Jack Carter's Law E-Book

Ted Lewis

• Herausgeber: No Exit Press
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Seitenzahl: 363

Beschreibung

The author of Get Carter returns to his greatest invention, a smooth-operating hardcase named Jack Carter, who is about to burn a city down in order to silence an informant... London. The late 1960s. It's Christmas and Jack Carter's the top man in a crime syndicate headed by two brothers, Gerald and Les Fletcher. He's also a worried man. The fact that he's sleeping with Gerald's wife, Audrey, and that they plan on someday running away together with a lot of the brothers' money, doesn't have Jack concerned. Instead it's an informant - one of his own men - that has him losing sleep. The grass has enough knowledge about the firm to not only bring down Gerald and Les but Jack as well. Jack doesn't like his name in the mouth of that sort.

Leseprobe

Praise for Ted Lewis

‘Lewis is major’ – Max Allan Collins author of The Road to Perdition

‘Ted Lewis cuts to the bone’ – James Sallis, author of Drive

‘A pulp-fiction triumph worthy of Jim Thompson or James Ellroy. I can’t remember the last time I turned pages so eagerly… his work cuts to the bone, both literally and metaphysically’– John Powers, NPR’s Fresh Air

‘One of the most coldly brilliant crime novels you will ever read… a mesmerizing story of power, love, hubris and betrayal – but, above all, the portrait of what one might call a tragic villain… Complicated in plot, propulsive in its narrative pace, beautifully structured, it is a book you’ll want to read’ – Michael Dirda, Washington Post on GBH

‘Ted Lewis is one of the most influential crime novelists Britain has ever produced, and his shadow falls on all noir fiction, whether on page or screen, created on these isles since his passing. I wouldn’t be the writer I am without Ted Lewis. It’s time the world rediscovered him’ – Stuart Neville

‘An example of how dangerous writing can really be when it is done properly… By preferring to look the street straight in the face instead of peeping at it from behind an upstairs curtain, Ted Lewis cleared a road straight through the black jungle’ – Derek Raymond

‘His characters have no tenderness, the settings are bleak, but this isn’t pulp fiction – it’s real writing’ – Richard Preston, Times

‘This is vintage British pulp fiction at its fast, furious and thoroughly sleazy best’ – Laura Wilson, Guardian

‘The book is outstanding: Lewis… judges perfectly when to horrify the reader and when to hold back… But the book is also funny and zestful: Lewis’s delight in his complex double-cross plot and low-life characters is infectious, and there is poetry in his stark evocation of Lincolnshire’s desperate tattiness. It’s equal parts suicide note and celebration of the human ability to find reasons to keep going’ – Jake Kerridge, Daily Telegraph

‘The Brit noir masterpiece by the author of Get Carter has been reissued. It’s well worth rediscovering’ – Robbie Millen, Times (Best Books of 2020)

‘An intuitive study of fear, guilt, loss and the corruptive power of violence, sex and pornography that redefined the possibilities of psychological noir. A savage valediction for the smart-suited working class gangster’ – Nick Triplow

‘Aristotle when he defined tragedy mandated that a tragic hero must fall from a great height… but he never imagined the kind of roadside motels of James M. Cain or saw the smokestacks rise in the Northern English industrial hell of Ted Lewis’s Get Carter – Dennis Lehane

Introduction

by Nick Triplow

With Billy Rags (1973) and Jack Carter’s Law (1974), Ted Lewis left behind the Humber landscape that had given his writing its distinct, edge-of-nowhere rawness. Written under pressure to repeat Get Carter’s success, these books are as close as Lewis would come to writing conventional crime novels. That said, moral certitude and sweet redemption are definitely not on the agenda.

Billy Rags is the story of professional villain, Billy Cracken, serving 25-years for armed robbery. A failed escape attempt sees him moved to E Wing of Aston prison, a high security fortress where criminal kingpin, Walter Colman, and his associates hold sway. Pitting himself against Colman and the prison system, Cracken’s time is hard time and he hatches an audacious break-out plan.

Lewis’s novel was based on the 1971 trial deposition of convicted armed robber and prison escapee, John McVicar, then in the first year of a 26-year sentence for robbery and firearms offences committed while on the run from Durham Prison’s E Wing, the ‘prison within a prison’ that housed some of Britain’s toughest inmates. The manuscript found its way to the desk of Lewis’s literary agent, Toby Eady. Specifics are shady, but it seems the intention was for a part of the novel’s advance to support McVicar’s wife and young son on the outside.

Reviewing Billy Rags in the Spectator, Auberon Waugh praised Lewis’s realistic depiction of ‘ordinary, run-of-the-mill criminal psychopaths’, while bending the conventions of traditional thriller fiction: ‘Obviously, it is to Mr Lewis’s credit as an artist that his book is extremely depressing and distasteful… scenes of sodomy and violence are described as they happen, neither more nor less.’

With a second roman à clef in mind, Eady brokered a meeting between Lewis and bank robber turned supergrass, Bertie Smalls – the project is rumoured to have been abandoned after one vodka-fuelled session. Instead, Lewis returned to the character that launched his career with the short story, ‘Kings, Queens and Pawns’, published in November 1973’s Men Only magazine. A year later came Jack Carter’s Law.

Lewis’s first Get Carter prequel is set in the London underworld of the late 1960s. Carter hunts a police informer in the Fletchers’ organisation. When he finds him, he’ll kill him. Old loyalties break down as Carter’s actions fuel old enmities.

In Jack Carter’s Law there is no revenge for a murdered brother or exploited daughter. It is this absence of moral cause, writes Max Allan Collins, that makes Jack Carter’s Law even ‘tougher and more uncompromising’ than its famous predecessor. Lewis delivers the comprehensive Jack Carter experience: the enforcer operating in the claustrophobic streets and grimy interiors of unfashionable London: low dives, smoky clubs and villains’ flats; the insides of Ford Cortinas, fag smoke, sardonic asides, bent coppers, naked violence, and sex for money. And drink. A lot of drink.

By this time, Lewis was writing against the odds. Heavy drinking placed his marriage under strain. Yet his voice is unmistakeable. Characteristic preoccupations of violence, sex and obsession are rendered in first person, present tense narratives that leave no space between the reader and flashes of action. Billy Rags and Jack Carter’s Law are timely reminders that when he was this good, Lewis made his own rules and dared you to look away.

Cross

The parked Rover shudders and sways in the wet wind that races down Plender Street. Plender Street is empty and lifeless except for the toffee papers and the newspapers and the fag packets that now and then are caught up in the swirling drizzle that’s slapping away against the steamy windows and deserted landings of the flats.

I look at my watch. Cross is late by forty minutes. Jesus, I could have been tucked up between clean sheets humping Audrey by now. As it is I might not even have the time, not with Gerald and Les breathing down my neck to find out what’s going on.

I look in the driving mirror and there’s a taxi coming round the corner, making spray like a corporation water cart. After it comes out of its drift the driver points it at the rear end of the Rover so I get out and walk to the back of the car. The taxi pulls in to the curb and the door opens and I get in. The taxi begins to move again.

‘So where the fucking hell have you been?’ I ask Cross, and he says, ‘It’s silly being like that, Jack. You know that. I mean, you ought to by now.’

‘Don’t shoot shit at me,’ I tell him. ‘You’ve never been late before.’

And he says, ‘No, but there’s never been a situation like this before, has there?’

‘I don’t know,’ I tell him. ‘You tell me. That’s what we pay you for.’

The cab smells of old cigarette ends and Cross’s damp raincoat. I pull the window down slightly and Cross takes his hands out of his coat pockets and places them in his lap and examines his fingernails like all the cheap B-feature coppers do. I take out my cigarettes and my lighter and Cross’s eyelashes flicker when he realises that I’m not producing the envelope. He can wait, like I’ve had to.

The cab crosses Camden High Street and I light my cigarette and as I light it I look at my watch and wonder how long Audrey could risk waiting for me at the flat.

‘All right, let’s be having it,’ I say to Cross and Cross reaches up and takes hold of the passenger strap and looks out of the window and says, ‘Well, for a start, nobody knows where he is.’

‘What are you talking about, nobody knows where he is? He was taken into West End Central three days ago. Mallory goes to see him two hours after he’s been picked up and he goes to see him again yesterday for the appearance. Then Swann goes down again to await Her Majesty’s Pleasure. So what the fuck are you talking about?’

‘What I’m talking about is that Swann never went back whence he came,’ Cross says. ‘As far as I can discover he never even left Bow Street. He did, of course, but nobody saw him go. And as nobody saw him go, well…’

Cross leans forward and taps on the partition and slides back the glass and says to the driver, ‘Turn round and stop on the other side of the road.’

The driver does as he’s told. Now it’s my turn to look out of the window. The rolling slope of Primrose Hill swings into view and beyond it the smudgy city shimmers through the steamy window. The cab stops and rain sweeps against its bodywork.

‘I’ve asked everyone that can be asked,’ Cross says, ‘and nobody knows a dicky-bird.’

‘And so what do you think?’

Cross allows himself a faint grin. ‘Approximately the same as you,’ he says.

When I don’t say anything Cross says, ‘Well, there you are.’

Then he leans forward and slides open the partition again and tells the driver to take us back to Plender Street.

On the way Cross says, ‘If, for one reason or another, this turns out to be the last time we meet on a professional basis, I’d just like to be able to think that when you remember all the little favours I’ve done you and Gerald and Les, then you’ll forget you ever heard my name or saw my face.’

I put my hand in my inside pocket and take out the envelope and put it against Cross’s mouth and push upwards, causing the envelope to buckle against the underside of his nose, forcing his head back onto the shelf behind the seat.

‘Listen, cunt,’ I tell him, ‘what’s in this envelope is all you get in return for your favours. And just remember this: I’m not so stupid that I don’t tumble you’re just telling me half of what you know, like you always do. So if there’s a time when there’s a few names flying this way and that don’t forget that yours begins with the third letter of the alphabet.’

The taxi draws up behind my Rover and Cross tries to get the envelope away from his face and says, ‘What I’ve told you is all I know.’

‘Oh yes? Well if there’s anything you’ve overlooked then phone me or Gerald or Les before ten o’clock tonight. Now take your pigging money and let me get out.’

I let go of the envelope and it falls in Cross’s lap. While he’s smoothing out the envelope I open the door and rain spits into the cab. I look at my watch. Sod Gerald and Les. They can wait for an hour. I slam the cab door behind me.

Audrey

I’m lying back in bed, smoking, and I say to Audrey who I’ve just lit up in more ways than one, ‘Isn’t it about time you had your nails cut,’ and she says to me, ‘Leave off, you know that’s one of the bits you enjoy best,’ and I must admit she’s right, only of course I don’t admit it to her. I take a few more drags and look down my body and at her body which is naked except for the half-slip which, time being of the essence, we never got round to taking off. The slip’s all twisted up round her waist except for a little bit of lace edging that’s overlapping the top few curls of her pubic hair. I reach down and pull the slip away so that she’s all exposed and she gives me a look. ‘Do me a favour.’ I tell her, ‘Not yet, what do you think I am, James Bond?’ She pulls a face. ‘All it is,’ I say, ‘is that it’s a long time till your next visit to the hairdresser’s, isn’t it, and I like to remember,’ and she says, ‘Funny.’ At first I don’t tumble and then when I do of course I have to laugh.

I finish the cigarette and get off the bed and walk over to the table where we’d left the vodka and ice and slices of lemon and I liven up my half-empty glass and ask Audrey if alcohol might not be an anticlimax after what we’ve just been through and she says, ‘What about you then?’

‘I’ve got to steady my nerves down after that,’ I tell her and she says, ‘Well, you’d better give me one because I’ve got to steady mine down because I’ve got to phone Gerald. I’m late.’

‘I’ve got to phone him too,’ I tell her. ‘I should have been at the club an hour ago.’ I make her drink and take it over to the bed picking up the phone on the way. Audrey takes a drink but she doesn’t touch the telephone, just stares at it, as she lies there propped up on her elbow. ‘Someone, somewhere wants a phone call from you,’ I say, but all I get for that is ‘Piss off.’ I shrug and take a drink and sit down on the edge of the bed. ‘You know what would happen, don’t you,’ she says. I know what’s coming but I don’t say anything. ‘I mean,’ she says, ‘if Gerald ever got to know about us.’ ‘Yes, I know,’ I tell her. ‘We’d both be dead.’ ‘No,’ she says. ‘You’d be dead, you’d be the lucky one. What he’d do to me would be much more interesting. I mean, Gerald really enjoys going to work.’ ‘I know all about Gerald,’ I tell her, lighting up another cigarette. ‘You think I don’t know about that?’

‘I must be bleeding barmy,’ she says, and I tell her yes, she must be bleeding barmy. ‘I mean,’ she says, ‘doesn’t it worry you?’ ‘’Course it worries me,’ I tell her. ‘What do you think?’ ‘Well, you never seem to,’ she says. ‘No, well…’ I tell her. Then there’s a long silence and after that she picks up the phone and dials the number. I lie back on the bed and rest my head on her stomach. You’ve got to give her credit for being a great little performer because when the receiver’s lifted at the other end she delivers ‘Hello sweetheart,’ just the way she does whenever she phones me. I can hear Gerald’s reply even from where I am. ‘What the fucking hell do you want?’ he says. ‘Oh, bleeding charmin’,’ Audrey says, her hand over the receiver, ‘just bleeding charming.’ ‘Look,’ he says, ‘didn’t I tell you I’m having a meeting all afternoon? Didn’t I tell you that?’ I transfer my cigarette to my other hand and reach up and start massaging Audrey’s breasts. She tries to push my hand away but her being propped up on one arm and holding the receiver in her other hand she doesn’t have much joy. I carry on with the therapy and she says, ‘Yes, I know, darling, but I had to phone and tell you why I’m going to be a little late because I know how you worry.’ ‘All right, let’s have it,’ Gerald says. ‘So why are you going to be late?’ I take hold of her arm and pull her forward so that she overbalances off her elbow and falls with her breasts resting on my lower stomach. She mouths silent rage at me but Gerald’s voice rasps down the line and she has no time to recover her previous position. ‘The thing is,’ she says, ‘I ran into Yvonne in the hairdresser’s and what with Harry just being sent down she wanted to talk, you know, so I’m back at hers now. God knows how I’ll get away, you know what she’s like…’ ‘Fucking Harry,’ Gerald says. ‘A right bright bastard he is. Serves him bleeding right, don’t it? I mean, going out with those fucking amateurs, fucking ponces…’ Gerald stokes himself up on the subject of Harry and I slip my hand behind the back of her neck and push her head down until I can feel the warmth of her breath tickling the tip of my prick and the closeness of her breathing begins to take effect because she looks from it to me and her expression changes and a different kind of wickedness appears in her eyes and she lays the receiver on my belly, the mouthpiece against my prick-end, takes me in hand and begins to go to work, all the time looking into my eyes, and all the time Gerald’s barking voice reverberating through the plastic against my skin. Eventually Gerald’s voice stops and Audrey puts her mouth next to the mouthpiece, her lips brushing my tip, and she says, ‘I know, darling, you were right, you were always right about Harry, especially when you got rid of him. I mean, how could you trust a man who’s stupid enough to trust those ponces, you could see it coming,’ and Gerald says, ‘Too fucking true, he was a berk.’ Audrey says, ‘Anyway, I’ll be back as soon as I can. If I’m back too late tell Ann-Marie no later than seven with the kids, you know she spoils them,’ and Gerald says, ‘Right,’ and she says, ‘How about a kiss, then?’ ‘For Christ’s sake,’ Gerald says, ‘you know who I’ve got here?’ ‘I’m not going to let you go without a kiss,’ she says. ‘Oh, all right,’ Gerald says and makes a kissing noise down the phone, and she fakes one back, only her lips, when she purses them, are kissing me, and like I say, not on my mouth. The line goes dead and she carries on with the kissing.

After Audrey’s gone I have a shower and do myself a steak and salad. Gerald and Les can wait a bit longer. They’re not to know what time I met Cross. While I’m eating my steak and having an extra couple of drinks I watch television but I really don’t take anything in because I’m thinking of what Audrey said about being barmy carrying on together. I’d had that thought ever since we’d first tumbled. But the alternative, rowing out, just wasn’t on as far as I was concerned. Not since that very first time. Every bird I’ve ever had was just so much cold meat compared to Audrey. And in any case, trying to row out from a bird like Audrey would be just as dangerous as the present situation. The shit would fly whatever I did. So as usual I give up thinking about it and put on my gear and start out for the club.

Gerald and Les

The rain has stopped and the greasy streets are full of tourists trying to turn up the naughty bits of London. I get out of the cab and unlock the sober sage-green painted doors and Alex is standing there behind the lobby’s glass doors, his teeth highlighted whiter than ever beyond the glass’s bright reflection. I push open the glass doors and Alex helps me off with my coat.

‘Anything?’ I ask him.

‘Nothing yet, Mr Carter. A small game in the Green Room but it won’t get any bigger. The rest are just drinking.’ Up above me there is the faint sound of Motown-style music.

‘All the girls reported?’

‘All of them,’ Alex says.

I walk over to the plain door next to the cloakroom and unlock the door and open it and slide back the cage doors of the private lift and press the button. The lift only has one stop and that’s Gerald and Les’s penthouse office on the top of the club. The lift smells like the inside of a stripper’s G-string which isn’t surprising considering the amount of slag traffic it’s carried since my bosses, the Fletcher brothers, had it installed eighteen months ago. You’d have thought Gerald would have had enough of slags considering the route by which the two of them arrived at the top of the building that was now the centre of their operation. But not Gerald. Slags to him are like scotch to an alcoholic. Not that Les is a total abstainer but more often than not he’ll pour himself a drink and watch Gerald get on with it, with the kind of mild interest someone else would watch a couple of kittens at play. Les lives his life more in his head than Gerald does.

The lift stops and I get out. I’m in a small windowless hall. There is only one piece of furniture, a leatherette swivel armchair, and sitting in the armchair is Duggie Burnett. He’s wearing a hound’s-tooth suit – two buttons with side vents, narrow trousers with deep turn-ups – a yellow waistcoat, a Viyella check shirt and a plain woolen tie. He’d look like something straight off the early-morning downs at Newmarket if it wasn’t for the fact that his nose is on sideways and the rings he wears on each of his fingers aren’t there just for show. At the present moment he has a serviette tucked in his waistcoat and he is genteelly balancing a plate of sandwiches on his knees. The sandwiches have been daintily cut and served up with slices of tomato on top and a patterned doily underneath but Duggie is absorbed in gently taking the sandwiches apart and placing the salad stuff to one side and picking up the slices of ham with his fingers and eating them that way. Each time he places a slice in his mouth he thoroughly cleans the grease off his fingers with his handkerchief. I stand there watching him for a minute or two before I say anything to him.

‘And supposing I was Wally Coleman and six hundred of the fellows that walk behind him?’ I ask Duggie. ‘What would that make you and Gerald and Les by now?’

‘But you ain’t,’ says Duggie, not looking up from the disemboweled sandwiches. ‘If you was you’d be headfirst down that lift shaft with a bullet up your arse, no trouble.’

I grin at him.

‘All right,’ I say. ‘Let them know who’s here.’

He wipes his hands again and picks a handset off the wall next to him.

‘Jack’s here,’ he says, and puts the handset back on its cradle.

The door opposite the lift slides open and as I go in I say to Duggie, ‘Incidentally, it’s on the news a gorilla got out of Regent’s Park Zoo this afternoon. Haven’t caught him yet. If I was you I’d stay at home tonight.’

The door slides to behind me. I’m in another hall, bigger than the last. This hall has furniture, Regency repro, and gold-framed pictures, but there still aren’t any windows. The hall is lit by a single light set dead centre in the ceiling. There is another door, a replica of the one that is the entrance to the club, painted the same colour. I press a button on the wall next to the door and a second or two later the door is opened by another mug called Tony Crawford, the only difference between him and Duggie being that Tony’s gear is ten years out of date and that he’d eat the ham and the bread and the doily and the plate.

‘Right, piss off, Tony, this is a meeting now,’ says Gerald.

Tony closes the door behind me.

The room I am in is all Swedish. It’s a big room, low-ceilinged, and when Gerald and Les had it built on top of the club they’d let a little poof called Kieron Beck have his way with the soft furnishings. Everything about the room is dead right. The slightly sunken bit in the middle lined with low white leather settees with backs reaching the normal floor level, the honey-coloured polished floor itself with its scattered furs, the office area over by the window which runs all the length of one wall, the plain white desk that is worth half an Aston Martin, the curtains that make a noise like paper money when you draw them – everything is perfect. The only things that look out of place are Gerald and Les. So much so that they make the place look as if you could have picked all the stuff up at Maple’s closing-down sale.

Gerald is sitting in the sunken bit, making the leather look scruffy. He is wearing a very expensive three-piece suit, grey chalk stripe, but with it he is wearing a cheap nylon shirt and a tie that looks as though he’s nicked it off a rack in Woolworth’s. His shoes are black and unpolished and one of the shoelaces is undone. But even if the shirt had been tailor-made from Turnbull & Asser and the tie had come from Italy and the shoes had been handmade at Anello & Davide he would still look a mess. One of those people that make a difference to the clothes instead of it being the other way round. Les, on the other hand, is immaculate. He is perched with his arse on the edge of the white desk, smoking a Sobranie. He’s wearing one of his corduroy suits, the pale beige one, and with it he’s got on a lavender shirt and a carefully knotted brown silk tie, a pair of off-white suède slip-ons and socks that match the colour of his tie. What is left of his hair is beautifully barbered, just curling slightly over the collar of his shirt.

Audrey is there as well.

She’s over by the cocktail cabinet, getting the drinks together.

‘So,’ says Gerald, ‘we’re finally here at last, then.’

I sit down on an armless easy chair in the raised-up part of the room. I don’t say anything. There’s no point until Gerald and Les have run through today’s double act.

‘I mean, we thought maybe Cross had nicked you or something.’

Gerald laughs at the others, encouraging them to appreciate his wit.

‘We thought he might have nicked you for being double-parked,’ Les says in his humourless voice.

Audrey gives Gerald and Les their drinks, then pretends to remember that I’m there and I just might want one as well.

‘Do you want one, Jack?’ she says.

Gerald laughs and says, ‘Do you want one, Jack? Eh, Audrey, why don’t you give him one?’

He almost falls off the settee, he’s laughing so hard.

‘No thanks,’ I say to Audrey, looking her straight in the eye. ‘I had one before I came here.’

Les frowns and says, ‘You dropped off for a drink before you came here?’

‘That’s right.’

Les looks at Gerald and Gerald says to me, ‘Listen, you mug, we told you to come straight back here. What’s the fucking idea?’

I look at Les and say, ‘Les, I left Cross three-quarters of an hour ago. After what he told me I didn’t think a swift vodka and tonic would make all that much difference.’

‘Why?’

I take out my cigarettes and light up.

‘Because,’ I tell them, ‘it’s my opinion that Jimmy has been done good and proper and he’s weighed up twenty-five years against appearing for the Queen. Against us. And various other past associates that we don’t need to mention here.’

Gerald stands up and begins to turn bright red. ‘Bollocks!’ he says. ‘Bloody bollocks. Christ, what, with Finbow? Jesus, all Finbow has to do is pick up the phone and he’s a few grand better off and Jimmy walks out a victim of circumstances. Besides, Jimmy’d never shop us. He’s Jack the Lad. Jesus, Jimmy and me are like bleeding cousins. From way back.’

‘In any case,’ Les says as he lights a new cigarette from the end of his old one, ‘the cunt wouldn’t dare.’

‘No,’ Gerald says. ‘He’s right. The cunt wouldn’t dare.’

I shrug. There is a silence. Audrey crosses her legs and the nylons sound like static on a cheap transistor.

Les pushes his hands in the pockets of his jacket and the smoke from the cigarette in his mouth causes him to narrow his eyes and hold his head back so that he’s squinting up at the ceiling.

‘Is that what you really think?’ he says.

‘Well,’ I say, ‘look at it this way. Jimmy was at Norwood. He was at Walthamstow. He was at Ealing. He was at Finsbury Park. Granted that wasn’t one of ours but it’s another job. He was at Luton and he was at Dulwich and we all know what happened there.’

There is more silence and so I go on.

‘At a rough calculation, I make it that Jimmy has done about a million and a half quids’ worth of overtime for us over the last six or seven years. A real little cornerstone to the firm he’s been. A right sweet little catch he’d make for some rising star in West End Central.’

‘Yes, but Jack,’ Gerald says, ‘it’s Finbow, for fuck’s sake. Herbert fucking Finbow.’

‘If it was Finbow that plucked Jimmy, he’d have phoned by now. And in any case Jimmy’s been put out of the way. Finbow’d never do that. Unless Finbow’s had the operation.’

Gerald snorts. ‘Oh, yes, and I’m a fucking fairy.’

I shrug again.

‘Why don’t we get in touch with Finbow and find out?’ Les asks, as if I should have done it already.

‘If it’s Finbow, there’s no point,’ I say wearily. ‘If it’s not Finbow, there’s still no point. Can’t you see what I’m trying to say? Jimmy’s being done proper. So whoever’s doing him we can’t get to. They’re sticking it on him. And because they’re sticking it on him they’ve made him some kind of offer so that it looks good for him to stick it on us.’

‘Yeah, but look,’ Gerald says, ‘supposing he gets offered fifteen instead of twenty-five. Christ, that’s not big enough for him to drop in everybody else.’

‘You’ve got more faith in Jimmy Swann than his mother ever had,’ I tell Gerald.

Les gets up from the edge of the desk and walks over to the drinks cabinet.

‘Anyhow,’ he says, ‘even if he took the ten years’ difference he’d know we’d get him fixed on the inside. And Jimmy never was happy in a brace-up.’

‘Yes, that’s right,’ Gerald says. ‘He wouldn’t have the bleeding stomach for it.’

‘Unless,’ I tell them, ‘they’re fixing it so nobody can get to him, ever.’

‘But why would they?’ Gerald says. ‘What’s the point? Christ, if Jimmy spills, half the population of Inner London’d be standing side by side in the fucking dock and half of Old Bill’s mob as well. Jesus, they’re under-strength as it is without putting their own boys away.’

‘We don’t know what the point is, do we?’ I say. ‘That’s just it. We don’t know what’s going on.’

‘I thought that’s what we paid Cross for,’ Les says, again looking at me as if I was to blame for Cross’s lack of material.

‘If Jimmy’s turned Queen’s evidence then Cross will be sending his information in the other direction from now on,’ I say.

After a while Gerald says, ‘If Jimmy’s done a deal he must have given them something already.’

‘That’s right.’

‘So if it’s like you think it is then why hasn’t anybody been picked up yet?’

I shrug. ‘Depends. If they want everybody Jimmy’s worked with for the last half-dozen years, they want them all at once. They don’t want anybody clearing out at the first arrest.’

‘But it still doesn’t mean we can go on our holidays before we get to Jimmy,’ Les says, rattling the ice cubes in his drink. ‘And if you’re right, then of course we’ve got to get to him, haven’t you, Jack?’

I’m expecting that one so I say, ‘Sure. That’s right. If you’ve got one of those diaries with tube maps on the back then I’ll start right away. If I go through the alphabet I’ll be at Wembley about 1980.’

‘We pay you,’ Gerald says. ‘You find him. I mean you haven’t tried Finbow yet. Or Mallory. Christ, what about Mallory? Why the fuck hasn’t he been in touch? It was yesterday. Bleeding yesterday.’

I look at Les and Les looks at me. Gerald looks at both of us.

‘What?’ he says. So I have to spell it out to him.

‘If Mallory hasn’t been in touch then he knows what’s going on. So he won’t exactly be sitting behind his desk waiting for us to get in touch with him.’

Gerald stands up and walks a few paces then turns back and sits down again. His arse on the leather makes a noise like a bad diver hitting the surface of the water.

‘So where are you going to start?’ he says.

I shrug and get up.

‘May as well start with the obvious,’ I say. ‘At least that way we’ll make sure it’s the way it looks.’

Les downs his drink and says, ‘Maybe, but don’t forget Swann’s got to be found this week. Next week’s too late. And when he’s found, no mistakes.’

I walk over to the door and open it and before I close it behind me I say to Les, ‘I don’t make mistakes. Like, for instance, employing Jimmy Swann in the first place.’

Walter

The ringing tone whirrs in my ear for a long time before the receiver is lifted at the other end. There is no greeting so I say, ‘My name is Eamonn Andrews and this is your life.’

There is a sigh of relief and Tommy says, ‘It’s always nice to hear your voice on this number, Jack.’

‘Seeing as I’m the only one who has that number.’

‘Something like that.’

I shake a cigarette from my pocket and say, ‘You doing anything tonight?’

‘Yeah, I was taking the old lady down Ernie’s.’

‘Not any more you’re not.’

‘Why’s that?’

‘Because you’re going to look for Jimmy Swann before he coughs so big you’ll never be taking your old lady down Ernie’s or nowhere again.’

There is a long silence. Tommy knows better than Gerald and Les to worry his head about whether I’m wrong or not so he says to me, ‘What do you want?’

‘I want you to talk to some of Jimmy’s crowd and I want at least one of them to have something interesting to say to you. If you want some extra muscle get hold of Mickey and Del but make sure they’re sweetened up. The less that gets around the better.’

‘I won’t need them,’ Tommy says. ‘This kind of thing boils me up to the value of three.’

‘Yes. And if you do find him, leave enough of him for me. I want to know who he’s dealing with.’

‘I’ll try. I’ll be phoning you.’

The line goes dead.

I’m back at the flat sitting on the edge of my unmade bed with the smell of the sheets reminding me of Audrey. An hour ago I got on to Con McCarty to go down to Richmond and have a look at Mallory’s house and I’m waiting for his call.

I get up and pour a drink and think about the time at Dulwich. After that one Gerald and Les should never have touched Jimmy again, but no, they said he’s good, he knows his stuff, that was an accident, happen to anybody. Sure it was an accident, a Securicor guard lying in the gutter with a hole in his stomach, hands grabbing at the hole trying to keep himself together, and Tony Warmby frozen with the pump action still smoking and Jimmy who’d screamed at Tony to shoot now screaming at him to move, for fuck’s sake move, get in the fucking car, and then putting his foot hard down and taking off half on the pavement and leaving Tony there to cop for it. Sure it had been an accident. After all, as Gerald and Les had said, we’d got away with it, hadn’t we, we’d got the score, and Tony hadn’t grassed and the Securicor man hadn’t snuffed it. And Tony’s old lady’d got his share, hadn’t she? Didn’t work out too bad at all. Except someone like Tony who would never grass was on fifteen to twenty and the person who’d virtually put him away was now grassing the rest of us.

The phone rings and it’s Con.

‘Gone away,’ he says. ‘Gone away all neat and tidy.’

‘You got in?’

‘Yeah, I got in all right. For someone who associates with society’s antisocial elements he isn’t very burglarproof.’

‘And?’

‘The works. Suits, socks, papers – you name it. Even the fridge was clear. It wasn’t what you’d call a hasty decision.’

‘And nothing to say where to?’

‘What do you think?’

‘All right,’ I say. ‘I’m going over to Maurice’s now. I’ve got Tommy Gardner looking into Jimmy’s friends so you may as well go over to Jimmy’s place and see what you can turn up there. Which of course will be fuck all. But it has to be done.’

‘And then what?’

‘I don’t know. Come to Maurice’s and if I’m not there I’ll be back at the club.’

Con puts down the receiver and I put on my jacket and go out of the flat and get a taxi over to Maurice’s.

I walk down the basement steps and ring the bell and the curtain at the window by the side of the door moves slightly and then a minute later the door is opened by a tall blond Adonis with a Kirk Douglas hairstyle.

‘Evening, Mr Carter,’ he says.

‘Evening, Leo. Who’s in?’

‘The usual slags. The commoners. Nothing nice comes in till after midnight, not these days.’

‘Anybody I know?’

‘Not unless you’ve been keeping something from me.’ Leo unlocks the inner door and lets me into Maurice’s room.

The lighting is predominantly blush pink, the wallpaper Indian Restaurant relief. There is a small bar fitted under a Moroccan arch. There are a dozen or so small round tables and towards the back of the room there is another, larger Moroccan arch and beyond this arch there are four booth seats upholstered in red leatherette and this is where Maurice holds court, but before I go over and pay my respects I make my way to the bar. The boys are three-deep at the bar, as if they’re huddling together for warmth, heads flicking this way and that like bantams on the lookout for corn, all the different shades of rinses as one under the sugary lighting, chained jewelry dulled by the atmosphere, buttocks and profiles just that little bit smoother in the dimness. And of course a straight arrival like myself causes the heads to flick and the lips to flutter even more. The whole place smells like the inside of a handbag. I manage to reach the bar without too much friction and I tell the drag barman to give me a vodka and tonic and while he’s getting it for me I look in the mirror behind the bar and in the mirror is the reflection of Peter the Dutchman.

‘Buy us a drink, Jack?’

The reflection has dyed blond hair and purple tinted glasses. It’s wearing a coffee-coloured suit and a wide brown tie on a pink shirt. It’s smiling a great ice-cream smile using all the muscles you use for that kind of smile, but I know exactly what’s going on behind the purple tints. The barman waits for me to give him the nod and when eventually I do the reflection orders Campari, and sits down on the next stool but one.

‘Haven’t changed a bit, Jack,’ Peter says. And I say, ‘Who, Peter? You or me?’ Peter the Dutchman giggles and says, ‘I’ll never change, you know that.’

No, I think, you’ll never change; you’ll always be the sadistic puff you always were. Peter’s the kind of queer who’s not content with getting his pleasure with the other boys; he has to take it out on the girls as well. Looking at him, I remember a little croupier girl he took home once. I saw her a couple of days afterwards, when she’d managed to summon up the courage to come to the club to pick up her money, because there was no way anybody marked like she was going to sit at a table and encourage the customers to part with their money. I remember her well. She’d even had to buy herself a wig because Peter had cut most of her hair off for her. But thank Christ I don’t have to have much contact with him. He’s a specialist but he won’t be doing any business with our firm as long as I’m working for it. He’s just done remission on five for going over the top with someone who got in his way, and with a bit of luck the next tickle he goes on he’ll do the same, and then it’ll be more than five he’ll be out of the way.

‘Well,’ I say to him, ‘if you ever do change, don’t waste your money on sending me a telegram.’

Then Maurice sweeps over and leads me across to his alcove, ordering my drink on the move, and I have to put up with Maurice’s brand of chitchat.

While I’m going through this routine with Maurice there’s a commotion behind us and I turn round to see that the door has just opened and let in Walter and Eddie Coleman and their wives, pissed up to their gills and all set to make their collective presence felt on the conventions of Maurice’s Club.

The Colemans, so to speak, are in the same line of businesses as Gerald and Les. That is to say, they run clubs and various other legitimate and semi-legitimate businesses, but their real activity is directed towards the payrolls and the bullion and the banks and the import and export business. The only thing they don’t deal in on the scale of Gerald and Les is vice, and that’s because their patch is east and the Fletchers’ is west, and although they make a few bob out of it, the real money is in the west, and Gerald and Les have the west wrapped up. The Colemans would never attempt to upset that applecart, and at the same time it gets up their noses that Gerald and Les have a few vice strongholds in their territory and there’s sod all they can do about it, without starting the kind of aggro we can all do without.

‘Oh, for fuck’s sake,’ says Maurice, getting up and catching his medallion on the edge of the booth’s narrow table. ‘All we need. The royal family.’