September Song (14 page)

Malcolm Booth was hunched over one of the tables outside the Acropolis, smoking. The cigarette was cupped in his hand, giving the distinct impression that he was engaged in something furtive. He lumbered to his feet when I emerged.

‘Seeing me off the premises?' I said.

He gave a phlegmy chuckle. ‘Something like that,' he said.

We both stared at Frith Street and the waifs and strays who hurried past. Most of the lean men with hollow cheeks were looking to cadge a few drinks before closing time. What the few worn-looking women were doing was a mystery. Maybe the same thing.

‘Listen,' Malcolm said, ‘I don't know about you, but I'm not much of a one for this foreign muck. Fancy some fish and chips? There's a very decent chippie just off Leicester Square.'

‘Is there?' I said. ‘I didn't know that.'

‘It's tucked away.' He patted me on the shoulder and smiled knowingly. ‘Come on. I'm buying.'

How could I resist? After all, someone owed me a bite to eat.

As we walked away from the restaurant, I glanced back and saw three big, well-dressed black men pause outside and light cigarettes.

We mooched around the shabby little garden in the centre of Leicester Square silently eating our cod and chips, not quite oblivious to either the pinched-faced people in their Sunday clothes loudly making the most of their afternoon off or the bright lights of the giant picture houses. Sunday clothes on a Saturday afternoon? Maman would not have approved. The, according to Les, quite risqué film
The Seven Year Itch
with Marilyn Monroe was playing. I thought I'd wait for it to come to the Gaumont. Though I supposed I might have to take the bus up Lea Bridge Road to the Bakers' Alms to the Ritz or the Plaza.

In fact, we were not entirely silent – Malcolm chomped quite noisily on his crisp wally – but we didn't speak. Malcolm was right. It was a good chippie. I couldn't believe that I hadn't come across it before.

Malcolm smacked his lips when he finished and then licked some of the grease off his fingers, balled up the newspaper wrapping and dropped it by a sad stunted bush, on the bare earth, among a group of mean-eyed and ill-favoured pigeons. I rather pointedly sought out one of the rubbish bins so thoughtfully provided by the municipal authorities. Sometimes there's something of my severe, rather proper mother about me. The bin was, of course, full to overflowing.

‘Well?' I said.

‘Good fish and chips, yeah?' he said, running his tongue around his back teeth.

‘Yeah,' I said, ‘thanks.'

He was a big man, but his dark-brown suit hung well on him, and his shoes were nicely polished, his brown trilby recently brushed.

‘Listen,' he said, ‘I hope you didn't get the wrong idea last night.'

‘Sorry,' I said, ‘I'm not sure I know what you're talking about.'

‘Last night,' he said, ‘when I said I'd like to shake you by the hand for thumping Ricky.'

‘Oh,' I said. ‘How could I have got the wrong idea?'

He shrugged and scuffed the ground with one of his expensive shoes. ‘I don't know,' he said. ‘You might have thought I didn't like young Ricky.'

‘Well, I didn't get the impression that you were best mates,' I said.

He looked at his watch. ‘I could murder a pint,' he said. ‘We've got time. What about it?'

‘All right,' I said, ‘but I don't really like beer.'

He looked worried. ‘Well, if you don't want a drink, you can always have lemonade or something.'

‘I said I didn't like beer,' I said. ‘I didn't say I didn't like a drink.' After the horrible Greek wine that Fitzgerald had forced on me, I needed something. ‘Come on, I know somewhere.' And I led the way out of the scruffy little park, past the foul-smelling toilets, to the French.

As always, there was a thin crowd at dinner time on a Saturday, and we had half an hour to closing so there was plenty of time for a couple of drinks. Which was just as well, as the bottle of dark beer I bought for Malcolm went down in one great glug. The ‘decent little Burgundy' recommended by Gaston turned out to be rather better than decent, and it completely washed away the unpleasant memory of the wine at the Acropolis. I sipped at it and looked around the little bar while Malcolm went back to the counter ‘for the other half'. Gaston, his big soup-strainer moustache suggesting that he was more French than was really the case, efficiently poured him another glass. Malcolm brought me another glass as well which was very decent of him.

‘So,' I said, ‘what's on your mind?'

He leaned in closer, conspiratorially. ‘What you have to understand,' he said, ‘is that I've been with Mr Fitz for a long time now. I've worked hard to get where I've got.' He looked around to make sure that no one was listening. ‘And so it's only natural that I'm worried about where I stand when he brings in the youngsters. Isn't it?'

I shrugged. I really didn't know.

‘The thing is, though, I wouldn't want Mr Fitz hearing that I'm cheesed off or anything.'

‘Your name didn't come up, Malcolm,' I said.

‘Well, you know, what with what occurred,' he said, ‘I wouldn't want any suspicions being raised.'

‘Of course not,' I said.

‘The thing is,' he said, ‘Mr Fitz, he has an odd way of running things. He likes to keep us all on our toes, you know. So, every so often, he brings new people in.'

I nodded. Les had explained something similar to me. He called it the ‘cats in a bag' approach. When things in the sack quieten down, you open it up, chuck another cat in and see what happens. ‘Supposed to stop the hired help becoming complacent,' Les had said. He didn't approve. ‘Life's aggravating enough as it is,' he'd explained, which seemed true to me.

I sipped some wine and looked around the little bar. It was emptying rapidly, and, Gaston and Malcolm apart, there wasn't a soul in there who I knew.

Malcolm glugged down his second beer and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. He pulled a pack of Woodbines and a box of matches out of his suit pocket and lit up.

‘So,' I said, ‘what's going to happen now? To the distribution network that Mr Fitzgerald's Young Turks ran.'

Malcolm took the cigarette out of his mouth, still cupped inside his big hand, and shook his head.

‘I don't know,' he said. ‘Ricky's still running things, I guess.'

I nodded, but I didn't see Ricky running anything, except scared, for a week or two.

‘Do you know what happened last night?' I said.

‘No,' he said. ‘Course not.'

He looked at me so honestly and frankly that I couldn't quite bring myself to believe him. I wasn't entirely sure that I liked Malcolm Booth. I certainly didn't like the man he worked for, and I knew I wouldn't like what he did for a living.

‘The piano player,' I said, ‘the Yank. Where did you find him?'

He took a long drag from his cigarette and looked at me through eyes half closed against the rising smoke.

‘We was on our rounds,' he said, ‘collecting the rent, you know, from the girls. One of them asked us to help her with him. She'd dumped him on her sofa the night before.'

I raised my eyebrows, and he shrugged.

‘Feeling sorry for him, I guess,' he said. ‘She's always been a soft touch, Viv.'

I sipped at my second glass of wine. ‘Where's her gaff?' I said.

‘Just round the corner. Why?'

‘I thought I'd have a word with her. She might know where he went when he left the club last night.'

‘Doubt it,' he said. ‘She's a working girl. In any case, we know where he went, don't we?'

‘Maybe,' I said. ‘All the same, I wouldn't mind a little chat with her.'

He picked up his glass, drained it, put it back on the counter, sucked cigarette smoke deep into his lungs and sighed. ‘Sure, I can take you there, if you like.'

‘Thanks,' I said. ‘I appreciate it.'

I sipped some more wine and watched Gaston busy himself behind the bar as closing time approached. The pot boy shuffled over and collected our empties. There was none of the ‘time, gennulmen, please' nonsense from Gaston.

The photograph of a rugged, handsome Robert Rieux in his black beret and bulky leather jacket in a field in Normandy, brandishing a captured German Luger, was lost in shadow to the right of the bar. But I knew that I was still there, in the background, looking impossibly young and callow, with Big Luc towering over me and the Blier brother who was picked up in Caen a few days later standing to my right, looking like an overgrown schoolboy playing soldiers.

I sipped some more wine, the words from the original French version of ‘Autumn Leaves', the ones about life gently separating those who love without making a noise, whispering in my head, and I thought of Paris in the summer: clear, blue skies, warm sunshine, the smell of drains and strong cigarettes, crusty bread and café crème. And I wondered if Ghislaine had, as she'd said in her letter, gone back to Robert.

She probably had.

Then I wondered if I really cared.

I probably did.

NINE

M
alcolm Booth and I ambled out of the French, looking for all the world like we were bosom friends, and strolled along Old Compton Street for a little while.

He stopped outside a seedy bookshop that probably stocked the sort of title that Foyle's didn't, and he nodded towards a beaten-up old black door suffering from what looked like an advanced case of eczema.

‘Top floor,' he said. ‘Don't bother to ring. The door's always open.'

Sure enough, pinned to the panel above the little buttons for the bells was a handwritten card. ‘Artist's model, top floor.'

I nodded to Malcolm. ‘What's her name?' I said.

‘Viv,' he said.

‘Viv what?' I said.

He looked puzzled.

‘I don't know. Viv.' He snapped his fingers and nodded vigorously. ‘Laurence. That's it. With a “u”.'

‘Thanks,' I said. ‘For the fish and chips as well.'

‘You're welcome,' he said. ‘And thanks for keeping me straight with the gaffer.' He paused and looked uneasy. ‘I'll leave you to it then. I've got to get back to Mr Fitz. He'll be wondering where I am as it is.' He raised his eyes to the top floor. ‘You'll be all right?'

‘I'll be fine,' I said.

He nodded thoughtfully and looked down at the pavement. ‘Be seeing you then,' he said but didn't move.

‘Yeah,' I said, ‘be seeing you.'

‘Do you think she knows something?' he said.

‘No idea,' I said. ‘And I won't until I speak to her.'

‘Of course,' he said, ‘of course. Well, I won't keep you. If she does know something, I'd appreciate you getting in touch. Just leave word at the Acropolis. They'll know where I am.'

‘Right,' I said and stepped to the door, aware that Malcolm Booth was still standing there, still watching me.

I pushed with a fingertip, and little flecks of black paint, like tiny, sooty snowflakes, drifted slowly to the ground as the door swung open. I turned to Malcolm and held up my hand in final farewell, hoping that he'd take the hint, and then I walked into the narrow, dingy hallway, sidling past the two solid bicycles leaning against the right-hand wall without barking a shin, and reached the staircase.

The stairs must once have had a carpet because the central eighteen inches of each was paler than the outer six inches or so, but it had long since been ripped up and thrown away. Still, that was probably for the best as, although the place didn't exactly smell sweet, at least it didn't fill the nose with the fragrance of rotting Axminster, and the steep steps may have creaked alarmingly but there was no treacherous frayed fabric to catch at the heels and trip you up.

It was quite a climb to the top, but I eventually arrived at the final landing. I had a choice of two doors, but one was open and showed a stained WC and a sink so I opted for the other one and knocked. It was a flimsy affair with just a plywood face which gave alarmingly when I rapped on it. Nothing happened, and I knocked again.

I was about to give the door some more grief when I heard sounds of movement inside and then a pleasant, sleepy voice that I assumed belonged to Viv.

‘All right, all right, keep your hair on. I'm coming.'

The door opened, Viv peered around it and I was assailed by masses of brown, curly hair, about a gallon of cheap scent and a cleavage that Jane Russell would have been proud of.

‘I'm not open for business yet, dear,' she said. ‘You'll have to come back later.'

‘I'm not here for business,' I said.

‘Doesn't matter what you call it, dear – business or pleasure – I'm still not open for it.'

I laughed, and she chuckled.

‘You must be Miss Laurence,' I said.

She nodded, and then looked at me suspiciously. ‘You a copper?' she said. ‘Only, I heard about them boys last night, but I don't know nothing.'

‘No,' I said, ‘I'm not a copper.' I reached into my wallet and took out one of the posh cards that Hoxton Films had supplied me with and handed it to her. ‘That's me,' I said. ‘Tony Gérard.'

She held the card delicately between her forefinger and her thumb, narrowed her eyes and peered at it myopically.

I took the opportunity to peer at her.

She was still quite pretty in a tired, worn sort of way, with a longish nose, neat little mouth and a pointed chin, and she could have been anything from twenty-five to thirty-five, but I settled on late twenties.

She looked up from the card and frowned at me. ‘Films?' she said.

‘Yes,' I said, ‘I work for a film company but—'

‘No.' She shook her head violently, and her hair flew about and the impressive bosom heaved. ‘I don't do stags.'