by Simon Brett
‘A sort of body-guard?’
‘That’s the idea. Steenie needed one of them, the way he done business.’
‘Did he ever do anything illegal?’
‘Ah, what’s illegal? He was no more illegal than most of the fixers in this business. If you mean, could the law have got him, no. He’d never do nothing himself but, you know, things might happen. Frank was a big boy to have lean on you.’
‘Is he still around?’
‘Frank? No, he must be dead. Or shovelled off into the Old Folks like me. One of those big muscle-bound Johnnies. Go to fat when they stop training. Die of heart failure, most of them.’
‘Do you reckon Steen would have found a replacement?’
‘I don’t know. He’d got a well-developed sense of self-protection, you know, always carried a gun in the glove-pocket of the car. Probably got another bruiser after Frank. But perhaps you don’t need that sort of thing in the old lee-gitimate theayter. Only thing you have to look out for is the nancy-boys, eh?’
They laughed. Harry looked into his glass as if he could see for miles and Charles nudged him back on to the subject. ‘Do you know Steen’s son?’
‘Nigel, isn’t it?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Yeah, I met him. Nasty bit of work. Oh, nothing criminal. Just a bit slimy. Often happens. Old man does well and the kids don’t quite make it. I don’t suppose you’d remember old Barney Beattie. Vent act. Dummy called Buckingham. Barney and Buckingham. Great they were. Barney, he had these two sons-tried to set up a song and dance act. Nothing. Nothing there. Hooked off every stage in the British Isles, they was. It happens like that.’ The old man drained his pint reflectively.
‘Can I get you another one, Harry?’
‘No, it’s my throw.’
‘Oh, but I’ll…’
‘I can still pay my way.’ And with dignity he took the two glasses over to the bar. He looked small in the crush and it was some time before the order got through. Then he returned, face contorted with concentration as he tried to keep the glasses steady in his blotched hands.
‘There.’ With triumph. ‘Put hairs on your chest, Charlie.’
‘Thanks.’
Now, where were we? Yes. Steenie’s boy. Ain’t got the old man’s talent, none of it. Been involved in one or two real disasters. You know, putting on drag shows, that sort of spectacle. But he ain’t got the touch. Old Steenie, he’d make money out of a kid’s conker match; Nigel’d close The Mousetrap within a week.’
‘Do they get on?’
‘Father and son? God knows. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don’t. Great arguments, old man used to keep disowning the boy. Then they’d be as thick as thieves again. He likes all the family bit, Steenie. Wife died-oh, years ago, so the boy matters a lot. Jews are like that aren’t they?’
‘Yes.’
‘You want to know a lot about them, don’t you?’
‘Just interest.’
‘Yes.’ A pause. ‘You know, Charlie my boy, from the way you says that I can tell what you really want is the dirt. All right then-’ he edged closer so that he was whispering rather than shouting over the juke-box ‘-here’s the nastiest rumour I’ve ever heard about Steenie-really nasty rumour. Dancer he knew-she was on a bill with me and Lennie down the Hackney Empire. Steenie was putting the show on, and he’d got a thing going with this bint Veronica. Always put it about a bit, Steenie. Had a lot of lead in his pencil, that boy’-the image of the photographs flashed across Charles’ mind-‘Anyway, this girl gets knocked up, and when Steenie finds out about it, he don’t want to know. Won’t talk to her, doesn’t know her, gives her the boot. Out of the show.
‘Well, this Veronica won’t put up with this-comes round the theatre between shows one night-really drunk-really-I don’t like that in a woman-and she’s swearing and effing and blinding-big shout-up with Steenie-going to tell his wife, all that. Next morning she’s found floating face-down in the Thames.
‘All right. Could have fallen in. Could have decided to do away with herself. But nasty rumours at the time said she could have been helped in. Certainly her being off the scene was handy for Steenie. And Frank wasn’t round the theatre the night she disappeared. It’s a long time ago, though. Just rumours.’
‘Do you think Steen would be capable of that sort of thing, Harry?’
‘If someone was in his way, Charlie, he’d be capable of anything.’
‘I see, a real bastard.’
There was a long pause. ‘Yes, a real bastard.’ Harry chuckled. ‘But you can’t help liking him. One of the most likeable lumps of shit I ever come across.’
They talked a bit more, but Harry was tiring quickly. He seemed to be having difficulty with the second pint, and had only drunk a third of it when he looked at his watch. ‘Better be on my way, you know, Charlie. Not as young as I was.’
‘Will there be trouble when you get back?’
‘No. I’ll pretend I’ve had a turn or something. Ah, you know, I don’t like that place. Still, not for long.’
‘Are you moving somewhere else?’
Harry smiled. ‘Join Lennie. Won’t be long now. Still, can’t complain.’
‘A whole life-time in the business.’
‘Yes. Did our first show when we was four. And our last one three years ago on some stupid television thing about the music-hall. Seventy-four years in the business, that was, Charlie. Seventy-four.’
‘And you wouldn’t have had it any other way.
‘Good God, yes. It was Lennie who wanted all that. I wanted to be a professional footballer.’
VI
Transformation Scene
Charles tried to think it all out on the Saturday morning. He’d woken without a hangover and even done a token tidying-up of his room. Then out for a newspaper and some rolls, and he was sitting in front of the gas fire with a cup of coffee. Glance at the paper; no particular interest in petrol queues or Ireland without Whitelaw, so he settled down to think about Jacqui and Steen.
What he had heard from Harry Chiltern was disturbing. True, the business about the dancer in the Thames sounded a bit too melodramatic-the kind of story that gets embroidered over the years-and probably started out just as an unfortunate coincidence. Charles discounted the facts of it; but it was significant that Marius Steen attracted that sort of accusation. It didn’t bode well for Jacqui.
Then there were the photographs and her own story. Something didn’t ring true there. He pieced it together. In June, Jacqui and Steen went to a party, which was attended by Sally Nash, now on trial at the Old Bailey on charges of controlling prostitutes. At this party a fairly insipid orgy took place. Some pictures were taken by a nameless photographer. All through this period (according to Jacqui) things were swinging between her and Steen. She even got pregnant by him. He arranged an abortion which went wrong and they went off to the South of France to recuperate. And there, apparently, had an idyllic time. This idyll had continued up until the previous Saturday, 1st December, when they last met. That was the day after the Sally Nash trial started, and the day that Marius Steen’s terrible show, Sex of One and Half a Dozen of the Other celebrated a thousand performances. And from that day on Jacqui had been unable to contact Steen. He had very deliberately told her to get lost, and when she didn’t take the hint, he’d sent her an obscene note. And according to Jacqui, the reason for this must be Steen’s fear of her being associated with him in the Sally Nash case because it might affect his chances of a knighthood. It was preposterous. Nobody would behave like that.
Charles wasn’t sure whether Jacqui believed she was telling the truth or not. She might have her own reasons for obscuring the issue. But, leaving that aside for a moment, he tried to make some sense of Steen’s behaviour.
The simplest explanation was that he had just got tired of Jacqui. That was quite possible, however well she thought the affair was going. He was a man who had always put it about a bit, as Harry Chiltern said. Jacqui was an attra
ctive enough bit of stuff, but there were hundreds more like her and why should he stick to one? He’d be very unlikely to stay with her or marry her, particularly with a knighthood in the offing. As Jacqui herself admitted, she wasn’t the sort of consort for a ‘do with the Queen Mum’.
And, Charles’ mind raced on, Steen could have picked up a new tottie at the Sex of One… party on the Saturday night. That would explain the sudden change in his affections.
But as he thought of it, Charles knew the explanation was inadequate. Even if that had happened, it didn’t justify the violence of Steen’s attempts to get Jacqui off his back. No, Steen’s behaviour certainly suggested that he regarded her as a threat in some way. Perhaps she had tried to blackmail him…? Yes, that made sense. She had actually tried to use the photographs… perhaps to blackmail him into marrying her. (That would tie in with the pregnancy in the summer-an earlier attempt to force Steen’s hand.) She could have tried the blackmail approach on the Saturday afternoon; then, when Steen cut up rough, she realised she’d overstepped the mark and brought in Charles as a go-between to patch things up. That would even explain why she took him back to Archer Street from the Montrose. She’d just gone down there to look for any good-natured sucker.
But the new explanation wasn’t much more satisfactory than the first. For a start. Charles didn’t like to think of Jacqui in that light. And also he doubted whether she had the intelligence to be so devious. The only convincing bit was the thought of Steen as a frightened man. What was it he was afraid of?
Charles marshalled his knowledge of blackmailers’ habits. It was limited, all gleaned from detective novels. He got out the brown envelope and spread the photographs on his lap. His reaction to them had numbed. They just seemed slightly unwholesome now, like used tissues. Just photographs. What would Sherlock Holmes, Lord Peter Wimsey, Hercule Poirot and the rest have made of that lot? Charles made a cursory check for blood-stained fingerprints, the thread of a sports jacket made from tweed only available in a small tailor’s shop in Aberdeen, the scratch marks of an artificial hand or the faint but unmistakable aroma of orange blossom. The investigation, he concluded without surprise, yielded negative results. They were just photographs.
Just photographs. The phrase caught in his mind. Negative results. Yes, of course. Where were the bloody negatives? Jacqui had paid out a thousand pounds for something that could be reproduced at will. A very rudimentary knowledge of detective fiction tells you that any photographic blackmailer worth his salt keeps producing copies of the incriminating material until he’s blue in the face. It would be typical of Jacqui’s naivety to believe that she was dealing with an honest man who had given her the only copies in existence.
If this were so, and the photographer was putting pressure on him, then Steen’s reactions were consistent. He had reason to be frightened. But why should he be frightened of Jacqui? Charles shuffled through his pockets for a two p piece and went down to the phone.
‘Jacqui?’
‘Yes.’ She sounded very low.
‘All right?’
‘Not too good.’
‘Listen, Jacqui, I think I may be on to something about the way Steen’s behaving.’
‘What?’ She sounded perkier instantly.
‘Jacqui, you’ve got to tell me the truth. When you bought those photographs…’
‘Yes?’
‘Did you buy the negatives too?’
‘No. I didn’t. But he’d destroyed them. He said so.’
‘I see. And did you mention to Steen that you’d got the photographs at any time?’
‘No. I wanted it to be a surprise-a present. He had mentioned them vaguely, said he was a bit worried. So I fixed to get them.’
‘When were they actually handed over to you?’
‘Last Saturday evening.’
‘And you never mentioned them even when you tried to ring Steen?’
‘I started to. On the Sunday evening when I first rang him. I spoke to Nigel. I said it was about the photographs, but even before I’d finished talking, he gave me this message from Marius to… you know… to get lost.’
‘Right. Give me the name and address of the bloke you got the photos from.’
As Charles limped along Praed Street, he began to regret dressing up for the encounter, but when he reflected on the exceptional violence of blackmailers in all detective fiction, he decided it was as well to conceal his identity. The disguise was good and added ten years to him. He’d greyed his temples and eyebrows with a spray, and parted his hair on the other side. He was wearing the demode pinstriped suit he’d got from a junk-shop for a production of Arturo Ui (‘grossly overplayed’-Glasgow Herald) and the tie he’d worn as Harry in Marching Song (‘adequate if uninspiring’-Oxford Mail). He walked with the limp he’d used in Richard III (‘nicely understated’-Yorkshire Post). He wasn’t sure whether to speak in the accent he’d used in Look Back in Anger (‘a splendid Blimp’-Worcester Gazette) or the one for When We are Married (‘made a meal of the part’ — Croydon Advertiser).
‘Imago Studios’, the address Jacqui had given him, proved to be in a tatty mews near St Mary’s Hospital in Paddington. The downstairs stable-garage part had apparently been converted into a studio. On the windows of the upper part the curtains were drawn. Charles rang the bell. Nothing. He rang again and heard movement.
The door was opened by a woman in a pale pink nylon housecoat and pink fur slippers. She had prominent teeth and dyed black hair swept back in the style of a souvenir Greek goddess. Her face was heavily made up and eye-lashed. Charles couldn’t help thinking of a hard pink meringue full of artificial cream.
She looked at him hard. ‘Yes?’
‘Ah, good afternoon.’ Charles plumped for the When We are Married accent. ‘I wondered if Bill was in.’ Jacqui had only given him the Christian name. It was all she knew.
‘Who are you? What do you want with him?’
‘My name’s Holroyd. Bill Holroyd.’ On the spur of the moment he couldn’t think of another Christian name. He grinned weakly. ‘Both called Bill, eh?’
‘What’s it about?’
‘Some photographs.’
‘What is it-wedding or portrait? Because my husband-’
‘No, no, it’s a more… personal sort of thing.’
‘Ah.’ She knew what he meant. ‘You better come in.’
She led the way up the very steep stairs. The large nylon-clad bottom swished close to Charles’ face as he limped up after her. ‘Can you manage?’
‘Yes. It’s just my gammy leg.’
‘How did you do it, Mr Holroyd?’
‘In the war.’
‘Jumping out of some tart’s bedroom window, I suppose. That’s where most war wounds came from.’
‘No. Mine was a genuine piece of shrapnel.’
‘Huh.’ She ushered him into a stuffy little room lit by bright spotlights. It was decorated in orange and yellow, with a leopardette three-piece suite covering most of the carpet. Every available surface was crowded with small brass souvenirs. Lincoln imps, windjammer bells, lighthouses, anchor thermometers, knights in armour, wishing wells, everything. On the dresser two posed and tinted photographs rose from the undergrowth of brass. One was the woman, younger, but still with her Grecian hair and heavy make-up. The other was of a man, plumpish and vaguely familiar.
The woman pointed to an armchair. ‘Sit down. Rest your shrapnel.’
‘Thank you.’
She slumped back on to the sofa, revealing quite a lot of bare thigh. ‘Right, Mr Holroyd, what’s it about?’
‘I was hoping to see your husband.’
‘He’s… er… he’s not here at the moment, but I know about the business.’
‘I see. When are you expecting him back?’
‘You can deal with me,’ she said. Hard.
‘Right, Mrs… er?’
‘Sweet.’
‘Mrs Sweet.’ Charles was tempted to make a quaint Yorkshire pleasantry about the
name, but looked at Mrs Sweet and decided against it. ‘This is, you understand, a rather delicate matter…’
‘I understand.’
‘It’s… er… the fact is… Last summer I was down in London on business and… er… it happened that, by chance
… through some friends, I ended up at a party given by… er
… well, some people in Holland Park. Near Holland Park, that is
…’
‘Yes.’ She didn’t give anything.
‘Yes… Yes… Well, I believe that… er… your husband was at this particular party…
‘Maybe.’
‘In fact, I believe he took some photographs at the party.
‘Look here, are you from the police? I’ve had enough of them round this week.’
‘What?’ Charles blustered and looked affronted for a moment while he took this in. Obviously the police had been making enquiries about the Sally Nash case. Marius Steen’s anxiety was justified. ‘No, of course I’m not from the police. I’m the director of a man-made fibres company,’ he said, with a flash of inspiration.
‘Thank God. I couldn’t take any more of that lot.’
‘No, no. The fact is, Mrs Sweet, that… er… I am, you see, a married man. I have two lovely daughters at boarding school and
… er… well, I have become rather anxious about these… er
… photographs.’
‘Yes.’ She didn’t volunteer anything.
‘I have come to the right place, have I? I mean, your husband was at this party in…?’
‘Yes. He was there.’ She paused and looked at him, assessing. ‘Well, Mr Holroyd, I think I know which photographs you are referring to. Of course, photography’s an expensive business.’
‘I understand that, Mrs Sweet. How much do you think your husband would part with the… er… photographs for?’
‘Two thousand pounds.’
‘That’s a lot of money.’ The price has gone up, thought Charles. ‘And would that be for the negatives as well?’