25
LENNIE MASTERS’S BODY HAD LAIN THERE, half propped against the wall, the arm missing and blood starting to clot around the horrid, vivid wounds. The proprietor said they should leave, and that he would take care of calling the police. They did not argue. There would be awkward questions asked of those who were present. The place was illegal, for one thing, and there was a dead man slumped against the wall. The patrons and staff dispersed, gathering their belongings and hurrying down the flight of stairs and onto the street. No-one spoke. Billy and Jack went home. Joseph and Edward went straight to the Blue Arabian. George and Violet Costello were in one of the booths, locked in conversation with two beetle-browed heavies and a skinny man with buck teeth who was, Joseph suggested, “a big noise in America.” The room was jumping, a large crowd dancing to the Jock Salisbury Quartet, and the music and the smoke-heavy air made Edward’s head spin. They approached the booth, Edward waiting a respectful step away as Joseph waited for his uncle and aunt to acknowledge him. He dipped to George’s ear and spoke quickly. George’s expression darkened and he shared a quick word with his sister. They both made their excuses, leaving the table and hurrying towards the bar.
There was a door to a store room. George shoved it aside roughly and they followed him through: barrels of ale, bottles in crates, rows of empties. Violet looked out of place amid the detritus of the club. She looked glamorous, as always: dressed in a jacket with a high neckline, a knee-length tartan skirt and calfskin pumps with wedge heels. A tiny hat that must have cost a small fortune completed the ensemble. She took a cigarette from her case and screwed it into a holder.
“Not him,” George said roughly, pointing to Edward. “Family only.”
“He was there,” Joseph protested. “And I told you, he’s clever––he might be able to help.”
Edward stood silently, working out the angles.
“Let him stay,” Violet said.
“Fine,” George relented. “What happened?”
Joseph spoke quietly. “Jack Spot and three of his gypsies turned over the spieler on Manette Street. And then they shot Lennie. He’s dead.”
George’s face flickered from fury to confusion and then back to fury again. “Why? He wants a war with us?” He slammed his fist into the wall. The confusion and the frustration stayed, and for a moment he looked like a baffled toddler. He appealed to his sister, “Violet––what do we do?”
“What did he say?” she asked.
“That we’re finished in Soho. That we should clear out. He says he’s the new guv’nor.”
“And?”
“That’s it. He stole anything worth having and cleared off.”
Violet stared at the unlit cigarette but said nothing. She lit the cigarette slowly and carefully. Edward realised that she was as confused as George, but that she was better skilled at masking it. Joseph, too, did not know how to react. Edward had decided when they made their way into the club that he would keep his own counsel, regardless of what Joseph said. He had ideas but he did not want to speak out of turn in case they thought he was being presumptuous. But, watching them flounder, he realised that, in their own ways, they were all paralysed by confusion and doubt. They needed him. He saw the chance and he took it.
“He doesn’t want a war,” he offered carefully.
“Really?” Violet said acerbically.
“No. He’s weighed this up. It might have looked it, but wasn’t a spur of the moment thing. He thinks that shooting your friend is all it’s going to take to get what he wants. He was going to do that all along, it didn’t matter what he did or didn’t say. He thinks you’re weak. He thinks you’ll give up and step away.”
“Weak?” In a sudden movement, George was onto Edward, taking him by the lapels and shoving him against the whitewashed brick wall. He was prodigiously strong. “You don’t know him and you don’t know us,” he said, his face so close to Edward that he could see the bubbles of spittle forming on his bottom lip. “I’ve had people cut into little pieces for saying less than that to me.”
“Uncle,” Joseph said, his tone calm and even. “He didn’t mean it like that.”
“Let him go, George,” Violet instructed.
George pressed harder for a moment and Edward felt the points of his knuckles burying themselves deeper into the soft flesh beneath his shoulders. He released his grip. “Alright,” he said, taking a step back. “Go on then, explain, but watch what you say.”
Edward did his best not to patronise them. “Rational people don’t want to fight, not if they don’t have to. It’s messy and no-one ever ends up with everything they want. Spot is sending you a message that it’s not in your interests to take him on. There was no need to do what he did––Lennie wasn’t doing anything to provoke him and shooting him was gratuitous. That was the message he wanted to deliver––he’s saying that he’s dangerous and unpredictable, that he’ll do anything to get what he wants and if you want to fight him, you’ll have to fight on the same level. And he doesn’t think you’ll be prepared to do that.”
George folded his huge arms, his porcine eyes staring dead straight at Edward. “He’s wrong,” he said. “What a load of old bollocks.” Edward could see that it was just bluster.
Violet lit her cigarette, put the holder to her lips and drew in a sharp breath. “Fine,” she said, exhaling. “If you think you know what he’s doing, why don’t you tell us what we should do about it?”
“Start to close your Soho businesses down.”
“Shut them down?” George laughed harshly.
“And move out.”
“Run away?”
“Let him think he’s getting what he wants. Persuade him you’ve got no stomach for this, a scrap with someone who’ll shoot one of your men for no reason. Prove him right––make it look like you are weak.”
Because you are, Edward thought. Weak and lazy and ripe for the picking.
“And then?” Violet asked.
“And then you plan your next move. All warfare is based on deception. He needs to think that you can’t or you won’t attack him. You sit down. Plan the correct response. And then carry it out ruthlessly.”
“What a load of old bollocks, Violet,” George said dismissively. “We start to move out and every Tom, Dick and Harry will be onto us. They’re like damn sharks. They smell weakness––real or not––and you’re done for. They’d tear us to shreds. Sorry, Joseph, but your mate ain’t clever. He’s naïve. Wouldn’t last five minutes here.”
He knew that he did not have to persuade George. When it came down to it, he would do as he was told. It was Violet, shrew-like and wily, whom he had to persuade. She did not speak. She drew down again on her cigarette, her eyes on Edward and yet distant, as if calculating or toying with a difficult problem. She exhaled smoke up into the vaulted ceiling.
“Come on,” George said, straightening his jacket. His face was set now, his eyes bulging and the line of his jaw pulsing as he clenched and unclenched. “Best get you somewhere we know is safe. You need to think what we do next. I’ll tell you this, and I’ll tell you for nothing––Jack bloody Spot will rue the day he thought he could pull a stroke like this. I’ll have his eyes before the week is out.”
PART FOUR
September – December 1945
CALENDAR
–– 1945 ––
The Graphic, 25th July:
SCANDAL AS RETURNING SOLDIERS ABANDONED
– NO JOBS, NO ACCOMMODATION, NO MONEY –
By Henry Drake
The leading London hotels are full of well-fed, well-dressed foreign managers, clerks, waiters, porters. In the Piccadilly Hotel I saw only one English employee, a crippled soldier, who ran a lift, and the messenger boys. Yet London is full of disbanded unemployed soldiers. It is pitiful to see hundreds of young Britons, their breasts covered with war medals, turning barrel organs, the organ having an inscription drawing attention to their services and the unfulfilled promises made them. Sometimes they have a wounded mate appealing mutely to the pity of the cruel city; sometimes a wife and children. Others work in parties of crippled men.