So when Billy stole a Magimix from Curry’s for his mum’s birthday and was caught because he took it back to complain that one of the fixtures was missing, the boom was lowered on him, and he went down. The lesson did not immediately strike home. It took several more years, and sentences to a progressively longer spell in jug, before the shock of his mother’s death (hastened by shame, his brothers said) changed his ways.
He was now employed by an uncle who had a greengrocer’s stall in the Shepherd’s Bush market, and was working off his forgiveness in this world by hard labour and co-operation, when it was asked for, with the police. His quick guilty glance beyond Slider’s shoulder suggested that he was still up to something, but Slider thought it was probably something very mild and on the fringe, like illegal betting or buying hookey fags, which was best left alone. It was not so much turning a blind eye to crime,but the necessary price that had to be paid to have Billy just on the sticky side of the line that divided the real world from the criminal world, where he could be useful.
The pints came. Billy said, ‘Cheese mite,’ and drank off a good quarter, and Slider said, ‘Well, Billy, how are you keeping?’
‘Straight, Mr Slider,’ Billy answered quickly. ‘Straight as a die, I promise you. Uncle Sam’d kill me if I wasn’t.’
Slider smiled. The guilty man, etc. ‘I didn’t mean that. Are you well?’
‘Gawd, yes. Never been ill in me life.’ He was perhaps a little undersized, but stocky enough, with a curiously young face, given that he must be forty by now. It was smooth, almost unlined; small-featured, and pleasant enough under bristle-cut light brown hair, only a little vacuous, and with eyes that were just too far apart, which gave him a slightly glassy look, like a stuffed toy. ‘Yourself?’ he returned politely.
‘Oh, I’m fine. Busy as always.’
‘Yeah. This murder up the New Park.’ This was what locals had always called it – to distinguish it, of course, from the old park, Wormholt. ‘I’ve been reading about it.’ He gestured vaguely towards the newspaper.
Slider saw that it was the Daily Mail. ‘Bit up-market for you, isn’t it?’
Billy smirked. ‘I got this young lady now,’ he said. ‘Bit of a looker, she is, if I say it myself. She’s dead posh. Works in that hairdressers on the Green, The Cut Above, it’s called. Qualified and everything.’
‘Good for you,’ Slider said. ‘Thinking of settling down?’
‘Maybe,’ he admitted. Anyway, she wants me to better meself, so she’s started me reading this instead’ve the Sun.’ He looked at the paper a bit hopelessly, and then said, ‘Well, I never was one for reading. It’s got the racing in it all right, though.’
‘I didn’t know you were a betting man,’ Slider said. ‘Fond of the ponies?’
‘Oh, I always done a bit. It’s an interest more than anything. Me mum didn’t approve of betting, but she liked watching the races on the telly. Liked the horses. Same with me, really. Me uncle Sam what I work for now had a horse and cart when I was a kid, did a round on the White City estate. I used to like helping round the stable an’ that.’
Slider took a leisurely drink of his pint, feeling Billy relax at this reassuring lack of hustle. ‘Funny thing,’ he said, ‘this bloke that got murdered in the park, he was a betting man. I wonder if you’ve come across him any time. Unlucky Lenny, they called him.’
Billy chuckled. ‘Unlucky Lenny? Gawd, yes! I’ve heard about him all right. Is that who it was?’
‘Seems so.’
‘Gaw, what a mug! Talk about good money after bad! Always picked the long odds, daft outsiders, mug doubles, you name it. And if he ever did pick a good ’un, it got scratched or fouled or fell down. He ’adn’t got,’ Billy added instructively, ‘no science. If you’re gonna bet on the ponies, you gotter have luck or you gotter have science, one or the other. He didn’t have neither.’
‘And what have you got?’
‘Me? I don’t do much, just a bob or two. It’s more an interest, like I said. What I got is a sort of instinct. It comes over me every now and then, almost like I can see into the future. I look at a certain horse, and I just know. Then I stick a tenner on its nose and sit back. You’d be surprised how often it comes off.’
Slider would have been surprised. It sounded like crystal balls. In his experience betting men forgot their losses almost instantaneously, but remembered their wins for ever – a function which greatly improved their overall statistics and the bookies’ profits. He took another drink and said casually, ‘So about this Lenny – what was his surname?’
Billy shook his head. ‘Now that I can’t tell you. Never knew him personal. Everyone just called him Unlucky Lenny. He used to punt at the shop on the corner o’ Loftus Road. Just up the road from you,’ he added on an afterthought.
‘Yes, I know,’ Slider said. ‘Know anything else about him? What was he up to, Billy? He looked a bit tasty to me.’
‘I dunno exactly, but he was up to something all right,’ Billy said, flattered by the assumption of his omniscience. He desperately wanted to give value for money, and Slider could almost hear his brain creak as he strained to remember something worth delivering. ‘I see him around the estate a bit,’ he said at last.
‘Is that where he lived?’
‘I reckon he did. I dunno for sure.’ A light went on inside his head. ‘What I do know,’ he said triumphantly, ‘was he lived with a tom. What was her name? Tanya or Terry or something like that. No, Tina, that was it. Definitely. I heard some geezers talking about her.’
‘She was a prostitute?’
‘Oh yeah, she was definitely on the game. Lenny knew all about it.’
‘Was he her pimp?’
‘I dunno. Maybe. He wasn’t a professional pimp, I don’t mean that. He didn’t have no other girls. I reckon he just lived with her. Maybe he like organised it for her. And got it for free himself – you know. They say she’s a bit of a sort an’ all. A cracker. Goes like a train.’ He dropped a man-to-man wink. ‘So maybe old Lenny wasn’t so unlucky after all, eh?’
CHAPTER FOUR
Tart with a Heart
The tailor’s shop was just off Shepherd’s Bush Green – a few yards down a side turning, Caxton Street, which made all the difference to the rent and rates. It also made all the difference to the drop-in trade, but one glance at the window showed that drop-in was not the mainstay of this emporium.
Over the window was the name Henry Samson in chipped gold-painted plastic letters screwed to a black fascia. The window was exceedingly dirty and contained no display, only some bales of cloth wrapped in brown paper, a couple of old biscuit tins full of odds and ends, and three plastic roses in a vase circa 1973.
Atherton pushed the door open, and an old-fashioned bell on a strap tinkled pleasantly. It was dim inside after the sunshine in the street. The shop was tiny, and most of the space was taken up with the shelving round the walls on which bales of cloth were stored. A wooden counter with a glass front was covered in professional litter: scissors, tape measures, boxes of pins and a neglected sea of invoices, orders, correspondence and – probably – final demands from utility companies. The display element of the counter contained cardboard boxes of buttons and zip-fasteners. The tiny unused space in the middle of the floor revealed bare, dusty floorboards and a small square of old carpet on which the customer might stand to view himself in the cheval mirror which stood beside the curtain into the back shop.
The curtain moved now, and the proprietor poked his head out like a stage manager checking the House. The broad, fat, wrinkled old face creased into a smile of welcome, revealing the porcelain uniformity of the National Health’s finest.
‘Mr Atherton! Welcome, welcome! Just one moment and I’ll be with you!’
The curtain dropped, there was a sitcom rustling and thumping of hasty activity, and then it was thrust aside with a rattle of curtain rings, and the tailor came out. His head had first come through the curtain at Atherton’s level, but that was b
ecause he did his sewing in the back room sitting on a table (which kept the cloth off the dusty floor). Now he was on his own two legs his head was hardly more than five feet from the ground; but what he lacked in height he made up for in girth. He was wide all the way round, with tiny feet and quick, pudgy hands; rimless half-glasses poised halfway down his nose; surprisingly fine eyebrows, and a scantling of hair combed carefully over his bald top and dyed soot black with a tailor’s vanity. He wore old-fashioned striped morning trousers with a black waistcoat over a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up. The waistcoat glittered with the needles and pins thrust into both fronts, and a tape measure hung round his neck like a garland of honour.
He advanced, beaming, on Atherton, his hand out, and when Atherton gave his, enfolded it in both his own and pumped it up and down rhythmically as if he hoped for water. ‘Good to see you! Good to see you! Are you well? You look well.’
‘I’m in the pink, thank you,’ Atherton said. ‘I don’t need to ask you how you are.’
‘Never better!’ the tailor cried boastfully. ‘I’m never ill, you know. Hard work is the best medicine.’
His name was James Mason (‘No relation!’ he cried gaily on first introduction) but since he had escaped with an older sister from Germany during the war, that almost certainly was not his real name. He admitted to seventy-five, but Atherton would not have been surprised to discover he was eighty-five. With the wrinkles, the vitality and the swift, plump movements it was impossible to tell.
‘So what does my favourite customer want this morning?’ Mr Mason asked, relinquishing Atherton’s hand and drawing the tape measure off his neck with anticipatory relish. ‘Favourite customer’ was less of a hyperbole than usual with such titles. There was a small group of cognoscenti who treasured Mr Mason as he should be treasured, but he eked out a living with alterations and repairs to clothes it pained him to handle. ‘You’ve come at just the right time, as it happens. I have some cloth here – come, come and see. Let me show you. Just came in this morning, and I thought of you right away.’
He twinkled over to the window and heaved a wrapped bale, with astonishing strength given that it was nearly as tall as him, off the stack and over to the counter, dumping it on top of the clutter with a fine disregard for administration. Quickly he unfolded the brown paper and drew out a length of the cloth. ‘Look, look how beautiful. Feel. Lovely, isn’t it? I wish I could get more of it, but I thought of you first. I said to myself, “Mr Atherton must have a suit out of this. A pair of trousers, at the very least.”’
Atherton stepped forward to finger the cloth. It was charcoal grey with a faint stripe which was not colour but merely in the weave. Mason gazed up into his face, nodding and beaming.
‘Yes? Beautiful, isn’t it?’
‘What is it?’
‘You tell me.’
‘It’s very soft,’ Atherton suggested.
‘But very hard-wearing. It’s a mixture, of course. Wool, cashmere – mostly cashmere – and just a little mink.’
‘Mink?’ Atherton said, bemused.
‘I joke you not. Very hard, mink hair. Cashmere alone would not cope with all the sitting. But mink—!’ His eyes screwed up with anticipation of a coming jest. ‘When did you ever see a ferret with a bald patch?’
Atherton laughed dutifully, and prepared to break his tailor’s heart. ‘It’s very nice, but I’m afraid I didn’t come here for anything to wear.’
Mason took it well. He knew Atherton’s calling. He spread his hands a little and said, ‘Sandwiches I don’t do, it must be information.’
‘That’s right.’ He brought the leather jacket out of the bag he had carried it in, and held it out. ‘I hoped you could tell me where this came from.’
Mason looked serious. ‘Leather? Leather is something else. I am not an expert on leather.’ But he took it anyway, his fingers seeming to do their own examination, separately from his eyes. ‘Nice, nice quality skin. Off the shelf, of course, but the tailoring not bad, all the same. An expensive piece, I would say.’ He turned to the inside. ‘Good-quality wool lining.’ It was tartan, but of no clan or sept known to Scotland: a mixture of caramel, cream and milk-chocolate shades. Subtle and attractive.
Mason examined the label, and snorted. ‘Not Italian, of course! All the world wants Italian this, Italian that. Why? I can’t tell you. Italian food, Italian wine, yes, but when did you ever hear of an Italian tailor? Mean jackets, tight trousers, shoes too narrow –you want to look like a barrow boy? So choose Italian. You want to look like a gentleman …’ He left a space there for his most generous shrug.
‘If not Italian, what is it?’ Atherton asked patiently.
‘American,’ Mason said promptly. ‘The cut, the quality of the stitching. And the name I’ve heard of before.’ He examined the two tiny tags sewn into the seams near the bottom. ‘North-east America. These code numbers you get in New England, stock control. Not for export.’
‘So it was probably bought over there?’
‘Yes, but they sell such things also in PX stores. That’s export as far as we’re concerned, but to an American the PX is United States soil.’
‘I see. Well, thank you. I knew you’d be able to pin it down for me.’
‘Does it help?’ The bright eyes scanned his face keenly.
‘I don’t know that it does,’ Atherton said. Purely in the name of thoroughness he drew out the photographs and showed them to the tailor.
‘He’s dead, nuh?’ Mason said, looking closely at the mugshot. ‘It was him who wore the jacket? No, I don’t know him. And the tattoo – very few people with tattoos come to me. Or at least, not tattoos of that sort.’
‘Ah well, I didn’t think you would know him. Thanks anyway. At least I know he got the jacket from America.’
‘Or maybe an American gave it to him,’ Mason cautioned. ‘In payment for a debt, maybe. He doesn’t look the kind to get birthday presents. And now, from business to pleasure,’ he went on beguilingly, displaying the cloth again. A pair of trousers, what do you say?’
‘That’s business, surely?’
‘To make trousers for you is a pleasure,’ Mason said seriously. ‘I tell you no lie. A pure pleasure, Mr Atherton.’
* * *
‘Getting information on this case is like pulling teeth,’ Slider grumbled. ‘Now we know that Lenny lived with Tina, but not where, and no surnames for any of the blasted crew. And an American jacket. Where does that get us?’
‘Nowhere,’ Atherton acknowledged. ‘We don’t know that they were never imported. Or he could have gone on holiday to America and brought it back. People do, all the time.’
‘Or bought it in a pub from an American,’ Norma added. She was leaning against the door-jamb of Slider’s office, her arms folded across her chest like a housewife. Marriage had really changed her, Atherton thought. Any minute now she’d be getting a perm. ‘Or from someone who nicked it from an American –that’s more likely. So what now, boss?’
‘We try and find a tom called Tina,’ said Slider.
‘Needle in haystack time,’ Atherton commented.
‘If this were Ruislip it might be worth investigating a possible American connection, but there are no bases near here,’ Slider sighed.
‘What about the cultural legation or whatever it’s called in Holland Park?’ Swilley said. ‘That’s only just up the road.’
‘Culture?’ Atherton said. A bloke called Unlucky Lenny who lives with a tom?’
‘Maybe he provided a service of some kind. Even an embassy needs cleaners and dustbin men.’
‘That’s very profound, Norma.’
‘All right, you can look into it,’ Slider told Atherton. ‘I don’t suppose it’s anything, but it’s better to leave no stone unturned. Meanwhile, it’s on with the clubs, pubs and especially doorknockers. If Lenny lived on the estate, he must have been someone’s neighbour.’
‘Have you any idea how many flats there are on the estate?’ Norma said w
ith horror.
‘I daresay in a couple of weeks you’ll be able to tell me exactly,’ said Slider.
Porson was sitting down – in itself an unusual thing. His usual torrent of restless energy seemed to have been staunched. He sat at his desk reading, looking grey and old. Even his wig seemed limp and spiritless. Normally Slider’s fascinated fear was that it would go flying off with one of the old boy’s rapid changes of direction, but today it seemed to huddle close to the bony pate for comfort like a dog sensing disaster. Slider would have liked to ask if he was all right, but sympathy was not a thing you could show to The Syrup.
‘So,’ he said, looking up at last, planting a finger to mark where he had stopped reading. He had big, knuckly hands with an old man’s chalky, ridged nails, but they pinned down the paper firmly, just as, however random his vocabulary, his mind would pin down the facts of an investigation. ‘What have you got?’
‘More reports than a balloon-popping contest,’ Slider said, ‘but nothing to go on yet. We’ve got a first name, but no surname or address. An informant says deceased lived with a prostitute, but we’ve only got a first name for her as well, and of course there’s no knowing it was her real name anyway.’
Porson looked at him steadily from under eyebrows so bushy they always made him appear to be frowning. ‘You know we’re going to be under the microscope from the press with regard to this one? Our own back yard, and et cetera?’
‘We’re doing all we can, sir,’ Slider said.
‘I know, laddie,’ Porson said, unexpectedly kindly. ‘But I think we’d better go public all the same. Can’t do much investigating if you don’t even know who he was, can you?’
‘When, sir?’ Slider said, with a shrug in his voice. Going public was always a two-edged sword. It might bring in information, but it also warned people you might hope to take by surprise; and it spread knowledge of your weakness across the widest audience.
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