“Sorry? Tea would be lovely. This place of yours, Mama Mary, it’s very… very…”
“Red,” I whispered.
“… charming,” she finished.
We slithered among the silk and satin cushions, and Mary smiled at us as she poured the tea.
“Danny say you write in paper. Not ’bout us!”
“No, no. Mary. I promise you. I just need some help. Some advice.”
“I got advice. Stop. Don’t you go looking for trouble. Enough come to you.”
“It’s my job, Mary. All I want is to get a little closer to the action. Danny tells me you know everything that’s going on in…”
“… in bad part of town? That what you mean? Sure, lady. I got best ears in business.” She giggled, which might have looked charming in someone half her age. Though with her tiny physique, her black wig and her thick painted face, I couldn’t begin to put a year on Mary.
“Mary, one thing before we get started. I know how much you like silk…” I glanced round the room. “The redder the better, eh? Do you mind telling me where you get it?”
She screwed up her face so that her eyes became cunning slits.
“Why you interested, Danny? I paid all this.” She swept her hand round the room festooned with shiny hangings.
“I’m sure you paid for it, Mary. But maybe not full price. I’m not going to report you and this is off the record for Eve here. A customer of mine keeps losing some silk. I want to know where it turns up. I have my suspicions.”
Mary sat thinking for a second or two. “OK, Danny I trust you. But if I get in trouble ’cos you, then I send boys to cut off balls, OK?”
I coughed and dodged Eve’s stifled laugh. “Fair enough, Mary. What do you know?”
“Place in Whitechapel. On top of shop. Always got plenty stuff. Got stall in Petticoat Lane, but that rubbish. Good stuff, you need to know right man.” She tapped her head indicating she was in the know.
“Do you have a name, Mary? Just between these four walls. Promise.”
“I tell.” She shrugged. “No do you good. Big top guy too big to touch. Gamba, they call him.”
“Gamba? Gambatti? Pauli Gambatti?”
I whistled but it was no surprise. Gambatti had his finger in every dirty pie from Stepney in the east to Gray’s Inn in the west, and from the Thames up through Whitechapel and Bethnal Green to Hackney in the north. The western edge of his territory collided – in frequent bloody disputes – with Jonny Crane, boss of Soho and Holborn. His patch covered the warehouse area of Wapping. Out of the corner of my eye I caught Eve’s face. Her eyes were alight and her teeth were bared.
“Know him?” I asked her.
“I know of him. A name that comes up a lot in conversation. But I’ve never been able to use it in a story. He’s got expensive lawyers.”
I left it at that. We drank more tea, and Mary told us of dark rooms where poker was played, drinking dens that were open all hours, dog races where both dogs and punters were drugged, and pubs where you could arrange for a business rival or straying spouse to be fixed – permanently if required – for less than fifty quid. Eve wrote and wrote and when we emerged Soho was dipped in a golden glow from the last of the sun, and Mama Mary had broken off twice to welcome her first guests of the day to the pleasure palace: men dropping by on their way home from work.
“I need a drink,” Eve said as we stumbled into the light.
“As long as it’s not tea.”
“Never. I will never drink another cup of tea.”
“I know a place.” I checked my watch. “And they’re open in ten minutes.”
I steered her through Soho noting the subtle changes that were taking place.
Lights coming on in dark doorways, bouncers rolling their shoulders, heavily made-up girls beginning their patrols. The streets were filling with men with hats pulled down despite the early summer warmth. As we walked, we touched occasionally; I even held her arm from time to time to see her across a road or past a pushy procurer. She didn’t seem to mind.
We joined a small queue outside the Dog and Duck in Greek Street. Neither of us looked at each other, not wishing to advertise our need. At exactly six o’clock the bolts rattled; the door gaped open and a rush of stale air wafted over us. I got us drinks and led the way upstairs. We were the only customers in the small dark room. It smelled of two hundred years of beer and smoke.
“Cheers!” I raised my pint glass.
She smiled and clinked her vodka and lemonade. “Cheers, Danny. Thank you. I liked Mary.”
“She’s a tough little cookie, but honest. As honest as a madam can be, I suppose.”
“She seems to like you.”
“I told you, we helped each other.”
“But I’m not sure if I got anything that will make my readers sit up and buy more papers.” She took out her notebook – a black leather-bound pad that fitted into her raincoat pocket. She flicked through it, frowning. “Sorry, I don’t mean to be ungrateful. It’s just I need more…”
“… excitement? Look, if you’re up to it, we could grab a bite and then try one of the clubs or illegal bars. I think I can get us in.”
She shook her head, and I felt curiously let down at the prospect of saying goodnight.
“I can make something of it.” She raised her hand and drew a headline in the air. “Illicit gambling den! All-night bars of Soho! But it’s been done. And everybody knows it goes on. I need action. Bring me the head of a gangster,” she challenged. “Crime boss captured in shoot-out. That’s what makes the news.”
“If only we had Prohibition.” I sat back and examined her, trying to see the situation dispassionately, as if what I was about to suggest was simply business. I digested her quirky features – nose too long, eyes too big and mouth too full. Some women – not always the prettiest – set your blood racing. You want to do foolish things in front of them to keep their interest: cartwheels, picking fights with strangers, robbing a jewellery store. Eve had that quality.
I wanted to impress her, to keep her near me.
Yet I knew nothing about this woman. I looked down at my beer and tried to picture her climbing a wall, running for cover, perhaps swimming for her life. I thought of the agents I’d worked with – women so brave and selfless it made you feel namby-pamby. Was she up to their mark? No one ever knows until they’re tested. And by then it’s too late.
But Eve Copeland seemed to have fire in her belly. Look what she had achieved.
And the way she’d sought me out. It said a lot about her determination. I lifted my gaze again into her questioning eyes. Unless I had failed to get the measure of her, I’d seen this sort of steel in only a few people in my life.
“Are you scared of water?” I asked.
“I’m a fish. You should see me at the Lido.”
“I’d like to.’ I smiled at the thought. “OK in boats?”
“Big ones or little ones?”
“Little to start with. Can you take a risk?”
“Life’s a risk. What is it?!”
“What I’m about to propose is dangerous. You could get hurt… badly. Depends what we run into. Who we run into.”
“Are you going to tell me before I start screaming?”
“There’s going to be a raid. On a warehouse.”
She was sitting forward now, her dark eyes gleaming. “That’s more like it.” She looked round the empty bar and lowered her voice theatrically. “Tell me more.”
“Bales of silk. Mary described the end result. We’ll have a ringside seat at the start. The warehouse owner’s being robbed blind. Tomorrow there’s a fresh shipment in from Holland on the goods ship Clever Girl. I’m going to try to stop them.”
“Count me in!”
“There’s one thing. Mary mentioned a name. It shook you. Pauli Gambatti. I think he’s behind this. If he is, he won’t be happy. In fact he’ll go berserk. And he’ll know you were on the inside if you write the story. Still want in?”
<
br /> She handled it well, barely blinked. But I could see her pupils dilate. She forced a smile.
“I’m in! Look, I’m starving. One more of these and I’ll fall over. How about an early dinner? My treat. It’s on the paper. You can tell me all about it.”
She knew an Italian restaurant just off High Holborn. It was one more Italian than I’d ever been in, if you don’t count Glasgow chippies. She told me it had been shut for much of the war after Churchill had ordered the internment of “enemy aliens”. The aliens seemed pleased to see her. I just hoped they harboured no hard feelings as they stirred their pots. We took a corner table, and I had to ask the stupid question: “Do you come here with your boyfriend?”
She looked amused. “That’s very personal.”
“You’re joining my gang. I need to know a bit about you.” It was only half a lie.
“No boyfriend. Too busy. And even if I had the time, not enough good men to go around. Single men. Why aren’t you married?”
Back to her defensive tricks again. “I’ve been busy too.” I tapped my skull.
“Before the war.”
“There were girls.” I shrugged, and thought of the sparky mill lassies in Kilpatrick on a Saturday night, mad for dancing, mad for men. Get a man, get pregnant, get married, get old. Not like the cerebral ones I met at university who were more interested in the meaning of life than living it. “And you?” I asked.
She looked distant for a moment, and I was about to change the subject. “There was a boy. I don’t know what happened to him.” She shook her head.
“Sorry. Any sisters? Brothers?”
“Someone you can invite to the funeral?” she parried.
“It’s not going to be that risky.”
“Shame.” She relented. “No, no family. Only child. Mum and dad both gone.” Her jaw tightened and for a second, I glimpsed a different Eve Copeland. Then the barrier came back up. She picked up her fork and jabbed the back of my hand, hard enough to leave a mark. “This really is a job interview, isn’t it? Next it’ll be hobbies and interests. Then why do I want this job and what my qualifications are, and…”
“OK! Enough! I give in.” I laughed and rubbed my hand.
We broke off the swordplay and ordered some lasagne and a glass each of red wine. I took her lead on the food. The Tally caffs in Glasgow only served fish suppers and ice cream. The wine was better than the camel piss I’d tried in North Africa when I had a forty-eight-hour pass, but not much. I’m a Scotch drinker through and through. But the acid red seemed to mellow her.
“Danny, I’m very boring. I work hard at the paper. Any spare time I have, I read. I read till my eyes bleed. That’s my life.”
“That’s not boring. What do you read?”
“Anything. Everything! There’s so much.” Her face glowed.
“Library?”
She shook her head. “I love being the first to open a book. It is a complete indulgence. But at sixpence a go…”
“Penguins!” Without thinking, I stretched out my hand and laid it over hers. She didn’t seem to notice, just nodded sheepishly as though admitting to a cocaine habit. I left my hand over hers.
“You too?” she asked.
“I’ve had to put up a new shelf. Who do you read?”
“Hemingway, Linklater…”
“Mackenzie, Christie…” I raised her.
She riposted with, “Orwell, Priestley…”
We were showing off. But isn’t that what you do when you find a fellow clan member? In the excitement, our fingers seemed to become laced.
“OK, OK. Here’s the test.” I squeezed her hand. “Steinbeck.”
“Tortilla Flat, Of Mice and Men…”
“Grapes of Wrath! What did you think of Grapes of Wrath?”
“I wept,” she said simply.
“Will you marry me?”
“And share my Penguins? Never!”
They tried clearing our table and sweeping up around us. Finally they put upturned chairs on the tables, so that we sat in a forest of thin columns. We took the hint at last and I walked her home through Bloomsbury to her digs in Russell Square. It felt companionable and right to hold hands all the way. Her fingers were long and slim and hot. We weren’t sure what to do on the doorstep and ended up with a brush of lips on lips. It was enough to get a taste of lipstick and wine and cigarettes, and I wanted more. But she seemed to blink, as though coming out of a dream. She backed away and slipped inside. Yet something had begun. It was easy to involve her in my business. Easy to get involved with her, period. That’s my excuse.
SIX
I woke early, but lay wondering at the turmoil in my mind. Nothing had happened last night. Had it? Why should it? She was my client. I was working for her.
Running a detective agency didn’t put me among the bankers and accountants, but it warranted professional standards. Didn’t it? Besides, if I wanted to pick up a girl who liked books as much as me, I should hang around libraries. And yet… we hadn’t been able to stop talking, comparing notes, trumping each other, flashing our best sides. We were kids showing off, excited by the promise of adventure. That’s all. But I should have kissed her again. Properly.
I got up and dressed and stopped myself three times from lifting the phone and calling her newsdesk. It’s a character defect with me, over-reacting at the merest sniff of a chance with a lively girl. I shoved her out of my head. I pulled my chair up to my desk and switched into SOE planning mode. I had work to do. But as I began to lay out the operation, all I could see were the risks for her. Maybe I should have called her and put her off. I had the phone in my hand when the boys arrived. I put it back in its cradle.
They were punctual: army training. I’d met them in the pub a couple of months ago, and over a few ales we became instant pals. As with Eve, you recognise your own type. I get them to do some stuff for me: recces of hotels and offices, tailing philanderers, that sort of thing. I can trust them. Four of us cloistered in my little office. Four men, two chairs. I took one, Midge the other. Midge Cummin, by common but unspoken assent, was my number two. An ex-sergeant in the Paras, one of the few who survived Arnhem. He was unemployed and living off the pittance of his demob pay supplemented by jobs like this, but his boots shone like he was Honour Guard at Sandhurst.
The other two sat on the floor with their backs against the wall. A pall of smoke already hung from the ceiling and at the rate we were puffing the cloud would envelop us all within the hour. I opened the window and watched the breeze stir and suck at the foul canopy. Maybe Prof Haggarty was right; I should give up the fags.
I went through my analysis of the layout at Tommy’s warehouse and briefed them on the plan, such as it was. There would be a lot of improvisation. I asked Big Cyril what he thought about the timing. He was squatting against the wall tugging at his beard. He was Navy and looked exactly like the bloke on the back of a packet of Players. Cyril Styles was the quiet man who killed with his bare hands, or with a knife or anything that came to hand, in his former life as a platoon leader in Special Boat Squadron.
“It depends on the tide. I’ve checked the tables and we should get floated at 21.35. It’s already dark by then. But you said we’ve no idea what time the raid will happen?”
“That’s true,” I said. “We could be wasting our time tonight, but you’ll get paid for turning up. I agreed with Tommy Chandler that if nothing happens this time, you’ll still get a couple of quid each. The bonus – twenty a man – gets paid when – if – we nail these bastards and stop the thieving.”
“Sounds fair enough to me,” chipped in Stan Berry. We all reckoned Stan’s mom had slept with a Jack Russell. He was five foot nothing, wiry, and kept his hair short and spiky. He couldn’t sit still on his scrawny arse for longer than two seconds. For the last twenty minutes he’d wriggled and twisted like he had fleas. But this was the guy who’d bailed out of his burning Lancaster over Cologne, spent six months in a German POW hospital before escaping on crutche
s through the lines to France, then Spain, and took the next seat on the next Lancaster to bomb the bastards again. For the crap food, he said.
I would put these three men up against a gang ten times their strength and still bet my house on them. If I had a house. But it was important never to get all four of us in the same pub. Unless they were watering the beer.
“Right. You all know your job. Midge takes one boat, Cyril takes the other. I’ll be with Midge, Stan goes with Cyril. And remember – no killing! This isn’t Jerry. Hear that, Cyril? No knives, no garrotting, and absolutely no guns.”
“What if they’ve got ’em?” asked Cyril, disappointed.
“Or there are ten of them,” chipped in Stan.
“You’ve got surprise and experience on your side.”
“You sound like my old sergeant major just before he sent us out against a Panzer unit,” said Cyril.
“What happened?” asked Stan.
“We lost,” said Cyril dryly.
“Still, we’ve got these.” Midge picked up one of the pickaxe handles he’d brought and thwacked it into his hand with a ringing smack.
“But try not to brain them, fellas, OK? We want to hand them over to the bobbies in one piece, everything in working order. If we can.”
I stared each one in the eye till I got the look that said they understood.
“There’s one other thing. We’ll have a passenger tonight. A reporter who wants a scoop. I’ll take personal responsibility. None of your names will show up.”
“What the fuck, Danny? A passenger? This is no time for a fucking passenger,” said Midge.
“I said it’s my responsibility. OK?”
There were a few more grumbles but no serious objection. I wonder what they’d have said if I’d told them the reporter was a girl? One shock at a time.
At eight o’clock I was walking along the cobbles towards the Anchor Tap, a pub in Horselydown Lane, the frontier to a run of narrow streets and warehouses just down river from Tower Bridge. The streets were empty; the warehouses shut for the day, and all the workers – draymen and lightermen – safely home with their feet up listening to the wireless and reading their paper. Sensible blokes. But they’d left their spoor on the air like a tribe that had just folded its tents: acrid fumes of coal fires from guttering braziers, the sharp stink of urine and dung from the Clydesdales, and ripe malt and hops from the Anchor Brewhouse. It set my senses alight and made me wish I was meeting this girl for a quiet drink instead of a gang for a midnight ruckus.
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