September Song (19 page)

Lee, on the other hand, agreed with some alacrity that maybe going to the police wasn't such a bad idea after all. The little set-to had certainly shaken him up, but his acquiescence probably had more to do with Miss Summers' worries for his well-being and her insistence, I think, than any fears he had about his safety. He was really focused on getting out of town the next day and up to ‘glass cow' for their next engagement. I had a sneaking suspicion that Inspector Rose might well have a view on that, but I thought it wiser not to give voice to it.

Apart from the bruised rib, I had a rather unattractive little red lump coming up on my left temple, and neither injury was doing anything for my mood. But I tried to be patient with Philip Graham. I really did.

The dingy little room felt cramped and crowded. Probably because, although there were only four of us in there, it was.

Lee stood near the door, fizzing like a bottle of Tizer, desperate to prowl up and down while waiting for Peter Baxter to come off stage and give him access to the telephone in his office.

Jeannie Summers sat quietly, occasionally murmuring to Lee, telling him to relax and that everything would be all right.

Philip Graham sat in the only other chair the room boasted, his legs crossed, holding his cigarette well away from his body in an oddly affected way that I found annoying. But then everything about him irritated me, from his carefully cut and brilliantined hair to his beautifully shined Church's shoes.

Although she wasn't talking to me, I listened to Miss Summers, took a deep breath, calmed down and asked young Philip, again, what it was all about. And, I told him, this time I wanted as much detail as he could give me.

‘Just a little business venture that Ricky and I had going,' he said offhandedly. ‘Buying and selling stuff. At a considerable profit, natch. I never knew the ins and outs of it,' he said. ‘I was just the man who financed it.'

I sighed. ‘So,' I said, ‘you handed cash over to Ricky Mountjoy, he did the deals and handed you back your cash and the profit and you never asked any questions and knew nothing about it.'

‘That's about it,' he said, flicking ash ostentatiously on to the floor.

I sighed again, yawned and stretched. ‘We have a small problem here and a large problem,' I said.

He looked at me expectantly, managing to combine insolence and patronization in one open-eyed expression.

‘The small problem,' I said, ‘is that I don't believe you. The big problem is that if I don't know what this is all about I can't do what Les Jackson pays me to do, which is to look after his assets – of which you are one – when things threaten to turn nasty. And this has more than threatened. It's already gone sour.' I paused. I really wanted to knock the faux-innocent look off his face but I knew that wouldn't get me anywhere. ‘I'm going to take a two-minute turn out in the corridor now, and while I'm gone I'd like you to see if you can recall the nature of your business with Ricky Mountjoy. If you can't, I'm going to call Mr Jackson, tell him that I'm washing my hands of you and then I'm going to call my favourite detective inspector and tell him what I think was going on.' I paused again. All this talking was exhausting. ‘Do you understand me, Philip?'

He offered a cautious nod.

‘More importantly, do you understand the consequences of that course of action?'

‘Yes,' he said. ‘I'll make sure that you lose your job.'

I smiled at him in what I hoped was a suitably menacing way. ‘I don't really have a job to lose, Philip,' I said. This time the pause was for dramatic effect. ‘You do.'

My swift and effective exit was somewhat ruined by having to manoeuvre my way around Lee and mumble an apology for standing on his foot, but I hoped that young Philip had got the point. I wasn't convinced, though, and stood in the corridor reflecting that the boy's arrogance knew no bounds. I could remember being twenty-one. My arrogance had been limitless too. But it had been a substitute for confidence, like, I suspected, Philip's. There had been nothing much behind it.

The band was still playing. But they were well into ‘The Sheik of Araby' again, so I guessed they were into encores and about to finish the set.

Bill marched briskly back from a quick recce in the yard. ‘Nothing going on upstairs, Tony,' he said. ‘I reckon they've called it a day for the night.'

As it were, I thought. White-haired old Mrs Wilson would have loved that back at Church Road School when I was ten. She'd been a great teacher.

‘Thanks, Bill,' I said. ‘That's good to know.'

He leaned against the wall next to me. ‘Fancy the Orient for promotion this year?' he said.

I shrugged. ‘Who knows? Good chance, I suppose, but they flatter to deceive. Here, you've got your ear to the ground. What's young Ricky Mountjoy been up to?'

‘Ricky Mountjoy?'

‘The boy who ran when you came riding to the rescue tonight,' I said.

He looked blank and shook his head.

‘Young lad from my neck of the woods. Hangs out at the Frighted Horse. Runs some sort of drug distribution service for one of the big gangs.'

‘Oh, him. I don't know, really. He turned up a month or two back, working for Fitz's lot. Word is he's very ambitious and he and his boys have set something up on the side. Don't know what. You know what the gossip's like around here. Could be something or nothing.'

‘And Fitz knows?'

Bill rumbled a deep laugh. ‘Tony,' he said, ‘I ask you, if I've heard something, what are the chances that Fitz hasn't?'

Not very high. I nodded in a sage sort of way.

He took out a pack of Woodbines and offered it to me. I shook my head and he took out a cigarette, rasped a match across the abrasive edge of its box and lit up with a deep satisfied breath.

I smiled at him and went back into the dressing room just as the band came to an abrupt stop to what sounded like thunderous applause. Of course, everyone was well oiled by now and having a great time. Lee and Jeannie Summers passed me on the threshold. They'd obviously decided to wait for Peter in the corridor where Lee could pace to his heart's content.

I stepped aside to let them by and then took the two steps that placed me directly in front of Philip Graham. I looked down at him sternly. He looked at the carpet.

‘Hashish,' he said, ‘
kif
. Ricky met a Moroccan when he was in jail. He came here to avoid all the trouble but got done for something. Anyway, he and his mates have a regular supply from the Rif Mountains. And a lot of the Africans and the other darkies from the West Indies, they like it. They call it ganja. There's a real demand in some of the clubs and pubs. Ricky wasn't looking to go in big, but he needed some money to start up. I gave him a hundred quid. He gave it back with another hundred on top within a week and we were up and running.'

I asked why they'd thought I'd been involved in the attack on the two other boys. He just shrugged and said something about ‘bad blood'. When I asked why they'd come after Lee tonight, he just said that they wanted their ‘goods' back. When I asked if Malcolm Booth and Mr Fitz's other boys knew what they were after, he said he didn't think so, that they just thought it was Mr Fitz's ‘goods' they were looking for. And some summary justice. Of course.

‘Lee doesn't have your stuff,' I said. ‘And I really don't think he knifed Del and Billy. Do you?'

He shrugged dismissively. He obviously felt differently. I suppose if he really had seen Lee holding a knife when he and Ricky went past the alley, I couldn't blame him. And, of course, there was the matter of ‘bad blood' there as well.

This time my sigh wasn't born of exasperation but of deep and unmitigated gloom. I could think of a few people whose toes they'd trodden on. James Fitzgerald probably wasn't pleased with them. He wouldn't like his boys going freelance, and he'd definitely want his cut. And the Maltesers who ran some of the seedier streets of Soho, where a few of the black clubs had taken root, could have been cheesed off. But, as a warning, carving up Del and Billy into something suitable for a kosher wedding seemed a bit excessive.

I wondered if Ricky Mountjoy and Mr Fitz were still upstairs, because after I'd put Les Jackson's would-be matinee idol in a taxi there were a few questions I needed answers to. And those two just might be able to help.

I couldn't for the life of me think of a single good reason why Les Jackson should be forking out serious moolah to keep Philip Graham in a hotel out of harm's way when the boy didn't appear to have the sense to take advantage of Les's generosity and keep a low profile. But then I couldn't think of a single reason – good or bad – why I was going to do my best to extricate the unpleasant little oik from any brown and sticky substance he was immersed in, but I knew I would.

TWELVE

R
obert Rieux, Ghislaine's husband, serial adulterer, heavyweight trades-union leader in France and one-time communist resistance fighter, had certain rhetorical flourishes masquerading as rules for confronting the enemy. The first of which, roughly translated, was: ‘Be swift, be deadly.'

That was certainly sound advice when dealing with the sentry at a goods yard you were planning to blow up, but it didn't offer me much for what I had lined up.

One of Robert's other maxims is easily translated as: ‘Surprise!' I guess I had that going for me.

As I clanged my way up the back stairs to the Acropolis, I was half-hoping that there wouldn't be anyone home. After all, it was very late. Peter and the band were doing one final sweaty set, otherwise Bill would have been very happy to accompany me, but, he said apologetically, he just couldn't leave the club in case he was needed. I did think about waiting, but decided I needed to get this sorted and out of the way.

I braved the puzzled looks of the kitchen staff as I strolled past and pushed my way through the swing doors that led to the dining room, feeling a bit like the mad major I'd seen in 1944 walking straight at a German machine-gun emplacement with nothing but his Webley in his hand. Robert, Big Luc, Ghislaine and I had all watched him with mounting disbelief. If he'd waited, we'd have dealt with it, as we'd dealt with four or five others. But he'd seemed to think that a sneaky attack involving hand grenades was unsporting.

Still, I'd got a very good Webley out of the action.

I rather wished I still had it when I saw James Fitzgerald and a few of his men sat at what I assumed was his usual table, but I was (slightly) relieved to see that Malcolm Booth wasn't there. His bruised – possibly cracked – ankle would have reminded him that he had a genuine grudge. I noted that Ricky Mountjoy wasn't there either.

Gratifyingly, Mr Fitz himself looked very surprised to see me. He gave his world-famous impression of a fairground goldfish waiting to be won, mouth opening and closing a few times. Two of his boys, including the one I'd thumped outside St Martin-in-the-Fields, half rose, looking a bit belligerent, if confused.

‘It's all right,' I said, extending my hands out, palms towards them in what I hoped was a placatory gesture. ‘I haven't come to make trouble. I just need to have a few words with his nibs here.'

All three of the men with him turned to James Fitzgerald. He stopped gulping and actually smiled.

‘Tony was kind enough to buy me luncheon earlier today,' he said. ‘The least I can do is hear him out.' He looked at one of his bruisers. ‘Find him a chair, Harold,' he said.

There was a certain amount of shuffling around the table as room was made for another place. Mr Fitz himself, though, looking like a cross between a boyish and benign Chinese Buddha and an impish Alfred Hitchcock, did not so much as twitch a buttock. Eventually, enough space was found, and Harold rammed a chair into the back of my legs. I didn't have much choice. I sat. Harold remained standing behind me. I can't say that I felt entirely comfortable. Especially as I hadn't really thought through what I was going to say. All the scenarios that had flickered across the silver screen of what I think of as my mind hadn't got me as far as sitting down. Most had ended in fisticuffs before a word had been spoken.

I heard Harold light a cigarette behind me. I was reminded of the bad boys sitting behind me in the picture house before the war, blowing smoke into my hair so my mother would think I'd taken up smoking. Which, in spite of my protestations and explanations, she did.

I also remembered a hairy moment in a café in Pontorson when three German soldiers had decided to examine my documents. I should never have been there, but Ghislaine had talked about Mont St Michel and I'd wanted to see it. The moment wasn't as nasty as some that had followed, but it was tense enough, and one of the soldiers, who was probably even younger than me, had stood behind me, puffing away nervously.

I never did get to see Mont St Michel.

James Fitzgerald took a sip from his brandy glass, smacked his lips and smiled at me. ‘I'd offer you a glass,' he said, ‘but Greek brandy is, like Retsina, an acquired taste, and I didn't gain the impression over luncheon that the wine altogether met with your approval. Perhaps a light ale or a Mackeson?'

I shook my head. ‘No,' I said, ever polite. ‘No, thank you.'

He put his glass on the table, leaned forward slightly and placed his fingers together in a vaguely ecclesiastical gesture. ‘Well then,' he said, ‘what can I do for you?'

‘First,' I said, ‘you can promise me there will be no repetition of what happened half an hour ago.'

He raised his eyebrows and leaned further forward. ‘What happened half an hour ago?' he said.

‘Oh, come on,' I said. ‘Some of these boys, and a few others, came down to lift the piano player from the jazz club. There was a bit of unpleasantness.' I paused and stared into the mean little eyes that glittered in his bland milk pudding of a face. ‘You must have heard about it.'