Jane looked at her watch as Teflon drove to the Broadwater Farm estate; it was half past four, and she figured she could still get to her parents’ for supper by six. She wondered if Tony would be there and what state of mind he’d be in. She hoped he wasn’t, in case he inadvertently let slip he’d recently seen her.
‘Thanks for agreeing to see the Wilson twins with me today.’ she said.
‘No problem. It will give us more time to concentrate on our other enquiries tomorrow.’
‘I’ve got to go with the Colonel to meet his informant, but that’s at 7.30 in Brick Lane, so I should be back at the office before nine. Then we can collect Fiona Simpson and take her to see the albums.’
‘The man she saw in the driver’s seat of the Cortina has to be Graham Smith.’
‘I just hope she picks him out.’
‘Even if she does, Murphy won’t arrest him yet. He wants them all bang to rights, cash and guns in hand on the plot, so he can put them away for a long time.’ He paused, then gave her a side-on glance. ‘You’ve done well, Jane.’
‘Thanks.’
She smiled over at him and for a moment their eyes met. She quickly turned away, feeling herself flushing. He was a handsome man, and she couldn’t help being attracted to him, but another relationship with a police officer – let alone one of the Flying Squad – was definitely not in her plans.
Why don’t I ever meet anyone nice outside the job? she wondered.
‘For now, I’m not going to tell Rachel, or Emma, anything about the suspects we’ve identified or what we know about them,’ she said, bringing her focus back to the job in hand.
‘I agree with you. Looking ahead, it might be better not to put Rachel through the experience of giving evidence in court against men like them. I’ll park here in Willan Road; it’s only a short walk to Tangmere House.’
‘Kingston was very quiet at the meeting,’ Jane remarked as they got out of the car.
‘According to the Colonel he had a massive bust-up with his wife last night.’
‘I hope it wasn’t too serious,’ she said, hoping he’d say more.
‘Keep it to yourself, but apparently when she got home last night, Katie decided to tell her boyfriend she was having an affair with Kingston. He then phoned Kingston’s wife while we were all in the pub, so no surprise all hell broke loose when he got home.’
‘Bloody hell,’ Jane said, wondering what else Katie had said.
‘Kingston’s a good detective and a decent bloke – but he’s only got himself to blame when it comes to his home life. His wife is a lovely, attractive woman. For the life of me I can’t understand why he goes out looking for a burger when he’s got steak at home.’
Jane didn’t much like what the analogy implied about her, so she quickly changed the subject.
‘I know Murphy wanted you there when I speak to the twins about their family, but I was thinking it might be best if I spoke to Emma alone.’
‘That’s fine by me. I could go through the cars section in Exchange & Mart with Rachel while you do that,’ he said. ‘What a surprise – looks like the lift’s working.’
A young couple stepped out of it as they entered the foyer. Jane winced at the thought.
‘I’d rather walk up the stairs.’
Teflon smiled, turning away from the lifts. ‘You might be right.’
When they got to the right floor, Jane knocked on the door of flat 68 and it was quickly opened by Emma.
‘Hello, Jane, please come in.’
‘Thanks. This is my colleague Lloyd Johnson.’
Emma shook hands with him.
‘How’s your investigation going? Were the men in the cafe involved in the robbery?’
‘The investigation is progressing well, and thanks to Rachel’s information we have some interesting leads.’
Emma looked pleased. ‘That’s good news. She’s in the living room doing some drawings and will be eager to know what’s happened. I’ve been sewing and stitching a little present for you.’
‘You didn’t need to do that.’
‘It’s not much, just a way of thanking you for offering to help us with the council.’
‘Get out of that one,’ Teflon whispered.
Rachel was sitting in an armchair with her back to the living room door and wasn’t aware anyone had entered the room. She was drawing in an A4 sketchbook. Emma walked in front of Rachel and signed that Jane and her colleague had come to see them. Rachel jumped up with a smile as she signed ‘hello’, then gestured to them to sit down on the sofa. As they sat down, she showed them her drawing of a man’s face. Jane was astonished by how lifelike it was, and her eyes were instantly drawn to the pair of boxing gloves on a chain around the man’s neck.
‘Is that M2?’
Rachel nodded and turned back a page, revealing another drawing, then wrote M2 next to it with a pencil.
‘They’re brilliant, Rachel, and they’ll be very useful to us,’ Jane said.
‘Definitely better than most police artists’ impressions,’ Teflon remarked.
‘She has a photographic memory,’ Jane said.
Rachel flicked back another page, which had a drawing of a young man with hair down to his shoulders.
‘I take it that’s the good-looking man who wears the polo shirts with a crocodile on them?’ Jane asked.
Rachel had a twinkle in her eyes as she smiled, and nodded her head repeatedly with a childlike innocence.
Emma looked at Teflon. ‘She likes him . . . a lot.’
Rachel frowned at her sister and handed Jane the sketchbook.
Jane opened her shoulder bag and took out the Exchange & Mart paper Kingston had given her. As Jane spoke Emma signed to her sister.
‘I’d like you to go through the cars for sale section with my colleague Lloyd and see if you can identify the car the man in the camel hair coat was driving.’
Rachel nodded and signed to Emma.
‘She said she can try and draw it if you want.’
‘Look through the magazine first, then if you don’t see the car do the drawing. Meanwhile I’ll help Emma make a nice cup of tea for us all.’
‘Can I have a coffee with milk and sugar please?’ Teflon asked.
Jane followed Emma to the kitchen.
‘Is something wrong, Jane?’ a worried-looking Emma asked.
‘What makes you think that?’
‘You didn’t say anything about your investigation to Rachel and seemed eager to be alone with me.’
Jane realised Emma was more perceptive than she thought.
‘Actually, there is something I need to speak to you in private about.’
‘Do those men know it was Rachel who told you about them?’ she asked, with a genuine look of concern.
Jane shook her head emphatically. ‘We haven’t spoken to them and only my team know about you and Rachel.’
‘Was it them that committed the robbery and shot the police officers?’
‘We don’t know for certain, and even with what Rachel told us we haven’t enough to arrest them – so there’s nothing for you to worry about.’
‘That’s a relief. Can I tell Rachel?’
‘Of course. What I want to speak to you about concerns yours and Rachel’s childhood.’
‘There’s not much to tell, really. As you know, our parents died in a car crash and we were raised in a children’s home.’
‘Was it St Cuthbert’s in Tottenham?’
‘Yes, why do you ask?’
‘A colleague of mine spoke to a nun at St Cuthbert’s. She told him about twin girls called Emira and Rasheda Osman, who were sent there in 1958 after a car crash.’
‘I’ve never heard those names before.’ Emma looked away nervously.
‘The nun said one girl was deaf and the other had a deformed left hand as a result of the crash. To me, there can be no doubt she was talking about you and Rachel.’
Emma sighed and looked at Jane. ‘After the crash we were both in hospital for some time, then our uncle looked after us for a week while he finalised the arrangements for us to go to St Cuthbert’s. The Mother Superior decided to change our names to Emma and Rachel Wilson. Rachel was withdrawn and isolated in a world of deafness, she needed me to support her, but after a year and a half I was sent to live with a family and Rachel remained at the home.’
Jane was stunned. ‘They split you up? Why on earth did they do that?’
‘They liked to foster children out whenever they could, though some siblings were kept together.’
‘After what you and Rachel had been through, I would have thought it crucial you were kept together.’
‘I still remember one of the nuns at the home telling me no one wanted a deaf and dumb girl to look after. Even though I was eight by then, I knew she was expressing her own feelings as well. I missed Rachel terribly and asked my foster parents if they would take me to the care home, but they told me it wasn’t a good idea as it would make me miss her more, and the same for her.’
‘You obviously kept looking for her, though.’
‘Of course . . . I eventually found out she’d been moved from St Cuthbert’s, but no one would tell me where. I was beginning to feel there was nothing else I could do. When I was twenty-one I worked as a seamstress at a dressmaker’s in Hackney and rented a single room in a bedsit. One day, out of the blue, a girl came up to me while I was in Woolworths shopping and started waving her hands at me. I hadn’t a clue what she was doing, until an older woman with her said she was using sign language.
Jane smiled. ‘Oh my God! Was it Rachel?’
‘No, the girl was with her mother and thought I looked exactly like a deaf friend of hers. It dawned on me she might have thought I was Rachel so I spoke to the mother, who told me her daughter had been a day pupil at the Asylum for the Deaf and Dumb in Lower Clapton. It turned out Rachel was sent there from St Cuthbert’s, and it was a proper school where she’d been a resident pupil for years. The mother told me Rachel was still there and teaching sign language. I couldn’t believe we were living a mile apart in the same area and never knew it. I went straight to the school to see her.’
‘It must have been a wonderful feeling when you saw each other again after all those years apart.’
There was a broad smile on Emma’s face. ‘It was beyond belief, Jane. It’s hard to explain the mixed emotions when you find someone you thought you’d never see again. We both cried floods of tears as we hugged each other and vowed we’d never be parted again.’
‘If you were both living in Hackney, how did you end up on the Broadwater?’
‘When Rachel started working at the Tottenham sorting office it made sense to apply to Haringey Council for accommodation. We’d been orphans at St Cuthbert’s and I’d spent my teenage life living with different foster parents in Haringey. I applied to the council and they immediately offered us a flat on the Broadwater Farm – we didn’t know what the estate was like.’
‘The nun at St Cuthbert’s also told us your father, Mehmet, was being chased by police when he crashed the car with you and your sister.’
Emma’s eyes narrowed at the mention of her father, but there was also a sadness in her face.
‘Did the nun tell you he killed our mother and a police officer?’
Jane nodded. ‘I can understand why you and Rachel didn’t want to tell me the truth about everything that happened . . . It’s OK.’
‘Rachel lost her memory as a result of the car crash. The nuns said it was best I never told her how Mama died, and they led her to believe she was killed in the car crash. My father beat her to death in front of us. I’m glad Rachel doesn’t know the truth, and as long as I live I’ll never tell her.’
Jane was shocked. ‘You witnessed the assault on your mother?’
Emma nodded. ‘We cowered in a corner, holding each other tight, as Mama screamed in pain and begged him to stop. The last thing I remember was the way she tried to reach out to us as she lay on the living room floor in a pool of blood. I put my hand out towards her, but he stepped between us and shouted at us to go to our room.’
‘Did you see him shoot the policeman as well?’
Emma looked close to tears as she recalled the painful events of her past.
‘The bastard didn’t care about anyone but himself – our lives were ruined because of him. He’d take a belt to us if we misbehaved, Mama would cry and he’d blame it on us, then when he hit Mama with a belt, we just accepted his behaviour as normal . . .’
She paused and took a deep breath before continuing. Jane could see the hatred for her father in her eyes.
‘But when I saw what he did to Mama that day with his fists, I realised he was evil – just like those men in the cafe.’
‘I’m so sorry, Emma . . . I can’t begin to imagine what effect that must have had on your lives.’
‘My father was punished by God for his sins,’ Emma continued. ‘But the reality is he got away with nearly killing me and Rachel, and murdering Mama and the policeman. I’m glad he died, but part of me will always feel he should have been tried and sent to prison.’
‘I understand now why you wanted Rachel to tell me about the men in the Bluebird cafe.’
Emma looked imploringly at Jane. ‘Promise me you’ll never tell her the truth about our father and what he did to Mama . . . It would break her heart.’
‘You have my word on it. We’d better finish making these drinks and take them through, or Rachel will wonder what’s going on.’
As they walked into the living room Rachel signed to Emma, asking if everything was all right.
‘We were just chatting about your drawings, then I showed Jane some of my dress patterns.’
Emma handed her sister a cup of tea. Jane could tell from the look on Rachel’s face she suspected her sister wasn’t being truthful. She handed Teflon his coffee.
‘Any luck with the car?’
‘Looks like your Camel Hair Coat Man was probably driving a Jensen Interceptor.’
‘That’s a sports car, isn’t it?’
He grinned and shook his head. ‘Saying that would be sacrilege to a Jensen owner. The cars are classed as GTs, which means Grand Tourer, from the Italian gran turismo – luxury high performance cars that are designed for long-distance driving, like Aston Martins, Ferraris and Maseratis. Jensen stopped producing cars in 1976, but a new one back then would have cost you around eight grand.’
Jane smiled. ‘I didn’t take you for a car buff.’
‘I’m not, but my dad is. He gets Classic Cars magazine every month and lets me have them when he’s finished. I like to dream about cruising an alpine road in an Aston Martin.’
Rachel signed and Emma translated.
‘She said, “You never know, one day you might win the pools or Premium Bonds and be able to buy one.” ’
‘I’d get stopped by the police every five minutes if I was driving a Jensen – or any expensive car for that matter,’ he said wryly.
Emma signed while Jane explained to Rachel that her information about the men in the cafe had proved useful and was still being followed up, but there was no direct evidence to suggest they had committed, or were about to commit, a robbery. Rachel smiled and signed that in some ways that was a relief. She was worried about using the cafe after telling Jane what she had lip-read.
‘I want you to know, if you use the cafe on Monday morning, I might be in there working undercover as a waitress. If I am there it’s important that you don’t do anything that might give away you know me.’
Rachel looked anxious and signed quickly.
‘She’s worried you told Nick about her.’
Jane shook her head. ‘Don’t be. He doesn’t know that you’ve spoken to me and, like I promised you, he never will.’
Rachel sighed with relief and signed, asking if Jane would like her to stop using the cafe for a bit.
‘It’s entirely up to you, Rachel, but I’d be grateful if you’d continue going in and lip-reading what the men talk about.’
She looked at Emma for advice.
‘I think you should if it will help their investigation, but like Jane said, it’s up to you.’
Rachel licked her lips as she thought about it, then agreed that she would go to the cafe on Monday morning.
*
As Jane and Teflon walked towards the stairwell to leave, Emma called out to them.
‘I wasn’t entirely truthful with you about why I needed to get away from the estate. We did suffer abuse from some local teenagers, and occasionally a few adults. We even had “weirdos” and “psycho twins” painted on our front door. I genuinely feared reporting it to the police would make matters worse, so we chose to ignore it and tried to avoid the people responsible when we were coming and going from the flat. Then one day everything suddenly changed. Someone had repainted our front door and the abuse stopped. If the kids saw us coming, they’d walk off or look the other way.’
‘Sounds like “someone” had a word in their ear and told them to stop. Do you know who it might have been?’ Jane asked.
‘At first, I didn’t, but after a few weeks I discovered it was Uncle Asil, our father’s brother.’
Jane looked perplexed. ‘The same man who abandoned you twenty-two years ago?’
Emma nodded. ‘He worked for my father and returned to Cyprus after his death. He came back to England a few years ago and found out where we lived. I wrote the letters to the council about a move to get away from him . . . Asil is a criminal, just like my father was.’
‘It sounds like you’ve spoken to him.’
‘He waited for me outside my work one day. I didn’t know who he was at first, but he called me Emira and I could see the resemblance to my father. I told him I wanted nothing to do with him and walked away, but he begged me to hear him out and said he only wanted to help me and Rachel. I said we were fine and didn’t need his help, but he followed me and said he was already helping us.’
Jane guessed what Asil had done.
‘He’d threatened the people on the estate who were abusing you.’
‘Not him directly. He hired some people to find us, they witnessed it and he told them to sort it out.’
‘So you did talk with him.’
‘Yes, I couldn’t get away from him. He told me he never worked for my father and sent us to St Cuthbert’s because he was unable to raise us on his own. Now he’d returned to the UK he wanted to make amends, but I told him Rachel and I would never forgive him and not to come near us again or I would call the police. He handed me a large envelope and said it contained twenty-five thousand pounds, which we could use to buy a place of our own. I told him I didn’t want his ill-gotten gains and threw it back at him. Then he handed me a business card and tried to convince me he owned a company in Cyprus that exported fruit for big supermarkets. I knew he was lying, tore the card up and walked away.’
‘When did you speak to him?’
‘About two months ago.’
‘And you haven’t heard from him since?’
‘No, but I’m sure he’s watching us. You have to understand I can’t risk Rachel finding out the truth. If we can get moved off the estate then he won’t be able to find us.’
‘He has already, and he will again if he wants to. The good thing is that so far he hasn’t turned up here. I’m grateful you’ve told me the truth, Emma, but knowing what I do now puts me in a difficult position. I can’t lie to the council to help you get a move—’
‘And I can’t tell them the truth for Rachel’s sake.’
‘Leave it with me for now. My detective inspector was arranging for a local detective to speak to you next week. I’ll have to tell him about our conversation today and seek his advice about the best way forward, then I’ll let you know what he suggests.’
On the way back to the car Jane told Teflon about her conversation with Emma in the kitchen.
‘That puts everything in a different light,’ he remarked.
‘I wouldn’t want Rachel standing up in court where the defence could use her family past against her and she wouldn’t have a clue what they were talking about.’
‘In that case, do you think you did the right thing by asking her to keep helping us?’
‘We can use what she tells us as intelligence and not evidence. That way we won’t need to call her as a witness and can protect her identity.’
‘That’s good thinking, but I’d run it by Murphy first and let him make the decision.’
He opened the driver’s door. She got in the passenger seat and looked at her pocket notebook.
‘Do you want to get off home now or are you happy to carry on working?’
‘I’m easy. Where do you want to go?’
He started the car and prepared to drive off.
‘I was thinking of visiting Abby Jones. She’s the young girl who saw the man shooting at the police car—’
‘Didn’t Murphy say to hold off on her for now?’
‘Yes, but I’ve a gut feeling she may have seen O’Reilly’s face. What she said to me at the scene doesn’t add up.’
He frowned at Jane. ‘That will piss Murphy off big time – and that’s not something you want to do right now.’
She checked something in her pocket notebook.
‘I asked Abby to describe the tall man who got out of the passenger seat of the Cortina. She told me he was wearing a balaclava, even though every other witness said he was wearing a brown stocking mask.’
Teflon shrugged. ‘The poor kid obviously made a mistake – which is understandable when there are bullets flying round your head and police cars crashing in front of you.’
‘From where the getaway car stopped in Woodville Road there were two trails of blood. One ran to the middle of the road, where several drops were confined to a small area, which indicates someone was standing there. The fired cartridge cases were near there as well, and the direction of the other blood trail was returning to where the car had been—’
He was starting to get frustrated with her stubbornness.
‘I think maybe it’s best we call it a day.’
But Jane wasn’t going to be deterred.
‘If the man who fired the handgun at the police car had a cut to his forehead, you’d expect the stocking mask to soak up the blood and maybe leave a few drops here and there.’
‘What’s your point, Jane?’
‘If the blood was being soaked up by the stocking it would spread like ink on blotting paper, making it difficult to see. We think O’Reilly was the man who fired the handgun, and we know he has a cut to his head. I believe he took the stocking mask off before he got out of the getaway car because he couldn’t see with it on. Abby wasn’t mistaken; she lied because she was frightened. But if she can identify O’Reilly in a line-up, we’ve got him. Likewise, if Fiona Simpson can identify Graham, plus we can link them to the Ripley brothers—’
‘Even if Abby Jones agrees to do an ID parade, she might bottle it on the day, then you’re left with nothing. You nick them on the plot, and they’re all fucked in one hit.’
‘That could happen, but we won’t know unless we speak to her. If she agrees to look at an ID parade, we can tell Murphy, then he can decide on the next move.’
‘He’ll still be pissed off.’
‘God forbid the next robbery our suspects commit should go wrong again. Like Murphy said, one of us – or worse, an innocent bystander – could get killed . . . all because we want to make a pavement arrest.’
He sighed and shook his head. ‘Christ, you can be infuriating at times . . . What’s Abby’s address?’
‘Number six Leybourne Road, Leytonstone.’ She grinned. ‘And don’t worry, I’ll take the blame if Murphy gets his knickers in a twist.’