What if I couldn’t pull myself up? What if I missed? I looked down into the darkness into which I’d plummet, perhaps a pile of bricks following me ensuring that this was the final movement of my life even if hitting the deck didn’t do it. I’d be signing my own death warrant.
More police cars are arriving below. Reinforcements.
If only there was a plank or something to bridge the gap, but there’s nothing up here. Nothing at all … except the ladder. The ladder. The ladder that got me on to the roof.
I scrambled back to the roof door and got down on my knees. I could hear a lot of commotion coming from below, but the police hadn’t reached the top floor yet.
The top of the ladder had solid brass hooks on either side that rested in a notched groove on the inside of the jamb. It would be simple enough to disengage them. Yes.
Then I realised I was still carrying the gun. I looked at it in horror … like it had been planted on me. What do I do with it? Without thinking I put it in my jacket pocket and started hauling the ladder up.
This wasn’t easy. The ladder was made of hardwood and was about ten feet long. I puffed and wheezed as I dragged it out on to the roof and just as I got it clear I could hear coppers racing up that final flight of stairs.
I dragged the ladder over to the parapet and then realised that I didn’t have the strength to feed it across the gap. The thing was just too heavy. It would fall down into the blackness.
I had a better idea. I pushed its feet against the bottom of the parapet and then moved down to the other end. I lifted it above me and then started ‘walking’ it upright, the other end being firmly lodged against the brickwork. When it was at an angle of about 75 degrees I took a big slow breath and pushed the ladder forward with all the strength I could muster. I looked up as sweat poured into my eyes. The ladder slowly decelerated as it approached its apogee and then it was still, as though it didn’t know which way to fall. I watched it and prayed. It teetered and then moved forward, as if in slow motion.
The slow motion became fast motion as it gathered speed. I jumped back a couple of steps as the near end slid back along the ground towards me.
Fuck, I thought, I don’t want it to bounce off the wall and fall! So I reached forward and grabbed the first rung as it rose towards me. It hit me in the face and I jerked my head back, but I didn’t let go.
The far end crashed down on the wall and the shock travelled the length of the ladder and into my hands and arms and a dull pain made me cry out.
The ladder had come to rest. Now it was still.
I tried moving it. It seemed secure, its own weight keeping it in place. It’s now or never, I guess.
I inched along the ladder on my hands and knees. My hands on the side and my knees, or rather just below my knees on the rungs. I did it so slowly and deliberately. I mustn’t rush it. Just cool and careful.
I’ve got all the time in the world.
I didn’t look down and I didn’t look back and I didn’t look forward. I didn’t even listen to anything other than my heartbeat. You’ll soon be there and when you are you’ll know.
Slowly.
Gently.
Time is on your side. My hand touched the railway wall.
Gently still. Don’t rush it.
Cautiously.
I tumbled over and landed on the granite hardcore in which the railway sleepers were embedded. I stared up at the night sky and took some deep breaths and said a prayer to whoever might be out there.
I pushed myself up and peered over the wall. Light was coming from the hatch but as yet there were no coppers on the roof. I yanked the ladder forward so as to pull the far end off the parapet of Caroline House and then I let go. It started to fall.
As the ladder crashed down on to oil drums or whatever it was that was stored below at street level I was a good many yards down the railway track.
I was running hard.
Running. Along the rail tracks perched high above lost and forgotten streets. Slow broad curves as the railway sweeps through the rooftops.
Don’t look back.
Keep running.
And now down an embankment and through an archipelago of bomb sites and I’m by some Stygian canal. Without stopping I take the gun from my pocket and cast it into the murky waters. It’s gone. Swallowed up.
I’m running into the night, enveloped by the moonless dark of the East End.
8
Brilliant Corners
I’m just a patsy.
– Lee Harvey Oswald (1963)
SATURDAY. A slothful Saturday afternoon. Saturday, 3 August 1963. I’ve got the day off. Charlie and a new guy are covering me down at Modern Snax. First Saturday I’ve had off in a couple of months.
I’ve just been out and got all the papers. I’ve bought all the papers every day now for the last three days. All of them. I’ve gone through them a column at a time, scanning every last little news item and filler. But there’s been nothing, not a hint or a whisper of what happened in Caroline Street. It’s like it never happened … and I’m beginning to think that perhaps it didn’t. There hasn’t been anything on the radio or the television either. I even went down to the East End last night and picked up all the local papers I could find. I checked through them a column-inch at a time. Nothing. Not a dicky bird.
I heave today’s papers across to the growing pile in front of the wardrobe. There might be something in the Sundays tomorrow, but I have a feeling there won’t be. If this story was going to surface it would have by now. It’s dead. It’s a non-event.
But why? Do the police sometimes keep stuff under wraps? For a while anyway? They might … but why? I’ll ask Nick about that some time, he might know. They often keep important evidence secret when they’re on to someone, a suspect, when they don’t want to tip their hand. But the thing itself? The event? I wonder.
Listen, if the Old Bill turns up on my doorstep what’s the worst that’s going to happen to me? I’ll have a bit of explaining to do. That’s the worst. A bit of explaining. I just tell them exactly what happened. They’ll have to believe me. No doubt about that. Yeah, I knew Sonny … but I hadn’t seen him for a while. He was into all sorts of villainy I knew nothing about. Vicky Stafford? Never met her. Didn’t know her.
Why did she want to meet you?
Don’t know. That’s what she was going to explain.
How’d you meet her in the first place?
I didn’t. She phoned me, said we should meet. Out of the blue.
You’d never met her, didn’t know who she was, and she just phoned you?
Yes. Well, she did say we met once some time ago but I couldn’t remember her.
Where was this?
She said at a party or something … with Stephen Ward.
Who did you say, sir?
Stephen Ward.
Stephen Ward, sir? Stephen Ward?
Hold on a second. I can’t say that. That’ll just get me deeper in the shit. No. Nothing about Stephen. I can’t mention him.
No, she just phoned me out of the blue. Right out of the blue.
And you have no idea, sir, why she wanted to see you?
None whatsoever, Chief Inspector.
Anyway, I’ll say if I was going down there to do something like that I’d hardly wander into the nearest pub, chat with the barmaid, say I was supposed to be meeting someone at Caroline House, and announce that I’m from Bayswater, would I?
Well, would I?
You certainly wouldn’t, sir. I’m sorry to have bothered you. You’re free to go. The officer here will chauffeur you home. And, here, have some petty cash for your time and trouble.
Now there’s a point. An interesting little point.
The barmaid.
The barmaid I had a little chat with.
I said I was meeting someone at Caroline House. I said I was from Bayswater.
The coppers must have gone to that little pub and said: any strangers been in? You notice anything that night? Must h
ave. They’d have got a description from her. She’d have remembered that I said Bayswater because she went there once herself. She couldn’t have forgotten. Now if all that’s true, why hasn’t around here been swarming with coppers? Maybe it has. But then why haven’t they turned up here? Are they still looking for me?
They could have got a description from her and broadcast it. They haven’t. Nothing.
I don’t think they’re looking for me.
If anything was going to happen it would have happened by now. The show’s moved on. Yeah, that’s it. Moved on.
I take a half-smoked joint from the ashtray and search about for a box of matches which I eventually find over by the spluttering percolator. I light the joint and take one big draw on it until my lungs are full to bursting. I hold it in and then slowly exhale. I take another hit right away, hold it all in and let it out very slowly again. I feel so light I think I’m going to float up to the ceiling, but instead I stumble forward. I steady myself against the sink, and then my knees seem to disappear and instead of floating to the ceiling I glide to the floor.
It’s comfortable down here and at least I’m not going to fall any further.
There’s the joint. There still, in my left hand, smoking away and waiting for me. I crook my arm and over comes the remains of that little four-paper number. It hovers in the air above me. One last hit. There you go. Good stuff this. Strong too. Really strong. Charlie says he got it from some spades over Hoxton way. The radio: ‘And here is the news.’
‘Kim Philby, the “Third Man”, who was granted Soviet citizenship earlier this week, said in Moscow yesterday that ….’ Another hit on the joint.
‘Mr Anthony Wedgwood Benn, the former Viscount Stansgate, announced ….’
Good dope this.
‘And here is a news flash. Dr Stephen Ward, the osteopath who figured prominently in the scandal surrounding the resignation of Mr John Profumo, the Secretary of State for War, died earlier this afternoon at St Stephen’s Hospital in London … from a drugs overdose. Dr Ward had been in a coma for seventy-two hours. There will be a full report in the six o’clock news.’
Oh, my God!
‘Who was Vicky Stafford, then?’
I’m sitting on a park bench in the gardens on the Embankment feeding peanuts to the pigeons. It’s overcast. Might rain. My watch says ten past four. Nick Esdaille is sitting next to me with a joint in one hand and a pen in the other. His reporter’s notebook is open on his lap.
He repeats the question.
‘Who was Vicky Stafford, then?’
The question isn’t just addressed to me. He’s asking London too, the city that surrounds us.
I look across the sweep of the River Thames in front of me. Cleopatra’s Needle there and Waterloo Bridge beyond it. The Royal Festival Hall on the south bank opposite. Hungerford Bridge over to the right taking the trains out of Charing Cross and across Ol’ Man River, Father Thames.
Buses. Taxis. Lorries. Pigeons. And pigeon shit everywhere. Even over the fresh litter.
‘Who was Vicky Stafford, then?’
‘That’s the third time you’ve asked that.’
‘I know. If you keep asking a question you’ll eventually get an answer.’
‘Who from? These down-and-outs and winos here? The pidgins?’
‘There’s an answer out there somewhere.’
‘Yeah, I know. But how do we get it?’
‘That’s another good question.’
‘We’ve got two good questions … and this is really strong shit, man. Takes your head off.’
A worse-for-wear tabby cat ambles over to us from the bushes and frightens off the pigeons. The cat noses around for something to eat, sees it’s only peanuts here, and heads off back into the greenery.
‘I tell you what I think, Nick. I think that wasn’t her name. It’s an invented name.’
‘Quite likely.’
‘Very likely.’
‘I wonder if she knew Wendy Davies?’
‘Who’s Wendy Davies?’
‘Wendy Davies worked in this pub just around the corner from where Ward lived. She had a boyfriend who was a copper. Ward used to go into the pub and she got friendly with him. Sucked up to him a bit. And she spent a lot of time round at his place in the months leading up to the trial … as a police spy. She started to hawk her story about Fleet Street and then her mother stepped in and got some injunction on one of the papers and took her back to the country.’
‘Where’s she now?’
‘Who knows, Timmy?’
Nick takes another hit and exhales slowly and deliberately with his eyes closed. Wendy Davies? What was all that about?
‘There’s a lot of strangeness about in the metropolis these days. Big heavy doses of strangeness.’
Nick’s gnomic statement hangs in the air. He’ll amplify it in a moment, after a further hit.
‘There’s whispers … there’s rumours. There’s whispers of rumours … there’s rumours of whispers. You don’t know what to believe … you just don’t know what the fuck to believe. Real strangeness.’
Another hit.
‘You hear that Rachman, the slum landlord, isn’t really dead. He’s alive. He worked for MI5. He worked for the KGB. He was Ward’s controller. Then you hear Ward was his controller. Then there’s the Great Train Robbery, right? A million pounds goes walkies. A million in ready cash. Who took that? Then Macmillan says that he got it all wrong in 1955, Philby was the “Third Man” after all. Sorry about that. But then who is the “Fourth Man”? Who else have the Russians got over here? Who was engineering what?
‘And ain’t it just so convenient to have them Russians to blame stuff on, eh? Just so very convenient. Any skulduggery – look for the Russians.
‘Who are we not supposed to be looking at?’
I latch on to that: who are we not supposed to be looking at? There’s some piece missing from all these stories. Some hidden hand. Some factor X. Something unseen. Obvious only because it’s glaringly absent. The lacuna. Who are we not supposed to be looking at? Or what? It’s like reading one of those official biographies of public figures where you seem to be told everything, but as you read it you keep thinking there’s something missing. It doesn’t hang together as it’s told. It doesn’t knit. Then, years later, you read that John Doe was a raving old queer who spent all his time chasing young men. You’ve been given the key to the biography. It now makes some kind of sense.
These news stories and events are like this. We’ve got everything except the driving motivation. The main point.
Who, indeed, are we not supposed to be looking at?
‘I mean you read all this stuff about the Profumo Affair. Do we really have any idea what was going on, Tim? Any idea at all? It’s supposed to be about Profumo fucking the arse off Keeler while she was carrying on with the Russian naval guy at the embassy. Went on for ages. Now the security services must have known this because those Russian embassy blokes can’t piss without our chaps knowing about it. So why didn’t they give the word to Profumo? Why didn’t they say, “Listen, old man, things could be a bit tricky here. You could get yourself in a spot of hot water”? No, they didn’t say anything. Makes you wonder. Really makes you wonder.’
A final hit and Nick flicks the remains of the joint into the litter bin where it continues to smoulder.
‘One thing that worries me, Tim, is those girls that Stephen used to send along for your films.’
‘It worries me too.’
‘It should … but I don’t know why.’
‘Nor do I.’
‘And that guy’s wife you photographed. Bizarre.’
‘I didn’t photograph her. I walked out.’
‘Yeah. But you were supposed to.’
‘But I didn’t.’
‘Stephen was really strange … wasn’t he?’
‘I guess so … Nick.’
‘I can’t work out any of the rhyme or reason to this, particularly when I’m totally
fucking loaded.’
We both laugh.
Nick stands up and totters forward. He turns and steadies himself against the bench.
‘I really am fucking loaded … and I’m hungry. Ravenously hungry.’
I push myself up and support Nick with my arm.
‘Come on, I’ll take you over to the café. We’ll get something to eat.’
‘Yeah.’
Nick looks like a drunk as I steady him along the path that leads over to Villiers Street. We take our time. We go slowly and thoughtfully, one consecutive step after another.
‘I’ll tell you one fucking good thing that’s gonna come out of all this. One great fucking bit of good news.’
‘What’s that, Nick?’
‘I’ll tell you. Macmillan’s fucking resignation. That slimy old bastard is finally going to have to go. The worst fucking Prime Minister we’ve had this century. That old tosser will have to go. He’s fucked up on everything and the Tories will ditch him. His days are numbered. I’ll be dancing in the streets when he goes.’ And with that Nick’s legs seem to give way and he topples back on to the grass. He’s on his back, spreadeagled, pigeons wandering around him. He’s lying there smiling at the sky.
‘You all right?’
‘Yeah. Listen, Timmy.’
‘What?’
‘Bill le Sage’s playing at the Marquee tonight! We’ll get some dope. A couple of girls. Make a really big night of it. What you say?’
‘Bill le Sage? Sonny used to follow him all over London to hear him play … thought he was almost as good as Milt Jackson.’
‘Sonny. Poor, poor Sonny ….’
August gave way to September and then it was my birthday. I was twenty-six years old – four years short of thirty for Chrissakes! October hurried in and Beatlemania was born – the Fab Four were a fact of life and there was no escaping them. Even Charlie was going around with a Beatle haircut and wearing collarless jackets. Nobody could avoid She Loves You and all those other songs.
Nick was right about Macmillan. He resigned in October, though what resign means here is anyone’s guess. Nick says the Tory grandees got together and said, right mate – jump or we’ll push you! Supermac jumped and then out of a hat the magic circle produced the Earl of Home (pronounced Hume). Who? the country said. Who? Some old duffer from the Scottish borders nobody outside Westminster had ever heard of.
London Blues Page 25