Black Butterfly (4 page)

I withdrew my hand as though scorched. ‘Coral, I’m so sorry. I thought that perhaps you and I…’

And now she looked me full in the face and laughed. The
delicious tingle of anticipation began to disperse. My face fell. ‘I thought you might be keen to, you know…You seemed as if you might want to…’

‘Oh, I’m right keen on that!’ she blurted out. ‘But you’re too old for me, sir. I like a nice firm cock, me.’

B
y the evening, the rain had stopped. The muggy atmosphere, however, remained. Somewhat deflated by Miss Beveridge’s brutal assessment, I returned to Downing Street to plan a night of oblivion.

Rank has its privileges. Long-time readers may be pleased and a little relieved to know that, after a lifetime of penury, my elevation to the post of ‘Joshua Reynolds’ had brought with it a juicy stipend. This, combined with a renewed interest in the painters of the turn of the century, had finally allowed me to spruce up Number Nine to my satisfaction. Well,
I
didn’t spruce it up, of course, but rather employed a battery of truculent youths in blue overalls to do it for me. Whilst I sat in happy contemplation, lads with oily hair and big boots happily clod-hopped over the dust-sheets, slurping at treacly tea and giving me the occasional devastatingly proletarian smile. One or two had even been persuaded to pose for me and–oh, their terrible beauty! Wondrously surly versions of Sargent’s
Madame X
, draping the looped straps of their overalls off bare, creamy shoulders.

But there was no one waiting for me in Downing Street now. I had planned to bathe and change but instead, restless and out of sorts, I decided to drive the Bentley up to Town.

Soho thrummed like a wire across a drum–reeking of camphor from summer clothes, with the sizzle of neon café signs and the scents of expectation: tobacco, coffee, sweat, sex. Wide-open restaurant doors belched Bolognese over the smell of the drains and tarmac.

I zipped past Little Italy and swung right into Dean Street. A youth in a bum-freezer absently sloshed a pail of soapy water across the pavement, forming a black bloodstain. His hair shone with Brylcreem and a desperate moustache clung to his lip like an anemone to a wet rock.

I slowed down in the traffic. He caught my eye and, clearly having finished his shift, wandered over. ‘Peps?’ he offered, laying an elbow on the sill of the open car window. ‘Weed? Bennies? Barbs?’

‘How thrilling of you to offer,’ I said. ‘However, I think I can struggle through the evening without artificial stimulants. Thanks all the same.’

The youth just shrugged and shambled away from the Bentley towards a pale blue moped that was parked on the kerb. He kick-started it and the engine rattled and fired. Where was he off to, I wondered. Pockets stuffed with cheap fags, pills and French letters, roaring through the sultry night…

The traffic shifted and I headed north towards Oxford Street, passing narrow entranceways as quaint as Eastbourne beach huts. In most, below stuttering red lamps, hovered
ghostly whores. Out of the tail of my eye, I caught the slash of pink blouse and pink mouth, stockings with holes in them the size of two-bob bits, cheaply peroxided hair tumbling out of bent pins. As I drove by, the girls drifted in and out like figures on a weather house, and fugitive memories sprang up unbidden. How gaily I had trawled these same streets as a young man, a raffish De Quincy, my scarlet-lined opera cloak shielding each of my couplings as completely as the veil of the night itself.

The car was idling again. I glanced over my shoulder and the image thrown back in a tobacconist’s window–an old man hunched over a steering wheel–banished all such nostalgia.

Then another memory intruded. An occasion, a lifetime ago, when wee me, dressed in a little sailor-suit, had been ushered into the presence of a dying aunt. She was a vision in black bombazine, extending a fragile hand from the dark pit of her bath chair to stroke my smooth cheek. ‘Ah,’ she had cooed, ‘little Lucifer. How I wish I could change places with you…’

Now, in the plate-glass reflection I seemed to see myself stretching out a withered claw to touch the face of youth with envy, envy, envy…

I shook my head. Christ! I was being ridiculous! I’d never been a maudlin soul and had no intention of starting now. Throwing the car briskly into first, I dodged the traffic of Oxford Street and headed for the fabled
Blood Orange.

Three storeys tall, the club staggered between a pair of more respectable buildings like a drunk between two coppers, the windows of its tumbledown, mucky Queen Anne façade bobbing with shadows and candlelight. In its twenties heyday,
it had been the epitome of glamour. Now, in its dotage, it had a seedy appeal all its own. I parked the car in a cobbled mews that stank of last night’s relief, then went up worn steps into a kind of vestibule.

A bare bulb caked in dust threw ugly shapes over the chocolate-brown walls and the fretwork of a tiny, asthmatic lift. With a melancholy sigh, cables twisting and coiling like the undulations of a charmed cobra, the lift arrived with a jarring thump. I pulled open the grille, got in, and jabbed at the soiled green button, which had seen too many thumbs.

The lift juddered upwards two floors and then decanted me into a big, dark room, every available surface covered with shards of broken mirror, grotesquely reflecting the heaving mass of jabbering, laughing faces. A shifting miasma of tobacco smoke rolled under the low ceiling like a storm cloud.

I intended to get very drunk.

I headed for the curved bar, where sat a big man with a neck like a block of ice cream. He was forcing flat champagne onto a sad-eyed girl in her mother’s furs, whilst two skinny queens in evening dress hooted at each other, their wolfish features shattered, split and reflected in the mirrored walls. Incongruously, a teenage Boy Scout (I couldn’t seem to get away from them at present) was wandering from table to table with a collecting tin. A gross, red-eared fellow, like an ogre in a fairy tale, slipped a coin into the tin and then waved the lad away.

There was a loud bellowing laugh and the man at the bar slumped to the floor, one shoe off, his threadbare sock wet through.

I knew them all. Loved and loathed the pack of them. Such was the
Blood Orange
.

However, at one of the two dozen tables, sat a stranger; an insignificant-looking bald man with little puffs of white hair sprouting from behind each ear. His white silk scarf had twisted up the points of his collar to give him a Pickwickian air.

Although I didn’t recognise him as an habitué of the club, his face was nevertheless oddly familiar.

Leaning like a question mark against the wall right by him was a young man of Negroid appearance, though pale for one of his race. Toreador-slim in skinny suit and tie, his glossy black hair was cut in a straight fringe, and acid-green socks showed above pointy shoes.

He watched the Pickwickian from under sleepy eyelids.

Dismissing them both from my mind, I made my way to the bar where stood, presiding over this whole carnival of damnation, a colossal female in canary yellow. At that very moment, she was knocking back a pint of Dog’s Nose and pulling a flap of skirt out of the cheeks of her buttocks.

My dear servant Delilah was now as old as the hills and as white-haired as I. But age had not withered her, nor custom made stale anything but the irrepressible reek from her armpits. We’d been through a hell of a lot together, and when fortune had finally come my way, in a mood of sudden philanthropy, I had granted her freedom from domestic service. With her savings, she had bought the leasehold on the crumbling
Blood Orange
, and the rest, as they say, is hysteria.

‘A brandy and soda, my good woman,’ I demanded, sneaking up behind her and giving her a playful punch on the arm.

The old bruiser span round, fist raised, a mad-dog gleam in her eyes. Her mouth was smeared with lipstick and had the appearance of an open sore. ‘Mr Box! Mr Box, sir!’ she cackled, enfolding me in her immensity. ‘What a sight for sore ’uns! Cor, I nearly felled ya there. Get sat down and I’ll fetch you some plonk.’ She propelled me towards a splintering stool.

‘How’s business?’ I enquired as she sloshed cognac into a none-too-clean tumbler and slid it over the tarnished veneer towards me.

‘Same as ever,’ she growled. ‘I gotta read the riot act three times a week just to keep the buggers in order but they’re not a bad lot. And they know not to fight too ’ard or they’ll get a taste of
this
.’ She bared her meaty fist from which sprouted wiry grey hairs. ‘Mind you,’ she continued, ‘some might say as we’ve gawn up in the world.’

‘How so?’

She nodded towards the fluffy-haired Pickwick-like fellow I’d noticed earlier. The coloured youth was now sitting with him and they seemed to be having a fairly lively conversation. The older man was looking nervously about and nibbling at his fingernails. The boy was shaking his head, ever so slightly, and the dead straight hair shifted like a curtain over his smooth forehead. ‘Know who that is?’ asked Delilah, with a wink.

I frowned. ‘The boy?’

‘Nah, nah, nah. Dunno about him. The old geezer.’

‘I feel I should,’ I admitted. ‘He’s certainly familiar. But I’m not as good with faces as once I was.’

‘Sir Vyvyan Hooplah,’ breathed Delilah, rubbing a soiled tea-towel around a gin glass. ‘Remember him?’

‘I do!’ I whispered. ‘Yes, of course. Used to be…Secretary of State for–no–he was Head of the Board of Health, wasn’t he? Under Asquith!’

Delilah shrugged hugely. ‘I just remember him from the picture papers. Nearly got the top job, didn’t he?’

I nodded, intrigued. ‘Yes. He did.’ And indeed, it was Hooplah. Pinched and mean-spirited by reputation, he was a pillar, supporting wall and front porch of the Establishment. And yet there he was, sat at one of Delilah’s chipped tables–apparently in search of oblivion, like me.

It was hard to make out details as the packed club’s clientele swirled around in my line of sight but I saw the Negroid youth gesticulating and Hooplah angrily pushing him away. Then the scene disappeared as the room was plunged into darkness. A spotlight hit the tiny bandstand and couples staggered into drunken dancing.

‘And what you been up to, sir?’ asked Delilah, a mischievous twinkle in her bloodshot orbits. ‘Helping some kiddies across the road? Opening a new ’ospital ward? Or have you been going to the park to chuck Hovis at the ducks?’

‘Now, now, Delilah,’ I said, sipping gingerly at the brandy. ‘You’re sounding petulant again.’

‘Well,’ she drawled, ‘not like the bloody old days, is it? Stuck behind a desk fiddling with paper-clips. I bet you’d give a year of your life just for a nice juicy hassassination!’

I shook my head. ‘Time to bring down the curtain, Delilah,’ I said. ‘The party’s over.’

But scarcely had the words left my lips when I felt a sudden heat on my cheek, and my smeary glass exploded as a 9mm bullet slammed into the bar.

I
flung myself to the floorboards. Grit and dust choked me and the air was full of cordite. There was a shocked pause and then one of the stringy queens started screaming like a
castrato
.

In a ring of suddenly empty tables stood Sir Vyvyan Hooplah, brandishing a Luger. His ruddy face was suffused with a wicked grin and the clouds of hair behind his ears seemed to stand on end. He fired again, further fracturing the mirrored walls. The exotic-looking young man shielded his head with long, slim fingers.

Delilah reacted with the speed of a panther. A long-in-the-tooth panther, mind you, but still fairly nippy. As I scrambled to my feet, she rolled up her sleeves and prepared to give Hooplah what for.

‘Look out! Look out!’ cackled Sir Vyvyan delightedly, loosing off another shot. ‘I’ll take on the lot of you, d’you hear? Haha!’ His face was now almost violet above the white scarf. ‘Never fired a weapon, d’you see? Sat out the war on my silly
old rump. Both wars, in point of fact, but now…
Now!’

‘All right, mate,’ warned Delilah, approaching stealthily. ‘Time you turned in.’

‘Not likely!’ yelled the berserk former politician.

He fired another bullet and then proceeded to propel himself head-first through the crowd. The Negroid boy reached out and got him by the ankles but the old buffer slid from his grasp and clattered to the floor. Then Hooplah righted himself, galloped towards the lift, dragged back the grille and turned to face the room, a manic glitter in his eyes. ‘See? See!’ he roared. ‘I’m a match for you!’

The Luger spat fire into the smoky air and the great central chandelier splintered, smashing crystal droplets to the floor like frozen tears.

The lift chugged into life and Hooplah was gone.

‘Stairs!’ I cried. ‘Get to the stairs!’

Delilah and I tore from the room and onto the
Blood Orange
’s ill-lit stairwell. We clattered down two flights, flung open the front door and dashed outside, only to be greeted by the roar of an engine and a great screech of tyres. Two sharp reports, a blur of scarlet and Hooplah was off, careering wildly around parked motors, accelerating south towards Oxford Street.

I gaped at Delilah. ‘He’s stolen my ruddy car!’

Delilah heaved a huge sigh, shoulders sagging in defeat. ‘Come on then. I’ll call the rozzers.’

‘What are you talking about?’ I bristled. ‘I want my Bentley back!’

‘Yeah, but—’

I looked round swiftly and my heart leaped as I caught sight
of the ugly young moped driver who’d earlier offered me stimulants. ‘I thought you wanted to recapture the halcyon days, you old fossil,’ I cried to Delilah. ‘Come on!’

We dashed the few yards to the moped, our hips clicking like knitting needles. The youth, now chatting up a girl in bright yellow pedal-pushers, looked at me, his black brows contracting as I placed a hand on his machine. ‘Awfully sorry,’ I smiled disarmingly, ‘but that old bugger’s pinched my car. Hope you don’t mind but I’ve got to get it back.’

A strand of his Brylcreemed hair flopped forward, almost poking him in the eye. ‘So?’ he drawled, winking at the girl. ‘What’s that got to do with me?’

‘Not a lot,’ I admitted calmly and, stepping to one side, allowed Delilah’s chunky fist to connect with his chin.

‘’Ere!’ piped up the girl in the pedal-pushers. With a mildly surprised grunt, her beau slid from the moped’s seat. Delilah caught him deftly, then, with only a little difficulty, dragged him onto the pavement. A groan of effort, and I swung my leg across the broad back of the moped. Behind me, Delilah did likewise and the poor vehicle sagged under the weight. I chugged the engine into life and, belching fumes, we screeched off into the traffic in pursuit of my Bentley.

‘What the hell can have got into the old fool?’ I yelled as we gathered speed.

‘I ain’t never seen him in the club before,’ cried Delilah. In one of the huge mirrors clamped to each handlebar, I saw her wiping sweat from her brick-like forehead. ‘He just wandered in looking a bit nervy-like.’

I peered ahead at the silvery car bumpers as we shot across Oxford Street and back into Soho. ‘Maybe he’s cracked,’ continued Delilah. ‘Pressure of work.’

I shook my head. ‘No, no. He’s been retired for years. In any case—’

A fugitive memory began to intrude on me, like a trapped bee knocking against a window casement. ‘Do you know, Delilah, this is—
Look out!’

I swerved, careering past a leggy girl in lethal heels. Poland Street shot past like a dimly lit canyon. The warm air whipped at my face and my hair streamed back off my forehead in snowy fronds. Ahead, manoeuvring through the traffic with terrifying disregard, was the Bentley. I winced as Hooplah pranged a black cab, eliciting an explosion of horn parping, and a stream of oaths from its cloth-capped driver, as he scraped against the chassis. A youth in corduroys yelped in terror as the Bentley mounted the kerb and, scattering pedestrians like skittles, skidded off.

‘The lunatic,’ I muttered. ‘He’ll top someone.’ I swung us right in hot pursuit. ‘And Christ knows what he’s doing to my suspension!’

‘What was you gonna say?’ cried Delilah.

I crouched low over the handlebars. ‘Tell you later!’

Ahead tail-lights blurred, speckled with the amber signs of black cabs. There was a fanfare of protesting horns as Hooplah smashed into Berwick Street. A mass of gabardined punters fled as the car screamed past them. Then, suddenly, dozens of covered market stalls blocked his way.

Hooplah slammed on the Bentley’s brakes. I could see the top
of his bald head shining in the electric light as he considered his next move. In an instant he had revved the engine and the car leapfrogged forward, ploughing into the stalls and sending shattered planks, fruit and vegetables spuming into the air. As we gave chase, a fat cauliflower smacked Delilah on the side of the head and, without warning, she bounced off the back of the moped. It bucked upwards at once and I struggled to keep control.

There was a sickening crunch as Hooplah sliced my beloved Bentley through the last of the stalls and, in a plume of exhaust smoke, zig-zagged towards Shaftesbury Avenue.

Righting myself, I threw a glance over my shoulder to see Delilah struggling to her feet. Relieved, I pressed on, accelerating past the arched naughtiness of the Revue Bar–furtive tarts diving for their lives–then weaving down Rupert Street before bucking onto Shaftesbury Avenue in hot pursuit.

As I stuttered through the traffic, I peered ahead, desperate to catch a glimpse of the Bentley’s red livery. And yes–at last–there it was! Hemmed in and unable to proceed. To my horror, Hooplah was relentlessly ramming the back bumper of the car in front. Still perched atop the stolen moped, I zipped past an overheating sports car until I was just behind the crazed former Cabinet Minister. ‘Hooplah!’ I hollered. ‘Stop the damned car! What the hell—’

He turned and the look on his ancient face fairly made my blood run cold. There was an intensity, a sort of mania in the eyes, which utterly transformed him.

‘Oh hello!’ he cackled, spittle dribbling onto his chin. ‘Haha! Hello, old man! Old man! Haha! That’s good!’

I tried to inch the moped forward but a determined old family tourer was blocking my way.

‘Hooplah!’ I cried desperately. ‘Sir Vyvyan! Get out of the car before you kill someone!’

‘Get out? Get
out
?’ The response came as a choked whisper. ‘Are you quite mad?’ Suddenly the gun was in his hand again and he loosed off a couple of shots into the air. I ducked down.

‘I must get on!’ whooped Hooplah. ‘No time to lose! Can’t you see? Can’t you see what’s happened? It’s a bloody miracle!’

At last, the other car crawled out of the way and I was able to pull level with the Bentley. Hooplah aimed the Luger right at me but I managed to knock it away and reach out to grab his collar. Then I almost toppled over as the light switched from red to amber, the traffic ahead suddenly moved and the old lunatic slammed the car into gear, rocketing off once again.

I swore under my breath, righted myself and squeezed the handle of the moped. It chugged forward but then the bloody thing stalled. Precious moments were wasted as I kick-kick-kicked at the starting pedal. Then I was once more giving chase.

Still, that nagging memory persisted. There was something about Hooplah’s behaviour. Something familiar…

Suddenly, a stretch of clear road opened, leading, with dreadful inevitability, to the statue of Eros. Hooplah took immediate advantage and opened up the Bentley’s throttle, weaving across the road and tattooing the asphalt with streaks of burned rubber. Cursing the sluggish moped, I urged it on, leaning forward heavily against the handlebars, batting aside the insects that zipped into my eyes and mouth.

I could hear the Bentley’s outraged engine even above the din of the night-time traffic, and glimpsed Hooplah’s head twisting round, the glint of his teeth as he giggled insanely. Then the Bentley was powering past everything in sight, zooming down the very centre of the road. Hooplah attempted a right turn and suddenly the car was on two wheels, smacking onto the pavement and heading for the famous statue. In a blur, the motor flipped over and slammed sidelong into Eros with a devastating percussion. The Bentley’s windscreen erupted outwards, and Hooplah was hurled onto the steps beneath the aluminium statue. As though in sympathy, Eros sagged as the masonry crumbled beneath him, arrow now aimed downwards, as if to pierce the old man’s heart.

I screeched to a halt, swung my legs over the moped and stumbled towards the scene of the accident. A gawping crowd had already gathered around Hooplah and the Bentley. I fought my way through the mass of sequins, duffel coats and crumpled uniforms towards the politician. The Bentley lay in a heaped pile, steam hissing from the ruined chassis, oil pooling from her mortal wound.

A thin trickle of blood was dribbling from Hooplah’s lips onto the starched ends of his wing-collar.

‘Sir Vyvyan?’ I whispered urgently. ‘Sir Vyvyan, can you hear me?’

His eyes fluttered open, startlingly bright amidst the gore that smeared his features.

‘Wonderful!’ he murmured. ‘Wonderful!’

I pressed my face closer to his. ‘What happened to you?’

His eyes began to close.

‘Hooplah!’ I cried. ‘
For God’s sake, what happened?’

The old fellow began to chuckle gently and, struggling to get his breath, whispered, ‘
Le
…
le papillon noir
…’

I frowned. ‘What?’

But Hooplah’s eyes had closed. A broad smile spread over his blood-soaked face–and he was gone.

From close by I heard the clang of a police bell and looked up. To my surprise, in amongst the ogling crowd was the coloured boy from the
Blood Orange
. Girl-slim, fingers bright with rings, he gazed at me from behind the geometrically straight fall of his black hair. Then he was gone, melting into the crowd.

My instincts told me that he was involved in all this. Hooplah had seemed perfectly normal until he started talking to that young man. I moved swiftly after him and was almost knocked down by a wheezing Delilah who had finally caught up.

‘Christ,’ she gasped, ‘I should be careful what I wish for. I ain’t got the strength for this lark any more. What ’appened?’

‘Dead,’ I muttered.

Delilah shook her massive head. ‘Bloody odd. Never seen anyone act like that before.’

I clambered onto the moped and kick-started it into life once more. ‘I have.’