by Colin Murray
I didn’t expect them back soon. They’d be nursing their bruises for a day or two. But I knew they’d be back – Ray, in particular, looked like a grudge-bearer – and the next time they’d come mob-handed.
I stood there for a moment or two, wondering what to do. A lot depended on what was in the package Jon had dropped in my lap. Whatever it was, it looked like tomorrow was going to be busy.
Just when I thought an early night was in order, Jerry came tottering down the street and then up the stairs. He started talking nineteen to the dozen about some records he wanted me to hear. In particular, he’d tracked down a King Oliver recording, with the peerless Armstrong on trumpet. He’d even brought a small bottle of brandy back from the pub with him, in case I had returned.
An hour or two of cognac and jazz seemed like a good way to relax. If I was too distracted by recent events to be quite as enthusiastic as he probably expected me to be when I told him we’d be down in a few minutes, he was gracious enough not to show it. Although it might just have been that he’d had a beer or two too many to even notice that I was un peu distrait.
I thought guiltily of the effort that he must have put in to finding the record. After all, the great Satchmo was my weakness, not his.
Ghislaine was still in the scullery, fussing over a boiling kettle and staring at exotic kitchen utensils like teapots and tea-strainers. I asked her for the little package.
I was browned off with her for coming back before she could possibly know what the situation was, but I had to admire her courage and so kissed her gently on the cheek instead of taking her to task for putting herself in danger. She’d done it for me, after all.
I took the package from her and went into my office. She followed.
I sat in my chair, and she stood behind me, her hand on my shoulder, smoking, as I undid the string, tore open the brown envelope and carefully unwrapped the folded sheet of paper inside.
Oddly, she seemed unsurprised by the six little glittering shards of stone nestling in cotton wool.
‘That guy,’ she said – she used the word type – ‘in the French pub, he is a gangster.’
I nodded my agreement. My few minutes alone with Don and Ray had not suggested to me that either of them knew how to handle a garrotte, or that they would be cold-hearted and grimly determined enough to do it. But Jan the Belgian holidaymaker . . .
We both stared at the diamonds for a few minutes. Then a thought occurred to me. Not a nice one. If I was right, Jonathan Harrison must have known that Richard Ellis, his great chum, was dead.
‘I don’t suppose,’ I said, looking up at Ghislaine, ‘that the name of the woman Jon was with was Rosemary, was it?’
‘Perhaps,’ she said, still apparently transfixed by the little faceted stones.
Jerry’s shout broke the moment. ‘Are you coming down? Your brandy’s getting cold, and the jazz is getting hot.’
‘On our way, Jerry,’ I called back, carefully gathering up the diamonds and slipping them into the brown envelope. ‘Not a word about these,’ I said to Ghislaine. ‘Not to anyone. It’s important. I think that someone has already been killed for these.’
She looked at me quizzically.
I slid the envelope into my jacket pocket, put the Webley in the large, battered cardboard box that serves as my filing cabinet, under ‘G’ for gun, smiled at Ghislaine and, with an elaborate little bow, indicated that we should join Jerry downstairs. She smiled back, curtsied and took my arm.
We started walking to the door, but Ghislaine suddenly stopped.
‘Antoine,’ she said, ‘I nearly forgot. I have something for you.’
She slipped off into the other room, and I heard her ferreting about in her suitcase. She came back with a smile on her face and a book in her hand. She presented it to me.
It was a book of poetry, Les Fleurs du mal. I thanked her and left it on my grandfather’s chair.
I led her downstairs and into Jerry’s back room and then asked him if I could put something else into his safe.
He was half-lying on the floor, his back against a big armchair. He nodded languidly at me and waved his arm vaguely in the direction of the brandy and the two small tumblers. Ghislaine went over to the sideboard and poured herself a drink.
I nipped into the shop and opened the safe, intending to put the diamonds safely inside, with the lighter, envelope of money and cigarette holder. However, that would have been difficult: the lighter and money were no longer there.
TEN
There are some people who really are the salt of the earth – decent, hard-working people who’d share their last meal with you.
Bernie Rosen’s family’s like that. They are warm, hospitable people. The men of the family are always the first to the bar, and the women always have a pot of chicken soup on the stove.
Bernie is a bit more complicated.
‘Well, well,’ he said as he unbolted the door to his uncle’s shop off Hatton Garden.
‘Uncle Manny,’ he yelled, ‘look what the cat dragged in!’
‘It’s good to see you too, Bernie,’ I said, shaking his hand. ‘How’s Rachel?’
‘Good, Tony, good. And how are you, me old china?’
‘As you see,’ I said, ‘en pleine forme, mon ami.’
Bernie had never looked good in uniform – too tall and gawky – and here he was in the nearest thing that civilian life offered: shiny black suit, white shirt, black yarmulka and dark tie. Just like his Uncle Manny, who came out from behind the counter.
‘Tony,’ Manny said, grabbing my shoulders, ‘you look good.’ He stepped back, appraising me like I was a pearl necklace. ‘A bit skinny, though. Come eat with us some time. My Ruthie will soon feed you up. Come Sunday.’
‘I’d love to, Manny,’ I said, ‘but it might have to wait for a bit. How is Ruth?’
‘A lot better now, thank you for asking. She has pills.’ He raised his hands and looked up to heaven. ‘So many pills.’
I stayed with Manny and the lovely Ruth in their house in Southgate for six months after I was eventually demobbed. Bernie had arranged it after we met for a drink and he discovered my parents had been killed and the house destroyed and that I was living in a flea-bitten boarding house. As we picked our way past the desperately sad and unruly piles of rubble that had once been a row of houses to find a decent pub, he said, ‘Can’t have you living like this, Tone. I’ll sort something out.’ And he did – the next day. The house was a palace – it even had a bathroom with hot running water. I spent that cruel winter in something approaching warmth and luxury.
Ruth’s only son (I always thought of Manny junior as Ruth’s – Manny never spoke of him) had died in Burma, and it was his room that I lived in. They were good to me, and I’m grateful to them. Funnily enough though, I couldn’t wait to leave. Easy living didn’t suit me. It was partly that I didn’t fancy standing in for Manny junior, but it had more to do with me. I missed the tension, the anxiety, the raw excitement of being at war. Perversely, I missed being cold and hungry.
True to form, Manny forced tea on me, and we talked. After a few minutes, I took out one of the diamonds and asked Manny what he thought.
He looked at me quizzically, then took out his jeweller’s loupe, sat behind the counter and studied the stone.
‘What I think,’ he said after perhaps five minutes of careful scrutiny, ‘is that you didn’t come by this legally.’
‘Not exactly,’ I said, ‘but it wasn’t illegal either. It dropped in my lap.’
Manny and Bernie both snorted derisively.
‘Literally,’ I said. ‘It was dropped in my lap.’
‘Well,’ Manny said, ‘unless this was one of your very rich lady friends doing the dropping, I’d hazard a guess that whoever dropped it didn’t come by it too legally either.’ He handed the loupe and the diamond to Bernie.
Bernie looked up and gave Manny a little nod of appreciation. ‘What do you know about diamonds, Tony?’ Bernie said.
‘What do you think makes them valuable?’ he said, looking again at the diamond through the loupe.
‘They’re rare, aren’t they?’ I said.
‘Not really,’ Manny said. ‘But the supply is carefully controlled. To give the appearance of rarity. Why else would chips of compressed carbon be that desirable?’
‘When we look at a diamond, we look for colour, clarity, carats and cut,’ Bernie said. ‘This stone is as close to colourless as I’ve ever seen.’
‘Is that bad?’ I said.
‘No, it’s very good. And the cutting is excellent. Antwerp, I’d say, wouldn’t you, Uncle Manny?’
‘Sure,’ said Manny, ‘but most diamonds are cut in Antwerp.’
‘So, what can you tell me about it?’ I said.
‘I can tell you that the sparkle and dispersion are uniform, that the table is centred and symmetrical,’ he said, smiling mischievously.
‘Thanks,’ I said, ‘but I don’t have the foggiest idea what you’re talking about.’
He chuckled throatily. ‘It’s a very good stone, Tony. Its value depends, of course, on what it weighs,’ said Bernie. He paused and looked reflective. ‘The Germans had access to Antwerp’s diamonds during the war. Useful to the war effort and all that. Industrial diamonds, that is. But I bet they took the others as well. This could be one of those.’
‘Yes, and it could be kosher,’ Manny said. He paused and sniffed. ‘Of course, there’s the illegal trade. Millions of carats are smuggled out of West Africa every year, Tony. Most of those end up in Antwerp.’
I’d forgotten how much Manny and Bernie both liked to show off their knowledge. And how competitive they were about it.
‘What you should do,’ Manny said, ‘is take it to Scotland Yard and explain.’
‘That’s complicated,’ I said. ‘I’m not sure I can do that.’ Finding a body was one thing; finding six diamonds was another. I was sure the murder and the diamonds were connected, and I didn’t much fancy being the only link between the two that the police had. ‘I couldn’t leave it with you, could I?’ I paused. ‘And the five others.’
‘Five others!’ Manny and Bernie both shouted at the same time.
Manny wiped his hand across his mouth and shook his head. ‘I can’t afford to take the risk, Tony. Receiving stolen goods is a serious offence.’
Manny is a fundamentally decent man. And an honest one.
‘We don’t know that they’re stolen. And it wouldn’t be receiving them. Just storing them for a day or two,’ I said.
‘A nice distinction,’ Manny said, ‘but not one a judge is likely to make.’
I knew Manny well enough not to force the issue. ‘I understand, Manny. It’s not a problem. I thought they would be safe here.’
‘Take my advice,’ he said. ‘Go to Scotland Yard.’ He paused and smiled, relieved that I wasn’t pressing the point. ‘And come eat with us some time soon.’
I was sweating in the warm sunshine as I dawdled along Hatton Garden. Les Jackson wasn’t expecting me at Hoxton Films for nearly an hour, so there was no need to hurry and get even sweatier. I’d called him at home first thing and told him I’d seen Jon. He said he’d take me to see Miss Beaumont, to tell her.
I passed three youngish women, elegant in their narrow-waisted cotton frocks, loitering on the pavement, peering into a shop window. I thought of Mrs Williams.
And then I thought of Ghislaine. It was early closing day, and Jerry had promised to take her to see the sights – the Tower, Buck House, the greasy old Thames – and to Tubby Isaacs’ whelk stall in Petticoat Lane and for a pint in Dirty Dick’s. If the weather stayed fine, she might enjoy herself. She might even forget about Robert for a few hours. And Jerry’s a simple soul. Squiring a beautiful, older (well, she was a few years older than him), sophisticated French woman around London is about as close to Paradise as he’d been for a while. The only thing that could have made him happier would have been if she’d been American, a jazz lover and rich. OK, that’s three things, but no one – and certainly not Ghislaine – is perfect.
I had lain awake for a while the night before, after we’d finally left Jerry’s room, ‘Canal Street Blues’ and ‘Tears’ still resounding in my brain, reading some of the poems in the book she’d given me. I didn’t really understand them – I’m not much of a one for poetry – but they made you think. There was this bloke writing about a big city and trying to turn the squalor, the crime, the tarts and all that into something beautiful. It made me look at London a bit differently. I still couldn’t see it as beautiful though.
I was almost at Holborn Circus when Bernie caught up with me. He was out of breath and very sweaty.
‘Glad I caught you, Tone,’ he panted. ‘Let’s grab a cup of coffee and talk.’
I didn’t need to look at my watch, but I did anyway.
‘Ten minutes tops,’ he said.
We retraced out steps and then turned off into Leather Lane. The market was just opening up, and there were no shoppers about, just the stallholders. Most of them knew Bernie and nodded at us.
We went into a nasty little caff that was half full of cheeky cockney chappies, all drinking mugs of tea, smoking roll-ups and coughing up phlegm when they laughed at off-colour jokes. It was the sort of place that made Costello’s look like the Savoy Grill. The window was steamed up, and the atmosphere was heavy with the smell of fried meat, cigarette smoke and cabbage water.
The coffee was filthy – grey and scummy – but not as filthy as the tea-stained spoon chained to the counter that Bernie used to shovel sugar into his cup.
‘Bloody hell, Bernie,’ grumbled the greasy little weasel who’d served us. ‘You trying to put me out of bleeding business? I’ll have to bloody charge you double for all that bleeding sugar.’
‘You kidding?’ said Bernie, stirring the cup vigorously and then replacing the spoon on the counter. ‘This stuff is undrinkable without sugar. You start making proper coffee, I’ll stop using all your sugar.’
‘You don’t like my coffee, you can piss off,’ the weasel said and turned back to the cigarette he was smoking and the bacon he was frying.
Well, everything was in order: the worn scraps of colourless lino that covered the floor were just as dirty as his mouth.
We took our coffees to a rickety old wooden table, stained and scarred from too many culinary skirmishes.
Bernie took a sip and looked at me thoughtfully. ‘You really got six diamonds like that one?’ he said quietly.
I nodded.
‘I’ll take them off your hands,’ he said. ‘There’s a market for stones like those.’
‘I don’t think I can sell them, Bernie,’ I said. ‘I may have to do what Manny says and take them to the police.’
Bernie made a face. ‘Uncle Manny’s going to be sixty-eight next month,’ he said. ‘He’s got his comfortable house; he’s got Auntie Ruth to worry about. He doesn’t want to take risks. You and me, we’re the war generation. We take chances.’
‘Manny did his bit in the first lot,’ I said.
‘Sure he did, but that was a long time ago. He’s an old man now. Me and you? We see an opportunity and we take it. Right?’
To be honest, I wasn’t sure that was right, but I had nothing to gain by disagreeing with him. Except a lecture. ‘Maybe,’ I said. ‘I’m not sure I can see any opportunity yet. I don’t know enough.’
‘But you intend to find out, don’t you?’
‘I thought I’d have a go,’ I said. ‘Ask a few questions . . .’
Bernie snorted into his coffee. ‘Who do you think you are? Dick Barton?’
I laughed. ‘Not unless you’re Snowy,’ I said.
‘You and me,’ he said, snorting again, ‘we’re more like that Sid James and Tony Hancock!’ He paused and looked at me thoughtfully. ‘Tell you what. I’ll keep them safe for you and do a proper valuation. You can let me know what’s what in due course.’
&
nbsp; I sipped a little coffee. It tasted as bad as it looked.
‘I said it was undrinkable,’ Bernie said. He must have read the expression on my face. It wouldn’t have been difficult.
‘Do you know something about these diamonds, Bernie?’ I said.
‘Course not,’ he said. ‘No one recognizes a diamond. Unless it’s big and famous. The one you showed me is just a very nice stone.’ He paused. ‘What do you say?’
I looked around the shabby little caff and sighed. I really wanted to be out of there.
‘All right,’ I said, ‘I’ll be in touch next Tuesday or Wednesday. After Easter.’
I had no intention of letting him sell them, but I reckoned they’d be safer somewhere with a bit of security, like a jeweller’s safe, rather than at my flat where anyone could walk in, or in Jerry’s safe, which, again, anyone, apparently, had access to.
I really didn’t want to carry the diamonds about any longer, and I handed Bernie the little brown package. He slipped it into his jacket pocket without a glance.
I figured I could trust Bernie a bit. He knew me well enough to know I didn’t care for people lying to me or trying to take me for a ride. But, like I said, Bernie’s complicated.
‘You know,’ he said, looking around and waving his arm at the people inside the caff, ‘everyone reckons that this street is named after a tanner or a leather merchant.’ He shook his head. ‘Not true. The name’s a corruption. Back in medieval times, it was called Le Vrunelane, which was probably someone’s name, and that became Loverone Lane, and that became something else, and now it’s Leather Lane.’
‘I didn’t know that,’ I said, remembering why I was so fond of him.
‘Not many people do,’ he said, leaning back in his chair and smiling smugly.
Daphne looked at me sourly as I poked my nose into reception at Hoxton Films. Although it could just have been the cigarette smoke making her squint.
‘Hi, Daff,’ I said, squeezing past the waiting couriers.
‘Hi, yourself,’ she said.
Not the cigarette smoke then.