“Mr Chad?” Joseph didn’t get the reference.
“The cartoon character. With his nose over the wall.”
“You mean Kilroy?” He remembered the character. A simply drawn bald-headed man with a large nose poking over a wall, hands gripping either side, with the slogan ‘Kilroy Was Here’ etched next to it. As a child they had been everywhere. Drawn on walls or in toilet cubicles. When he’d asked his mother what they meant, she’d told him that the “bloody Yanks”, who were flying into nearby RAF Croydon, were taking liberties with British hospitality.
“That’s what the GIs called him, but he was Mr Chad first and I’ll be jiggered if he’s going to be anything else whilst I’m around.”
Joseph looked back over the wall at the yard around the warehouse. No sign of life. No one had arrived or left since they took up their position a little over half an hour ago. He looked at his watch.
“Must be about lunchtime,” he said.
“One of us should go and find something to eat,” Ray agreed. Ray held the need to be fed sacrosanct. You never turned down a meal, because you never knew when you were going to eat again, a mantra that had come from his time in the army. In police work, much like the army, a day could change in a heartbeat.
“Want me to go and see what’s nearby? I imagine we can’t be far from a café or baker’s.”
“It is London,” Ray agreed.
Joseph started to ask if Ray wanted anything in particular when movement caught their attention. Someone approached the warehouse.
“My word,” Ray whispered as he recognised the figure.
“That’s Harry Jones,” Joseph said, more to get confirmation than to just state the obvious.
“What on earth is he doing here?”
They watched as Harry walked towards the warehouse, glancing over his shoulder as he passed into the yard outside it, and doing so again and again until he rapped his knuckles on the door. He paced on the spot, waiting for someone to open up, as if he needed to visit the bathroom.
“I always thought he was hiding something.”
“Yes, but what?” Joseph added.
Someone opened the door, their face out of sight. Harry said something that didn’t carry to their vantage point on the platform. All they could do was watch as Harry waited at the door for someone to make a decision over whether to let him in or not. Then the door opened wider and Harry walked in.
“Lunch will have to wait,” Ray grimaced.
Days could change in a heartbeat.
*
Whatever Harry had to say didn’t take long. Within minutes, the door opened and Harry walked back into the yard, heading straight for the gate without looking back.
“What do you want to do?” Joseph asked.
“I want to see where this fizzer goes,” Ray replied. “Could be nowhere, could be somewhere. If it’s somewhere, brilliant, we keep watching. If it’s nowhere, we bring him in. I want to know what it is he’s got to say for himself.”
“We best get moving then.” Already Harry had reached gates of the yard, turning left and heading as if to go under the railway arches and the opposite side of the tracks.
They ran down the platform, reaching a staff track crossing: a series of wooden planks that led across the tracks from one side to the other. They were supposed to be used only by rail staff, a fact that an angry guard hollered at them as he saw them cross.
“Police,” Joseph shouted back, trying briefly to fumble in his pocket for his warrant card, but giving up as he reached the south platform and had to hoist himself up. He didn’t look back to see if the guard was placated. They darted into the main station building, through the small concourse, and out onto a narrow pathway that ran parallel to the track.
There weren’t many physical feats where Joseph had the edge on Ray, but running was one of them. He was light and wiry and Ray, several years his senior and a couple of stone heavier, couldn’t keep the pace. Joseph reached the end of the pathway well before his partner. He slowed, not wanting to spook Harry should he come out of the arches to his right. He didn’t. Joseph flattened himself against the wall, then peered around the corner.
There was no sign of Harry.
Had they lost him? Joseph stepped out of his cover, breaking into a jog and heading towards the warehouse. The street was deserted. He passed under the tracks, a row of terraced houses and a pub up ahead on the left, the entrance to the warehouse on the right. He looked at the pub. Perhaps Harry had gone in there? Maybe he’d been told to wait.
He crossed the road quickly, approaching the pub. A small side street ran next to it. A battered car had been parked up next to a gate that looked as if it led to the backyards of the properties on the street. A couple of metal bins stood at the entrance to it. As he looked, a man stepped backwards from behind the car. He couldn’t make out who, other than it wasn’t Harry. Too tall. Too broad. They were dressed in a black overcoat, the collar pulled up, a flat cap pulled down low over their forehead, hiding their face. The figure wound back his foot and then kicked at something behind the car.
“Oi!” Joseph shouted without even giving a second for the rational side of his brain to think. “Police!”
He broke into a run. The figure looked up at Joseph, then broke away from whatever they were kicking, peeling off in the opposite direction. Joseph went to give chase, closing quickly on the man, still unable to make out a face. As he passed the car, he glanced down quickly at what the figure had been kicking. It wasn’t a ‘what’. It was a ‘who’. Bloodied and barely conscious, Harry lay on the floor, his hand raised up in defence, completely unaware that his assailant was now gone.
“Oh no,” Joseph stopped his run and bent down to Harry. “Are you okay?”
Harry didn’t say anything. Blood bubbled around his mouth as it poured from his nose and a large gash above his left eye.
“What on earth happened here?” Ray panted as he arrived.
“The assailant made off towards the creek,” Joseph said, looking up at the now-deserted street.
“He’s gone now,” Ray confirmed. “I’m going to go get help. You stay with him.”
Ray went back the way he’d come, hammering on the door of the pub, asking them to open up, in the hope that they had a phone inside. Harry spluttered some more, his eyes rolling in his head.
“Do you know who did this?” Joseph asked. “Can you tell me?”
Harry blew more blood out of his mouth, then lay back on the ground, his head shifting slightly from side to side.
