by BK Duncan
‘I might just do that one day. But the dens where the desperate can end up gambling for their lives come pretty high up my personal list of resident evils. The places where it happens are closed to outsiders and you have to be invited to attend. So I’m here trying to figure out how to get my ticket in; respectable West End clubs like this are often trawled for likely punters by the dens’ gatekeepers.’
May began to get the picture. No wonder he’d been so happy she’d turned up: she was his cover story. His means of blending in so he could observe without being observed himself. She drained the last of her vile drink to cool the lump in her chest that was making it difficult to breathe. She was angry with herself for believing it was a date, for getting excited and fussing over her preparations like a schoolgirl, but mostly with Jack for revealing the reason he’d asked her as casually as if it didn’t matter.
‘I need to pay a visit.’ It was the most she could say without exploding.
***
She was washing her hands when two giggling young women lurched through the swing door. Eying them in the mirror May wondered if they’d had one cocktail too many with their flushed cheeks and wide pupils glittering like polished jet. They huddled over something the thinner of the two had cradled lovingly in her hand.
‘Will she never leave?’ Her companion’s misjudged whisper bounced off the tiles.
‘This snow’s the best in town; well worth waiting for.’
May dried her hands on the fancy towel and left them to it. She was passing the cloakroom when she stopped. Of course, Clarice Gem. The logo of the passionate dancers had been on the matchbook in her lodgings. Had this been where she’d obtained her powders? Jack obviously thought it perfectly acceptable to be working tonight so May didn’t see any reason why she shouldn’t do the same. After all, it wasn’t as if there was any other point in her being here.
Imagining she was wearing her skirt and blouse instead of a low-cut dress, she re-entered the main room and strode back to the table.
‘Is it easy to get cocaine in this place?’
‘My, my, May Keaps, you are full of surprises tonight. And there was me thinking you irredeemably wedded to the right side of the law.’
‘Don’t be stupid.’
‘Take it easy - perhaps it was a little rash of me to order another Campari; that last one really seems to have put a fire in your belly. I’ll have you know it’s not so outrageous to assume that underneath it all you’re not so very different to the other women here. That terrible piece of knitwear apart. They all take it. Most recreationally, but some can’t get through a day without it making their lives worth living. Neither of which makes them any the less ordinary. Look at that one over there... the one with the yellow feathery scarf thing.’
‘Boa.’
‘Where do you think she works?’
May watched the way she danced, letting the man lead whilst still being careful not to get too close to the couples on either side. ‘Shop girl. John Lewis I’d say.’
‘I will bow to your superior knowledge of department stores. How about her?’
He was now pointing to a straight-up-and-down blonde in a backless sequined dress that would’ve had Sally drooling.
‘I doubt she’s ever done a day’s work in her life.’
‘And her?’
This one singled out for attention was sitting on a chocolate leather sofa and weeping, seemingly alone and unembarrassed. May couldn’t help but imagine Clarice in her last hours of misery.
‘Okay, I get your point. Now tell me something; if a woman made an appointment to come here, would it be for drugs?’
Jack surprised her by laughing. A convulsive chuckle that ended with him having to take off his glasses and wipe his eyes.
‘Seems I’ve only got to show you a fence and you’re over it and galloping across the field before I can point out the open gate. Snow is fashionable and these girls can pick some up anywhere. They come here to dance and flirt, not risk trying to buy in public and getting nabbed by a plain-clothes member of the constabulary. It’s the same with gambling, opium, all the vices: the naïve get trapped, the habitual get careful, and the addicted get dead. It’s a sure fire way of telling them apart.’
The Campari she didn’t want appeared over her shoulder. Jack slid a tip from the table onto the proffered tray. The waiter muttered something she didn’t quite catch; then Jack looked up, did a sort of double-take and reached out to shake the man’s hand.
‘May Keaps, allow me to present Brilliant Chang. He’s the proprietor of this place.’
May looked up to see a Chinaman dressed in a dinner jacket of midnight blue with glistening silk lapels, and a silk shirt that was so white it sucked in the light. His black hair was slicked back, adding extra definition - as if it were needed - to the bone structure of a... there was no other word for it... beautiful face.
‘Delighted to make your acquaintance, Miss Keaps.’ His voice was tactile, flowing over her in a liquid caress. ‘Although I fear we have not been introduced properly; my birth name is Nan Chan. The other is my English name. I will happily answer to which ever one you choose.’
Jack patted a spare chair. ‘Come and join us for a while. I want to know what chance you think Valentine’s Kiss has in the 3.30 at Lingfield.’
Their guest cocked his head at May for permission to sit. She readily gave it; his presence had transformed her mood - and the entire evening. She noticed his exquisitely manicured hands with their long, thin fingers as he lightly adjusted his trousers at the knees to preserve the creases. She buried hers deeper in her lap. Delicate flutes of champagne magically appeared. May enjoyed the novelty of crisp bubbles bursting on her tongue as the men talked horseracing form, track conditions, and the likelihood of one trainer or another doing the double. It was only when they started discussing betting odds and totes and accumulators that her attention began to stray. Their host picked up on it immediately.
‘Please forgive my selfishness in talking about my passion.’
‘Horseracing?’
‘The philosophy of man’s need to seek excitement through the things over which he has no control. I am not a gambler, Miss Keaps, but a student of Confucius.’
She might have guessed he was a philosopher; she’d been watching him with Jack and he’d been engaged in the conversation but holding something back as if he was observing himself as well as his companion. How he could do that whilst making you feel you were the most important person in the world when he looked into your eyes and spoke to you.
‘Billy... there’s a telephone call. Says it’s urgent.’
The barman was calling across above the music.
‘I’ll take it upstairs. Another time I hope, Miss Keaps.’
May watched him walk away from their table. And then it registered. Billy. The name Clarice Gem had written in her diary for the night of her death. She’d found him. But the next thought made her feel as unsettled as if her champagne had been spiked: Jack had introduced him as Brilliant Chang and chang was Limehouse slang for cocaine. Had this elegant and charming man been the one who’d supplied the means for Clarice ending her life? May didn’t want to believe it. But the only way she’d know for sure was by issuing him with a subpoena to attend the inquest. The warmth she’d felt in his company had turned oppressive. Since she’d long ago abandoned the notion of being here on a date there wasn’t any reason for her to stay. She searched in her bag for the cloakroom ticket, found it, and stood up.
‘I’ve noticed he has that effect on women; one moment I’m pleasant enough company and then he comes along and, hey presto, I suddenly turn into dog meat.’
Jack was smiling but she’d been wrong-footed once too often already this evening.
‘I’ve got a headache, that’s all.’
‘I’d offer to escort you
back to Poplar but...’ He raised his hands to indicate their surroundings.
She couldn’t bear to hear him spell it out for her. ‘It’s okay; I’ll get the doorman to call me a taxicab. You stay. After all, one of us ought to get what they want out of this evening. I’ll see you around. And thanks for the drinks.’
Chapter Nine
May heard the clock above East India Dock gateway chime yet another hour. The whirr and clank of the distant winches and cranes were not meshing into their usual lullaby, and the hoot of a steamer on the river was downright sinister. When she realised she’d never go back to sleep, she hauled herself out of bed, splashed her face with water from the nightstand, and began to get dressed. It wasn’t hard to pinpoint the source of her restlessness: Brilliant Chang. She’d been so taken in by his charm as if she’d lost all ability to judge character. And if that was the case she could only put it down to becoming too emotionally involved. It had started when she’d seen Clarice on the mortuary slab and compared her young vulnerability to Alice’s: such a novice’s mistake. Compassion was important in a coroner’s officer because it reminded her that a body had once been a real person with family, friends, feelings, hopes and desires. Sentimentality, on the other hand, simply blurred the edges between truth and fiction.
It was Saturday but she’d go into the office to type up Brilliant Chang’s subpoena to be sure he’d receive it in time for the resumption of Clarice Gem’s inquest on Tuesday. May left a note for Alice on the kitchen table - with a reminder about the laundry - and closed the front door quietly behind her.
The night mist from the river had turned into a wet fog. Through it the gaslight at the end of the street burned like a little dying sun. She thrust her hands deeper into the pockets of her brother’s pea-jacket and for a moment thought she could detect his scent - pipe tobacco and hair oil - rising up from the collar. But she knew it was a memory; cooking, coal gas, and mildew were the only smells clinging to the matted wool. Gripped by an overwhelming need to feel close to him again she turned and headed in the opposite direction.
***
The garage was in Pennyfields, under the bridge carrying the London and Blackwall Railway into West India Docks. When her brother had first brought her here she’d been terrified of the trains roaring like dragons over her head. The walls dripped with slime and stank like a shallow pond but it had seemed then - as now - a magical place fashioned out of necessity, built out of dreams.
May hammered on the small door cut into the larger double one filling the arch. Tom’s muffled voice reached her, angry with curses. When he let her in she could see why; the front of his overalls was sodden.
‘What you want to make me jump like that for? Spilled coffee all down me, didn’t I?’
She wanted to laugh but knew he’d be deeply offended. ‘Sorry, Tom. I’ll make you some more.’
‘No you won’t, missy; always tastes like shit when you’ve been near it. I’ve got me some best beans I’ll have you know. Under the counter for a generator I’ve been fettling with. You coming in or what? Can’t stand here all day.’
Tom was like an elderly uncle, and just as tetchily set in his ways. Short and stocky with clumps of white hair sticking up as if coated in engine oil, he had a withered arm from where he’d caught it in the flywheel of a threshing machine as a boy in Suffolk. But that made no difference to his dexterity with anything mechanical. If it had nuts and bolts and belts and pistons, Tom coaxed it back to life with all the skill of a surgeon.
‘You come for a look, or what?’
He bent over to fiddle with a small Fairbanks stationary engine. The space filled with the smell of paraffin and a throaty rattle; there was a puff of blue smoke and the bulb hanging from the ceiling pulsed with light.
‘Was working on it, Sunday. Reckon I could have her good as new. Excepting I ain’t got the parts. Can’t buy them with coffee beans.’
He wheezed a laugh and May joined in. She’d been visiting often enough to know not to rush him. Tom had ways of doing things and had been known to hurl an oilcan - and on one memorable occasion a heavy spanner - if his patterns were thrown by something unexpected. And then he’d be forced to start from the beginning again. Slow and sure were his mottos: it made him a good engineer but a frustrating companion.
May was going to perch on a wooden crate but changed her mind when she saw the grease. She had her work skirt on after all.
‘I’ve been putting a little by. It’s not much but if you tell me what you need then maybe I can find the rest.’
Had it been wise to make what would’ve amounted to a cast-iron promise to a man like Tom? But she’d told Albert she’d look after it for him - in that final letter - and she wasn’t going to let a lack of money turn her into a liar.
Tom was rubbing at the wet cloth stretching over his belly with a sheet of newspaper. She wondered how much longer she’d have to wait before he’d let her see what he’d been up to. Would he feel the need to boil up some more coffee first? It all depended on whether he felt he had to start that from scratch again, or if he saw the spilling of the pot as the beginning of something else; perhaps changing into another set of overalls. It was impossible to second-guess Tom.
But he managed to surprise her by doing neither, instead sucking air through his teeth as he walked to the back of the workshop. The place was littered with half-finished projects but hers was the only one kept in hiding. He grabbed the corner of the canvas tarpaulin, and with a flurry worthy of a stage magician, pulled it to the floor. The motorcycle sat on its forks like a roped horse brought to its knees. The wheels lying like an afterthought on one side.
‘Oh, Tom, you’ve mended the handlebars.’ May wanted to rush over but didn’t want him to cover it again.
‘Don’t know how you can see nothing from there. Step up here, missy, and get yourself a proper look. No touching, mind. The gear lever’s only resting.’
The 1912 Norton Brooklands Special had been Albert’s pride and joy. He’d won it in a card game with a Speedway racer. It had been a wreck then but he and Tom had begged, stolen, and improvised what they could to turn it back into something like the record breaker it had once been. And that had been its undoing. Whilst home on leave, Albert had taken it for a spin, opened up full-throttle, lost control on a bend, and ended up in a ditch. He had been thrown clear and limped back, but the Norton had suffered the indignity of travelling for its final journey in the rear of a coal cart. Tom had been tinkering with it ever since. Two and a half years of painstaking stripping and welding and educated guesswork.
‘Been all over her. Had to replace some of them leather pieces on the drive belt but foreman of the tannery owed me; came across some bulbs; cleaned the brake pads; given her as much oil as she can take - the caps on the ends of the rocker spindles topped up, push rods, arm ends, cables and controls. Checked tappet clearances, gaps in magneto points, whistled through carburettor jets. Only thing left now is a new spark plug.’
And to put the wheels back on, May wanted to add. She was feeling dizzy from the paraffin fumes and Tom’s monotone recital of activities she couldn’t begin to visualise. Wood she understood. Wood you could listen to through your fingertips, smell if it needed a fresh coating of linseed or beeswax. Metal was altogether too artificial. But the machine itself was a thing of beauty. One day she would take it out of here. She would learn to ride and return it to the life it had been built for and deserved to reclaim. The life that Albert should have had. Her chest quivered. She was grateful for the train passing overhead and setting everything loose rattling. Although she doubted if Tom would have noticed if she’d burst into tears because he had lifted one of the wheels and was pushing it towards his workbench.
‘Handful of spokes wouldn’t go amiss. Can’t do nothing but have them new.’
What passed for sunlight in Pennyfields was strengthening through the open doorw
ay. May remembered how much she had to do today.
‘I’ll bring you some money during the week. I can’t say exactly when because we’re very busy at the moment.’
‘There ain’t really no rush. They’re coming to take me away.’
‘Who are?’
‘The family. What’s left of them.’
May hadn’t known he had any.
‘My brother’s the only other one of our generation not dead. Seems he’s now set on giving me that honour. And they want me there to watch his passing. I ask you; ain’t as if there’s nothing I can do about it.’ He slid his hand like a blind man over the top of his workbench. ‘Got something for you.’
A chain dangled from his index finger. On the end of it was a key.
‘Cut a spare. Let yourself in and out, why don’t you? She could do with a good polish. You touch anything else but the chrome, mind, and I’ll winch the whole thing up and toss it in river.’
May took her badge of trust with the solemnity with which it was offered. By the time she had composed a short speech of thanks Tom had his back to her and was attacking something with a pair of pliers. She waved her fingers in a silent farewell and stepped back out to face the demands of the real world.
***
Once in the office, May discovered two of Clarice’s friends had responded to the newspaper announcement. She wrote them letters with the date and time of the inquest, finishing everything she had to do by mid-morning. She gathered up the envelopes to post. Brilliant Chang’s subpoena she’d decided to deliver in person and slipped it into her shoulder bag before setting off to see if Sally wanted to make the trip into Town. Her friend had no qualms about breaking the rules of Sabbath - maintaining that God valued industriousness over piety - Saturdays being the only time she could go into the West End shops to look at the new fashions. May would tack on the offer of such a trip now in return for having a witness when she handed over the summons.
***