by Dan Kavanagh
‘AAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhh…’ He screamed himself awake. It was one of those dreams when you know all the time you’re dreaming. Usually they’re bad dreams, and you comfort yourself with the knowledge that your brain is just having a mean time with you. But when you’re in a good dream and know that it’s only a dream, then you feel an undercurrent of bitterness all the way through and you wake with ashes in your mouth and strange pains and an unconquerable sense of loss. You feel as if America has slipped through your fingers.
Duffy lay on his back shaking a little. Out of curiosity, he lifted the bedclothes to see if he had a hard-on. No dice. Even if he dreamed he had a hard-on with Carol, even if he was fucking her in his dream, he awoke to a peeled prawn and a walnut. No dice.
Duffy wasn’t impotent. He couldn’t lay that at the door of whoever fitted him up. He was just impotent with Carol. At first he’d thought it was the shock of what had happened. Then he began to realise that he might get over the shock and still not recover his powers with her. Perhaps never. He’d tried lying in bed with her and ordering his cock to obey, silently shouting and cursing it. He’d tried closing his eyes and thinking of other women he’d fucked, and other men he’d fucked, and the most exciting pornography he’d ever clapped eyes on. No dice. Desperate, he’d even tried wanking himself to erection and then turning towards Carol; but his cock, unruly to the bitter end, wilted like a flower at dusk. No dice.
And the end was bitter. If you can’t fuck the one person you want to fuck, then pleasure got from fucking other people is even more lined with irony. After a while, at Carol’s insistence, he went off and tried fucking other people. To his distress, there was no problem; to his further distress, he always found himself enjoying it just enough to want to do it again. He fucked men and women indiscriminately, but found that, without realising he was doing it, he was setting himself a rule: never twice. The sweetest girl, the randiest guy, both would leave in the morning. However much they asked to see him again, and however nice he thought they were, he would never say ‘All right’. Never. It was, perhaps, a sort of fidelity to Carol, even if a fidelity wrung from the most fevered promiscuity.
What Carol did he never asked. He didn’t ask because all the answers she could give were bad. If she was sleeping with lots of guys, he knew he’d hate it; if she was sleeping with just one guy, he’d hate it more; if she was sleeping with no one, he’d hate it less but feel the pressure on him even more intolerable. Duffy, in short, was in a state of pain.
It’s a state for which the only cure is work. Duffy had mixed feelings about McKechnie’s job. It might increase the pain inside him to go back prowling round his old patch; maybe it would just stir everything up and never give him the chance to come to terms with it. On the other hand, maybe there would be some opportunity of making a settlement with his past. But what if there were, and he muffed it?
Still, it was work, it would get him out of his flat some mornings. It was twenty quid a day plus tube fares. Duffy could do with that. The bars he cruised had suddenly put up their prices a lot. People said it was the one pleasure that was free, but it wasn’t. You had to pay one way or the other: either with your feelings, or else in buying drinks as you tested the company, weighed it up, went through the social rituals which were essential if you wanted to end up not feeling a complete whore.
Duffy dug out his basic electrician’s kit from a cupboard and set off for Rupert Street. He’d already told McKechnie to bring in a small tape recorder and a number of tapes. At the office they sent Belinda out for a couple of take-away coffees and Duffy pressed a rubber sucker on to the body of the telephone on McKechnie’s desk. A short length of wiring connected it to the portable Sony in the top drawer.
‘Secret Service stuff, eh?’ said McKechnie, who was getting quite excited.
‘This is Cubs’ stuff,’ replied Duffy. ‘Put me up to thirty a day and I’ll get you free calls to Australia.’
‘We’re not quite that big yet. What about Barnsley?’
‘It’s harder to fix than Australia, funnily enough. Cost you forty.’
‘You’re a hard man, Duffy.’ Duffy winced. McKechnie must have heard that line somewhere and thought it was the thing to say.
‘Now, it’s quite simple. When Salvatore comes on the line, you just press the Record button in the normal way. And don’t forget to talk natural.’
‘What do I do with the tape?’
‘Call me afterwards and I’ll tell you what to do. I won’t come and collect it. Maybe I’ll work out a drop. Or you could always post it.’ The last suggestion sounded rather limp, even if it probably was the most efficient. Duffy constantly found that clients expected all sorts of secret tricks for their money. They wanted you to use a walkie-talkie when it was easier to use a public callbox; they wanted the windows of your car to be all blacked out although this made you the most conspicuous vehicle on the road; they wanted to leave things for you behind lavatory cisterns and wear false moustaches and buy complicated telephoto lenses which they couldn’t work. The last thing they wanted to see you doing was sitting on your butt, applying your brain to their particular problem, and coming up with a one-word solution. And the last thing of all they ever wanted to be told was, ‘I should go to the police if I were you.’ They hated that. Clients, Duffy reflected, were dumb.
Duffy turned down the offer of a second King Kong mask (he couldn’t be bothered to take one, but what he actually said, to boost customer morale, was, ‘No, it’s a better disguise not to have one this time’), and stepped out into Rupert Street. The pale man who ran the dirty bookshop had just taken down his shutters and was fiddling with the neon sign in the window. So far it only read BOO.
Duffy took a breath, headed up to Shaftesbury Avenue, crossed it, and found himself back on the patch he’d worked for three years. He’d been back a few times, to a restaurant or something, but always in the evening, under cover of dark. Now he felt more unprotected, more recognisable. He dived into a coffee bar. Sitting over a cappuccino, he gave himself bottle. Four years was a long time: whores change, villains change, the blues change. If that was bad in terms of finding things out, it was good in terms of not being recognised. Besides, he looked different now. Before, it had been two-piece suits from Burton’s and Hepworth’s, with a sports jacket for when he was trying to look casual. Now it was Jean Junction, street markets, suede and leather, faded denim; his hair was quite a bit longer at the sides, and brush-cut on top; sometimes he wore shades with pale yellow glass in them.
And on top of that, the answer was to walk like a punter. Punters had two ways of walking – very fast, as if they had a couple of minutes to catch a train and couldn’t get out of the Golden Mile quick enough, and very slow, as if they were killing time before an appointment, and that was the only reason they were loitering through the place. And whichever method they adopted, they always walked with their heads a bit down; they didn’t look people in the face, and they believed, if they kept their eyes lowered, that no one could see if they were squinting sideways into the windows of dirty bookshops. The people who walked at a normal pace with their heads up, and who looked other people in the eye as they passed them, were the people who owned the place: the shopkeepers, the whores, the pimps, the restaurateurs, the villains, and the blues.
As a copper, Duffy had been street-wise. He knew the way the place worked, how to get around in it, where the skeins of power ran. You picked it up slowly, partly from other coppers, but just as importantly by finding out for yourself; by getting to know the patch not just physically, but somehow emotionally as well. You sensed it pulsing away. This wasn’t the main part of being a copper: you didn’t stand in the middle of Soho, mystically sniffing the air like Maigret, and then head off and run a villain to ground. It was just background; it was knowing where you were. But to Duffy it was a vital preliminary to the job.
He finished his coffee and went out to get the feel again of his old patch. He walked along Old Compt
on Street, up Greek, down Frith, up Dean, across little courts and alleys into D’Arblay, down into Broadwick (past West Central on the other side of the street), down into Brewer, along to where it nearly joins up with Berwick in a fetid knot of street markets and escort agencies and cinemas, past Raymond’s Revuebar and back across into Dean. He ate a lasagne and green salad in a corner café, and reflected that he still had almost eighteen quid left for the day (McKechnie, after some protest, had paid him seventy-five pounds in advance).
In four years it had changed a bit to his eyes. There were more bookshops than before, and more sex shops with rubber cucumbers in the window. Massage parlours seemed to be holding steady. Strip clubs were a bit on the decline, and had largely given way to porno cinemas. A few years ago Soho simply had normal cinemas, but showing naughtier films from the regular distributors: Danish Dentist on the Job, Nurse Call, Catch 69, Vixens Behind Barbed Wire, those sort of films. If you wanted something a couple of degrees hotter, the only place to go was the Compton Cinema Club in Old Compton Street; and if after that you were still unsatisfied, as you came out there might, if you were lucky, be a tout or two on the pavement offering you a really blue film. Now, though, there were whole series of cinema clubs, called Triple-X and X-Citing and Double Blue and Eros Eyrie and Taboo, with gaudy signs outside offering XXX-rated movies to those over eighteen.
The heat of the early afternoon made Duffy feel, not exactly randy, but definitely a bit interested. Head down, he turned into a dirty bookshop on the corner of Greek Street. At the desk a Mediterranean youth was reading the racing news and watching over the small shelf of dirty movies. On two sides of the shop were racks of mags, arranged by customer interest. The largest section was the Hetero one; then came Homo; then Leather and S & M and Bondage and Big Tits and Schoolgirls; finally a few shelves of paperbacks. The sales technique of the shops hadn’t changed: you left English mags open for browsers to see – let them get turned on by Rustler and Rapier and Playbirds and Lovebirds and New Directions and QT – but sealed up the more expensive American imports so that they looked as if they must be a lot hornier. Duffy smiled at the hopeless self-deceiving gamble which the punters continued to go in for, still trusting in a hot cover, an inflated price and a polythene bag. He glanced at the rack of Big Tit mags, whose publishers had always seemed to work harder at the titles of their mags. D-Cup was still going strong, he noted, and so was 42-Plus; Bazooms was there too, making tits sound like ballistic missiles; and a new one called Milkmaids. Duffy remembered one that had started up a few years ago called Charlies’ Aunts, which had tickled him at the time; it had folded after a couple of issues – the punters probably thought it contained beaver-shots of old ladies. Maybe the invention had gone out of the industry, he reflected.
Next to the Bondage section – a few copies of Hogtie and one or two of All Roped Up – was a doorway leading to some cubicles. 10p X-RATED PORNO MINI-MOVIES CHANGE AT DESK read the sign. This was something new since he’d been around. He got some change at the desk and went into one of the cubicles; pinned to the door was a torn-off box lid advertising the film he could see there: ‘LESBO LOVERS – Two girls all alone and left to their own vices go horse riding and find lots going on underneath!!!’
Duffy sat down on the bench and fumbled with his change. There was no lock on the door, which you kept shut with an extended foot while you watched the film being projected on to a white board on the back of the door. Duffy kicked the door to, and then couldn’t see where to put his money in. He opened the door again and found a metal box near his right hand. 10p and the film began. A large black girl sat in a bath and soaped herself, concentrating on her pubes and her tits. The film stopped. 10p and the girl took the shower attachment and hosed off her tits, then hosed off her pubes, rolling her eyes back as she did so. The film was a bit out of focus, but it might get more interesting as it went on, Duffy thought. Where were the other girl and the horse? 10p and the girl was in the bath still, soaping her tits and pubes again. Whether the film was being long-winded, or whether it had come to an end with his second 10p and was starting again, Duffy couldn’t quite make out. His concentration began to wander. The light from the projector showed up the comments which previous punters had scrawled on the ‘screen’: NO FUCKING GOOD one of them had written, and another, ALLIE’S ARMY.
As he came out of the booth, Duffy’s heel slipped a bit on the floor. With a pile of change still in his hand, he tried another cubicle. This time there were two girls, kissing each other rather demurely. 10p and they started rubbing each other’s tits as if they were polishing silver. Duffy wondered – was it worth risking another 10p? Well, it’s on McKechnie, he thought. 10p and the girls started stroking one another’s pubes and acted opening their mouths in delight and surprise. The focus was better in this booth, and Duffy found his cock was quite enjoying the show. 10p and one of the girls was lying on top of the other. That wasn’t so much fun. 10p and a skinny bloke with a moustache jumped out of the shower and the girls acted ‘Eeeek!’ 10p and the skinny bloke started smacking their bottoms. There was no fun at all now; his cock told him it had had enough.
As he came out of the bookshop a girl jumped towards him. She was a plump, clean-looking girl with round, gold-rimmed glasses. She stood in front of him and pinned a badge onto his lapel. He squinted down and saw that it read ‘Have a Happy Day’. She chirruped,
‘We’re trying to help poor children all over the world. I’m sure you’d like to make us a donation.’
She was bright in manner, polite, and firm. You couldn’t take objection to her. Duffy could. Fucking Moonies, he thought, can’t even leave the poor old guilt-ridden punters alone. He unpinned the badge and offered it back to her; she was already pulling out a record from her shoulder-bag,
‘We’re trying to help poor children. I’m sure you want to make a donation,’ she repeated.
Duffy couldn’t help saying what he thought. ‘Fucking Moonie,’ he said, dropped the badge and turned away. As he went she hit him over the head with the record.
That was new too, then, he reflected. He walked on down the street past a few Triple-X porno-blue clubs (he’d save them for another day), and came across something else that was new. PEEP SHOW, it said, LIVE GIRLS DANCE NUDE WHILE YOU WATCH. As he approached the place, head slightly down, he squinted sideways: 50p, the sign said, and DIFFERENT GIRLS. He walked on, then did a classic punter’s double-back, putting on speed and suddenly jumping through the door. He changed a couple of quid at the desk and went into a tiny cell. The lock just about stopped the door from swinging open. At eye-level in the opposite wall there was an opening about the size of a letter box. On the floor were Kleenex tissues; some of them were damp. Disco music was being played on a powerful sound system.
Duffy dropped a 50p into the slot and a metal shutter at the level of his face jerked up, revealing a glass slit window. He pressed his nose against the glass and saw a girl dancing. The booths formed an almost complete circle round her, with a gap for her to come on and offstage. She was naked, thinnish, with a noticeable appendix scar and breasts which had probably been siliconed. She played with her tits and rubbed her pubes while dancing, and kept an eye on the row of slits, moving to face each new one that opened for a few seconds. Duffy laid out another 50p on her, though some of the time he spent looking round at the other letter boxes, at the anonymous pairs of eyes.
He’d had about 40p worth of the girl when the music suddenly stopped and she ran off stage. At once the next girl ran on, shedding her track suit as she came. Quick, quick, don’t make the punters angry. She was a black girl, and she seemed vaguely familiar to Duffy. She was thinnish like the first girl, with a hard-looking, impassive face. She danced a lot better than her predecessor, and was a lot more athletic. She was also a lot dirtier. She played with tits and pubes while she danced, as the other girl had done. But she also leaned right over, stuck her bum in the air, and pulled her cheeks apart so that you could see her cunt and her bum-hole
. Then she would bounce over towards a letter box and put her leg right up in the air, resting her foot against the wall of the booth while she dabbled at her cunt with her fingers. After a few seconds she would dance away again, then attract in turn the attention of all the punters with their visors raised and appear to pick out one of them. The lucky man, provided his 50p didn’t run out, then had his window squeegeed by the girl’s cunt. This happened to Duffy after he had spent about £1.30. It wasn’t exactly a turn-on (though it certainly wasn’t a turn-off), but it was a bit odd: rather like sitting in your car at a garage while they chammy your windscreen.
Duffy wasn’t quite sure why he dropped the fourth 50p into the slot – after all, he knew he’d seen the best part of the show. With other men the action would have sprung from the generosity of the satisfied punter who’s been ripped off so many times that he likes to show his appreciation for once. With Duffy it sprang from a still lurking curiosity. He somehow felt he’d seen the black girl before. On his final 50p, he didn’t watch her tits or her cunt; he watched her face. There was something familiar about it. Then he switched his gaze and saw it – a thin white scar on the right shoulder. It was the girl who’d been stabbed four years ago, the girl he’d visited in hospital and leaned on a bit.
Duffy waited around outside the Peep Show for a while. He couldn’t do too much of this, he realised. Standing around on street corners in Soho was all right as far as the public went: they just thought you were a pimp. But the other pimps and the blues tended to come by for a closer squint at you. After a bit Duffy looked around for a café and saw one forty yards down the street. Not the best location, but he might be able to get a clear view from there. He sat over a coffee – the boredom of it brought back to him his days with the force – and waited for about half an hour. Then the black girl came out of the Peep Show and started walking down the street in his direction. He abandoned his coffee and stepped outside. She was twenty yards short of the café when she suddenly jumped into a taxi and disappeared.
