kitchen window,’ Dan warned Fifi as she turned in her seat to kiss him.

  It was a Sunday afternoon in mid-November and they were down the garden sitting by the summer house in a patch of sunshine. It had been raining incessantly for the last two weeks, but as today was dry and sunny, after lunch Fifi and Dan had volunteered to rake up the fallen leaves that lay like a thick orange and yellow carpet on the lawn. But halfway through the job they’d got bored and sat down for a rest.

  ‘Let her watch,’ Fifi murmured. ‘I don’t care.’

  Dan returned the kiss, wishing he could whisk her indoors and go to bed for the rest of the afternoon. But he knew Clara would see that as a step too far.

  ‘If only we had a place of our own,’ he murmured, still holding her tightly. ‘Shall I find us another flat to rent?’

  ‘I don’t think I can trust you with that job again,’ Fifi joked.

  They both laughed because here in the safety and seclusion of the Browns’ garden, the recent events in London seemed just a bad dream.

  Dan had found himself a job during their first week back in Bristol. It was with a local building company who did repairs and renovations as w
ell as building new houses. Dan really liked it as he did a great deal more than just bricklaying. This week he’d been installing a bathroom, doing the plumbing and tiling, and on Monday he was starting on building a garage. His wages were almost as high as in London and the firm had so much work coming in they were turning some jobs away.

  Fifi was doing temporary secretarial work for an agency at the moment while she kept her eyes open for a permanent job. She was fully recovered in every way now, eating like a horse, sleeping like a baby without any nightmares, and very happy to be back in the safety and comfort of her family home. It was Dan who suffered the nightmares and paranoia.

  He liked living here. It was good to come home from work to a hot meal, and Clara was a fantastic cook. He got on well with Robin, Peter and Patty; Harry had become the father he’d never known. Even Clara with her strict mealtimes, the way she never trusted him to take his work boots off in the porch, or even wash his hands before meals, had become very dear to him. But it felt as though he wasn’t really providing for his wife, and he still felt very guilty that he had taken Fifi to a place where she was exposed to so much danger.

  They had a row after they arrived in Bristol because Fifi wanted to write to her old friends in Dale Street. Dan said it was dangerous for anyone to know where they were. She argued that if any of Trueman’s men were intent on finding them, it wouldn’t take much effort to do so anyway. She also said Frank, Stan and Nora Diamond all had enough troubles in their own lives without divulging their address to anyone else, and they’d be upset if they were just abandoned as if they’d meant nothing.

  She was right, Dan knew that, but the image of the crimes committed in Dale Street wouldn’t leave his mind. Or how he’d felt when he got to that barn and thought Fifi was dead. All he could hope for was that once all those terrible people had been tried and found guilty, he might be able to forget.

  Detective Inspector Roper had waited until Dan and Fifi were home in Bristol before visiting them and taking their full statements, but he had telephoned since to update them with what was happening in the case.

  The body of a teenage boy had been found buried near the barn, and although the forensic department had not yet finished their investigation, it was thought he was David Harvey, a fifteen-year-old runaway who had been reported missing in November 1962.

  Jack Trueman had been charged with the boy’s murder, rape of a minor, abduction, and a whole raft of other lesser crimes which had come to light during the investigation of his business empire. He was being held in custody to await his trial, and although he had tried to rally support from his old friends, associates and employees, Roper reported they had all turned their backs on him, and in the prison he was frequently attacked by other inmates.

  Alfie had smugly believed that by turning Queen’s evidence and giving the police a full and frank account of all the crimes committed at number 11, he would escape with just a short sentence. But when Molly found out that he would be a witness for the prosecution, she was so livid at what she saw as betrayal that she started talking too. She had revealed details of several robberies with violence he’d committed, the assault on Dan, and incest with his two oldest daughters. The latter was backed up with a statement from the daughters.

  Roper was certain now that both Alfie and Molly would spend the rest of their lives in prison as on top of all their lesser crimes they were accessories to murder and had procured young persons for immoral purposes and endangered their lives. No judge was going to be lenient with a couple who had so little regard for even their own children and showed no real remorse at what their depraved behaviour had led to.

  Seven other men who had taken part in some of the activities at number 11 had also been arrested. One was the gangster Tony Lubrano, who admitted helping in the burial of the teenage boy and disposing of John Bolton’s body in the Thames. He claimed that Bolton was already dead when he was sent by Trueman to collect the body. But the amount of water in Bolton’s lungs proved he had died of drowning and had only been stunned by a blow to his head before he went into the water, so he too would be tried for murder.

  Dan wasn’t entirely surprised when he learned that Chas Bovey, the labourer he worked with at Stockwell, was involved with Trueman, as he’d always known he had some very shady associates. When Harry had said someone from the building site must have been passing on information, the only man Dan felt was capable of it was Chas. But it was a shock to hear that he’d been present at several of Alfie’s parties, that he’d driven the car with the teenager’s body out to Bexley, and that his sexual tastes ran to young boys. The attack on Dan in the alley was clearly down to Chas tipping Alfie off too.

  The remaining five men were present either on the night of Angela’s rape or at the death of the young boy. They all used fear of Jack Trueman as the reason they hadn’t come forward voluntarily but once arrested they were all too eager to spill out details about the nights in question. Roper had charged all of them with aiding and abetting, and concealment of a crime.

  George O’Connell, the foreman of the council depot where Stan worked, was in the pay of Trueman too. He claimed it was Trueman’s intention to have Alfie killed in prison, making it look like suicide, because he was afraid Alfie would implicate him. He had been unable to get this carried out as Alfie had been put in solitary for his own safety. O’Connell had bribed Frieda Marchant to make a false complaint about Stan in an attempt to draw the heat away from Alfie in the hope he would be put back amongst the other prisoners, and the original plan could be executed.

  The two men who abducted Yvette had been found and charged; Delroy Williams and Martin Broughton, who took Fifi, likewise. But Broughton had been promised that the help he’d given the police would be taken into account when he was sentenced.

  Mike Muckle had been almost beaten to death by other prisoners while held in Brixton; ironically he’d been mistaken for his Uncle Alfie. He was still in the prison hospital when Roper learned it was Yvette who killed Angela, so the charges of accessory to murder against Mike were dropped and he was transferred to a civilian hospital.

  Roper had told Dan that Mike didn’t appear to have played any part in the card parties, and as he wasn’t very bright, in his opinion the lad was to be pitied rather than punished for having relatives like Alfie and Molly. He believed Mike would go straight now, as his spell in prison had frightened him so badly.

  Fifi had asked Roper if he could find out how the three remaining Muckle children, Alan, Mary and Joan, were doing. He came back a few days later with the news that they were all doing surprisingly well in a small children’s home in East Anglia. The matron had reported that they were very difficult to begin with, but right out in the country side, with good food, kindness and no reminders of their former life, they had eventually settled down and seemed happy. Alan was reputed to be very good with animals, and said he wanted to work on a farm when he was old enough.

  After hearing this news Fifi took the view that at least one good thing had come out of all the horror. She hoped poor Dora was happier too, wherever she was.

  Both Dan and Fifi were very aware that the trial was likely to shake them up again, and that until it was over and sentences passed, they would be living in a kind of limbo. This was why they’d made no attempt to find a home of their own yet.

  ‘If we did rent a flat it would take us far longer to save a deposit for a house,’ Fifi said thoughtfully. ‘So let’s hang on here until after the trial, it’s only about six weeks away.’

  ‘As long as we do go then.’ Dan grinned. ‘My idea of a perfect Sunday is to spend it in bed with you, not raking up leaves. And I suppose we’d better get it finished now or your mum will get the tight face again.’

  Fifi giggled. Clara was being almost too nice and it was beginning to get on her nerves. When she did do the ‘tight face’ as Dan called it, Fifi secretly hoped it would erupt into a row. Too much calm and serenity wasn’t natural.

  Yet finding out how d
istraught her family were when she went missing had made a huge impact on Fifi. She’d always thought she wasn’t loved as much as Patty and the boys, and she’d often felt like an outsider.

  On the first night home she gave her parents the notes she’d made about them in the barn. She’d thought it was important that they knew what she’d been thinking about during that time. Both of them had cried openly, the first time Fifi ever remembered her father crying.

  ‘Just because you weren’t easy like Patty was as a child didn’t mean we loved you less,’ her mother sobbed out. ‘You were the one that made us laugh, you had a spirit that was all your own. Looking back, I often wonder if some of the problems you had were because I didn’t have enough time for you alone. It was hard having four children in six years. Maybe I didn’t let you be a baby long enough, and I was so anxious too, what with the war and your father away so much. But the oldest child always has the hardest time in a family, because they have to break new ground.’

  Fifi had joked to Dan while she was still in hospital that she’d been through a mental spring-clean in the barn. All the old grievances had been pushed aside by good memories, she’d been able to see how much love she had inside her for her parents and how little she’d regarded their feelings in the past. She wasn’t sure before she and Dan came back here to live that this change of heart was a permanent one; she suspected that at the first tiff she’d be back where she started.

  But her parents’ total acceptance of Dan, and indeed their affection for him, made Fifi so happy that it was impossible for her to backslide. Furthermore she found herself making a concerted effort to improve the relationship with her mother.

  She’d stopped throwing her shoes down in the hall, she kept the spare room tidy, and she did a whole range of chores without being asked. She’d even got her mother to give her cookery lessons, something Clara had been telling her she needed for years and Fifi had claimed she didn’t.