we’ll handle it. We’re in Camden High Street now.’ He relayed to Billy what Roper had just told him. ‘We’ll go and look this guy Cochran up. Do you know the address?’
‘No, but the sat-nav will,’ Billy said. ‘So let’s move it.’
They twisted and turned through a number of side streets, finally reaching one called Church Street. There was no number sixty, and beyond the street was a vast empty site, obviously cleared for building. There was a convenience store on the corner called Patel’s, freshly painted, incongruous against the old decaying houses.
‘Wait for me,’ Dillon said, and got out of the Cooper.
The store was crammed with just about everything you would ever need and the stocky Indian in traditional clothes was welcoming. ‘Can I help you, sir?’
‘I was looking for an address—Sixty Lower Church Street.’
‘Ah, long gone. Many streets were knocked down last year and Lower Church Street was one of them. They are to build flats.’
‘I was looking for a man named Matthew Cochran who used that address.’
‘But I remember number sixty well, it was a lodging house.’
‘Thanks very much.’ Dillon returned to the Cooper.
‘No joy there. Lower Church Street was knocked down last year and the address was just a lodging house. Let’s move on.’
Like many areas of London, Kilburn was changing, new apartment blocks here and there, but much of it was still what it had always been: streets of terrace houses dating from Victorian and Edwardian times, even rows of back-to-back houses. It was the favoured Irish quarter of London and always had been.
‘It always reminds me of Northern Ireland, this place. We just passed a pub called the Green Tinker, so that’s Catholic, and we’re coming up to the Royal George, which has got to be Protestant. Just like Belfast when you think about it,’ Billy said.
‘Nothing’s changed,’ Dillon told him. He thought back again, to his mother dying when he was born, his father raising him with the help of relatives, mainly from her family, until his father, in need of work, moved to London and took Dillon with him. He was twelve years old and they did very well together right here in Kilburn. His father earned decent money because he was a cabinet-maker, the highest kind of carpenter. He was never short of work. Dillon went to a top Catholic grammar school, which led him to a scholarship at RADA at sixteen, on stage with the National Theatre at nineteen—and then came his father’s death, and nothing was ever the same again.
Billy said, ‘Where did you live? Near here?’
‘Lodge Lane, a Victorian back-to-back. He opened up the attic, my father, put a bathroom in. A little palace by the time he had finished with it.’
‘Do you ever go back?’
‘Nothing to go back to. The fella who tried to incinerate you, Costello/Docherty? His address was Point Street. We’ll take a look.’
‘Will you still know your way?’
‘Like the back of my hand, Billy, so just follow what I tell you.’
Which Billy did, ending up in a street of terrace houses, doors opening to the pavement. There were cars of one kind or another parked here and there, but it was remarkably quiet.
‘This is going back a few years,’ Billy said as he drew up.
The door of number five was interesting for two reasons. The first because there was a yellow police scene-of-crime band across it forbidding entrance, the second, the formal black mourning wreath hanging from the door knocker.
‘Interesting,’ Dillon said and got out, and Billy followed. The curtain twitched at the window of the next house. ‘Let’s have words. Knock them up.’ Billy did.
The door opened and a young woman in jeans and a smock, holding a baby, appeared. ‘What is it?’ she asked, with what Dillon easily recognized as a Derry accent.
Billy flashed his MI5 warrant card. ‘Police. We’re just checking that everything’s OK.’
‘Your lot have been and gone hours ago. They explained that Docherty had been killed in a car accident. I don’t know why they’ve sealed the door.’
‘To stop anyone getting in.’
‘He lived on his own, kept himself to himself.’
‘What, not even a girlfriend?’
‘I never even saw him with a boyfriend, though he was of that persuasion if you ask me.’
Dillon turned on his Belfast accent. ‘Is that a fact, girl dear, but one friend surely, to leave that mourning wreath?’
She warmed to him at once. ‘Ah, that’s Caitlin Daly for you. A heart of gold that woman, and goodness itself.’
‘Well, God bless her for that,’ Dillon told her. ‘A fine child you’ve got there.’
‘Why, thank you.’ She was beaming now.
They got in the Cooper and Billy drove away. ‘You don’t half turn it on when it suits you.’
‘Fifteen Green Street now. Just follow my directions.’
Billy did as he was told. ‘What’s the point? We know Pool lived on his own. I thought you wanted to go and look up the local priest?’
‘We’ll get to that, so just do as I say,’ and Dillon gave him his directions.
The houses in Green Street were substantial: Edwardian and semi-detached with a small garden in front and a narrow path round the side leading to a rear garden.
‘This is better,’ Billy said. ‘No garages, though.’
‘People who lived here in 1900 had no need for garages.’
Dillon opened a gate and walked up to the front door through the garden, followed by Billy. The door was exactly the same as the one in Point Street, with the police band across it and the black mourning wreath hanging from the knocker.
‘Caitlin Daly again, it would appear.’
The door of the adjacent house was within touching distance over the hedge. It opened now and a white-haired lady peered out. Dillon turned on the charm again, this time pulling out his own warrant card.
‘Police,’ he told her. ‘Just checking that all is well.’
The woman was very old, he could see that, and obviously distressed. ‘Such a tragedy. The police sergeant this morning told me he died in a terrible crash somewhere in central London. I can’t understand it. I’ve driven with him and he was so careful. A professional chauffeur.’
‘Yes, it’s very sad,’ Dillon told her.
‘I knew his mother, Mary, so well, a lovely Irish lady.’ She was rambling now. ‘Widowed for years, a nurse. It was a great blow
