September Song (11 page)

‘Weather's changing,' I said to Enzo when he brought my toast.

He looked forlornly through the window. ‘Bloody country,' he said. ‘It's going to rain again.'

He was so distraught that I couldn't bring myself to trouble him for another cup of coffee. Instead, I joined him in staring silently out of the window.

As I watched, a beautiful old black Rolls-Royce sailed around the corner from Lea Bridge Road and shivered to a halt outside Jerry's shop.

Now I knew something really serious was up because Charlie Lomax, Les Jackson's driver, jumped smartly out (well, as smartly as a fifty-two-year-old, slightly overweight ex-boxer could – perhaps ‘lumbered smartly out' would be more accurate) and opened the back door and allowed the man himself, Les, to slide off the leather seat and step on to the pavement, straightening his jacket as he did so.

Now Les is not a lazy man, and it is not unknown for him to be up and at his desk by eight o'clock, but he has never paid me a call before half past seven. In fact, I was struggling to remember an occasion when he had paid me a call at any hour of the day.

‘Excuse me, Enzo,' I said. ‘I'll be back in a minute. With a rich customer for you.'

I walked to the door and called to them. ‘Les, Charlie. Over here. I'll buy you a cuppa.'

It was still cool, and it didn't look as if the sun was going to break through the increasing cloud. I found I preferred this to the high seventies of yesterday. My new wool suit felt right for the weather.

Les looked up, saw me and stalked across the road, followed by a serious-looking Charlie.

‘No time for that,' Les said. ‘Get in the car.' The dark bags under his eyes were a fetching shade of green, and he looked decidedly irritable.

‘And good morning to you too, Les,' I said.

‘Sorry, sorry,' he said, shaking his head. ‘I didn't mean to be rude.'

‘That's all right,' I said. ‘Have a cup of coffee, calm down and tell me what's up.'

He rubbed his eyes, stroked his chin and sighed. ‘Yeah, that's not a bad idea.' He turned to Charlie. ‘I don't suppose you had time for any breakfast, did you?'

‘No, guv,' Charlie said.

‘Let's grab some now, then. While we've got the chance.'

I led the way back into Costello's.

Enzo nearly smiled when Charlie ordered bacon, egg, fried bread and beans, but normal service was soon restored and he was back to his miserable self as soon as Les just ordered tea.

‘So, what's up?'

‘Philip Graham is what's up,' he said.

‘Disappeared again?' I said.

‘No,' he said. ‘Holed up in his flat. Won't come out. Sounds shit scared.'

Another one, I thought. ‘What's he scared of, Les?' I said.

‘Buggered if I know,' he said. ‘He wouldn't say. He mentioned you, though. And I thought  . . .' He trailed off and looked at me appealingly.

Les at his most appealing is a cross between an old basset hound and the Cheeky Chappie himself, and difficult to resist. He also pays my wages.

‘That I might know something, or squeeze something out of him,' I said.

‘Perzactly,' he said.

‘Well, I don't know anything,' I said, ‘and I can but try to find something out. Where's he live?'

‘Somewhere in Ladbroke Grove,' he said.

‘Really?' I said.

He nodded.

‘Les,' I said, ‘you really have to start paying your stars properly. Shouldn't he be living in Mayfair?'

‘No, he bloody shouldn't,' he snapped. ‘He's an oily rag, and I don't like him. The camera does, though. Mind you, it doesn't love him half as much as he loves himself  . . .' He trailed off again and sighed. ‘I'm getting too old for all this. I'm fed up with it, Tony. The unions, the stars, the distributors, they're all getting me down.'

I took a deep breath. ‘You're worried about Daff, Les,' I said. ‘That's what's getting you down.'

Enzo brought over tea for Les and Charlie and another coffee for me. Les stirred a spoonful of sugar into his cup and took a sip. I lost count of the number of spoonfuls Charlie put in. He would have saved time by pouring his tea into the sugar bowl.

‘I know,' Les finally said, ‘and the toothache doesn't help either.' He paused. ‘All the same, it's a miserable bloody business at the moment. It's just one damned thing after another. Someone's always trying to stitch me up.'

‘Must make a change from you stitching them up,' I said.

‘Very funny,' he said and sipped some more tea. ‘But, yeah, I do miss having Daff around the place.'

Charlie stared steadfastly into his tea. Clearly, he didn't miss having Daff around. Fortunately, Enzo arrived and slapped a plate of fried food down in front of him and he set to with a will.

‘She always kept me on the straight and narrow,' Les said.

I laughed. ‘I doubt even Daphne could do that,' I said.

Les gave a phlegmy chuckle. ‘I suppose not,' he said. ‘But she tried harder than most.' He paused. ‘Ah, I wish you'd known her before the war. Handsome woman. Smart, too. Sharp tongue on her, mind.'

‘She's not gone yet, Les,' I said. ‘You never know.'

‘The forecast's not good,' he said. ‘Not good at all, Tony. The quack says there's not much hope.' He paused again. ‘By the way, what did she want with you?'

‘Oh, nothing much,' I said. ‘There's just a little family matter on her mind. From way back. Well before she met you.'

He sniffed. ‘You going to be able to sort it out for her?'

‘I'll do me best, Les,' I said. ‘But the mists of time and all that.'

‘Mists of time!' he said. ‘I think me memory's going. Remembering the past is like trying to look through a pea-souper these days. You know something's out there somewhere, but you're blowed if you can see what it is.'

‘Come on, Les, you're not that old,' I said, thinking of old man Mountjoy.

He finished his tea and stood up, looking impatiently at Charlie, who was busily mopping up the last of his egg yolk with a piece of fried bread. There was a little dribble of bean juice on his chin.

‘Ready when you are, Mr J,' Charlie said through a mouthful of soggy bread, scraping his chair back across the floor and bending over to swill down the last of his tea.

I left half a cup of coffee. I'd been wrong. It wasn't that good.

Characteristically, Les waved aside my offer to pay and rummaged in his pocket for a few half crowns. Enzo thoughtfully put the cigarette he'd just lit into the scarred ashtray on the counter and, once again, in another rare moment of peace and happiness, came close to smiling.

Les was misinformed. Philip Graham didn't live in Ladbroke Grove at all. His flat was at the top of a big, old house in Bayswater. It was pretty rundown though, and there were a lot of stairs. Les looked like he'd just climbed the north face of the Eiger by the time we stood outside the flimsy-looking blue door. He was huffing and puffing like a pressure cooker about to blow. As he said himself, he was getting on a bit. Still, so was Charlie, and he didn't look too bad. It was all those ‘spots of lunch' Les treated himself to and those expensive cigars and cheap women that were slowing him down. Come to think of it, though, I hadn't seen him light a cigar lately, and he hadn't drawn my attention to the charms of his latest secretary for a month or two. Perhaps he really was feeling his age.

He nodded to Charlie, who rapped on the door. The door shivered.

We heard someone shuffling about inside and then a muffled and wary, ‘Who is it?'

‘It's Mr Jackson, Mr Graham,' Charlie said.

There was a long silence.

‘Why don't we just huff and puff and blow the door down?' I said, hoping that Les wouldn't take the comment personally. ‘It's what the bad boys would do, if that's who he thinks we are.'

Les shook his head irritably. ‘Just open up, Phil,' he said. ‘I've brought Tony to see you.'

The door shook a bit more and then swung to and there was Philip Graham.

Unshaven, in grubby vest and pants and with his hair awry and rubbing at sleep-encrusted eyes, he didn't much look like a matinee idol, more like a scrofulous and unpleasant young man, thin, pale and malicious. Which is, I suppose, what I'd always thought he was.

He stepped back and beckoned us inside. Then he looked quickly out on to the landing and firmly pushed the frail door to when we were in. I don't know who he thought that was going to keep from getting at him, if that's what he was afraid of. He was certainly afraid of something.

We stepped straight into the living room. There was the usual stale, young-man smell about the place – feet, sweat, unwashed clothes and bodies – and it was dark and untidy in there.

Home, not-so-sweet home.

It reminded me of the war. And, I was sadly forced to admit, it was just a little bit like my own flat, above the record shop.

‘So,' I said, keen not to stay in that fetid atmosphere any longer than was necessary, ‘what's up?'

In the half-light and shadows of the room, the venom in the look he flashed me shone brightly. I thought it was uncalled for.

‘You telling me you don't know?' he said.

‘Er, yes,' I said, ‘I'm telling you that I don't know. If I knew, I wouldn't have to ask, would I?'

‘Can we have a light on? Or draw the curtains?' Les said. ‘This place is like a bloody tomb. And an open window wouldn't hurt. It smells like something died in here, weeks ago.'

Charlie pulled the curtains to one side and forced the sash window up.

The light didn't improve noticeably, but some cool, sooty air sneaked in and disturbed the
ambiance
a little.

I looked out of the window at the higgledy-piggledy rooftops of west London while I waited for Philip Graham to talk. There were a few gaps in the roofline here, but not as many as in the East End. The light was the colour of a dirty net curtain. I thought of the blue sky of Paris and felt a brief but overwhelming spasm of regret. I wasn't sure what for.

I turned away from the gloom of a London morning, back to the gloom of a seedy flat in west London.

Les had lit a cigar. It wasn't quite of Churchillian stature, but it was heading in that direction. Charlie was lighting a Woodbine for Philip Graham. Graham was looking worried and furtive. I glared at him unsympathetically.

‘Well?' I said. ‘What's the story?'

He drew nervously on the cigarette, then blew smoke out through his nose. ‘Last night,' he said and then stopped.

I sighed. ‘Yes,' I said, ‘last night  . . .'

And then it all came out in a breathless rush.

The gist of it was that he'd gone slumming again and had visited the Frighted Horse way after hours. It was the usual lock-in scenario, and he'd met up with Del, one of his ‘friends' from Thursday night, and then Ricky and Billy had turned up. Billy had seen Lee (‘that piano-playing bloke we had the run-in with'), and Del and Billy had decided on a pre-emptive strike. They were only gone about five minutes and came back, grinning and full of it. Apparently, Lee'd pulled a blade on them, but Billy had wielded his little cosh and they'd given him a bit of a seeing-to and he'd collapsed like a soggy newspaper. They'd left him in a crummy alley round the back of the pub. Then Ricky had handed them some envelopes and sent them off to make their deliveries. And they hadn't come back.

I shrugged. ‘So what?' I said. ‘They probably went to a club.'

‘No,' he said grimly. ‘They were supposed to come back. But they couldn't. When Ricky and me went out, we found them. Lying in the alley they'd left your mate, the pianist, in. They'd both been knifed.'

‘Dead?' I said.

‘Don't know,' he said. ‘Ricky and me ran for it. But I suppose so.' He paused. ‘They didn't look well.'

Neither did he, but I didn't say anything. As for the other two, I didn't feel anything much tugging at my heart strings. A lot of good, decent young men died in the war. These may well have been stupid, pointless deaths, but, somehow, I couldn't think of Del and Billy – short though my acquaintance with them had been – as good or decent. But I was worried for Lee. Well, if I was honest, I was worried for Miss Summers.

‘And you think  . . .?' I said.

He looked at me like I was an idiot. ‘I think that your mate Lee did for them and you know all about it,' he said.

I shrugged again. ‘Why would you think that?' I said as mildly as I could manage.

Judging by the look that crossed his face, either I'd been a lot more aggressive than I'd intended or he really was a shrinking violet.

‘He was there,' he said. ‘Waving this bloody great knife. Why do you think we ran?'

‘Are you sure it was him?' I said. ‘They'd dealt with him a couple of times before without much difficulty. What would have been different this time?'

He looked at me warily, not saying anything. The accusation was in the look.

‘For the record,' I said, turning to Les and Charlie, ‘I wasn't there. And knives are not my style.' But I was thinking back to what Lee had said to me the night before. It had sounded suspiciously like knives might be
his
style.

‘No one's accusing you of anything, Tony,' Les said.

‘I rather think they are,' I said.

It wasn't just Philip Graham. The Mountjoys obviously thought I was involved too. And they, equally obviously, thought that I was connected, and that a corrective punishment was therefore not advisable. My thoughts strayed to Big Malc and his boss. I wondered who that might be.

‘What are you involved in, Philip?' I said.

‘Nothing,' he said.

‘Oh, come on. Why didn't you call the police?'

‘Ricky didn't think it was a good idea,' he said, looking past me.