by Jake Arnott
On the night we opened we had a full house. Things looked good. The Stardust could start making real money for Harry Starks at last. As the punters sneaked out, I noticed a cropped-haired man who remained seated at the back of the club. It was Detective Chief Inspector Mooney.
‘Inspector Mooney,’ I announced, all mock polite.
‘George, please.’
‘Is this business or pleasure?’
His little eyes twitched. He made a tutting sound and shook his head slightly.
‘Now, Ruby,’ he said chidingly. ‘It’s business of course.’
‘Really?’
‘Oh yes. All official and above board. I have to obtain authorisation from the Commissioner himself to attend theatrical performances that might be of an obscene nature.’
‘And how was tonight’s show?’
‘You’ve got nothing to worry about. It was all very tastefully done. My report will recommend no further investigation.’
Harry had come over.
‘George,’ he said, deftly handing him a brown envelope.
‘Harry. Congratulations on a successful new enterprise.’
Harry sat down on a chair next to George. I could see that they wanted to talk so I left them to it and went backstage to see the girls.
Harry called me up to the office later. He was sitting at his desk, brooding. For the first time The Stardust was making real money for Harry. Stacks of it. It was bringing the punters in, which it had never done before. But they were flocking in to see filth. It wasn’t the club that he’d wanted it to be. There were no more opportunities for being photographed with celebrities or society types at charity evenings. Those pictures lined the walls of the office. He was staring at them wistfully as I went in.
‘You wanted to see me,’ I said.
He came out of his gloomy reverie and looked at me.
‘Ruby,’ he said and smiled.
He handed over a wad of notes.
‘What’s this?’
‘It’s a bonus, Rube.’
‘Harry, you don’t need.’
‘Go on, take it.’
So I took it.
‘How would you like to earn a lot more money, Ruby?’
I didn’t like the sound of this.
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean, becoming involved in some of my other business ventures.’
I’d never really pried into Harry’s affairs. He’d told me that he’d ‘gone into publishing’. I knew that this meant pornography.
‘I don’t think so, Harry.’
‘Now wait a minute, Rube. Hear me out.’
Harry explained how he was paying off the Obscene Publications Squad in return for a free hand in running his porn racket. He needed a go-between.
‘Why?’
‘Well Rube,’ Harry said with a sigh, ‘I can’t afford to be seen to be too close to Old Bill. Smacks of being a grass, see? Something goes down and people might point the finger. Word gets around that maybe I’ve been handing up bodies.’
‘So why me?’
‘Well . . .’
‘What?’
‘Well, old George Mooney’s taken a bit of a shine to you.’
‘Oh, great.’
Harry chuckled.
‘Thing is Rube,’ he said. ‘Mooney’s playing hard to get with me. And I’ve come up against more opposition than I’d bargained for. I thought that this was going to be an easy little racket. Something to retire on. It still can be, but I’ve just got to get tight with the Dirty Squad, that’s all.’
‘So you want me to get tight with Mooney?’
‘Look, see it as a public relations exercise. Lay on a bit of charm. You’re good at that.’
‘And what if the Detective Chief Inspector wants a bit more than that?’
‘You can look after yourself. See if you can find out what he’s into. If we can get something on him then we can use it against him. I’ve tried setting him up with tarts but he doesn’t want to know.’
‘Is he queer?’
Harry laughed.
‘No. I don’t think so anyway. Rumour has it that he’s, you know, into watching. He’s a, what do you call it? A voyager.’
‘A voyeur?’
‘That’s it. All this porn stuff. I suppose after all this time it’s got to him.’
‘Dirty old man.’
‘Harmless though, I reckon.’
‘So what does he see in an old dolly bird like me?’
Harry gave me this shocked look. He could be quite camp when he was laying on the charm.
‘Rube,’ he protested. ‘You’ve got charisma, darling.’
‘He knows about Eddie.’
‘Of course. But I think that could be a winner and all. Being a villain’s wife. He’s bound to be drawn to that.’
‘What makes you think that?’
‘Just a hunch.’
‘You should do a psychology degree.’
Harry smiled.
‘So what do you say?’ he asked.
‘I don’t know, Harry.’
‘A favour, Rube,’ he said softly.
I looked back at his face, caught that stare of his. I realised that ‘favour’ wasn’t a request, it was a reminder. A reminder of all the favours he’d done me. I’d always known that this time might come. Time to pay back.
‘I’ll cut you in. As I’ve said, there’s a lot of money in it. Plenty to go around. Honest Rube, we’re looking at money to retire on.’
‘I’ve heard that one before,’ I said, bitterly.
Harry shrugged and nodded.
‘Yeah, but we won’t be taking any silly risks on this one.’
I realised then the difference between Harry and Eddie. Eddie’s crime was driven by a doomed romanticism. Harry did business, coldly and ruthlessly.
‘Just take him out and entertain him,’ he said. ‘Find out what his weaknesses are. And find out where I stand.’
I couldn’t really refuse. I was in debt and scraping around for money. No career, no prospects except The Stardust. I relied on Harry. And his ruthlessness at least had a certainty to it. He was on to a sure thing. It didn’t seem that I’d have to do very much. But I felt myself being drawn into something. A gravity that governed me. As if I’d always really belonged to seediness and the bad side of things.
Me and George Mooney dined at Kettner’s. I chatted him up with showbiz gossip. Secrets of the stars I’ve worked with, all that crap. He lapped it up. George offered up some gossip of his own. The Krays. The Twins had been arrested back in May and committal proceedings had just been concluded. Nipper Read had stepped up police protection of witnesses. Some of their own firm were ready to go QE.
‘No honour among thieves, Ruby,’ he droned.
I thought about Eddie. But I didn’t say anything. I was supposed to be being charming, after all. I hoped to God my husband didn’t find out about me entertaining a bent copper.
‘And what about your work, George?’
I tried to sound interested. I wanted to lead the conversation on to the business in hand.
‘Well, it’s not exactly as glamorous as the Flying Squad. But it does have its compensations.’
‘Surely there can’t be need for law enforcement in that area. Not now things have got more, well, permissive.’
‘Permissive,’ Mooney hissed the word back at me with relish. ‘Yes, we live, as they say, in a permissive age. But, you see, as laws become more liberal they have to become more tightly regulated. The whole point of permissiveness is permission. We have to be careful what is permitted.’
‘I see,’ I said, nodding along with him.
‘Filth, depravity, we can only allow so much. We can’t stamp it out, we can only contain it. Control it. The courts are practically useless in defining what obscenity is. So it’s up to the police to decide what’s permitted.’
‘So, this means you’ll be granting permission to certain people.’
Mooney looked up and sm
iled. His little eyes gleamed at me across the table.
‘Ruby,’ he said, ‘I know that you’re here on behalf of Mr Starks. It pains me to think that the premise of our little tête à tête is this sordid business.’
‘Now, George,’ I purred at him. ‘Don’t be like that.’
‘I’d like to think,’ he went on, haltingly, ‘that you could enjoy my company. Just a little bit.’
‘Of course,’ I replied, giving my best Charm School smile.
‘Then we can be friends?’
His hand slithered across the tablecloth to rest limply on mine. I tried not to shudder. His palm was warm and clammy.
‘Yes,’ I agreed through a clenched grin.
‘Then I will deal with you, Ruby, as a friend.’
I slipped my hand out from under his as casually as possible and folded my arms. I tilted my head engagingly to one side.
‘So?’ I asked softly.
Mooney’s eyes darted to and fro as if he was checking the room.
‘Permissiveness requires a necessary permit charge. It’s big business we’re dealing with here. “Licensing” we like to call it. Harry Starks knows all about it.’
‘So, are you, well, granting him a licence?’
‘Yes, to a certain extent. But we’re not giving him free rein just yet.’
‘Why not?’
‘Certain reservations, shall we say.’
‘Such as?’
‘Well,’ said Mooney, ‘Mr Starks is a formidable operator, someone who can control the Soho rackets, someone we could definitely do business with on a large scale. This sort of thing needs a firm hand and Harry has a very good pedigree where that’s concerned. But we don’t want the boat rocked. We can’t afford to be seen to be presiding over some sort of unseemly power struggle. This business with the Maltese. It needs to be sorted out.’
‘And what do you suggest that he does?’
Mooney shrugged.
‘Well, unless he can eliminate the opposition, swiftly and efficiently, I’d suggest some sort of accommodation. If both parties can be clear about who operates what, then we can be sure about who we’re dealing with and settle our percentage accordingly. But, however, it needs to be done quickly and cleanly. We certainly can’t sanction a messy gang war. That would definitely be bad for business. With the Twins banged up and awaiting trial, West End Central are under pressure to come down heavily on anything that looks like a power struggle. So I suggest that Mr Starks operate with some discretion.’
Mooney insisted on paying for the meal, even though Harry had given me plenty of cash to cover it. He showed me to my cab and I allowed him to peck me on the cheek.
‘I look forward to our next date, Ruby,’ he said as I got into the back.
I reported back to Harry and he set up a meet with the Maltese. I got back in touch with Mooney so that he could sit in on the negotiations. Harry cut me in as promised and he went through the sort of money he planned to make from this racket. There was a huge amount to be made and I would be on a percentage. It all started to make sense. All I would have to do was play at being nice to that creep Mooney. Hell, I’d done a lot worse for less cash. Now I could get together some capital of my own. I could set myself up with it and I wouldn’t have to rely on anyone. I thought about Eddie again. I didn’t love him any more. I didn’t want to have to worry about him rotting away in the Hate Factory. I wanted to be free of all that.
The big meet took place at the Criterion Restaurant. Harry attended with two of his firm, Big Jock McCluskey and Manny Gould. Three of the Maltese firm were there and George Mooney turned up with a couple of junior officers from the Dirty Squad. And like some diplomatic summit, they carved it all up.
It was agreed that the Maltese would stick to their familiar territory, clip joints and prostitute flats. But they would only have a limited interest in pornographic bookshops. Harry would make few incursions into prostitution and clipping, mostly confined to running rent boys, which in any case the Maltese had no interest in. In return, he would take the biggest share in the pornography trade.
It was a shrewd deal on Harry’s part. He knew that the porn trade was booming and was easy to run, and carried with it the minimum risk. Initially the Dirty Squad was to be paid, via Mooney, £5,000 – £3,000 from Harry and £2,000 from the Maltese, and then a continuing percentage from the shops and clubs.
To secure the deal and to make sure that there was less chance of rivalry in the future an arrangement was worked out giving both parties, the Maltese and Harry’s firm, joint interest in some of each other’s clubs. This meant that if any of the premises run by either group were attacked, the other operator would suffer by it as well. So the incentive for any further trouble was removed.
Everyone went away happy. The racketeers could continue to make a fortune out of vice with the minimum of harassment. The police would get their cut and be able to claim that they were keeping the lid on Soho. Anything that might too easily offend public morality, over-enthusiastic touting by a clip joint, shop-window displays that were too lairy, these could easily be curbed by having a quiet word. It made sense for the Dirty Squad to deal with organised crime, with crime that they themselves had helped to organise. It meant that their patch wouldn’t get fucked up by irresponsible and unruly elements. The gangsters could do the majority of the policing for them, and the really dirty stuff at that.
At first I had worried about Eddie. Then I stopped worrying about him and just worried about not worrying. As the months went by with him inside, I felt a sort of emptiness towards him. My visits had already become much more important to him than they were for me. I felt guilty about that, which just made things worse, and I began to go and see him less and less. I started to think about getting a divorce.
By now I had money in the bank. A couple of years of this, I figured, and I could look after myself. The porn business was booming. I got to know how it all worked. How the shops were laid out. Soft core in the front, hard core out the back. And the real money was to be made in the shops. In retail. Especially the hard stuff. The wholesale racket was vulnerable, with risks at both ends, production and distribution. Harry could pressurise the people producing this filth into disposing of their stock at low prices whilst the punters were willing to buy it at any price. Buy cheap and sell dear, the classic profit formula. And there was much less risk involved as well. Harry didn’t even own the shops that he ran, he leased them from what was known in the trade as ‘the superior landlord’. Managers or wholesalers could be charged with ‘possession for gain’ but ‘possession’ or ‘gain’ could not be proved against Harry. And with the Dirty Squad paid off, Harry was laughing. It was hard not to admire his cunning in all of this. He was offering ‘protection’ and yet he was the most protected.
I got involved with it far more than I’d really wanted. I got to know the ludicrous nicknames – nobody used their real name if they could help it. And I got to know the slang for all the aspects of the business. Photographs were ‘smudges’, Super 8 films were ‘rollers’ and dirty books were ‘yellow backs’. Most of the hard-core stuff at that time was imported from Scandinavia. ‘Scans’, they were called. Some stuff came from America but this was done by people going over to New York, buying up the heaviest porn they could find and smuggling back individual magazines which could be copied ‘dot for dot’ in some dingy printworks in London. Scans were shipped in in bulk, right under the noses of Customs and Excise. There were careful methods of importation. Smudges and yellow backs would come in in bales of wastepaper that were then being imported from Scandinavia. Rollers would often be hidden in refrigerator trucks carrying bacon. Flesh with ‘Danish’ written all over it.
Thankfully, I rarely had to handle this filth. Whenever I saw any of it, well, I felt a sort of sadness. It all seemed pathetic. It was hard not to pity the sad old raincoat brigade who lapped all of this stuff up. The really obscene thing was the huge piles of cash we were making. And most of all, I pitied the
people these distorted bodies belonged to. I didn’t imagine they were paid much or treated well.
I tried not to think about them or feel guilty in any way, and instead to concentrate on the thought that with enough capital I could set myself up somehow. I could divorce Eddie and, I don’t know, maybe even start my own business. Something utterly legal and boring. I didn’t have any idea of what, though. The money kept coming in, some of it in my name simply to protect Harry, but a fair percentage would be mine in the long term. Or so I hoped.
I wanted to talk to Harry about Eddie. But I couldn’t get much sense out of him. He was in love again. He was stupid over this kid Tommy. I couldn’t say I blamed him. Tommy was fucking gorgeous, that’s for sure. Blond with pale blue eyes. A tight, muscled little figure. There was something very flirtatious in his manner. He had a slight squint, a lazy eye full of mischief.
Harry had met him a few years back in one of the boys’ clubs that he’d donated a boxing trophy to. Harry had got him to give up boxing. ‘It’ll spoil your looks,’ he’d told him. He’d been in trouble and done a bit of borstal. When he was out he came and found Harry.
He wanted to be an actor though I don’t think he had any idea of how to go about it. He’d done some modelling and some extra work, that was all. He seemed very taken with me. I guess he thought, rather naively, that I could further his career. I told him straight out that I wasn’t exactly a shining example of success when it came to show business but I promised that I’d do anything I could to help. I couldn’t tell whether he had any real talent in that direction. He kind of performed with people, sort of craving their attention. He knew he was attractive all right, but he gave off a sort of nervousness, as if he was struggling with something.
Tommy had had a hard time. In and out of care most of his life. You’d often catch a hurt look about him that spoke of God knows what. And I suppose I worried about him. Harry’s boyfriends could often have a rough deal.
