by M. J. Trow
Maxwell chuckled. ‘George Smiley, yes. George Blake, no.’
‘Who?’
Maxwell’s face straightened. ‘No, I’ve said too much.’
‘No.’ Shakespeare sat down opposite him. ‘No. Who’s this George Blake, man?’
Maxwell leaned towards him. ‘Burgess? Maclean?’ He might just as well have said Burgess Meredith.
‘Er …’
‘Spymasters,’ Maxwell whispered. ‘Recruited at Cambridge.’
‘And Alice …’
‘Working for them.’
‘Never.’ The Rasta pulled a flat ciggie out of his shirt pocket.
‘That’s what they said about the Krogers.’ Maxwell leaned back as bravely as he dared.
‘Who?’
‘I’m sorry, Mr Shakespeare,’ Maxwell said. ‘I thought you watched the news. The Krogers were your average, everyday couple. Folks next door types. Except that they were selling secrets to the other side.’
‘Yeah, but …’ Shakespeare was beginning to wish he hadn’t spent the best years of his life being shat on by teachers now. ‘What other side? I mean it’s all gone, innit? The Evil Empire.’
‘Oh, Lord, yes’ – Maxwell smiled, crossing his legs and cradling his knee – ‘the USSR has gone, Mr Shakespeare, but there’s still the CIS. And of course, China.’
‘Oh, yeah.’
‘Tiananmen Square.’
‘Right.’
‘I was there.’
‘Get away.’
Maxwell wished he could. The arch storyteller, the spinner of dreams, was getting in over his head. ‘Alice,’ he said, ‘tell me about Alice. You knew her.’
‘Oh, yeah,’ Shakespeare said, ‘Yeah, she lived here for … oh, four, maybe five months. Had the room upstairs.’
‘She posed as a trainee teacher?’
‘Yeah. English.’
‘Are you the landlord here?’
‘Nah, I collect the rent, that’s all. The owner is Mr Villiers.’
‘Was she regular with the rent – Alice?’
‘Oh, yeah.’ Shakespeare nodded. ‘Look, man, I need to see some sort of ID.’
Maxwell sighed again and rummaged in his inside pocket. ‘Here,’ he said.
Shakespeare looked at it. ‘Countdown,’ he read. ‘This is a credit card.’
‘I told you,’ Maxwell shrugged. ‘I’m a teacher.’
‘But …’
Maxwell leaned forward again. ‘Mr Shakespeare, I have to have a cover, don’t I?’
The light of realization dawned in the Rasta’s eyes. ‘Oh, yeah. Right.’
‘Alice was on a grant.’ Maxwell got his man back to the point.
‘A grant?’ Shakespeare sniggered. ‘Look, man, this is John Major’s fuckin’ England, know what I mean? A grant don’t buy shit.’
‘Indeed,’ Maxwell nodded. ‘So how did she pay her rent?’
Shakespeare winked. ‘Porn,’ he said.
‘Porn,’ Maxwell repeated.
‘And for that, you’ll need to see Mr Villiers. Frith Street. But look, man, ’mean – you’re not goin’ to mention my name, right? ’Cos it’s my fuckin’ kneecaps, know what I mean?’
‘A name like William Shakespeare?’ Maxwell frowned. ‘I’d find a name like that very difficult to remember.’
Soho is a circus within four circuses – Oxford, Piccadilly, Cambridge and St Giles. Its name, they say, comes from the hunting cries of the 18th century when bucks and blades raced each other over the watercourses that criss-crossed the edge of the parish of St-Martin-in-the-Fields. The film world had descended on Wardour Street in the wake of three centuries of arty-farty types who wrote poetry and music. But there were other elements in Soho, who catered for the London of the Night.
Maxwell left the tube in the twilight at Tottenham Court Road and turned right into Soho Square where the curious tower was all that was left of the Church of St Anne to remind the world of the lost gentility that had left for healthier places. Soho of a Friday evening was crawling with people who were of the superficial stamp of Peter Maxwell – middle-aged men wandering the lanes of love, the siren streets. The neon lights flashed before him – revue bars, girls, peep shows – jostling with the clash and clamour of China Town with its huge ornamental gate and the sleek, black cars of theatregoers. Maxwell was in the forbidden city.
He lingered a little longer than he should have looking for Gregory Villiers’ emporium and a gum-chewing piece of totty flagged him down. She lounged against the door-frame of a strip club that was all flashing light bulbs and floating plastic streamers.
‘’Ello, love,’ she winked at him, shifting her weight so that her hips swung provocatively and one powerful thigh showed even longer below the leather skirt.
‘Hello,’ Maxwell smiled.
‘What you looking for, then?’ she asked.
‘Gregory Villiers,’ he said.
The girl straightened, her hands on her belted hips. ‘You filth?’
That was twice in one day that Maxwell had been asked that. ‘No,’ he said, wiping his fingers on his jacket, ‘just mildly grubby. I need to talk to Mr Villiers about one of his girls.’
‘Oh, yeah?’ the girl chewed. ‘Who’s that, then? I might know her.’
Maxwell peered at the keeper of the gate. What was she under that purple eyeshadow, those blushered cheeks? Fifteen? Sixteen? ‘Have you finished your coursework?’ he asked.
She stopped chewing. ‘You what?’ Then a broad smile crossed her hard, insolent face. ‘Oh, I get it, Grandad. You’re into schoolgirls.’
Maxwell couldn’t resist a snigger. ‘Oh, yes,’ he said. ‘Everyday’
‘Well,’ the girl took his arm, ‘come on in, then. Third booth on the right.’ She placed her small hand with its glittering rings and purple nails against his chest below the bow. Her smile had gone.
‘That’ll be five quid. Up front.’
Maxwell ferreted in his pocket and produced a crumpled note.
‘I’ll give you ten if you tell Mr Villiers that Mr Maxwell would like to see him.’
The girl hesitated, then snatched the note. ‘All right,’ she said, ‘third on the right.’ And she was gone, leaving Maxwell alone in the semi-darkness.
From nowhere a large coloured man in a white T-shirt was standing in front of him. ‘Get your change here, squire,’ he said, all teeth and attitude.
‘Change?’ Maxwell frowned.
‘Look, man, you’re not telling me you ain’t done this before. It’s a quid a peep, all right. You feed the machine. Now, how many d’you want? Ten? Twenty?’
‘What do I get for my quid?’ Maxwell asked.
The coloured man blinked at him, looked him quickly up and down. ‘Bleedin’ ’ell, you ain’t done this before, have you?’ He jammed his fingers down on the till and the drawer slid open with a clash. ‘Let’s say five, shall we? We don’t want nobody havin’ a heart-attack on the premises.’ And he held out his hand for the note.
‘I just want to see Mr Villiers,’ Maxwell persisted.
‘Nah,’ the coloured man was pulling out five pound coins. ‘Take it from me, man, he’s not your type. You have a little shufty in number three, now. That’ll get your pecker up.’
‘Mr Villiers.’ Stubborn was Maxwell’s middle name.
‘All right.’ The coloured man raised both hands, ‘Felicity has gone to get him, but while you’re waiting, you might as well have some pleasure before business. Besides,’ he closed to his man, ‘if you’re looking for a particular girl, it might be that number three’s the one.’
‘No,’ Maxwell smiled sadly, ‘that’s not likely’
‘A fiver,’ the coloured man insisted, towering over Maxwell in the eerie blue light.
‘All right,’ Maxwell decided to buy some time, ‘a fiver.’ And he exchanged his note for the coins.
There was a small door ahead of him with a scratched star on the front and the number three below it. He pushed gently and found himself stand
ing in a narrow booth, lit by a single red bulb in the top corner. Raucous music blared through the wall facing him and a disembodied voice said, ‘You put your money in the slot, Granddad. To your right.’
Maxwell peered into the gloom and found it. As his first coin hit the mark, a grille flew open at eye level and he found himself staring into a small, well-lit room with mirrors on all its surfaces. An Asian girl in a blonde wig and plaits stood in a far corner, sucking an enormous lollipop. ‘Worst Shirley Temple I ever saw,’ Maxwell muttered to himself. The girl was all of thirty, but she wore white ankle socks, a short pleated skirt and a school blouse and tie. After a few seconds, she undulated around the room and Maxwell became aware of other slots in other doors giving other men the same view he had. What grabbed him most though was the face of the coloured man directly across the room from him, cheek by cheek with the girl at the doorway. They both stared intently at Maxwell.
The thirty-year-old Year Ten girl was peeling off her tie and ripping off her blouse as the grille slammed shut. Damn! Maxwell wanted to watch those two across the room as much as they clearly wanted to watch him. He fumbled with his second coin and the grille flew open again. The pair were still there, talking silently under the shrill blast of the taped jazz while the girl cavorted in the centre, swinging her large breasts to the music and rolling her tongue around the lolly. Then in the grille across the room, the girl’s face was replaced by a man’s: dark, swarthy, watchful. There was something about those eyes that Maxwell didn’t like. And he couldn’t look away.
The schoolgirl was in front of him now, in his way, jutting her nipples out at him, inviting him to suck her lolly. He waved her aside, but the grille snapped shut again and he found himself feeding the machine for all he was worth. The coloured man had gone from the far grille now and only the dark, hypnotic eyes stared at him, like Svengali to his Trilby, a cobra to its prey.
The girl had hauled herself up onto a frame Maxwell hadn’t noticed was there, bending her knees and lifting her skirt to reveal her skimpy white knickers. She leaned towards his grille. ‘Would you like me to do something sexy?’ she asked.
‘What?’ He was trying to see past her.
‘Anything you like,’ she purred, misunderstanding the tone of his question. ‘Have you got yourself out?’ She tried to peer into his cubicle, her hand stroking across the knicker elastic, sliding between her legs. Under her tense thighs he saw the dark eyes blink, close and vanish and the grille came down again.
He spun to the door, wrenching it open and collided with a fat man with a shiny bald head. ‘Here,’ Maxwell stuffed his remaining two pounds into the punter’s sweaty hand, ‘have one on me, but I wouldn’t accept her lolly if I were you. I’m not sure where it’s been.’ And he was out in the foyer, making for the stairs.
He found them faster than he intended, because the coloured man in the white T-shirt had grabbed his arm and had pushed him against the wall. Maxwell felt the world spin and the most indescribable nausea swept over him as he felt a boot in his kidneys. Then he was dragged down a corridor, his right cheek scraping on the flock wallpaper and he was thrown into a back room.
As he steadied himself in a desperate attempt to keep his feet, he was aware of a desk and, sitting beyond it his feet crossed over at the ankles on a level with Maxwell’s waist, was the man with the eyes.
‘I hear you’re looking for Gregory Villiers,’ the man said. He was the wrong side of fifty and even further the wrong side of sixteen stone.
‘That’s right.’ Maxwell tried to stand up, but the pain in his back wouldn’t let him. He was aware of the coloured man at his elbow.
‘And who might you be?’ the man with the eyes asked.
‘I might be the bloke who reports you to the police for GBH,’ Maxwell winced. He felt iron fingers yank back his hair and his neck all but snapped. With what little strength he still possessed, Maxwell clenched his fist together and swung sideways, catching his man in the ribs and knocking him off balance. The coloured man crashed against the wall, but bounced off it and came forward with eyes blazing.
‘Prince!’ the man with the eyes barked and the coloured man stopped like a frozen frame from a film, his jaw flexing, his fists still in the air. ‘Leave us now, will you?’ The accent was thick, but unplaceable. ‘Mr Maxwell and I want to have a little chat.’
‘We do?’ Maxwell’s eyes narrowed.
‘I’m Gregory Villiers’ – the man leaned forward over the desk – ‘won’t you have a seat, Mr Maxwell?’ Villiers tilted his head imperceptibly and Maxwell heard Prince leave. The Head of Sixth lowered himself gingerly to the padded plush.
‘Cigar?’ Villiers was doing his best to live up to the reputation of sleaze. Surely he wasn’t going to offer to make Maxwell a star?
‘No, thanks. If it isn’t a cliché, I’d like some answers.’
Villiers leaned back and lit a Havana for himself. ‘What do you think of Amrit’s act?’ he asked.
‘Who?’
‘The Lolita in booth three.’
‘Rather long in the tooth, I thought.’ Maxwell believed in calling a spade a spade.
‘Quite,’ he said. ‘It’s the law, of course. Vice. Not like the old days, Mr Maxwell. Half of C Division’d get in here of a night. Now they’re all squeaky-clean, wet-behind-the-ears kids. Now, look, I’m sorry Prince was a little … what shall we say, martial? … earlier. He’s got a heart of gold and was just obeying orders.’
‘Bit like Himmler,’ Maxwell beamed.
The impresario was fazed for a moment. ‘Yes,’ he grinned, coughing a little over his cigar and pointing it at Maxwell, ‘yes, that’s right. Very similar. Now, what can I do for you? Er … something special? Golden showers, perhaps? Trip to the farmyard?’
‘Alice Goode.’
Villiers blinked, the dark eyes for a moment lost, confused. ‘What’s that?’ he asked.
It was Maxwell’s turn to lean forward. ‘Not what, Mr Villiers,’ he said levelly. ‘Who. Alice Goode was a young lady. She’s dead now’
‘I don’t think I follow …’
‘She worked for you year before last, last year, whenever. Whether it was this dive stripping for weirdoes in French maid’s outfits or whatever, I don’t know’
‘How did you get on to me?’
‘The same way the police did,’ Maxwell told him.
‘The police?’ Villiers repeated. ‘No, you’ve lost me.’
‘I was told that Alice worked in Soho …’
‘It’s a big manor,’ Villiers shrugged.
‘… for Gregory Villiers,’ Maxwell finished his sentence. ‘Or are you going to tell me the phone book’s full of them?’
‘All right.’ Villiers could fence with the best of them. He’d been closed down three times by the Vice Squad. He employed the Met’s Obscene Publications as letter-openers for him. ‘Alice worked for me. But that was then. What are you talking about, dead?’
‘She was murdered,’ Maxwell told him.
‘Christ!’
There was something in the man’s tone that Maxwell hadn’t expected, hadn’t bargained for. ‘You didn’t know?’
‘So help me God.’ Villiers shook his head.
‘You don’t read the papers? Watch the news?’
‘Too depressing.’ Villiers blew smoke rings to the brown ceiling. ‘Violence and viciousness everywhere you look. And the economy! I mean, I like a laugh
‘They found her body four days ago. She’d been strangled.’
‘Jesus!’
‘When did you see her last?’
‘Alice? Christ knows. Where are we now? May? It must have been last spring – yeah, over a year ago.’
‘What did she do for you?’
‘For me?’ Villiers had suddenly tired of his cigar and stubbed it out on his silver ashtray. ‘Not a lot, personally. Too lanky. I like them more solid. She was desperate, she said, needed the money’
‘You put her in the booths?’
‘Na
h, she hadn’t got the temperament for that. No, Alice had a certain something. Don’t know what you’d call it. Charisma, I suppose. Couldn’t waste her talents on such a small turnover. She did some shoots.’
‘Shoots? You mean films?’
‘Yeah. With the late, great Pryce Garrison.’
‘Late? Great? Pryce Garrison?’ It wasn’t often Maxwell needed confirmation of nearly every word in a sentence.
‘All right,’ Villiers grinned, ‘so maybe he wasn’t so great. Still, ten inches isn’t bad, is it?’ He winked. ‘And his name wasn’t Pryce Garrison, either. It was Kenneth Winkler. But,’ he raised a triumphant finger, ‘he is late. That I do know. Died five months ago. Drove his car into a brick wall, the stupid shit.’ He shook his head.
‘People die in your business, Mr Villiers,’ Maxwell found himself observing.
The impresario scraped his swivel chair back slowly, ‘Which bring us to another point, Mr Maxwell,’ he said. ‘Business. For the last half-hour you’ve been in mine. Now, I’ve been generous. I’ve given you my precious time and some honest answers. Now it’s your turn to tell me, what’s your business? Private dick?’
That in itself was a rarity in Villiers’ business, ‘I’m a teacher,’ Maxwell admitted.
‘A teacher?’ Villiers started to snigger. ‘Well, then,’ he said, ‘you’ve got your own resources. Don’t know why you needed booth three.’
‘I didn’t,’ Maxwell told him. ‘I needed you.’
‘Sweet,’ Villiers said, but he wasn’t smiling. ‘But I don’t think I can help you any further, Mr Maxwell.’
‘The films,’ the Head of Sixth Form said, ‘what films was she in? Were they distributed? If so, where?’
But the interview was at an end. Villiers had nudged a button under his desk and Prince and a friend, equally black, equally massive, stood in the shadows by the door.
‘Would you show Mr Maxwell out?’ Villiers asked. ‘The side door, I think.’
Maxwell knew a brick wall when he saw one and he stood up, collecting his battered hat. ‘I hope, for Alice’s sake,’ he said, ‘you were more forthcoming with the police.’
‘I haven’t had a visit from the police in a month of Sundays,’ Villiers said. ‘They’re so squeaky clean these days, I think even crossing the threshold offends them. Goodbye, Mr Maxwell. Do call again if you change your mind about Amrit. She can do things with bananas that would make your eyes water.’
