Deadly Serious Read online

  ‘What would you say if I told you they were back?’

  ‘Never!’ Hoskins stared intently at Cannon as if it might make him deny such an outrageous statement, but as Cannon held his gaze he replied in a low, grim voice, ‘Then I’d say there’s a whole lot of trouble coming this way.’

  ‘What were you able to tell Jones?’

  ‘I could ’ave told him a lot, but why should I? He wrongly accused me of shooting someone—’ he said, shaking his head like an old dog trying to rid itself of a bad taste, ‘and threatened to take my gun licence away.’

  Cannon knew the story well, another incident of Jones not listening to local knowledge, but he did not want Hoskins to dwell on the past. ‘Were they a big family, the Jakeses?’ Cannon asked.

  Oh yes,’ Hoskins said, ‘enough Jakeses to go round, enough to terrorize anyone anywhere in the country I should think.’

  Cannon recalled the glimpse of the men outside the prison. ‘And are they alike?’

  ‘Peas in a pod, though you’d not get many of those big buggers in a pod. There were seven brothers when I was a boy, seven and two girls and you never passed their cottage but one of ’em was getting a right thrashing. The father was built like a brick shithouse.’ He paused and looked up. ‘Liz not about is she?’

  Cannon shook his head – Hoskins never swore if Liz was behind the bar.

  ‘The lads, in turn, took it out on everyone smaller than themselves, and most of us were,’ Hoskins remembered. ‘They terrorized everyone. Later on, it was their own wives and kids who suffered – the same thing all over again.’

  And so poor Danny, Cannon thought.

  ‘If something’s brewing, don’t get mixed up in it, John,’ Hoskins said, and the use of his first name made Cannon realize how sincere the old chap was.

  This, and a significant change in Hoskins’s manner. The fact that he was quiet and thoughtful the whole evening made more impression on Cannon than Thompson’s garrulous tour of 26 Snyder Crescent.

  The evening trade was like Hoskins, quiet. It was without the usual sense of having had an enjoyable night with his customers that Cannon watched Hoskins, invariably first and last, leave just after ten o’clock. He stood on his front steps, closed his eyes and let the peace, the quiet and the chill of the night take him over. He shivered but stayed where he was.

  The puzzle was Jones, of course. Jones enquiring after Maddern, then trying to pump Hoskins, of all people. Had Jones finally realized he was wrong to dismiss his sergeant’s and Thompson’s information? Should Cannon go to see Jones himself? Should he speak to Maddern first?

  He decided he must keep faith with Maddern while knowing that time, the quick response, could be the difference between life and … He pulled himself up, he must not get too fanciful. Old Hoskins’s dour mood was catching.

  He went back inside, began putting everything to rights, dutifully wiped tables, washed the last glasses, went into his cellar to turn off taps on barrels and check the temperature. Then he activated the security lights, which would be useful when Liz and Alamat returned. Then, with no one to talk to, Cannon did not bother to make his usual night-time cup of tea and went straight to bed – to lie awake.

  He supposed he dozed, but came to full wakefulness again sometime after 1 a.m., and saw the security lights were on. He listened for the sound of engines, his jeep and the MG, but could hear nothing, and the lights went out. Occasionally a fox triggered them. He presumed that was the case now but he was so fully awake – and Liz surely could not be much longer – that he decided to go down and make himself that cup of tea he had missed earlier.

  His hand was on the kitchen light switch when the outside lights came on once more and the shadow of something much larger than a fox went swiftly past the kitchen blinds. He stood and listened. There was a definite thud against the porch door, and then something Cannon had not expected – a knock, quite an ordinary-sounding call to the door. Then knock, knock, like the game, and Cannon found even his heart was beating a little faster as he wondered who was there. Then harder and faster. Whoever was out there had truly decided to rouse someone, somehow.

  Cannon took the keys to kitchen and porch doors from the dresser, pausing before he opened the second door, preparing himself to deal with whoever was so furious or so desperate to get in. He pulled it wide, at the same time stepping back so he was out of striking distance.

  Danny Smithson fell onto the doormat at his feet. Cannon stooped to try to lift the boy. ‘Danny, what is it, what’s wrong?’ he asked. Danny drew a great sobbing breath but no words came. ‘Come on, let’s get you inside,’ Cannon said, struggling in the confined space to lift the bulky boy, but he managed to get him into the kitchen and onto a chair.

  ‘I’m … I’m—’ the boy began.

  ‘Get your breath, I’ll make us some tea,’ Cannon was saying as the boy suddenly sobbed convulsively. This tough boy, who could take a beating, now began to cry as if his heart was breaking.

  ‘Hey, hey,’ Cannon said, gently putting his arm around Danny’s shoulders. This seemed to make matters worse and, in spite of all his knowledge and experience, Cannon nearly said, ‘It can’t be as bad as that.’ Instead he asked, ‘What can I do to help?’

  Chapter 7

  ‘So we have to do what we can,’ Cannon explained to Liz. She looked totally drained from six and a half hours, driving only to find the drama of Danny in her kitchen when she arrived home and accepted the tea Cannon poured without question.

  Danny shook his head at the cup Cannon offered him, still seeming shaken by the vehicles arriving at The Trap and being convinced it was men after him. Liz rose, waving a silencing hand at Cannon and fetched the boy a can of coke from the bar and opened it.

  ‘Thank you,’ Danny said, and sipped at it.

  Liz had arrived in time to hear the trauma of his mother kept prisoner in her own home, or the home ‘the family gang’ had made them move to. Now she sat quietly across the table from Danny and asked why he thought they were not letting his mother go out.

  ‘It’s so I do as I’m told,’ Danny had declared, ‘go to school and stuff, so no one knows what’s going on.’

  ‘What is going on?’ Cannon asked.

  Danny shook his head. ‘Me and my mum was all right until the family found us again.’

  ‘Your father, he was a Jakes …’ Cannon began.

  ‘I kept my mam’s name,’ he interrupted, scowling.

  ‘Where is your dad?’ Cannon asked.

  ‘He got shot years ago, that’s when me and Mam got away.’

  ‘I believe one of the family came out of prison recently,’ Cannon said.

  ‘He’s Dad’s father,’ Danny retaliated, ‘nothing to do with me and Mam. I’m not like them,’ then catching Cannon’s swift glance added reluctantly, ‘except in looks.’

  ‘Is he at your house?’

  ‘Yeah, and what he says goes, Mam says he thinks he’s the big cheese.’

  Cannon was glad Alamat had gone straight to his flat from the car park, taking his new interest in the English language with him.

  ‘He’s sleeping in our living-room where the telly is, and threatens to have my mam beat up, “or worse”, if I don’t do what he says, keep quiet and stay upstairs, and they give her pills to keep her quiet.’ Danny looked up defiantly. ‘I put two in his brandy,’ he said.

  ‘Tonight?’ Cannon asked sharply.

  Danny nodded. ‘The pills and his new bottle of brandy were in the kitchen. I wanted to be sure he wouldn’t wake up while Mam’s on her own.’

  ‘So there’s no one else in the house.’

  ‘No, just him, and Mam chained to her bed.’

  ‘Chained?’ Liz was stirred to anger and to move to the chair next to the boy.

  ‘One of them hit her across the mouth this morning, knocked her down, said she would be better out the way. Then I saw Mr Thompson at the papershop and he showed me the card you gave him, Mr Cannon, and you both helped me before and—�
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  ‘Right,’ Cannon declared, ‘OK, slow down.’ He began striding around the kitchen, each pace a name, a question, a review of all he knew: Danny, his mother, Thompson, Maddern. The sergeant could not have been to the station yet. What was the right way to handle this? Find Maddern? Go to Jones? It was all going to take too long. He paused to glance at the clock, 2.30 a.m., and felt a pang of alarm. ‘Mr Thompson said some of the men always come between three and four. Does anyone check on you?’

  ‘They’ve stopped coming,’ Danny said, ‘I think that’s all finished. I heard the old man say they had moved on to the last stage, and thank Christ because he didn’t want to be in this dump long. They’ve stopped bringing things.’ He stopped, informant suddenly turned back into a young boy, and added, ‘That’s when they stopped Mam going out when they started bringing things.’ His gaze dropped and he twirled the can of coke nervously as he went on, ‘And they’ve been repacking what’s there for days.’

  Cannon got the impression the boy knew more than he was now saying, and pressed him. ‘So what did you see?’

  ‘They brought wooden packing cases….’ he stopped, shot Cannon a swift, frowning glance, making the ex-Met man realize that deeply engrained in this boy was mistrust of anything official, anyone connected with authority. It was the moment when Danny Smithson had to finally step from one camp into another, the same moment when so many battered wives, abused neighbours, victims of crime, stepped back from testifying. Cannon held his breath.

  Danny swallowed hard. ‘Everything that was in little boxes in the spare room was tipped out and put between layers of insulation they threw down from the roof. One of them said the stuff they had up there was too heavy to rattle. They laughed about that.’

  ‘So did you see what they were repacking?’

  ‘Yes, they didn’t care,’ he paused, looked directly into Cannon’s eyes and went on, ‘said if I was a good boy I’d be able to live “the life” one day. But the old man got mad with them, made them block up the landing window so no one could see in. There was only Mr Thompson, but they did as they were told.’

  ‘So what were they . .?’

  ‘Jewellery, all kinds, bracelets, necklaces, rings, and little bags, they tipped one out to show me; uncut diamonds they said they were.’

  Cannon remembered there had recently been a violent raid on a renowned jeweller’s in Birmingham, a specialist who cut his own stones. So had the gang been assembling the proceeds of raids over a time? The price of gold, the wisdom of putting spare cash into precious stones in the financial climate of the world, had seen the number of raids on jewellers soar.

  ‘One of them tossed me a diamond ring, and said to put it in my pocket,’ Danny was saying.

  ‘And you did?’ Cannon said more sharply than he intended.

  ‘I gave it to Mam. She shoved it under her pillow.’

  Cannon’s instinct was to bawl the boy out. Didn’t he know this was one of the ways criminals involved the innocent and the reluctant: planting evidence, instilling fear of discovery?

  ‘I must get back to Mam,’ Danny said, a new wave of concern making his voice higher, more boyish, as he asked, ‘but what should I do, Mr Cannon? What can I do?’

  In his mind Cannon was certain the safest thing to do was keep Danny there while he went along to try to get the mother out, but he would need Danny to keep his mother quiet and reassure her. He would also need bolt-cutters.

  ‘We’ll go and get your mother now, if you’ve drugged the old man it will be the perfect time.’

  ‘John!’ Liz exclaimed.

  She limited her protest to his name as Danny turned to her and said, ‘Please let him help me, Mrs Cannon.’ The boy’s appeal and assumption she was John’s wife left her merely shaking her head at her partner.

  ‘The sooner his mother is out of their clutches the better,’ Cannon asserted. ‘They’ll assume Danny got her out somehow, they won’t suspect, they won’t think of looking here.’

  ‘Here?’ Liz repeated, aghast but too tired to argue with what she also thought of as John’s overpowering need to inflict justice on everyone. ‘Of course, where else?’ she said.

  Danny rose, mouth open, looking from one to the other first in disbelief and then in hope.

  ‘Then I’ll go and find Maddern, and if he’s not already been to see Jones I’ll go with him,’ Cannon said. ‘If we move quickly there’s so much evidence.’

  ‘You could just take the evidence to …’ Liz made one final effort to keep some kind of normality in their lives.

  ‘I’m not risking it, timing is everything, these people are ruthless, they’ll let no one – their own or anyone else – stand in their way.’ Cannon also had a great curiosity about the ‘heavy’ stuff that they had in the roof-space of that rundown council house. ‘It seems to me that the old man is accumulating all his assets and he, and those he favours, will be making a run for it … and to be assembling this near the coast means it will probably be abroad.’

  ‘Are you up for this, Danny?’ Cannon asked. ‘Because we should go now.’

  ‘My mother’s chained to an iron bedstead,’ he said.

  ‘I have bolt-cutters, that won’t be a problem,’ Cannon told him.

  ‘When I came home I saw a bike outside,’ Liz said. ‘Is that . .?’

  ‘It belongs to Mr Russell, the newsagent, I borrowed it from his back yard.’

  ‘Did you?’ Liz said. ‘Well, we’ll have to have a word with him about his security. Go on, I’ll put it out of sight for now,’ she added, giving the boy a pat on the back, and receiving a cursory kiss on the cheek from Cannon.

  ‘I’ll take your car,’ he said, ‘it’s quieter.’

  ‘We’re really going?’ Danny asked as they left the kitchen.

  ‘You can keep your nerve?’ Cannon asked as they drove. ‘And watch me closely once we’re inside, do exactly as I say or indicate. We want to be quick, quiet – and no picking up extra things. We get your mother, and out, understand?’ He glanced across and saw the boy nod. Cannon hoped he did, as some saying about not willingly putting your hand into a nest of vipers came into his mind.

  The church clock ponderously rung out the quarters and then three o’clock as Cannon parked near Church Walk some distance beyond Russell’s shop, and on the opposite side of the green to the old council estate. There was a wind, and clouds moved rapidly across a bright moon. The effect was a little like someone switching a light on and off. The solitary streetlamp looked like an old forty-watt bulb after every flash of the moon. Cannon carried the bolt-cutters under his jacket in true burglar fashion.

  They carefully negotiated the broken gate and the trodden front garden as Danny felt around his neck, pulled out a string and his front door key. Cannon wondered how long he had been a latch-key child, and also, glancing at the house next door, whether old Thompson was watching? He raised a gloved finger to his lips as Danny slipped the key into the lock.

  The door hit and grated on a piece of grit as Cannon pushed it a little wider than Danny had done. They held their breaths and waited long seconds. Cannon could make out the stairs on his right and the door to the living-room where the grandfather held sway to his left. Cannon closed the door and gently propelled Danny ahead of him to the stairs, thinking he should have asked if any of the stairs had a particularly loud creak.

  By the time they reached the top he had greater respect for the carpenter who had worked on this council house. Danny paused, and took charge, holding Cannon’s sleeve to guide him into the first bedroom on the right, then clicked on the light in what was obviously his bedroom. Cannon, half in the doorway, immediately saw it was a wise move. The landing was a disaster area.

  A loft ladder had been pulled down and left half-blocking the way between bedrooms and stairs were two small packing-cases, one nailed down and one half-full, a layer of insulation material in place ready to cushion the next deposit of goods, and beyond that a tide of tumbled empty boxes.

  C
annon took a slim, flat torch from his pocket, gave it to Danny, took the bolt-cutters from beneath his coat, indicated they should get to work, and switched off the bedroom light.

  They had negotiated ladder and boxes, Danny shining the beam carefully at Cannon’s feet, and had reached the second bedroom door when there was a dull heavy thud from below, followed by a second which was equally heavy. Both froze, but there was no doubt about the next sound, as the grit under the front door again grated across the tiles. Whoever pushed the door this time, though, did not desist. The pushing and the grinding scrape went on until the door must certainly be wide open, from the draught that swept up the stairs.

  Cannon took the torch and slipped it back into his pocket, stood holding the boy’s arm as a man’s low voice echoed from immediately below them and the hall light was put on. Whoever it was had been here before and was pretty confident.

  ‘I’ll take these upstairs, you get the rest,’ a first, irritated-sounding man muttered.

  ‘We’ll get the rest,’ a second voice decided, adding, ‘I’ll just check with the boss first.’

  The sound now of a door being tapped, then opened, a low voice making an enquiry, and again a little louder, then the door quietly reclosing.

  ‘He’s well gone,’ the man reported, ‘empty brandy bottle on the table, and he does know we’re coming with this extra lot.’

  ‘Let’s get on with it then,’ his helper grumbled, ‘back’s killing me.’

  ‘You’re all moan,’ the other warned in a low voice. ‘I’d be careful it I were you, the boss likes quiet workers.’ The door grit sounded again but the same voice ordered, ‘No, leave it open.’

  The second Cannon judged it was safe he whispered in Danny’s ear, ‘Get to bed, stay there, and remember you’re not on your own now.’ Danny gave a low, gasping sob, like a child drawing in air before tears. Cannon gripped his arm tighter. ‘It’ll be all right, I’ll see to that,’ he promised, took the torch, shone the light at Danny’s feet, saw him into his bedroom and closed the door.