Miss Bombazine laughed. ‘That Korky, she told me.’
‘It’s only an old one,’ he admitted lamely. ‘It’s only a sort of souvenir. It doesn’t work and there’s no ammunition. I was in the army once.’
‘So I heard.’ She appraised him again. ‘What rank? My father was a soldier.’
‘I got to the dizzy height of Staff Sergeant,’ he said.
‘I can’t remember my old man’s rank. But he did something brave. He got a medal. He’s dead now. I wouldn’t do this if he wasn’t.’ She was silent, almost embarrassed for a moment. ‘Not that I blame you, having a gun,’ she said. ‘I’ve got a big tin of pepper under my bed although up to now I haven’t had to throw it in anybody’s gob. But you never know.’
‘I can’t get over Korky telling you that,’ he muttered shaking his head.
Miss Bombazine shrugged. ‘Well, she found it when she was poking about I expect, having a look. Kids like that always search around, see what’s what. When you live on the edge, like I do for that matter, you always have a little nose into anything you can. It’s a sort of defence, being prepared.’
He sighed. ‘Do you have any idea where she might be?’
Miss Bombazine pursed her big, crimson lips. ‘Any number of places,’ she said. ‘But you told her she had to leave, didn’t you. What are you worried about? She told me you wanted her out.’
‘But not like that. Not immediately. I thought she would get a job and then somewhere to live.’
‘To make you feel better,’ she said bluntly.
Savage drank his coffee to screen his discomfiture. He put the cup back on the saucer. ‘I came here to these flats to get some privacy,’ he said. ‘I’ve got my problems too. I don’t want anybody living with me.’
‘God knows where she’s gone,’ sighed Miss Bombazine. She regarded him shrewdly. ‘She won’t go on the game if that’s what’s worrying you, I can tell you that. She asked me about it but she’s not the type. Too strong, too self-willed. She’d spit in a man’s eye. Doing this you’ve got to put all your own feelings under the bed. It pays well and once you’ve learned to pace yourself the work isn’t hard, but it don’t do a lot for your self-respect. Korky would argue. And that’s no good.’
He had finished his coffee and he stood up and then solemnly shook hands. Hers were big and soft. As he reached the door he asked: ‘What about Mr Kostelanetz?’
‘What about him?’ she shrugged. ‘That old wanker, pretends to be this, pretends he’s done that. According to him he could have married the Queen Mother, he’s got the Victoria Cross and he swam the Channel. He’s brimming with shit. He’s got his fingers in a few pies but I reckon he’s harmless. All talk.’
He thanked her for her information. ‘What are you going to do now?’ she asked as he left and went down the corridor.
‘I’ll have to go and look for her,’ he called back. ‘I can’t leave her on the streets.’
He spent the morning touring West London in a taxi. He instructed the driver to go slowly and he searched the pavements and the doorways. The man was keen to take part. ‘Who is it you’re looking for?’ he asked soon after they set out. He claimed to have been a sailor and to have acute eyes.
‘A girl. She’s thin with long darkish hair. She’ll be wearing one of those fun-fur coats. Pink.’
‘What’s her name?’ asked the man as if it were an important recognition factor. ‘Korky,’ Savage told him with a hint of embarrassment. ‘Kathleen actually.’ His driver’s eyes searched the mobile streets on one side as Savage scanned them on the other. They saw no sign of her and the bill came to forty-five pounds with the tip. ‘Hope you find her,’ said the driver.
In the middle of the day he went into a pub, something which even a few weeks earlier he would have avoided. It was only two corners away from Kensington Heights, the Balmoral Castle, and sitting in a corner, with the three dull men he recognised as the trio he had ejected from the apartment at gunpoint, was Mr Kostelanetz. The smile was broad and thick as the overcoat. ‘Mr Savage,’ he said. ‘Frank, come and sit down. These gentlemen will buy you a drink on their way out.’
The three men looked disconcerted at the news that they were leaving but rose with ponderous obedience. The one who had carried the cricket bat asked Savage solicitously what he would have. He asked for a whisky. ‘Make this whisky a double for Mr Savage,’ purred Mr Kostelanetz as the man shuffled towards the bar. Savage made to protest but the smooth overcoated arm came across like a barrier to deter him. ‘Have a double, Frank,’ said Mr Kostelanetz quietly. ‘He owes you.’
While the others loitered uncomfortably near the door the man, half-looking over his shoulder as though he hoped for a change of mind, went to the bar. He did not have enough money, he protested, for a double. One of the others came forward with the offer of a loan. The whisky was borne almost ceremoniously back by all three men before they backed away and went outside. ‘Good chappies,’ murmured Mr Kostelanetz. ‘But short of brains, and courage. And almost everything.’
Savage took one sip of the Scotch. ‘Has your young lady gone?’ enquired Mr Kostelanetz looking deeply into his own whisky as though he might find her there.
‘You know?’
The grey man heaved his shoulders as if there were many things he knew but for which he could not be responsible. ‘I knew she was going,’ he said. ‘She told me that you had said she would have to. I offered to help her in any way I could. I am a helpful man, Frank.’
‘She told me.’
The overcoat sighed. ‘But she is a free spirit. And now she has gone, that little Kathleen.’
‘Korky,’ mentioned Savage. ‘She’s called Korky.’
‘Ah, I don’t understand you English and your nicknames. You give some person a name and then you change it. What sense is there in that? To me she was Kathleen. And now she has gone.’
‘I’m trying to find her. I’ve been everywhere.’
Mr Kostelanetz raised his solemn eyebrows. ‘But you wanted her to leave, to be off.’
‘Yes, all right. I didn’t intend her to just go like that. Walk out. I wanted to help her get sorted out first . . .’
‘A nice job, a nice home,’ intoned Mr Kostelanetz as though reciting some poem from his homeland.
‘Yes,’ said Savage regarding him firmly. ‘That was more or less the idea.’
‘And now she’s out there in the cold.’
‘Yes,’ he responded like an admission of guilt but then adding: ‘It’s not all that cold.’
‘At night,’ nodded the big man. ‘It is cold. If you’re outside it is cold.’ He continued the sigh. ‘I like this girl,’ he said. ‘She’s got, you know, balls. Character. She’ll be around somewhere. She won’t have gone away very far.’ He glanced furtively around the bar as if fearing he might be overheard. ‘I’ll have my people search for her,’ he whispered. ‘Everywhere.’
Savage returned to the apartment and opened a tin of soup. He half-warmed it and ate it. Then he went out again to look for her, this time on foot. He went through Holland Park and Kensington Gardens. He asked nomadic groups of young people. Nobody had seen her although some knew her. His legs ached; he had not realised he was so out of condition.
At the dark end of the afternoon he gave up and went back to Kensington Heights. He made himself some tea and stood at the window, peering out dismally on the moving dusk as though in hope he might spot her from that height. As he was returning to the kitchen with the cup the telephone caught his eye; he waited, regarding it as if he had never noticed it before. He put the cup in the kitchen and returning to the phone picked it up. His fingers went to the buttons. He began to tap out Jean Deepe’s number. His hesitation offered him time to think again and he put the receiver down, slowly, in three stages. What could he have said to her after all this time?
Still looking at the phone as if daring it to ring, he sat down again. It did not. He wandered around the room, lost in his own home.
He d
ecided to have a final search. Pulling on his long overcoat, he went out again, down the stairs and out into the drab evening. Drizzle smeared the streets; in Kensington Church Street the shop lights reflected sadly silver on the pavement, the traffic sizzled cheerlessly. He walked around the streets, along the ranks of parked cars, into a mews, around the railings of the park, and down into a church crypt where fifty homeless people watched him walk in and quietly moved their meagre personal belongings closer to them on the benches. Someone was achingly playing a flute and someone else was shouting at them to shut up. There was little light down there and the limited illumination incised the shadows on faces; eyes moved towards him. There were old people at one end of the crypt and young people at the other, a recognisable frontier between them. There was no one he could see of middle age; perhaps the old ones were really middle-aged. When he surveyed the expressions again, trying to pick someone he could ask, he saw that even the young looked old. Old, defeated, fierce.
No one had seen her. ‘Don’t know what you’re rabbiting on about,’ said one youth truculently. ‘Coming down ’ere asking questions.’
‘Makin’ inquiries,’ objected another. He took in Savage’s shape and the haircut. ‘Are you the fuzz?’
Savage said: ‘No, I’m not.’
A blanket in a corner moved and hollow eyes appeared. ‘Interferin’,’ complained the ghostly voice. ‘Piss off.’
Savage retreated towards the door. Sitting on a bench reading the Evening Standard was a fat youth with a ring through his nose. ‘Who was it?’ he asked.
‘I’m looking for a girl called Korky,’ asked Savage carefully. ‘Have you seen her?’
‘Don’t know her,’ said the plump boy peering back to the newspaper as though she might be mentioned there.
‘I do. I know that Korky.’
It was a girl wearing two coats and a woollen hat with a bobble that dangled to her mouth. She blew it aside. ‘Skinny bit. She was down around World’s End today.’
Savage stared as if he did not believe her. ‘World’s End . . .’ he began stupidly.
The girl grinned like a spectre. ‘’Course not the real World’s End.’ She laughed harshly. ‘This is the real one down here, mate. World’s End in Chelsea I mean.’
‘Right. Yes. Of course. Thank you very much.’ He became cautious in case she changed her mind. ‘Whereabouts was she?’
‘Just World’s End,’ repeated the girl. Her face was puffy, her eyes uncaring. She followed him to the door. ‘That info’s got to be worth something,’ she said putting her hand out.
He gave her ten pounds. She gasped and thrust the note swiftly into her top overcoat pocket. Looking cagily behind her she followed him out from the crypt. ‘Got any more?’ she demanded. He gave her another five pounds. She snatched the money and treated him to a sharp stab of defiance before turning and running off into the Kensington night. He saw her in the distance dodging among people on the pavement and wondered where she was running with the money.
Savage hailed a taxi and told the driver to go to World’s End. He scanned the pavements as they travelled on towards Stamford Bridge. It was a windy night and people bent their heads as though each had a secret or a sorrow. ‘Chelsea are playing tonight,’ mentioned the driver over his shoulder. ‘They’ll be just about finishing now. It’s going to be murder along there.’
It was. The football watchers disgorging from the floodlit stadium trooped along the King’s Road. Chelsea had lost. ‘Piss off,’ snarled one as he tried to get out of the taxi. ‘What d’you think you’re fucking on?’ demanded another. The taxi driver shouted to Savage. ‘Sure you want to get out ’ere, mate?’
‘I’ll risk it,’ Savage called back.
‘Animals, this lot,’ called the driver. ‘I’m a Millwall man myself.’
Savage got out of the cab and eased his way through the crowd. The men were trudging like a defeated army, those going into the wind with their faces scowling down at the pavement. There were other vehement groups, hostile, arguing, cursing among themselves and with anyone else they could. Suddenly he found himself pushed and pinned against a shop front by four youths. ‘You’re bloody Newcastle, you are,’ accused one.
Savage, feeling the glass pane at his back, shook his head. ‘Chelsea,’ he managed to say.
‘All right, then,’ challenged another, hooded below an anorak like an ugly monk. ‘Who’s the reserve keeper for Chelsea?’
‘Yeah, that’s right,’ growled one of the others glancing admiringly at the interrogator and adding his hand to the clutch holding Savage against the window. ‘’E was on the bleeding bench tonight.’
‘Look,’ Savage said, his voice rising. ‘I haven’t been to the match. I’m looking for a girl.’
All four appeared astonished once they had collectively grasped the information. ‘Looking for what?’ demanded the quickest one.
‘A young kid,’ he said stoutly. ‘She’s lost.’
The information seemed to knock the aggression from them. One after the other they took their hands away, releasing him from the plate glass. ‘If we see ’er we’ll let you know, mate,’ said one utterly mollified.
‘Yeah, we’ll do that,’ promised the cowled face.
They turned from him, continued the way they had been trudging and within yards had joined with another group of lamenting Chelsea supporters. ‘It’s this fucking wind what done it!’ wailed one. They put comradely arms about each other, sad and vanquished, and stumbled into the dim disconsolate throng.
Seeking an escape Savage swiftly turned down a side street away from the indignant human river. There were terraced houses down there, one door was ajar with half a face projecting like a reluctant moon. ‘Want to come in?’ enquired a rough but motherly voice. ‘Keep you out of the way for a bit. Only two quid.’
He was about to decline but immediately saw another rowdy gang wheeling into the street. ‘Yes, all right,’ he said. Eagerly she admitted him and he found himself in a smelly passage with a dozen other anxious men. The woman shut the door with finality and her tiny eyes surveyed the line. ‘Two quid,’ she repeated to Savage. He produced the coins and she took them with a hand like a crab. She was only slight but she had no difficulty in bustling in ragged slippers along the crowded passage. Savage realised there were more men in the adjoining room.
‘What’s this?’ he asked the man standing next to him.
‘Ma Pelling’s,’ grunted the man as though he was surprised Savage did not know. He listened to the sounds outside and alarm grew on his face. The rowdy gang were moving along the street in the wind, crying their wild slogans. Another mob could be heard approaching. When the first party had moved along the street and the second were still in the distance, the man standing opposite him in the passage, an Asian, whispered: ‘It is called a safe house.’
As the second hooligan group strode nearer, silence dropped over the cowering men around him. ‘Shush,’ warned Savage’s Asian neighbour urgently. ‘No talking please.’
Eventually they heard the clamouring threat move away. The relief was tangible. Ma Pelling shuffled to the front door and opened it gingerly. ‘Nearly all clear,’ she croaked.
For a further ten minutes the men waited, hardly shifting, in their dim sanctuary. Eventually Ma Pelling made another chary inspection and, having done so, dragged the door open. ‘All clear,’ she announced. The men began to sidle into the street, not without first looking each way as they reached the door; some went on tiptoe. They shifted past Savage and he realised that there must have been twenty hiding in the house, two with young boys and one, mysteriously, with a dog.
Savage lingered. ‘It’s like the air raids,’ Ma Pelling reminisced. ‘Waiting for the Germans to go over.’ She grinned gummily. ‘Mind you, it’s a good earner.’
‘Do you know any of the young people who hang around here?’ asked Savage still in the corridor. The final man apart from himself, a large, apprehensive-eyed Black man, was scrutinising the street
. He crept out heavily.
Ma Pelling sniffed at the enquiry. ‘I see them,’ she said. ‘They come and pee in my entry. Them and their drugs. At least in the war you knew where you was.’ She could see he really wanted to know. ‘Somebody gone missing?’ she asked shrewdly.
‘Yes.’
‘Boy or girl?’
‘Girl.’
Further creases joined her face. ‘Girls is trouble,’ she acknowledged pursing her lips. The statement appeared to prompt her to deeper thought. ‘There’s a gang ’angs about at the back of the supermarket,’ she said eventually. ‘Where it’s warm from the pipes and they can eat any stuff what’s chucked out.’
‘Where’s that, the supermarket?’ said Savage.
‘Safeways. Right up this street, turn left and it’s ten minutes along on the other side. There’s a yard at the back.’
He thanked her for the shelter. ‘Come back any time,’ she invited genially. She added a harsh laugh. ‘I ought to call this place Safeways, didn’t I? When Chelsea’re at home, I always do it then. A quid a time. Two if they lose.’
Following the pattern of his predecessors he glanced each way before going up the street towards the main road. At the junction the wind seemed to be blowing in three directions at once. The lights remained emptily flooding over the football ground. The crowd had cleared except for stragglers but the World’s End was crowded and so were the other pubs along the King’s Road, their windows thick with silhouettes.
He followed Ma Pelling’s directions and at the shuttered supermarket turned down a service road into the yard behind. There were two unattended trucks and, standing apart, a jacked-up trailer, almost against the back wall of the supermarket, near an outlet issuing steam. Below the trailer was a huddle of bodies. He could see other lying forms in boxes along the wall next to the steam pipe.
With caution he approached the trailer and slowly bent to look under it. The huddle remained unmoving, except for deep collective breathing. He stooped further. A face, long and pale and disturbed, peered out at him. ‘Oh, fuck,’ murmured the boy. ‘Not the fucking fuzz again.’
Kensington Heights Page 15
