The Talisman (41 page)

The club just about ran itself, but they had to deal with a lot of aggravation from villains demanding protection money. Alex always paid without a murmur, as he had seen what happened when other club owners didn’t. The places were ‘fired’, or fights broke out among the guests, uninvited guests who drank a skinful and then picked rows and broke mirrors and noses. Dora had been all for fighting the thugs, calling in the police, but she had as usual given way to Alex.

After the first few months Alex had realized he was not a good front man. His scarred face didn’t actually add to the ambience, and so he left it to Dora. He was always working behind the scenes, though, always there when needed, and the club ran like clockwork. He had fingers in many other small businesses – he had bought out Harry Driver years ago, and ran his sweatshops and betting shops as well as his small drinking clubs. As he did at Masks, Alex paid protection money to keep things quiet, but there was a growing undercurrent of violence as gang warfare raged between rival East End gangs for territory. Alex played no part in the violence, and became known as a ‘steady’, a man anyone could rely on, a man who always kept his word. He was an honourable man and it paid off. He was left to run his clubs and his offshoot businesses without much trouble.

After resisting at first, Dora gave way as she watched many clubs being taken over by the gangs. She also complied for her own safety. She had branched out, no longer living in Johnny Mask’s old place, and had bought herself a three-storey house in Notting Hill Gate. Johnny’s flat was known as the ‘dossing pad’, where the hostesses from the club took back their tricks – all part of the club’s ‘social benefits’.

Dora kept her own special stable of girls clean and on a quick turnaround, but like Alex she also had a second string to her bow. The Notting Hill Gate house became known as a ‘party’ place, with girls even more beautiful than those at Masks. They were from all kinds of backgrounds, but classy, and all in it for the fast money. The films and ‘private cabarets’ were expensive, and only for those with a lot of money or connections. Dora was a ‘madame’, and a tough one. She tolerated no nonsense and her house was tasteful and, above all, well run. Even more important, it was safe. The law was paid off; politicians, magistrates and the aristocracy were welcomed along with the odd chief of police and foreign diplomat. The Notting Hill Gate house was a very lucrative business on its own.

Trusted and well liked, Dora was paid handsomely for her small parties. She was also earning a fortune. Alex, of course, knew about her little ‘perks’, said that as long as she didn’t involve him it was fine, but he refused to take part in any of the activities although he kept an eye on her books.

Dora also ran a team of girls known as the ‘cash and carry’, who were planted in the casinos with ready money supplied by Dora. The big, high-rolling gamblers, the female ones with only a certain amount of money to spend each week, would sell off their jewels to continue gambling when their cash ran out. The women were mostly foreign, Arabs, Lebanese, and whenever they removed a bracelet or a ring Dora’s girls would move in and buy it for cash at a quarter of its value.

Wrapped in her white mink coat, Dora sat in the back of her Rolls. She was nervous, wondering what Alex would say. She knew how much he depended on her, and she chain-smoked, stubbing out the cigarette after one puff and lighting another immediately. The Rolls stopped at a traffic light, just a short distance from her home, on the corner of Ladbroke Grove. She leaned forward and pressed the button, the glass slid back. ‘Pull over, just for a minute.’

The Rolls glided to the side of the road and stopped, engine ticking over. Dora thought it was fate – it had to be – all these years and not a word, and tonight of all nights she saw him, knew it was him just from one look.

Johnny Mask, wearing a filthy raincoat and with a hat pulled down over his straggly, greasy hair, was picking through a wastebin at the side of the road near the traffic lights.

‘I want you to do something . . . You see the guy, the dosser on the side of the road by the wastebin? Take your hat off, put your collar up.’

Dora lowered the window and watched the chauffeur walk behind Johnny Mask and drop two twenty-pound notes on to the wet pavement. Johnny had stopped rummaging, was staring at something he had taken out of the bin. The chauffeur tapped Johnny on the shoulder, pointed to the ground.

‘You drop something, mate?’

The chauffeur walked on, crossed the road and returned to the Rolls.

Johnny Mask looked down at the folded bills, gave the chauffeur a look and then a smile, his old smile, patting his pockets. He bent down and picked up the wet notes, gave a shifty look round and beetled off down Ladbroke Grove.

Down and out, Johnny was still the same. Dora pressed the button and the window glided up. She knew he would be drunk out of his already addled mind within the hour. So much for the past, she was now sure where her future lay.

Dora entered the club. It was early, so there were few punters about. Those that knew her smiled, and Arnie gave her his usual welcome.

‘Hello, Lana, how’s things?’

Arnie had a fixation on Lana Turner, and as Dora looked like her he had always called her Lana. She smiled and patted his arm, knew she would miss old Arnie. She weaved her way through the tables, stopped to fix a flower arrangement, looked over at two of her girls and gave a small wave. Then she opened the door to the inner sanctum.

Alex was at his desk as she knew he would be. She tossed her mink over the easy chair and poured herself the usual iced water, and leaned on the small corner bar.

Alex barely looked up from the accounts. He had not changed much – he wore his hair slicked back, oiled with Brylcreem, but he didn’t seem to have changed. His thick-set shoulders and heavily muscled arms were still courtesy of George Windsor, as they still worked out together regularly. Because he frequently had considerable amounts of cash to bank, he carried a gun in an underarm holster, and his suits were cut by a skilled East End tailor to disguise it. He did not bother applying for a licence; with his record he was sure to be turned down.

Always immaculately dressed, Alex looked more like a City gent than a club owner in his pale blue shirts with detachable white collars, and dark, pinstriped suit. Dora often wondered if he only had the one suit, as he never wore any other colour or style. Only his face distorted the image.

Dora had never been to Alex’s flat in the East End. At one time she had wondered what it would be like, but when she dropped hints for an invitation they were ignored. Eventually she put Alex down as a skinflint because he showed no outward signs of his new-found affluence. He did not smoke or drink, and seemed to have no friends apart from George Windsor. However, he did buy a Jaguar every year, and listed it as a company car for tax purposes, although no one else was ever allowed to drive it. Alex paid Arnie a tenner a week to make sure it was waxed regularly and remained in pristine condition.

Dora sipped her iced water, thinking what an oddball he was. ‘Alex, do you mind if I ask you something personal?’

He didn’t even look up from the books, just lifted his pen towards her and carried on writing.

‘You got a girl hidden at your place?’

Alex laughed and said there were enough around the club without having one at home. She knew he occasionally took girls up to the old flat, but never twice, or if he had she didn’t know about it. Sometimes the girls talked to her, asked about him.

‘That your personal question, is it?’

She clinked the ice in her glass and perched her bum on the edge of the desk. ‘Nope . . . You’re not gay, are you? I mean, really gay, sort of a closet queen?’

He jabbed the pen into her side then dropped it on the desk. ‘No, I am not a closet poofter, what’s all this leading to? What d’you really want, Dora, come on, out wiv it.’

Dora saw him grimace. He tried so hard to speak correctly, but still he used words like ‘wiv’ and ‘somefink’ when he wasn’t concentrating. She found the way he tried to copy the toffs’ accent endearing. She herself had taken elocution lessons for years, and had suggested Alex do the same. Her voice now had little or no trace of her own East End origins.

Alex tapped the books and asked again what she wanted. She sighed, chewed her lips. ‘Is this all you want out of life, Alex? This place, your little sidelines – don’t you want a family, kids – you know, the things most people want?’

He picked up her hand, her left hand, and looked at the ring. He laughed, but didn’t let go. ‘What’s this? Don’t tell me that Texan wants to make an honest woman of you? That what all this is leading up to? Well, don’t ask me to walk down the bleedin’ aisle.’

Dora snatched her hand back. ‘Do me a favour! You think I’d get married here, with all these apes looking on? Oh, he knows all about me, don’t get me wrong, but we’d get a quickie licence in Nevada, or some place like that. What you think of him, Alex?’

Alex shrugged and picked up his pen. ‘I’m not marryin’ him, you are. Seems an all right enough bloke.’

Dora paced up and down for a moment, then sat on the edge of the desk again. ‘It’s my chance, Alex. I can make a new life for myself, no worry about running into some “john” I had God knows how many years ago . . . He lives in Houston, don’t think I ever laid anybody from there.’

Alex stared at her, knew she was serious, and he rubbed his nose. ‘So how much do you want? I’ll buy you out.’

Just like that, no arguments, no recriminations, no sarcastic remarks. She wanted to cry.

‘What’s the matter, I said the wrong fing?’

‘No, no, you great big idiot, you said just the right thing and I love you for it, I really love you, Alex.’ She hugged him, but he gently pulled his arms away and opened up the safe.

‘I saw Johnny Mask tonight – he looked like a dosser, thieving out of a wastebin. It must have been fate, sort of helped me make up my mind.’

‘You’d never end up like that. Here you go, let’s sort through the contracts.’

Watching him laying out the documents on the desk, taking out the chequebooks and cashbox, Dora thought to herself that he wasn’t wasting a minute. ‘You think I’ll make a good wife?’

‘No, lousy. Yer can’t cook, can’t do nothing ordinary – but then, you never could . . . Yeah, I’d say you’ll make ’im a great wife. Now put yer name on the dotted line.’

‘Alex, if you asked me, I’d stay. But you don’t need me here any more, do you? Place runs itself, more or less.’

Alex twisted the pen, then suddenly held out his hand to her. He fingered her tiny white hands with the long, blood-red nails. She knew he was the best friend she would ever have, and began to get tearful. She really cared for him. ‘You know, Alex, you should take a break. Everybody has to at some time. He won’t come down here now. I know why you’re always here. But Eddie’s not coming back, not here.’

His hand tightened on hers and his grip began to hurt her. His voice was quiet and cold. ‘One day he’ll come back – if not for you, he’ll be looking for me. An’ I’ll be ready, waiting. I’ll surprise him. Now sign these contracts if that’s what you want.’

In his clean, neat flat Alex sat with his arms folded behind his head. He owned Masks outright, plus Dora’s Notting Hill Gate property, and he began to calculate just how much he was worth. He grinned to himself, he was doing all right – more than all right, he was making it and he was going to go even further. He had to admit the buy-out had almost cleaned him out of ready cash, but he would soon be flush again. He began to think about buying the year’s new model Jaguar XK120, the sports model, he’d have it custom made.

Going to the bathroom, he picked up his toothbrush and squeezed some paste on to it. He stared at his muscular body in the mirror, then began to brush his teeth. He was always very self-conscious about an ill-fitting plate he had to use after losing two front teeth at the hands of his prison guards. He kept it by his bed at night in a small cup. He splashed cold water over his face and patted it dry.

He would have liked to celebrate his success, but there was no one he particularly wanted to see. He pulled on his freshly laundered pyjamas and turned back the bed. From habit, he always made it as he had been forced to in prison. The small flat was bare, only his precious, worn books were on display. The cleanliness and neatness of the two white-walled rooms verged on the obsessive. A kitchen table and two chairs were the only other pieces of furniture. He had painted them white, and often a vase of fresh flowers stood on the table. His writing paper, pens and sharp pencils stood in groups in a small holder. Every garment had its hanger, socks and shirts had their space. Each drawer was lined with paper.

At night Alex would spend his time reading, always aware of the limits of his education. He liked routine, and every night when he returned from the club he would put in two hours’ work. He was taking several university courses by post. He never intended to take any of the exams, it was purely for his own enjoyment, and these hours were precious to him.

He sat at the table, his exercise books in front of him, but he couldn’t concentrate, so he lay down on his bed instead. There was someone he would dearly have liked to show off his success to, and that person was Edward. He whispered to the white walls, ‘I can wait, Eddie, I can wait, and I’m going to get rich waiting.’

W
hile Alex climbed to success in England, Edward’s preparations for the ‘big scam’ in South Africa were moving towards their conclusion. Skye Duval worked at the press releases for the reopening of the mines, all due to the assurance of a young scientist carrying out experiments on their owners’ land. The mines were mostly fictitious and so far afield the reports would take some time to verify.

BB was deliberately getting himself deeper and deeper into debt with the banks. Mortgaging the house was the last move. All his defunct mines were now open, and to all intents and purposes active.

Rumours began to spread like a small bush fire, continually fuelled. The De Veer Corporation placed a notice in the newspapers disassociating themselves from the ‘new chemical method of assessing mining areas’. Edward was unobtainable, supposedly travelling across Africa. A group of technicians were put into Edward’s laboratory to take over his experiments. Hundreds of thousands of phials took time to assimilate, none could be taken at face value. They had to begin taking their own samples from the same areas, but they had Edward’s notes and positive samples, all linked directly to the reopening of the mines.