by Mark Dawson
“This is the life,” Joseph said, reclining into the generously padded chair. “Ain’t it?”
“I’ll say it is,” Edward agreed.
He looked around at the other patrons. Money was everywhere, almost tangible. The furnishings, the clothes, the exquisite drinks and food, the tiny details that were evocative of the very best quality, he closed his eyes for a moment and allowed himself to sink into it all.
“Are you alright, Doc?”
“Never better,” Edward said with a smile. This was what he wanted, he thought. All of it and everything. He wanted it more than anything else in the world.
23
THEY HAD PARKED THE CAR a hundred yards away from the entrance to the depot. It was a stolen drag, taken from Islington earlier that day. Jack McVitie had slipped a flexible strip inside the space between the window and the frame until he found the lock and popped it open. Easy. He had picked up Billy Stavropoulos earlier and now both of them sat waiting, their hands gloved and with their balaclavas in their laps. They were in Dalston, parked beneath a gaslight. Billy was staring at his Pools coupon, referring to the newspaper he had spread across the dashboard, “competitors’ hints,” his forehead creased with concentration and indecision. What a mug, McVitie thought. Those things never pay out.
“Look at this place,” Jack said, glancing out at the desolate streets. “I weren’t born too far away from here. What a bloody awful hole. I couldn’t wait to get out.”
Billy put the coupon down. “It’s no bloody good. I can’t concentrate.”
“Still thinking about him?”
“He’s a liability.”
Jack chuckled hopelessly.
“Ain’t funny. Why’s Joseph bringing him out for this?”
“You can’t deny he’s been better.”
“You keep defending him!”
“I’m not, I’m being straight––he’s been better.”
“Ah, bollocks.”
“He has. Admit it, Billy, it won’t kill you. I don’t know why you’ve got such a thing for him. He’s hardly a bad chap.”
Billy grunted. He wasn’t going to admit any such thing. He took off his gloves, took a cigarette from the packet on the dash and lit it.
“I reckon we were a bit harsh on him,” Jack said. “He’s alright. Can’t argue he’s a bit square. Quiet type. But he’s not a bad bloke.”
Billy screwed up his nose. “He’s a stuck-up bastard.”
Jack laughed. “That’s a bit unfair.”
“He is. That attitude.”
“He’s just quiet––what you’d call a thinker. You can tell.”
“He’s a thinker, alright––thinks he’s better than the rest of us. His head’s right up his arse. You know he was at university before the war? University.” Billy mouthed the word as if it were something distasteful. “Makes sense, though, don’t it? He’s got that way about him, the way he looks at people like us like we’re something to be scraped off the bottom of his shoe. All high and mighty and all that.”
Edward was the first bloke Billy had ever met who’d been to University. Like Jack and Joseph, he’d only stayed in school as long as he absolutely had to and, even then, he’d bunked off more than he was there. Life wasn’t all about books and blackboards and exams, least not his kind of life. He’d given himself a proper education, taught himself the things he needed to know: how to dip a wallet from a man’s pocket without him knowing; how to hide a razorblade in the peak of your cap, how to use it to slash at a man’s face; how to smash a window without making a sound; the best way to hoist gear from a shop.
Billy slipped his gloves back on and squeezed the wheel. Fabian. The cowson had been involved in the plotting and planning of this particular job ever since Joseph had suggested it: checking out the route, the best time to go through with it, the fastest way back to the lock-up, mapping it out, working out the traffic lights and the bottlenecks where the traffic might get jammed. Two days solid of sorting everything out. Jack was right: Edward was one of life’s planners. Billy was more like Joseph, more of an impetuous type of fellow, the get-in-and-get-out type, more doing, less thinking. He knew his strengths, he knew his weaknesses and he was happy with where the line was drawn.
Jack wound down the window and flicked the dog-end into the breeze. “Can’t say I mind him being along. You go on a job with a thinker, you’re less likely to get pinched––simple as.”
“Don’t mean I got to like him.”
“No, it doesn’t,” Jack sighed. There was no point in arguing. The headlights of a van gleamed off the windscreen. “Speak of the devil.”
The van parked up the road ahead of them. It flashed its headlights.
“Alright, then? Let’s get started.”
The two of them went around to the boot of the car and took out a long pair of boltcutters and two crowbars. They pulled their balaclavas down over their faces and jogged briskly to the depot. It was a small warehouse, set back from the road by a narrow yard, access prevented by a solid pair of padlocked iron gates. Joseph, similarly attired, was waiting for them there. Edward was in the van. There was no need to speak; they had been over the plan and they knew what they each had to do. Jack raised the bolt cutters so that the jaws clasped around the padlock and squeezed the arms together. The lock cleaved in two, dropping to the ground, and Joseph pushed the gates apart as Jack hurried through. The depot had a shuttered door for loading and unloading goods, secured with two padlocks that were fixed to clasps on the ground. They took the crowbars and jammed them into the locks, bracing against them until they popped open.
Edward started the van and reversed it into the yard so that the rear was lined up with the shuttered doors that were used for loading and unloading goods.
“Quickly,” Joseph called.
Jack ran to the doors and took a key from his pocket. They had been given the original by the member of staff at the depot who had proposed the job––in return for a cut of the profits––and had copied it overnight. Jack unlocked the shutters and heaved them up. The depot was storing fur coats and mink stoles. The place was practically full of them. They were brand new, still wrapped in their plastic dust sheaths.
“Oi!” The shout came from behind them. “What’s your game?”
A security guard was shining a torch at Jack. He hadn’t seen the others, and so he didn’t notice as Billy stalked behind him and swung his crowbar across the back of his knees. His legs buckled beneath him and he fell backwards.
“Alright, alright,” he said, raising his hands in surrender.
Joseph knelt next to him and put a hand on his shoulder. “We’re helping ourselves to the gear here. Play nice and we’ll be on our way. Don’t be silly and you’ll be fine. There’s no need for you to get hurt.”
“I won’t do nothing,” the man said.
“That’s good. We’ll be as quick as we can.”
They hurried into action, taking the coats from their rails and tossing them into the back of the van. Twenty, then twenty-five, then thirty. Eventually, there was no more space. Billy shut the doors.
“Well done,” Joseph said to the guard. “That’s that––we’re finished.”
The man looked unhappy.
“What is it?”
“You can’t leave me like this.”
“What? You ain’t hardly even been touched.”
“That’s what I mean––you have to give me a black eye.”
“You want a black eye?”
“It can’t look like I co-operated with you, can I? The boss needs to think I put up a scrap. He’ll think I was in on it and he’ll give me my cards. I’ve got a wife and a nipper to feed. I need this job.”
“You want me to hit you?”
“Just––you know, just a black eye.”
“If you say so.” Joseph struck him, quite hard, a left hook that dropped him to his knees. Billy whooped, laughing, and before any of them could stop him he swung a kick into the man’s gut. He fell
onto his side, gasping, and Billy kicked him twice more. “How’s that?” he said, “good enough for you?”
“Whoah!” Jack laughed, surprised.
Billy kicked him again.
“Billy!”
“No names!” Edward shouted.
“He said he wanted it to be convincing––it’s what he wanted. I’m doing him a favour.” Billy swung a kick into the man’s head and a plume of blood spewed out and splattered across the ground.
“Enough!” Edward said, grabbing him and pulling him back out of range. “Jesus, man––you’ll bloody well kill him.”
He squared up to Edward. “Get your filthy hands off me.”
“Back off,” Joseph called sternly.
Billy shrugged Edward aside and laughed.
Edward knelt down by the guard’s side. He was bleeding from the mouth but the blood was from a badly cut lip, and not internal. He was conscious, but woozy.
“Is he alright?” Joseph asked.
“He’ll live.” Edward propped him against the side of the building and followed the others back to the road. “You’re a bloody fool!” he called after Billy.
“Ah, piss off.” He got into the car and Jack slipped in next to him.
“That was a bit over the top,” Jack said.
“Don’t you start.”
“I’m not having a go––I’m just saying.”
“See what I mean, though? About Fabian? The bloke ain’t got no balls.”
Jack started the engine. He didn’t reply.
“Let’s get off,” Billy said. “I feel like a drink.”
24
EDWARD WATCHED AS JACK MCVITIE adjusted his trilby. He was trying not to show his excitement as the dealer dealt another queen on the river. McVitie had played his hand slowly, carefully making sure Billy and Edward followed him to the last round of betting. They had, and he pushed half of his chips into the middle of the table.
Edward paused, making an assessment of the cards and his chances.
“So––what are you doing, Doc?” Jack said. “In or out?”
“I’m in.” He pushed the rest of his chips over the line.
McVitie turned to Billy. “You in or out?”
Billy made a show of deliberation. “You’re bluffing.”
“You best call me then, hadn’t you?”
“Fine. I’m all in.”
Jack laughed. He pushed the rest of his stack over the line, too.
They were flush, and they were enjoying themselves. This was a Costello place, several large rooms above a shoe-shop. Part-spieler, part-brothel. It was one of the more established joints in Soho. The dividing wall between two rooms had been knocked down and a baccarat table installed. A roulette wheel was next to that, together with a couple of tables for poker and chemin de feu. A mirrored bar had been fitted at one end of the room, with black market spirits hanging upside-down in optics. The bar was crescent-shaped, lit from beneath, with coloured Venetian glasses stacked on glass shelves. A chandelier hung from the ceiling and the windows were covered with thick, expensive Moroccan drapes. The clientele entered through a side-door on the street where they were met by a suited doorman and ushered up a bare staircase into the room. A door at the other end of the room led to three bedrooms. They were reasonably furnished. That was all that was required; after all, the guests did not stay long.
Smoke hung heavy in the gloom. There were ten around the table: Jack, Billy, Tommy, Joseph and Edward, four local businessmen and Lennie Masters, the perpetually-glowering thug that Edward had met the first time he had visited Halewell Close for Chiara’s birthday.
Edward settled back into his chair and waited for the last player to fold his hand. He was in an excellent mood. Ruby Ward had visited the lock-up and assessed the coats they had stolen that morning. Edward had discovered that he was much more than the face of the Costello’s automobile business: he was their main fence, using the car showroom as a legitimate front to launder their dirty money and to distribute the booty with which they fed the black market. They already knew that the coats cost forty pounds each in Mayfair, and they had thirty of them. Ruby had offered twenty apiece. He would sell them for thirty, but retailing the goods entailed the biggest risk and so no-one begrudged him his mark-up.
The adrenaline of the heist receded and, as it did, the four of them had been filled with exhilaration that they had successfully pulled off the job. It was something different from the burglaries. They were diversifying. Edward, too, felt more optimistic for his own prospects than he had for many years. The afternoon at the Ritz had underlined it for him: he was starting a new life. Goodbye to the deprivations of his return, the ignominy of begging the state for aid, the foul garret and his grasping landlord and the shameful prospect of pawning his things so he could afford to eat. He felt as he imagined emigrants felt when they left their problems behind them in some foreign country, discarded their old friends and relatives and past mistakes, setting sail for Australia, or America, and the promise of something better. He had felt this way before but he had been negligent then and, eventually, he had had no choice but to burn that life and exchange it for another unsatisfactory one. Now he would do it again. It was a chance to clean his slate.
He looked around the table. The five of them looked swell. His ratty old demob suit was a distant memory and now he wore a pale blue silk shirt with a Barrymore roll collar and a burgundy silk tie, the sort worn by Adolphe Menjou, the American actor. His shoes were hand-made from a shop in St. James’ that catered to crowned heads. They were made from wild boar, were bright yellow under the instep and they cost ten guineas. His suit was double-breasted, powder blue and cut in the American style. He looked and felt a million dollars.
Billy Stavropoulos had a large cigar clamped between his teeth. Edward looked at him, sitting there like the cock of the walk, and had the same anxious thoughts again. He was not the least bit contrite about his behaviour that morning. He’d made a joke of the beating he had meted out, laughing at the guard’s request that he should be marked and suggesting that he would have no trouble now in persuading his employers of his innocence. He’d get a raise, he reckoned, on account of the fight he must have put up. Edward thought Billy was hideous. He was cruel and unpleasant, uneducated even by the standards of the others, untroubled by the faintest shred of culture. If there was a potential impediment to his plan then he, undoubtedly, was it. There was a feral cunning to him, a natural wariness so that Edward knew he would always have to be watchful when he was around. He would never be able to truly relax. Billy made another crack about the morning’s work and looked around the table, gawking at the others to ensure that they found it amusing. Add a needy insecurity to his emotional make-up, Edward thought. The man was horrid from his head to his toes.
Lennie Masters chuckled at Billy’s joke, baring a yellowed set of teeth. Joseph smiled with a forbearing expression and Edward realised that he had come to accept the extremities of his behaviour. It was “just Billy,” he had explained by way of explanation earlier. He had “always been like that.” That really was not good enough so far as Edward was concerned. They were already taking significant risks and it made no sense to him to tolerate behaviour that made the risk worse. If he had been in control, that would be something that he would not allow. Billy’s behaviour was clumsy, stupid, dangerous and unnecessary. He knew he would have to discuss him with Joseph and he wondered how best to do that without annoying him. Billy was an old friend, after all. His oldest. Edward was new to the scene and knew it. It was difficult.
The bets were called, hands were folded. Billy, Jack and Edward were the last men standing.
“Let’s see your hand, then,” Billy said to Jack.
Jack gleefully laid the cards on the table. “Three Queens,” he said.
Edward had a pair of jacks, and he hadn’t played them well at all. Jack’s trio beat him. “Damn,” he said. “I’m out.”
Jack reached across the table for the pile of ch
ips.
Billy raised a hand. “Hold on, my old mate,” he said.
“Piss off, Bubble––you ain’t never beating that.”
“Sorry,” he said with a grin that said he wasn’t sorry at all. “I am.” He put his cards face up on the velvet. “Full boat, kings over tens.”
A full house? Edward chuckled. Billy had played them both like a cheap fiddle.
Joseph and Lennie, long since out of the hand and undamaged, could afford to laugh. Jack and Edward were out of chips. It was just Billy, Joseph, Lennie and one of the businessmen left in the game.
Edward and Jack stepped away from the table and delivered their empty glasses to the bar.
Edward had quizzed Joseph about Jack McVitie as they made their way across Soho to the club. He had been involved with Joseph almost as long as Billy had. He had been born in Islington, and had had a difficult childhood, dropping out of school at an early age and falling into petty crime. He met Joseph in borstal in 1936 when both boys were twelve. Joseph had been sent down for burglary, Jack for stabbing another boy in the back with a pair of scissors. The two endured their inside year together, and, when they were released, they started thieving. Then, Joseph had gone to war while Jack had paid a dodgy quack to sign him off with asthma. He had spent the duration robbing whatever he could get his hands on and feeding the black market, but it had been hard graft and he had been glad to get cracking again with Joseph once he got back from the fighting. He was six foot two, heavily built, and crippled by vanity. He kept his balding thatch covered with his ubiquitous hat and had pushed a broken glass into the face of the last bastard who made a joke about it. That had done the trick. The subject hadn’t come up since.
