Hall of Mirrors

by Christopher Fowler

  ‘My hipster loons, what about them?’

  ‘Don’t you remember wearing them to the Black Raven? The thread in the turn-ups got wound around the girl next to you. She wasn’t very impressed when you walked away and pulled her off her stool. I agreed to come here because I thought you had better be briefed. Ever hear of a chap called Sir Charles Chamberlain?’

  ‘Concrete,’ said May. ‘He’s a great fan of it. A very fashionable architect.’

  ‘I don’t care for this new brutalist style. The term is a French word meaning raw, you know. It was used by Le Corbusier to describe his choice of material – béton brut, raw concrete.’

  ‘Trust you to know that.’

  ‘I’ve never been down the King’s Road before.’ Bryant looked around. A pretty girl in a white Biba minidress and sunglasses was coming out of Granny Takes A Trip with shopping bags, but for every young trendsetter there were at least two old men in raincoats and caps. ‘I thought it would be more exciting somehow. You hear so much about it. It’s just shops, isn’t it? Sir Charles Chamberlain made part of his vast fortune by experimenting in concrete. There was an article on him in The Sunday Times.’

  ‘I reckon it’s the way forward,’ said May. ‘Have you been to the new Hayward Gallery? The whole thing is made of great stone slabs.’ He tore his eyes away from the passing girl and turned his attention back to his partner. Bryant, he felt, was a stranger to the joys of summer life in London.

  ‘I’ve seen photos of the Hayward. It looks like some kind of bottling factory,’ Bryant complained. ‘There are quite enough ugly buildings in London already. Why would we want any more?’

  ‘I think you misunderstand what he’s trying to achieve,’ replied May. ‘Sir Charles Chamberlain is the man of the moment. His companies were the subject of a BBC Man Alive programme. He’s a civic-minded modernist who advocates an egalitarian approach to community design. He’s worth millions.’

  ‘Not for much longer.’ Bryant sidestepped an Afro-haired beanpole in octagonal glasses, canary-coloured loons and amber love beads. ‘He’s up before the beak on Monday morning, Law Courts on the Strand. I was supposed to give you a letter to sign from the CPS but I forgot to bring it.’

  ‘On what charge?’

  ‘Corruption. Chamberlain’s people were caught offering bribes to a Westminster Council official. Apparently we’re too junior to be granted access to the full details of the case. I quote.’ Digging into his Harold Wilson raincoat (waterproof, wool-lined, deeply unfashionable) he produced a folded square from the Daily Sketch. ‘“Says Sir Charles, ‘It’s time for London’s mean little Victorian houses to be demolished and replaced by all-concrete homes.’ The Sketch says let’s have houses in the sky. That’s where the city’s future is, in sunlit flats of up to one hundred storeys high. Building upwards will safeguard London’s green belt for future generations. Sir Charles may prove the saviour of British town planning, and is currently in top-level negotiations with the new Greater London Council.” It’s a sure sign of dirty work when the press start praising a captain of industry.’ He tucked the article away.

  ‘It doesn’t make sense,’ said May. ‘Why would he have allowed himself to get caught up in a grubby bribery scandal?’

  ‘Maybe he was a bit too impatient to get things done.’

  May was disgusted. ‘This country is so philistine when it comes to change. That clipping of yours is right. Most of us are still living in poky little Victorian boxes. Every time we’re offered something new we shake our heads and retreat into the past.’ He had to raise his voice as they passed a shop blasting out psychedelic rock.

  Bryant put a finger in one ear. ‘Chamberlain may be building for future generations, but not for me. I prefer Victorian houses, thank you. They’re cosier.’

  ‘And colder and draughtier and darker,’ May countered. ‘Wouldn’t you like to live in a place that has a separate bathroom and an inside toilet?’

  ‘Not really. The former seems wasteful and the latter unhygienic.’

  ‘You can’t stop progress, matey. We’re scraping the soot off this city and going psychedelic. Haven’t you seen Carnaby Street? They’re planning to stop traffic going down it and pave the whole thing over. Soon the entire city is going to look like that. Concrete and plastic and glass instead of boring old bricks.’

  Bryant glanced doubtfully at the shower of three-dimensional op-art stars that fell across the window of a former fish shop. ‘It’ll take more than a lick of paint to change things.’

  John May had lately moved to a stylish split-level flat above a strip club in Brewer Street, Soho, but Bryant was back in Whitechapel at his widowed mother’s damp rented house. The death of her husband had prematurely aged her, and the state had failed to rehouse her in the blank new flats springing up around Petticoat Lane. Mary Bryant had been told she could not stay in her property for much longer as it was technically a slum, having no indoor toilet or separate bathroom. Her entire neighbourhood had been earmarked for demolition. Even though her friends loved their new modern flats, she refused to look at them.

  She had cried for days after receiving the notice to quit; she had lived in the same tiny house all her life, and her brothers still lived in the next street. Bryant had petitioned the council to no effect. In a few weeks’ time his mother would be moved to a new prefabricated maisonette at the top end of Columbia Road.

  Bryant accepted that life would never be as easy for him as it was for John. There was a class gap between them, not much more than a crack really, but enough to separate their lives and cause a tingle of resentment after a few drinks.

  May stopped before a shop called Hippy Hippy Shake that sold Afghan coats, navy drill tunics, Boer War uniforms and Indian kaftans in an array of eye-watering colours, all arranged beneath a huge dayglo poster of a pointing Lord Kitchener. The scent of patchouli oil wafted out on a tinny arabesque of sitar music. ‘Look at those fittings,’ said Bryant indignantly. ‘You can tell it used to be a barber shop.’

  ‘You can get your hair cut anywhere, Arthur! This is with-it gear, baby.’

  ‘Please stop sounding like somebody on Juke Box Jury. And don’t tell me this is where you buy your clobber. Look at the prices!’ He tried to read the tag on a tie-dyed granddad shirt. ‘You could spend ten guineas on an outfit if you weren’t careful.’

  May glanced down at his own wide-lapelled denim jacket, orange polo neck and flared jeans. ‘About sixteen pounds ten, actually.’

  ‘On your wages? Stone the crows. Bell-bottoms were designed so that sailors could roll them up, not so you could parade around London hoping to impress birds. You won’t catch me in a fez and a cape. These are my old man’s demob trousers. My mum got a draught excluder from the leftover material.’ He stopped to light his Lorenzo Spitfire.

  ‘How did this Chamberlain chap get caught, anyway?’ May paused to consider a shop dummy modelling a collarless aubergine velvet suit and matching floral scarf.

  Bryant sucked another match flame into his pipe bowl. ‘I’m assuming you read the notes I posted to you?’

  ‘I couldn’t decipher your handwriting.’ May had been going out with a wild-eyed waitress from Lyons’ Corner House and had lost a couple of days, judging by the amount of washing up in his sink. Last night the vaguest recollection of a party in the Post Office Tower had surfaced.

  ‘You know the hardest part of my job?’ said Bryant. ‘Holding your attention. Now, flibbertigibbet, try to concentrate while I paraphrase. Chamberlain is connected to a number of European trade fairs where his staff struck suspicious deals with councillors under his direct orders, but the evidence is mostly hearsay and flimsy. The prosecution reckons that part of the story is still missing.’

  ‘You mean there’s no paper trail and his defence lawyer might get him off the hook.’

  ‘That’s what they’re afraid of, so the Home Secretary ordered the CID to look for a whistle-blower. Step forward one Monty Hatton-Jones. He used to work in an auction ho
use and now owns a number of UK companies, including a construction plant in Dagenham. He reckons that within five years this whole city could be rebuilt, but he’s reliant on Chamberlain for contracts. He has to be careful about who he signs up with; mistakes cost more than just reputations. Look what happened to the residents of Ronan Point. That was over a month ago and they’re still waiting to be rehoused.’

  In East London the corner flats in a newly opened twenty-two-storey prefabricated block had collapsed from bottom to top, killing four and maiming many more. There was already talk of the disaster destroying public confidence in affordable high-rise homes.

  ‘That was a tragedy,’ May admitted.

  ‘It was down to poor design and corner-cutting,’ Bryant responded. ‘The country’s in the middle of a building boom, and no matter how good Chamberlain is, he can’t be allowed to get away with bribing officials. The trouble is, Sir Charles casts a long, dark shadow over this city. He owns segments of the entire housing supply chain. He buys up the land and demolishes the old buildings, and his architectural practice designs the new flats that go in their place. Now this fellow Monty Hatton-Jones is willing to testify against him.’

  ‘Because he has some part of the missing paper trail?’

  ‘He has something much better. He was present at a crucial trade show in Berlin, where he managed to record a damning conversation between Chamberlain’s people and the Westminster planning officers.’

  ‘Why would he do that?’

  ‘It may not have been deliberate. Apparently he was tinkering with some equipment on the display stand next door. They were demonstrating a thing called a “compact cassette”. It’s a sort of—’

  ‘I know what it is,’ said May keenly. ‘They were developed for dictation. Phillips are planning to introduce a high-fidelity cassette deck for home use next year. It’ll use volume compression and expand high frequencies to boost low-level treble information—’

  Bryant raised his pipe. ‘You know I offered to warn you when you were being boring? The point is that it was on the stand where Chamberlain’s chaps were chatting with their cronies, and the microphone picked up their deal.’

  ‘What, accidentally, just like that? A bit convenient, wasn’t it? Was Chamberlain set up?’

  ‘That’s what we don’t know. The point is that the so-called “cassette”—’

  ‘Do you have to put inverted commas around everything that strikes you as new-fangled and undesirable?’ asked May irritably.

  ‘—may not be admissible in court, so Hatton-Jones is prepared to back it up with full testimony.’

  ‘What does the tape actually say?’

  ‘We can’t have access to it, but I understand it details payments that will be made to the councillors if they give priority to Chamberlain’s tender.’

  May was puzzled. Something didn’t ring true. ‘Wait, how does Chamberlain know this Hatton-Jones fellow?’

  ‘I believe they go back a long way.’

  ‘How far? Business, university?’

  ‘School.’

  ‘Then why on earth is Hatton-Jones prepared to hang him out to dry? Don’t these chaps stick together?’

  ‘That’, said Bryant, ‘is what we’ve been asked to find out. Trust me, there’ll be plenty of time, more than forty-eight hours. He’s being delivered into our care this afternoon. He’ll remain with us until we reach the Law Courts with him on Monday morning for his appearance at ten thirty sharp.’

  ‘What are we going to do with him?’ May wondered. ‘We can’t lock him up at Bow Street.’

  ‘I don’t see why not,’ said Bryant. ‘Not in a cell, obviously. More like under house arrest.’

  ‘Perhaps we should bring him toast and marmalade and the morning papers too.’

  ‘No, Gladys can do that. Look out.’ Two young men in Second World War army uniforms painted with ‘Ban The Bomb’ slogans were arguing with a pair of Chelsea Pensioners who clearly did not take kindly to seeing military outfits worn by trendy pacifists. They were briefly joined by a girl wearing a British sailor’s uniform with a giant iridescent fish on her head. She ducked into an Aladdin’s cave filled with rainbow-coloured neckerchiefs and brightly dyed lace shirts.

  ‘Really,’ Bryant complained, ‘how much longer do we have to put up with this ludicrously self-conscious we’ve-all-run-away-to-join-the-circus-in-silly-hats peace-and-love maharishi nonsense? This wouldn’t happen in Newcastle. Try poncing about with a crystal walking stick and a feather boa up there and you’ll get your eye poked out.’

  ‘I think you’re taking a bit of high spirits rather too seriously, Arthur.’

  ‘Am I? Swinging London is a con,’ Bryant raged as more boys in military jackets and decorative medals pushed past. ‘Most of the country is still trapped in the fifties. It hasn’t got two halfpennies to scrub together. We’re not continental. In Great Britain coitus interruptus means the man getting out of bed to put another shilling in the gas meter. This lot can pretend the sun will shine for ever while they dance around blowing bubbles with flowers in their hair, but really we’re a nation of carpenters, shopkeepers and mechanics. All this optimism and glamour and pretending you’re creative is already on the way out.’

  ‘What a prematurely senile old misery guts you are,’ said May indignantly. ‘What are you going to be like when you’re middle-aged? I’d rather have this than what we had before: petrol rations and utility furniture. It’s nice to see some bright colours and hear pop music for a change. Get off your soap box and tell me something more about Chamberlain.’

  ‘The point is, it isn’t just a babysitting job.’ Bryant squinted up into the sunlight. ‘If we get more information out of Hatton-Jones maybe we could widen the investigation to include the Westminster planning committee. At the moment it’s not our case that’s going to trial. They’re after the man at the top, so only Chamberlain is on the stand. But if we can get definite proof that others are on the take, we could really make a name for ourselves. The unit isn’t going to survive much longer without a couple of high-profile arrests under its belt.’

  They had stopped outside the yellow Formica and chromium fascia of an ABC café. May checked his Timex. ‘Lend us a bob; I’ll get two teas. Then we have to get to Bow Street.’

  ‘We’re not picking him up from Bow Street,’ said Bryant. ‘We’re collecting him from a coffee bar in Belsize Park. He won’t go anywhere near the West End.’

  ‘Whyever not?’ May asked.

  ‘He thinks Chamberlain is going to send someone after him,’ Bryant explained.

  ‘Really? This fellow is a knight of the realm, not a Kray.’

  ‘Your naïvety is really quite charming.’ Bryant flagged down a taxi. ‘I imagine Sir Charles will make sure that his own hands stay clean this time.’ He opened the door and ushered May in. ‘Our Mr Hatton-Jones reckons he’s in fear of his life.’

  7

  * * *

  LES BICYCLETTES DE BELSIZE

  The Belsize Park coffee bar was called Sweet Suzy Sunshine. Its floorboards were woozily painted in diagonal green and yellow stripes. On the bare brick walls gig posters for Jethro Tull and the Moody Blues vied for space beside Cleo Laine and Anthony Newley. The café was the brainchild of Sweet Suzy, a well-spoken girl in a strawberry-blond hairpiece who was waiting on the tables. Since the juke box was playing Jimi Hendrix’s ‘All Along The Watchtower’ rather too loudly, Monty Hatton-Jones had perched himself at a white wrought-iron table outside on the sunlit pavement.

  He was hard to miss. Bryant first spotted a vast flabby face as maroon as mutton, atop some kind of public school tie that looked as if it was strangling him. This vision of epicurean indulgence was dressed by Savile Row but not too recently, its copperish hair waved and shaved in the Bond Street manner, its moustache ends waxed to points. Hatton-Jones seemed born to loll in a gentleman’s club wingback, but his bulk made him appear positively Brobdingnagian when balanced upon a minuscule wire-framed chair.

 
; ‘Forgive this ghastly venue,’ he said, half-heartedly rising to greet them. ‘I thought I’d be safe here. No one I know would ever imagine me visiting such a place.’

  ‘It’s just a lick of bright paint, hardly a den of iniquity,’ said May.

  ‘You know what I mean – all these long-haired layabouts and their chicks. I had to come out here because it’s all jungle-bunny music inside.’ Hatton-Jones was a picture of florid indignation. He had the look of a man who always went where he intended to go, and damn everyone else. ‘There’s one chap in there wearing Distinguished Service medals from the Great War on a bandsman’s tunic,’ he complained. ‘Decent officers died for those gongs. The government should bring back conscription. That would teach them some bloody respect.’

  ‘So that another generation of young men could needlessly die for their country?’ asked May.

  ‘Look here, that’s conchie talk,’ warned Hatton-Jones. ‘I live in Greenwich, where we still respect the value of a decent bloody navy.’ His eyes glistened like angry marbles and gave him energy, but also a hint of incipient lunacy. Right now, he didn’t seem much like a man in fear of his life.

  Bryant had already decided that he would let his partner deal with Monty. He sat back and felt the sun on his face. A woman in a brown tea-cosy hat and tartan overcoat walked past. She was holding on to a girl in a yellow minidress that had a circular hole cut out of the front. Mother and daughter were so firmly locked in different eras that it seemed hardly possible they could co-exist. Lately he saw the same disjunctions wherever he looked: Victorian workhouses next to glass tower blocks, E-type Jaguars passing horse-drawn rag-and-bone carts, mods standing beside pensioners. Transitional times.

  Hatton-Jones was still droning on about how awful today’s young people were. Bryant could hear children laughing. There was a school playground nearby. What would the next London be like for them? The city transformed itself like an actor changing costumes in a play, now a hero, now a fool, now a tyrant.