“This bloke isn't a little cracked, is he Gary? He's totally gone, a man on a mission. We're stepping in front of an oncoming express train for you, mate.”
“I know, and tonight we'll derail it.”
Or die trying, I thought.
“How is the job now, Gal?”
“The same as it always was, too many chiefs and not enough Indians. It’s all about statistics now and intelligence dissemination. To be honest, the copper on the street has not got a clue what’s really going on. It’s one cock-up after another.”
“Nine o’clock you want us here?”
“Yes please.”
I downed my lager and went to get John.
***
We made our grand red carpet entrance at nine on the dot, emerging out of a bullet-proof limo to a sea of paparazzi and TV cameras. Let the hounds see the fox...
Out of necessity, I had dressed quite plainly: simple black Armani T-shirt, navy blazer, dark denim jeans, brown Sendra ankle boots; but somehow Johnny had managed to get hold of a classy Tom Ford three-piece suit which probably retailed at over £2K. He looked flasher than a Russian oligarch on the pull, and as sharp as the blade he had no doubt got concealed in the pocket of his strides.
There had been talk of demonstrations outside, but the threat of counter-marches had persuaded the Home Secretary to ban demos within a one mile radius of the club. Instead, a token protest of just twelve people had been allowed. They were middle-aged ‘Broadies’ (the tabloid term for William Broadwick supporters), holding placards with slogans such as ‘What about the victims?’, ‘Bring back the rope’ and ‘Baker Back In Jail’.
Inside, the club was buzzing. Mod DJ Paul Hallam played ‘What’s Wrong With Me, Baby?’ by the Invitations as security ushered us to the VIP enclosure past a pop-up stall serving free pie and mash – in honour of South London's prodigal son. Above our heads were nets heavy with blue and white Millwall FC party balloons, and pride of place in the VIP section was a provocative ice sculpture of a handgun and silencer.
Genial Peter Stringfellow himself welcomed us to our seats. My eyes were everywhere. The place was full of South London’s criminal elite, the extended Baker family “as staunch as the Home Guard” according to Johnny, Soho faces, minor name pop singers, fame chasing models and sympathetic soap stars. There was also, I noticed, a party of hired-in lookalikes: a Keith Lemon, an Adele, a great Del-Boy Trotter, a decent Liz Hurley, a rather poor Tony Curtis in a skimpy toga, one extra-large Mr T and two Nicki Minajs.
“Nice. I wouldn't mind a Minaj a trois,” I remarked to John. “Here, is that the real Joey Essex?”
“Who gives a monkey's toss?”
“Good point.”
“That is the real Harry May, though.”
I followed his line of vision and saw the wizened visage of a legendary old South London villain, once known optimistically as ‘the Robin Hood of SE1’. It was half right, May definitely took from the rich...
The two men exchanged thumbs up, which John followed with a clenched fist salute of solidarity.
A Richard appeared at my side, her hand went straight to my thigh as she whispered exhausting sounding promises into my shell-like. I liked the Bermondsey accent and the mandarin and orange blossom whiff of her Coco Chanel eau de parfum, but she looked a bit too much like Mario Balotelli’s idea of a classy bird, you know what I mean? All fake tits, hair the colour of stale piss, and a dress that barely covered her costs. “I want to taste you,” she murmured, in a voice heavy with promise. I smiled and said I’d see her later. Well, you never know how the night’s going to end up.
John was on his feet kissing another woman.
“H, this is Maxine,” he said. “My future ex-wife. Max, this is Harry, he used to be filth but now he’s just West Ham scum.”
“Lovely to meet you, Max,” I said, pecking her cheek. “Thanks, John. Do you want to take your knife, or just leave it stuck in me back?”
He roared and gave me a bear hug. I felt the pressure of the gun that was in a shoulder holster carefully concealed under his jacket – unauthorised, naturally. I was packing too, and ditto.
“What is this classy lady doing with a bloke like you?” I smiled, winking at her.
“Everything you fuckin’ dream about, mate,” he replied.
Hallam played ‘Soul Drummers’ by Ray Barretto. What a groove. Pure class. One by one, a procession of villainous faces came up to pay their respects. One retired North London Peterman, Jack Vance, well into his late sixties turned up with a Britney Spears doppelganger on his arm. The girl could have been anything between seventeen and a fifteen month stretch. The necklace she was wearing probably cost more than my car.
“Fuck me, Jack, is it ‘bring your daughter to work’ day?” cracked Johnny. The old fella’s lip curled like one of Ali Baba’s slippers, but he forced a smile and said nothing. “Hope you’ve stocked up on Fisher Price condoms.”John switched his attention to the girl. “Oi, Lolita, you seen this watch, luv?” John flashed a top-end Rolex. “I got it today from a bloke down Deptford market...£15 grand...”
The gag soared over her pretty peroxide head like the Red Arrows, but Baker was in his element, he’d be reeling them in all night. It must seem odd to some, I guess, to see this powerful alpha male conceal his obvious intelligence behind a barrage of coarse wisecracks but that was his shtick, his shield, his modus operandi. The jolly hardcase. The killer clown. And I was the same. It was how we were brought up, using one-liners as weapons. It was a banter culture that grew out of growing up in hard places. You had to laugh or else you'd cry. Soldiers, firemen, medics, cops too...we all relied on that dark humour to stay sane. Even to this day, I'd rather listen to Bernard Manning ripping the piss out of a party of saps than some smart-arse graduate being 'ironic'.
Stringfellow conjured up medium-rare steaks and a medium-bare lap-dancer with a lion tattoo on her thigh started to do her stuff – how many times had she had to suffer ‘big pussy’ cracks on account of that naff old bit of ink?
Peter’s stunning brunette wife Bella was chatting away to Maxine Slater. “We’re trying for a baby,” he told me proudly.
“I don’t blame you mate, if she was my missus we’d be trying for a baby every night and twice on Sundays.”
The club owner laughed and started chatting to Ronnie Wood – the real one, I think. Gary Shaw appeared at my side, with another copper in disguise. Some people just shouldn't be CID. This guy was fat, we’re talking Greggs on legs, and so shifty he looked like he’d just robbed a post office and was looking for somewhere to dump his mask.
“All okay, Gal?”
“Yeah, except for me sciatica kicking in. You?”
“No problem. I’m on bottled water now. Head as clear as your bank account. Anything suspicious yet?”
“Not yet. But security has been kept deliberately loose. We want this character to be able to weasel his way past the doormen.”
“It’s still early. Plenty of time...”
“You see the Jack the Ripper?” asked his pal, the shifty-looking cop. The bloke had breath like a freshly exhumed corpse.
I nodded, handing him a piece of gum.
“I could pull a stretch for what I’m thinking.”
“Ha ha. Save it for Her Indoors mate.”
“If I did that it’d get rusty.”
Can't say I blame her, I thought. Peter Stringfellow threw his arm around his shoulder, and recoiled slightly from the quick blast of badger breath.
“Enjoying yourself lads?”
“It’s the ‘feminism for beginners’ class, Peter?” I replied.
“We’re just admiring your stripper,” Shaw’s pal said.
“They’re not strippers,” the club-owner said, looking hurt. “We don’t have strippers. We have entertainers, dancers. End of story.”
“Quite right,” I said. “You should sue them for defamation. Get yer writs out for the lads...”
The club owner grimaced, while the ch
astised cops left us to mingle awkwardly with genuine party goers. Gary walked off like a penguin with cramp. I noticed that his colleague kept checking his wallet, probably sensible. There were more dippers here than Oxford Street.
Strippers, lap-dancers, performance ‘artistes’ – call them what you will, they never had much appeal to me. If I wanted to mix with unhappy birds who hated my guts but wanted my money, women who were happy to turn me on and then leave me harder than a Cyberman’s helmet, I’d just go drinking over Chelsea way with a load of Sloanes.
I sat and watched the next batch of party guests arrive. They were an odd mix: hulking great geezers from Eastern Europe who looked like they’d just walked in from a Grimms fairy tale, a skinny once-famous ex-model whose boat, due to ill-advised cosmetic surgery, now resembled a tightly squeezed toothpaste tube, a couple of heavy Malts, and a statuesque former soap actress, her handsome face partially eroded by too much Marbella sun, who still looked the business.
“She’s hot in France,” said a passing snapper who had followed my gaze.
“Yeah? So was Joan of Arc, mate.”
Johnny Too was having an animated conversation with a silver-haired fox involving the words ‘graft’ and ‘nose-bag’. Not to be sniffed at, they say... My moby buzzed. It was a text from Knockers. She was coming down to London with her dad tomorrow morning for some rally and would I meet her for dinner? I texted back a smiley face and turned off the phone. I wasn't in the mood to start playing text ping-pong right now. In fact, I had started to feel a little anxious. I got up to stretch me legs and have a quick nose about, get my own ‘wrong’un radar’ working overtime.
The celebrity table next to ours had filled up nicely. There was Barbara Windsor, laughing and clucking, Wilf Pine, the only Englishman to have become a ‘made man’ in the Gambino crime family, talk radio jocks Nick Ferrari and James Whale, ancient showbiz hack Rick Sky looking the same age now as he had done in the 80s, a definite mirror in the attic job that one, Chris Quentin, formerly from Coronation Street – a long time formerly – and some woman with a great smile who I recognised as an ITV weathergirl but couldn’t place her name. Quite a looker. We’re talking about warm front leading to mounting high pressure in the trouser area. Beyond them were a table of porn stars familiar to students of that dubious art form under the noms du plumes – noms du plunge? –of Trixie Merriman, Rebel Knight and Brian ‘Big-below’ Belton.
I recognised the geezers with them as Kev ‘The Hammer’ Moody, and Si ‘Spanner’ Sternchuss and wondered if all the other porn barons had nicknames drawn from the toolbox. Come on down Sid Screwdriver, Chico Chisel and Willie Wrench...The shit that goes through your mind when you're killing time...
The red-head detective sergeant behind the bar caught my eye. I gave her a little wink. She winked back. Oh yeah. On a normal night she’d be in with a chance. She still might be. No way was I going home alone tonight.
54
The Nell Gwynne Tavern, London, The Strand
The great reunion had turned out to be as tedious as William Broadwick had expected. He didn’t like the scruffy, no-frills pub, with its dim lighting, Estonian bar staff, its lack of any food option that wasn’t served between slices of corner shop bread and the absence of anything remotely approaching a decent wine. On the plus side, they had Bombardier on tap and at least he didn’t have to struggle to hear what anyone else was saying. There must be louder morgues.
Broadwick sank three pints of premium lager in rapid succession. All of his old school friends had turned up, with their wives, a dismal bunch of loud under-educated women. It was good to see them all though: Pete McDermid, Al Chandler, Chris Billingham...even Paul Leather, who he didn’t really get on with. There was something pleasing about the mix of easy nostalgia and absolute trust that springs from knowing someone for half a life-time.
The talk was of families, jobs, and then inevitably for the men, football and politics. The unfulfilled dreams would come many pints later. Slowly, as always happened, the group divided along gender lines, the women to the right of the bar. The men re-assembling to the left, gathering around the soundless TV tuned to Sky Sports, as much for the additional lighting as the indifferent match.
Paul Leather, usually so hostile because of the chasm between their politics, seemed particularly friendly. The two men ended up sitting on a corner table, where Paul was happy to discreetly share the decent brandy he’d smuggled in his bag. He topped William up whenever the grumpy, twenty-something bar manager wasn’t looking.
“Are you still a Red, Leather?” Broadwick asked looking for a fight.
“After Blair and Brown who could be?” came the reply he wasn't expecting. “Thirteen years of a Labour Prime Minister and the working man is right back at the bottom of the pile. The few of us who can actually find work, that is...”
“The ones who haven’t been undercut by imported labour force, legal and illegal,” Broadwick nodded.
“And the NHS has turned shittier than a freshly used bed-pan...”
“We’re in love with the myth of it but run scared of the shocking reality.”
“That’s true enough, I suppose. But of course the Tories are no better. I still believe in progress, Will. I just can’t find a party that suits the way I feel.”
“What do you mean by progress?”
“Change of course, change for the better.”
“And do you see this progress anywhere? In any aspect of our culture, in education or in art or in our standard of living?”
The words came with a sneer worthy of Paxman with the hump.
“Only in culture, I suppose.”
“Really? I’d like to know where Paul, because all I can see in Western culture is a steady, continued erosion.”
“Music...comedy...”
“Are you joking? Modern comedians are is a bunch of overpaid, over-privileged brats relying on smut for easy, forgettable laughs! And these preening fools are taken seriously by our liberal Left establishment and feted with guest spots on Question Time, for God’s sake.”
“Well our rock music is still good.”
"Who?"
“Well, I guess Coldplay...”
“Are you really suggesting Chris Martin can hold a candle to Keith Emerson?”
Paul topped up his glass.
“Even the bands we used to listen to and love, Pink Floyd, Genesis, ELP, Yes, King Crimson, you can’t seriously suggest they’re in the same ball park as Vaughan Williams or Benjamin Britten, let alone Bach, Wagner, Beethoven and the rest. I listen to One Direction and all I hear is a ringing cash register...”
“Hey, Will mate, I don’t think they’re aiming at you.”
“No, but tell me one great ‘pop’ act ever that deserves to be treated seriously. Bob Dylan and his doggerel?
John Lennon singing ‘imagine no possessions’ on a £1million piano?
It’s laughable.”
“Lennon wrote, or co-wrote some of the greatest popular music ever made.”
“Ever made? Or of his generation? Gilbert wrote wittier words, Sullivan came up with superior tunes, as did Richard Rodgers and Jerome Kern. And let's not even start on all the crap John Lennon endorsed – Yippies, Trots, suspect Maharishis, callous IRA murderers, Michael X, another bloody murderer... Compare Lennon's lyrics to Hart or Porter, he can't touch them. He doesn't come close to Johnny Mercer...”
“I've never heard of Johnny Mercer. But my point is I'd still rather listen to ‘Norwegian Wood’ than anything from a West End musical, and I'd rather listen to the Allman Brothers than any opera you could name. Complex doesn't necessarily mean better, in my humble opinion.”
“No, and there is plenty of folk and choral music that I adore, but looking at the big picture what we have is a rush of Gadarene swine to the lowest common denominator. You see a supposed intellectual like Alan ‘Two Jobs’ Yentob praised for fawning over washed-up pop has-beens. To me it’s just a sign of our infantilised society. It’s a virus, and i
t’s spread right across the board. Plays, art, poetry, literature – all of them are shot, all of them inferior, all crippled by the curse of modernity, the culturati's love affair with crap. There hasn’t been a decent novel written in our lifetime.”
“Woah, that's a big claim. You were born in 1957, same year as me, so there have been loads of acclaimed classics since then. Let’s think, Portnoy’s Complaint?”
“Wank! Literally wank! All the books that figure in those preposterous lists of great modern novels you occasionally find in the Sunday Times or the Observer are irredeemably inferior to the best that have gone before. I saw Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children listed in the Guardian, it’s virtually unreadable.”
“The Bonfire Of The Vanities?”
“Yes, that’s good.”
“Got you there, then!”
“No, I said it was good. I didn’t say it was a classic. It’s been a long time since Steinbeck, Wodehouse and Orwell.”
“And you hate modern art too?”
“What is there to like about it? Seriously, Paul. Damien Hirst is a conman, Gormley’s work is ugly...Saatchi paid £150,000 for an unmade bed! Cows cut in half, a tiger shark in a tank, lights going on and off...and this crap is elevated to the level of Rembrandt? Give me strength! It’s been the Emperor’s New Clothes since day one, an absolute racket. These trend-chasing mug punters can’t even see they’re being hustled.”
“You know, you may have a point. But who’s to blame?”
“You know as well as I do.”
“What do you mean?”
Broadwick lowered his voice. “Look at the religious background of the people who push this tripe the most ardently...”
“Are you saying what I think you’re saying?”
Broadwick lowered his voice even more, Paul leaned in closer. “It’s Jewish hustlers all the way down the line, and we’re the schmucks who fell for it.”
Paul thought this was blatantly absurd. He had been obsessed with top-flight Jewish humour for years, everyone from Woody Allen to Larry David via Mort Sahl, Seinfeld and Jackie Mason, and had read every word Marx, Engels and Lev Bronstein had ever written. But he was content, in fact delighted, for now, to let Broadwick ramble on.
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