Mr Love and Justice

by Colin MacInnes

  At closing time, Edward lingered in the street carrying (a subtle touch, he thought) a quarter-filled can of paraffin whose purpose was that wherever he might be observed to loiter, the assumption would be he was visiting or coming from a neighbour to collect or supply this useful household fluid. At the back of his mind there was also the notion it might come in useful to hurl at somebody, if need be. For Edward was now learning what all young coppers do: that their job, at night, and even sometimes in the day, can be very dangerous. The only security he felt was that he was alone: always the safest situation for any probing, nocturnal prowler. This wisdom confirmed the Detective-Sergeant’s diagnosis that he was born to the purple of the CID: who’ve soon understood the real reason why plain-clothes men are told to work, if possible, in pairs, is not for their own protection but that one can be the witness of an assault upon the other, and bring any vital messages home to base.

  By now he was following a carolling party piloted by the pimp, the paraffin in his can playing lapping harmonies to their graceless melodies. The Cypriot café was not far off, and from its exterior Ted had no difficulty in observing they descended immediately to an invisible basement room. After a while of strolling and hesitation he entered, parked his paraffin tin, and ordered kebab and ladies’ fingers. He ate these slowly and drank two Turkish coffees till he was the only surviving customer. Hints began to be dropped, even by the courteous Cypriots, that the time had come for him to be on his way. He therefore retreated to the road again, where he spent a tiresome, embarrassing hour of vigil.

  But this delay served a purpose: his mounting irritation was now firmly concentrated on the drunks and gamblers in the cellar. Of course, he knew well – even recruit training had taught him that – you should always try to remain quite impersonal in your feelings about suspects, and not ever become too interested in them as individual human beings. On the other hand, a little spite and resentment would spice the eagerness to effect a capture. Edward was soon rewarded by the exaggeratedly cautious appearance of three Irishmen and the pimp. Observing (with recollections of the textbooks) Alternative B, he ‘followed’ them from in front assisted, like a blind man’s guide-dog (who, after all, doesn’t know either where he’s going), by the sound of their lurching feet behind. Soon the feet stopped, and he looked cautiously back to identify the brothel.

  This word (brothel) conjured up scandalous, alluring visions. What it in London in most cases consists of is a dilapidated house with several girls in rooms with minimal accessories. But even in this basic, utilitarian form it still has, on account of the ancient mystique of the word and its frankly anti-social purpose (and the curiosity and venom these variously attract), a certain faded glamour. But not to Edward Justice. Edward did not condemn prostitutes because they were ‘immoral’: he did so because they sought to destroy in the most flagrant possible way his own deep belief in love. He therefore approached the establishment with intense interest and disapproval.

  Lights shone from curtained windows, but the place was otherwise discreet. He knocked and nothing happened. Then he went away, returned and gave – a happy bow at a venture – three short knocks and one long. A light came on in the hall, the door opened hiding the person behind it, then closed on Edward who found himself confronting a forty-ish man in jeans. ‘I don’t think we’ve met,’ this person said.

  ‘No. I’d like to see one of the girls.’

  ‘Busy, mister. What you got in that can?’

  ‘Oh, that? It’s for the wife.’

  ‘She know you’re here?’

  ‘Not likely.’

  ‘No. Well, there it is. You can call back, or if you like you can have a Maxwell House with me downstairs while you’re waiting for a vacancy.’

  Edward accepted. The basement room was scented in a savagely ‘oriental’ manner, and its furnishings were the Harrow Road emporium’s version of Ali Baba’s cave. The stranger put on a kettle, then surprised Edward considerably by trying to give him an affectionate kiss. He preserved his calm, however. ‘You’re one of those,’ he said, disengaging politely.

  ‘One of the many,’ his host cried gaily. ‘We horrid creatures crop up everywhere!’

  ‘So you don’t cause jealousies among the girls.’

  ‘Oh, I wouldn’t say that. After all, in a certain way they’re very fond of me, and I’m very necessary to them, too.’

  ‘You own this place, then?’

  ‘Me? Living in the basement? Silly! No – I’m their maid.’

  ‘A male maid, like.’

  ‘Check!’ cried the male maid, pouring water on the Maxwell House. ‘And now,’ he continued, bringing the coffee over, ‘a question or two to you, please. Who sent you here?’

  ‘The Cypriot boys.’

  ‘Which one?’

  ‘Dark feller.’

  ‘Darling! All Cypriots are dark! Nicky, was it? Constantine?’

  ‘Nicky, I think.’

  The male maid shook his head at Edward. ‘Naughty!’ he said. ‘There is no Nicky.’

  ‘Well, mate, I don’t know his bloody name but he just sent me.’

  Hand on a jeaned hip, the male maid eyed him. ‘Do you know what?’ he said. ‘I think I’ve been a very, very stupid boy. I think you’re quite probably a c-o-p.’

  ‘Who – me?’

  ‘You, darling.’

  The male maid, darting like a goldfish, had raced through the door, slamming it behind him, and as Edward jumped up he heard the sound from the backyard behind of an outside lavatory chain being vigorously pulled up and down like a ship’s siren. By the time he got to the first floor there were signs of considerable movement. Edward banged on the nearest door whence a loud female voice bellowed at him to fuck off. The second door on the landing opened, and he was face to face with a squat woman of thoroughly unwelcoming demeanour who, blocking the whole doorway, said to him, ‘Let’s see your warrant.’

  ‘Open that door there,’ said Edward.

  ‘Listen, young man. Show me your warrant or else hop it. If you don’t, I’m on the blower to Detective-Constable you-know-who.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Who will not be pleased you’ve come here pissing in his garden.’

  ‘What you mean?’

  ‘Son, I’m beginning to think you’re stupid. What you suppose I pay twenty a week for to you people? Get going, now. And sort it all out with your own mates: they’ll tell you.’

  By now doors had opened, figures appeared, and several very truculent males had gathered at strategic points on stairways. Silence fell a moment, and everybody watched. Edward had never felt so solitary in his life.

  ‘You’ll hear more of this,’ he said, and walked downstairs. There were shouts of laughter and crude cries of abuse.

  By the door, the male maid handed him his paraffin tin. Bursting with rage, Edward knocked it out of his hand, grabbed him and manhandled him out into the street. ‘I’m being arrested!’ cried the male maid. ‘First time in years. A thrill!’

  As he marched his capture up the dark and empty roads, Edward recalled as best he could in his emotion all the golden rules of an arrest: for this, though far from being his first, was his first one in the expert CID. He longed to get at his black notebook, for facts noted down in this, he knew, had a magical effect on juries and even magistrates. An officer, by law, can produce his notebook when in court and consult it (for matters of fact alone, of course) when in the witness-box. The conception that these factual jottings may be fantasies or added long after their supposedly immediate inscription – or that the defendant, too, might be permitted to produce a similar jury-impressing book – does not seem to have occurred to legislators. Edward knew all this: but to him the black book was the reassuring symbol of his office; and he liked to enhance the tenuous reality of the confusing happenings of fact by giving them, as soon as possible, this inscribed, oracular dimension.

  But how do you get at your notebook if you’re frog-marching a delightedly wriggling suspect i
n the dark? The more Edward thought of the whole episode the less he liked it. On a sudden decision he stopped at a corner, let the male maid go and said, ‘All right – I’m turning you loose. Now skip!’

  ‘Oh, are you!’ said the maid, rubbing his skinny arms.

  ‘Hop it now,’ said Edward.

  The male maid stood his ground and cried, ‘Copper, I refuse to be released.’

  Edward had not quite expected this. ‘Oh?’ he said, as nastily as possible.

  ‘Look, big boy,’ the atrocious male maid answered. ‘You’ve messed things up for us tonight, and I’m going to mess up a thing or two for you.’

  As to his next move, Edward didn’t hesitate. He hit the male maid very hard in the face, and turned and walked away. When he paused after several hundred yards to make some notes of the occurrence (and of others) in his book, he was dismayed to see the maid still following at a distance. He hurried on; and reaching the highway, by the expedient of showing his card to a uniformed man and of declaring the male maid had urinated in a public place, he shook him off and returned (determined to say nothing of all this) to the station.

  Immediately on arrival, he was sent for by the Detective-Sergeant. This officer, more in exasperation than in anger, blew him up. ‘You’d like to know,’ he said to Edward, ‘what you’ve done wrong. Well, I’ll tell you: everything.’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘First and foremost – and even you should know this, Constable – you don’t tackle any case – any case at all – without prior notification and permission unless, of course, it comes up on you suddenly like a smash-and-grab or something.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘This is a Force,’ the officer said. ‘Not a collection of Robin Hoods.’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Next. If you want to enter a house without a warrant, I’ve no objection: these little matters can usually be ironed out and brothels, of course, don’t expect you to have one anyway. But please don’t enter any house at all without first checking if your colleagues happen to know much more about it already than you ever will. Particularly, Constable, any suspect premises we’ve decided to let stay open for our own particular purposes.’

  ‘I’m sorry, sir, I don’t …’

  ‘I expect not. Look! That gaff, as gaffs up this way go, is perfectly well conducted and a very useful place indeed to pick up real suspects in: the sort of criminal you should be interested in.’

  ‘I see, sir.’

  ‘You see!’

  ‘I suppose, sir,’ Edward said cautiously, ‘the woman phoned you … or someone.’

  ‘Oh – brilliant! Let me tell you something, son. That good woman you upset is much more useful to the Force at present by her information than you look like shaping up to be.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘And now you’ve crashed in there like a cow in a china-shop, what use is she going to be to us? Eh? Answer me that! Or ask me before you do these things. That’s what I’m here for: come and ask me!’

  ‘But sir,’ said Edward full of contrition, ‘brothels are often raided, aren’t they? Brothel-keeping cases do come up …’

  ‘Naturally, boy! But do use your loaf! You only raid the place when any advantages it may have to the Force are less than the prestige of a cast-iron brothel-keeping case. If vice has got to flourish, it had better flourish underneath our eyes until we’re ready to clamp down on it.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  The Detective-Sergeant lit his pipe. ‘You’ll soon see how it is,’ he said. ‘Sometimes, of course, the order comes to us from on high, and then we close the place up anyway. Or maybe the Madam forgets her place and fails to be co-operative. Or maybe there’s a change of personnel here at the station and somebody new in charge just doesn’t like her face. Those vice hustlers know all that, and so do we: the whole thing’s perfectly well understood. Except, of course, by idiots like you.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  A constable entered, saluted and said, ‘There’s a poof downstairs, sir, wants to bring an assault charge.’

  ‘Against who?’

  The constable looked at Edward.

  ‘Oh, no!’ the Detective-Sergeant cried. Then, to the constable, ‘Throw him out.’

  ‘He’s very persistent, sir. He says if we won’t wear it here he’ll take it to another station.’

  ‘Does he?’ the Detective-Sergeant said, an ominous glint appearing in his clouded eyes. ‘Just wheel him in, Constable, will you?’ He then turned to Edward. ‘You’ve broken,’ he said, ‘the first rule of the business: which is to make an arrest, and fail to bring a charge and make it stick.’

  Edward said meekly, ‘Can’t we just charge him, sir, with being a queer?’

  The Detective-Sergeant didn’t even bother to answer. The male maid appeared and the uniformed constable withdrew. The Detective-Sergeant got up, punched the male maid five or six times very hard in an extremely dispassionate manner in the stomach, then threw him across a chair and said, ‘I know you’re a masochist and enjoy it, but don’t provoke me or there might be an accident. Now, listen. What happened down at your place tonight just didn’t happen. Do you understand? If I hear a squeak out of you, or anybody, I’m taking you in, not on a vice charge which I know you wouldn’t mind, but on a charge of robbing a client there and, believe me, everything will be present and correct: witnesses and stolen goods, your own sworn statement – the whole lot. You poofs have a high time in the nick, three in a cell, as we all well know. But this wouldn’t be months I’d get you, sonny, it’d be years. And think of it, you might grow old and grey and unattractive, ’specially if I dropped a hint about you to the screws. So. Just apologise to my officer for all the trouble you’ve caused everyone, withdraw your charge as you pass the desk on your way out, and get back to bed again with your current husband.’

  The male maid left in silence: though not without a yearning, reproachful glance at Edward.

  Then the Detective-Sergeant said: ‘Now you, son. Please understand: I can’t have anything more like this from you, either. You’ve got to improve your performance quite a bit or I’ll lose my patience with you.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘All right. Fuck off home.’

  Edward stood at attention in salute, but hesitated before moving off. ‘Well?’ said the Detective-Sergeant.

  ‘Sir: it’s just a question, sir, of procedure. This hitting them. I know the rule is you never do. But could you tell me please, sir, when you can do?’

  A cracked smile appeared on the Detective-Sergeant’s life-battered countenance.

  ‘Well, son,’ he said, ‘number one, in public, never. The citizens don’t like it. Also, they don’t believe we do it. Of course, if you’re quite obviously attacked it’s another matter.’

  ‘Yes, sir. And in here?’

  The Detective-Sergeant rose and said, ‘Well, Constable, that depends. Personally, I don’t happen to be a sadist and never do it unless it’s clearly necessary to get certain results. Others do, I know, just for the heck of it: but not me.’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘If you do do it,’ the officer continued, ‘the first thing to remember is not to mark them: not to hit them where it shows next day in daylight. Never forget: they’ve got to be produced in court in twenty-four hours – or forty-eight, of course, if the day of arrest happens to be a Saturday.’

  ‘And if you do happen to mark them, sir?’

  ‘You say they went berserk and had to be restrained. Of course, you know – sometimes they do: I could show you a scar or two to prove it.’

  ‘But, sir. If you bash them – don’t they tell the magistrate?’

  ‘Sometimes … It has been known … I’ve not met with one magistrate yet, though, who’s believed it … Or even if they do, well, so long as they think the charge you’ve made against the prisoner’s quite authentic it doesn’t seem to worry them unduly … As for juries, if a prisoner pleads violence or a forced confession, in my experience all
it does is tell against him in the verdict.’

  ‘I see, sir.’

  ‘Don’t rely on that, though, Constable. There’s no point at all in using force just for the sake of it, unless it serves a purpose. Because – and you might as well remember this if you possibly can – your real battle isn’t with the criminal but with the courts. It’s only there that you can get him his conviction. You’ve got counsel up against you, and solicitors, and the witnesses for the defence, and juries and magistrates and judges – and the press, please don’t forget those little parasites. They’ve all got to be defeated or convinced before your man gets his complimentary ticket for a seat in Brixton.’

  ‘I’ll remember, sir.’

  ‘I do hope so. In the Force, Constable, the greatest asset that a man can have, in my opinion, isn’t all the ones you read so much about but purely and simply a sense of order: of thoroughly methodical procedure. If you train yourself to be methodical and avoid confusion like the plague, then you may end up Chief Constable – just think of that! Not, on your present showing, that it’s very likely,’ he added, turning out the light and opening the office door.

  MR LOVE

  A chief difficulty in his new role, Frankie found, was what to do with the twenty-four hours of the day. At sea, this never had been a problem: even leisure, on board ship, seems to be purposeful: a relaxation from the tasks behind, a preparation for those ahead – time never seemed to hang upon a seaman’s hands. Even to be unemployed was, in a sense, a full-time occupation: the hours it took to achieve the feat of the single minute’s signing on at the Labour; the problems of where to sleep and how to eat, and even the sterile round in search of jobs.

  But now his timetable except at certain immutable, vital points was vague in the extreme. He had to be home in his girl’s new flat at Kilburn for the most important moment of their day – or night-and-day, for Frankie was finding the two radically divided sections were merging into one. This was the moment when, dismissing the last visitor, his girl produced the old black bag (to which in spite of growing prosperity she sentimentally clung) and shook its contents out upon the kitchen table. This was the hour of reckoning, the essential confrontation. Frankie must know exactly what she earned – if she’d hid as much as a halfpenny their relationship would lose its fundamental basis. And she must know that he knew: what he then did with the money seemed of less importance to her, for she was quite ungrasping and, so long as she had what was necessary for essential housekeeping and personal adornment, she left the disposition of the funds entirely to him.