Hard Going

by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles

  ‘Lionel Bygod was his name,’ Slider confirmed. ‘Had you seen him in here before?’

  ‘No, not that I remember. I mean, we get hundreds through here. He wasn’t a regular, anyway.’

  ‘All right, tell me what you do remember.’

  ‘Well,’ said Mesud, frowning, ‘he got here early, I remember that. He’d booked for half twelve, and it was only about quarter past, and he said was it all right to sit down and wait. Ever so polite. Lovely voice, he had, too – kind of rich, you know? Posh accent. Well, I showed him to his table – it was still quiet. The big rush starts half twelve. Well, he sat down and I offered him a drink and he said he’d wait for his guest to arrive, so I gave him a menu and left him alone.’

  ‘How did he seem?’

  ‘Seem?’

  ‘Happy, sad, worried?’

  Mesud shrugged. ‘I dunno. He was just old. And polite, like I said.’

  ‘All right. So he waited, and his guest eventually arrived?’

  ‘Yeah,’ he said, and some emotion flickered across his face. He lowered his voice. ‘It was a lady.’

  ‘Can you describe her?’

  He glanced around conspiratorially, and lowered his voice still further, leaning in towards Slider. ‘Well, I say it was a lady. She was – big boned, if you get my drift.’ He sat back, and gave them a significant nod.

  Ah, thought Slider, catching Atherton’s quick glance with a strange mixture of satisfaction and disappointment. So the lady was in fact a man.

  SIXTEEN

  Trannyshock

  ‘How do you know?’ said Slider.

  Mesud gave him an almost hurt look. ‘Oh, come on!’ he muttered. Another furtive glance. ‘Look, you can’t let Uncle Ali know.’

  ‘Know what?’

  ‘Anything I tell you,’ Mesud said with a hunted air. ‘He’s well old-fashioned – you know what I’m saying?’

  ‘Fine,’ said Slider, ‘but you haven’t told us anything yet. Mr Bygod was with a lady who wasn’t a lady. Can you describe her?’

  ‘Tall. Skinny. Maybe my age – maybe more. It’s hard to tell under the make-up, you know? Not old, though – not old like him. Very good wig – looked like real hair. Quite good style – nothing overdone. She could have passed most places, long as the light wasn’t too good. Maybe that’s why they chose this place – it’s dark in the daytime, like you see. But I was in a quake in case Uncle Ali clocked her. He’s not into that stuff – calls it ungodly. I mean, dinosaur or what? And he can be rude to people. That’s why I made sure to serve ’em.’

  ‘How friendly do you think they were? How did they behave towards each other?’

  He frowned again. ‘Well, it’s hard to say. It was a bit like a first date, to my mind. They were a bit nervous and stiff with each other. Not like they knew each other well. But it was …’ He paused, thinking. ‘I dunno. Not like a date. Different.’ Another pause. ‘But she was professional. I don’t get it.’

  ‘How do you mean, professional?’

  ‘The make-up, the wig, the clothes – it was all put on right. Like I said, she could have passed, a lot of places.’

  ‘Did you hear Mr Bygod use a name?’

  He shook his head.

  ‘Did you hear anything of what they were talking about?’

  ‘No. They stopped when I came to the table. It wasn’t a lot of laughs, though.’ His face cleared. ‘That was it. I said it wasn’t like a date: she wasn’t flirting with him, or trying to get off with him. It was more like – serious stuff. Like business.’

  Slider pondered this. It didn’t seem to get them much further forward, except to cast suspicions once again on Bygod’s proclivities. ‘Have you seen the lady before?’ he asked. ‘Or since?’

  ‘She’s not been in here before,’ he said. ‘But I think I know where she works. There’s this club, down towards the corner of Brewer Street, the Gaiety. Tranny club, drag acts and so on. I go past it on my way to work from the station, and there’s this poster of one of the acts, looks a bit like her.’ He shrugged. ‘I can’t get too close and look properly in case anyone sees me. Everyone round here knows my uncle, they’d tell him like a shot if I was seen looking at a place like that. I got to be careful. Half the people in Soho are my cousins.’ He gave a furtive sideways look under his eyelashes. ‘He’s looking at me now,’ he said without moving his lips. ‘Wondering what I’m telling you. Don’t let on,’ he pleaded. ‘Make out I’ve not told you nothing.’

  Slider gave a tiny nod, and seeing Berrak surging towards them, said aloud, ‘Well, thank you for your time, anyway. If you do think of anything that might help us, give us a ring.’

  Mesud gave a sulky sort of nod and made his escape, though not without a look from his uncle searing enough to have stripped wallpaper.

  ‘Did you get what you want? Did he help you?’ Berrak asked with his gold-studded shark’s smile.

  ‘I’m afraid it looks like another dead end,’ Slider said, ‘but thank you for letting us ask. If anything occurs to you about Mr Bygod’s visit here, anything at all, please let us know. The smallest thing might help.’

  Berrak answered with a bow. He swivelled on his small feet, hidden away down there under the swell of his overhang like the point of a spinning top, and ushered them towards the door. ‘Glad to help, glad to help. Come back any time. Come back and eat. Bring your friends. Always glad to see you.’ The words had as much meaning as birdsong – it was just the sound he made.

  The rain had stopped at last. The clouds were still wet-looking and dark grey, but they were becoming ragged, and even as they stepped out a shaft of sunlight poked its way through a gap and bounced blindingly off the wet pavement. Water was dripping fast off every edge and vertical surface and the cars were still making that swishing noise as they passed, but everything looked instantly more hopeful in the brighter light.

  ‘So,’ said Atherton, ‘what was old Lionel doing with a drag queen? He was hanging out with the alternative culture after all – and I thought he’d done with all that.’

  ‘Maybe his lunch companion was asking his legal advice,’ Slider suggested. ‘Mesud said it looked like business.’

  ‘Then why was he/she in full fig?’ Atherton asked.

  ‘Well, I don’t know,’ Slider retorted. ‘Let’s go and find out.’

  The Gaiety – ‘Cute name,’ said Atherton – looked like any other seedy club in the area: a ground-floor open foyer with an island box office, like an old-fashioned cinema, and beyond it the entrance to the stairs down to the cellar level guarded by a steel let-down gate. The neon sign on the street over the foyer was lit, the words Gaiety and Nitely separated by a cancan girl whose kicking leg went up and down – an illusion rather spoiled by daylight since you could see all three of her legs quite clearly.

  On the foyer walls were glass-fronted cases containing posters for the various acts, and below the window of the box office was a bill which shouted in bold black capitals:

  KITSCH CABARET!

  BURLESQUE!

  TOP DRAG ACTS!

  TRANNY HEAVEN!

  ‘Just in case you didn’t get it,’ Atherton mentioned. He moved about, looking at some of the glazed posters of the stars. ‘I’m not reassured. There’s one here called Eva Brawn. And the emcee’s name is Hugh Janus. Subtle, or what?’

  ‘Why should they have to be subtle?’ Slider said reasonably.

  ‘Or, my God, maybe it’s his real name!’

  ‘Settle down,’ said Slider. He was inspecting one that was on the street façade, to the right of the entrance, one that Mesud might have been able to see in passing. ‘I wonder if this is it? “Danielle LaMartine, the Parisian Songbird”. What d’you think?’

  ‘I think I want to go home.’

  ‘Stop whining. We’re going in.’ He had noted a security camera high up inside the foyer which had turned to look at them, so he stepped up to it and held up his warrant card. A few minutes later a concealed door in the side wall opened and a man
came out. He was in formal black trousers but his white shirt was open at the neck and had its sleeves rolled up, indicating he was still off duty – the first show, Slider had noted from the box office was not until three.

  ‘Can I help you?’ the man asked, with the complete lack of servility you can afford when you’re eleven feet tall and so wide they could show movies on your back. His head was shaved, his arms were lavishly tattooed with dripping fangs of one sort or another, and his face was as bumpy as a sack full of knuckles – which was probably what it had been pounded with over the years.

  Slider pulled himself up to his full, unimpressive height and projected all the silverback alpha-ness at his command. ‘It’s not trouble,’ he promised. ‘We’re looking for social contacts of this man.’ He offered their printout of a photograph of Bygod, and held it insistently until the man took it and looked at it. ‘We think he may have come here, or visited someone from your show.’

  ‘Maybe,’ the man grunted, shoving the photo back. Slider’s scalp thrilled. This was as good as, ‘Yes, he did,’ from the likes of Knuckles, here. It was a positive lead at last. He felt Atherton stir with interest beside him.

  ‘Was he a regular?’ Slider asked.

  Knuckles shrugged. ‘Coupla times, last week. Never seen him before that. What’s he done?’

  ‘Nothing,’ Slider said reassuringly. ‘Just trying to find people who knew him. It’s a matter of an inheritance. Did he come to see anyone in particular?’ The eyes, grey and flat as smoothing-irons, regarded Slider with faint amusement at this suggestion that he would answer questions to which Slider did not already know the answer. So Slider added, ‘We think perhaps he was interested in Danielle LaMartine.’

  ‘What our acts do in their spare time is their own business,’ he said, which again was his equivalent of a ‘yes’.

  ‘We’d like to talk to her,’ Slider said firmly, to let him know this was not a request but an order. ‘Can you give us her address?’

  Knuckles shrugged. ‘She’ll be back here later for her act. You can wait till then.’ Routine stalling.

  ‘I’d sooner talk to her somewhere quiet.’ Which meant: ‘Do it – now!’

  Knuckles looked away indifferently down the street and seemed to speak without moving his lips. ‘Flat in Old Compton Street, over the coffee store. Red door.’

  ‘Thanks,’ said Slider, with a feeling of relief that it was somewhere close by. Travelling out to a suburb only to find their quarry had been travelling in at the same time was an all too frequent annoyance. He started away, to be halted by a slight clearing of the throat from behind him. He looked back, to see Knuckles sporting a faint air of unease, which must have been pretty damn’ surprised to find itself there. Slider raised his eyebrows in enquiry.

  ‘He’s all right, Danny,’ Knuckles said, profoundly embarrassed to be professing such a soft emotion.

  ‘I don’t mean him any harm,’ Slider said kindly. When they were out of sight down the street, he said to Atherton, ‘Interesting that he reverted to “he” instead of “she”. I wonder what that means.’

  ‘That he likes him, perhaps,’ said Atherton.

  ‘I think saying, “He’s all right,” suggested that. But likes him how? Why?’

  ‘I thought you were giving up rhetorical questions. The important thing is that he obviously expects Mademoiselle LaMartine to be at home. Which means less wasted time for us.’

  Old Compton Street was literally round the corner, and they were there in front of the coffee merchant’s in no time. The terrace here had three storeys above the shops. The proportions and the original sash windows were eighteenth century, but the beautiful grey-brown brick had been painted white, alas, to make it uniform with the concrete new-build further down. While Slider mourned, Atherton was examining the red door and its buttons. The top one was labelled simply ‘Danny’.

  ‘Here goes,’ he said.

  After a long wait, the intercom crackled. Atherton leaned in and enunciated clearly. ‘Danny LaMartine? It’s the police. We’d like to talk to you about something. It’s not trouble for you. Just a routine enquiry.’

  There was another crackle, which might or might not have been a human voice answering. They waited, and Atherton was just preparing to ring again when the door opened cautiously, and a face peered out. They both held up their warrant cards.

  ‘Sorry,’ said the face. ‘The buzzer’s not working and it’s a long way down. What’s it about?’

  ‘We’d like a chat with you,’ Slider said. ‘Nothing to be alarmed about.’

  Eyes scanned his face and were apparently reassured. ‘D’you want to come up? It’s a bit of a climb.’

  ‘Yes, please,’ Slider said firmly.

  The door opened fully and revealed a tall, skinny man in his thirties, wearing black sweat pants and a baggy blue T-shirt decorated with the Pasche ‘Tongue and Lip’ icon in scarlet, framed by the words ‘Stones’ and ‘Fifty Years’. His feet were bare and his toenails were painted with cherry gloss. He had the slight stoop of the shy, tall man, and looked at them with victim’s blue eyes, around which there were traces of last night’s make-up. His hair was toffee-fair, short, thick and tousled; his thin face had high cheekbones and a distinguished nose, with rather full, soft lips. There was nothing particularly effeminate about it, but Slider could see how he could transform quite successfully into a woman.

  He let them in to a narrow hall with stairs going steeply up. Slider laid his hand on the banister and felt the glorious patina of the old Georgian wood, thinking it was probably all that was left of the original building except for some of the walls. Alas again.

  ‘Sorry, it’s quite a climb,’ the young man said again. ‘You might need oxygen at the top.’ It sounded like a routine pleasantry: he moved easily, lithe as a dancer, but Slider felt the pull of gravity and his unexercised lungs.

  They passed two landings with closed, panelled doors to other dwellings, but at the top there was barely any landing and only one door, propped open with a wooden doorstop in the shape of a cat. ‘Here we are. The eagle’s nest. Please come in.’

  His voice was educated, soft and musical, but with just the faintest camp intonation that was probably part of the profession. They followed him into a cramped passage with, to the right, a door open on to a tiny bathroom, in front a doorless tiny kitchen, and to the left, at the end of the passage, daylight. He led them towards it, and they found themselves in a tiny bedroom/sitting room, with two sash windows on to the street, and a fireplace with an electric two-bar heater in it. It contained an iron bedstead, a cheap two-seater sofa, a coffee table and a television on a stand. There wasn’t room for anything else. Slider wondered where he kept his clothes. There were books along the mantelpiece, and on the walls were vintage movie posters – Casablanca, Phaedra, The Maltese Falcon.

  ‘Please, do sit down,’ the man said, gesturing to the sofa. He sat down on the edge of the bed, there being nowhere else. He hunched his shoulders and clasped his hands between his knees – a boyish pose, though it probably spoke more of unease.

  ‘I want to assure you first we’re not here to make trouble for you,’ Slider said.

  The man nodded, the blue eyes remaining wary.

  ‘Your name – is it really Danny LaMartine?’

  ‘Danielle LaMartine’s my stage name,’ he said, ‘but I was Christened Daniel. You can call me Danny.’

  ‘And do you know this man?’ Slider handed over the picture. Danny looked at it for a long time, his head lowered to hide his face. ‘Did you have lunch with him last Tuesday,’ Slider went on gently, ‘at the La Florida?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Danny. He looked up, keeping hold of the picture rather than giving it back, which was unusual. He looked from Slider to Atherton and back again, his expression puzzled and a bit anxious. ‘But why are you here? What’s this about? Has something happened?’

  ‘I’m very sorry to have to tell you that he’s dead,’ said Slider.

  The
blue eyes filled with tears, the lips quivered, but he remained looking at them steadily, even straightened his shoulders a little, as if facing justice. He nodded. ‘I see,’ he said.

  Atherton stirred. ‘You don’t seem surprised.’

  ‘He told me—’ Swallow. ‘He said it wouldn’t be long. I thought I’d see him again, though. I thought—’ Now he squeezed his eyes shut, and two tears, forced out, tracked slowly down his cheeks. ‘We wasted so much time,’ he said in a gaspy voice, trying not to cry. ‘If only – we’d met – sooner.’

  ‘How long have you known Lionel Bygod?’ Slider asked, through a suspicion that was working its way to the surface.

  The eyes opened, swimming with tears, and a quavery smile quirked his lips. ‘All my life, I suppose,’ he said. ‘He’s my dad.’

  Slider made the judgement, conveyed to Atherton by a look, not to tell him right then that the death was not due to natural causes. He seemed ready to talk, and here was the chance, he felt, to clear up a lot of puzzles, a chance which might be lost in the bewilderment and shock that would follow the revelation of murder. There was no guile in the face to suggest he knew anything about the death. In fact, it was a face of great sweetness. Slider remembered Diana Chambers using that epithet about Lionel – not a word generally applied to a man, and having the more force for that.

  ‘I didn’t know he had a son,’ Slider said.

  ‘For a long time, if you’d asked him, he probably would have said he didn’t.’ A look of bitterness. ‘I shouldn’t have left it so long. I wish I’d come back sooner. If I’d known then what I know now … It was my mum, really, more than Dad in the beginning, but he went along with it. I suppose – well, it was shock as much as anything. I can see that now, but at the time …’ He gave a quavery smile. ‘There were faults on both sides. I was as pig-headed as Mum in my own way. Everything had to be the way I wanted it.’