Duffy (11 page)

‘Come in, love,’ she said, and backed into the room. As she did so she let the dressing gown fall back so that he could see a black garter belt and stockings and a black bra.

‘Nothing dirty,’ she announced, before he had time to close the door. ‘I don’t do nothing dirty. I don’t do it up the bum and I keep me mouth to meself. It’s ten if you want it straight, eight for the hands, an extra two if you want to see me tits; and there’re a few other things I might do but you’ve gotta ask for them.’

‘Renée,’ he said, ‘I’m Duffy.’

‘Sorry, love, never remember a face in my business.’

‘No, I’m Duffy, I’m not a client…’

Renée looked up, very cross.

‘What d’yer mean, you’re not a fucking client? Whatcher doing here if yer not a client?’ She looked at him again, then suddenly she recognised him.

‘Duffy. Of course. Duffy.’ She looked embarrassed. ‘Why didn’t you stop me in the sales spiel, you bastard?’

‘Didn’t have time. You never let a fellow get in edgeways, Renée, did you?’

‘I’d let him in edgeways; just wouldn’t let him in from the back. Hey, Duffy, what’ve you come to see me for?’ She pulled her dressing gown across her body.
‘And
I let you see what’s become of me. I oughta charge you for that, Duffy. What’ve you come to see me for?’

‘Well…’

‘Oh, Christ, I’ve just remembered. I’ve just remembered why you stopped coming to see me. I didn’t know you were bent, Duffy. I mean, I don’t judge, but I didn’t know you were bent. Bent and little boys, it was, wasn’t it, Duffy, that’s what they said. I don’t judge, but little boys I don’t approve of, I’d better tell you that straight out.’

‘It wasn’t little boys.’ Duffy was furious. Is that what the whisper was? ‘Who said it was little boys?’

‘Oh, you know, that’s what they said. People. You don’t remember who.’

‘It was a fit-up, Renée. I was fitted up by someone to have me thrown out. The kid said he was nineteen when the coppers kicked the door in, but he could have been twenty-five. I thought he was, but he told the blues he was nineteen. It was a fit-up, Renée.’

‘Sorry to hear it, Duffy.’ Renée was sceptical about coppers who were flung out of the force; they always said they’d been fitted up. Still, Duffy had always seemed to be fairly honest.

‘Is that why you never took Renée’s Christmas box, Duffy? ’Cos you were bent?’

‘I was only a bit bent, Renée. I like fish as well as meat. It’s no problem to me. But it wasn’t little boys; it’s
never
been little boys.’ Duffy was still cross. Who did he have to thank for that: fucking Sullivan? Another of his little avuncular acts?

‘O.K., Duffy, calm down.’

‘And I didn’t take the Christmas box because, well, for one thing I knew you were much too smart not to find a use for it later. I knew that I’d be after someone, or a mate of mine might be, and then there’d be a phone call from our Renée and she’d say, “Duffy, remember that Christmas box? Well, now I’ve got a little something to ask you in return.” I knew you were much too sharp not to use that sooner or later.’

‘You’re no fool, Duffy.’

Duffy nodded agreement; with someone like Renée you always had to work out exactly where you stood.

‘Now, what have you come back for if it’s not to add to poor old Renée’s pension fund?’

‘Well, I might be able to make a contribution. It’s information I need, Renée.’

‘Not back in the force, are you?’

‘No. I’m – well, let’s say I’m acting in a freelance capacity for a certain party who’s being preshed locally.’

‘What’s wrong with the wonderful boys in blue?’

‘Well, it looks as if all their blind eyes are pointing in the same direction at the moment if you can imagine.’

‘I might have heard of it happening before. And so this particular fellow called for Duffy?’

‘All right.’

‘Why you?’

‘I’d been recommended.’

That was another thing which Duffy was puzzling over: who’d recommended him to McKechnie. What had he said? ‘I asked around’? Where had he asked, Duffy wondered. Certainly nowhere near his last two jobs – advising on a burglar-alarm system for a factory in Hounslow, and telling a slice of posh trash where to hide her jewels. (She’d been too mean to insure them or buy a safe and too lazy to put them in the bank and take them out when she needed them: she just wanted Duffy to go round the house with her and tell her the last place a thief would think of looking. She’d been reading some story, she said, where something had been cleverly hidden in the most obvious place and no one had ever found it: wasn’t that
such
a good idea? Duffy told her that the most obvious place for her jewels was in her jewel box, and what chance did she think there was of burglars looking there? She’d looked a bit put down, and Duffy went on to rubbish the whole theory of keeping things in obvious places: lots of burglars are so thick they only look in obvious places. So what about somewhere that isn’t
terribly
obvious and isn’t
terribly
difficult, she asked? Then the medium-grade burglars find your jewels, Duffy said. So they settled for the hardest place after all. Then it turned out that what she’d
actually
been thinking about was the elephant’s-foot waste-paper basket that grandpa had brought back from India and which had a false bottom. Duffy said that this was ideal, wrote out a bill for fifty pounds, tore it up, wrote out a new one for fifty guineas, sent it off and swore to himself that if the posh trash didn’t pay he’d make sure a little leak went in the right direction. To someone, for instance, who collected waste-paper baskets.)

‘But the Mile’s changed a bit, I expect, since I was here. I thought you might be able to fill me in. You know, who runs what, who’s new, what sort of presh is on, that sort of thing.’

‘Funny you should ask me that, Duffy, I was only talking to Ronnie about it the other day. I’m not a moaner, you know that, and it’s not just an old tart talking who’s getting elbowed off the street by young scrubbers…’

‘You’re looking younger than ever,’ Duffy responded automatically.

‘Don’t shit me, Duffy, I know I’m getting to a difficult age for a tart. You get past a certain age and you’ve got a choice: either you’re content with your regulars – and I am on the whole, I’ve got a nice bunch, quite clean most of ’em – though you gradually see them dropping off a bit; you know, trying someone a bit younger or a black tart, or someone who does something different. Or you do…oh, what’s the word for it, Duffy, you do that thing what big companies are always doing…’

‘Diversify?’

‘That’s right. You have to diversify. And that, believe you me, is a U-fer-mism. Diversify means you have to take anyone who comes up those stairs, diversify means taking mean shits who want to hurt you. It means you have to let punters fuck you up the bum, and I’m
never
going to do that. It means you have to let them give you a bashing with whips and stuff. Some of them…well, I’m not easily shocked, you know that, Duffy, some of them, soon as they see I’m not fifteen, they want to do things I won’t even tell Suzie next door, corrupt her poor mind. Personally, I blame all this pornography the Labour Government let in, that’s what I blame.’

Duffy smiled, though he wasn’t sure if he was meant to; Renée often laughed when she was serious. But one thing was clear: she wouldn’t be diversifying.

‘When I started in this gaff it was a nice trade, being on the streets. Sure, there were a few nasties now and then, but it was a nice, friendly trade. You set yourself up, you built up your custom, you got known for what you did best, and you turned an honest penny. You saw some things which you probably shouldn’t have seen, but you kept your trap shut. I remember when I used to have a cabinet minister from Harold Macmillan’s Government in here regular as clockwork; every Friday after adjournment, before he caught the train back to his constituency. Well, he was only a junior minister actually, but I wouldn’t tell anyone his name. That’s what the business was all about. And I wouldn’t tell
you
his name, neither.’ Renée looked at him belligerently.

‘I’m not asking.’

‘That was nearly twenty years ago, anyway. I liked the work then. You had nice holidays, the streets were friendlier, almost everyone asked for it straight, and if they didn’t they were very apologetic about it. You’d say, “Come on love, out with it, you can’t shock Renée,” and then they’d babble on about boots or whips or school uniforms or something and you’d say, “Sorry, love, I’d really like to, I just don’t have the equipment with me, but I tell you who you ought to see and that’s Annie,” and they look terribly grateful and go off and you quickly ring up Annie and tell her you’ve sent someone round and she either does the same back or sends you a few quid for the introduction.

‘We weren’t cut-throats because we knew there was enough punter to go round. But that’s changed a lot since then. You’ve no idea the way the average tart’s living’s been attacked in the last twenty years, Duffy, no idea. There was that Permissiveness for a start, when all the girls who didn’t use to suddenly started putting out.
That
didn’t do us any good, as you can imagine. And then there was that Women’s Liberation which amounted to exactly the same thing. Then all the films started getting dirtier and dirtier, and the books did too. You could go to the theatre and see girls waggling their twats on stage and everyone was calling it art so that they didn’t have to put a newspaper over their head when they came out. Art – fart, if you ask me.’ Renée was really getting launched. Duffy just sat back and listened.

‘So what happened to us was that a bit of good old-fashioned straight with tarts got the squeeze. Sure, there’s enough of it to keep you going still, but when fellows could get it at home or from their secretaries or from any old pub scrubber for nothing, why should they lay out good money on us? So two things happened. One was that we started noticing we were getting a bigger percentage of oddballs than before – you know, crips and hunchies and things. Not that I really mind them, they’re quite sweet really; it’s just that, you know, given the choice…

‘And the second thing was that the punters weren’t wanting so much straight as before. All of a sudden lots of punters wanted you to wank them off. I mean, you’d think that was the one thing they could do for themselves, wouldn’t you? I don’t mind doing it, as long as you’ve got something to catch the drips, but I do find it’s hard on the wrists. I mean, five or six punters in a row and none of them want to put it in, it takes it out of you. You feel you’ve been lifting boxes of apples all day. I
did
think of charging more for that than for straight, I don’t mind telling you.

‘And it wasn’t just wanking. Suddenly, they were all wanting mouth stuff. Well, I don’t do that, I really don’t, I think it’s disgusting really. But I always make sure the girl I share with will do it, then they can pop across the landing if they really want that. The other things, too, well, as I say, I blame all that Labour pornography. And all those film clubs and massage parlours – have you seen them, Duffy?’

Duffy nodded.

‘They’ve been a terrible blow, too. All the punters just go and sit in the dark and watch films of people fucking. What good is that to trade? And as for the parlours, you know I sometimes wonder why they haven’t run us girls out of business. I suppose the only thing that keeps people coming to us is the thought that they might go into a parlour and find out they had to have a real massage – have some great fat German woman hitting them in the back like she was beating steak, and then push them in an ice-cold plunge shower, and all for fifteen nicker or something.’

Renée laughed. She liked the idea of it. She didn’t take her business too seriously, even when she was complaining about it. Duffy laughed as well.

‘Still, I suppose that isn’t quite what you wanted to ask me.’

‘Not quite. I was thinking a bit more about who runs what, and that sort of thing.’

‘Well, that’s changed a lot too, and if you ask me it’s not got any nicer neither. And it all happens so quickly you can’t keep up with it. Now, the old days, it was all the Maltese boys. They got a really bad press, the Malties did, but I always thought that was, you know, racial prejudice. They’d stick a knife in you soon as look at you if they thought you were shitting them, but I never had no trouble. They used to buy up houses and set them up real regular. Strip club in the basement, dirty bookshop on the ground floor, escort agency on the middle floor, tarts on the top. It was like a layer cake, that’s what it was like. And the runner would come round every Friday evening and collect a tenner from every floor. Forty quid the building. Sounds peanuts now, doesn’t it? But I suppose the rates were much cheaper then, and these Maltese boys, you know, they had a sense of what they wanted out of their investments, and if they got forty quid a house, they were happy. Mind you, you had to pay, even if business was bad, otherwise you’d be sitting at home and suddenly a paraffin heater might come flying through the window. Not nice, they weren’t, when they were riled, the Malties; but they were fair, I’ll say that.

‘Then there was a big clean-up and lots of the Malties got put in pris or kicked out; some of them just ran away and got given a stretch in their absence. And I suppose everyone thought, Oh well, that’s cleaned out the Malties, now we’ll be able to take the children walking up and down Old Compton Street with ice cream cones in their mitts. Silly buggers. What they should have known was that the Malties were the best we’ve ever had. Just because they put the Malties in pris, it doesn’t mean the tarts are going to go away, does it? Stands to reason. It just means someone new’s going to come in and take their slice.

‘Well, that’s what happened of course. You know that as well as I do, Duffy. Ever since, there’s been absolutely no stability. No stability at all. A few local pimps got bigger, some fellows from up north muscled in; we’ve had a few Paddies, only they didn’t last long; there’s the blacks there now, and even some of the Chinkies have tried expanding a bit. I mean, it stands to reason, doesn’t it? And then, after the Malties went, all your wonderful boys in blue started getting bent as hairpins. With the Malties, it was just a little bit here, a little bit there, either side step over the mark and they go down for a bit. But when the Malties went, didn’t the blues get grabby? The tarts were paying the pimps, the pimps were paying the blues, the tarts were paying the blues. It was a real free-for-all, I can tell you, and the coppers were getting way over the top.