by Dan Kavanagh
After lunch it was back to the Double Blue. He hoped this bit of the day would go better. He dug out his membership card in the name of Daniel Drough and presented it to the soiled hippy in the box office, who shook his head.
‘Sorry, mate, your membership’s expired.’
‘Don’t be stupid, I only joined a few days ago.’
‘Sorry, mate, that’s not what your card says.’ He handed him back the card: Membership for one year from…’ it said at the bottom, and on his previous visit the hippy had filled in ‘10 June 1978’. He’d written ‘1978’ instead of ‘1979’ so that the card appeared to expire the day he had sold it. One of the oldest tricks in the book. Duffy kicked himself.
‘Look, you sold me that card a couple of days ago.’
‘Me? Not me, mate. I only came back from holiday today.’
‘Where did you go?’ Duffy was pissed off, especially with himself. The hippy looked mystified. What was this punter doing getting all uppity?
‘And besides,’ the hippy went on triumphantly, ‘this isn’t my writing.’
Duffy handed over another fiver.
‘Same name again this time is it, guv? Or do you fancy a change?’
‘Heath,’ said Duffy, ‘E. Heath.’
Inside, there were about the same number of punters as before. Twenty or so diligent E. Heaths who might never have moved since Duffy had left the last time. On the screen the beach movie was showing again. Now a fat man had joined the two oily girls, who were toying with a beachball. For some obscure reason – perhaps as a punishment for their lesbian activities on a public strand – he kicked away their beachball, turned them over on their fronts, and began slapping their bottoms. With the amplifying system at the Double Blue, it sounded as if someone were beating carpets: a loud, extended, reverberating crump.
After ten minutes or so of this, Duffy decided to move. He got up from his seat and made his way to the toilet. He walked slowly past it and stopped by the emergency exit opposite the foot of the stairs. He looked up the stairs, listened for a bit, then took out his metal-clippers. He could go for the padlock or he could go for the chain. Both of them were a bit rusty, and almost certainly never used, but Duffy thought it possible that the padlock got a few glances occasionally. He started work on one of the links in the chain. Then he stopped, looked for a rustier one, and started again. After several silent heaving bursts on the clippers, he severed the link at a point where one of its straight sides began to go into a curve. Then he moved the clippers along about an inch and started work again close to the other curve. Soon a short, straight piece of link just under an inch long tinkled on to the stone floor. He picked it up and put it in his pocket.
Next he slowly slid the bolts at the top and bottom of the left-hand door. The door could now be pushed open from the outside until it came up against the chain, which would still hold tight despite the missing piece of link. The exit was in a dark part of the corridor, getting a little faint light from the top of the stairs, and Duffy hoped that no one would take a look at it. It would be just his luck if the G.L.C. decided to send round someone from their licensing department for a spot check.
Duffy walked softly back to the toilet, went inside and shut the door. The cistern had lost its lid at some stage, and Duffy climbed on the seat and peered in. He took the metal-clippers out of his pocket and gently lowered them into the water. The inch-long piece of chain followed. Then he climbed down, satisfied. That was the mechanical side done. The human side was always much more likely to go wrong.
He went back to the stairs and started to climb them. When he got to the top he saw three closed doors. He walked quickly across to the one on his right, the one from which the voices had come before, and knocked. Nothing happened. Instead, there was a voice from behind him.
‘Not still looking for the pisser, are we, mate?’ It was the big gingery man he’d seen before. ‘Because if you are, then all I can say is you can hold it for quite a lot longer than I can.’
He had come out of the left-hand door, and beckoned Duffy across towards him.
‘Now, what can we do for you, mate? Not happy with the fillum or something?’
‘The film’s fine,’ Duffy said, ‘absolutely terrific. The punters are loving it. They’re climbing up their seats with happiness. You’re Georgiou.’ He hoped to God his guess was right.
‘I might be.’
‘Going to invite me in?’
‘Pardon my manners, squire,’ said Georgiou, ‘but I’m a bit picky about who I have in my parlour.’
‘You don’t seem too picky about who you get to collect your drops.’
‘Meaning?’
‘Meaning the bloke in the denims who did the run from Brewer Street the other day. You must have to tie a ball of string to his ankle or something to make sure he doesn’t get lost.’
Georgiou looked at him and grinned.
‘I think I might invite you in after all, Mr…’
‘Wright.’
‘Mr Wright? Sounds like it’s my lucky day.’
He pushed open the left-hand door and politely let Duffy precede him. Or he could have been making sure Duffy didn’t scarper. Duffy went in. It was a small office with a few box files and a girlie calendar on the wall and a little kitchen off to one side. It was reminiscent of McKechnie’s office. The main difference was that the pick-up man was lounging on a tangerine settee. Same denims as before; just as scruffy; a half-hearted moustache.
‘Take a seat, Mr Wright. I think you’d better have my chair, and I’ll sit on the sofa just in case one of the two of you wants to kill the other. By the way, this is Mr Jeggo.’ He continued the introduction in formal style. ‘Mr Jeggo, I don’t think you’ve met Mr Wright. Mr Wright, I think you have had the pleasure of seeing Mr Jeggo.’
Jeggo had clearly heard the conversation on the landing and stared impassively at Duffy. It was the sort of gaze you might run into in an abattoir.
‘Mr Wright was just saying, Jeggo, that he thought you could brush up your technique a bit. Weren’t you, Mr Wright?’
Duffy judged that there was little to be got from ingratiating himself with Jeggo; it was probably too late anyway.
‘Yeah. First thing I’d say’ (Duffy took on the tone of a subaltern running through the mistakes of a squad of new recruits: firm but understanding) ‘is that you ought to try and remember which dustbin the drop is being made in. There’s no point in Georgiou or Eddy or anyone asking for the drop to be made in a precise place and then have the pick-up man acting hunt-the-thimble in broad daylight.’
‘You a copper, asshole?’
‘No. Second, don’t walk along the street to the drop, pick it up, turn round, and walk back from the direction you’ve come: no one walks down Brewer Street, looks in a dustbin, picks something out and then retraces their steps unless they’re a pick-up man. Approach the drop, make the pick-up, and then carry on in the same direction.’
‘Asshole,’ said Jeggo quietly.
‘Third, you did quite right to go up Berwick Street.’ (Duffy made it sound as patronising as possible) ‘A nun with a wooden leg playing the mouth-organ could lose a tail in that market. But you’ve got to try: you can’t just hope that the market will do the job for you. You’ve got to use it – use the stalls and the people and the way it all works. And the fourth point’ (Duffy noticed that Georgiou was smiling to himself) ‘is that you’ll never spot a tail if you don’t look for one. Simple as that. You didn’t know if you were being tailed or not; you didn’t bother to find out. You just picked up the drop and buggered off home with it.’ He turned to Georgiou. ‘Oh, I hope you didn’t train him, Georgiou. I don’t like to seem rude.’
‘Not at all rude, Mr Wright. I’m sure Mr Jeggo will do a great deal better next time, eh, Mr Jeggo?
‘I think I’ll kill this asshole,’ said Jeggo in a toneless voice. Duffy decided to bait him some more.
‘Then let’s hope you’re better at being a killer than you are at bei
ng a messenger boy. I wouldn’t let you lick the stamps for my letters at the moment.’
‘He’s a copper,’ said Jeggo, ‘he reeks of copper.’
‘No,’ said Georgiou, ‘he’s too smart to be copper. He reeks of smart, that’s all.’
‘I wanna kill him,’ Jeggo repeated petulantly.
‘I don’t think that’s a good idea, Jeggo. I do think we ought to ask him what he wants first. But we’ll bear the idea in mind. Now, Mr Wright, we’ve had a few laughs, and you haven’t come for the pisser, so what’s it all about?’
‘What’s it about is, I don’t tell you in front of messenger boys.’
‘Very well. Jeggo, go and kill someone in the other room, will you?’
Jeggo got up and left.
‘I want to see Eddy.’
‘Of course you do.’
‘Well?’
‘Oh, Mr Wright, I’m merely waiting for you to state your business.’
‘I’m from McKechnie. I want to deal.’
‘Ah. Well, that’s interesting. Would you like to tell me what you have in mind?’
‘No. I want to talk to Eddy.’ Duffy didn’t sound to himself as if he had much of a leg to stand on.
‘Well, Mr Wright, Mr Eddy prides himself on the vertical structure of his business. He likes to think that everyone should have access right to the top. I’ll go and see what he says.’ He disappeared, then put his head back round the door. ‘Oh, I shouldn’t worry, I don’t really think Mr Jeggo means to kill you. It’s just one of his exaggerations.’
Three minutes later Georgiou returned.
‘Mr Eddy will see you now.’
They went out on to the landing and Georgiou opened the middle door. They were in a short passage, and Duffy immediately felt a change of atmosphere: there was carpet on the floor, and fresh green paint, and a couple of prints on the wall. At the end of the passage was a cream-painted door. It was opened and Duffy stepped through into another world. He found himself in a high, elegant, Georgian double-cube sitting room, painted pale green. There were pier-glasses between the windows and old prints round the walls. The room must be almost twice as wide as the Double Blue below, Duffy reflected; it must run through into the next building, and perhaps the one on the other side too. There were chintz-covered sofas and in one corner a large executive’s desk with several telephones on it and a bronze statuette of a swan. The windows were double-glazed, and the pale green carpet was thick beneath Duffy’s feet.
Big Eddy Martoff came through a door in the left-hand corner of the room holding a manila file in his hand. He laid it on his desk and walked over to the two of them. He was taller than Duffy; but then, most men were. Still, he was no taller than six foot, and not especially broad. ‘Big’ was doubtless a street name which had most effect on those who had never met him. He was a good-looking man in his middle-thirties, dark crinkly hair, sallow complexion, brown eyes, high cheek bones above a long expanse of cheek. He was dressed like a man who ran the sort of modern art gallery whose paintings you couldn’t afford. A lightweight medium blue suit, soft cream button-down shirt, French tie, expensive mocassin shoes.
‘Mr Wright. You like the room?’
‘All right.’
‘I’m very fond of it. And I’m especially pleased with the Morland prints. I think they suit so well.’ He talked like he looked: soft, smooth and expensive. Old Martoff must have left a nice little educational trust for him, Duffy reflected. ‘The window seats are very pleasant too, Mr Wright. Not common in this part of London, as you can imagine. You can sit on one of those window seats and feel the sun on your face and simply forget all about the pressures of business.’
‘Hope the floor’s soundproofed.’ Duffy thought of all the amplified sheepdogs and carpet-beating raging on below. He also thought that, even allowing for a bad tape, there was no question but that Martoff was ‘Salvatore’.
Martoff smiled.
‘Ah, of course, you came up the back way like a tradesman. I hear you gave a sparkling piece of instruction to one of our trainees on the way in.’
‘I think I’ll leave by the front entrance when I go, if that’s all right by you.’
‘Well, let’s talk our business first, Mr Wright.’ He went and sat behind his desk, beckoning Duffy to a sofa. The sofa felt quite a bit lower than the desk. That corny old executive’s trick, thought Duffy; ah well, if he needed it. Georgiou went and parked a fat ham on a window seat.
‘Now, Mr Wright.’
‘McKechnie says you’re squeezing too hard. McKechnie says he’s too pressed for funds, business is bad at the moment. McKechnie says will you lay off for a while. McKechnie says what sort of deal do you want from him?’
Martoff laughed lightly. ‘Mr Wright, do you realise you started every sentence with the words “McKechnie says…” It’s like that old game we used to play as children, O’Grady Says. I do hope the same rules apply and that I don’t have to do everything that McKechnie says. That would be a severe disappointment to me. What do you say, anyway, Mr Wright?’
‘I say the same – you’re squeezing too hard. After a while you can’t get blood out of a stone.’
‘Correct me if I’m wrong, Mr Wright, but you haven’t come here on a charitable impulse? That is to say, I take it you are not just an old friend of McKechnie’s who happened to be passing and was moved by the sight of his distress to come and plead on his behalf? That, I take it, is not exactly the case. You are, are you not, receiving an emolument from McKechnie? Indeed, you are being paid for coming here and pleading McKechnie’s poverty, are you not?’
‘Not so’s you’d notice.’
Martoff smiled.
‘Well, let’s not quibble. My point is that you seem to be getting a bit of blood out of the old stone at the moment. So, for instance, McKechnie could easily give me your blood, couldn’t he?’ Martoff sighed a little, and stroked the bronze swan. ‘It always saddens me, Mr Wright, how much people lie about money. With peasants, well, one expects it; but in business…I suppose I’m just a bit too idealistic for my work. You’d be surprised how people squeal that their pips are squeaking when all I have done is gently pinch the peel of the orange between thumb and forefinger, like a housewife at market.’
Duffy waited. With men like this, men used to power, you always let them talk on. Martoff seemed to be coming out of a reverie.
‘But then I suppose I am a bit too idealistic anyway. Take the question of you, for instance.’ Duffy held his breath. ‘I agreed to see you because of what Georgiou said to me. He told me that you had said to him that you wanted to deal. I believed it. So I invite you in, and wait for you to say your piece, and what do I discover? No deal. Nothing like a deal. I mean, what I understand by a deal is that one party says, “If I give you x, will you give me y?” and that the second party thinks it over and says either “Yes”, or “No”, or tries to haggle about the terms. Correct me if I’m wrong, Mr Wright, but as far as I can see from examining your “deal”, your “deal” consists of saying to me, in simple terms, “Lay off”. Now, isn’t that what it amounts to?’
‘McKechnie says what do you want from him?’ Duffy doggedly repeated his only line.
‘Oh dear, Mr Wright, I don’t seem to be getting through to you, do I? My point is that it’s all very well for McKechnie to say his stone is exhausted and has no more blood in it, but what has he got to offer me as a disincentive from having occasional modest stabs at this famous stone of his? That’s what I understand by a “deal”, anyway. I’m sorry if I’m a little old-fashioned, but I simply see no “deal” at all.’
‘Well, I’d better be off then,’ said Duffy. He began to rise from the sofa.
‘Let me detain you a little longer, if I may, Mr Wright, because there are a few things which it might be in both our interests, not to mention that of your paymaster, to get clear. There are three areas in which I think I could probably help clarify your thinking. I hope you’ll bear with me.’ He was clearly a man used to bei
ng borne with.
‘The first is that you didn’t come here to “deal”. Let’s get that straight. You don’t have a “deal”. I doubt if you even talked about it with McKechnie first, because if you had, then you might have come up with something a little less feeble. So, perhaps you should admit to yourself the real reason for coming. You came in order to see me. I quite understand. I am a local businessman of some standing. A lot of people want to see me. Maybe you thought that unless you invented some “deal”, I would not judge you important enough to receive. Well, you may have a point there. But I think we should all remain as clear about our own motives as possible, don’t you?
‘This leads on to my second point. You were asking, in a rather confused way, about my own motives and intentions in regard to the man whose stone writes so many of your cheques. I think I can be quite open with you, Mr Wright, because if you haven’t worked out my intentions by now then you must be as fuddled as poor Mr Jeggo out there. In simple terms – and there are no complicated terms – I am taking over Mr McKechnie’s business. That is my intention. If you ask my motive, that is not very shadowy: my motive is that I want to own his business. So, I am dispossessing him of his two warehouses and his office. It is as simple as that. I am sorry if there has been any ambiguity, but I’m afraid my style of business has always been to take things slowly. I like people to get used to the idea of losing their possessions. It sometimes takes them a while to adjust, to make new arrangements. But I’m sure Mr McKechnie will adjust.’
‘What if he doesn’t want to hand over?’
‘Oh, come, come, Mr Wright. Or is that question designed to make me utter some quotable quote? You wouldn’t have a tape recorder strapped to your body, or anything foolish like that, would you? We shall be forced to have a look before you go, you understand?’
Duffy grunted. Quite right to dump the metal-clippers.
