No Hearts, No Roses

by Colin Murray

  Actually, he wasn’t that small. It was just that Jenkins managed to be very large, in that English-public-school way, and took up more space than was his by right.

  They were both in evening clothes, but the smaller man didn’t look all that comfortable. He accepted a glass of champagne, but he just held it in front of his chest. His limp, grey-blond hair hung greasily over his forehead, and his red, acne-pitted face looked as raw as if someone had taken a cheese-grater to it. The same someone had broken his nose at some time. But he stared at the world through thick-lensed glasses with remarkably clear blue eyes.

  ‘I’m just showing my friend, Jan, the Soho sights,’ Jenkins said. One of his big hands reached out and pulled Jan closer to us. ‘Jan, this is Mr Tony Gérard, who I was telling you about.’

  The man’s face sharpened up with interest, and his thin lips tightened a little. It was a bit like seeing a fox sniff prey.

  ‘Actually,’ Jenkins said, ‘I heard that a mutual friend was in here earlier.’ He paused. ‘Jonathan Harrison.’ He was trying to sound casual, but he was much too studied about it. So, he wasn’t here by chance, and he hadn’t been following me.

  ‘He’s not a friend of mine,’ I said.

  ‘So you haven’t seen him, then?’

  I shook my head in a non-committal way and, mercifully, Ghislaine said nothing. With a little luck she hadn’t followed the conversation.

  He sniffed, took a sip of his champagne and looked around the bar. ‘Excuse me,’ he said, ‘there’s someone I must have a word with.’

  He wove gracefully through the knots of drinkers and fell into conversation with a thin, sallow-complexioned man in a worn green tweed jacket who was standing opposite us at the other end of the horseshoe-shaped bar. The man looked quickly across at me and then nodded in reply to something Jenkins said. Jenkins pulled a large pigskin wallet out of his inside pocket, slid a ten-shilling note out and handed it to the man, who crumpled it up and thrust it into his trouser pocket.

  ‘Sorry about that. Just a little business,’ Jenkins said as he rejoined us.

  The man he’d introduced as Jan was still staring into his glass of champagne, apparently fascinated by the bubbles trickling to the surface.

  ‘Where are you from, Jan?’ I said.

  ‘Jan’s come over from Belgium,’ Jenkins said briskly, ‘for a little holiday. Drink up, Jan. Plenty more to see in Soho before the night’s out.’ He turned to Ghislaine. ‘Delighted to have met you, my dear,’ he said, reaching out and taking her hand before she could hide it and pressing it to his lips again. Somewhat reluctantly, he released her hand and nodded curtly at me. ‘And you, too, Mr Gérard.’ He finished his champagne, plonked the glass on the bar next to the still half-full bottle and strode out.

  The tough-looking Belgian put his glass down too and followed him out.

  I watched them go, wondering what Jenkins thought Jan was about to give away. Belgium didn’t mean much to me. I knew that Brussels was the capital, and I also knew that Adolphe Sax came from there.

  I swallowed some Beaujolais and tried not to think what might be in the package Jonathan Harrison had pressed upon me. I looked around for the gaunt man with the sunken cheeks and worn tweed jacket, but he, too, had whispered away into the night. Just one of those fragile figures who flit from pub to pub in a fog of alcohol and cigarette smoke, cadging drinks, selling information for shillings.

  NINE

  We emerged from Leyton Underground station, which, as Ghislaine pointed out, isn’t underground at all, into a cool evening breeze. It was something of a relief after the fetid, atmosphere of the train and, in spite of the sulphurous tang to the air, it was refreshing.

  After clambering up the stairs and then ambling slowly along the High Road for a short while, we stopped at the chippie, and I introduced Ghislaine to the quaint old English tradition of eating scaldingly hot cod and chips, soused in vinegar and gritty with salt, out of the newspaper. She wore her severe, disapproving face and burnt her fingers and the inside of her mouth before abandoning the entire project in disgust, fastidiously rewrapping the soggy mess in its weeks’ old wrapping. (I did point out that if food is too hot to touch it is probably inadvisable to put it in your mouth, but she just sniffed and grimaced rather unattractively.) It occurred to me that the chip shop owner must have been hoarding newspapers for ages.

  I genially ignored Ghislaine’s complaints and pointed out all the places of interest on our route – the library and town hall – and warned her that we would soon approach the local den of iniquity, the billiard hall.

  I disposed of the grease-soaked newspaper wrapping, which still contained most of Ghislaine’s fish and all of her chips, in a dustbin outside a featureless, terraced house. We licked our fingers thoughtfully and stared off into the dark interior of Coronation Gardens, the little park opposite. A large black and white cat, just an ominous, silent shadow on the darkened concrete pathway by the permanently dry and dirty fountain, padded sensuously towards a flower bed, stalking something.

  I thought of Jenkins and his nasty-looking friend and looked bleakly back towards the town hall and library, but there was nothing out of the ordinary. An elderly drunk crossed the road with exaggerated care, a bus charged past, bright and almost empty, and a boy on a bike, peddling furiously, tried to keep up.

  We walked on and, as we came abreast of Tyndall Road, I pointed out the comforting solidity of the Midland Bank where I liked to think that my money resides. I looked across at Osborne Road and pointed out the stand of Leyton Orient Football Club bulking darkly at the end. The Os were flattering to deceive again.

  I suddenly remembered I should have been at football training. I’d have to try and get in touch with Reg, the manager, to find out if he wanted me on Saturday.

  I was suddenly struck by the absurdity of worrying about the fate of a Third Division (S) football team and whether a fourth-rate amateur team of spotty boys and clapped-out old has-beens had a place for me when a boy had been brutally murdered.

  The door to the billiard hall opened, startling me and spilling light and two men on to the pavement behind us. One of the men nodded as they negotiated their way around us, apologizing to Ghislaine, touching a finger to his cap, and I nodded back, realizing that I’d fallen into a strange, introverted state.

  I walked more briskly, turning into Grange Park Road and then Church Road. We passed the quiet, old graveyard of St Mary’s, which had always spooked me as a kid, and I didn’t show Ghislaine the bomb site where the house I’d grown up in had stood, nor did I poke my head into the Antelope to see if Jerry was there. I wasn’t sure that Ghislaine would respond favourably to being thrust into purdah in the Ladies Snug Bar. The Antelope isn’t as louche as the bohemian pubs in Soho.

  I strode purposefully past Church Road Primary School and the house of white-haired Mrs Wilson, my teacher there for two years, barely pausing to remark on them, and then crossed swiftly over the road.

  It might have been guilt at missing football training and not having been for a couple of weeks to the liniment-soaked atmosphere of the sweaty Walthamstow gym where I jumped rope and whacked the heavy bag, or it might have been just a physical response to the prickle of anxiety I kept feeling stab at my guts, but I was walking quite quickly as Lea Bridge Road came into sight and Ghislaine was having trouble keeping up.

  I stopped though when I saw the dark-grey Humber Super Snipe parked outside Costello’s by the bus stop. Carelessly, the driver had stopped too close to a lamp-post. There was enough light to see inside.

  The engine wasn’t running, but there was a man behind the steering wheel. I could see the outline of his trilby and, even as I watched, he revealed just how casual and unprofessional he was by flicking his cigarette butt out of the window.

  I don’t believe in coincidence, and I’d seen that car twice before. I knew that the driver was waiting for me.

  I slipped as surreptitiously as I could into the shadows offered by a terrace of
houses and drew Ghislaine with me. I explained to her what I suspected. She looked sceptical, but I had told her on the journey back a little about Jenkins and that Jon was in trouble and so, sceptical or not, she agreed to keep out of sight. I took out the little package and asked her to keep it for me. Just in case. She shrugged extravagantly and slipped it into her handbag.

  Then I wondered how I was going to get across the road without being spotted.

  The whine of an approaching bus gliding gaudily up the quiet, darkened road gave me an option. I waited until it was level with me and crossed in its wake. I was hidden from the driver of the Humber for a few crucial seconds and, with any luck, he was watching the bus to see if I got off.

  He must have heard me open the rear door, but I was in the back seat and had my forearm pressed against his windpipe before he even moved. He struggled a bit, his hands pulling at my arm. I punched him once in the side of the head, and his hat fell off. Then I gripped my wrist with my other hand and applied more pressure to the stranglehold. He got the message and slumped down in the seat quiescently. The car had the smell of new upholstery overlaid with cigarette smoke. He smelt of Brylcreem and coal tar soap.

  ‘What’re you doing?’ I said. ‘Waiting for me?’

  ‘Can’t speak,’ he croaked out.

  ‘Sure you can,’ I said. ‘I’m going to count to ten and if I haven’t heard anything, I’m going to apply some real pressure. One, two . . .’

  ‘Waiting for a girl,’ he wheezed. ‘Taking her to the pictures. You’re hurting me.’

  ‘Not as much as I’m going to,’ I said, tightening my grip.

  He gave a pained, gurgling sound and started to choke. I relaxed my grip again, offering him another opportunity to talk. He didn’t take it, but spent a few seconds coughing and spluttering.

  I suppose I should have realized that they’d have the other man watching from somewhere else, but I guess there’s something contagious about sloppy technique. I wasn’t aware of him until he tapped on the window with the barrel of a Webley .38.

  He beckoned me out of the car and had the good sense to step well back so I couldn’t slam the door into him. I was too busy berating myself for my own lack of professionalism to have any appreciation for his.

  We trooped across the road, with me in between them, like the cold beef in a sandwich. The driver led the way and kept coughing and feeling his bruised throat. He mumbled something about a crushed larynx, which clearly wasn’t true, but I thought it best not to point out that he wouldn’t be talking if I’d done him any serious damage.

  The guy behind me kept just far enough back to cover any sudden moves in his direction and just close enough to forestall any I might make on the driver. Not that I had any intention of doing anything that might result in the discharge of the Webley. I’d seen two people gut-shot, and it hadn’t been pretty. Big, affable Luc had been one of them, and he had wept bitterly with the pain. He’d survived though. Whether he recovered enough to ever drink his beloved Calvados again, I rather doubted.

  It’s funny the things you think about when you’re walking up the stairs to your own flat with a man holding a gun a few steps behind you. Le trou normand had never figured much in my life, and yet there I was remembering Luc savouring his glass between courses, even when all we had to eat was a couple of hunks of bread.

  Seeing Ghislaine again must have awoken memories I didn’t know I had.

  Ghislaine!

  I hoped that she had the sense to stay out of the way.

  We went into my office and the driver turned around, smiled evilly and hit me hard in the stomach. I sank to my knees, gasping for breath. He stood over me with a vicious look on his face. I thought I was about to get the savage beating before being asked the questions. But the other guy waved him away with the gun.

  ‘Get up,’ he said, ‘and sit in that chair.’ He was pure north London, Arsenal supporter, salt of the earth, good to his old mum. He wasn’t a bad boy – he just happened to hurt people for a living.

  I levered myself up and gulped in some air as I lurched to my grandfather’s old chair. I wasn’t suffering that much, but thought I’d overplay it and gain a little time.

  I’m not a pub brawler and never have been, but I do try to keep in trim with the football, a bit of road-running and regular trips to the boxing gym. Not that I box. But I did, of course, at one time, receive intensive training in how to hurt people. Sadly, on a few occasions, I’ve had to resort to using some of what I was taught.

  I had a feeling that this was going to add to the score.

  I knew I could take the driver. He was slow and flabby and didn’t punch that hard.

  But the other guy was an unknown quantity. And he was holding the gun.

  I slumped into the chair, held both hands to my stomach and groaned. It was a little theatrical, but I hoped to make them relax a little and come that crucial twelve inches too close.

  The driver was behind me, slightly to the right. The gunman stood in front of me, five feet away. He had lowered the gun, which suggested that he wasn’t used to handling it. A Webley is heavy and holding it at the ready for any protracted period can be tiring.

  He was younger than I’d first thought. Still making his name as a hard man, then. Which made him dangerous. And he hadn’t put a foot wrong so far. But he was sweating a little, which suggested he was nervous. It wasn’t that warm in the flat.

  ‘Just hand it over and that’s the end of it,’ he said.

  ‘What?’ I said very quietly.

  He came a step closer and raised the gun again. The barrel trembled slightly.

  ‘I’m not pissing about,’ he said. ‘Give me the package and we’re on our way.’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ I expelled some breath, hunched over and clutched my stomach again, as if I was still hurting.

  And he made his first mistake. He moved towards me again, within grabbing range, and he lowered the gun, preparing to give me a clout.

  I may not be as quick as I once was, but I’m still quick enough.

  I pushed off from the balls of my feet and came out of the chair low, hard and fast. My left forearm hit him in the throat as I straightened up, with the full force of my body behind it. He gave a curious, phlegmy gurgle as my momentum carried him across the room and slammed his gun arm into the wall.

  To his credit, he held on to the Webley as he dribbled slowly down to the floor, and I had to bring my heel sharply down on his wrist before he let go. I kept my foot pressed on him as I swooped down and picked up the gun. He was out of it. His mouth was open, drool trickled as slowly as molten lava down his chin and his eyes rolled up.

  The driver was slow to move, and when he did it was just a half-hearted lunge. All I had to do to avoid him was lean back. He was nowhere near making contact, and I had to step closer to him in order to bring the gun barrel smartly down on the same side of his head as I’d punched him earlier. He went down like a sack of potatoes, more from self-protection than anything. I hadn’t hit him that hard, but he was going to have a fair bit of bruising on that side of his bonce in the morning. When I turned the gun on him, he sat up quickly and put his hands in front of his chest, palms out. It was a fairly pathetic sight, but then all surrenders are.

  ‘Pick him up,’ I said, moving quickly away and pointing to the young guy slumped against the wall. He had started to cough and splutter as though he was choking.

  ‘What,’ said the driver as he stooped beside the sorry-looking hard man who was now seeing the world through teary eyes and gasping like a stickleback pulled from the Hollow Ponds, ‘what are you going to do?’

  ‘I’m going to let you go, of course,’ I said. ‘After you’ve told me everything.’

  The Webley was a Mark IV with a five-inch barrel, very like the one I’d been issued in 1944. Well, issued is putting it a bit strong. The officer who sort of handed it to me no longer had any use for it. The heavy machine-gun in the concrete pillbox that h
e’d tried to take by marching straight at it, instead of sneakily sidling up to it and dropping a grenade through the letter-box, had made a bit of a mess of him. To cut a long story short, it was one of the few handguns that I knew my way around, and I think that Don, the driver, and Ray, the gunman, recognized that.

  Well, I assumed they did, since they didn’t offer any more resistance and we were on first-name terms within a couple of minutes of settling down for our little chat. In fact, we were getting on so well that when Ghislaine came tiptoeing up the stairs I yelled at her to put the kettle on for a cup of tea. I wanted her out of the way for as long as possible.

  I’m exaggerating a little about how well we were getting on. Well, more than a little. In fact, I extracted no information from them. I had nothing to bargain with. I couldn’t offer them money, and it was obvious that I wasn’t going to smack them around or shoot them, and any threat to involve the police would have been a hollow one.

  Don did start to mutter something about ‘the foreign geezer’ when I first asked them what this was all about, but he shut up when the recovering Ray gave him a very nasty look. Clearly, Don was more frightened of Ray than he was of me.

  They had nice suits and ties, and they had access to a fancy motor, so they were definitely on wages. The Webley was in good condition too, recently cleaned and oiled. They saw no reason to jeopardize their employment and sullenly dared me to push them.

  It did cross my mind to threaten them with Ghislaine’s tea, but they’d probably never heard of a French infusion so it would have held no terrors for them.

  I cut my losses and sent them on their way before Ghislaine had finished banging around in the scullery. They scuttled quickly down the stairs with me following. Seeing them off the premises was the least I could do.

  I watched them climb into the car. I’d expected Don to screech away, leaving rubber on the road, but he pulled out from the kerb as gently as if he was taking his test. He even stopped at the junction and politely allowed a youngster leaving the Gaumont to cross the road.