Kiss Me Quick (2 page)

12 January 1964. Soho, London. Evening.

Detective Edward Tobin stepped into the Peek-A-Boo Club on Wardour Street. He badged the doorman, a slender young man in a cheap tux that left lots of spare room around the collar. Tobin badged him more out of habit than necessity. They’d met before, and the doorman knew his profession. He was expecting him. As Tobin was led through the club, he reflected on how Soho muscle wasn’t up to much these days.

Tobin, on the other hand, measured five foot eleven inches, weighed in at about sixteen stone, and possessed noticeably more muscle than fat for a man who was a year off his police pension. He’d fought middleweight in the army and for the Met, and as they say –
and they always say
– he could have been a contender. He looked like an ex-pug. Punched and paunched out, with
half-closed
, narrow eyes, a spread nose, fat lips and – as he found out when he got his ticket out of Palookaville and fought Freddie Spinx at the Royal Albert Hall – a glass jaw.

The club was empty. Dark, low ceilings, cavernous. Small stage, about ten tables. The walls were lined with
horseshoe-shaped
booths recessed into faux-rock effect walls, with heavy black-velvet curtains that could be drawn around them for more privacy. Tobin looked around the club. He’d been there many times before, but never with a dead body lying on the floor.

‘Where’s Duval?’ he asked.

‘In his office.’

‘Then go and get him. And tell him to have my envelope.’

The slender bouncer sloped off.

Tobin went over to inspect the body on the floor. Male,
mid-thirties
. Suited. Thick head of brown hair on top of a thin, drawn, cadaverous face – which, of course, it now genuinely was. He had smooth skin which just served to accentuate the scores of scars he carried on his face, all varying in size and distinction. Three long razor cuts down his left cheek looked like the latest addition to this collection.

Tobin knew the corpse: Tommy Ribbons. He was ‘a face’ and a fixture in Soho. Tommy had a place in Berwick Street, the Author & Book Club. A two-room dive with a bar and a betting parlour upstairs. The only authors that hung out there were the authors of their own misfortune, in hock to books that carried columns of odds and wagers, not prose and poetry.

Ribbons wasn’t his real name. He’d been given that nickname due to the scars he’d picked up over the years – literally cut to ribbons. His real name, long forgotten apart from on his
extensive
form sheet at West End Central, was Smithson. Thomas Albert Smithson. The extensive razor cuts to the face hadn’t killed him, they were merely wounds he’d picked up two years previously. Tobin knew that because he had worked the case. Ribbons had close ties with the Maltese: he was married to a Maltese girl, and worked as muscle protecting their prostitution rackets in Soho. The Maltese were then trying to get a foothold in the lucrative West End slot-machine business. But two brothers from south-east London already in that business wanted to keep the monopoly, and had sent their emissary to etch their intentions clearly across Tommy’s face.

What had killed Tommy Ribbons was plain to see: a
twelve-inch
carving knife buried to the hilt in his chest.

‘Looks sort of funny, doesn’t it?’ said the voice behind Tobin.

Tobin looked around hoping to find Duval, but instead he found Detective Treadwell.

‘I double parked,’ said the young detective, knowing that would displease Tobin. It did.

Tobin wanted Duval here in the room before he wanted Detective Treadwell, because he wanted the envelope. That’s why he’d sent Detective Treadwell off on a parking expedition.

‘What the fuck’s so funny about it?’ he snarled.

‘Laid out like that, looks sort of staged. A theatrical depiction of a murder victim.’

Tobin shook his head in mild disgust, major annoyance. ‘What is this, then, some of your poncified university humour? What they call it – satire? Beyond the Pale?’

‘Fringe, Eddie.
Beyond the Fringe
,’ replied the young detective thoughtlessly, as he knelt down for a closer look at the body.

‘Smart-arsed bunch of disrespectful public-school irons, the lot of them.’

‘That’s as maybe, Eddie, but you wouldn’t get this going on in the Establishment Club.’ He continued inspecting the body.

‘Talk straight, Treadwell.’

‘OK, how’s this? The knife obviously stopped his pump straight away, accounting for the small amount of blood around the wound and hardly any on the floor. No signs of a struggle. His tie’s still in place, so doesn’t look like he’s been in a fight. No cuts to the hands or arms, suggesting he didn’t raise them to protect himself. Probably didn’t think he had to. And by the time he did, it was too late. I’d say not only did he know his attacker, but he trusted him.’ He glanced up at Tobin. ‘Don’t you think?’

‘Nice way to start the New Year,’ interrupted Lionel Duval, emerging from the beaded curtain that separated the back room from the main club. Sleek as a shark in a slate-grey suit, his
perfectly
coiffed silver hair put him in at around fifty; his smooth boyish features put him in at under forty; and the gold-framed tinted glasses that covered those cold dead eyes put him in as a night-time operator. ‘The Fourth Estate will love this shit. That Duncan Webb of the
People
, he’ll be all over it like a bad case of the pox. Always looking for intrigue, that man.’

The irony wasn’t lost on the young detective. As he stood up to greet Duval, he couldn’t help but smile. ‘A scarred-faced
gangster
found with a knife practically nailing him to the floor of a Soho clip-joint isn’t exactly “cat stuck up a tree” material, Mr Duval.’

Duval was a study in indignation. ‘Clip-joint? Eddie, who’s the adjunct?’

‘This is Detective Vince Treadwell and …’ Before Tobin could finish, Duval had reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a wedge-heavy manila envelope. Tobin cut dead Duval’s indiscretion by dipping his brow into a furrowed frown, raising his voice and putting him straight. ‘Otherwise known as “Vinnie Clean Face”.’ Not subtle but effective. Duval went into reverse and slipped the envelope back into his pocket.

Tobin then felt the need to clarify the nickname, ‘We call him that on account he’s so young and fresh faced. A college boy.’

It was an apt description of the young detective, but a risible explanation of the moniker. Vince registered the point with a small cynical laugh, accompanied by an equally disdainful shake of his head.

‘Oh, nice to meet you, Detective Tread …?’

‘Treadwell. Detective Vince Treadwell.’

‘Tread-well. Detective Vince Treadwell,’ Duval echoed, making a show of committing it to memory. Satisfied it had sunk in and been stored away, he pulled a big convivial grin, showing rows of expensively capped teeth. ‘And please call me Lionel. All my friends call me Lionel.’

‘You need Murder Squad, Mr Duval.’

Duval understood the message, but kept on grinning.

‘So how come you called DS Tobin?’ continued Vince.

Duval looked at Tobin for a lead, but none was forthcoming. Tobin wasn’t that fast on his feet – not even in his boxing days.

‘I called Eddie here because, well, he’s an old acquaintance. And I knew he’d follow the correct procedures, deal with it in the proper manner. Murder Squad, Vice Squad, they’re all much of a muchness to me. All you boys in blue, pinstripe, houndstooth or Harris fucking tweed for that matter are, like I said, Vince, friends of mine.’ Laughing now, Duval offered Vince his hand.

Vince pointedly ignored it, gestured to the body and asked, ‘So what happened here?’

The continued snubs appeared to be water off the shark’s back. Duval’s grin stayed fixed as he replied, ‘Well, from what Colin told me—’

‘Who’s Colin?’

‘The doorman,’ replied Tobin.

Vince took out his notebook and started writing.

‘Tommy Ribbons came in with two mates,’ continued Duval. ‘Maltese guys – dark, swarthy-looking buggers from all accounts. Nattering away in their lingo, ten to the dozen, you know how they do. They sat in the booth.’ He pointed to the booth. ‘Then they ordered some drinks off one of our lovely hostesses, the only one on duty at the time as it thankfully happens. When she returned with the drinks, the two swarthy fellas were gone’ – Duval glanced down at the body ‘– and only he was left.’

‘Where’s the girl?’ asked Tobin.

‘I sent her home. She was in floods. In floods, she was, poor cow. She’s new and she comes from Luton. Never seen a dead body, let alone one like this. Nice introduction to the bright lights, eh?’

‘We’ll need to talk to her,’ said Tobin, ‘and see if she got a good look at the dagos.’

Duval tut-tutted and shook his head, not in admonishment but simply to rectify that last statement. ‘They were Maltese, Eddie. Dagos are Italians.’

‘I thought Italians were wops,’ replied Tobin. ‘What’s the difference?’

It was Vince’s turn to shake his head. ‘Nothing, Eddie. I think Mr Duval is just looking after you, wanting you to get your racial epithets right.’

Duval issued a mirthless laugh, then looked Vince up and down, reappraising the young detective. ‘Oh, you’re cute. Whippet-smart, and good-looking, too,’ he said, nodding in wary admiration. ‘Double cute.’

Vince ignored all this and carried on studying the stiff,
kneeling
again to take a closer look at the weapon that had put him there. ‘Big knife, not the kind you’d carry around with you,’ he said, looking up at Tobin, who knew Soho like the back of his fist. ‘There’s a hardware store on Greek Street sells kitchen
supplies
, right?’

Tobin nodded, his slitty eyes showing no enthusiasm for what Vince was saying.

‘Maybe it wasn’t planned. They saw Tommy, went and bought the knife, invited him for a drink somewhere dark and empty,’ he continued, switching his attention to Lionel Duval. ‘Somewhere not too many questions get asked, because they don’t like the publicity, and they killed him there.’

‘What’s the adjunct saying, Eddie?’

Vince stood up. On its second mention, the word ‘adjunct’ had lost its charm.

Tobin raised two placating hands. ‘He’s saying nothing, Lionel. Just speculating.’

‘Any other witnesses?’ asked Vince. ‘Punters?’

Duval shook his head, then qualified the gesture with, ‘No, we’d only just opened. We don’t attract the normal theatre crowd. We cater for a later clientele. A more adventurous punter, shall we say.’ Again with the big convivial grin, topped off with a wink. ‘All good dirty legal fun.’

‘So I hear. Got any of it on film?’ Vince asked.

Duval’s grin turned into a grimace as he fixed Vince with a hard stare. ‘Litigious little fucker, ain’t he, Eddie?’

The club owner had himself recently made front-page news in the
People
, when a party at his Suffolk mansion had predictably enough turned into an orgy. But, more unpredictably, it was rumoured to have been filmed, with two-way mirrors and hidden cameras all over the gaff. Some fuzzy black-and-whites of a peer of the realm and a Russian diplomat being serviced by a rent boy and one of Duval’s ‘hostesses’ had surfaced on Fleet Street. But the papers couldn’t publish them – lots of arse shots but no faces.

‘All good dirty legal fun,’ echoed the smiling young detective, breaking off the staring competition with Duval and turning his attention to the booth where Tommy Ribbons had sat with his killers.

On the table, a candle stub was stuck in an empty
wax-encrusted
Mateus Rosé bottle but, like all the other candles in the joint, it hadn’t been lit yet. Dark as it was, Vince reckoned the hostess must have seen Tommy Ribbons cop for the knife, but then Duval had straightened her out with a few quid to keep her mouth shut. Because that’s what you do in Soho: look the other way and keep shtum. Killing a man in a Soho club was as safe a proposition for the perpetrator as using an empty back alley in a ghost town. Vince also figured, for what it was worth, and
considering
the ‘keep shtum’ policy that pervaded Soho, that Colin the doorman would have been standing by the neon-lit entrance, and therefore must have had a good look at the men.

He asked Duval, ‘Where’s Colin?’

‘Out front, probably.’

Tobin to Vince: ‘Why don’t you go and fetch him. And call the incident in, whilst you’re at it.’

Vince knew that Tobin wanted him out the room so he could finally pocket his envelope. He gave a slow, knowing nod to the two men, making his disapproval of the exchange clear.

Vince had been working Vice Squad, West End Central, for three months, now, and knew that envelopes were all part of the game. Like tips for the bin men at Christmas, that’s how it was explained to him. But it was Christmas all year round for the Vice coppers in Soho, as the clubs, clip-joints, pimps, prostitutes and porno peddlers paid up every week. Just to ensure that they weren’t hassled every week. It was a sweet deal, and Soho had been pretty much wide open since the Messina brothers (three Sicilian white-slavers who had exerted a stranglehold over vice and prostitution in the West End for a good fifteen years) got pinched and deported in 1955.

Since then, the nefarious activities of the West End vice rackets had separated into lots of little parcels. Which is just the way Detective Eddie Tobin and his cohorts liked it, because those little parcels soon turned into lots of little envelopes. The envelopes provided insurance for men like Duval, the largest player in Soho. So when a curtain was pulled around a private booth at the
Peek-A
-Boo Club, and a hostess administered a blow job to a visiting Unilever business man, a Chancery Lane barrister or a
Westminster
politician, a Scotland Yard policeman wouldn’t suddenly pop his head around the curtain and say, ‘Peek-a-boo!’

Vince dutifully went off to get Colin the doorman, then that call to Murder Squad. Thus he let Eddie Tobin collect his regular envelope off Duval who, as dirty as he was, was not a true villain – he was too busy legitimizing himself through buying up his own little parcels of land in the lucrative square mile of Soho.