by Ted Lewis
Peter finishes his story by smiling at me. Then he takes out his cigarettes and lights up and says, “So what do you make of that?”
I go over to the dresser and pour myself another drink.
Con says, “Those fucking chancers.”
I walk over to one of the steel chairs and sit down. The Colemans. Those bastards are the ones that fixed the picture. And they could only have got hold of it through Mallory. Mallory’s in hiding, and Mallory’s representing Jimmy Swann. And last night . . .
“So what are we going to do?” Con says.
“What do you think we’re going to do?” I say to him.
“Where will they be?”
“I don’t know.” I look at my watch. “It’s five o’clock. They could be anywhere. But wherever they are they won’t be expecting us. They know there’s a chance we’ll suss them, but they’re hoping we’ll either be picked up or blasted out of it before that happens.”
“Yeah, but we’ve got to be dead careful,” Con says. “If we go piling into one of their places and they’re not there, then the word’ll be out, no trouble, and then we’d never find them.”
“I know. We’ve got to do it right but we can’t give ourselves the right amount of time.” I take a sip of my drink. “Also, if they’re not together and we take one of them out of it the word’d be out that way, too.”
“So, what?”
I think about it for a minute or two.
“Seeing as they’re both family men, we’ll see if they’re at home first,” I say. “Then if they’re not we start looking in their places. That’s all we can do.”
“Right,” Con says, getting up.
“Only you’re staying here,” I say to him.
“Hang about . . . ”
“Somebody’s got to keep an eye on her,” I say, indicating the bedroom door. “She could drop us all in it.”
“Yes, but why me?” Con says. “What’s wrong with him?”
“I thought you’d never ask,” Peter says.
“Out of the two of you,” I say, “there’s not much to choose. But I’d rather have him where I can see him.”
“Charming,” Peter says.
I put my glass down and I say to Con, “Phone Audrey at Danny’s at seven o’clock. Tell her what’s going on. If anything comes up I’ll phone you here. All right?”
Con nods but he’s not happy.
“What did you do with your motor?” I ask Peter.
“Left it with a friend at Warren Street,” he says. “It’ll be on the market with a different colour in the morning.”
“Has he got any motors for sale right now?”
“All the time.”
“Let’s go and see him, then.”
--
Eddie
Walter’s house is a very nice house. Just as nice as Gerald and Les’s. It’s on Millionaires’ Row in Hampstead along with all those other businessmen’s nice houses. Only unlike all the other houses it isn’t lit up like Blackpool Illuminations. There’s not a light on, not even a porch light to illuminate the slowly drifting snowflakes. The whole house is dead and you don’t have to get out of the car to know that the occupants have gone away. It has that feel about it.
“Well, that’s one less way to Jimmy Swann,” I say, lighting up a cigarette. In the passenger seat next to me Peter takes a packet of cheroots out of the pocket of his leather coat.
“They may be coming back,” he says. “They may just be out for the afternoon.”
I shake my head.
“Walter’s got three kids. After what’s happened today he’s sorted them and his missus out of it. Just playing safe, just in case.”
“If that’s the case, then Eddie’ll have done the same,” Peter says, lighting a cheroot.
“I don’t know. Eddie lives different to Walter. He still lives in the Buildings, in the flat his old mother used to have. Like a palace inside, so I hear, but still the Buildings. He likes the security of his old surroundings.”
“Yes, but if he knows we’re getting on to him his living room and two bedrooms won’t seem all that appealing.”
“But he doesn’t know yet, does he? I mean, Walter’s the one with the head, the forward-looking one. It’d be just like Walter to slide out of it in the hope that if everything’s blown then he’ll know about it when he’s called on to identify Eddie.”
“So we go and see if Eddie’s at home, then?”
I switch on the ignition and let out the hand brake and the car begins to slip away from the curb and I say to Peter, “If we are in luck, and Eddie is at home, you take your lead from me, right? I don’t want your enthusiasm for your work cocking up the whole operation. I mean, if it did, I’d just as soon see to you as I’d see to Eddie or anybody else.”
“Jack,” he says, “you’ve got such a wonderful way of putting things. Did you know that?”
“I always was good at English,” I tell him. “Or so my old English teacher used to say.”
We drive along in silence for a while and then Peter says, “Incidentally, I don’t give two fucks about what’s behind all this, the ins and the outs, but I would like to know, in your opinion, who’s going to come out of it best.”
“Why, so that if it’s the Colemans you can do a little pirouette and end up facing the other way?”
“I always face the other way. Or hadn’t you noticed?”
“I only notice things that are likely to affect me.”
Peter rolls the window down and throws the cheroot out.
“But do you see what I mean?” he says. “I came to Gerald and Les for finance. That’s all I’m interested in. This little tickle I presented to them could see me in the sun for the rest of my life.”
“In that case I should keep doing your banking with Gerald and Les. That way you might even get to go on the job.”
Peter doesn’t answer that and when I make my next right turn I catch a quick glance at his face. It’s set like some old boiler who’s concentrating on her Bingo card. I shake my head and look at my watch. It’s ten minutes to six.
It takes us another half an hour to get to Eddie’s. I park the car in a side street and Peter and I walk back to the corner and look up at the Buildings on the other side of the road. They look like reject plans for Colditz. Real artisans’ dwellings and I bet Eddie’s still paying the same rent his dear old mother used to pay. And with his money he prefers to stay there.
We look at the Buildings for a minute or two more, and then I say to Peter, “What have you got with you?”
“What I’ve always got,” he says. “My quiet little peashooter.”
“You haven’t got your shotgun stuffed up your shirt?”
“No,” he says. “Unfortunately I said goodbye to that this afternoon.”
“Thank Christ for that,” I say.
“You’d be well out of it by now if I hadn’t brought it along.”
“If you say so,” I say, beginning to cross the road.
“Too bloody right you would,” Peter says, following
after me.
We get to the other side and go through the arch that opens into the courtyard that’s formed by the four interior walls of the Buildings. Apart from tracks of footprints round the sides the large central area of snow is pure and unbroken and under the lights from the landings the whole scene looks like something from an old British picture.
“Eddie lives on the top floor,” I say to Peter. “You’d think that seeing as he chooses to stay here he’d at least have bothered to move down a bit.”
We walk round the inside of the courtyard until we come to the foot of the flight of stone stairs that leads up to the landings. Everything is very quiet, it being the teatime hour. We get to the third landing without seeing anybody. Eddie’s flat is the third one along on th
e right as you stop off the stairs. We walk along the landing and stop outside the front door. There is a small panel of frosted glass set in the door and through it there is the faint glow of light from deep inside. I look at Peter and he looks at me. I step forward and have a look at the lock. It’s a Yale so that doesn’t take long and when I’ve finished the door opens half an inch without making any noise at all. We wait and listen for a few minutes and from inside I can hear the sound of someone talking on the phone beyond a closed door. I can’t tell who it is or what they’re saying but at least there’s somebody at home we can talk to.
I push the door open so there’s room enough for Peter to go through and when he’s done that I follow him and close and lock the door behind us. We’re in a small square unlit hall. Including the front door there is a door in each of the four walls. One of the doors is open about an inch and this is where the light and the voice are coming from. I walk the couple of steps it takes to get to the door and I have a look to see what I can see through the crack.
Eddie’s been very considerate because he’s placed himself precisely where I can see him. He’s standing over by the window with his back to the room, looking out at the falling snowflakes. The phone’s pressed to his ear and whoever he’s talking to is doing all the talking at the moment because Eddie’s just making the occasional grunt of agreement. He’s wearing the waistcoat and trousers to a very nice dove-gray pin-stripe suit and on his feet he’s wearing a pair of tartan carpet slippers.
I push the door open very, very slowly. Eddie continues nodding and grunting so without making a sound I move into the room and Peter follows me. When we’re both in, Eddie puts the receiver down on the cradle which is perched on the windowsill and scratches his head and shoves his hands in his pockets and continues to look out of the window until in the blackness he registers our reflections instead of the snowflakes. Then he spins round and catches the phone with his right hand and sends it crashing and tinkling to the floor. He looks from side to side like a rubbish defender looking for someone to play the ball to, then chooses a direction and begins to bluster through the furniture in the direction of the kitchenette but I take off at a tangent and cut him off and at the same time Peter pulls a chair directly in front of the door we’ve just come through and sits down in it and takes out a cheroot and lights it up. Eddie now is forced to forget his instincts and pulls himself up short to try and rationalise the situation. He knows there’s nothing he can say, because if there was we wouldn’t be there. There’s no way out for him, but he can’t prevent the cogs in his brain turning and turning just in case he can come up with something. So I light up a cigarette and look round the place and wait for Eddie to reach his logical conclusion.
The place is done out like a miniature brothel. Everything that is possible to have a pattern on it is patterned: the suite, the curtains, the wallpaper, the carpet, the cushions. One wall consists of rose-tinted paneled mirrors and yet in the middle of those panels is set an electric fire and round this fire there is even an inlaid pattern of roses. In fact all the patterns are floral (but never the same one twice) and the whole effect makes the ramrod stripes of Eddie’s beautiful suiting seem quite spectacularly out of place, like a graph superimposed over a flower study. And then there are the ornaments. There are a couple of shelves on the wall where the window is that are brimful of miniature liqueur and spirit bottles. Then there are three whole shelves on a bookcase that are stacked with mementos of holidays abroad, like pot sombreros or ashtrays set in basket weave or little figures of donkeys in sombreros with little bambinos leading them or cellophane encased dolls in national costume, or models of famous pieces of architecture with tiny barometers set in relevant positions to the design. And then there are the reproductions: Picasso’s Clown, Tretchikoff’s The Tear, and the wild horses in the surf.
I throw my spent match in a wastebin with a floral pattern which is set in a mock wrought-iron receptacle and I say, “I always thought it quiet round here, Eddie, until I saw the inside of this place.”
By this time Eddie has reached the macaroni stage and his face has gone as slack as a melting waxwork and the only thing that stops him sinking to his knees on the carpet is the unconscious awareness of the knife edges in his trousers. His mouth is wide open like the mouth of a fish with a hook inside it but he’s not going to be able to control his lips so that he can form any words. His face is the colour of vanilla ice cream and beads of oily sweat are slowly following the downward pattern of his expression. Inside he must be wishing he’d worshiped a little more fastidiously at the shrine of the God he’s now praying to.
“Well,” I say. “Eddie.”
Eddie’s hands move briefly as though somebody’s pulling the strings and I walk over to him and flip the top of my cigarette packet and offer him a cigarette but all that happens is that his mouth falls open a little bit wider. So I take hold of one of his hands and insert a cigarette between the fore and middle fingers and lift his arm and hold his hand so that the cigarette is near his lips and he automatically does the rest himself. I light the cigarette for him and he manages to inhale and while he’s doing that I draw well back and hit him as hard as I can just below his breastbone. The punch makes him stagger backwards rather than fall over immediately but he’s got to fall over sometime and when he does it’s across a low table next to the colour telly, upending the little wrought-iron magazine holder and scattering the telly papers all over the place. I give him a few minutes to get his breath back and to pass the time I watch the cigarette I gave him burn a hole in the centre of one of the flowers in the pattern on the carpet.
When Eddie’s got himself back together I say to him, “As you know, we haven’t the time to play mulberry bushes. All we want to know is what’s happening, from beginning to end. That’s all we want, Eddie, and I think you know that shooting shit won’t help your position one little bit.”
Eddie drags himself up off the floor and supports himself on the back of an easy chair and exercises his lungs for a couple of minutes.
Then he looks up at me and says, “What’s going to happen to me?”
“I don’t know, Eddie,” I tell him.
He looks down at the back of the chair again and nods.
“Yes,” he says.
I sit down in the opposite armchair and say, “Tell us first, Eddie. You never know, depending on what kind of fairy tale it is there might just be a happy ending.”
Eddie stays the way he is for a minute then works his way round to the front of the chair and eases himself down into it. Then he sees the cigarette lying on the floor burning its way through the carpet and he bends over and picks it up and flicks the ash into an ashtray and takes a drag.
Then he passes his hand through his hair and is about to speak, but before he can, I say, “First, Eddie. The wife. The kids. Where are they?”
“They’re out of it,” he says. “They’re away. That I’m not telling you.”
“It’s not important right now,” I tell him. “Just didn’t want us to be interrupted once you got into full flow.’’
Eddie takes another drag on his cigarette.
“It wasn’t my idea,” he says.
I don’t make any comment on his statement so there’s no alternative but for him to go on. “I mean, I said to Wally, ‘We’re all right as we are, aren’t we? What’s wrong with the setup we already have? This idea is going to bring us nothing but fucking strife.’ But Wally just rubbed his hands together and said he’d been looking forward to a setup like this for years.”
Eddie puts the cigarette out in the ashtray. He looks at me and then at Peter and then back to me.
“What was the idea, Eddie?” I say to him.
“Well, it wasn’t even Wally’s idea, was it? I mean, if it hadn’t been served up to him he’d never have thought of it by himself, would he? I mean, be fair. Would he?”
“So whos
e idea was it?”
Eddie makes sure he’s not looking into my eyes when he says, “Hume.”
Eddie might be avoiding my eyes but I can certainly feel Peter’s boring into the back of my neck when the word drops into the silence of the room.
“See, Hume comes round to see Wally one day about this bullion job we put out over in Bromley. He comes steaming in with his usual spiel about how he’s fitted up somebody who wasn’t even on the job and how to save himself ten out of twenty this somebody’s going to stand up and point at me and Wally. Of course, Wally tells Hume to piss off and go and play in the next street. I mean, the thing is that this somebody’s a geezer called Danny Ross and Wally did Danny a great big favour once and Danny’s soft as shit and he’d do thirty rather than point at me and Wally and Wally tells Hume as much. Hume doesn’t like it, understandably enough, so he takes his pleasure by saying that if Danny’s such an old mucker of ours we’ll enjoy seeing him do a twenty-five for this and a couple of others Hume will fit him in on, not to mention Danny’s old lady who he’ll do for harbouring and receiving and being an accessory and all that rubbish. So Walter says all right, all right, how much? Hume calms down and then he asks us how much we fenced it for. I mean, he sat there and fucking asked us. So Walter tells him half of what we got for it and Hume says in that case ten grand’ll see Danny at home with his wife and kiddies until the next time. Wally says five and they finally fix a figure. And with that Hume trolleys off. For a while Wally’s blazing and all for putting a bomb outside Hume’s front door but I cool him off and he lets the matter drop. Then a month or so later Hume comes back and says to us how’d we like to have him as a permanent partner? Wally says fucking lovely, it’ll only cost us fifty grand a year at Hume’s rates, why doesn’t he start today? Hume wears it all and when Wally’s finished he says, ‘Let’s not be silly, you couldn’t even afford that if you had Gerald and Les’s patch as well,’ and Wally says, ‘Yes, you can afford anything when you’re dead.’ Hume shakes his head a few times and then puts us this proposition; first, that he’d heard he could get Finbow’s job if Finbow was out of it. And that would be a step in the right direction but Gerald and Les would still be there, Finbow or not. So, he says, supposing somebody blew the whistle on Gerald and Les? Supposing it could be guaranteed that somebody would be out of the country the day the trial ended, with a new name on his passport and free passage to anywhere he wants to go with his family and ten thousand quid out of the police fund? Plus, of course, whatever me and Wally’d want to chip in, which could make the offer much more attractive. And he says with him in West End Central and Gerald and Les and you out of the way he’d look after us the way Finbow looked after you lot. And we’d be doing twice the business, what with the shops and the clubs and the places and all those things.”