London Noir - [Anthology]

by Edited by Maxim Jakubowski

  ‘Close the bloody door. I’ll catch my death.’

  Charlie closed the door.

  Lorna said, ‘Well what did you get?’

  Charlie limped to the table and emptied his pockets. As he did so Lorna said, ‘You hurt yourself? I saw you was limping yesterday. You OK?’

  ‘It’s nothing,’ Charlie said.

  Lorna moved to stand. ‘Let me see.’

  ‘No!’ Charlie said.

  Lorna sat back again and her skirt rose farther up her legs. ‘Suit yourself.’

  ‘It’s all right,’ Charlie said. ‘It’s all right.’

  On the coffee table Lorna sifted through two credit cards, three cheque-books, and a big handful of jewellery including two gold rings, but no cash. ‘I’m not having a good run,’ Charlie said.

  ‘I know,’ Lorna said. ‘Your luck ain’t been so good. But that’s OK.’ From her cleavage she took a roll of notes and offered them.

  Again Charlie hesitated.

  ‘What’s the matter with you today?’ she said. ‘Don’t you like me or something? Because I always thought you did, only now you act like I got the bloody plague.’

  ‘I ... I like you,’ Charlie said.

  ‘Well take the bleeding money then,’ she said, ‘cos you and me has got to have a little talk.’

  ‘We do?’ Charlie said. He took the money. It was five new twenty-pound notes. After he counted them out he said, ‘This is too much, Miss Lorna. This stuff ain’t that good.’

  ‘Sit down, Charlie,’ Lorna said. ‘Here, by me.’

  Charlie didn’t know what to do.

  ‘What the fuck’s the matter!’ Lorna said. ‘I’m trying to do you a favour, but everything I say I gotta say six times before you do what I want. Jesus, I used to think Lennie treated you like shit, but I’m getting sick and tired myself. You going to sit down, or what?’

  Charlie sat.

  ‘Thing is,’ Lorna said, ‘I been hoping one day I’d have a chance to say something with Lennie not around and today’s the day cos Lennie decided to go to the races.’ She patted her skirt flat.

  Charlie watched her carefully.

  ‘Thing is, Charlie, Lennie is ripping you off.’

  ‘He’s . . . what?’

  ‘Making a mug out of you. That’s the tall and the short of it. I could see all along you was a straight enough guy, and I hated to see Lennie take advantage, but there wasn’t nothing I could do about it till now.’

  Charlie stared at her hard.

  Lorna said, ‘You’re thinking about Beverley, ain’t you?’

  Charlie nodded.

  ‘Well that’s exactly where he’s doing you, Charlie. He takes most of your share of what you bring him, don’t he? And that’s cos he’s supposed to have Beverley fixed up in a hospital place and it’s getting her off the stuff, right?’

  Charlie nodded, his eyes open wide and focused unblinkingly on Lorna.

  ‘Well he’s ripping you off right, left and centre. He’s putting everything in his own pocket and he’s laughing all the way.’

  ‘But Bev?’

  ‘You want to know where Lennie’s got your Beverley? You really want to know? He’s got her working up the Cross. She’s working for him, Charlie. She’s hooked up to her eyeballs and she’s buying it on her back. So he’s got you both, Charlie, and he’s bloody laughing.’

  Charlie continued to stare, motionless. But his breathing became more rapid.

  ‘I know it’s rotten,’ Lorna said. ‘And I only tell you cos I want to help you. I know he’s my old man, and that ain’t going to change and nothing I can say could change him anyway. If I told him, “Don’t do this,” or “Don’t do that,” the only thing that would happen is I’d be back working alongside your Bev. He likes me well enough, does Lennie, but I ain’t so stupid as to think there ain’t plenty of others would do. I may look it, but I ain’t stupid.’

  Charlie still said nothing.

  Lorna said, ‘But fair’s fair, Charlie. And he ain’t being fair with you, so I thought when I got the chance I’d help you get some of your own back. What do you think?’

  Charlie thought. He said, ‘How?’

  ‘By ripping him off,’ Lorna said. ‘By ripping him off good and proper.’

  Again Charlie said, ‘How?’

  ‘He’s got a house. We live there, Lennie and me. And it ain’t half bad. So I thought the best way for you to get your own back was for you to do your business at Lennie’s own gaff. I can tell you where he keeps all his cash, and he’s got securities. And you can take my jewellery too - he’d never let me keep it anyhow if we split up. You’ll make more money in one night than you ever seen before, and you can use it to get Bev back, and try to do her some real good if it ain’t too late. How’s that sound?’

  Charlie stared at her.

  ‘Bleedin’ hell, Charlie, say something. I’m risking my bloody neck here. There ain’t nothing in it for me. If you do Lennie’s place like I say, it may not cost me money, but he’ll be like an orang-utan with a sore areshole for a month and that won’t be fun, believe me. So, you on for it, or not?’

  Slowly Charlie nodded.

  ‘The best thing is for you to pull the job tonight, cos him and me is going to be at a party. You can do it early, between ten and eleven, cos you’ll know we’re out. It’s got to be the chance of a lifetime to get your own back. So what do you say? You want the address?’

  * * * *

  When he left Lorna, the first thing Charlie did was take the tube to Camden Town. In the kitchen of a scruffy flat ten minutes walk from the station he gave three of the new twenties to a woman named Sally. Sally was surprised that Charlie gave her so much. ‘You did good last night, huh?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Charlie said.

  Although Sally had a ten-month-old daughter, Amanda, at her breast she said, ‘There something I can do for you, Charlie?’ and she nodded toward the bedroom.

  Charlie shook his head. ‘The knee’s still bad. But I’m hungry.’

  Sally lifted Amanda slightly. ‘When’s she’s done I’ll cook you something.’

  ‘Na,’ Charlie said. ‘I’ll go down the chipper. I’ll take Tommy. Get some for him too.’

  ‘Suit yourself. You know where to find him.’

  Charlie made his way into the living room where Tommy, Sally’s eleven-year-old son, sat lolling on a couch in front of a television set.

  ‘Wakey wakey,’ Charlie said as he sat down.

  Tommy looked up sleepily. Charlie took a chocolate bar from his pocket and passed it to the boy. Tommy accepted the chocolate wordlessly and began to unwrap it. As he did so, Charlie turned to the television set and tried to work out what was happening to the cartoon figures who were dashing about on the screen.

  After a few minutes Charlie said, ‘I’m going for fish and chips. You coming?’

  Tommy said nothing, but he rose from the couch and followed Charlie back to the kitchen where Sally was laying Amanda in her cot. Charlie said, ‘Heard from Stinger?’

  ‘Na,’ Sally said.

  ‘Only another twenty-seven months,’ Charlie said.

  ‘With good behaviour,’ Sally said, ‘and when was that fucker’s behaviour any bloody good, eh?’

  * * * *

  After leaving Tommy, Charlie went to King’s Cross. The first few girls he asked said they’d never heard of Beverley and that cheered Charlie up. But as he moved closer to Gray’s Inn Road a black-haired woman in a leopard-skin T-shirt said, ‘I saw her over there half an hour ago,’ and pointed. As Charlie’s eyes followed the woman’s finger he saw Beverley for himself, leaning against cast iron railings and looking unsteady.

  He watched as two men walked towards her and slowed down. She, in turn, straightened and spoke to them. The men laughed and walked past. Beverley called them names that Charlie could hear all the way to where he was standing with the leopard-skin woman. Behind the men’s backs Beverley gave them the finger, but neither of them turned to see it.

 
; Then, as the two men approached the leopard-skin woman said, ‘On your way, Dad.’

  Charlie left, leaving both Beverley and the leopard-skin woman to business.

  * * * *

  The robbery at Leonard Slaughter’s did not go as planned. For a start, nothing inside the house at the address Lorna had given was where it was supposed to be. And when it came to details, like the cash in the screw-off top on the corner of the wooden bedstead, not only did none of the bedstead’s corners screw off, they weren’t even wooden.

  Another thing was that the house did not belong to Leonard Slaughter.

  And the last thing was that waiting inside the house was the fat policeman and he was carrying a truncheon. When he revealed himself the fat policeman said, ‘I hope you’re going to make a run for it. I really hope you will, because I love the sound this thing makes when it hits a head. Go on, son, run. Make my day.’

  * * * *

  The next morning Leonard Slaughter was in a very good mood. After a leisurely breakfast in his sumptuous flat, he went to the Balham High Road office and waited for the expected visit from the fat policeman. The fat man was due at two but even when he hadn’t arrived by three, Slaughter was not unhappy. He poured himself and Lorna another drink and he decided to have her tell again the story of what she had said to Charlie.

  ‘The old scum,’ Slaughter said. ‘He hadn’t brought anything worth having for weeks. Definitely losing his touch. Definitely expendable.’

  ‘You should have seen his face,’ Lorna said.

  ‘You said you was an out of work actress when we met,’ Slaughter said, ‘but I never believed it until now.’

  Lorna had just about got through the story when the fat man finally arrived. He looked grave.

  * * * *

  The fat man needed only ten minutes to tell the story of the arrest and subsequent events. His anger increased each minute. “I know I said any body,’ he said with fury, ‘But I meant a body I could count. Someone I could point to and say, “Look that clears up twenty or thirty burglaries, so we can concentrate on something else again.” I did not mean an eleven-year-old kid, even if he did look sixteen. And I certainly did not mean an eleven-year-old kid who had a thin skull.’

  Before the ten minutes were up the fat policeman made it clear that when he’d sorted his own problems out he would return. He made it clear that his past arrangement with Leonard Slaughter was at an end. That what should have continued as a simple and secure arrangement was now a fucking mess and anything that came out of it was no more than Lennie Fucking Slaughter fucking deserved.

  Neither Slaughter nor Lorna knew what the fat policeman was talking about, and made attempts to say so. But the fat policeman’s ten minutes didn’t run to it. When he was finished he stormed out of the room because he was due back at the station to begin the internal investigation procedure.

  But the fat policeman did not get to tell his side of the story to the internal investigators. He barely got as far as the stairs.

  From the shadows on the landing Charlie stepped out as the fat policeman left Slaughter’s office. With a tyre iron he broke the fat policeman’s head open with a single blow, just as the fat policeman had done to Tommy. Like Tommy, the fat policeman was dead before he hit the floor. Unlike tommy for the fat policeman the floor was at the bottom of the flight of stairs.

  The noise of the fall was loud enough to be heard inside Slaughter’s office. Lennie Slaughter opened the door and came out onto the landing to see what had happened.

  In a matter of moments he followed the fat policeman in all particulars except that at the bottom of the stairs his body did not land on the floor. It landed on the fat policeman. Neither Slaughter nor the fat policeman knew who had hit him. Or, of course, why.

  Inside the office Lorna’s fate was different. She, at least, knew who. She was even able to protest, to scream. But of course nobody came to her assistance and in any case they would have been too late.

  * * * *

  Back at the nick the senior officers waiting to interview the fat policeman grew angry when he did not arrive and they thought he was being obstructive. Colleagues who knew him better thought chances were he’d done a runner. Both, of course, were wrong, but it was not until a down-and-out tried the handle of the dirty, unlabelled door on

  Balham High Road that anybody found out what had actually happened to the fat policeman. As soon as he saw the bodies inside the unlocked door the down-and-out ran away. Three people passing on the pavement saw him run. All three went to investigate.

  Later one said he had heard the fleeing man scream. But none of the three witnesses could describe the down-and-out in any detail.

  <>

  * * * *

  LIZ HOLLIDAY

  AND SHE LAUGHED

  I

  reckon it took all the luck in the world to get me this flat,’ Jane Martin said. ‘Probably means I’ll never get another job, or win the pools, or anything.’

  She was sitting in the darkness in the hall, with the telephone receiver cradled on her shoulder. She took a piece of meat from the kebab open on the floor in front of her. ‘I mean,’ she went on, ‘how many other single people do you know who have council flats to themselves, Paula?’

  Her friend’s voice crackled down the line at her, saying something congratulatory, but Jane’s attention was on the cans of paint she had bought that morning: painting the whole flat white wasn’t really cheap, just cheaper than any other idea she had been able to come up with.

  ‘I’ll see you about noon then?’ Paula said. ‘You provide the lunch and I’ll provide the labour.’

  ‘Greater love hath no woman than that she paint her best friend’s new flat,’ Jane said. By the time she put the phone down, they were both giggling. She picked a chilli out of the kebab and munched on it. Something made her turn towards the door.

  A pair of blue eyes was staring at her through the letter-box.

  Her heart thumped once. She shouted, ‘What are you doing, you bastard?’

  The letter-box swung silently shut. She thought she heard a single footstep. Then there was silence. Her whole body was rigid, and her breath was unsteady. She stared into the darkness with her hand on the phone. After a few moments, when she was calmer, she thought: I should phone the police. But it was too late. By the time they arrived, he would be gone.

  She stood near to the door, listening, but heard nothing. Curious, she touched the letter-box. It was slightly open, but shut easily beneath her fingers. If she hadn’t known better she might have thought the wind had opened it. But she did know better. She imagined him standing on the other side. He was probably laughing at her, laughing at her fear.

  She went into the living room. The room was almost empty, but moonlight illuminated the floor cushions and the sofa, her one decent piece of furniture. She went and looked out of the bare windows. I ought to get some curtains, she thought; but she didn’t really want to. She loved the way the spring sunlight flooded into the room, and the sense the openness gave her of being part of a living community. What’s the point of living near Portobello Road if you’re going to shut yourself away? That was what she had said to Paula, when they had been making a list of essentials. Sometimes Paula was just too practical for her own good.

  A car door slammed somewhere. Jane’s head jerked round. She realized she had been listening for . . . something the whole time.

  Before she went to bed that night she jammed a chair up against the front door, but as she lay sleepless in her bed she was still listening, listening.

  * * * *

  ‘You should have shoved a knife in the guy’s face.’ Paula stabbed at the door with a brushful of white gloss.

  ‘And get done for manslaughter, knowing my luck? Yeah, right.’ Jane pulled the roller down the wall with more vigour than was strictly necessary. Paint splattered everywhere. ‘He was probably just looking for a flat to squat. Now he knows someone’s here, he won’t be back.’

>   ‘Well at least call the police. What do you think they’re there for?’

  ‘Oh sure. He ran off the second I shouted at him. He could have been at Marble Arch by the time they arrived.’

  ‘For God’s sake . . . you have to stop thinking like a victim.’ Paula started to fill in around the doorhandle.

  ‘Great. Now it’s my fault.’

  ‘I’m not saying that. I’m just saying you have to do something. Don’t let the bastard win, you know?’ She laid the brush across the top of the can. ‘Hell with this. I’m going to make a cup of tea.’