“Cos really, I ain’t done anything wrong. Not a thing. I just done what I thought was best.”
“What happened, Harry?”
“Well, everyone was talking about how there’s people who work on the docks for Tommy Jay and the like and how maybe Gerald had probably got mixed up in it.”
“You didn’t think you’d go and outright ask Tommy Jay, did you?” Ray looked scornfully at Harry now.
“No, of course not,” Harry replied indignantly. “Well, not like that.” He looked at the door nervously. “I thought I saw an opportunity, you know? What if Gerald had been working for them? There had to be a role available, you know? Dead man’s shoes and all that. I went and offered to help them out. I mean, I didn’t technically break any laws, because they sent me packing.”
“Harry, honestly?” Ray shook his head. “You heard someone got killed and you thought it a good idea to offer your services to a criminal who may or may not have been involved in it? That might be one of the daftest things I’ve heard of.”
“It’s true. Look at me. Look at us. There’s five of us up in here. A two-bedroom flat on the fifth floor. My mum, me and three sisters. There’s not enough room to swing a cat and I ain’t likely to see enough to change that for us before the girls are all married off and someone else has saved them. The youngest is just eight. I don’t want my sisters growing up and looking for someone to marry out of desperation to get out of here, because Lord knows, who would blame them if they did? This isn’t how people should be living. Cooped up in a box, tripping over each other, struggling to have enough to eat. I know what happens to girls when they get desperate. I know how they can make money if they need to. I ain’t letting them think that’s the way out. If I have to put my neck on the line to save them from thinking that way, you better believe I will. Better me dead in a gutter than them.”
“And who pays for them then, Harry?” Ray asked. “What happens when you become less than useful? I mean, that could well be what happened to Gerald. He served his purpose and had to be disposed of. There’s no one helping the people who needed him anymore. His flatmates haven’t got the first clue how to live in this country, and I can assure you, no one is going to be queuing up to help them. They’ll lose their flat. Lose their jobs. Then what? And don’t get me started on his unborn child.”
Harry looked at Ray sharply. “He had a kid? I didn’t know.”
“Not yet,” Joseph replied. “We’re not even certain it is his, but if it is, then Gerald will never be there to look after it. Never be there to provide for it. Never be there to help the mother out, and I’m sure she’s going to need it if it is his. Kids with two different colour parents are going to have it hard in years to come.” He’d knew what people truly thought about different races and creeds when you let them off the leash. It would be bad for them. It would be bad for their children. It had held him back from wanting to start a family.
Harry looked away again, swallowing back the tears as he did. “It doesn’t matter though, does it? They gave me their answer. Told me to sling my hook, then gave me a shoeing to make sure I knew better. Don’t worry, officers, I won’t be going back. I might be naïve, but I’m not foolish. You don’t make the same mistake twice.”
“What will you do?”
“I’ll get better, go back to work, and do whatever I’m told.”
28.
They headed to Gerald’s former home next, intent on finding out more about him from his flatmates. As far as both of them knew, a possession charge still hung over one of them, Hubert, though the other two, Vincent and Errol, had their charges dropped. That suggested that Hubert would admit to it, probably to protect the others. It might have been noble, but it would cost him. If he got lucky, then it would just be a fine, but it could easily be a prison sentence. After that, life would be a lot harder for Hubert Francis. In the interim it would be hard for Vincent and Errol, who would be covering the shortfall for two people on their rent.
The mood remained sombre when they entered the house. The three men were still clearly struggling to get their heads around their new reality. A collection of paperwork lay strewn across the tattered carpet in the living room as they had begun to pick apart what they needed to do now with Gerald no longer there to do it for them.
“You know, Britain really is a very officious country,” Vincent said as he sat down on a folding deckchair. “It really could all be a lot simpler, you know. But everyone wants to take a piece of what you’re getting for themselves.”
“How did you do it back home?” Joseph asked, trying to make conversation.
“This is home,” Vincent said pointedly. “Back where I came from you had different sorts of stresses. Nowhere is perfect, is it? I think you learn that when you go from one place to another. Especially a supposedly better place.”
“You don’t think Britain is better?” Joseph asked, becoming immediately embarrassed by the assumption he placed in the question.
“You got the money here. That’s what makes all the difference, doesn’t it? Everything else, pfft, it should matter, I guess. But it doesn’t.”
“To be honest, Mr Johnson, as nice as your conversation with my colleague here is, we do have some pressing business to talk about,” Ray interrupted the comparison of living standards in the Commonwealth.
“About Gerald?” Vincent asked hesitantly, as if wary of being led into a trap.
“Indeed. What can you tell us about him? His day-to-day life and so on?”
Vincent looked surprised at that. “Oh,” he said, his eyebrows raising as he thought about his answer. “Well, he was a good man, wasn’t he? I know you want to hear that he did all sorts of nonsense down at the docks, because it would make your life a hell of a lot easier, wouldn’t it? The truth be told, that’s not who Gerald was. He did the right thing when it came to work.”
“What makes you say that?” Ray asked. “You didn’t work with him, did you?”
“I did. Not at the docks, but when we first came over here, me and him got a job down in Southampton, working for the Southampton Corporation, fixing roads and things like that,” he said the name ‘Southampton Corporation’ proudly, as though they should be in awe of it. “Anyway, it’s a tough old job. Outside all the time, labouring. And it’s cold in this country, rains a lot, don’t know if you ever noticed that. Hard times for some of us. You get to feeling down a fair bit. Not Gerald, though. Man could bring a smile out of anyone. He kept us going. Kept us laughing. That’s a gift, that is. And he always did it whilst doing the job in hand. Working hard and playing hard, all the time. The bosses down there, they liked him, which isn’t always an easy thing for someone fresh off the boat. They wanted us to stay down there. I say ‘us’, I think they would have been happy with just Gerald, but he insisted that we come to London. This is where it was at, he said. We could make a life for ourselves here. So, two years ago, he decides it’s time to move and we followed him.”
“You and the other two occupants?” Joseph asked for his notes.
“Yes, and a few other gentlemen as well. And not just West Indians, now. Some of them were from Poland, been there a couple of years. Another gentleman from Kenya. Said he wanted to come to, so we all did. They’re all around. They keep in touch. They were all devastated to hear what happened to him.”
“Forgive me for interrupting, but Gerald sounds like a very popular gent from what you’re saying. I don’t want to cast any undue aspersions on that, but that doesn’t fit the story we’ve heard from other people,” Ray said.
Vincent laughed. “Oh my. You really need to ask why a popular black man who has the respect of his colleagues might somehow find that he’s not liked by some of the people who were there before? Believe me, wherever we were, there was someone who didn’t like Gerald. Same as wherever you two go, no matter what you do, someone isn’t going to like you. Thing is, it’ll never be for the colour of your skin, will it?”
That one stung Joseph a little bit. He of all people should have thought of that. For Dziko. For the kids he might one day have. He looked at the notepad.
“I find it a little hard to believe that all the aggravation that Gerald Trainer might have faced in life came down to his colour.” Ray wasn’t so afflicted.
“Ah now, with all due respect detective, how would you even begin to know?” Vincent sighed in frustration.
“It’s like you said, people dislike me. I bet there’s plenty of white folk in that number.”
“Of course, there are some people who will dislike someone, whatever the skin they’re wearing. But tell me, how many times did you find someone automatically took a distaste to you, the moment that they found out you are a policeman?”
“Not the sort of people I’d be that concerned about disliking me,” Ray’s rebuttal was typically no-nonsense.
Vincent’s was even more so. “Exactly.”
Ray nodded, getting the point. “Okay,” he replied. “I understand what you’re saying. So, do you think there could have been a racial motive to what happened to Gerald?”
“I don’t doubt it for one moment. And I don’t think you’d be short of suspects down there either. There were plenty of people who would have been jealous about him now.”
