Bent

by Joe Thomas

  What are you going to do about it?

  Well, the first thing he's going to do today is head down to one of the addresses on his scrap of paper. A Georgian gaff in Bloomsbury where, he believes, a certain Josephine Jennings resides, a young woman who, he's been told, can sometimes be seen out dancing with old Riccardo Pedrini. She’ll do, he thinks, she’ll do as a starting point for today. There is still a little under fifteen hours until kick-off tonight, so there is plenty of time to brief some of the minor players and ensure the match is weighted nicely in his favour.

  He decides to walk. His head could do with air, he thinks, could do with the exercise, his head. He really thinks his head will benefit from the walk, will appreciate it. He should take his head out walking more often, during the day, he considers. He walks at night too much, and his head misses the sunshine, the rays of sun, those life-giving rays. When he started at the Flying Squad, and when he and Doris lived in Mitcham, he would walk home, some nights, most nights, hour and a half it took, sometimes more, but what a way to keep his head clear, and to keep in shape too.

  He sets out, his head down as he leaves the Mad House. He doesn’t want any grief for the thing he did that he doesn’t regret. There’ll be a court hearing soon enough and he’ll stand up and say what he always says and the fact is that the lad is a pest, a whore-botherer, and we don’t like them, and a known associate of Mr Oliva to boot, so Brass won’t be at all upset if the lad gets slapped with a heavy fine, or even does a little stretch, a month or so, just for show, as that's why he, Challenor, was brought in, clear through some of this Soho murk, sieve the place of murk, and make the whole place a little more palatable, a little more drinkable.

  He charges down Oxford Street. Easier this way, less criminal distraction on Oxford Street. Does a left up Tottenham Court Road, then a right straight off, and then wriggles through into Bedford Square. Late September, he thinks. He takes a seat on a bench on the street in Bedford Square, and decides he’ll wait until after 9 a.m. He reckons it's not really on to pay a visit to a civilian before 9 a.m., you don’t want to worry them, after all, unnecessarily, especially if you’re hoping they’ll do something for you.

  Late September. It doesn’t know what it's about, the weather, in late September. It's fresh, he’ll give it that, this late-September day. He’ll let today have that, certainly. Fresh, clear, thin air. He doesn’t get too much thin air around here, these days. There's a chill to it, too, the day. Late September sun is, what? Not quite autumn, too weak a proposition to be summer. It's schizophrenic, really, this weather, this sun, doesn’t know what it's about, warm one moment, cool the next, the sun just doesn’t know what it is in late September, won’t make its mind up.

  There are leaves starting to fall, he notices, about the place. There's a grey, light haze to the square. Josephine Jennings lives just off the square, not far from the Pedrini clan, and he wonders if this is a childhood romance situation. Certainly they’ve been seen dancing at the Lorraine club, and that's not on Challenor's radar as an especially naughty venue. Not quite wholesome — no, he wouldn’t say it was wholesome — but it's attended, generally, by good kids, and appears not to be a front for anything. Which is rare, but not unheard of.

  The square is waking up. Doors open, men skip down steps to work. Men skip up other steps and doors open and in they go to work. Funny old place, Bedford Square, he thinks -

  Dual-personality type thing going on, in some senses. If you can ascribe such a diagnosis, such a sentiment, to a place. There's likely a book term for this, he thinks. Old Tojo’d know. He smiles. Course he would. He’d have known, for sure. He was quite the bookworm, old Tojo. He hasn’t thought of Lieutenant Wedderburn for some time. He's not sure his head is up to it today, if he's honest. So he shakes it, his head, and checks his watch and, seeing it's after nine, he heads across the square to locate the domicile of one Josephine Jennings.

  *

  ‘I cant keep doing this, Tanky,’ Tojo says. ‘This hide and seek is killing me.’

  You know how he feels. You’re crawling up the mountain before first light to hide, and then crawling down again as it gets dark. Up and down, down and up for two days and two nights. Carrying everything with you each time you go up and down.

  And still no one —

  On the third day, Tojo says, Tuck it, let's just roll our sleeping bags here and be done with it. At least something might happen.’

  You’re in for a penny there, you think. And Tojo never swears. So the pair of you bunk down in a ditch not far from the rendezvous point. You conk out like a milk-drunk baby.

  And then —

  The sun dazzling, the stream dancing, you wake up with what you know is a heavy boot, nudging you in the ribs.

  *

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Challenor says to Josephine Jennings's concerned-looking mother. ‘She's not done anything wrong, nothing at all.’

  Mrs Jennings has a thin-lipped, furrowed-brow face on, topped off by a puckered mouth and narrowed eyes. She hands Challenor a muddy, grimy-looking cup of coffee.

  ‘I thought I’d pop round your drum directly, have a quiet word, you know,’ Challenor says, giving it the local bobby. ‘Don’t want to put you out.’

  She says, tentatively, ‘You won’t mind if I stay put then, Detective Challenor? For the interview?’

  Challenor's head hums. His head whirrs. He can feel the caffeine course with each sip of this muddy, grimy coffee. He gives Mrs Jennings a serious, strained sort of smile. He does not have to act in any way to administer this smile.

  He says, ‘It's not an interview, Mrs Jennings, just a word about some people your daughter may know, some friends of friends, if you like.’ He pauses, delivers another serious, contemplative look, and adds, ‘I think it's best we have a little privacy It’ll be a moment, maybe two, no more, and there's really no need for you to worry.’

  Mrs Jennings presents Challenor with a serious, concerned look of her own. ‘Very well,’ she says, all timid. She gives her daughter's hand a squeeze and then, well, Challenor thinks, the word he's after is retires. She gives her daughter's hand a squeeze and she retires.

  Challenor's head races. His head is scampering about all over the gaff. It's like a bloody lab rat, now, Challenor's head.

  Josephine Jennings is a cool-looking customer. She certainly seems unfazed, indifferent, even, Challenor thinks.

  ‘How can I help you, detective?’ she asks.

  ‘Clever girl,’ Challenor says.

  ‘No need for that, detective.’

  ‘No need for what?’

  ‘Patronising. No need to be patronising.’

  Challenor grins. His head zips. His head grins. ‘Point taken,’ he says. ‘But it is somewhat smart of you, insightful, really, to offer, you know, your help, straight off the bat, I mean, first up. Clever.’

  ‘Seems like the best use of our time. Speed things along.’

  ‘OK, Josephine, I’ll get straight to the point.’

  ‘Please do.’

  ‘Right so, the point. I’ve heard you knock about with Riccardo Pedrini. That true?’

  Josephine Jennings smiles. ‘Knock about with?’

  ‘OK,’ Challenor says, ‘I’ve heard that you occasionally frequent certain Soho establishments together.’

  ‘That is true, yes.’

  ‘Right. So you know his pal Joseph Oliva?’

  ‘I wouldn’t say I know him. He's sometimes around.’

  ‘Right, gotcha. Know his reputation, do you?’

  Josephine raises her eyebrows. She smiles again. ‘I’ve heard him refer to himself as “King” Oliva.’ Challenor can hear the irony. Josephine's smile brightens. ‘I’m not sure that's quite the same thing, though, is it? Not sure it answers your question, exactly.’

  Challenor smirks. ‘How long have you known Pedrini?’

  ‘On and off, years.’

  ‘And young Maria, his cousin. Know her, do you?’

  ‘Met her.’


  ‘Right, OK. I’ll get to the point.’

  ‘You’ve said that.’

  Challenor rolls his eyes. His head twangs. Someone is plucking some string that's pulled tight, right through the middle of his bonce. Taut as fuck this string is, twanging away it is, twanging away in the middle of his pulsing bonce.

  ‘You OK, detective?’

  ‘Nothing a body transplant wouldn’t fix,’ he says.

  Josephine Jennings smirks.

  ‘Age,’ Challenor adds. ‘It's a tricky fucker, age. A hell of a leveller, age, you’ll find, one day.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Relentless, it is. No hiding from it, age.’

  ‘Anyway...’

  Challenor nods. ‘Right, the point. I need you to do something for me, and you will do it because although I know you have nothing to do with anything, you know, naughty, we are looking at known associates of Oliva's, and,’ he pauses, ‘knocking about with old Pedrini is quite enough of a thing to mean an easy transition from outside the circle to in it, if you know what I mean.’ He pauses again. ‘We clear?’

  Josephine Jennings is nodding. ‘Crystal,’ she says.

  ‘I want you to tell Pedrini, today, as in soon, two things. Firstly, I want you to tell him that I’ve been sniffing about.’

  ‘Which is true.’

  ‘Which is true. Secondly, I want you to tell him that I told you that if they — and by “they” you know who I mean — ‘ Josephine Jennings nods ‘- if they don’t nail old Wilf Gardiner down pronto, then old Wilf Gardiner's thinking about giving me young Maria on a solicitation number.’

  ‘Which is not true.’

  ‘Clever girl.’

  ‘Like you said.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘I can do that,’ Josephine Jennings says. ‘And what about me?’

  ‘You’re passing on a message - also true. And that's it.’

  ‘That's it? Nothing else you’re going to make me do?’

  ‘Not a prosciutto sausage more, sweetheart.’

  Josephine Jennings smiles. ‘I’ll see you out,’ she says.

  At the door, Challenor says, ‘Oh, and if you see them tonight -and you likely should, you know, keep everything above board and so on — be aware that come the end of the evening, I expect they’ll be headed to the Phoenix club on Old Compton Street. Know it?’

  Josephine Jennings nods. ‘Skin joint, right? One of Mr Gardiner's?’

  ‘That's the badger.’

  Josephine Jennings nods.

  ‘I’d steer clear,’ Challenor says, and he skips down the steps, off to work.

  His head, he thinks, his head aches.

  *

  Your hand is on your Schmeisser and your knife is hidden inside your sleeping bag —

  Easy reach. Easy does it.

  The sun blinds you.

  ‘Easy, Tanky,’ you hear Tojo mutter.

  First thing's first—you realise very quickly that this isn’t one of your mob.

  Second thing, you clock that the man with his foot in your side is alone. He's alone, and he is very rustic looking, you realise. In fact, you think, as you lie, unblinking but blinded, unmoving, if, one month ago, someone had asked you to describe what you reckon an Italian peasant farmer might look like, you reckon you would have described something very similar indeed to the man standing above you, grinning, with his foot lodged in your side.

  He looks at you in something like astonishment, amused astonishment, or what you expect passes for astonishment with rustic, stoic, Italian, peasant farmers. A sort of stoic indifference, just about quizzical.

  He looks at you in something like astonishment and says, ‘Inglesi?’

  You laugh. ‘So much for our uniforms then,’ you say to Tojo. Your uniforms, you remember, are supposed to resemble the German uniforms.

  ‘Shut up, Tanky,’ Tojo says.

  Tojo and the Italian begin to engage in some hand waving and tentative chat. Sounds like more than one language to you. Either way, you lie still, one hand on your Schmeisser, the other wrapped around your knife.

  A conversation, of sorts, ensues. In French, you think? Cant be. You think: get a fucking wriggle on, Tojo. The longer were here, the quicker were fucked —

  Nerves. You’re not afraid, but you’re nervous, and when you’re nervous you twitch, you race, you act —

  ‘Come on, Tanky,’ Tojo says, were going for a feed.’

  You slip out of your sleeping bag and gather your things.

  Now this turn of events, you decide, is very good news indeed.

  *

  Challenor rings the bell of a fairly well-to-do Georgian town house in Bloomsbury.

  A young woman - a girl, really - answers the door.

  ‘You Maria?’ Challenor asks.

  The girl curls her lip. ‘No.’

  ‘Who are you then?’

  ‘I’m her sister,’ she says. ‘Wait - you from school?’

  Challenor laughs. ‘You supposed to be there then?’

  The girl shrugs. ‘You know.’

  ‘I’m a detective, young lady. Detective Sergeant Harold Challenor.’

  ‘The school sent a detective? Blimey.’

  ‘Gawdsake,’ Challenor says. ‘Where's your sister?’

  ‘She’ll be in the church. You know the one on Clerkenwell Road? Roman Catholic one?’

  ‘I know it. What's she doing in there then?’

  ‘You know the delicatessen next door? Terroni's?’

  ‘I do know it, yes.’

  The girl pulls a chirpy, proud, so-there face. ‘My family's that is. She works today. Says the church is the only place she ever gets any peace and quiet.’

  ‘Hard worker then.’

  The girl sticks out her tongue.

  ‘Charming.’ Challenor grins. ‘Your cousin Riccardo in today?’

  ‘Nah, at least not until late this afternoon.’

  ‘Not an early riser then?’

  The girl laughs. ‘I wouldn’t know. He doesn’t live here.’

  ‘Where does he live?’

  The girl pushes the door slightly to, aware, Challenor realises, that she's saying too much, perhaps, though also that she's confused, as she clearly knows nothing about her cousin. There's that instinct, Challenor knows it well, that instinct that even your civilians will have round here, in the older families, that instinct to keep your gob shut when there's a copper asking questions. She's got it, Challenor can see that. Just the slight touch on the door, and the closing of the expression, the slight darkening. Not so playful now, she's not.

  Challenor reads all this in a flash. No point getting her into trouble.

  ‘Don’t worry your pretty little head about it, girl,’ he says. ‘We’ll keep this little conversazione to ourselves.’

  The girl raises her eyebrows. ‘How come you speak Italian?’ she asks.

  Challenor winks. ‘Long story, girl.’

  *

  You’re following the Italian peasant farmer and the bugger's only bloody grinning, grinning like a bloody loony —

  He keeps turning, beckoning to you, to follow him, and he's still grinning, and turning and bending his dirty, soiled little farmer's finger, beckoning you with it, and you never do know, so you keep your Schmeisser handy and your knife unsheathed.

  But Tojo seems OK with it all, and he's having a chin wag with the old lad in French, you reckon, and you’re gasping for some tuck, some wine and some scran, a full belly would change pretty much any situation, but right now, gawd Jesus, you could really do with a feed and a bloody lie-down on something soft.

  The farm is a square-brick house with a few primitive barns dotted about the place that look lively for a bit of shelter, you think.

  And then you’re following him inside to a big flag-stoned kitchen with great long beams running above you, and each bloody great long beam has got a whole load of bloody hams hanging from it, each of these bloody long beams is festooned with hams —

  Festooned they are! />
  And your stomach doesn’t half flip at the smell.

  Gawd almighty, your stomach is saying, push on, eh? Your stomach is telling you exactly what to say, now, in Italian. Your stomach demands it, it begs you, it orders you.

  And the farmer grins and gestures at his farmer's wife, a small woman wrapped in a shawl, with a crooked nose and toothless smile like some awful fairy tale —

  But before you can say ‘I smell the blood of an Englishman this old crone, this farmer's hag, is piling mounds of steaming spaghetti into cavernous bowls, and filling bucket-sized mugs of wine, and bringing you a tray of warm — Christ it's warm! — bread and you don’t half melt at this gorgeous Italian couple's kindness.

  And courage. You understand that too, once you’ve had your feed, had your fill of this famous Italian cuisine you’d heard about. They’re bloody courageous putting you up like this, with the German army all about the place and whatnot. You know what they’ll do if they catch you — and you know what they’ll do if they find out who's been helping.

  There are stories. Villages burned. Farmers’ families rounded up and executed. Sanctions, too, on supplies. It's pillaging, really, it is, you think — they just take what they want and if you don’t like it, lump it, is the message.