Soho Ghosts (The Soho Series Book 2)

by Greg Keen

  ‘Better fuck off, then.’

  Farrelly wasn’t a natural negotiator. People either accepted his initial offer or suffered the consequences. The fuck-off option might also briefly be on the table. Before I could respond, there was a crash behind us.

  ‘Christ’s sake,’ Farrelly muttered.

  A guy had lifted a large disc off a machine and dropped it on the floor. Judging by the way he was loading an even larger weight, he didn’t intend to replace the first one on the rack.

  ‘Take a break,’ Farrelly instructed the boxers.

  He left ringside and walked across the floor of the gym. One by one, the other members stopped working out. The guy who had dropped the weight had settled on to the saddle of the machine and placed his hands on its horizontal bar.

  ‘Get up,’ Farrelly told him.

  ‘What?’ the guy said.

  ‘You heard me.’

  The bloke wasn’t quite as large as Mr Zit, but he had several inches on Farrelly. He positively towered over him. At a push, I’d have said he was six-four and eighteen stone. He dismounted the machine.

  ‘Can you read?’ Farrelly asked.

  ‘Can I what?’

  ‘Read,’ Farrelly repeated. ‘Can you read the English language?’

  ‘Yeah,’ the guy grunted. ‘I can read.’

  ‘Tell me what that says.’ Farrelly pointed to a sign on the wall: ALL WEIGHTS MUST BE REPLACED IMMEDIATELY AFTER USE.

  The guy shrugged and said, ‘I’ll do it when I’ve finished.’

  ‘You’ll do it now,’ Farrelly told him.

  The guy looked down at a forty-five-degree angle.

  ‘I said I’d do it later, granddad.’

  ‘Now,’ Farrelly insisted.

  The shoulders in the big guy’s neck tensed. ‘If you want the weight back on the rack, you’re gonna have to put it there yourself,’ he said.

  Every pair of eyes in the gym, including those of Christ and the black-faced lamb, was focused on the two men. What happened next amazed me.

  Farrelly backed down.

  ‘Fair enough,’ he said, and picked the weight up.

  The thick metal disc was the circumference of a bicycle wheel. Farrelly held it chest-high with both hands. He smiled at the guy. The guy smiled at him.

  The weight slipped from Farrelly’s grasp.

  No matter how butch you are, having twenty kilos of steel fall directly on your toes is going to be mortal fucking agony. The guy’s screams echoed around the vaulted roof of the gym. He fell to the floor and attempted to grab his crushed foot.

  Farrelly calmly replaced the weight on the rack. His victim’s screams morphed into sobs. Three of the other members gathered around him. Unless they had a syringe of morphine handy, there probably wasn’t much they could do to help.

  ‘Tell Carlos someone’s had an accident,’ Farrelly told a man who’d been training on a leg press. ‘He’s gonna need an ambulance.’

  The bloke nodded and left via the door I had arrived through.

  Farrelly stepped back on to the dais looking no more concerned than if he’d just broken off our conversation to take a piss. ‘You still here?’ he asked.

  ‘I can’t get near five grand, Farrelly. Is there no one else you can recommend? Not as good, obviously, but, you know . . . cheaper.’

  Farrelly looked at me intently and sniffed a couple of times. He transferred his gaze to the fighters. The guy in the red helmet was drinking from a taped bottle. His partner had removed his gloves and was adjusting his shorts.

  ‘How much you got?’ Farrelly asked.

  ‘Maybe a grand.’

  ‘Gary, over here a minute.’

  The fighter in the blue head guard crossed the ring. There was something familiar about his eyes but I couldn’t work out what it was.

  ‘This geezer’s called Kenny Gabriel,’ Farrelly said. ‘He’s a private detective and he needs a bit of protecting, which ain’t no surprise.’

  ‘Pleased to meet you, Mr Gabriel,’ the guy said, his voice muffled by the helmet.

  ‘Call me Kenny,’ I said to him.

  ‘Now, I know you ain’t done this kinda work before, Gary, but it’s two months ’til you fight again, so there’s no reason you shouldn’t earn yourself a few bob.’

  ‘You said I needed to put the hours in.’

  ‘I know what I said,’ Farrelly replied. ‘But it’s only a week and you’ve got ages to get ready for Saunders. This might not be a bad idea.’

  ‘Whatever you think’s right,’ the guy said, and removed his helmet.

  Forty years fell away in a moment.

  SIX

  The kid in the helmet was the spit of Farrelly. Not the Farrelly who ran a gym in Bethnal Green in 2016, but the Farrelly who had stood on the door of the Galaxy Club at the arse end of the seventies. His eyes were the same intense cobalt-blue. His hair was in a crew cut. His nose had a bump in the bridge. The vein in his left temple stood out in the same way Farrelly’s had when I’d first been introduced to him. Was the guy part of a military experiment? I imagined a platoon of Farrellys yomping across the desert chanting What’s your fucking problem? and You’re gonna get a twatting.

  ‘Are you feeling all right?’ Farrelly 2.0 asked me.

  ‘Just a bit dizzy,’ I said. ‘I’ll be fine in a minute.’

  ‘Would you like a glass of water?’

  ‘No, thanks. It’s passing.’

  Indeed, reality was beginning to reassert itself. The only glass that the seventies Farrelly had ever offered anyone was directly to the face. If there was a doctor turning out cloned versions, he hadn’t got the formula quite right. As my head cleared, I also realised that Code Name: Gary was five inches taller than his lookalike.

  ‘How about a cuppa?’ he suggested. ‘Carlos could make you one and stick a couple of sugars in it. Probably dig up a couple of biscuits too.’

  Another thing distinguishing Code Name: Gary from the imp of death was his accent. Farrelly sounded like Bill Sikes might have done if he’d been a bit more cockney. Gary was more Thames Estuary than Limehouse Basin.

  ‘Are you two related?’ I asked.

  ‘He’s my dad,’ Gary said. ‘We met for the first time last year.’

  ‘Did you know you had a son?’ I asked Farrelly.

  He shook his head. ‘Gary’s mum weren’t too keen on me meeting him.’

  This would have put her in the wise-woman category had she not been insane enough to mingle fluids with Farrelly in the first place.

  ‘When d’you want Gary to start?’ he asked.

  ‘Immediately.’

  ‘You mean tomorrow?’

  ‘Right now, if possible.’

  Farrelly gave me a sideways look. I’d deliberately withheld Billy Dylan’s name in case it pushed up the daily rate. I was about to confess the reason for urgency when Farrelly said, ‘He’ll need a couple of hours.’

  ‘How about we meet in the Vesuvius?’ I suggested.

  ‘That spieler in Greek Street? Thought it closed down.’

  ‘The new owner kept it open.’

  ‘Why did he do that?’

  ‘Because the V is a place of great cultural significance.’

  ‘It’s a shithole.’

  ‘Can’t it be both?’ I asked.

  Due to rush-hour traffic it took an hour to get from Bethnal Green to Greek Street. In the back of the cab, I conducted some research on Alexander Louis Porteus. According to Wikipedia, he had been booted out of Harrow at the age of fifteen for drinking and moral turpitude. He must have been a bright bugger as he’d still made it to Oxford.

  Shortly after Porteus’s graduation, his father died in a road crash and the young Alexander inherited a fortune. He spent a few years in the Alps, but worsening asthma put an end to his mountaineering exploits. Back in London, a brush with spiritualism led to a wider interest in the occult. So much so that, by the late twenties, Porteus had his own church near Broadstairs called the Temple of Selene.

>   The main tenet of the church had been to thyne own selfe be trewe. This was largely interpreted as do a shitload of drugs and bang anything that moves. Many of the disciples were third-tier bohemians and artists, and Porteus became a face in Soho. He bought a house in Dean Street and opened the bookshop in Cecil Court. The former was allegedly used for orgies, the latter raided several times by the authorities.

  And so it continued for most of the thirties and forties, during which time Porteus wrote several books on Magick, as he insisted on calling it. The most notorious was a novel titled The White Tower, which many scholars considered to be an alchemical treatise on the pursuit of immortality. It was rumoured that The White Tower was the book Jim Morrison had been reading at the time of his death. Hand in hand with this rumour was the one that Morrison wasn’t actually dead at all.

  Thickening the conspiracy stew was the fact that The White Tower had been privately published in Paris shortly before Porteus allegedly pegged it from cancer in 1947. That it bore the name William Gifford made no difference. Porteus was wanted by the authorities on a number of charges, and had been keen to remain anonymous.

  Photographs accompanied the Wikipedia entry. Two were of Porteus dressed in the robes of the Temple of Selene. They made him look a little camp, as though he were a minor character in a Gilbert and Sullivan production. The third shot was of a different order. It had been taken late in Porteus’s life, when his hair had gone and his face had become a fleshy ovoid. His eyebrows had run riot and his ears looked as though they had been inflated and might explode at any moment.

  All of which should have made Porteus look like what he was – a silly old duffer high on smack and his own self-regard. Lending the image a chilling aspect was a pair of hypnotic eyes that seemed to leer through the screen on my phone. When the cabbie pulled to a halt on Greek Street and announced that I owed him forty-six quid, I felt as though it had only been a couple of minutes since we’d left the gym.

  An Italian expat called Jack Rigatelli opened the Vesuvius club in 1968. Housed in a cellar, the club provided a bolthole for like-minded members to play cards until the early hours. Last year Jack Rig suffered a fatal heart attack. His brother, Antonio, had been intent on selling the building, but had since opted for the rental income from companies prepared to pay through the nose for a Soho address.

  The V’s ceiling is heavily stained from fifty years of fag smoke and the wall-mounted TV is old enough to be in the Science Museum. On a corkboard behind the bar are postcards from members on holiday in places as diverse as Florida and Fleetwood. Next to it is a jar of pickled eggs that predates decimalisation.

  I ordered a whisky and ginger ale from Whispering Nick. ‘ON THE SLATE?’ he asked after sliding the tumbler across the Formica surface.

  ‘Thanks, Nick. What’s the damage now?’

  ‘HUNDRED AND TWENTY-EIGHT POUNDS, THIRTY-FOUR.’

  A virus ruined Nick’s voice box when he was a kid. His hoarse croak is only audible in a quiet room. Any background noise and he needs his halter mic and speaker. As usual, the volume was cranked up to 11.

  ‘I’ll clear it soon, mate,’ I promised.

  ‘DON’T BOTHER ME NONE. I’VE GOTTA NEW JOB.’

  ‘Congratulations,’ I said. ‘What is it?’

  ‘BINGO CALLER.’ A rasping sound emerged from Nick’s speaker, along with a couple of feedback shrieks. ‘YOU GOTTA LAUGH, AINTCHA, KENNY?’ he asked before scooping up the box and heading towards his next customer.

  I occupied a table and thought about life. I was in my late fifties and had less money in the bank than the average twelve-year-old. Last October the manager of the V had invited me to move to Manchester with her. For several months, Stephie and I had been friends with benefits. She was sexy, intelligent, funny and kind. Only an idiot would have allowed a final chance for happiness to slip through his fingers, which is precisely what I did.

  Stephie hadn’t called since she left. But then, why would she? A few times I’d picked the phone up; each time I’d lost my nerve. It wasn’t the sex I missed so much – although I did miss the sex – as the advice. Stephie called it how she saw it and usually she called it right. What with the Dylans breathing down my neck, I could have used her input.

  Gary Farrelly walked into the Vesuvius with a nylon rucksack over his shoulder. ‘Sorry I’m late, Kenny,’ he said.

  ‘Don’t be,’ I replied. ‘What d’you want to drink?’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘It’s a waga.’

  ‘A what?’

  ‘Whisky and ginger ale.’

  ‘I’ll have one of those,’ he decided. ‘Only without the whisky.’

  A whiskyless waga didn’t sound much fun, but Gary was probably in training. I returned from the bar to find him gazing around the room.

  ‘Do you come here a lot?’ he asked.

  ‘Not as often as I used to,’ I said.

  ‘Is it a members’ club?’

  ‘After a fashion.’

  He gave the V another quick once-over to see if there had been something he’d missed. His perplexed expression suggested not.

  ‘Look, Gary,’ I said, changing the subject. ‘There’s something you need to know about the man I need protecting from.’

  ‘Dad said it was a jealous ex-husband.’

  ‘The husband is Billy Dylan.’

  ‘Should I know him?’

  ‘Basically he’s a gangster. His dad’s doing time for the Haddon Street robbery and Billy served six months for aggravated assault last year.’

  Gary nodded as though digesting this information.

  ‘He also beat the shit out of my business partner,’ I added, giving him something else to chew on. ‘And he doesn’t work alone.’

  ‘Does my old man know about this?’ Billy asked.

  ‘I think he probably should.’

  ‘Why’s that?’

  ‘No offence, but Farrelly said that you haven’t done this kind of work before.’

  ‘It’s nothing I can’t handle.’

  ‘Maybe,’ I replied. ‘But shouldn’t that be your dad’s call?’

  I’d avoided bringing Billy’s name into proceedings in the gym in case it elevated Farrelly’s fee. Conscience had got the better of me.

  Gary took a sip of ginger ale. ‘I’m a karate black belt and I’ve worked doors since I was eighteen, if it’s experience you’re worried about.’

  ‘Did Farrelly find you, or did you find him?’ I asked.

  ‘Me him.’

  ‘Must have been a hell of a shock.’

  ‘Yeah, he wasn’t expecting to see me.’

  I’d meant the other way round, but let it go. After finishing our drinks and saying goodbye to Nick, we left the Vesuvius and headed west. I used the fifteen-minute walk to extract further biographical information. Of particular interest was the union between Gary’s mother and father. ‘Where did they meet?’ was my first question.

  ‘Speed dating,’ he said.

  ‘Farrelly went speed dating?’

  ‘So my mum reckons.’

  ‘How long were they together?’

  ‘Only a couple of months. Some bloke asked Mum what she was doing with an old fart and that if she wanted a decent shag she should go home with him.’

  ‘And then what happened?’

  ‘Dad ruptured the guy’s spleen.’

  Thank God Farrelly’s isn’t the finger on the nuclear trigger. A minor dispute over fishing quotas and half of Spain would be vaporised. ‘So that was the end of the relationship?’ I asked as we rounded the corner into Brewer Street.

  ‘Yeah, although Mum didn’t know she was pregnant.’

  ‘Has she met anyone since?’

  ‘There’s been a few boyfriends, but no one’s gone the distance.’

  ‘What made you want to track your dad down, Gary?’

  ‘I was thinking of joining the army. If anything happened then I’d never have known my old man, and he wouldn’t have known me. Didn�
�t seem right somehow.’

  ‘Was your mum okay with the two of you meeting?’

  Gary shrugged. ‘She came round eventually.’

  A significant chunk of Odeerie’s business comes from clients wanting to trace their birth parents. I often wondered if they were doing the right thing. It seemed to have worked out for Gary, though, and I put this to him.

  ‘Yeah, it’s been great,’ he said, although the loss of eye contact was interesting. ‘You got kids, Kenny?’ I shook my head. ‘Married, anything like that?’

  ‘Nothing like that.’

  We walked in contemplative silence until outside the Yip Hing supermarket. ‘Mind if I nip in here?’ Gary asked. ‘I need skimmed milk for my protein shake.’

  ‘Course not,’ I said. ‘I’ll go ahead and stick the kettle on.’

  ‘Can’t allow you out of sight, Kenny.’

  ‘Yeah, I get the need for eternal vigilance, Gary, but we’re in the middle of the West End and my flat’s only fifty yards up this extremely busy road.’

  My bodyguard frowned before saying, ‘The milk can wait ’til tomorrow.’

  ‘For God’s sake, get it now.’

  ‘All right,’ he said reluctantly. ‘But keep your eye out.’

  It was getting on for ten o’clock and there was quite a bit of activity in Brewer Street. A gaggle of Japanese tourists were photographing the exterior of the Glasshouse Stores pub and a stag do wearing T-shirts featuring pictures of the groom was careering towards Regent Street. Pretty much business as usual. I turned the key in the lock. Immediately someone bundled me from behind into the lobby. I sprawled on the floor with the wind knocked out of me. The door closed and I heard a chuckle.

  ‘Hello, Kenny. We’ve been waiting for you.’

  I recognised the first guy as the driver who had dropped Billy Dylan off at his mistress’s house. A Crombie overcoat disguised his bulky torso, although it looked incongruous paired with mauve tracksuit bottoms and immaculate white trainers.

  His companion was wearing one of those Three Musketeers moustaches that should be made illegal and a plaid shirt. He was smaller than Baldy, but there wasn’t much in it.

  ‘I don’t know who you think I am, but my name isn’t Kenny,’ I said.