The Riot

by Laura Wilson

  ‘I just need to ask a few questions, that’s all. Is Mr Crockett here? I don’t need to bother your other friend.’

  Conroy shook his head. ‘Crockett working. I get the day off and Jackson not here anyway. This about Mr Hampton?’

  ‘That’s right. The girl who lives upstairs, Vicky Allardice. You know who I mean?’

  Panic flashed in Conroy’s eyes. ‘I know she, but I ain’t do anything against the law.’

  ‘It’s OK,’ said Stratton, ‘no one’s suggesting that you have. As I said, I’d just like you to help me out with a bit of information. You see,’ he added, ‘I’m new here myself.’

  Conroy looked baffled. ‘I mean,’ Stratton continued, ‘this is a new patch for me – a new part of London – so I’m just finding my way round the place.’

  Seeing from the confusion on Conroy’s face that his attempt at finding some common ground had failed entirely, Stratton continued, ‘Vicky said she saw you upstairs that evening. About twenty to ten.’

  Conroy looked alarmed. ‘I never saw she.’

  ‘But you were here? She said you were coming out of the lavatory.’

  ‘I’m here all the time, and Frankie, in this room. We go out to the shops, come back, stay home. Save money – my wife makin’ child and I send she money so she come here when the baby born. We ain’t see anybody. Maybe I go upstairs sometime – for that – but I don’t remember.’ Clearly fearful that he wasn’t being believed, Conroy said, ‘That Mr Hampton a good man – make us welcome right from the start. When we arrive—’

  ‘When was that?’ asked Stratton.

  ‘April. Me and Frankie. We meet this fellow, he from Africa, face all scratch up,’ Conroy drew several lines on his cheeks with his fingers, ‘he say, “Go see Perlmann, man.” So we come here and Mr Perlmann rent us this place. Mr Hampton, he collecting money from the tenants every week. He tell us maybe it have a cheaper rent if we speak to the council, the tribunal … I don’t know. He going to come and talk to us about this thing, but we thought if Mr Perlmann willing to rent to coloured people, well …’

  ‘You thought it best not to complain,’ finished Stratton.

  ‘That’s right. Mr Hampton tell this to the Jamaican boys too, downstairs.’

  ‘You’re not from Jamaica?’

  An almost imperceptible flicker of irritation crossed Conroy’s face. ‘Trinidad, man.’

  ‘How much rent do you pay here?’

  ‘Eight pound. Me and Frankie pay half, every week – it have less each now Jackson staying with us.’

  Stratton blinked. High rents to prostitutes were one thing, but Conroy was, according to his notes, a labourer. ‘Eight pounds? For this?’

  Conroy nodded.

  ‘How much do you get paid?’

  ‘Seven pound ten a week. So does Frankie. I can’t get a better work here. I’m a carpenter – cabinet maker. Trained. Frankie’s a trolley bus driver but he can’t get a work like that – he get a factory work.’

  Stratton thought that Conroy was probably telling the truth – a coloured man might well get less than his British workmates. He looked round the room once more, feeling uneasy, adrift. Conroy, he felt instinctively, was honest. It was just the strangeness of him – of all of them, and of this unfamiliar place – that was causing this feeling of not quite having a grip on things.

  A shout from the road outside – ‘Nigger-lover!’ – like a whip-crack across the torpid air, made both men jump. Stratton went over to the window. A group of Teddy boys were hanging about on the corner of the street. Or rather, six of them were dressed in the Teddy boy style – the other five, who appeared older, were more conventionally clad. Coloured people were hurrying past them, in groups of two or three, heads down, eyes averted. As far as Stratton could tell the insult must have been aimed at the two English girls he could just see disappearing round the corner. There didn’t seem to be any weapons on view but, despite the fact that half of them were lounging, leaning against the wall, there was an unmistakable air of aggression about the group, a dangerous alertness, like dogs sniffing for signs of threat. He could see people retreating from their doorsteps and curtains twitching, so that the very houses seemed to exude an air of tension, as though the street were holding its breath. Something’s going to happen here, thought Stratton. Maybe not today or tomorrow, but soon.

  As he watched, another coloured man came into view, walking by himself. The heads of the group swivelled, as one, to stare at him. Stratton was too far away to make out their individual expressions, but there was a menacing rigidity to every jawline and pair of shoulders that told him all he needed to know. As the coloured man drew level with the group, one of the Teddy boys took a step forward and spat, catching him squarely on the side of his face. The man didn’t break stride but carried on walking, taking a handkerchief out of his jacket pocket and wiping off the spittle. Stratton looked round to see if Conroy, who was standing just behind him, had witnessed this. Conroy’s face was completely devoid of expression, the dark eyes opaque, but – in apparently unconscious mimicry of the man in the street – his hand was lifted up to his cheek.

  CHAPTER THREE

  By the time Stratton had got downstairs to the front door, the group of men had disappeared. He walked to the end of Colville Terrace but could see no sign of them. Now they’d moved off he could see, chalked in big letters on the brick wall they’d been lounging against, the letters KBW. He stared for a moment, wondering what they meant.

  As he doubled back, he noted that people had begun to reappear on their front steps. They were chatting as before, but now the talk seemed more fragmented, broken off for glances up and down the street. As he climbed the steps to Hampton’s house again, he was aware of half a dozen pairs of watchful eyes upon him and suspicious mutterings in his wake.

  *

  Alfred Russell sat so stiffly that Stratton might have thought, if it were not for the fact he’d heard him croak ‘Come!’ in answer to his knock, that rigor mortis was already upon him. His single room smelt sourly of mortality, with a sharp overlay of piss. The heavy curtains were drawn and when a knife of light from the hall sliced across the room as Stratton gingerly opened the door, his first impression was that Russell had recently been burgled. The furniture was good quality, solid stuff – the best he’d seen in the house – but there were drawers pulled out and the floor was strewn with items of clothing garnished with dog-ends from an overturned ashtray. He spotted a row of three brimful basins lined up against the wall – the source of at least one of the odours – and, tottering beside them, a pile of unwashed crockery.

  When Stratton explained who he was Russell said, in surprisingly cultured tones, ‘Please draw back the curtains. I’m afraid I tend to forget.’ He added, as Stratton did so and opened the window for good measure, ‘Don’t have much use for the sun these days, you see.’ Turning, Stratton saw, as the dusty light flooded into the room, not only that Russell was even older than he’d at first thought, but also that he was wearing a pair of dark glasses and had a white stick at his side. ‘Do sit down – if you can find a space to park yourself, that is.’

  Stratton cleared a tray with the remains of some sandwiches off the only available chair and sat down. ‘I hope the place isn’t in too much of a mess,’ said Russell, ‘although I fear it probably is. I pay the girl next door a few shillings to clear up from time to time and visit the launderette and so forth, but she hasn’t come in recently.’

  Stratton, taking in the man’s unshaven appearance and the stained and dishevelled condition of his linen suit and grease-spotted club tie, said, ‘If there’s no one else who can help – no family – I can always speak to the welfare officer if you need—’

  ‘I do not need,’ said Russell firmly. ‘While I am – naturally – grateful for your concern, the last thing I want is to be treated like a mentally deficient toddler by a bunch of do-gooding women. The coloured boys who live on the other side of that wall –’ he gestured behind him –
‘are kind enough to do any shopping I might require. Between them and the girl, I can manage. She’s a good enough sort in her way,’ he added, ‘but ignorant, like a lot of people nowadays. Asked me the other day if Barbados was part of Jamaica! I was in the West Indies, of course. Colonial Service … You’ve not been here before, have you? With the other chaps who were asking questions, I mean.’

  ‘No,’ said Stratton. ‘This is a new patch for me.’

  ‘Then,’ Russell leant forward, clearly pleased to have a new audience, ‘I’m sure you’re wondering how I’ve ended up in a hole like this.’

  This, thought Stratton, definitely came under the heading of ‘learning a bit about people’, as Matheson had instructed. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I was – but first I need to verify your statement. You say you were here all evening, in this room?’

  ‘Yes. As you’ve probably gathered, I don’t get about much these days.’

  ‘And you didn’t see – sorry, hear – anything unusual?’

  Russell shook his head. ‘Footsteps on the stairs – music – that sort of thing.’

  ‘Voices?’

  ‘Nothing particular. I had the wireless on for most of the time. Jean – that’s the girl who comes in—’

  ‘Jean Tyndall?’

  ‘That’s right. Didn’t see anyone else all evening. I’d thought Hampton might come down for a chinwag, but of course he didn’t.’

  ‘Did you know him well?’

  ‘I don’t know about “well”. Quite a time, certainly, because he and his wife – she died in November – had been here almost as long as I have, and I came here in 1937. After I lost my sight he used to read me things out of the paper. He was a great one for politics. Self-educated, of course. Had a lot of bees in his bonnet as these types tend to do – don’t have the breadth of knowledge, so they lack perspective … But a nice enough fellow. Took the death of his wife very hard – really knocked the stuffing out of him.’ Russell nodded emphatically, as if he’d finally made up his mind about something. ‘I liked him. I shall miss his company. Now,’ he added, after a few seconds’ contemplative silence, ‘let me tell you my story. I was drummed out of the Colonial Service. Bit of a scandal, I’m afraid. Wife upped and left, took the children, and I’ve not seen any of them since.’ He sat back, clearly wanting Stratton to ask for more.

  ‘The scandal – was it a girl?’ asked Stratton.

  ‘It was a boy, Inspector.’ This was produced like a trump card and uttered with the gleeful candidness of someone who had absolutely nothing left to lose by his honesty. ‘Nineteen-twelve, it was. When you –’ here, the bristly lower half of his desiccated face contorted in something like a leer – ‘were in short trousers.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Stratton, ‘I was.’ He’d been seven in 1912.

  ‘I can always tell the age from the voice.’ Russell gave a triumphant crow of laughter. ‘Still remember that boy, though. A native, of course – there wouldn’t have been half so much fuss if he’d been one of ours. The mother found out and kicked up a hell of a stink – caused a lot of embarrassment all round, so they shipped me back home. But’ – his tone became serious – ‘there is a point to my telling you this: I know these people, you see. And I can tell you – despite what you may hear to the contrary – that none of them would have killed Hampton. They’re here for a better life, not to make trouble, and besides, Hampton was trying to help them.’

  ‘Over the rent, you mean?’

  ‘That’s right. I don’t know how much you know about the situation here – with housing, I mean.’

  ‘I’m not exactly an expert, no,’ said Stratton.

  ‘Hampton bent my ear about it often enough,’ said Russell. ‘I’m what’s known as a controlled tenant, you see. I pay twenty-five shillings a week for this place – have done since 1939, because the law says the landlord can’t put my rent up.’

  ‘But …’ Stratton recalled reading something about this in the newspaper the previous year. ‘Haven’t they just changed that?’

  ‘Yes, last year. The new Rent Act – but that only applies to houses with a rateable value of more than forty pounds – if they’re in London, anyway, not slums like this. Of course a fixed low rent is pretty well guaranteed to turn any place into a slum. If the landlord’s not getting a decent return it isn’t worth his while to make repairs, so the houses end up falling to pieces. And you can’t get a controlled tenant out: in this house there’s me, Bill Harkness upstairs, the two Lewis witches and the Tyndalls downstairs, and of course there was Hampton too. Unless we leave of our own accord, there’s nothing the landlord can do. Well, nothing legal. He can, of course, make our lives so intolerable that we’ll pack our traps and clear off, but – so far – that hasn’t happened here. Perlmann’s preferred method is to fill the place with whores and Negroes and encourage them to make everyone else’s lives a misery by having parties every night with loud music and so forth – not that they need very much encouragement.’ Russell chuckled. ‘Noisy by nature, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Have you had trouble of that sort here?’

  Russell shook his head. ‘Perhaps we’ve just been lucky, but I think Hampton being here had a lot to do with it. Perlmann was very careful not to rent the rooms unfurnished – if you do that you automatically create another controlled tenancy, and of course that’s the last thing he wants. Hampton told me the stuff he put in was junk – falling apart, half the time.’

  ‘Did Hampton pay any rent himself?’

  ‘Oh, yes. He told me that Perlmann said he could live here free in exchange for collecting the rents, but that he insisted on paying in order to ensure his controlled status, so Perlmann gave him a bit of money for collecting from the houses he owns in this street.’

  ‘How many?’

  ‘Four. Lots more round about, of course, but Hampton only collected here. The coloured always end up paying more for a room because so few people will accept them.’

  ‘What about the local council?’ asked Stratton. ‘Won’t they house them?’

  Russell shook his head. ‘Waiting lists are full. In any case, you need proof that you’ve been resident in a particular locality for five years before they’ll even look at you, and most of them around here are less than a year off the boat, so you can see they don’t have a lot of choice. And of course with the tarts you can charge pretty well what you like – sky’s the limit.’

  ‘Vicky Allardice told me she pays £2 a week for her room.’

  ‘Well she would, wouldn’t she? She pays £15. Hampton told me. Conroy and Crockett and the new chap pay a total of £8 – Perlmann couldn’t give two hoots about sub-letting, so long as he gets his whack. MacDonald and Royce pay £8 a week too, and so do the Gilchrists, who took over Hampton’s flat. Those two no-hopers at the top—’

  ‘The art students – Massingberd and Hartree?’

  ‘No idea of their names. Hampton told me they look like a pair of circus clowns – clothes covered with paint, berets …’ Russell snorted. ‘They pay £10 between them, and Jean pays £1 for a room on this floor that’s barely more than a cupboard.’

  Stratton did a moment’s mental arithmetic. ‘So if the controlled tenants were replaced with coloured people—’

  ‘Or prostitutes. Schwartz and tarts, Perlmann calls it.’

  ‘—then he’d make, say, £86 a week instead of £55. And presumably, he’d get about an extra thirty-odd quid each from all the other houses, would he?’

  ‘Something like that, I should think.’

  ‘So if Hampton was going about telling all these tenants to go to the rent tribunal and Perlmann heard of it, he wouldn’t be very popular …’ Stratton thought for a moment. ‘Although uncontrolled tenants, if the landlord finds them wanting, can presumably be booted out fairly easily.’

  ‘A month’s notice, as the law stands, and then if they don’t leave you can evict them by force. But,’ Russell leant forward for extra emphasis, ‘once that tenant has applied to a rent tribunal for
a reduction, ten to one he’s given three months’ security of tenure, which is renewable each time the three months is up. There’s something else you might like to know, too. Hampton told me he’d been told not to bother collecting rents off us controlled tenants.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Why do you think? So that he could claim we were in arrears and evict us.’

  ‘Did Perlmann say that to him?’

  ‘Not in so many words, but we knew what his game was. Hampton told him he wouldn’t do it and he’d have to have the money whether he wanted it or not.’

  ‘I get the picture. So who’s been collecting the rent since Hampton died?’

  ‘Chap called Laskier. Sort of bookkeeper for Perlmann, I think. I imagine that’s only a temporary state of affairs, though.’

  ‘And he’s been collecting the rent from everyone, has he?’

  Russell nodded. ‘As far as I know, he has.’

  ‘And have there been any direct threats? Trying to get you to leave, or warning the coloured tenants not to go to the tribunal?’

  ‘Not me. As to the other thing, I don’t know. I did hear something one evening last week. Wednesday, I think, or Thursday.’

  ‘What was it?’

  ‘Royce and MacDonald had visitors. Two, I think. I wouldn’t have paid much attention, except that they had a dog with them. I heard it growl and it sounded like a big beast. Dogs make all sorts of different noises but this one was vicious, as if it couldn’t wait to take a lump out of somebody.’

  ‘Did you hear what was said?’

  ‘I heard one of the Jamaican boys say, ‘What do you want?’ and then it sounded as if whoever it was pushed them back inside the room – a scuffle, pushing, shoving, all very quick – and I could hear the dog’s feet scrabbling on the floor and it was snarling, and then the door slammed shut.’