The Soho Noir Series

by Mark Dawson

  Billy went back to the sitting room and opened the only door that had been left closed. It gave onto a small study: a desk and a single chair, a standard lamp, a gramophone, neat piles of stationery. He turned on the lamp and sat in the chair. He opened the desk drawers, one by one, reading through the papers inside and tossing them behind him when he was done. There was nothing of interest. The final drawer was locked. He took a metal ruler from the desk and inserted it between drawer and pedestal. A solid yank: the lock shattered and the drawer slid open. An unsealed envelope was inside. He took it out. It was fat and heavy. He slipped his fingers inside and withdrew a wad of pound notes, fifty or sixty of them. There was a letter attached to the envelope with a paper clip. Billy unfolded it and read:

  Dear Jack,

  Your father’s account at the hospital is overdrawn and I do not have the ready funds to meet it. I realise that it was only the other day that you made your last remittance, but there any possibility that you could make another? I would gladly pay myself, but I have paid the money you gave me to the builders so that they can begin work on the restaurant and I am not sure how easy it would be to get it back.

  Regards,

  Jimmy

  And the unsent reply, marked with today’s date.

  Dear Jimmy,

  I’m afraid this might be the last payment, at least for a little while. I trust it is sufficient to put father’s account back into credit. Things are not going quite as well as I had expected, although I am taking steps to rectify them. In the meantime, I hope that the refurbishment is proceeding to plan. I will be in touch.

  Jack

  Billy turned took the envelope and turned it over.

  It was addressed to the Shangri-La Restaurant, Dean Street, London.

  He went through the rest of the drawer. He found three passports and flicked through them with a growing sense of disbelief. The first was for Edward Fabian, the second was for Jack Stern and the third was for Roger Artis. The photograph in each was of Fabian. He found different Registration Cards, different Ration Books and another hundred or so pound notes. Billy laid them all out on the desk.

  He had known something was wrong as soon as the man had said Fabian was his brother. The poor fellow had said that he hadn’t seen him for years, since the start of the Blitz, that they had been close up until then and that he just couldn’t understand what had happened so that he had just vanished into thin air. In the end, the family had assumed that he must have been killed in the bombings. But then he had seen the story in the paper and he hadn’t been able to believe it. The picture was of a different person, that was true, but everything else was exactly right: the name, his age, the university at Cambridge, the degree in medicine. Perhaps the picture was a mistake? He had wanted to speak to him and Billy had taken his details and promised to pass them on. He wouldn’t do that, of course, there would be no point. He had known, then, what Fabian must have done and, if he was right, there wouldn’t be much of anything left for the fellow after Billy was finished with him.

  He pulled the drawer all the way out and turned it over, shaking everything that was left out onto the floor. A packet of cigarettes. Pens. A stapler. Some paper clips. Scraps of paper. Army documents. When the drawer was finally empty, he traced the toe of his shoe through the debris on the floor. Something glittered back up at him. He knelt down and sorted through the rubbish with his hands until he found it.

  A platinum ring. A large oval diamond set in the centre. Smaller pear-shaped stones all the way around.

  Billy recognised it at once. He had been there with Joseph when he bought it. Tiffany on New Bond Street. It was the same day that he had asked him to be his best man. The day after he came back from Paris.

  He thought for a moment; it didn’t make sense. He sat down in the chair and thought about it some more. He cleared a way through the confusion to leave just one possible reason why Fabian would have the ring.

  Fabian was working for Jack Spot.

  And Fabian wasn’t really Fabian at all.

  He laughed, unable to stop himself, the laughter driven by the anticipation at what he would now be able to do. He looked again at the passports and documents and the ring. It was too good to be true. He would finally be able to balance the ledger. All those frustrations, those sneers and snide remarks, so much to pay him back for. This was quite a haul. It was better than he could ever have hoped for.

  52

  EDWARD STIRRED GROGGILY at the early morning sun shone through the open window, motes of dust drifting lazily though the golden shafts. He settled back against the mattress, allowing himself the luxury of waking gradually. He had a hangover, he discovered, a dull throb in his temples and an insistent ache in his bones. He and Chiara had enjoyed a splendid night, returning to the Ritz for the meal that Edward had originally promised and then drinking at the hotel’s bar until two in the morning. He had drunkenly suggested they take a room there rather than return to his apartment but she had chided him for his extravagance, and they had taken a taxi home and gone straight to bed. He felt her weight beside him, and the warmth from her body against his skin.

  He got out of bed gently, so as not to wake her. Chiara had bought him a gift as they wandered around the West End yesterday: a luxurious Egyptian cotton dressing gown from Dickins & Jones. Edward pulled it on and went through into the living room. They had barely paused there the night before, removing their coats and shoes before repairing to the bedroom. Now, with the full light of the morning blazing through the uncovered window, he could see that something was wrong. The door to his study was ajar and he always kept it closed. He crossed the room and touched it with careful fingertips, then pushed it open. The room beyond was in a mess: papers had been removed from the desk drawers and strewn around the room, books had been tipped from the shelves, the standard lamp was lit, the chair was overturned. Edward stepped inside and quietly shut the door behind him. He went to the desk; the most important drawer had been forced, the wood splintered and torn around the lock. He pulled it all the way open and searched inside. Edward felt the blood go out of his face. He felt faint. His passports, his correspondence, his money; it had all been taken.

  He stood in the middle of the small room, his hands braced against the desk to stop him from falling. He stared vacantly out of the window at the jagged horizon of rooftops and chimneypots, feeling nothing except a faint, dreamlike panic. Chiara was sleeping in the next room but she suddenly seemed hopelessly far away. He was friendless and alone, that was the thing he had to remember. He always had been, and nothing had changed. A cold shiver ran up and down his spine and then, much too suddenly for him to react, he vomited. The first gout fell across the papers on the carpet but the second, more powerful, he managed to direct into the wastepaper basket. His head began ringing as if he were about to faint, and the absurdity of his faintness, plus the danger of collapsing and having Chiara find him dazed and prostrate on the floor amid all this mess, made him gather his strength and walk slowly and carefully back into the sitting room, then into the kitchen, and then to drink a pint of cold water.

  He opened the window and breathed in the fresh air deeply. He wasn’t going to faint, he told himself. He was going to compose himself, recover his equanimity and think rationally about what he had to do. He went back into the sitting room and quietly closed the door to the study, then he went into the bathroom and stood under a cold shower for ten minutes, letting the water run all over his body, scrubbing it into his scalp and face, the icy cold driving away the dazed panic so that he could think clearly. He turned off the shower, dried himself and, after quietly collecting his clothes from the bedroom so as not to disturb Chiara, dressed in the lounge.

  He wanted to go out and take a walk but he knew he couldn’t leave Chiara in the flat. He stood looking at the disorganised clutter on the desk, the acrid tang of his own vomit starting to fill his nostrils. For a moment, he wondered if he had the strength or the energy to straighten it all out. It annoyed
him how foolish he had been. Those things should have been hidden properly, under the floorboards or put away in a safety deposit box. He had meant to, too, but he had continually put it off. Lazy and stupid, he cursed himself. He banged his fist against the desk. Lazy and stupid and now he was going to have to pay for it.

  He heard the sound of the mattress as Chiara shifted her weight on it, and then the creak of the floorboards. He closed the door to the study, took the bin into the kitchen and washed it out. He splashed his face with cold water, scrubbed it dry with a tea towel and took a deep breath, preparing himself to start the day.

  53

  THE SHANGRI-LA WAS EASY TO FIND. It was on Dean Street, towards Theatreland and Shaftesbury Avenue. A great spot, Billy thought. Slap bang in the middle of the action. Just the kind of place that out-of-town theatregoers would visit before their shows, a little bit of authentic Soho atmosphere but not too much. The place was shut at the moment. The windows were covered with paper but Billy found a gap that he could peer through. The place was in the middle of a redecoration: the tables were covered with drop sheets, pots of opened paint were lined up, a step-ladder rested against the wall. There was a man inside, spreading out another sheet over the bar. Billy knocked on the window. The man shook his head and mouthed that he was closed. Billy knocked again, smiling, and pointed to the door. The man weighed down the ends of the cloth with a pot of paint, rubbed his dirty hands against the apron he was wearing, came over and opened up.

  “Sorry, pal, we’re closed. We’ll be open again next week.” The man was old, in his early sixties perhaps. He was thin, with wispy greyish-black hair and large grey eyes that seemed to wobble in his head as if he was cockeyed. He wore a pair of square glasses that were marked with tiny flecks of white paint.

  “Are you the proprietor?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s Jimmy, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” he said carefully. A flicker of suspicion passed across the man’s face and there was a natural wariness in his eyes. “Who’s asking?”

  “Can I come in for a moment?”

  “I said we’re closed.”

  Billy looked straight at him. “It’s about Jack. Jack Stern? It’s important.”

  He watched as the man’s face clouded with a wariness that was quickly cleared by a shrug and a shake of the head. “Afraid I don’t know anyone by that name,” he said, breezily. “You must have me mistaken for someone else. Good day to you.”

  He smiled and started to close the door but Billy was too quick. He jerked his body forwards, catching the frame against his shoulder and bouncing it backwards. It thudded into the man’s chest and he staggered into the restaurant. Billy followed inside, shutting the door behind him. He slid the bolt across and pulled down the blind.

  “Look here,” the man protested angrily. “What’s your game, mate?”

  Billy looked around. There was a small, framed picture on the wall above the bar. It was of the man, Jimmy, and a young boy. Billy recognised him. He was much younger then, wearing chef’s whites. Billy guessed the photograph must have been ten years old. The younger man was Fabian. The shape of the face, the hair, the same knowing look in his eyes; there was no doubt about it.

  “That’s him,” he said, chin-nodding towards the photograph. “He calls himself Edward now, but I know that ain’t his real name. He’s been lying to me for weeks.”

  “That’s a friend of the family,” the man said. “Really, sir, I don’t know what you’re talking about. Please, just leave––I don’t want any trouble.”

  “‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’” Billy mimicked. “They always say that.” He reached into his pocket and slipped the fingers of his right hand into a pair of brass knucks. “They don’t say it for long, though.” He closed his fist, took his hand out of his pocket and, without any other warning, rabbit-punched the old man. He went down, wheezing and gasping, falling to his knees. “Now then,” Billy said as he stood above him. “I want me and you to have a little chat, alright? You’re going to tell me everything about Jack Stern. Everything. I won’t lie and say I’d rather we could keep it civil. Your boy’s caused me a lot of problems. I’ve got what you might call a lot of frustration––I need to work it all out.”

  54

  SO JOSEPH HAD ASKED BILLY to be his best man. Edward knew that the two of them had grown up together, and that they had history, but he wanted to tell Joseph that that had been years ago, when they were both boys, that they hadn’t seen each other all the while he had been fighting and that, most of all, couldn’t he see, after all that time apart, that Billy was no good? Couldn’t he see that he was impetuous, unreliable, prone to jealousy, violent, and, most damning of all, that he was dull and stupid and just so awfully boring?

  He had been irritated by the predictability of the news but he had quickly reminded himself that it did not really matter. He had been a little surprised to have been invited to the evening at all. He was grateful for that. He knew that he had very nearly lost his chance with Joseph altogether, and that he had been given a reprieve.

  It had fallen to Billy to organise the stag party. The group had gathered for dinner at Claridges and, after enjoying the meal, they had taken a drunken tour of their favourite Soho haunts. The evening had been especially raucous. There had been a dozen of them at the start of the night and they had collected hangers-on as they stumbled around Soho’s streets and alleys. By the time they reached the Alhambra they were nearer thirty. They arrived at a little after midnight, everyone drunk except Edward. He was keeping a careful eye on the amount that he drank. He felt as if he was negotiating a high-wire above a precipitous chasm and he couldn’t risk losing control.

  The upstairs room had been reserved for the party and the most attractive of the barmaids were deputed to serve them for as long as they had a thirst. Jack McVitie had spoken to the Malts and arranged for three strippers to provide the entertainment and a temporary stage had been erected at one end of the room for them. The first of the girls, a busty redhead who teetered on vertiginous heels, had just negotiated the shallow step up to the stage and was beginning her routine. Joseph, Jack and Billy were sat at a table that offered the best view of the performance. Joseph had been identified as the groom and the redhead was lavishing her attention on him. The girl finished her routine, festooning her underwear around Joseph’s head. He stood and kissed her on the lips, the men hollering their approval, and pressed a note in her hand.

  Edward stood with his back against the bar and took it all in. Billy twisted around, craning his neck until he found him. He smiled at him for the third or fourth time that night: a cold smile laced with enmity and hatred.

  Edward had not seen Joseph since Paris. They had shared a slightly rueful greeting at the start of the evening but they had not yet had the opportunity to speak properly. Now, though, he disengaged himself from the others and made his way across the room to the bar. Edward was suddenly nervous. He had the strange feeling that his brain remained calm and rational but that his body was out of control and that, unless he held himself tight, he would be unable to stop his muscles from trembling. He thrust his hands into his pockets, his fists clenched, and then took them out again, moulding his fingers around the shape of his glass.

  Joseph sat next to him. “Keeping yourself to yourself, Doc. Having fun?”

  “Just catching my breath. Are you enjoying yourself?”

  “I’ll say. You lads have done me proud.”

  Edward looked over at where Billy was standing with Jack McVitie. “Billy’s done a grand job,” he forced himself to say.

  Joseph looked thoughtful, his knees splayed and a hand pressed against his knee. “I know you don’t like him,” he said, “and I know he can be a right pain in the arse, but you’ve got to remember I’ve known him since we were nippers, and, when you think about it, what is the best man, anyway? It’s just a symbolic thing. Doesn’t actually mean anything. I thought it would be the right thing to do.
He has his problems but I’ve treated him badly lately. I want him to see this as an olive branch.”

  “You don’t think I’ve done anything to make matters worse?”

  “No, nothing deliberate, but I think you probably need to cut him some more slack. You intimidate him––Jesus, Doc, you intimidate me some of the time. You’re an educated man, a University man, Billy knows you’re clever, more than he is, I think it makes him feel very self-conscious. Me too, sometimes, if I’m honest.”

  “I’m sorry,” Edward said. This was all very annoying but there was little he could do about it now. He felt a moment of awkwardness but Joseph alleviated it by putting his arm around him and hugging him close. “Look, Doc, I’m sorry about what happened in Paris. It was bloody ridiculous. I said some awful things. I don’t know what came over me.”

  “I’m sorry, too,” Edward admitted. “There’s been such a lot going on, it’s been difficult.”

  “That’s no excuse.”

  “No. But I’m sorry if you think I was interfering. ”

  “You weren’t. You’re frustrated. I am, too.”

  “But I shan’t mention it again.” He paused. “What about what you said about us working together?”

  “No,” Joseph said, shaking his head. “We’ll finish Honeybourne and then call it quits.” He noticed Edward’s irritation and clapped him firmly on the shoulder. “Look, Doc, you just need to think about it for a moment. You’re a clever bloke, you know what the right thing to do is––it’s annoying but you know it’s for the best. You don’t really want to get involved with all that, do you? Not really. It’s got no future. I’m not daft, I know we’ll get nicked eventually. And I’ve been inside, Doc, remember: it’s bloody awful. Why would you want to take that chance when you’ve got all that other stuff going for you? If you get nicked, and you get yourself a record, that’ll be that for you, won’t it? There’ll be no medicine then. You don’t get doctors who are ex-cons, do you? You’ll have thrown away everything that you’ve worked for.” He paused again, and took a drink. “Don’t look be so glum. You know you’ll always be a good pal to me, don’t you?”