by Laura Wilson
‘It’s certainly regrettable,’ he said, in a bland tone that suggested he thought it was anything but. ‘I’m afraid I don’t have any knowledge of the incident, but if you’d like to come in … Don’t worry,’ he added, as Stratton peered apprehensively upwards, ‘the dog can’t get down here – and even if he could, he wouldn’t hurt a fly.’
Stratton doubted this. The dog hadn’t stopped barking. The continued shouting from the man above seemed to be having the effect of encouraging it rather than the opposite, and a series of thumps and rattles suggested that it was hurling itself against the door he could see at the top of the stairs. It sounded vicious, old Mr Russell had said. As if it couldn’t wait to take a lump out of somebody.
‘What sort of dog is it?’
‘German shepherd.’
Stratton saw Dobbs give an almost imperceptible lift of eyes and chin which indicated ‘Wouldn’t you bleeding know?’ as clearly as if he’d actually said it. Gleeson must have caught it too, because he said, ‘It’s a guard dog. We’re entitled to protect ourselves.’
The place was sparsely furnished with a desk, a couple of hard chairs and a few displays of books with titles such as Blood and Soil and Land and Destiny. The walls were decorated with photographs of Gleeson in what looked remarkably like the uniform worn by Hitler’s Brownshirts, but with the cross-and-circle symbol on the armband. Seeing where Stratton was looking, Gleeson raised his chin slightly, as if about to give a Nazi salute.
‘As I told you,’ said Gleeson at normal volume, the barking having subsided, ‘I know nothing of the matter. This organisation does not condone violence. I personally abhor the use of force.’ There was a great deal more of this, during which Stratton got the sense that he was hearing the official version of the White Defence League creed, especially the flourishes about ‘getting a square deal for the Negro in his own country’. Phrases from the statements he’d been reading: We gave the nigger a belting … a good larruping … We steamed into him and done him up … jabbed at his memory in aggressive counterpoint to what Gleeson was saying. ‘It’s all very well,’ the man continued, ‘for those who don’t have to live cheek-by-jowl with them to talk about giving them a warm welcome. They don’t live in fear that their homes will be sold over their heads to coloured people who will drive them out in order to house their friends and relatives. They don’t feel resentment when they see the Negro with his smart clothes and flashy car—’
‘Be that as it may,’ said Stratton, ‘what I’m interested in is what you and your colleagues were doing yesterday evening.’
‘I was here,’ said Gleeson. ‘Writing an article.’ He gestured towards a newspaper lying on the desk. Stratton saw that it was a copy of The Black and White News, and that the main headline was ‘The Coloured Invasion’.
‘I see,’ said Stratton, feeling that he couldn’t take much more of this. ‘Was anyone with you?’
‘I was here all evening, by myself. I took the dog out for a walk at about ten o’clock, and then I went to bed.’
‘What about your colleague Mr Knight? Where was he?’
‘I have no idea. You’ll have to ask him.’
‘Is he upstairs?’
Sensing that Gleeson was about to deny this, Stratton said, ‘Someone is. Unless that dog of yours can talk as well as bark.’
Gleeson sighed heavily. ‘I’ll fetch him. Whatever you may think, Inspector, we believe in the democratic process.’
Stratton looked over at the photograph of Gleeson in his Brownshirt uniform. ‘Really?’
‘Yes,’ said Gleeson with controlled exasperation. ‘Really. We are merely reflecting the views of a sizeable – very sizeable, I may say – percentage of the population. They may not be those who write for the newspapers or speak in Parliament, but their voices deserve to be heard. We don’t set out to make trouble.’
‘But,’ said Stratton, ‘you’ve clearly had trouble. You said you got the dog for protection.’
‘Yes, to prevent trouble.’
‘So you haven’t had any?’
‘Not yet, no. But it’s coming, Inspector. It’s bound to. The people of this country won’t stand for what’s happening.’
*
Eddy Knight, when he appeared a few minutes later, was a strikingly handsome man who looked to be in his early twenties, quite as heroically squared-jawed as Gleeson, with high cheekbones, dark-brown eyes and thick, caramel-coloured hair. He might, Stratton thought, have been a film star – pin-up boy for the white race – but his voice, a Cockney whine, shattered the illusion. ‘I don’t know nothing about any bloke called Johnson.’
‘Where were you yesterday evening?’
‘At the pub with me mates.’
‘All evening?’
‘From about seven o’clock.’
‘Which pub, and which mates?’
‘The General Smuts.’
‘It’s on the White City Estate, sir,’ said Dobbs.
Knight gave him a scornful look. ‘Yeah, course it is.’
‘And the names of your friends?’
Knight counted them off on his fingers. ‘Ronnie Mills, Gordon Baxter, Fred Larby, Tony Pearson … I think that’s all.’
‘What time did you leave?’
‘Closing time.’
‘And then?’
‘Then I went home.’
‘Where’s home?’
Knight reeled off an address on the White City Estate, which was a sprawl of boxy brick council blocks a couple of miles down the road.
‘Why aren’t you at work?’ asked Stratton.
‘Starting a new job next week.’
‘Where’s that, then?’
‘Whitham’s on Shepherds Bush Road. It’s a hardware shop.’
‘How long were you unemployed?’
‘Couple of weeks.’
‘Why did you leave your last job?’
‘Didn’t like working with blacks, did I?’
‘What are you doing here?’
‘Helping Mr Gleeson.’
‘Eddy is an active member of the League,’ put in Gleeson, who’d been hovering proprietorially during this exchange.
‘Dog handler, is he?’
‘He sometimes exercises the dog, yes.’
‘Walk it up Colville Terrace do you, Eddy? Take it into coloured people’s homes so you can threaten them?’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘You may not, Mr Gleeson,’ said Stratton, ‘but I think Eddy does, don’t you, Eddy? After all, if you’ve not been in work it’d be an easy way to earn some cash, wouldn’t it?’
‘I don’t work for Jews,’ said Knight.
‘Who said anything about Jews?’
‘You didn’t have to,’ said Gleeson. ‘Everybody knows what Perlmann’s up to.’
‘My uncle worked for him,’ added Knight, ‘and look what happened.’
‘Who’s your uncle?’
‘Bert Hampton. Got murdered in cold blood by a bunch of niggers after the rent money and your lot haven’t done nothing about it.’
‘I take it you have proof of this.’
‘Don’t need no proof. It’s obvious.’
*
‘God Almighty,’ groaned Stratton, easing himself gingerly into the uncomfortably hot car and immediately winding down the window. As if being sweaty and dispirited wasn’t enough, he also felt, in some irrational and not-quite-definable way, contaminated. Further questions to both Gleeson and Knight had been met with repeated assurances that neither man knew anything about Johnson’s murder and a lot of other guff about how they abhorred violence and would never dream of condoning such a thing, never mind actually taking part in it, etc., etc., and Stratton hadn’t believed a word.
‘Well,’ said Dobbs with gloomy satisfaction. ‘That’s democracy for you.’
Surprised, Stratton asked, ‘Would you prefer something else?’
‘Hitlerism, you mean? No, I bloody well wouldn’t. But what I mean is,
they’re entitled to say what they think, aren’t they?’
‘Yes, they are.’ Except, thought Stratton, that they hadn’t – not even the half of it.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
‘What a splendid idea!’
The Honourable Mrs Virginia Rutherford had so much of the girls’ boarding school about her that Stratton couldn’t quite believe she hadn’t said that it was a ‘wizard’, or even a ‘ripping’ idea. Not that he had any notion of what the idea actually was – the noise level in the room made it impossible to hear anyone who wasn’t standing right next to you. Whatever it was had been proposed by a fat, earnest-looking individual in a crumpled suit, who’d been introduced as Malcolm Watson, councillor for North Kensington. His voice was quiet, whereas the Hon. Virginia had the sort of jolly bray that would have carried across a hockey field. She was a large, untidy woman of forty-five or thereabouts, almost as tall as he was, with broad shoulders already stooped from a lifetime of trying to make herself seem smaller. Her clothes, though undoubtedly expensive, were decorated with a lot of fussy details that seemed to emphasise, rather than diminish, her size. She was friendly in a clumsy, self-mocking way that made Stratton think she must have been teased a good deal in the dorm and decided that pre-emptive measures were the best form of defence. He had not, as yet, been able to discover her reason for being at the gathering, which was taking place in a drab function room in a building of tattered Edwardian grandeur near the town hall. Various attempts had been made to give the place a festive air – potted palms scattered about the perimeter and coloured streamers hanging from the handful of subfusc oil paintings that adorned the walls. There was a table equipped with various bottles and another, next to it, with plates of what Stratton thought were probably fish- and meatpaste sandwiches and bowls of potato crisps. White-jacketed waiters were weaving their way through the crush proffering trays with glasses of sherry and – to Stratton’s relief – half-pints of beer.
Watson started talking again. Stratton, momentarily dropping the pretence of being able to hear, allowed his eyes to wander round the room. Although two of the three large windows were open, the lack of any sort of breeze meant the place was like a Turkish bath. Watson, Stratton noted, was having a particularly bad time. There were twin pouches of sweat under his eyes, more sweat was trickling down from among the thin wisps of reddish hair on the top of his head, and he kept pushing back his glasses, which slid repeatedly down his nose.
‘We’re going to make it a social occasion,’ the Hon. Virginia was saying. ‘We’re having it in a proper local place – a basement club – so that we can meet people on their home turf, as it were. Really get below the surface, see everyone behaving naturally, just as they normally do.’ She sounded like an anthropologist enthusing about some just-discovered far-flung tribe. ‘I’ve said I’ll look after the refreshments. What do you think, Inspector?’
She turned to Stratton, mouth momentarily open. She had a smear of lipstick on her top teeth and he found the sight of it oddly touching. ‘An excellent idea,’ he said, wondering what it was he’d just endorsed. Some sort of party, by the sound of it. Letting his eyes roam about the room once more, he noted that the ratio of male-to-female was about fifty-fifty, with the talkers tending to be men and the listeners, women. In the last hour, he’d been introduced to a fair few of them by Matheson. The men seemed to be mostly youth-welfare officers, NSPCC workers and the like, and the women, members of voluntary committees. Stratton spotted Matheson himself in the company of one from – he was pretty sure – the Family Welfare Association. Both of them were paying close attention to the chap from – he thought – the probation service.
Catching the words ‘rent tribunal’, Stratton leant forward and strained his ears to hear what was being said. ‘Do you realise,’ said Watson, ‘that Mr Perlmann owns a hundred and forty-seven properties in the area? He gets the money to buy them by charging these exorbitant rents, of course, and the conditions are terrible – people living like animals – but it’s an uphill struggle getting them to the tribunals and the Council won’t act unless the complaint is brought by the tenant himself. I suppose one could try reasoning with the likes of Mr Perlmann, although I can’t imagine there’s much of a “better nature” there to appeal to.’
The Hon. Virginia, who had acquired a large pink blotch on both cheeks during this speech, said, ‘As matter of fact, I do know Mr Perlmann. Not well, of course,’ she added hastily, ‘but my husband is a member of his club. I’m going along there after this, to meet him. Perhaps you gentlemen would like to come with me?’
‘I hardly think that would be appropriate,’ said Watson. ‘For someone in my position, I mean.’ Stratton thought he detected a wistful note in the man’s voice, which provoked a memory of something said to him years ago by Colonel Forbes-James: ‘These principled Socialist types are all the same – give them lunch at the Ritz and they’ll eat out of your hand.’
‘Yes,’ said Stratton, ‘I can see that might be a bit awkward …’ On the other hand, he was buggered if he was going to pass up an opportunity to view Perlmann in his natural surroundings. ‘But,’ he finished, ‘I’d like to come, if I may.’
‘Oh, yes.’ The Hon. Virginia’s pinkness, now apparently due to pleasure rather than unease, had spread to reach her ears. ‘I’ll ask DS Matheson if he’d like to join us, shall I?’ she added.
Watson’s attention was claimed by a brisk, unsmiling woman from the Marriage Guidance Council with a very tight and – judging by the faint ammoniac fumes emanating from her head – very recent perm. Turning away from the two of them, the Hon. Virginia said conspiratorially, ‘I’m rather new to all this, as I expect you’ve gathered. But it is so wonderful to feel that one might be able to make a difference to people’s lives.’
Not only people’s lives, thought Stratton; her own, too. He felt drawn to her – not by any physical attraction, but by how open and guileless she was.
‘It’s like this super idea of Mr Watson’s,’ she was saying rather breathlessly, ‘for a get-together with our coloured friends. I mean, it’s all very well to say, “Love thy neighbour,” but one has to get to know him first, doesn’t one? Of course, it won’t solve the problem of overcrowding, or –’ she lowered her voice – ‘the immorality – brothels and girls on the streets and so forth – but all the same …’
Listening to her talk, Stratton found himself imagining what her life must have been like and thought he could see why someone like her would be drawn towards the oppressed, and especially oppressed outsiders. Noblesse oblige must be part of it, but also, he imagined, a desire to be freed from the shackles of her upbringing.
Suddenly she gave a little cry and, sticking out a hand, caught the arm of a woman who was making her way past them. ‘Here’s someone you absolutely must meet, Inspector!’
‘Hello, Mrs Rutherford.’
‘This is Mrs Jones, Inspector. She does the most wonderful work on the Care Committee, and—’
The rest of the sentence was lost in a roar of laughter from somewhere behind him. The Hon. Virginia carried on talking animatedly, but even when the laughter died down, Stratton wasn’t taking in the words. Mrs Jones had deep brown, almond-shaped eyes with long lashes, and waves of black hair that framed an oval face with a fresh, slightly suntanned complexion. She wore a simple frock of a creamy-yellow colour, which perfectly suited her slender curves, but then, Stratton thought, anything would have suited her. Conscious that not only was he staring at her but he hadn’t actually spoken yet, he put out his hand. ‘Ted Stratton, from Harrow Road Station. Pleased to meet you.’
‘Fenella Jones.’ She wore no gloves, and her palm felt soft and cool against his. He wanted it to stay there forever.
Forcing himself to let go of her, he said, ‘That’s an unusual name.’ Oh, God. What an idiot! She must have heard that hundreds, if not thousands, of times.
Her smile, which had been in place before, but in a sociable, pleased-to-meet-you sort of way,
widened into warm intimacy. She’s just being polite, he told himself, and anyway, she’s married. The Hon. Virginia had just said as much, hadn’t she?
‘… so I think my mother must have seen it in a book or something and persuaded my father – he died when I was quite young, so I never had a chance to ask him about it …’ Stratton was too busy watching her eyes and mouth to get more than the gist of this. She had a London accent – not Cockney or plummily ruling class, but somewhere in the middle. His gaze must have made her self-conscious, because, still talking, she put her left hand up to brush an imaginary hair from her cheek, and Stratton saw that she wore no ring. ‘… but I don’t remember his ever calling me by my full name, just “Fen”, which made me feel like a sheepdog or something.’
But you’re lovely, Stratton wanted to say. Instead – because she’d stopped talking and was now looking at him with slight perplexity – he said, ‘I’ve never—’ just at the same time as she said, ‘I’m sorry—’
The Hon. Virginia, whose existence Stratton had entirely forgotten, cut in here with, ‘Well, I’m sure you two will have heaps to talk about, and there’s someone I really must speak to, so …’ She tailed off and disappeared into the crowd.
Fenella laughed – a proper laugh, not a social trill. ‘Oh dear. What were you going to say?’
‘Just …’ Stratton, who was experiencing some difficulty breathing properly – which must surely be due to the heat of the room – pulled himself together. ‘Just that I’ve never seen anybody who looked less like a sheepdog. I should know,’ he added. ‘I was brought up on a farm.’
‘Oh.’ Clearly embarrassed, Fenella said, ‘I’m sorry. I wasn’t … you know, fishing.’
‘I didn’t think you were,’ said Stratton, feeling fractionally more in control of the situation. ‘But it’s true.’
