The Sweeney 01

by Ian Kennedy-Martin

  Regan climbed the stairs to the top outside corridor of one of the two blocks which comprised Carlyle Buildings, and pushed down through the lines of damp washing to the extreme end to check whether, from the Davies flat, the ubiquitous Mr Smith’s front door on Number 14 in the adjoining block could be seen. It could.

  He rang the doorbell. There was no one in the open-curtained front room, but from the back of the flat the sound of theme music from a lunchtime TV programme. He waited half a minute and rang the bell again. Night worker, waking up, watching telly in bed — Regan decided as a possibility, as he rang the doorbell for the third time. There was the sound of shuffling slippers and a bronchial cough. ‘Who is it?’ A woman’s voice.

  ‘Police, ‘Regan said.

  ‘What d’you want?’

  ‘Open up, please, missus.’

  A door-bolt snapped back and the woman, aged around fifty, appeared in a nightgown. ‘What d’you want?’ she repeated.

  ‘I wonder if you or your husband can help us in a certain inquiry.’

  ‘What inquiry?’ She yawned in Regan’s face. Regan took a half a step back as the stale breath hit him.

  A man’s voice bellowed out, drowning the TV at the back of the flat. ‘Who is it, love?’ ‘Police,’ “love” answered. ‘Old Bill, local nick?’ the male voice enquired.

  ‘Sweeney,’ Regan answered loud.

  ‘Jesus Christ, why didn’t you say?’ A second later a slight, stooping man appeared, naked from the waist up, zipping up his trousers. ‘What d’you want, Mister? What does the Sweeney want with us?’

  ‘Help with some information. From the end of this balcony you can see Number Fourteen. I wonder if you can tell me anything about it? Whether you can describe any person you might have seen entering or leaving it?’

  The man knew nothing; the woman knew too much. Or she knew a certain amount and talked too much. She knew the flat belonged to an Irishman; she didn’t know his name. She hadn’t seen him for a long time. She had seen other men using it. How many? Well, actually, one. She gave me an accurate enough description of a man who wasn’t Mavor. The man had a lot of crumpet, birds. How many? Three. What did they look like? More accuracy now — a woman describing women. Expensive clothes, girls who had their own cars. Call girls probably, from the West End, slumming it with a hard case, with a hard one, down the East End. Two blondes described, then to the piece de resistance, a full description of the third girl — tall, flash, heavy in jewellery, spade. ‘Real slag tart, hair frizz up like a Woolworth mop. A proper darkie, like Africa. Not your West Indian. Some of them West Indians aren’t so bad when you get to know ‘em. But this one a real sambo. And I arsk you, what is Africans doing in England? I mean when were our lot in Africa larst, with colonies?’

  Regan shrugging off the historical enquiry, looking for something that was a positive lead, but in a way the psychology of the situation was to let her run on, while her old man went back and got his shirt on. Regan inhaled the stale breath of British Fascist working class bigotry, and, when phrases had been repeated once too many times, he shot the question. ‘You don’t know how I could get in touch with the blackie — like you haven’t told me, when did you last see her here?’

  ‘Week ago.’

  ‘And you’ve no idea how I could get a hold of her?’

  ‘Course I know how to get hold of her. She’s a stripper down the Jockey Club, Jamaica Road. Her black tits are on photeys all over the bloody front of it. School kids can see them. My old man says that’s all right ‘cos it teaches kids what gell coons are for, but I think it’s bleeding daft — bloody Jockey Club’s right next door to the Baptist Church…...Hey, do you want….? Hey, I haven’t finished...!’

  Regan was pushing his way back to the staircase through the lines of washing.

  The Jockey Club, Jamaica Road — Regan tried to remember how many other names it had gone under, and how many managements had actually gone under. It was a post-war building which stood on a corner site junction of Jamaica Road with Ellesley Road, and near the High Street. So there was a lot of passing traffic and people about. Regan told Len to cruise the car round the block twice, because he’d noticed something.

  ‘I remember it as the Park Lane Suite, Skylight Club, the Penthouse. Then those thieving Cypriots took it over and it became the Famagusta Club, and the Hellenicana and God knows what else,’ Len offered.

  Regan working it out, not failing to notice what the lady in Carlyle Buildings had pointed out — the big tits on photos in the club entrance and the spiel: ‘Martha de Amour—She Sings, She Strips. Ten More Beautiful Girls, Continuous Nitely...’ Other lovelies in other photos, all spades. Audience presumably a spade audience.

  ‘Notice, Len?’ Regan asked at the beginning of Len’s third tour round the block.

  Len nodding. ‘At this time of day, the club’s not open. They’re not bouncers.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Bodyguards, guv?’

  Regan nodded slowly. There was a front entrance, and there was a side entrance to the Jockey Club. The man idling at the open doors at the front of the club was over six foot, massively built, a bullet head and a pink face, and a tiny cigar jammed into the teeth in the middle of it. To the side of the club his companion was, if anything, larger, certainly heavier, and very dark, probably African. ‘I wonder if there’s another entrance to the club. Left. Then pull into the kerb.’

  Len turned the Vauxhall VX 4/90 left and out of sight of the heavy at the side door of the club, and pulled the car into the kerb.

  ‘How long do I give you, guv?’ Len worried, knowing that Regan was going to go past the two goons to find out who or what they were guarding. And concerned about Regan’s chances vis-a-vis the height and width of the goons.

  Regan didn’t answer. He studied the ten foot high brick wall of the rear of the club. ‘Take the car tip on to the kerb, along the wall. I’ll use the car roof as a leg up.’

  Len eased the car up on to the kerb and slid it alongside the wall.

  A minute later, Regan was out of the car, eyeing up and down the back lane, then up on to the car roof, and a leap and a grab and he was on top of the brick wall. He got a leg over the wall and changed position, so that he was facing the wall again as he dropped on to the hard cement of the back yard of the club. He fell -the wrong way. Pain detonated up from his right ankle. He spent the next minute blinding and cursing as quietly as he could as he hobbled in circles around the dustbins full of waste food and empty bottles that littered the yard.

  He put his weight down on the ankle and it seemed all right. He stepped through the rubbish and over to the yard door. His hand went out to grasp the handle. It didn’t because the handle was yanked open inwards with the door, and Regan realized two things very quickly. One, that there was obviously a burglar system, probably touch-pads, in the yard. And secondly, that the man who had been standing guard at the side door of the club was the largest black man in the world.

  It wasn’t just his height, it was his mass, his confidence, his obvious fitness. The black man was grinning. Regan was already consigned to some amusing part of his memory where he stored details of people he threw back over ten-foot walls they’d dropped from.

  ‘Detective Inspector Regan, Flying Squad,’ Regan tried for openers. It was apparent that this was not the subtlest approach.

  The black man took out a cigarette, lit it, still grinning. ‘The warrant to enter these premises?’

  Regan thought about that. Thought about the whole spectrum and possibilities of negotiating with the big black grin, and meanwhile listened to the music, the girl’s voice, and the piano, both tinkling out from somewhere in the building. ‘You need a warrant to search a premises, friend, not to enter it.’

  That gave the African something to think about, while he changed position edging out of the door trying to look behind Regan, still grinning, maybe thinking there were others out there whom he would be tossing back over the wall.

  Re
gan stepped past him.

  A huge hand shot out and grabbed Regan by the shoulder, a vice grip, rooting him to the spot. Regan was stopped and stopped himself. He looked into the grin. ‘That’s technical assault.’

  The grin widened. ‘Why be technical about it — you want a real kicking?’

  ‘I’m looking for Miss Martha de Amour.’

  ‘Not any more.’ The big man began to gently haul in on the grip and the shoulder-pad of Regan’s overcoat.

  Regan jabbed a right fist fast and hard on to the man’s nose. He saw the pain jerk every muscle across the face. That was less than a second of observation because both of Regan’s hands went up and grabbed the man’s hair and jerked down in that moment of automatic reaction when the black man’s hands moved too late to protect his face. Regan’s knee came up as he pulled the man’s head down. The hands couldn’t protect the nose again. The force of the knee hit the nose a second time. Regan knew the effect, as calculable as the simplest equation — two steam-hammer blows to the nose unplugs the tear ducts, blinds the eyes with tears. Next move, always spin a big man on his axis — own weight will not aid him unless his feet are solidly placed. Regan kicked hard at the big man’s ankle as he straightened, blinded. He kicked him, angling his foot so that the part of the shoe that connected was the solid inside edge of the heel. The black man tipped over twenty degrees while still trying to straighten and grab blindly at Regan.

  Regan’s hands went back to the man’s hair, pulled him right

  round, accelerating a body that was already stumbling over bottles and more rubbish to the point where it must fall. A final thrust on Regan’s part to place the exact area where the top of the black man’s head should connect with the brick side-wall. Then the sound of the skull concussing as it smashed into the wall. And the black man was out for the count. And as inert as any of the other rubbish in the yard.

  Regan picked up the black man’s cigarette still alight, broke it in half, threw away the filter end that the man’s mouth had touched, and inhaled once on the remaining half. He made his way over to the door and stepped into the rear exit from the club.

  She looked better than her photographs. She was one of those girls — they exist — who look worse after a hair-do. Sitting on a bar stool pulled over to the piano, she was not made-up and her hair was flat down. And it all added up to a good argument against Max Factor and Vidal Sassoon, or any other argument at all.

  A little white pouf about five foot high was her accompanist. As Regan approached her she studied him and somehow she got better looking. But there was pain on the little guy’s face, because she was not a good singer and the pouf was the only one in the world who cared about this. Except Regan, who allowed her to finish. The lyric was about a girl who comes from the country to the big city to get a job in a house as a maid, and it turns out she has other duties. The song was accompanied by obscene gestures — presumably part of the strip routine. Regan was interested that she would go to the trouble of rehearsing with the pouf to get the song right. A Jamaica Road audience pays for the sight, not the sound.

  The song ended. She dismissed the pouf with a slight sideways movement of her head. They both knew instinctively what Regan did for a living. The pouf glowered at him, and disappeared off through a curtain at the back of the stage of the low-ceilinged room.

  Martha de Amour moved gracefully across the floor and around behind the bar and pulled out a diet American Dry and spun off the top. ‘I suppose you don’t drink on duty?’ she announced.

  ‘I drink scotch on duty,’ Regan corrected.

  She found a glass and a bottle of scotch and slid them across the bar top to him. ‘I have a large friend, sits around the yard outside. He makes sure no one troubles me. He’s tall and dark and…’ she didn’t continue the description.

  Regan poured himself a large scotch. ‘I met him.’

  ‘He’s supposed to make sure I’m not bothered by anyone.’

  Regan sipped the scotch and thought about it. ‘We came to an arrangement,’ he said.

  ‘Which leaves another good friend of mine out front,’ she said gently.

  Regan nodded slowly. ‘Yep. Somebody wants you protected.’

  She smiled. It was an open smile. ‘Did you like my song?’

  ‘You want me to be honest?’

  She nodded.

  He pursed his lips as if really thinking about it. ‘I think you should work on it.’

  She nodded.

  ‘Not here.’ He finished the scotch. ‘Why don’t we go to your place and sing me a song about a girl who comes from the country to be a maid in a big house and ends up with more bodyguards than Fidel Castro.’

  She smiled brittlely. ‘Fidel Castro the cigar millionaire?’

  ‘The same.’

  ‘Actually I don’t have time. Busy day for me. Maybe next year.’

  Regan decided she was intelligent, attractive, bright, and as hard as a rock. ‘Madam, the person who has least time is me. This your handbag?’

  It was not anybody else’s. It was sitting on top of a fur coat on a bar stool. Regan snapped it open and upended the contents on the bar.

  ‘Hey,’ she shouted. Her expression changed to fury. She made a sudden move left, obviously aware that the only functioning bodyguard was the bald-headed lumberjack out front.

  Regan’s right arm grabbed and hauled in on her wrist. ‘Madam. Sit down!’ His voice suddenly cold. She thought about how he must have tamed the gorilla in the backyard, and sat down.

  ‘Your real name Martha Williams?’ There were two letters in the handbag with the name and an address in Kensington.

  She shrugged the question off.

  ‘Okay.’ He gathered the contents back into her handbag, handed her fur coat over the counter, and kept her bag. ‘Side entrance. Don’t wake the dog at the front.’

  She came to the instant conclusion not to resist. In fact she steered him to the side entrance to the club.

  They came out of the club and made a left turn and headed down and round to the back of the block. Regan put her in beside Len. He got in the back of the car.

  ‘Fifteen Blenhurst Mansions, Campden Hill.’ He’d got the address from the two letters addressed to Martha Williams.

  ‘Right, guv.’

  Regan relaxed in the back seat, wondering where this was going to lead, feeling gloomy, not feeling at all positive about anything that was happening in this case. Then suddenly, and he was almost startled by the sound, he heard crying. Miss Martha de Amour Williams was crying. It was obvious from one look at her face and her trembling hands that she was crying from fear.

  Detective Sergeant Carter and another detective sergeant colleague of his arrived at five-fifteen. Lieutenant Ewing arrived about quarter of an hour later. Regan wanted as many as possible — he wanted 15 Blenhurst Mansions, in the luxury Campden Hill sector of Notting Hill Gate, taken to pieces from ceiling to floor.

  Martha Williams sat it out on a hard-back chair placed dead centre of the room. She looked miserable. Regan refused her a phone call to a lawyer from the phone in her own apartment on the grounds that he wasn’t yet arresting her, and although she knew he was not legally entitled to do any such thing, she would reserve the remnants of her resistance for refusing to say anything at all.

  ‘Anything specific that we’re looking for?’ Ewing asked. He’d been there ten minutes, poking around, wandering from room to room. It was a five-roomed flat, beautifully furnished, with views across the gardens at Campden Hill and on to the high tree line of Holland Park beyond rooftops a quarter of a mile away.

  ‘There’s the same feel about this place as Carlyle Buildings, right?’ Regan surveyed the activity, Carter and the other detective sergeant pushing the furniture around, moving a coffee table to get access to a cupboard. ‘Carlyle Buildings a slum, this luxurious. One thing in common, both set up for instant flight. This place isn’t lived in, it’s camped in.’ He turned to the girl. ‘Right?’

  She
said nothing.

  Carter paused from his exertions. ‘If it’s a camp site, guv, what the hell are we taking it to pieces for?’

  Ewing answered for Regan. ‘We have no other leads.’ He turned to Regan as if what he’d said had reminded him of something. ‘I want to talk to you.’ He indicated the door to the empty dining room. He wanted to talk to Regan alone.