Bad Penny Blues

by Cathi Unsworth

  But it wasn't Teddy's club where the trouble had begun. It was Le Continental, the faux-Parisian review of strippers run out of Marks’ Old Compton Street premises. Five people had been arrested over the course of five days in September 1962 for attempting to extort monies from Marks with violence. The press saw it as another victory for Wesker, a bullet to the heart of organised crime.

  Pete hadn't been in on the first two arrests, but he had seen the suspects in the cells with bloody noses and missing teeth. Grigson and one of his protégées had brought them in. An Italian called Alfredo Togneri and his neighbour Alec Chesterfield, both 22. The charge sheet said they had been in possession of offensive weapons, Togneri a flick-knife and Chesterfield an iron bar, which they had used to intimidate Marks on the steps of Le Continental.

  Wesker had been on the phone in the CID office when Pete, standing behind him in the doorway, had caught the end of his conversation.

  “…what's done is done, darling, at least we got one of the bastard's known associates,” he was saying. His jacket hung on the back of a chair, his shirt was open at the neck and there was blood on his cuffs. “As for the other slag, well, that's what we in the army call getting caught in the crossfire.” He laughed. “But don't sweat, me old sweetheart. I'll drop by Shaftesbury Avenue tomorrow and see if I can't pick something up.”

  The next day a mechanic named Sidney Hillman, who worked on Shaftesbury Avenue, had joined the ranks of the accused. Pete had found out more about him while he and Bream were dispatched to look for another member of the gang, a Greek called Theo Georgios. Bream had been in on a few more meetings than Pete. While they'd sniffed out the Greek on Berwick Street, he'd provided a running commentary on the arrest of the mechanic.

  “It's a longstanding thing between Hillman and Marks,” Bream informed him, “come out of some angst over a scrubber, wouldn't you know it. One of the girls worked down the club. Hillman come after him with an axe, apparently. Marks dropped the charges, probably on account of the bird, you know how soft-hearted he can be.”

  Bream said this with no apparent irony.

  But it was Marks whose nickname was ‘The Chopper’, for the methods he used to keep his women in line, so the legend went.

  “So what the guv reckons is that Hillman put this gang together to try and get his revenge. Once we've got the rest of them, we'll get the story straight. Oh, hang about.” Bream's hair seemed to bristle like antennae as his eye caught a group of people coming out of a doorway of a bookies just ahead of them. “Here comes our bubble.”

  Georgios had had a girl on each arm – flush from the 1.30 at Kempton Park, he'd been about to take them both out for dinner. He hadn't come quietly but Wesker had parked the van around the corner so it wasn't too far for Pete to drag the screaming Greek, while Bream tried his best to hold off the harpies who'd rushed to his defence. Once inside, Pete had felt the man suddenly freeze when he came eyeball-to-eyeball with The Bastard.

  “Mr Wesker,” he said.“Please, I can explain.”

  Wesker smiled, teeth glinting, patting his truncheon across the palm of his hand. “I'm sure you can, me old darling. But first, I want to take a look at that motor of yours.”

  “Motor?” Georgios looked perplexed.

  “White Ford Anglia,” Bream read out of his notebook, “registration number PAR 147.”

  Georgios looked from Bream to Wesker. “Why?” was all he said.

  Wesker had then found a detonator in the White Ford Anglia, which had recently been serviced by Hillman's Motors of Shaftesbury Avenue.

  Then, on the night of the 26th of September, Grigson arrested a fifth man outside Le Continental. Ernie Fletcher was identified by Marks as part of the gang who had been threatening him on the night of the 21st, and who had fled when Togneri and Chesterfield had been nabbed.

  The whole mob had been up at the Old Bailey on 6 December 1962. Marks had testified, alongside one of his girls, how all five had waged a sustained campaign of intimidation against him in the weeks leading up to their arrests. Wesker had stood up tall in the dock as he confirmed the array of weapons that had been found, exuding a stentorian sense of gravity as he spoke. The jury hadn't taken long to convict. Hollow-eyed Togneri was sent down for seven years, Hillman and Georgio for five, Chesterfield for three and Fletcher for 15 months.

  Long sentences for men with no previous convictions.

  Pete didn't know what the Civil Liberties people had that he didn't, but he had worked long and hard trying to establish how Hillman could have put this gang together. Togneri and Chesterfield were neighbours. Togneri was friends with Hillman, but Chesterfield was adamant he didn't know the mechanic. Georgios had his car serviced at Hillman's garage but beyond that they were not known to socialise together. And the only thing that connected Fletcher was that he and Georgios had once had an argument in the street and threatened each other with the police. From his reaction in the van, Georgios obviously had had previous run-ins with Wesker – but whatever it was that he was about to explain to him had nothing to do with what he was ultimately charged with.

  The only thing that Pete felt certain of was that Hillman was the man Marks and Wesker really wanted. The key to it was probably the girl Hillman and Marks had fought over, one Gladys Small. But she didn't work for Marks any more, her name was phoney and she had no fixed abode. Whoever she was, she had just disappeared into the Soho night.

  Pete's brain ached. The clock told him it was a quarter to three now.

  There were still another seven names to go through.

  14 YOU’LL NEVER WALK ALONE

  “Well, well, well. If it ain't the little Welsh rabbit.”

  I look up and the room swims in and out of focus, the lights from the candles on each of the little tables making golden ribbons in front of my eyes. From out of the darkness a pair of cold grey eyes bearing down on me, the face behind the voice, the voice that I hoped never to hear again.

  I see him in his black suit and his white shirt and his black tie, the light dancing round him like a halo, only he wouldn't wear a halo, not him, not The Chopper. Scars on my arms from him, scars on my legs, on my back, on my belly, on my backside. Two years old but suddenly they hurt afresh, throbbing out a flesh warning that brings the room back into focus, the lights falling away, the sounds of music and chatter replacing them.

  “That's all you ever do is rabbit, ain't it girl?”

  He kneels down so his face is level with mine and I can see those long lines down the side of his mouth, deep as scars, his face the same shape as the tool of his trade, a hatchet with a haircut, pasty white skin with pockmarks and blackheads and those eyes, those cold, cold eyes.

  “What d’you want?” I hear myself say, my skin prickling with fear like a million tiny little electric shocks, telling me: Get out of the room, get out of the room…

  He waves a finger in my face.

  “See, there you go again, Welshie, all facking mouth – ain't you ever gonna learn to keep it shtum?”

  I shrink away, avert my gaze to the empty glass in front of me, smeared with lipstick and grubby fingerprints. My discomfort makes him laugh, makes him lean in closer so I can smell his breath, tobacco and whisky over rotten teeth. He whispers in my ear.

  “You're on the skids, ain't you Welshie? Big Tits Beryl's given you the boot I hear.”

  My mind shrinks and crawls. Big Tits Beryl: coat hanger in her beefy hand, thrashing the arse off me after I did something wrong… something with the lorry drivers… something I don't want to remember. Rubbing it better afterwards with baby oil, saying she was being lenient on me, doesn't want me to look like damaged goods or I won't be able to go out and earn for her, but it was for my own good. Rubbing it in greedily, hot fingers searching out the places her steel whip never reached, rubbing and rubbing, hot and red, fear and disgust rising up in me.

  I pick up the empty glass; think about smashing it into his face, adding to the scars there. Remember the chopper and put it down again.r />
  Get out of the room, get out of the room…

  “Ain't no one paying for any more of that mother's ruin?”

  He's changed his tone now, talking softer, more conciliatory, but still with that underscore of menace between us, white sparks dancing in the air.

  “I could have a job for you if you want it.” He stretches out that finger again, traces a line along my jaw. “Looks to me like you need it, girl. You ain't no Lily of the Valleys no more.” His grip tightens on my face, fingers sharp into my skin, he turns my head around to face him, bores into me with those cold, empty eyes.

  “But you'll do,” his mouth twisted into a sneer, his breath curdling the air, “for this little scene.”

  “I don't…” I begin but a wave of applause drowns out my words, people around me getting to their feet, applauding what ever it was that we were in here to see. If only I could remember where was here and what this was…

  The Chopper's hand under my elbow now, dragging me out of my seat, unsteady on my feet, the lights blurring and sliding now as he propels me away from the crowd, from the people and the noise, down a back set of stairs, some secret place that he has access to, always the secret places with The Chopper, down and down the staircase, music ringing tinny, distorted through the walls, out into the Soho night.

  I know this is Soho but I can't remember how, have I been here before, this back yard with cobbles, this dark space between the bright lights? It feels familiar, and yet…

  There's a black car waiting there, a long black car.

  The black car. Oh God, oh Jesus, I know what this car is for, what those two figures in the front seat want with me, those men, their faces lost in the darkness.

  I try to pull from The Chopper's grasp, but his hands are firm, digging into my elbows. Bruises blooming under his grip, I can feel them, and my feet slip on the cobbles, my worn-down heels that I never had the money to get mended sliding backwards. The Chopper hauls me over, curses dropping from his crooked lips, leans across to the man in the passenger seat.

  “This'll do for you,” he says. “Got enough gin in it to withstand most anything. Likes it rough anyway, silly little slag.”

  He opens the back door, bundles me in, says something else to the man in the passenger seat, something I can't hear.

  Here comes the candle to light you to bed.

  The seats are smooth, made of leather, it smells of cologne in here, clean and expensive, but I don't feel safe, not at all. There is a wooden partition between the men and me so that I can't see them, the windows are tinted so I can't see out either. The engine starts up and the car begins to move, not a car, no, a coffin on wheels. I reach for the door handle on the left side, there is nothing there.

  I turn to my right. She is sitting there in her blue and white striped summer dress, her brown hair cut in the style of an actress she had favoured, something not right about the tilt of her neck. I watch with horror as she puts up a hand to push her head back up and looks at me, her eyes filled with pity, and as she does a strange music begins to play, sounds like it's coming from a radio, like the music on the stairs it's tinny and distorted but I can hear a man laugh and a woman scream.

  I look at her ruined face and I start to think of all the times I cracked my heels on the Whitechapel Road earning brass for Beryl, all the dirty lorries and shabby cars and none of them so terrifying as this, this sleek, purring coffin taking me out of this world and into the next, a song I once heard in a coffee bar playing out my funeral march, mocking me. I look down at the stained skirt of my mustard-coloured dress and I remember what my ma said to me before she died, how I had to wait 'til I got married and then I could have a string of pearls as long as the sidings in Barry, but never take money from a man, no, never take money from a man, and I called myself Smart, but I was never smart. I should have listened to my ma but now it's too late, The Chopper's got his revenge on me, no peace in the valley for me. The Chopper has found me and come back for me and put me here in this coffin where I can't escape and soon it will be the earth, the cold, cold earth and I will lie there, my mouth open in a scream until the flesh falls away and there's nothing left, no funeral, no chapel, no ‘Abide With Me’ sung like a beautiful wave of peace by the men from down the mines. Just nothing: a long, loud, screaming nothing.

  I sat up in bed, a silent scream stuck in my throat, staring into the blackness, wondering where the hell I was and what the hell I had become. Only when I had realised that what I was looking at was just a sliver of orange from the streetlamp coming through the curtains in my room in Powis Terrace, did I realise that I wasn't the girl in the mustard-coloured dress.

  And that the noise I could hear was not the sound of a car taking me to my own funeral, just the dull thump of bass from someone playing a record in the house next door.

  I threw back the covers and slid out of bed, cold sweat sticking my nightie to my legs. Went into the bathroom and turned on the light, stared at my chalk-white face in the mirror above the sink.

  It was me looking back. Not the girl in the mustard dress from the café in Soho a few hours before. Not the girl in the blue-and-white striped dress come back from my nightmares of 1959…Or was I Alice, staring through the looking glass? Everything in the room seemed too white, too big, too bright. The porcelain under my fingers as cold as a mortuary slab.

  Then my stomach heaved.

  “Anarchists in leather jackets looking for aggro, bearded Communists in donkey jackets, Ban-the-Bombers, wild-eyed girls with straggly black hair, blue-jeaned Teddy boys and joyriding Beatniks…”

  Two weeks later, I stood in the middle of a packed tube, trying to read the paper while holding onto the overhead strap, swaying uncomfortably against my fellow passengers. I was due at the shop to meet Jenny, for her fittings for the opening. I hadn't anticipated sharing the carriage with this lot.

  But the night before, there had been a riot in Trafalgar Square, a protest against the visit of King Paul and Queen Frederika of Greece. Two thousand people tried to get down the Mall. I'd never heard of such violence on a march before.

  “As traffic came to a standstill, police helmets clattered across pavements, fists flew and prancing police horses bowled over crowds,” I read. “Some rioters, waving banners that read Down With The Nazi Queen, fought off bobbies from the top of a doubledecker bus. A few youths who made it to the Mall were stopped by flying tackles.”

  I thought of Chris, sitting in the café, the night I saw the girl in the mustard dress and then had that terrible dream about her.

  “It does all pale compared to people's lives and liberty.”

  The focus of the protestors’ rage was the assassination of the left-wing Greek MP Gregoris Lambrakis. One of the leading figures in the anti-nuclear movement, he had been run over by a lorry and killed after delivering a speech at a pacifist rally in Thessaloniki. No one was in any doubt that Greek government agents were responsible — even Harold Wilson had boycotted the state banquet.

  “Central London today,” I read on, “becomes virtually a ‘police state’. Some 5,000 uniformed and Special Branch men will be taking over the area…”

  “What you reading that for?”

  I looked up, saw a wide, ruddy face, a dense brown beard and a pair of beady brown eyes boring into me through bottle-thick specs.

  “I'm trying to understand,” I said, “what this is all about.”

  “Understand?” he said. “There ain't nothing in that paper that's gonna make you understand, love. They ain't gonna tell you the truth are they?”

  It was gone rush hour, so there were no pinstriped suits to defend the honour of the Establishment, only a scattering of middle-aged matrons who reacted to his words with a mass shifting of tweedy bottoms on seats, and tourists clutching their children close. Everyone else on the train appeared to be with him.

  “You ain't stupid, are you?” he said, softening his tone. “I bet you don't want nuclear missiles on our doorstep neither, do you?”

/>   “No,” I said, “no I don't.”

  “And you don't want Nazis sipping tea in Buck House.”

  I shook my head, holding his gaze.

  “But they,” he took the newspaper out of my hand and folded it in half, “they don't care what you think. Our interests are not their interests. They want us to know our place and stay in it, so they can carry on with their business of making money and screwing us over. But we don't have to take it. We can make a difference. Show them…”

  The train shuddered to a halt at Bond Street station. The anarchists, communists and beatniks made for the opening doors. But those beady eyes remained fixed on mine, a messianic flame burning in their depths.

  “You could get off here and join us,” he said. “Or you can carry on with your nose in a paper, understanding nothing.”

  He was so different from Chris, I thought, even though they would probably both be on the same side. I didn't doubt what he said was true, but I didn't like to be spoken to like a child. I thought he was one of those people who enjoyed going on demos just for the fighting and the chance to be self-righteous about it.

  “Come on Rob,” one of his companions put a hand on his shoulder, “it's out here for Claridge's.”

  “Yeah,” he said, “I know.” He looked back at me. “You coming?” he said.

  “People's lives and liberty…”

  “No,” I said.

  He smiled, a sardonic curl of his top lip. “You don't want to know, do you? Well,” he handed me back my paper, “sweet dreams then, darlin’. Just remember, when they finally come for you, there won't be no one left to defend you.”

  His words were still echoing in my mind as I put the key into the shop door on Marlborough Court.