Mr. Love and Justice (13 page)

Edward, both by interest in the Madam and by professional decorum, had said nothing yet. As she appeared to have finished (always let women
finish
, he’d discovered: there’s nothing they like better than for you to interrupt them), he said to her, ‘Who do you suspect? The girl?’

The Madam blinked her eyes and said, ‘It must be her. Who else could it be?’

‘This girl been here before?’

‘Well, yes, as a matter of fact, yes, she has on one or two occasions. And I’ve always thought her – the little I’ve seen of her, of course, for I don’t interfere with my tenant’s private affairs though I do, naturally, keep an eye on things – a very attractive and well-spoken young lady. But there is one other thing about her.’

The Madam paused and Edward, eyeing her coolly, still said nothing.

‘I happen to know,’ the Madam said, ‘she has a boyfriend who I think she calls Frankie who I
don’t
think is a very desirable sort of young man at all. I did see them once together, as it happens, and I wasn’t favourably impressed by him. I’m not saying, mind you, that he did it or even that he egged her on. But I
do
know he’s an undesirable influence and I have, of course, told my
tenant that the girl is not to visit my house again under any circumstances whatever.’

‘I may need,’ said Edward, ‘to talk to your tenant. But meanwhile you’d better give me the girl’s address.’

The Madam instantly gave it. Edward looked at it, remained impassive, then looked at her. ‘May I ask you, madam,’ he said, ‘how you happen to have this girl’s address at your fingertips?’

A shaft of venom came into the Madam’s eyes as they fluttered, and she said, ‘My tenant told me it.’

‘How did
he
know?’

‘
That
, I couldn’t say.’

‘I see. And when you saw her with this friend of hers, where was it?’

‘I don’t see …’

‘Where was it?’

‘In the street.’

‘Not here?’

‘Certainly not!’

‘And not at the address you’ve given me?’

‘Of course not! I don’t even know where it is – except, of course, that it’s somewhere up in Kilburn.’

‘Very well,’ said Edward, rising. ‘Thank you very much.’

The Madam came closer, looked up at him like a corrupt innocent in a Rossetti painting, and putting one ringed hand on his vigorous arm said, ‘I
do
hope, officer, you can recover this jewel for me with the minimum of fuss.’

‘I’ll do my best.’

She lowered her eyes, then said, ‘My tenant – confidentially, of course – would be willing to offer a quite considerable reward if it were returned to him without any publicity. I don’t know how much – he hasn’t said – but certainly at least half of its full value.’

‘I’ll remember that,’ said Edward.

Frankie was sitting drinking lager and lime with the star ponce, and his girl was sulking in the adjacent bedroom. She was sulking, in the first place, because she didn’t approve of Frankie’s friend being there at all. In earlier days he’d never have taken a silly chance like that (hadn’t she always told him – business and pleasure
must
be kept quite separate?) and now, really, he was getting careless (the number one – short of impotence – defect in any ponce).

But the chief and most vital source of argument had been about her miscarriage. In spite of precautions unwanted pregnancies, in a prostitute’s life, can occur as they can in anybody’s (if only, she thought, the Americans or the Russians or whoever it was would hurry up and perfect those magic pills you popped into your mouth) and Frankie’s girl, in the past, had always taken these
mishaps in her stride, seen her favourite doctor (up in Tufnell Park), rested up afterwards and gone back to work again. This, without telling Frankie, she had recently done once more and he, when she told him, had exploded in a rage! Would the child have been his, he’d asked? Well – almost certainly: at any rate, very likely. Then didn’t she realise, the stupid bitch, he wanted her to have his son if nature sent him? Why the hell hadn’t she
consulted
him about it?

Now, in the first place, it’d honestly never occurred to her that he might feel like this; and in the second – well, both as a woman and as a prostitute wasn’t it
her
affair? Why! the man was beginning to behave to her like a
husband
! And to make matters worse, because of her resting there was no ready money – and Frankie, if you please, ‘didn’t like to’ touch their
savings
! Well! What in the hell are savings for? So she brooded in the bedroom, doing her nails nineteen times each and wondering if she should sink her dignity and go in and look at the telly. Masculine laughter, coming from the adjoining room, added mightily to her exasperation.

Looking up (as we do when the Palaeolithic man inside us telegraphs his warning), she saw something that roused all her professional alertness and – like a ship’s officer who, in a storm, may instantly forget a quarrel or postpone it – she hastened to the room next door. ‘Frankie,’ she cried. ‘You remember that couple at the wrestling?’

‘Eh? Yeah.’

‘Well –
he
’s coming over.’

‘Who is it?’ said the star ponce, whose reflexes were also racing at a calm and well-oiled tempo.

‘A copper,’ Frankie said, ‘or I believe so. He’s shacked up with a girl here – something shady, I don’t know what – and he’s never given us any kind of trouble …’

‘Well, he’s coming over,’ said the girl.

‘You want to go?’ said Frankie to his friend.

‘Why should I – if you don’t want me to?’

‘Thanks, pal. I may possibly need a witness. Baby, as for you, you’d better get back in that bedroom.’

The girl made as if to speak and then retired – but grabbing, on her way, a large pile of Yank mags. The two men took another tranquil drink, nerves tingling, waiting for that big event in the ponce’s life – the
knock
.

It came.

Frankie got up, opened the front door, and closed it behind him so that he faced Edward on the balcony. He said nothing at all and looked at Edward, relaxed and not particularly hostile, in the eyes.

‘I expect you know who I am,’ said Edward.

‘Sure. It’s written all over you,’ Frankie said.

Edward smiled slightly and said, ‘Could I come in?’

‘You’re
asking
to?’ said Frankie.

‘Certainly. It’s an enquiry … I haven’t got a warrant or anything like that …’

‘I didn’t suppose you had or you wouldn’t have asked me, and you wouldn’t have been alone.’

‘Well. Can I come in?’

‘I don’t see why not.’

Frankie opened the door, invited Edward to sit down
but did not offer him a drink or, for that matter, introduce him to the star ponce – who throughout the interview did not look at Edward (or be seen to) any more than Edward did (or seemed to do) at him.

‘I’ll come straight to the point,’ Edward said. ‘It’s about a theft. You may know nothing whatever about it, and I may be disturbing you for nothing, in which case, of course, I apologise. But on the other hand if you could help me at all over it, I think it might be to your advantage.’

‘So far,’ said Frankie, ‘you haven’t said a thing I understand.’

‘No. Well, to make it brief. Can I be frank?’

‘If any copper ever was …’

Edward smiled. ‘Well, put it like this. The young lady you live with has been in business, I believe, up till quite recently at a certain premises. Do I make myself clear?’

‘Go on …’

‘Well, now. It’s been reported to me that at these premises there’s been a theft.’

‘Yeah? Of what?’

‘A snuff-box.’

‘A what?’

‘A jewelled snuff-box of a certain value which we – and the person who’s lost it, naturally – are anxious to recover.’

‘I suppose they would be.’

‘Yes. Well – that’s all I have to tell you.’ The two men looked at each other. And their looks had one thing in common (which is a very rare one
among coppers and among ponces, and even among any men at all) which was that neither feared the other in the least.

Edward got up. ‘I expect you know,’ he said, ‘where you can find me if there’s anything that you can tell me soon. But it would have to be soon, please, because if I can’t settle this thing one way then I’ll be obliged, you see, to settle it another.’

‘Yes,’ Frankie said, rising too. ‘I know where I can find you. You live over there, don’t you, with a young woman?’

Edward nodded.

‘I didn’t know,’ said Frankie, ‘that in the Force they allowed you that particular kind of freedom.’

‘Well,’ Edward said beside the door, ‘I dare say, whatever profession or activity you may have, you never find that you’re entirely free in it.’

He smiled slightly and Frankie let him out. Then cutting short the star ponce (who had accumulated a wealth of professional diagnosis of the situation that he was positively bursting his handsome body to impart), Frankie went into the bedroom, closed the door behind him, pulled his girl to her feet and said, ‘Have you been stealing?’

‘Stealing, Frankie?’

Frankie slapped her face. She slapped back. Frankie slapped her really hard and she fell down on the bed. Outside, the star ponce slightly smiled: the familiarity of the episode was reassuring.

The girl looked up at him and said, ‘Frankie, that’s the first time you’ve hit me.’

‘It’s not.’

‘It’s the first time you’ve hit me like
that
.’

‘Well, I want an answer. Did you knock off a snuff-box at the Madam’s?’

The girl looked incredulous, then furious, then laughing a bit hysterically she rummaged among her lingerie and cried, ‘You mean
this
?’

‘Yeah. Why you pinch it?’

‘
Pinch
it? Are you crazy? The old bastard
gave
it to me.’

‘You lying?’

‘Oh, go and get stuffed, Frank! You’re needling me too much!’

‘He gave it to you, you say?’

‘Of course he fucking gave it to me! He was high as a kite at the time and now I suppose he’s saying I took it from him in his drunken stupor. Well – what should I have done? Got his permission in writing? He kept tucking it inside my bra and saying, “
Chérie
, this is for you,” and crap like that.’

Frankie held the box, looked at her and said, ‘I’m sorry, baby. But you should have told me.’

‘What was there to tell? I’ve had presents before, often enough – dozens of them, I’ve had.’

‘Things like this?’

‘Why? Is it all that valuable?’

‘That’s what the copper was here about – I suppose you heard.’

‘No. I tried to listen, but he spoke too low.’

Frankie considered, put the box in his pocket and
said, ‘Look, baby. I want you to go out and take a little walk.’

‘Why?’

‘Because I say so. Just for an hour or so.’

‘You want to talk it over with your pal?’

‘Yeah.’

‘
I
’m too stupid to give an opinion, I suppose?’

‘Just do as I say, baby, there’s a honey.’

The girl agreed, not because she thought Frankie was right but because she knew the convention of male sagacity in crises – particularly those closely related to the law – was a powerful one in ‘the game’; and come to that, it was the boys themselves who so often
were
in greater danger.

‘Okey-doke,’ she said. ‘You win.’

When she’d gone, the two men embarked on their analysis of the angles. ‘As I see it,’ said the star ponce as a Queen’s counsel might to a promising junior, ‘it’s quite clear the copper wants the box and not your girl. I’d also say he’s called here on his own initiative. Reasons: he came alone and he was very nice, which coppers never do or are if they mean business.’

‘He wants the box for himself, you think?’

‘No: there’s probably a reward attached. Well, if you can square it with your girl I’d say the simplest is to give it to him
but
, if you take my tip, you’ll do it in front of two witnesses – outside the game, if possible –
and
if possible, invisible to him.’

‘I’m certain,’ said Frankie, ‘he’s up to something with that girl of his he doesn’t want generally known. So
I don’t think he’s likely to pursue the matter very far, knowing I might bring
that
up. I’d better try to find out exactly what his set-up with the woman is.’

‘If he gets awkward at all,’ said the star ponce, ‘you might try to implicate her. Lay her, I mean.’

‘Boy, have you
seen
her?’

‘No. But all women are much the same from the navel down. There are, of course,’ the star ponce continued, ‘other aspects. You could consider, through your own woman, trying to have a go at him – I mean some compromising situation with witnesses and perhaps a camera.’

‘Yeah.’

‘Or,’ the star ponce went on, warming to his work, ‘there’s possibly this other angle. I couldn’t help hearing you and your girl having a bit of an argument.’

‘No?’

‘No. Now, I don’t know … I don’t know how you’re fixed and I’m not trying at all to interfere. But if it
did
happen you wanted to cut out from the lass and latch on with another – and believe me, Frankie, there’s plenty of them who’d not say no – this would certainly be the opportunity.’

‘You mean,’ said Frankie smiling slightly, ‘I could just disappear and let the law take its course?’

‘That’s it! It’s not you, after all, who’s committed any theft … supposing, that is, she’s wrong about what she said to you and it
was
one – and at any rate it
looks
like one to some people, doesn’t it. Well, you could fix things in that way: just leave her and the copper to sort the matter out.’

Frankie got up. ‘No, I don’t think so, boy,’ he said. ‘I’m not tied to that chick – don’t think that – I’m not tied to
any
woman and I never will be. But I’d certainly never shop her, and that’s what your suggestion would amount to.’

‘If you say so. What I was doing, Francis, was considering all the angles and the aspects.’

‘Oh, I’m very grateful, man – don’t misunderstand me.’

The star ponce rose too. ‘So what you going to do – I mean with the box?’ he said.

Frankie took it out of his pocket and threw it a foot in the air. ‘Hang on to it a while and see. Perhaps I’ll do a little investigation on my own account just like a copper. Perhaps there might even be a little bit of rough stuff, too, like they do from time to time.’