September Song (15 page)

I held up my hands to calm her down. ‘No.' I said, ‘I'm not here for anything to do with the company. It's a private matter. You helped out an acquaintance of mine the other night.'

She looked at me suspiciously. ‘Yes, dear, that sounds like me. Heart of gold. The original tart with a heart.' She paused and chuckled again. ‘Well, not the original. That would have been that Nancy in
Oliver Twist
, wouldn't it?'

‘I wouldn't know,' I said. ‘I haven't studied the matter.'

She sighed. ‘I have,' she said sadly. ‘So, what do you want?'

‘Like I said. I wanted to say thanks for what you did for Lee, the American bloke you brought here the other night.'

‘Oh, him. Poor lamb.' She shook her head dismissively. ‘Anyone would have done it. He was helpless, and those horrible little oiks were just taking advantage.' She paused. ‘I don't like to see anyone being bullied. And that Ricky  . . . I really don't like him. Just seeing him gives me the willies.' She paused again, looking thoughtful, then she shook her impressive tresses and laughed. ‘I gave them a right mouthful, I can tell you, sent them off with a flea in their ear. Couldn't leave him there, could I? They'd be back and start again. So I brought him here.'

‘I don't know that anyone would have done it,' I said. ‘And Lee is really very grateful.'

‘I know,' she said. ‘He came back last night to tell me.'

‘Did he?' I said. ‘Is he still here?'

She avoided my eyes and looked down at the worn wooden boards. ‘No, he left a couple of hours ago,' she said.

‘Pity,' I said. ‘You don't know where he went, I suppose. People are keen to find him.'

She shook her head. ‘He didn't say where he was going,' she said.

We stood on that cramped, dark landing in silence for a few seconds. Viv Laurence stared at the floor. I stared at a patch of damp on the discoloured ceiling by the bare light-bulb.

‘Are you really his friend?' she said very quietly.

‘No, I'm just an acquaintance, like I said. But people who are his friends have asked me to find him.'

She looked at the card that was still in her hand. ‘Is there really a film studio in Leyton?' she said.

‘No, that's just where I live,' I said. ‘There used to be one in Walthamstow, though. My grandfather worked there.'

‘I didn't know that,' she said.

We stood in another awkward silence. My mother wouldn't have approved of her, but Viv Laurence seemed to me to be a fundamentally decent sort. I found that I wanted her to like and trust me.

‘I'm really sorry to have bothered you,' I said. ‘If you do hear from Lee or see him, perhaps you could call the number on the card. There are people who are very worried about him.' I don't know why, but I decided not to mention that one of them was his wife.

She tapped the card against the door jamb. ‘I'm sure he'll turn up,' she said. ‘He's like a bad penny, that one.'

I smiled at her as reassuringly as I could and turned to go.

‘Wait a minute,' she said and slipped back into the flat. She emerged a moment later holding the tie Lee had found somewhere before last night's performance. It was a very sudden pea-green. ‘He forgot this,' she said, holding it out.

I took it, and her warm, soft hand briefly brushed mine, and then she shut the flimsy door.

I stuffed the tie into my jacket pocket, where the other one still lurked, and I realized that if I didn't find him soon, I'd have quite a collection of the ghastly things.

There was a little welcoming committee waiting for me when I emerged on to the pavement on that dull afternoon. Malcolm Booth hadn't taken the hint and shoved off and was now accompanied by the bloke he'd been with the night before and by Dave Mountjoy and two other little Mountjoys. Well, not so little, really.

They were huddled together to the left of the doorway, all puffing away furiously, giving off smoke like the Flying Scotsman at full pelt.

Malcolm saw me and shrugged apologetically, as if to say that it was nothing to do with him. I smiled back an ‘of course not, how could you think that such a thing had entered my head?'

I then nodded brusquely to Mountjoy and strode off to the right, in the direction of Wardour Street, in a decisive, ‘important things to do' sort of way. I had no great desire to talk to Dave Mountjoy. I strongly suspected that a little
tête-à-tête
would do nothing for my
joie de vivre
.

I must have surprised them because I'd gone about ten yards before the first, ‘Oi,' reached my shell-likes, twenty before I heard the sound of pursuit and thirty before a meaty hand dropped on my shoulder and Mountjoy's large, out-of-breath henchman, as I'd come to think of him, came alongside me.

I stopped, smiled sweetly at him and then looked meaningfully at his hand, which rested on my shoulder like a pound of pork sausages. It took him a few seconds to cotton on, but then he lifted it off gratifyingly speedily.

‘Can I help you?' I said. ‘Only, I'm expected, and I'm late already.'

‘Dave,' he said, still panting, ‘would like a quick word. It won't take a minute.'

I shrugged. He was woefully unfit, but then cigarettes aren't called gaspers for no reason. However, he was a very big man and I didn't want him to take umbrage so I waited for Dave Mountjoy to saunter up.

I glanced down at the wristwatch Mrs Williams – Ann – gave me a couple of years ago.

‘Do you mind if we talk while we're walking?' I said. ‘Only, like I just said to your mate here, I'm a bit late for an appointment and they'll worry about me.'

‘Sure,' he said. He turned to the big man. ‘George, you can have a cuppa at the caff round the corner. I'll see you there in twenty minutes.'

George looked at me suspiciously, and then nodded to his boss and turned back the way we'd come.

Dave Mountjoy snorted and indicated the big man with a backward jerk of his head as we started walking.

‘George doesn't much like you. He still thinks you know something about them kids getting cut up. Thinks you're connected. Thinks you might do the same to Ricky.' He snorted again. ‘But I know who you are. I remember your dad. I did wonder for a bit if you was perhaps made of tougher stuff. But I asked around. So I know you're not, and I know you don't know nothing about it. Or very little. I don't know what we was thinking, treading on eggs with you.' He sniffed. ‘Your dad was a waste of space. A lousy painter and decorator who had to be taught a lesson when the job he done was so bad that I wouldn't pay him for it. Bloody frog.' He took the cigarette out of his mouth and a harsh, racking cough shook his entire body. He hawked up phlegm and spat into the gutter.

The years hadn't been kind to Dave Mountjoy. He still had the same shifty look in his eye and the same rodent's features. But he'd developed a flabby belly and heavy jowls, and there was a yellowish tinge to his skin. A little lock of his white hair hung over his forehead and was stained brown from the constant stream of nicotine that wafted up from the cigarettes that were always clamped between his lips. His shabby, brown suit was a size too small for him, and his white shirt had seen better days too. It had the same faint yellow look as his skin. Maybe the scrap-metal business wasn't holding up as well as it once had.

I was surprised to discover that my indifference to him was profound. I couldn't even be bothered to get angry on my father's account.

We'd nearly reached Wardour Street before he spoke again. I could see the scruffy old Duke of Wellington on the corner.

‘I want to know what you said to my old man this morning. He's been odd ever since, muttering away about things forgotten years ago,' he said.

‘Oh,' I said dismissively as we turned into Wardour Street.

‘Come off it,' he said. ‘What did you talk to him about?'

‘I just asked him about one of his granddaughters,' I said.

‘He doesn't have any granddaughters,' he said.

‘Yeah he does,' I said. ‘Your brother, he knocked up one of the laundry girls. Would have been about 1928.'

‘What's that got to do with you?'

‘Nothing much,' I said. ‘Someone asked me to see if I could find the girl. That's all. I said I'd ask around.'

‘Well, don't,' he said. ‘You've upset Dad, and I won't have that. He's not been well, and that Jean wasn't nothing but grief. She ran away during the war, and we've not seen her since.'

‘Jean?' I said.

‘That's what we called her. She had some fancy, old-fashioned name.'

‘When did she run away?'

He shrugged. ‘Late forty-two, early forty-three? Dad was really worried about her. But he got over it, and I won't have you raking it all up. All right? George would like nothing better than to be let off the leash, and one word from me  . . .'

‘Why'd she run away?' I said.

He was quiet for a moment and looked down at the pavement. ‘I wouldn't know,' he mumbled. He suddenly stopped walking and looked straight at me in what I'm sure he thought of as a menacing manner, a finger raised. ‘I'm telling you to leave it alone. For your own good. All right?'

‘Understood,' I said, ‘understood.' And I raised both hands, palms out, in a gesture of surrender, to reassure him of my good intentions. Although he would have been fooling himself if he thought he'd scared me off. The only thing about Dave Mountjoy these days that would make you take a step back was the smell of stale sweat, sour beer and old cigarette smoke.

He stared over my shoulder for a few seconds, threw a very terse, ‘Good,' at me, turned and walked back towards Old Compton Street.

As I watched him, I thought of something Jerry said whenever someone came on a bit stronger than was, strictly speaking, necessary.

No one, I'm fairly sure, would mistake Dave Mountjoy for a lady – he wasn't, for a start, anything like as fragrant – but, for someone who was just concerned about his father's welfare, he was certainly, if I understood Jerry aright, protesting a bit too much. I wondered what there was to find out.

I also wondered if our meeting had been completely coincidental. I assumed it must have been, as it would have been much easier to seek me out on home territory. Then I wondered what he'd been doing up West anyway. George didn't look like the sort you'd take to the pictures on a Saturday afternoon. But, Ricky apart – and look how well things had worked out for him – the Mountjoys didn't do business in Soho. They were strictly a local firm.

Dave was probably just taking in the sights. And trying to find out which way the wind was blowing.

TEN

I
was still pondering the mystery of Dave Mountjoy's appearance in the West End when I pushed my way through the glass doors into the empty lobby of the building where Hoxton Films had its offices.

There was that quiet, Saturday afternoon, musty feel about the place, the hustle and bustle of the morning long past. I stood there for a moment or two, grateful for the calm, before climbing the stairs to the second floor.

Hoxton Films' reception area was just as deserted as downstairs had been. Well, it was if you ignored the piles of large envelopes scattered haphazardly around the place. I pushed a few to one side and sank down on to the muddy-coloured battered old sofa.

The desk didn't look right without Daff sitting behind it, simultaneously swilling tea, smoking, barking into the telephone and imperiously handing out and receiving bulky packages from elderly delivery boys. Sadly, I realized that I would have to get used to her absence.

I was beginning to feel the effects of my early-morning call. Lee's ties were an unsightly bulge in my jacket pocket, and I pulled them out, before they bagged the material too much, and laid them on the sofa next to me.

Les always reckoned that he got more done on a Saturday afternoon than he did throughout the week. Everyone else thought that he was just banging his secretary. As I lay back and closed my tired eyes, the distant sound of his voice drifted on the stale air. He was probably talking on the phone.

The back of my head, where I'd been walloped, was throbbing, and I was working on developing a monumental headache. Closing my eyes helped, and I was soon dozing, not quite awake and not quite asleep, with a riot of chaotic thoughts roaring around.

Jean Mountjoy, as I suppose she must have been known, was on my mind. I'd have to tap Mrs Norton again, to see if she knew anything about her disappearance. There was something odd there. The old boy didn't strike me as the sort who got sentimental or upset about the past. Though I suppose he could just be going doolally.

I should have been playing football with the lads out in Ealing, but I hadn't gone to any of the August training sessions because I'd been in Paris. And I'd contrived to miss the first two (now three) games as well. I wasn't high on Reg the manager's ‘most reliable players' list so far this season. Fences to be mended there.

Mrs Williams – Ann – would be expecting me that evening as well. I wasn't sure that I'd be much use to her in my knackered state. She was suspicious of my visit to Paris. Not that she had any reason to be. But there were fences to be mended there as well.

And then there was Jeannie Summers. I had a few questions for her. And Lee. Ah, those God-awful ties. At least I wasn't in bad odour there.

Inspector Rose, though, was a different kettle of stinking fish altogether.

And when I opened my eyes he was standing in front of me, a sly smile on his face, tapping his pipe into the big, solid glass ashtray that was usually full of Daphne's fag ends. Les was standing just behind him, and so was a roly-poly sergeant I remembered from earlier in the year. He was scowling. I assumed at me.

‘Hard night, Tony?' Inspector Rose said.