by John Burdett
At a bus stop, he said, “Who’s the D.I. running that prosecution, then?”
“Detective Inspector George Holmes. Why?”
“Thought it was. Just wondered.”
“You know him?”
“Everybody in the business knows him. A fanatic.”
“You could be right.”
As it happened, I had been impressed by George Holmes’s fanaticism that afternoon. Some papers, crucial to the prosecution, had disappeared, and George clearly blamed the negligence of prosecuting counsel. He’d not hesitated to lecture his Q.C. on security and the need to be efficient about putting gangsters behind bars. Although a naturally conservative man, he’d been almost spitting with fury. But none of us were entirely surprised he’d reacted in that way. We’d overheard some of his radically right-wing views over the past few days.
On top of the bus, crossing London Bridge, Thirst told me who had masterminded the robbery, throwing in a few details for verisimilitude. The name he gave was the person whom others with in-depth knowledge were also naming, usually in whispers.
“I suppose he told you himself?”
“Cop told me, actually.”
“Bent one?”
“You could say that. Twisted, crooked, corrupt, sociopathic—see how my vocab’s improved? Am I impressing you yet? But yeah, bent says it. They don’t come no benter than this one. Don’t ask me who, but you’d be surprised.”
The top deck of the bus was full. I was sitting next to the window on the right, looking east. Below, the river was swollen with a spring tide; a small dinghy with outboard was bouncing down toward Docklands. I could see Tower Bridge downstream and the pack of cars crawling across it. Mellow light hit the spires from the west, turning the upper white parts pink.
“How many times do I have to tell you, I’m not interested.”
“Course not. Look, it’s good to see you, that’s all. I was beginning to weaken. As long as I can see you now and then, I can keep away from the villains.”
I stared at him. “You don’t think I’m going to fall for that, do you?”
He shrugged. “Worked on Eleanor.” A faint grin.
“I’m not Eleanor.”
Just before Deptford, everyone except us started to get off to make connections for Docklands and Kent. While the other passengers were descending the stairs in a tired file, four punks forced their way up against the flow.
“Oi—” The conductor started to object, then thought better of it. A middle-aged woman said something about rudeness, and a man said, “That was deliberate—he trod on my foot.”
The complaints were muffled, however. The four punks were all large, with complexions like potatoes, orange hair cut Mohawk style, and tattoos on their necks that read “Cut here.” The biggest—he was over six feet—slouched past with a peculiar primate gait, arms hanging loose from sloping shoulders. Like the other passengers, I found that I was unwilling to engage his eyes, though it was hard to avoid staring at him. His colleague immediately behind carried a huge cassette player, which had to be held vertically to avoid banging it on the seats.
I was curious about how Thirst would react, but he seemed hardly aware of them. Then, as the last was passing us, he said, “Fucking amateurs,” loud enough for them to hear. The leader turned slowly, with the same peculiar nodding motion which characterized his walk. He looked up from under a low brow. The affectation of subhuman brutality was exceptionally convincing. He engaged Thirst’s eyes for a moment before nodding his way onward to the seats at the front. I felt a strong inclination to tell Thirst not to antagonize them. Residual male ego prevented me.
“All these punks are just a bunch of painted fairies,” Thirst said in the same loud, even tone. “Dunno why people are so scared of them.”
The nodding, half-shaved anthropoid head froze for a second at the top of its short arc, then continued to nod, though less convincingly. I fancied I could see a bristling on the back of its neck.
“Take that fat ponce,” Thirst continued. “Bet he wears women’s knickers and suspender belts.”
The youngest of the punks was unable to restrain a smirk, but the one with the cassette player turned to look at Thirst in surprise, as if he pitied him for the mayhem he was about to suffer. The big one changed the nod to a shake, as if he’d made a decision, and seemed about to stand up, but Thirst was already on his feet, blocking the aisle. It was only then that his reckless provocation made sense. He was squaring up, like a boxer, turned sideways to the aisle, hands raised in half-fists. He was alert and eager like an athlete. You knew how fast and dirty he would be, how much he would enjoy it.
The punks suddenly seemed clownish amateurs in comparison. The big punk made a poor show of adjusting his slouch, as if he’d not intended to stand up at all, and lolled against the wall of the bus. Thirst sat down.
“Turn it on,” the chief punk told his music department.
Immediately a deafening, punk-like noise filled the bus.
“Turn it off,” Thirst yelled.
“Get stuffed.” It was not the large punk who spoke, but the other with the cassette player.
“You what?” Thirst was on his feet again. The punk with the player looked hopefully toward the big punk, but the latter was suddenly apostate, nodding at a window. The punk with the player scowled and turned the music down.
“I said off.”
The music stopped. Still Thirst was not satisfied. He walked up the row of empty seats to where the punks were sitting. I could not hear what he said, merely caught a tone of quiet homicidal menace. “I turned it off, didn’t I?” The punk sounded frightened. Thirst came back and sat down.
“Punks.”
—
At Deptford we got off and walked a short distance to a street that had been affluent in Victorian times. Its airiness was in dramatic contrast to the amorphous conglomeration of high-rise blocks, mean terraces, and ugly sixties shops in the area. Very large detached houses with neoclassic porches stood at the end of long front gardens. About half of them were in decay, crumbling, one or two done up, and the rest converted into flats. He took me to the side entrance of one that had recently been painted a stark white, the only house with a high iron gate. I noticed a Guard Dog warning. There were marigolds and chrysanthemums in the front garden; the back of a sky-blue Rolls-Royce protruded from a carport. The windows of the house were of mirrored glass, so that it was impossible to see inside.
“Thought it was going to be a hole in a wall, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” I said. My imagination had painted a small dark basement with Formica chairs and cheap whisky.
He executed an elaborate tap on the side door and waited until a woman of about fifty with platinum-blond hair and wearing a dressing gown came to let us in. She took a cigarette out of her mouth, coughed.
“Well, if it isn’t young Oliver. Mildred? Ollie’s here, with a visitor. Haven’t seen you for ages, my darling!”
“ ’Lo, Aunt Maude,” Thirst said.
“You’re looking well. Give us a kiss.”
He kissed her gingerly on her mask-like cheek.
“Ah! He’s shy. You want to see him give us a kiss, mister, when there’s no company. Well, who’s this, then? Looks like a real toff.”
“This is James Knight, friend of mine.”
“Looks like a brief to me. I’ve seen those bags often enough in my time.”
“That’s right. I’m a barrister,” I said.
“Oh-la-la, we are honored. What was it, just a drink?” she asked Thirst.
“Yeah, we won’t be long.”
“Better not be; you know what’ll happen if he finds you here. He still hasn’t forgotten that five grand.”
“Figured he’d be at the shop till at least seven.”
“Yes, well, make sure you leave before then.”
In the hallway another woman appeared, also in a dressing gown, also about fifty. Her hair was jet black.
“Hello, Oliver.”<
br />
“Milly.”
Aunt Maude took us up a staircase with a thick red carpet and gold-painted handrails. Mirrors were inset in panels in the wall. A small bar with Queen Anne chairs in red upholstery waited off the upstairs hall. Maude put out her cigarette, stepped behind the bar.
“What’ll it be? You name it.”
The bar was stocked with the best makes of whisky and brandy, gin, vodka, every kind of liqueur. I noticed a whole row of single malts and a vintage Napoleon.
“Cold beer will do me,” I said.
“I’ll have a Glenfiddich,” Thirst said.
Maude brought us the drinks. “Help yourselves if you want more. I’m carrying on with the housework downstairs.”
We sipped our drinks.
“Been to a knocking shop before?”
“No, never,” I said.
“Brought up in one, me. They’re not all like this, of course. Maude got lucky after she retired from active service. This Kenyan Asian pimp needed an experienced Mama-san to run the place. I’m not too popular with him at the moment. Small matter of a few thousand pounds.”
“Maude brought you up?”
“Off and on. When she had the time and the money. She’s not really my aunt—that’s a kind of joke; I always used to call her Aunt Maude in front of the punters. You know how whores are—sometimes they go soft over a kid. Maude was like that with me. Guilt reflex, I s’pose the books would call it. My mum’s best friend before she fucked off.”
“You don’t know where your mother is?”
“Haven’t seen her since I was four, James. One of her punters offered to marry her so long as she didn’t bring her little bastard with her. South Africa, the story goes, but it could be anywhere. I don’t blame her, would have done the same myself. She even sent money for the first year.”
What had she been like, his mother? Hard and attractive, a brittle beauty? His father—could a prostitute even guess whose seed? Was there a part of him that cared?
“Where are the girls?” I said.
“Too early for them. Never see a whore before night as a rule, unless the punter puts in a request.” He chuckled. “That’s why old Maude and Mildred are still in dressing gowns. Old habits die hard. They probably only got up an hour ago.”
We ran abruptly out of conversation.
“I’d better phone Daisy, if you don’t mind; she was expecting me about now.”
“Under the bar.”
I stepped behind the bar. The phone was next to a police nightstick in one corner.
“Daisy, I’m with Oliver….Yes, him….We’re in a brothel in South London….Of course not….Yes, I did say a brothel, as in bordello, whorehouse, knocking shop….We’re just having a drink….Eleanor told him we would help….I will.”
I walked back to the table, sat down, and finished my beer. Thirst’s mood had darkened.
“Daisy sends her regards,” I said.
“You didn’t have to tell her it was a brothel.” His voice was thick like treacle.
“Sorry, I didn’t realize….”
“No, course not. Bit of a giggle, I s’pose, for you.”
I shrugged. “You brought me here.”
“Because this is all I’ve got.”
I looked around the room again. A second door, made to look like a panel in the wall, led off to another part of the upper floor.
“You should have said if it was top secret.”
“It’s not top secret. Just no need to blab, that’s all.”
I put the empty beer glass down on the beer mat on the little polished oak table. The bar was polished oak, too; so were the trimmings. Discreet wealth in neon lights. The carpet was red, like so much else in the place.
“Maybe I’ll be going,” I said. He remained with his legs stretched out, looking down.
“This is the trouble, isn’t it? I can’t do this—the social bit. I’m good in a fight—if those punks on the bus had bothered you, I could have flattened the lot of them, you wouldn’t have needed to raise a finger. But I can’t do this.”
“I’m not much good at it myself.”
“Don’t bullshit me. You’re a toff, like Maude said. You’re having a lark, slumming it.”
“I was having a lark. Tell me another joke before I go.”
He was silent for a moment. He sighed. “Not in the mood. Christ, why does it have to be this hard always? No wonder blokes go back inside.”
I moved my legs, ran a hand through my hair. “Tell me about Maude, then.”
“Nothing to tell; you can see it all by looking at her. That’s the thing with riffraff—we’re transparent.”
I stood up, walked across to an elegant window that reached down to about two feet above the floor. It looked over the back garden. There were three small cottage-like structures, an ornamental pond, and a hammock. I wondered about the cottages. Leather? Rubber? Chains? What were the limits? How much decadence could money buy? A syndicate I had learned about guaranteed its jet-set clients a chance to murder a South American Indian on a tour. And then there were snuff movies. But this seemed like a comfortable English business, almost respectable. In France it would have been part of the establishment. The target was the white-middle-class over-fifty male market—doctors, politicians, respectable businessmen, lawyers, anyone with money and a mildly thwarted libido. Blackmail?
“I can tell you one thing—self-pity won’t help,” I said, not really thinking about him.
“You said that before, but it passes the time in the nick. Becomes a way of life, feeling sorry for yourself.”
My eye finally registered a high-perimeter fence, electronic surveillance cameras set in the wall of the garage that jutted into the garden. The house was not exactly discreet. Every policeman in the area must know what it was. Someone was paying his dues.
“It must be pretty boring. What do you do all day in the nick?”
“Stare at the wall, watch telly. Sometimes there’s a bit of a fight. Sometimes someone smashes a screw. Always plenty of drugs if you’re into that. Sex, of course.”
“Sex?”
“You knew that.” He scowled. “Everybody does it. Doesn’t mean you’re queer if you have it off with another bloke in the nick—it’s either that or do it yourself. What’s the difference?”
I watched Maude and Mildred in their dressing gowns take a Persian rug out into the garden, shake it, laugh about something, take it back inside. I liked them; they put me in mind of aging monks who have come to see God in small things.
I had no reservations about being there. Despite Thirst’s mood, I was enjoying it. It was pleasant, sometimes, to be in an environment without standards. Daisy would have loved it.
“Did you never get close to anyone?”
“Bloke, you mean? You want to know if I’m a homo? I was seduced by a copper when I was twelve, if that helps. Couldn’t sit down for a week.” He was trying to sound indignant, but the way he said it made me laugh. He looked up.
“I’m not queer. Know Marlborough Street Magistrates Court?”
“Of course.”
“In one of the cells someone’s carved something: ‘I thought sex was a pain in the arse till I discovered girls.’ That’s me.”
I smiled.
“Like that one, did you?”
“I was smiling because you defy all the categories.”
“Me? Leave off. I only have to walk into a room, everyone sees where I’m coming from.”
How did someone like him walk into a room? It could be a difficult psychological maneuver, even for me, to walk into a room full of people who understood each other so much better than they understood me. Suppose you were violent, angry, tattooed—how did you walk into a room and make a success of it?
“They see the caricature, that’s all.”
“Look,” he said, “I’m sorry I came to the Bailey today. I was getting a bit desperate. See, things are better for me in one way, worse in another. I know what I want, for once in my life
—but I’m on my own. I go down the pub these days, like the other night in Camberwell, I look at the blokes I used to hang out with, and I think: Suckers. Like old Beaufort said, they all think they’re Jack the Lad, when they’re really being screwed by the system. But I’m not exactly a middle-class teenager learning his Shakespeare, either, am I? You’re about the only one I know who sees both sides—like me. But I shouldn’t have just turned up like that—makes it awkward for you, I expect.”
“Oh, never mind. I suppose I’m being overfastidious after all; it happens all the time—”
I stopped myself, but he had caught the meaning. “You mean ex-cons trying to make friends with briefs?”
“It can’t be done, Oliver.”
“But I’m straight now. How long does it take?”
“I don’t know; I didn’t make the rules.”
The severity of what I was saying made his mouth twitch. But he recovered surprisingly quickly and stood up. “Quick, let’s go—while you’re still smiling. That way maybe you’ll see me again.”
—
It took a good two hours to reach home; most of London was paralyzed in the rush hour. I bought the evening paper at a news vendor in the underground to read about the trial. I was not mentioned, but my client was described as “cunning and ruthless.”
Daisy was waiting for me in her old white sweater.
“What was it like?” she said before I’d had time to greet her properly. I knew how much the idea of brothels and prostitutes aroused her.
“I’ll tell you later,” I said. “I’m tired. I think I’ll read the paper for half an hour.”
“Don’t tease.”
She lifted the bottom of her sweater to show me that she was naked underneath. I changed into a dressing gown, lay on the bed. She put her head on my chest.
“It was amazing,” I said. “You wouldn’t believe it.”
“Get on with it.”
“Every room is different and dedicated to a different girl. The punter gets to choose which color he wants—black, yellow, red, white—and each room is made up to match. Thirst took me into three of them. In two of them a girl was naked, spread-eagled on the bed, tied up with silk ropes. You’re allowed to whip her if you pay extra, but you’re not allowed to draw blood. If you do, you have to pay a thousand pounds’ fine and they kick you out.”
