Bent

by Joe Thomas

  Challenor smiles — wolfish. He wonders how Lionel will maintain his stylish demeanour, his rakish allure, inside, inside with those animals; maintain his perm, in short, in a land where a dandyish sense is not always best appreciated.

  Challenor laughs. Poor old Lionel and his perm -

  He wonders if he’ll go down Brixton, meet up with old Oliva and his mob -

  What a fucking result, eh?

  *

  Next morning —

  The hatch is open and the guard collecting the rations has gone. Time for you to move. You dress in your skirt and shawl and rub more plaster on your cheeks.

  Christy you think, most old Italian peasant birds don’t look too clever after that life of hard work, but they’re fucking Cinderella compared to you.

  Down to the exercise yard, wrapped up in a great coat.

  The lads mill around you, shuffle as a group, in a circle, you in the middle, towards the hatch —

  You peer through it: the corridor that leads to a door that leads to the outside of the main building is empty.

  Here we fucking go, you say.

  Three of the lads lift you up, gather your skirt and heave you through the hatch.

  ‘Best of luck, Tanky,’ you hear.

  ‘Who dares wins,’ you whisper back.

  And then, again, you’re on your own.

  *

  Challenor is sauntering about West End Central. He's got his hands in his pockets. He's whistling. He's waltzing about in finest seafaring style, not a care, oh no, son, not a care in the world, not a care in the old world.

  He's top dog, top boy, top banana. King Challenor rules -

  King Challenor rules the roost, all right. Oh yes, he certainly does, King Challenor. The accolades are pouring in. Brass is happy. The Soho sewer is running cleaner. There are a few more faces inside. And there is a good deal less criminal activity, it appears, on the streets, on Challenor's streets, on King Challenor's streets.

  And if his methods are a little unorthodox, if he doesn’t exactly play by the rules, doesn’t always do things by the book, well, who cares. A Maurice Harding, a very well-respected CID, a man who does not suffer fools, not a man to heap praise, not an effusive man, has been quoted as saying: ‘I like Challenor. He's nicking the right people at the right time.’

  Challenor thinks about this quote and it helps him to ignore the whispers of his so-called, self-proclaimed immunity to censure.

  Challenor's heard that he reckons he's untouchable, invincible. That his war record, that what he did in Italy and France means that no one will ever get the better of him.

  Heavy lies the crown, old son.

  Shrug all that off.

  He's also heard something else, might be the biggest compliment he's ever had.

  He's heard that the Twins are offering a grand to anyone without a criminal record who will let Challenor stitch them up, and then turn the tables on him, bringing about his downfall.

  Yeah, Challenor's heard this. Krays are behind it, so they say, but it's a joint effort, apparently.

  The Soho criminal fraternity are not happy.

  The Krays can fuck off, Challenor thinks, smiling. He's only chased Reggie down Shaftesbury Avenue not that long ago, after all.

  He escorted the pair of them back to East London on another night. They were civil enough about it, that evening.

  And most recently, early summer, 1963, Challenor had rung his old contact David Parkinson to see if they were in a club in Gerrard Street.

  And they certainly were.

  But by the time Challenor arrived, they’d legged it.

  Someone in the rubber-heeled squad must have had a word.

  *

  You shuffle down the corridor. The corridor feels endless. You want to hurry, but you know you mustn’t. The corridor goes on and on —

  The corridor is lined by offices. A door opens —

  You shuffle on, trying not to look at the Jerry orderly who bustles past, weighed down by a folder of documents.

  He doesn’t even notice you.

  Christ, you think. What the hell are you doing?

  You reach the end of the corridor, the end of this endless corridor, and at the end of this endless corridor, there is a door.

  You push the door at the end of this endless corridor, you push it and it opens —

  It opens and you’re outside the main building, with one more obstacle to pass —

  The perimeter fence gate, thirty yards away, guarded by two soldiers.

  You breathe. You breathe in and out. You tighten the shawl around your shoulders. You do not look at the rifles that the soldiers carry.

  You have walked three hundred miles since landing in Italy, on that cool, dark, blue, black night, in Italy, in a tree, somewhere in northern Italy —

  But these thirty yards are further than this, longer than the three hundred miles you have walked across this beautiful country, Italy.

  You believe that your average German is an arrogant sod. And you’re banking on it now. They didn’t pick you at the church on Christmas Eve, after all?

  You’re trying to reassure yourself. You take one step, then another. One more step, then another step. You shuffle on, your shawl wrapped tight, your blanket skirt slipping —

  No! It's not the skirt, it's your long johns, your long johns that are slipping!

  You wriggle and pull as you walk, you keep walking, you mustn’t stop —

  Fifteen yards.

  Your voice echoes in your head: this is too good to last.

  Five yards. And a couple more steps, and you’re there, you’re at the gate and you’re turning the handle, and, thank Christ, you were right about your average German, there's no way on God's earth either of these fuckers is going to help an old Italian peasant woman, no way they’re going to open the door and stand aside for an ugly, old Italian peasant woman —

  And you’re through.

  And your long johns have just about stayed up.

  And you’re walking down the road, ambling down the road, shuffling down the road and an old man — an ancient man — clatters by in a donkey-drawn cart and he invites you to hop in and you’re away —

  And you get your bearings and you know that in not too long, the beatings and hunger behind you, you’ll be back with Mamma and the others at the Eliseio farm.

  Who dares wins.

  *

  Thing is, Challenor's also hearing that the unhappy Soho criminal fraternity have their own nickname for him -

  King Cunt.

  Bent

  After Italy came France in August 1944, and if the Italian job made Tanky, then Operation Wallace — as the behind-the-lines jaunt across north-western France from Orleans to Belfort, in the forest of Châtillon, just north of Dijon was known - made 2SAS.

  Major Roy Farran led twenty jeeps and sixty men. They were parachuted in and just got on with it. The goal: cause a bit of chaos, post-D-Day, to facilitate the advance of the American Third Army. Chaos meaning blow shit up and fuck up a few Jerries while they were at it. All a bit Boys’ Own, I know, but why not? It worked, after all.

  This was also my grandad's operation. He and Tanky had first met on training, then they were together on the submarine on Operation Marigold off the coast of Sardinia.

  And it made him, I reckon. Hard not to be formed by an experience like that.

  I wear his engagement ring to this day. It saved his life during Operation Wallace. His jeep tore around a corner and there was a Jerry roadblock. They slammed on the brakes and reversed back when the Krauts opened up. One of the lads tumbled out of the jeep and got one in the neck. My grandad grabbed the roll bar, his ring caught, and he clung on and stayed in. Next day, they blew that roadblock back to wherever it came from.

  The ring lasted another fifty years, despite the thin, bent band caused by that moment of purchase. After my grandad died, I got the ring. I wore it for six months and then it snapped in a pocket when I was playing pool in the pu
b. My grandmother laughed when I told her. I got it fixed easily enough and put it straight back on.

  Major Farran wrote a book called Winged Dagger and there is a hefty chapter on Operation Wallace. My grandad is mentioned several times. During the battle of Châtillon, a dozen SAS killed a hundred Germans, wounded many more, and destroyed nine trucks, four cars and a motorcycle.

  Farran is an entertaining writer.

  I was astonished to see a German machine-gun post on each side, facing outwards... I could not think what to do, so we sat in a garden and waited. Lieutenant Pinci begged a bottle of wine, bread and cheese from a French cottage, so we had lunch.

  I tossed up which German we should shoot in the back and it turned out to be the left-hand one. Sergeant Young took careful aim through his carbine and when I gave the word, he pulled the trigger.

  Sergeant Young: that's my grandad. He was certainly a marksman. At the end of the war, when they were up in Norway, basically hanging out, he heard my grandma was pregnant with my aunt. Farran let him go and he hitched a lift with a fishing boat that was crossing the North Sea. Problem was, he realised, there was a shit-tonne of mines all about the place and the skipper wasn’t exactly overly cautious in his approach to navigation, or steering. Cavalier doesn’t cover it. So my grandad stayed up for two days and two nights at the front of the boat with his trusty carbine, picking them off, any mines that popped up in the way.

  And he got home in time to see Auntie Liz born.

  Why am I telling you all this?

  Because I’m proud of my grandad, immensely proud of what he did, of how he lived his life. My mum always says that when they went camping in the summers, down in France or Spain, after the war, he was always the first to talk to any German holidaymakers. Something he understood: most of them were just young lads, like he was, like Tanky was, like Big Jim Mackie was, like Tojo was, like Cas Carpenter was, like Freddie Baines and Will Fyffe, like Pouch Maybury and ‘Umbriago’, like Larry Brownlee and Paddy McCann, like Sammy Harrison and Jake Manders, younger lads, all of them, than I am now - much younger. Operation Wallace lasted a month, a month behind the lines, a month when around every corner it was likely a German machine post was waiting to rip you apart, and the total number of trucks they blew up was something like ninety-five.

  The operation was, in Tanky's words, a sophisticated form of licensed mugging.

  So, yeah, I’m proud of my grandad and everything he did. One good little story: my mum's first husband was a conscientious objector. I know, right? Anyway, she decided that the best time for him to meet her old man was at an SAS reunion. Sense of humour on her, my mum. So there's this handsome little ratty man scurrying about, all confident, apparently, chatty and fun, meeting all this SAS mob, and not a single one of them was anything other than friendly, welcoming, understanding of this lad's position, his decision to conscientiously object to National Service. And you know why? Because none of them would wish what they did on anyone. They did what they did so there would be no war.

  I’m proud of my grandad, and there's barely a day when I don’t wish I could say it. I was a kid when he died. I didn’t know what it meant, to be proud. I often wonder if he’d be proud of me, of the man I’ve become.

  I’m proud of everything he did, proud of how he lived his life.

  But I’m not sure quite how Tanky lived his life -

  And I’m definitely not proud of everything he ever did.

  Seven

  ‘The biggest brick for the biggest boy! July nth, 1963

  Challenor is steaming. Challenor is furious. Challenor is not a happy chap.

  He's right in the thick of an investigation into a ‘near beer’ and clip-joint establishment on Frith Street called the Boulevard club. He loves the old ‘near beer’ terminology: a place that waters down its lager to such an extent it doesn’t need a licence for booze. Clip joint is not such a pleasant description of what that entails. He's never quite worked it out: clip? You promise a punter a bird, a lady of the night, and off you go to her rooms, and instead of a leg over, you have all the cash liberated from your pocket.

  Clipped.

  And he's making progress, too. He's had Patricia ‘Fat Pat’ Hawkins in, the Madame of the operation, and ‘Black’ Harold Padmore, a strapping Barbadian who used to be a cricketer but now only bowls wrong ‘uns. Yeah, he's making progress. There's been more than a few punters, a few marks, who’ve left the Boulevard's upstairs rooms after feeling a touch of ‘Black’ Harold's blade.

  So, Challenor is furious to have this little job interrupted.

  He knows he went a bit far with Fat Pat, shouldn’t have touched her. ‘May God forgive you,’ she’d said. ‘He probably won’t,’ Challenor had replied. And it wasn’t really on to be singing that old song by Danny Kaye and The Andrews Sisters, ‘Bongo, bongo, bongo, I don’t want to leave the Congo’ as he laid into old Harold. He may have gone a bit far there. Not sure they got the joke; not sure they understood the psychology behind this particular witness intimidation. PC Robb looked a bit shocked by it, too, Challenor thinks. ‘Take the black bastard out of my sight,’ Challenor told him, after he’d handed Padmore a lively tune-up. ‘I wish I lived in South Africa,’ Challenor had said. ‘I’d have a spade for breakfast every morning.’ No, old PC Robb didn’t look too sure about that remark, Challenor thinks.

  Yeah, maybe I went a bit far, he concedes.

  On the other hand, justice prevailed, he thinks, when push came to shove. He got the confession, didn’t he?

  End of the day, Challenor knows which way the court will vote when it comes to the testimonies, which way the wind blows: he is white, after all. And Padmore's a known face, so Brass is quite happy for him to take a kicking, as one of the more ‘louche’ elements of old Soho. And Challenor's a highly respected detective, of course, the Scourge of Soho, war hero, King Challenor.

  King Cunt.

  Challenor had a word with Doris after that. He told her: ‘If anyone tells you I’m having a breakdown, you mustn’t worry about it, it's all part of a plan.’

  But this plan is being interrupted by a state fucking visit, from fucking Queen Frederika of Greece, Elizabeth II's own third cousin, the great-granddaughter of Queen Victoria and Kaiser Wilhelm II, and who, growing up in Germany, was a fully fledged member of the Hitler Youth in the 1930s.

  That might be enough, but that's not why Challenor is incandescent with a sort of low-level rage, a nagging wrath.

  No, he's fed up because a whole mob of lefties and anarchists and the old Committee of 100 have been protesting outside Claridge's on Brook Street — where the gorgeous Greek Queen is parking her royal backside - for the last couple of days, and just the evening before, Challenor tended to the wounds of Police Inspector George Brooks, who had been hit slap-bang in the face by a brick thrown by one of these so-called political protestors, as he was on duty, just doing his job, outside Claridge's itself.

  Challenor's had it with this lefty mob. And he's after them.

  Soho, after all, and the odd bit of posh Mayfair, is, lest any cunt forget, his kingdom.

  *

  Challenor grabs Police Constable David John Oakey, one of the aides to CID, and tells him: ‘Get your glad rags on, young man, we’re going out.’

  Challenor's heard that there are going to be around fifteen hundred officers out on the streets around Claridge's tonight. Officers of all rank, all file, all sorts out, some sympathisers with the protestors, others out to break heads -

  Challenor knows what he fancies:

  A few collars felt. Some arrests.

  He likes to keep his arrest rate up, does Challenor. Always has. There was a time, back in Croydon, on his first beat, he’d do that by nicking the homeless. It was a winner: they were happy as they got a bed and a bit of shelter for the night -

  And Challenor made his numbers.

  ‘Come on, son,’ Challenor says to Oakey, as he shoulders the front door of West End Central. They push up Bond Street, do a le
ft onto Avery Row, and just ahead, on Brook Street, there is a sizeable crowd intent, it appears, on mischief. It is just after eight o’clock in the evening. It is a balmy evening. The light is gorgeous, Challenor thinks, a real fat glow to it, a definite balm, a right old summer's night for trouble.

  ‘It looks like a naughty group, does it not, David?’

  Oakey nods. ‘What's the brief, guv?’

  Challenor grins. ‘We are after any chaps with rocks and bricks and other makeshift offensive weapons. You know the drill.’

  Oakey nods again. He does know the drill. It's why Challenor strong-armed him out the door for himself.

  Brook Street is heaving. It's a real mass of bodies, all swaying, moving this way and that, like a football crowd, or a Rolling Stones show, Challenor thinks. Fewer tarts, mind.

  There are banners. One says: ‘Lambrakis R.I.P’

  Challenor recognises the name. It's why they’re here, really. A Greek political activist killed in fairly mysterious - and by mysterious, Challenor means very dodgy - circumstances.

  He nods at the banner. ‘Any excuse for a meet, eh, David?’

  Oakey nods once more. They peer about them, try and get some purchase on what sort of a crowd they’re dealing with here.

  ‘Keep a close eye on that banner, David,’ Challenor says.

  Challenor is wearing a long coat with deep pockets, and his old Tank Corps beret -

  Tanky's about.

  He figured he’d fit in with all the anarchists and the militants in a sort of faux-military get-up.

  Though what do they know, of course, these anarchists and militants, about real conflict?

  Fuck all. Throwing bricks mob-handed? Wankers.

  Challenor can see uniformed officers mixing it up in the fray. He can see the odd plainclothes jostle the less-savoury-looking elements.

  The air is thick with promise.

  It's one of those nights, Challenor thinks. His eyes narrow as he snakes this way and that. The air is, in fact, thick with the smell of jazz cigarettes, Challenor thinks. Not his remit.

  Challenor and Oakey worm through the crowds. It is a pertinent fucking contrast, the towers flanking a marching band of anti-royalists. Or pro-democrats. These days it's all so black and white it's hard to tell the difference, know where the, you know, know where the ideological lines are drawn and that.