Soho Dead (The Soho Series Book 1)

by Greg Keen

  ‘That in town?’

  ‘SW12. D’you need the full postcode?’

  ‘No, thanks, Jackie,’ I said. ‘You’re a star.’

  It was getting on for four by the time I left for South London, and dusk was settling. My calls to Anna Jennings had gone unanswered. If I saw Anna face to face, perhaps I could concoct something on the fly that would lead her to spill the beans about her big story. Always assuming she was in, and that the story had anything to do with Harry Parr.

  I emerged from Balham Underground station still struggling to devise something that would convince a hard-bitten freelance journo to blow her scoop. The best I’d managed by the time I entered Bydale Road was the promise of a decent staffing job on one of Frank’s magazines and a shitload of his cash.

  The houses were three-bedroom villas put up in the early part of the twentieth century. Now they were worth over a million quid each. Original features had been restored and small front gardens immaculately maintained. There were more four-wheel-drive vehicles parked in the road than you’d find at a Louisiana truck pull.

  Number thirty-four was an exception to the norm. It had been converted into flats and the garden concreted over. Two grey wheelie bins stood between the front door and a six-foot wooden gate that led to the rear of the house. The bell buttons on the door were marked FLAT A and B respectively. A plastic panel in the one attached to the gate had Jennings inscribed upon it. Below it was a brass lock.

  I rang the bell. No answer. I rang it three more times. Still no response. Usually my next move would have been to contact the neighbours and confirm that someone answering Anna’s description was living there. On this occasion I decided to give the gate a hopeful shove. It swung back on well-oiled hinges.

  On one side of the passage was a high fence, on the other a red-brick wall. In a small portico to the rear of the property was the entrance to Flat C. The door was locked and it would take a battering ram to open it – unless you had the key, that was.

  The first place I looked was the welcome mat. Then I checked underneath a solitary house brick and after that the letterbox to see if a string lay behind it. Nothing. I ran my fingers over the ledge above the door.

  Something fell to the cement floor with a shrill metallic clatter.

  It’s one thing snooping around someone’s place when you’ve been given permission; another thing altogether when you haven’t. The police generally refer to it as breaking and entering. For this reason I walked over Anna Jennings’ threshold with a degree of trepidation. Had one of her neighbours seen me then the cops could already be on their way. They would take some persuading that my intentions were benign.

  The door led straight into a tiny kitchen. A tap dripped steadily into a sink containing a couple of unwashed mugs and a dirty plate. On a freestanding cooker was a pan of congealed baked beans. Loaded into a toaster were two pieces of bread that hadn’t taken the plunge and never would. My guess was that Anna Jennings had left home in a hurry, which accounted for her forgetting to lock the gate.

  The bathroom made the kitchen seem large by comparison. It contained a Perspex pull-across shower stall and an avocado-coloured lavatory and basin. The last time it had been given a makeover had been at least twenty years ago. Either Anna rented the place or wasn’t that fussy when it came to interior décor. I blew into my hands to warm them up – the flat was as cold as a witch’s tit – and ducked out of the room.

  Whatever I was looking for would likely be in the studio. A futon-style bed stood in one corner. On the wall above the pillows hung a poster of a large oak, its branches covered in snow. Beneath the tree was written: Enjoy the little things in life for one day you may look back and discover they were the big things.

  So much for the hard-bitten journo.

  The surface of a pine chest of drawers was strewn with a variety of potions and cosmetics. It also had a dozen or so paperbacks ranged across it. Half were Penguin Classics, their spines in pristine condition. The rest was a selection of well-thumbed crime novels and bodice-rippers. A framed photograph of a couple in their sixties could have done with a bit of a dust. Otherwise the room and its contents were scrupulously clean.

  The main focus of my attention was the desk by the window. To its right stood a laser printer, to its left a two-drawer filing cabinet. A Victorian marmalade pot held a selection of pens and pencils. Most relevant was the MacBook Pro. I flipped its lid and pressed the power switch. The screen flickered into life and demanded a password. I tried Anna Jennings’ name and then her initials. Nothing.

  Odeerie would probably have been able to crack the code in minutes. I was reluctant to add burglary to trespass, though, and there was no guarantee that the machine held anything about Frank in its files. Indeed, no guarantee that Anna Jennings had a big story about him at all. Roger Parr’s track record wasn’t exactly spotless when it came to separating fact from fiction.

  I powered the machine off and turned my attention to the filing cabinet. The top drawer was full of back copies of financial magazines. The one underneath was far more interesting. A single file was fat with clippings and photocopied documents. Everything in there had something to do with Frank Parr or his company.

  Anna Jennings might return at any moment. With that in mind, I sorted through the documents quickly. Some went back as far as the seventies and eighties and marked the turning points in Frank’s burgeoning empire. A feature from the Telegraph dealt with his acrimonious split with Callum Parsons. The photograph showed a jowly Callum with long brown hair and tinted glasses. He looked like a member of a prog-rock band who had blown his royalties on donuts and pizza.

  What I didn’t find was anything not widely known or comprehensively documented. I grouped the clippings together and was about to dump them back in the cabinet when I noticed a stray document in the bottom of the drawer. It was a copy of a piece that had appeared in the Evening Standard almost forty years ago.

  Three people smiled at the camera in a way that suggested they hadn’t a care in the world. Anna Jennings had neatly recorded two of the subjects’ names – Frank Parr and Kenneth Gabriel – above their heads in pencil. The young woman to Frank’s left had April Thomson? written above hers. Enlargement had diminished the photograph’s clarity, but I could confirm the mystery woman was April. What had become of her since I last heard from her back in 1978, I had absolutely no idea.

  TWENTY-SIX

  Soho, 1978

  By the mid-seventies, Frank’s porn interests were ramping up. The profit was phenomenal. So was the hassle. Bribing the Vice Squad to look the other way didn’t come cheap and there was the constant risk of a competitor firebombing your premises. Sensing that the real money didn’t lie in sex shops, Frank had set up a mail-order business. For a cheque sent to a PO Box you could get a copy of whatever tickled your fancy by return without the bother or the embarrassment of having to schlep over to Soho to buy it in person.

  Mezzanine became the first magazine Frank published to carry proper editorial and advertisements. In ’78 it was still being distributed in brown paper envelopes, although the title’s list of subscribers was growing steadily. So was membership of the Galaxy. More punters meant more staff, and in January that year he took on a couple of new waitresses. One of whom was April Thomson.

  At first glance there wasn’t anything exceptional about April. She was tall, slim, and usually wore her dark-blonde hair in a ponytail. Her skin was lightly freckled and she had dark-blue eyes. In the Galaxy there were women so glamorous it made you nervous standing next to them. It took a while before you really noticed April.

  She was a nineteen-year-old English lit student who had registered with an agency to supplement her grant. They tried her at the Galaxy first as it paid a higher wage than most places. Frank offered her a job. April was pretty enough to interest the men without being flagrant competition for their women. Her Scots accent was soft and she was smart – a quality Frank appreciated in everyone bar customers and business r
ivals. Most of the guys on the staff tried it on with her, including me. We were gently rebuffed in a way that didn’t piss us off at the time or make us feel resentful afterwards.

  In late March I took a call from Frank. A pipe had burst in the club and flooded the restaurant. The damage was so bad he was going to close down for at least a month and refurbish the interior entirely. Everyone was to be kept on wages until the place opened again, when it would be business as usual. It was hard to inject a note of disappointment into my voice. I’d miss out on tips but that was a small price to pay for what was essentially a six-week holiday.

  The Standard did a puff piece on the Galaxy’s makeover. Frank insisted that April and I flank him for a photograph taken outside the club. The blurb read:

  The Galaxy Club in Berwick Street is to close for major refurbishment. Owner and Soho entrepreneur Frank Parr is pictured with staff members, Kenny Gabriel and April Thomson. The new-look Galaxy will be a focal point for the best in modern cabaret and sophisticated dining. It is set to reopen in May with a charity gala starring Frankie Vaughan. Membership is still available but strictly limited.

  During the weeks that followed, I met up with April most days. We’d have lunch and then visit a museum or a gallery. Failing that, we’d hang out in Regent’s Park. I would outline the blockbuster I intended to write and April would relate stories about her hometown. She made the place sound like something out of Whisky Galore, full of charming Scottish chancers who were never happier than when taking the piss out of Sassenachs or dancing the Highland Fling.

  I’d occasionally try to get her to turn an afternoon into an evening, in the hope that it would morph into a morning. Each time she claimed she had something on, or had to go home to write up the day’s events in her diary. When I accused her of having a secret boyfriend, she’d laugh and ask me who’d be interested in her. It was two days before the Galaxy reopened that I discovered the truth.

  One of my mates was having a stag do and we were in Sackville Street looking for a decent club, when I saw Frank and April sitting at a table in a restaurant window.

  Frank was saying something, and April was laughing. Not like she did when I told her a joke, but in a way that left no doubt as to what they meant to each other. Frank’s wife was pregnant with Roger at the time, although it wasn’t his cheating that bothered me. Nor was it envy. There seemed something innately wrong with the pair of them being together, as though they were each members of a different species.

  If one of the guys hadn’t doubled back to get me then God knows how long I’d have stood on the pavement staring at them.

  The reopening do was a lavish affair. Among those attending were three MPs, two England international footballers, Peter Cook and several members of Her Majesty’s Constabulary. Frank needed to stay on the right side of the cops. That wasn’t as tough as it used to be as the Met were beginning to come down hard on corruption. A lot of bent officers took early retirement and fucked off to Spain. Those too young to go down that route were either weeded out or cleaned their act up and crossed their fingers. The exception was DI Dennis Cartwright.

  The Galaxy had its fair share of loudmouths who groped the girls or tried to pick fights in the bar. A word from Farrelly generally did the trick. If it didn’t then he gave the member a VIP tour of the kitchen, where he would demonstrate just how effective the chef’s knives were at paring flesh from bone.

  The kind of trouble Cartwright brought wasn’t so easily sorted.

  Thursday was his usual night, and he always arrived alone. If Frank wasn’t around to schmooze him personally, I’d have to look after Cartwright and say how delightful it was to see him. He’d insist on having his favourite table and order the most expensive items on the menu. He signed the bill when it arrived but to my knowledge was never asked to settle up at the end of the month.

  At the start of the evening, Cartwright was reasonably well behaved. As the drinks went down he became increasingly lippy. Mostly it would be cruel observations about the acts, although occasionally he’d pass a loud comment about a member’s wife or the cut of his suit. He’d be careful not to pick on anyone well known or likely to strike back. Despite this there was the occasional skirmish. Farrelly or one of his doormen would move in and the guy who’d thrown the punch was ushered off the premises.

  What made it worse, for the female staff at least, was that Cartwright disliked dining alone. He’d always ask if I could find him ‘a little bit of company’, which meant having to detail one of the waitresses to join him. As this involved having Cartwright stare down their tops while having to laugh at his hilarious observations, there were never any volunteers. I operated an unofficial roster, which meant that none of the girls had to endure Cartwright twice in a row. The only woman I left off the list was April. Until one night he asked for her specifically.

  Frank was in the club that night and had ushered Cartwright to his table. A bottle of Moët arrived seconds later and the menu was delivered into his pallid hands. As usual he went with the priciest entry and then whispered something into Frank’s ear and pointed at April. It seemed that Frank was trying to steer him in a different direction. If that was the case then Cartwright wasn’t having it.

  Twice he shook his head and said something to Frank that looked like more of an order than a request. Even favoured guests didn’t tell Frank Parr what to do in his own club and I half expected him to whip the champagne bottle out of the ice bucket and bust Cartwright over the head with it. Instead he walked over to the bar and told April that the Detective Inspector had requested the pleasure of her company.

  They’d been sat together for about an hour when it happened. Although Cartwright was tucking into the booze with even more enthusiasm than usual, his public observations were few and far between. Instead he focused on April. This was peculiar, bearing in mind his predilection for women with big hair and bigger tits.

  What the conversation was about I’ve no idea, but suddenly she stood up and slapped him hard across the face. This wasn’t a unique event in the Galaxy, but there was a harshness about the contact that marked it out as something special. Everyone in the room turned to see what was happening on table twelve.

  For a moment I thought that Cartwright was going to return the slap with interest. Instead a grin came over his face that was one part leer and two parts smirk. Whatever reaction he’d been hoping for, this wasn’t it, but it seemed to have come in a close second. Had April followed up with another shot to the head then a round of spontaneous applause might have broken out. Instead she walked out of the club before anyone had a chance to stop her.

  Cartwright’s eyes followed her every step of the way.

  When April came in the following night, no one enquired what Cartwright had said to her. We asked if she was okay and let it go at that. Frank’s reaction surprised me most. In fact, I was surprised he suffered Cartwright’s behaviour in general. Having the DI provoke a member of staff without doing anything about it was even more stunning, particularly when it was someone Frank was having an affair with.

  At the end of the night, I went upstairs to tell him that we were shutting up shop and expected him to mention the incident, if only in passing. All he did was ask what I thought the take had been and what bookings were like for the weekend. As he didn’t seem in the sunniest of moods, I decided against bringing the subject up myself, and that was the end of the matter. Apart from one thing: April had Thursday nights off after that. Right up until she left the Galaxy, which was about six weeks following her run-in with Cartwright.

  Her departure came out of the blue. She worked a Saturday night shift, said goodbye to everyone, and that was the last we saw of her. A week or so later, Frank announced that she’d returned to Scotland and that we were looking for a new waitress. No one had a forwarding address and I assumed that I’d never hear from her again. But a couple of weeks later I got a note from April. She had moved to Glasgow to be nearer her family, apologised for not saying goodbye
and wished me luck with my plans to conquer the literary world.

  And in case you’re wondering what happened to DI Cartwright, they found him dead in a multi-storey car park six months later with a knife sticking out of his ribs.

  The kind chefs use for filleting.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  Frank had been a good seven inches taller than either April or me. His features were strong and his smile measured. In the Standard photograph, his shoulders looked like a heavyweight’s. Back then my unruly hair covered my ears and most of my forehead. Along with the shit-eating grin and the acne scars, it made me look like a twelve-year-old at his first school disco. God alone knew how the staff at the Galaxy had taken me seriously. It could only have been because Frank told them to.

  April’s face was hardest to read – her expression that of someone who couldn’t wait for the cameraman to release the shutter. The scalloped neckline of a crocheted dress laid bare the delicate bones of her shoulders. Against a chest dusted with freckles, I could just about make out the shape of a silver cross.

  I had regularly teased April about her visits to church. Her faith must also have been at odds with the student culture at UCL. Nevertheless, that’s where she went every Sunday morning to bang out hymns and importune the Lord to deliver comfort and succour to his bewildered brethren. Much good it had done her.

  The relationship with Frank couldn’t have ended well. Why else return to Scotland at such short notice? Perhaps she had expected him to leave his wife and then realised – or been informed – that it wasn’t going to happen. If so, then it would have been hard news to take. I hoped April had gone on to live in happier times.

  I wondered why a picture of her was lying in Anna Jennings’ filing cabinet. Had the journalist somehow got wind of Frank’s affair? And what if she had? EX-PORNOGRAPHER HAD BIT ON THE SIDE FORTY YEARS AGO was hardly going to create a sensation, even among the morally self-regarding readers of the Gazette.