London Noir

by Cathi Unsworth

  BY MAX DÉCHARNÉ

  King’s Road

  Chelsea, July 1977.

  They found him in the pedestrian underpass beneath the northern end of the Albert Bridge, a short walk down Oakley Street from the King’s Road. He’d obviously been given a thorough kicking, and there was an orange shoved in his mouth, completely blocking the passage of air. Tied up like something in a butcher-shop window.

  Didn’t look like he was bothered, though. He’d been dead for a good few hours already.

  There wasn’t much about it in the local papers, but you could tell the police thought they were onto something. They’d been seen nosing around at Seditionaries the following afternoon, flicking through the racks, checking out the Cambridge Rapist T-shirts, clutching copies of the NME as if they were going to stumble over a clue in among the usual snarky jokes and record reviews. Who knows, maybe they thought they had, because there they were again later that day, looking very out of place at the rear of the spiky-haired crowd in the Man in the Moon watching Adam and the Ants.

  Nosed around. Asked a few questions. Lowered the tone of the place. Something about bondage. Yeah, well, officer, what can I tell you? There’s a lot of it about …

  Didn’t look like the gig was their kind of scene. They left halfway through the headliner, X-Ray Spex.

  The following Saturday it was hot as hell. Usual collection of punky scufflers hanging around outside Town Records. Watching the passersby. Opening cans. Wandering off to check out the stalls at Beaufort Street Market. Keeping an eye out for the Teds or the Stamford Bridge boys. Regular King’s Road scene that summer, ever since the Jubilee violence had flared up—Punk Rock Rotten Razored, all the tabloid column inches stoking the flames. “Pretty Vacant” was heading up the charts while “God Save the Queen” was just on its way down, but Boney M and ELP were both in the top ten, and the papers were saying that Warner Brothers had just issued a single featuring a group made up of the Sun’s page three girls. Finger on the pulse, as always …

  Davis got out of the tube at Sloane Square, picked up a copy of the Standard at the stall outside, and headed up past Smiths in the direction of the Chelsea Potter for a lunchtime pint. No word on that stiff they’d found the other week at the Albert Bridge, but now some posh woman had been discovered smothered to death in her bed in Cheyne Walk, just a few hundred feet away from the site of the last killing. Done in with a pillow. Police are refusing to comment on possible lines of enquiry. Yeah, sure. Unconfirmed reports of a message of some kind pinned to the body.

  Davis looked out from his window seat and watched the nervous out-of-town kids heading for Boy a few doors away, heads down, expecting trouble.

  Two killings in as many weeks. Not unusual for the Lower East Side, but this was Chelsea.

  He rolled up the Standard and put it in his pocket, digging out the tatty copy of the NME he’d been dragging around for the past couple of days. Front page headline all about violence in the punk scene: This Definitely Ain’t the Summer of Love. Turned to page forty-six and scanned the gig guide, looking for likely shows. Nothing much doing tonight. Pub-rock no-hopers in most of the clubs. Monday looked better—Banshees/Slits/Ants at the Vortex, or Poly Styrene’s lot on Tuesday at the Railway in Putney. All good research material. Getting an article together on the upcoming rash of punk films currently in the planning stages. Russ Meyer farting about in Scotland with the Pistols, trying to get Who Killed Bambi off the ground. Derek Jarman rounding up his mates for something called Jubilee. Then there was the bloke who’d put some money into the last Python film and was now backing a disaster-in-the-making called Punk Rock Rules OK.

  “Get out there and see what’s happening,” said his editor. Five thousand words on the punk film scene. Throw in a sidebar about Don Letts’s 8mm footage they’ll be showing at the ICA. Have a look round the clubs. Keep your eyes open. Nice little feature with a few shots of some of these punkettes in fishnet stockings and ripped T-shirts. Play up the punch-ups with the Teddy Boys as well. Sex and violence. Must we fling this filth at our kids? Blah, blah, blah … Get a quote from that GLC nutter, Brooke-Partridge, the one who reckons most punk rockers would be improved by sudden death. Is this the future of the British film industry? The usual bollocks, you know the form …

  So there he was, knocking back a few pints in the Chelsea Potter, waiting to interview some idiot who claimed to be getting a script together about punk, but whom none of the bands or the managers on the scene that he’d spoke to had ever heard of. Probably a wasted afternoon, but what the hell. Even if the guy turned out to be a complete dingbat, he might provide some comic relief. A few stupid quotes. Ten years of interviewing some of the “giants” of European cinema for the magazine and listening to all their pompous arty bullshit had taken its toll. Egomaniacs, the fucking lot of them. Fellini’s 8, Fellini’s Roma, Fellini’s talking out of his arse … Give him an out-and-out chancer or a total loser any day of the week. At least they might be funny.

  In any event, the guy was a no-show. Two hours late and nothing doing, he was three pints down and had read both papers cover to cover, winding up back at that murder report in the Standard. Smothered to death sometime yesterday? Let’s check out the scene. Mildly pissed but coherent, he pushed through the door and headed west along the King’s Road. Turned left at Oakley Street, down past Scott’s old house, with someone playing Unicorn by Tyrannosaurus Rex out of an upstairs window nearby, then round the corner to where Rossetti had kept wombats and peacocks in his Cheyne Walk back garden a decade before they even built the Albert Bridge.

  Bored-looking copper on guard outside, bolting the door after half of Aintree had scarpered. Davis dug through his wallet and pulled out the press card he hardly ever used, knowing full well that it meant damn-all to most people. Still, you never knew.

  “Afternoon, officer … Nothing much left to see, eh?” Offered the copper a fag but he turned it down. “Heard there was a note pinned to the body …”

  “That’s right. Not that it helps much.”

  “Guess he’s hardly likely to have left his home phone number …”

  “Sounded like a quote from a book or something.”

  “Oh yes?”

  “They’ll be putting out a statement this afternoon, so there’s no harm in saying …”

  “Saw it, did you?”

  “Some people think little girls should be seen and not heard …”

  July 21. Hadn’t been a bad week. He’d seen the Only Ones at the Speakeasy on the Saturday. The Adverts and 999 at the Nashville on Monday, then that new bunch of Australians, the Saints, down in Twickenham at the Winning Post. Talked to a lot of people—punters, groups, managers. Bernie Rhodes refusing to let him talk to the Clash. Miles Copeland trying to convince him that some desperate bunch of ageing hippies calling themselves the Police were actually a punk band. Same old story. He’d also gone back to Chelsea again, to the Royal Court this time. Alberto y Los Trios Paranoias and their punk rock musical Sleak! with the annoying bloody exclamation mark on the end. The coppers were still sniffing around the scene, chasing some supposed connection with the two murders. As if killers are so eager to be caught they go around leaving clues, just like in the films.

  Davis was wandering up the King’s Road with a photographer in tow, looking for likely faces in the right gear who could help decorate the article. Fishnet stockings, the man wanted. Ripped T-shirts. Okay then. Sure, they’d already been down to the Roxy, but that was full of tourists—not like in Czezowski’s day back in the spring. Ever since the Roxy live album had come out a few weeks back, you couldn’t move down there for bandwagon-jumpers. Mind you, if today was any indication, the King’s Road was suffering from the same disease. It was like a lot of people had been telling him at shows all week: Half the real punks had already bailed out of the scene, and the plastics were moving in. Still, the editor wanted photographs …

  Saw a couple of likely looking prospects outside the Chelsea Drugstore, on the
corner where Royal Avenue met the King’s Road. Bought them a can of beer, slipped them a quid each, and they said it was cool to photograph them for ten minutes or so. Davis let them get on with it and wandered off a few yards away to sit in the sun. Before you knew it, more police, uptight about the camera.

  Asking for ID. Getting aggressive. The photographer couldn’t see what the fuss was about. Wasn’t as if she was the first person trying to get some shots of punks on the King’s Road that summer. Turned out it wasn’t that at all. They’d found another body. Right there on Royal Avenue, early that morning. Milkman practically tripped over it.

  When he came over to see what the fuss was about, Davis noticed that it was the same policeman he’d talked to outside the Cheyne Walk house.

  “Aren’t you the press man who was asking me questions about the previous murder?” said the copper.

  He admitted that he was. Somehow, being seen taking photos a few yards away from the latest crime scene started the constable’s antenna twitching. Davis agreed that he had a few minutes spare in which to come along and talk to the detective sergeant.

  “Bit of a coincidence, isn’t it? What’s your interest in all this?”

  “In the first one, pure curiosity. I’m a journalist. I read about it in the paper. I was round the corner having a drink. Thought I’d take a look.”

  “And today?”

  “Shooting pictures of punks for a feature I’m writing. It’s for a film magazine. They want coverage of some upcoming punk movies. I’ve been going around checking out the scene.”

  The sergeant thought about that for a while.

  “So would you describe yourself as an expert on this type of music?”

  “Not an expert, no. I’m way too old for this. Most of the punters are about sixteen. But I’ve been at a lot of the shows these past couple of months. Talked to some of the bands involved. Research. Building up a picture. Why, is there a connection between the punk scene and the murders?”

  “That’s one possible line of enquiry.”

  The sergeant produced a clear plastic evidence bag and held it out for inspection. Visible inside was a sheet of paper with the usual blackmail lettering cut out from newspapers which had fast become a punk cliché through overuse. There was just one short phrase written on it:

  I wAnNA Be a sLAvE FoR yOU aLL

  “Mean anything to you?” asked the sergeant.

  “Found on the body, was it?”

  “If you’d just answer the question, sir …”

  “Yes, actually, it does.”

  “I see. And why might that be?”

  “X-Ray Spex.”

  “X-Ray Spex?”

  “The band …”

  “I know who they are, sir. I had the pleasure of seeing them perform several songs at the pub up the road a couple of weeks ago …”

  “All right then. Go down to Town Records, 402 King’s Road. Get a copy of a new album called Live at the Roxy. X-Ray Spex track called “Oh Bondage Up Yours.” I think you’ll find it’s part of the lyrics.”

  Early August. “I Feel Love” by Donna Summer blasting out from every pub jukebox. Pistols still at number four with “Pretty Vacant,” just one place down from “Angelo” by Brotherhood of Man. Check out the record reviews in the NME and the two main albums featured were the new ones from the Grateful Dead and Soft Machine. These were strange times. Davis was finishing up his evening getting plastered at the Roebuck. Usual mixed crowd. A couple of the staff from Seditionaries getting the evil eye from some of the older geezers who took exception to the swastikas on their clothes. Francis Bacon wandering in, looking for who knows what. Two famous actors in the corner, saying nothing, seemingly miserable, and a smattering of underage drinkers keeping their heads down. Davis spotted a few of the punks he’d interviewed at a Rezillos show in the Man in the Moon a few days previously, then went up and bought them a drink on expenses to see if they had any likely tips for the coming week.

  “How’s it going, lads? Still getting hassled by the boys in blue?”

  “Now and then. They were at the Spex gig at the Hope & Anchor the other day. Taking people outside. Going through your pockets. The usual crap.”

  “Did they say what it was about?”

  “Nah. Don’t need an excuse, do they?”

  Apparently not. He went off to get some more cancer sticks and then pushed his way out through the doors and into the street. It was still bloody hot, but at least the tubes would still be running.

  Now it was September. He’d finally finished that bloody punk films article, not that the editor had been particularly impressed. Easy to see why, really. The Pistols film with Meyer was shaping up to be a total fiasco and no one would even let him near that shoot—a sure sign of trouble. Nice idea on paper, but what would a director like that know about punk? Or care, for that matter … As for Jubilee—God help him—if he had to listen to much more of Jarman droning on about his plans to have some of the actors speaking in Latin, like his fucking unwatchable previous effort, then Davis would personally pay a group of King’s Road Teds to show up on the set and batter people to death with copies of the script. At least that German bloke who’d shown up in town from Munich making a punk documentary a week or so back seemed to have the right idea. Go to the clubs, talk to the fans, talk to some of the music papers and shops. Capture it as it’s happening.

  Still, what the fuck, the article was done now.

  As for the cops, they had rounded up some poor sod who was now “helping them with their enquiries.” Three killings in four weeks. Must have made all the happy little ratepayers in their Chelsea Mews houses start screaming bloody murder at their local MP. No wonder somebody’s been arrested. Can’t have that sort of behavior in the neighborhood. The Standard didn’t have much in the way of details, as per usual. Seems like the guy had been picked up after a show at the Nashville, following “information received.” According to the way it played in the press, it sounded like they were hoping that they’d taken some kind of dangerous lunatic off the streets. Innocent until proven guilty, of course …

  What the hell. After a summer in which all the tabloids had spent their time running stories which claimed that the Sex Pistols cut up dead babies onstage and that your average punk was just as likely to bottle you in the face as say hello, hardly surprising that the cops would believe almost anything of someone who wore all the bondage gear. Was he guilty? Well, it seemed like he was their best bet …

  Davis turned on the television, but there wasn’t anything on the news about the killings. New Faces on LWT. Couldn’t stomach that so he turned it over and got the last ten minutes of Dr. Who on BBC1, followed by Bruce Forsyth and the bloody Generation Game. Still, at least in the film slot there was a double bill later on of House of Dracula and Corman’s Fall of the House of Usher, kicking off just after 10 p.m. Saturday night, though. What did they expect? Sometimes it looked as if they felt that anyone over the age of about fourteen or under the age of sixty would definitely be out and about having a wild time, so why bother?

  He turned off the TV. All right then, if all else fails, do some work. Went to the fridge, dug out a beer, and sat down in front of the Olivetti manual typewriter. The neighbors never liked hearing the clatter it made, but then fuck ’em; their kids had been playing the sodding Muppet Show album all week at huge volume on what appeared to be continuous repeat, and when the father ever succeded in commandeering the record player it changed to the fucking Allman Brothers and The Fucking Road Goes On For-fucking-ever. All of it. Several times. In the same evening.

  Jesus wept.

  No, a little typing at 7 p.m. was hardly enough to repay them for that kind of abuse.

  The punk film article was done and dusted, due to hit the newsstands in a week or so, but he still had a piece to write for some arty French cinema magazine which was right up itself but paid surprisingly well. He supplied them with stuff written in English, which they then translated and printed in French. Who k
nows if they did a good job or not. He didn’t care, and no one he knew ever saw the stuff. Mostly they wanted pretentious toss of the worst kind, and he was happy to oblige, under a pseudonym. This time, though, he’d sold them on the idea of a subject that actually interested him. Still, better not run this one under his real name either, all the same. Okay, the magazine only sold about 20,000 copies a time, virtually all of them across the channel, but you never quite knew who might be reading it, putting two and two together.

  Another swig of beer. Light up a fag. In with a new sheet of paper. Here we go:

  CHELSEA ON FILM

  Next time you’re in London on holiday, take a walk down the King’s Road. Now notorious for the exploits of some of Britain’s new ‘punk rockers,’ it also has much to interest the student of film history.

  Did you know that Stanley Kubrick shot parts of A Clockwork Orange right here in the neighborhood? Try catching the underground to Sloane Square station, then walk down the King’s Road until you reach number 49, the Chelsea Drugstore. Malcolm McDowell’s character, Alex, picks up a couple of girls in the record shop here before taking them back to his flat for an orgy. Then, if you continue in the same direction up the road, turning left onto Oakley Street, you’ll come to the Albert Bridge. It’s here, in the pedestrian underpass which runs beneath the northern end of the bridge, that McDowell is given a severe beating by a gang of tramps toward the end of the film.

  While you’re there, look back along the Chelsea embankment about a hundred feet and you’ll see an imposing Georgian house which is number 16 Cheyne Walk. It was in one of the upstairs bedrooms that Diana Dors was smothered to death with a pillow in Douglas Hickox’s hugely entertaining 1973 horror film, Theater of Blood, starring Vincent Price as a homicidal Shakespearean actor.

  Retracing your steps back to the Chelsea Drugstore, turn off at the road leading down the side of it called Royal Avenue. Another fine Georgian house, number 30 Royal Avenue, was used as the location for Joseph Losey’s 1963 film, The Servant, in which Edward Fox treats his manservant Dirk Bogarde almost like a slave, until the latter starts to get the upper hand …