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“You turned a blind eye sometimes?”
“I told you. I went to school with Billy Marshall, grew up the next street over. Only difference was, he was thick as two short planks, but he could fight, and me, well, I had the smarts and the stealth, but I wasn’t much of a scrapper. Enough to survive. And believe me, you had to have that much or you were a goner. Any trouble and I’d talk my way out of it, and if that didn’t work, I’d leg it. Mostly I’d talk my way out. Is it any wonder we went our different ways? Thing is, it could’ve gone either way for me. I ran a bit wild when I was kid, got into a scrape or two. I knew exactly where people like Reggie and Ro
“You’re saying morality doesn’t come into it?” Michelle asked. “The law? Justice? Honesty?”
“Words, love,” Lancaster said when he’d finished eating. “Nice words, I’ll grant you, but words nonetheless.”
“So how did you choose? Toss a coin?”
Lancaster laughed. “‘Toss a coin.’ Good one, that. I’ll have to remember it.” Then his expression turned more serious. “No, love. I probably joined for the same reasons you did, same as most people. There wasn’t much pay then, but it seemed a decent enough job, maybe even a bit glamorous and exciting. Fabian of the Yard, and all that stuff. I didn’t want to be a plod walking the beat – oh, I did it, of course, we all did, had to do – but I knew I wanted CID right from the start, and I got it. What I’m saying, love, is that when it came right down to it, when you stood at the bar of your local, or took your usual table in the corner, the one your father had sat at all his life, and when someone like Billy came in, someone you knew was a bit dodgy, well, then it was just a job you did. Everybody knew it. Nothing personal. We mixed, tolerated one another, hoped our paths never crossed in a serious way, a professional way. And remember, I was working out of West End Central then. The East End wasn’t my manor. I just grew up there, lived there. Of course, we were all aware there was a barrier between us, at least one we’d better not breach in public, so it was all, ‘Hello, Billy. How’s it going? How’s the wife and kid?’ ‘Oh, fine, Bob, can’t complain. How’s things down the nick?’ ‘Thriving, Billy boy, thriving.’ ‘Glad to hear it, mate.’ That sort of thing.”
“I can understand that,” said Michelle, who thought she took policing a bit more seriously and wouldn’t be caught dead in the same pub as known villains, unless she was meeting an informant. It was the same thing Shaw had said. The lines between them and us weren’t so clearly drawn as they are today, mostly because many cops and criminals came from the same backgrounds, went to the same schools and drank in the same pubs, as Lancaster had just pointed out, and as long as no i
“Just wanted to get it clear,” said Lancaster, “so you wouldn’t go away thinking I was bent or anything.”
“Why would I think that?”
He winked. “Oh, there were plenty that were. Vice, Obscene Publications, the Sweeney. Oh, yes. It was all just getting going then, ’63, ’64, ’65. There are some naive buggers who look at it as the begi
This was all very well, Michelle thought, but a man with a bee in his bo
“Blood pressure,” he explained. “Anyway, I’m sorry, love,” he went on, as if reading her mind. “I do go on a bit, don’t I? One of the few benefits of getting old. You can go on and on and nobody tells you to shut up.”
“Bill Marshall.”
“Yes, Billy Marshall, as he was called back then. I haven’t forgotten. Haven’t seen or heard of him for years, by the way. Is he still alive?”
“Barely,” said Michelle. “He’s suffered a serious stroke.”
“Poor sod. And the missus?”
“Coping.”
He nodded. “Good. She always was a good coper, was Maggie Marshall.”
Maggie. Michelle just realized that she hadn’t known Mrs. Marshall’s first name. “Did Bill Marshall work for Reggie and Ro
“Yes. In a way.”
“What do you mean?”
“A lot of people in the East End worked for Reggie and Ro
“So I’ve read.”
Lancaster laughed. “You don’t know the half of it, love.”
“But he wasn’t regularly employed, not on their payroll?”
“That’s about it. An occasional encouragement to pay up, or deterrent against talking. You know the sort of thing.”
“He told you this?”
Lancaster laughed. “Come off it, love. It wasn’t something you discussed over a game of darts at the local.”
“But you knew?”
“It was my job to know. Keeping tabs. I liked to think I knew what was going on, even outside my manor, and that those who counted knew that I knew.”
“What do you remember about him?”
“Nice enough bloke, if you didn’t cross him. Bit of a temper, especially after a jar or two. Like I said, he was strictly low-level muscle, a boxer.”
“He used to boast that he knew Reggie and Ro
“Typical Billy, that. Didn’t have two brain cells to rub together. I’ll tell you one thing, though.”
“What’s that?”
“You said the kid was stabbed?”
“That’s what the pathologist tells me.”
“Billy never went tooled up. He was strictly a fist man. Maybe a cosh or knuckledusters, depending who he was up against, but never a knife or a gun.”
“I didn’t really regard Bill Marshall as a serious suspect,” Michelle said, “but thanks for letting me know. I’m just wondering if or how all this could have had any co
“I can’t honestly say I see one, love.”
“If Billy did something to upset his masters, then surely-”
“If Billy Marshall had done anything to upset Reggie or Ro
“They wouldn’t have harmed the boy, to make a point?”