by Tony Parsons
I stood up as Keith Li passed our table. There was nothing remarkable about his appearance. He was shorter than average but looked fit and hard. He resembled countless other men in Chinatown who have spent a hard lifetime working with their hands and their back. His expression was somewhere between placid and blank. If you had seen him on Gerrard Street, you would have stared straight through him. But he was the king of these crowded streets. Two goons instinctively came towards me but the nondescript old man made an almost imperceptible gesture with his right hand, and they fell back.
I saw the recognition in his eyes.
‘Detective Wolfe,’ he said. ‘You were very polite to me when I was helping the police with enquiries.’ He still sounded like an announcer on the BBC World Service in the Fifties. ‘As I recall, you were the only one who demonstrated any of that famous English civility.’
‘I thought you were a teacher in China,’ I said.
‘I taught Wing Chun,’ he said. ‘I wasn’t conjugating verbs.’
Wing Chun is the form of Kung Fu that most closely resembles Western boxing.
‘You told me you were nothing here,’ I said. ‘But that’s not true, is it?’
I watched him stiffen with pride. Face, they would have called it in Chinatown.
‘Your colleagues made me feel that way.’
He looked at Ginger and nodded politely.
‘This is my friend,’ I said.
‘We’ve met,’ he said.
Nobody ran a business in Chinatown without the nod from the Triads, although they tended to keep their business among the Chinese community.
‘Very nice to see you,’ the old man said, and went to move on.
‘I don’t believe you,’ I told him, and I felt Ginger flinch. ‘I don’t believe you just happened to be passing and found that lorry. I think you got an early morning call from someone. I think someone else found the lorry and you received a call asking, “What do we do, Mr Li?” Either that, or it was your cargo.’
He stared at me calmly.
‘I was told there was a problem. I believed it was best if I dealt with the authorities personally. Do you seriously think I had something to do with those young women being smuggled into this country?’
I shrugged. ‘I don’t know.’
‘But you know Chinatown. You see my people every day. And sometimes you see people who are perhaps not completely legal. Shadow people, we call them. Waiters. Cooks. The girls who push the dim sum trolleys. The women who stand in the doorway of the Chinese Medicine places offering a massage. You see the shadow people, don’t you?’
‘What’s your point, Mr Li?’
‘What do you notice about the shadow people of Chinatown, Detective?’
‘They’re all Chinese.’
He nodded.
‘We stay with our own. We deal with our own. We do business with our own. We take care of our own.’
‘It still doesn’t mean that lorry had nothing to do with you.’
‘When you find the men responsible, you know as well as I do what they will be,’ he said.
‘And what’s that?’ I said.
‘They will be some kind of white man,’ he said.
And then Keith Li, head of the Wo Shing Wo, nodded courteously to Ginger and me before stepping out into the red-and-gold lights of Chinatown, his two bodyguards always one respectful step behind him.
I walked into the darkness of the crematorium and looked around for somewhere to sit.
There was plenty of choice.
The thin crowd was a reminder that Steve Warboys had never made it out of the minor leagues.
Some arson for the insurance money. Some Southend shoeshines. A bit of dealing on the side, in drugs, stolen goods and whatever else they peddled in the vast car park of the Champagne Room after dark …
It was a lifetime of criminality.
But it was not the stuff of legend.
They make films and they write books about Ronnie and Reggie, Charlie and Eddie, Paul and Danny. But nobody was ever going to make a movie about Steve Warboys, the late proprietor of the Champagne Room.
Not fifty years from now.
Not five minutes from now.
Steve Warboys was a minor Essex wide boy, all swagger and wind, whose major claim to fame was that his grandfather had strutted through London when gangsters were rock stars.
But that was a long time ago.
I took a seat at the back of that cold dark room and watched them file in. The heavy-set, crop-haired men and their gym-thin wives with their sunbed tans. And then, heralded by a whiff of cigar smoke, the parents of Steve Warboys, their faces tight with shock.
Barry Warboys was an expensively tailored sixty-year-old who had the fair complexion of all the Warboys, but that was where the family resemblance stopped.
Barry was every inch the prosperous businessman, expensively out of shape after decades of the good life, taking a drag on his cigar as he entered the crematorium, the tip flaming red in the half-light before he stubbed it out underfoot. His wife, Steve’s mother, was in a wheelchair.
She was painfully thin and dressed in chic designer black, hunched up as if she were in some kind of shell. One of her hands reached up to touch her husband’s fingers as he gently eased her chair into the front row.
And then finally in came Steve’s famous grandfather.
Paul Warboys was a bull of a man in a long black coat, the remains of his hair dyed an unbelievable blond, his face made golden by the years of Spanish sun he had soaked up after coming out of prison for the last time.
Even in his old age he still had enough of an aura to make grown men smile weakly, trying to catch his eye.
Paul Warboys ignored them all.
The old gangster took a seat in the front row across the aisle from his son, and the two men never once looked at each other.
They cremated Steve Warboys on that shifting border where London meets Essex. The sparse crowd stood in silence as the curtain came back and the coffin of Steve Warboys rolled into the flames.
Steve’s mother and father had the stunned look of parents who were living the ultimate nightmare of burying their child. They stared unblinking at the flames as their heat crept into that freezing room.
But it was only the grandfather who wept.
17
I sat at the wheel of the BMW X5, the big car still caked with the mud of northern France because people are cheaper than machines, and I watched the man walk through the burned-out ruins of what had been the Champagne Room.
Now Barry Warboys was ready to show his grief.
Now he looked like a man who had lost everything.
Now – unlike the previous afternoon at the crematorium, surrounded by people who believed him to be a far weaker man than his famous father – he allowed himself to weep.
He staggered across the black sodden ruins of the roadside bar, still oozing smoke three days after the fire that burned it to the ground, and his step was so uncertain that it seemed he must surely fall under the weight of his pain. He stood in the ruin, absent-mindedly puffing on a cigar the size of a Cornetto.
There was still a squad car on the scene to keep back the curious and the ghouls but the two uniformed officers inside sat chatting because nobody came, nobody cared, only the man with a sorrow that seemed to buckle his knees.
But I was not the only one watching him.
A uniformed chauffeur stood by the open door of a Bentley and kept a protective eye on Barry Warboys as he stood in the ruins of the burned-out bar. Both of our cars had the engines running, as if we might have to make a quick getaway from this place of death.
My phone vibrated. WHITESTONE CALLING, it said.
‘How can we have had a major Triad in an interview room and nobody noticed?’ she said.
‘Because we had twelve dead women that morning,’ I said. ‘And because for thirty years the Met have kept an eye on the 14K and assumed the Wo Shing Wo never come further south than Manches
ter. But things have changed.’
And because mistakes happen, I thought.
I heard her sigh.
‘You buy the story that Keith Li was a concerned citizen who happened to be passing by?’
I told my boss exactly what I had told the head of the Wo Shing Wo.
‘Keith Li was there because it’s his patch,’ I said. ‘Somebody clocked the lorry, knew something was badly wrong and called the law. And for a lot of people in Chinatown, the Triads are the law and not the Met.’
‘And what did he tell you?’
‘That his community takes care of their own.’ I watched Barry Warboys bend to pick something up from the smoking debris. It was a woman’s high-heeled shoe, the kind with the red soles. Christian Louboutin. My ex-wife loved those. Barry Warboys looked at it with something approaching wonder. He hung his head and began to sob silently.
‘So we should chalk him up as another totally innocent criminal who happened to be passing by,’ Whitestone said. ‘Just like your friend, the Filipina madam with her social introduction agency.’
‘We can give Keith Li a tug if you want,’ I said. ‘But I think it’s a dead lead.’
‘Just keep one eye on the smooth little bastard,’ Whitestone said, hanging up.
I got out of the car and the cops in the squad car and the chauffeur all watched me walk towards Barry Warboys. I thought the driver might make some token gesture of putting himself between me and his boss, if only to save face, but he wasn’t that kind of chauffeur.
So he simply stood there by the open door, looking like a driver from some black-and-white film about the gilded rich a hundred years ago. He was even wearing gloves.
‘Mr Warboys?’ I said, holding out my warrant card. ‘DC Wolfe of West End Central.’
He wiped his eyes with the back of his hands. I could see his father in him but Barry Warboys was a milder, meeker version, with none of the teak-hard leanness of his old man. He looked like what he was – a prosperous businessman made soft by the good life. He dropped the shoe and politely shook my hand, a strong, firm handshake that did not attempt to crush my fingers, the handshake of a man who had made his life in business.
‘I’m sorry for your loss,’ I said. I hesitated for a moment and added, ‘I can’t imagine what it must be like to lose a child.’
He nodded in acknowledgement.
‘Stephen was hardly a child,’ he said. ‘But of course they never stop being your children.’
His accent had none of the Cockney diaspora vowels of his father and son. Barry Warboys had an accent shaped not by class or city or region but by money and education – an accent posh enough to read the news but not so upper class that it would grate on anyone’s nerves. He was what my grandmother would have called well-spoken.
He glanced over at his car and for the first time I noticed his wife huddled deep in the back seat, her face hidden behind dark glasses, and so impassive that she could have been sleeping or dead.
‘I should go,’ he said. ‘My wife. The doctor gave her something and … Look, I don’t wish to be rude, but I’ve already spoken to one of your colleagues.’
‘I’m not here about the death of your son,’ I said. ‘That investigation is being conducted by detectives from Essex Police. I’m part of an ongoing investigation into a smuggling operation that led to the death of twelve young women.’
He looked genuinely shocked. He dragged on his cigar and then grimaced with distaste.
‘Stephen was a petty criminal,’ he said. ‘I am well aware that he was no angel. But do you really think he was involved in something like that?’
It was a genuine question. And a novel experience for me. In the criminal world, what you usually hear are protestations of innocence. You hear men with blood up to their elbows swearing on their dead mother that they would never harm a fly. So I was shocked to hear Barry Warboys even consider the possibility that his son had been in the people-smuggling business.
‘It’s one lead we’re following,’ I said. ‘We know of at least one lorry that was due to drop off its cargo of illegals in this car park.’
He thought about it. Then shook his head, dismissing the idea.
‘Stephen was not some criminal mastermind,’ he said.
‘Neither were the people who smuggled those girls,’ I said. ‘They were stupid, vicious little villains.’
Just like your son, I thought, as he looked at me sharply. Then he softened.
‘No,’ he said. ‘I just can’t believe it.’
‘Any idea who would want to burn this place down?’
He did not smile but some black brand of humour flickered for a moment in his eyes.
‘I think the obvious candidate is Stephen himself,’ he said. ‘What’s the expression? He had form.’
‘You think this was an insurance scam? The usual idea is that you torch the building but not yourself.’
He looked at me with real anger. And then it faded. Anger did not come easily to him and he did not relish the feeling. Perhaps he had seen too much of it growing up with Paul Warboys as his father.
‘I don’t know what happened. None of it makes any sense. And, to be frank, finding out the truth will not bring my son back.’ He looked over at the car. ‘With you in a moment, Mr Doherty,’ he said, and the chauffeur slipped into the driver’s seat, his leather gloves at ten to two on the steering wheel. Then Barry Warboys turned back to me.
‘I can’t help you with your investigation. The Champagne Room – smuggling migrants – it’s not my world. The criminal life is not my life. That was my father. And that was my son. But it’s not me.’
‘You run care homes, is that correct?’ I said.
A flicker of irritation. I saw the pride in him, the hard-earned pride that he felt in stepping out from the long shadow of his father and making a fortune without even having to break the law.
‘Golden Years is a chain of retirement communities,’ he said, stiffening with the thin-skinned vanity of the self-made man. ‘They are not care homes.’
‘How did you get into that line of work, Mr Warboys?’
He softened, comfortable with a question that he had answered many times before.
‘I was close to both of my maternal grandmothers during my childhood. I think it began with them. Being the recipient of such kindness from the elderly. And wanting to give some of that kindness back.’
I nodded. I knew what that felt like. My grandmother raised me.
‘And was your son close to your father?’
‘Stephen idolised my father,’ he said with a wry smile. ‘Didn’t it show? But the feeling was mutual – my father had that unconditional love that is probably only possible for a grandparent to feel. I always think that parents are too close to their offspring. As a parent, you can’t miss the fact that your child – whatever their age – is just one more flawed human being, same as everyone else on the planet. But I don’t think that grandparents ever feel that way.’
He looked at the wreck of the Champagne Room.
‘My father owned this place,’ he said. ‘Not my son. My father set Stephen up in business. Were you aware of that?’
‘We know the lease is held by a company that was in your late mother’s name.’
‘Then perhaps you should be talking to my father.’
‘I will,’ I said. ‘And what about you, Mr Warboys? Are you close to your father?’
Another look towards the car. I thought of the photograph I had seen in the Black Museum, of Paul Warboys and the laughing hardmen looking down at the timid little boy in his oversized boxing gloves. I thought I could see the ghost of that scared little boy in this sixty-year-old man with the forgotten cigar in his hand.
‘Close? I wouldn’t go that far,’ he said. ‘I don’t talk to my father, Detective. Not any more. We were not close when I was a child – he was away, of course, for many years and it was my mother and my grandmothers who really raised me. And we were not close after I grew up. We we
re civil when we had to be. Unavoidable family gatherings and so on. But after my mother died, we finally stopped pretending.’
‘Stopped pretending what?’
‘That we liked each other. That we tolerated each other. That we had any desire at all to spend even one moment in each other’s company.’ He shook his head with a bitterness that he would carry to the grave. ‘You see, my father did not treat my mother well. And that’s the real reason why there’s no way back for us.’
‘You mean he had an affair?’
Barry Warboys laughed.
‘He had lots of affairs?’ I said.
‘Worse than that,’ he said. ‘The ultimate betrayal is not having sex with someone else, Detective.’ He waited for me to fill in the blank.
I shook my head.
‘It’s having a child with someone else,’ he said. ‘I was still a boy. It must have been before my father got sent away. Because I can remember my parents screaming at each other when the woman turned up on our doorstep with her baby.’
‘Who was the woman?’
‘The woman doesn’t matter a damn.’
We stood in silence.
‘I saw a picture of you with your father,’ I said. ‘You were very small – three or four. In some boxing gym.’
I saw him flinch at the memory.
‘I remember the day,’ he said. ‘The boxing gym – I suppose it must have been in Hammersmith. I remember the smell of the men. The flunkies my father called friends. They reeked of cigarettes and aftershave, alcohol and sweat. And I remember how heavy those gloves felt on my hands and my father telling me to hit him.’
‘I don’t think I’ve ever seen a child look more afraid.’
‘My father wanted me to box,’ Barry Warboys said. ‘He wanted to teach me to box. I preferred books. I preferred sitting quietly in my grandparents’ home. It was a bone of contention between us. One of many. My business was another one. Cleaning bedpans in death’s waiting room, my father once said. I was a bit of a disappointment to dear old dad, as you can tell. I always have been. But it probably started in that boxing gym. And it happens, doesn’t it? There’s nothing remarkable about our estrangement. Do you talk to your father, Detective?’