by Beezy Marsh
‘Yes,’ he said, moving around to my side of the desk and picking up the frame for a moment. ‘She left me when she was young, too young,’ he said, with a note of regret in his voice. ‘I think of her often.’
‘I’m sorry for your loss,’ I whispered, afraid that I’d put my foot in it. ‘It must be hard to lose your sister.’
Suddenly, he clasped hold of my wrist, puffing on his cigar until the end glowed red. Then he took it out of his mouth and placed it close to my arm, so close I could feel the heat of it starting to burn my skin.
‘Please,’ I said, tears welling in my eyes as I tried and failed to pull away. ‘You’re hurting me!’
He smiled and it was more like a snarl, as he placed the cigar back between his teeth, still keeping a firm hold of me.
‘Yes, quite a performance you gave us, Nell. Old Banksy ain’t the foreman at Tate and Lyle because he don’t exist. But you know that, don’t you?’
I stared at the carpet, which was flecked with dark stains, as if someone had spilled ink all over it.
‘But I like you, so start explaining yourself before I change my mind and show you what happens to women who cross me.’
My mouth was drier than the desert as Billy’s coal-black eyes bored into mine. He relaxed his grip and I sank back into the wooden chair.
‘You’ll only get one chance,’ he said, perching himself on the edge of the desk and pouring himself a whisky from the cut glass decanter. ‘So, I’d make it good before I find a way of loosening your tongue. I think you get the picture, don’t you?’
He rolled the cigar smoke around his mouth and blew it out, slowly.
My mind was racing but everything was moving in slow motion. I stared at the floor. No words came.
‘Who sent you?’ he said, lunging forward and clasping a clump of hair at the nape of my neck so that I had to look up at him, bringing tears to my eyes.
‘I’m one of Alice Diamond’s girls,’ I said, hoarsely. ‘I had no choice but to come over here and spy on you.’ He raised an eyebrow and relaxed his fingers, letting them trail through my hair, stroking my neck, very gently. My scalp throbbed but his caress almost made me purr.
‘Well, well. Now you’ve got my attention,’ he said, moving away from me to the chair on the other side of the desk and settling himself down in it. ‘Tell me more.’
‘I was learning to be one of The Forty Thieves, before I got my collar felt by the law a few months back,’ I began. ‘I only went shopping with them once, but I’d learned the tricks of the trade with Alice.’ I was fumbling with my fingers, which seemed to have developed a life of their own.
‘I see,’ said Billy, icily. ‘Go on…’
‘Thing was I was already in trouble because I was pregnant, so the cozzer took pity and he didn’t arrest me. He took me home and told my parents. I got a right belting off my dad and then I was sent away to have the baby,’ the words came rushing out. I didn’t want to confess to being a jailbird, so I was a bit economical with the truth, not that it was going to get me out of this tight spot any easier.
‘Quite a story. I don’t know what it is about you girls these days,’ said Billy, tutting and smiling to himself.
That made me blush crimson. Telling Billy about getting myself into trouble with the baby was humiliating but there was no other way.
‘By the time I came home, my dad had run up gambling debts and the whole family was in hock to Alice. I couldn’t go home because my dad didn’t want to see me, and in any case, Alice had other plans…’
‘What kind of plans? She ain’t exactly a criminal mastermind, is she? Good at hoisting but that’s about the sum of it!’ he guffawed. ‘Alice Diamond, indeed! She should stay in Woolworths, on her side of the water, where she belongs.’
‘Alice was worried that someone was grassing up her girls because they kept getting nicked when they were going shopping. It was like someone was tipping the cozzers the wink. That’s what she thought,’ I said.
‘Did she now?’ said Billy, thoughtfully blowing a smoke ring up to the ceiling. ‘Thought I might have had something to do with it, I suppose?’
I nodded. You could have heard a pin drop.
‘I hear lots of things, as you can imagine, in my line of business,’ Billy said, softly. ‘But, as it happens, someone round the Elephant and Castle was singing like a canary about the comings and goings of The Forty Thieves. So, on this occasion, she was right.’
My heart was pounding. This wasn’t how I’d expected to find out about the snitch, not directly from Billy Sullivan himself. I had a horrible feeling about that, right in the pit of my stomach.
‘Times are getting harder for businessmen like me and the cozzers don’t like all the high-profile thefts from the stores when everyone is tightening their belts. The Forty Thieves like their luxury goods, don’t they? It makes people, decent people, feel… uncomfortable, cheated and at times like that, the police start trying to make my life a bit difficult. So, of course, I was happy to pass on what I could about the hoisters from The Forty Thieves, just in the interests of doing my civic duty.’
I bristled at the thought of what Alice would say about that. The King of Soho was dobbing us in it to save his own skin, just as she had suspected.
Billy was warming to his theme and seemed to be enjoying every minute of my discomfort: ‘Oh, don’t be offended, Nell. This is just how business is done among us fellas. Up here in Soho, we have good relations with the police. We hear things, they hear things. It works both ways. People don’t want gangs of shoplifters steaming through their stores, not after there’s been a war on and we’re all still living on the ration. These silly girl gangs grab headlines. It ain’t good for business, real business. And that’s what us men are all about.’
Well, I almost laughed at the thought of Billy, struggling to get by on rations with his petrol coupon fiddles and his nightclubs and his expensive, tailored suits. But I didn’t dare.
He leaned forward, so I caught another whiff of the whisky on his breath, as he whispered conspiratorially: ‘I’ll let you into a secret. The information I got about Alice and The Forty Thieves was payback of sorts, because the fella that told me owed me for a consignment of silk stockings that got nicked off the back of his cart outside Queen’s Buildings, right on Alice Diamond’s doorstep. We all know who the likely culprit was but of course, nobody there would breathe a word about it. All his customers said they were busy having a cup of tea at the time and nobody had seen a thing. Funny that.
‘So, the tallyman had to find a way to make it good before I showed him how upset I was about losing so much good stock.’
‘The tallyman!’ I said, before I could stop myself. ‘That slimy bastard. I never liked him. I knew he was a rat.’
Billy laughed.
‘It weren’t actually him who grassed though. It’s some bird he’s shagging who’s his eyes and ears who really did the dirty work.’
‘Someone with a debt to pay him?’ My heart sank as I thought back to Iris and how much she was struggling when we were back in Tenison Street. God only knows how she was coping now, but would she have sunk so low?
‘Do you know who it was?’ I asked.
‘Can’t say I know or care,’ said Billy, airily. ‘People always have their reasons to talk, don’t they? But I have to say, your tallyman has got a big mouth and he can’t keep his dick in his trousers. If he’d been doing his job properly instead of getting his leg over, those stockings would have earned me a pretty penny. So, you’re welcome to that bit of information, as long as Alice Diamond don’t find out it came directly from me.’
He blew another perfect smoke ring and it seemed to please him. He watched it for a moment before it disappeared.
‘But now we are better acquainted, in future, Nell, I expect you to keep me filled in about what The Forty Thieves are up to. You could be quite a good source of information.’
I gasped: ‘She’ll bloody kill me if she finds out!’
‘But how I am supposed to convince her that I found out so much about the grass in the first place?’ I said, desperately.
‘Oh, you’ll think of something,’ said Billy, standing up and brushing the creases out of his trousers. ‘You’re quite good at making up lies, aren’t you? Just ask Old Banksy.’
He moved back around the desk towards me, like a tiger stalking his prey.
‘You’re taking money from me, Nell, which means you are loyal to me,’ he said, with such menace that my heart skipped a beat.
‘I don’t mind you going out hoisting with Alice and her girls, that’s fine, nick yourself a few nice outfits for the club while you are on about it because I look my girls to look their best.’ He waved his hands in the air, like he was conducting an orchestra. ‘Play along, keep her sweet. But the minute I find out you are ratting on me, I will make whatever Alice Diamond can threaten you or your family with look like a stay in the Ritz hotel, do you get me?’
‘Yes, Mr Sullivan,’ I stammered.
‘It’s alright, sweetheart,’ he said. ‘Now we’re friends, you can call me Billy.’
He smiled warmly, leaning over to tuck a stray strand of hair behind my ear, but his eyes were cold and dark and I felt if I stared too long, I might drown in their depths.
‘You’ve such a lovely face, nice features,’ he whispered, his hands working their way across my shoulders. I could feel my body responding to his touch.
‘It would be such a shame to have to spoil it because people like to look at the club singer, especially when she’s pretty, like you.’
He let that thought sink in. I began to tremble from my head to my feet, which were practically tap dancing. The more I tried to keep still, the worse it got. More alarmingly, my insides felt all squishy every time I looked at him and I was powerless to stop it.
I turned away, studying the ink stains on the carpet in front of me.
It was only when I looked more closely, that I realised, with horror, that they were not ink, but spots of dried blood.
Billy Sullivan was expecting me to be his eyes and ears, to spy on The Forty Thieves, and Alice wanted me to spy on him.
I was in gangland now and I was playing with fire.
The question was, whose gang was I in?
Chapter Nineteen
ALICE
Soho, London, March 1947
I always get butterflies in my stomach when I go shopping up West. It’s the excitement of knowing there’s going to be some good stuff to nick. Lately, I know there’s more of a risk of getting caught and that’s been making me rather nervous in a way I’m not very fond of.
The newspapers are full of headlines about rascals on the take, stealing rather than doing an honest day’s work. Well, let the cozzers round up the spivvy fellas selling paper flowers and tat on street corners for a few shillings. I’m all for a clear out of the chaps who are so feckless they are poncing off decent folk.
I’ve had enough of all the patter that their wares are ‘speshul, love’ because, frankly, it makes it harder for me to sell decent stuff at a good price to my punters who are counting the pennies more than ever. I’m sick and tired of being undercut by their rubbish. Most of these spivs are draft dodgers or deserters who never did their bit in the first place and their shoddy knock-off goods are giving us hoisters a bad name. I’d love it if the cozzers would go one better than that and call on the Mr Bigs, all the gangland bosses over in Soho who sit there sipping whisky in their spielers until all hours, while they pull the strings on the spivs plaguing our street corners.
Round ’em up, I say, and get them down the Labour Exchange to do an honest day’s work. But leave me and my girls to do a fair day’s thieving because the price of clothing these days is just daylight robbery for us ladies and we have dug for Britain and kept the home fires burning during the long war.
Now it’s time for us to at least have a few nice threads to put on, ain’t it? We ain’t harming anyone by hoisting a few dresses because it’s all covered by the shop’s insurance, so who are we stealing from exactly?
As we glided through the backstreets of the West End in my Chrysler, I couldn’t help noticing that the streets were full of people queueing patiently. Truly, I have never known a nation like it. If there was a prize for queuing, the British would win it. Queues for tobacco, for the cinema, for spuds even in this perishing weather under such leaden skies. Why anyone would want to stand around freezing on the pavement is beyond me. My toes were nice and toasty in a lovely fur-lined pair of boots I hoisted from Derry and Toms up on Kensington High Street last winter and that is how they would stay if I had any say in the matter, snowdrifts or no snowdrifts.
Molly leaned over to give me one bit of good news, in between slugs of gin from her hipflask.
‘The blackout’s back from tonight,’ she slurred. ‘Newspaper seller told me this morning the gas lamps and electric will go off overnight for the foreseeable because of the power and coal shortages.’
That took the chill off the air because the blackout meant it would be easier for us to shift our wares to our fences. I don’t really go in for religion, but I said a prayer of thanks. Shop assistants were already bumbling around by candlelight in the late afternoons because of the power cuts, but this was like hitting the jackpot. A genuine cloak of darkness would make thieving so much simpler. For a moment, I almost got a bit teary-eyed remembering the good old days of the Blitz.
But then we drew up outside the Lyons Corner Tea House on Shaftesbury Avenue and I remembered I had to have a meet with my underworld spy: little Nell.
Nell was waiting for me, dunking a biscuit in a cuppa, with a face like a wet weekend.
‘How’s clubland treating you?’ I purred, sliding into a seat next to her.
‘It’s about as welcome as cancer,’ she replied.
‘That bad, is it?’
‘Punters are feeling me up, the digs I’m in are colder than Siberia and the pay is lousy but other than that, life on stage is just fantastic, thanks,’ she spat.
Honestly, she was such an ungrateful little wretch, after all I’d done for her.
‘Beggars can’t be choosers, can they, Nell?’ I said, smoothly. ‘Everyone has to start somewhere. At least you aren’t fur-pulling and doing piece work to make ends meet like your old chum Iris…’
‘Have you seen her?’ said Nell, leaning forward with eyes like a little eager bunny. ‘How’s she doing?’
‘She looked like a woman who’s got a lot of trouble with him indoors last time I caught sight of her,’ I quipped, watching Nell’s face fall. ‘But enough of her. Did you find out who has been snitching on my gang, in between enjoying the limelight?’ I said, pinching one of her biscuits and taking a bite.
‘I did hear a bit of a whisper,’ she said, averting her gaze. She spoke slowly, as if she was choosing her words carefully: ‘The barman told me that someone’s been grassing up The Forty Thieves, from inside Queen’s Buildings.’
‘Interesting,’ I said, chewing thoughtfully. ‘Any ideas who that could be, Nell?’
She glanced around the room, as if the answer was sitting at one of the little gingham-topped tables and might dash over to help her out. Then she spluttered into her tea: ‘No, no idea, sorry.’
‘Try harder, love,’ I said, putting my hand on her knee and giving it a squeeze, so that my nails were just starting to dig in. ‘Think.’
She winced under my grip.
‘I think I heard someone mention the tallyman was involved but I couldn’t be sure. Billy told the barman it was probably some gossipy housewife who was helping him because she was just jealous of all the finery the Forties go about wearing,’ she stammered.
Well, you didn’t need to be Sherlock Holmes to work out who the most likely snitch was, did you? The vision of Iris sitting alongside the tallyman on his cart, like the Queen of Sheba, was etched
in my memory. But it was more fun to keep Nell guessing whether I’d worked out her friend Iris was a blabbermouth because that way I could test her loyalty to me a bit more.
I relaxed my grip and smiled at her: ‘Billy? Not Mr Sullivan? Sounds like you have got to know him quite personally, Nell.’
‘God, no!’ she said, recoiling in horror. ‘Nothing like that! He lets all the staff call him Billy, that’s all. I don’t know him from Adam. He just pays my wages.’
There was a flicker of something in her eyes. Just a flicker, but it concerned me. What was she up to? I began to wonder how cosy she’d got with Billy Sullivan.
‘Is that right?’ I said. ‘I thought I paid your wages…’
‘I didn’t mean it like that!’ she muttered, turning red in the face. ‘You pay my wages, Alice, I ain’t saying otherwise. I’m in The Forty Thieves that is why I am working my arse off in that stupid club. It just came out wrong.’
She hissed at me through gritted teeth: ‘I know where my loyalties lie.’
‘There, there,’ I said, giving her arm a little pat, ‘Don’t upset yourself, we ain’t falling out and certainly not over a blooming fella like this Billy Sullivan.’
That seemed to make her relax. She forced a smile. But my interest was piqued.
‘But tell me, what’s he like? Is he scary?’
‘Terrifying,’ said Nell, the colour draining from her cheeks. ‘He’s got eyes like a bottomless pit. Fellas come in at all hours to pay their dues and give him a cut of whatever they’ve earned. He keeps a big ledger in his office with all the figures in it. He’s got the whole of Soho dancing to his tune.’
‘Has he?’ I drummed my fingers on the table in front of me. ‘Well, we’ll have to see about that.’
‘Do you need me to try to find out more? To see if there’s some other way to get one over on him?’ she said, brightening. She almost looked quite keen.
‘Are you volunteering?’
‘I just overheard something at the bar, it’s probably nothing…’ she said, glancing away.
‘What did you hear? You’d better spit it out,’ I said. If Sullivan was up to something, I wanted to be the first to know.