‘No,’ I said, not much above a whisper.
‘Say what?’
‘No.’
‘Good boy.’ Releasing me, he wiped his fingers down his trouser front. ‘You can give her my love, Ethel, when you see her. Though how you can fuck it without a bag over its head beggars belief.’
So I started slipping him scraps of information, nothing serious, nothing I was close to certain he didn’t already know. We’d meet in the Posts or the Two Brewers, sometimes Lyons’ tea shop in Piccadilly. It kept him at bay for a while but not for long.
‘Stop pullin’ my chain,’ he said one fine morning, ‘and give me something I can fuckin’ use.’ It was late summer and everything still shining and green.
I thought about it sitting on the steps at the foot of Lower Regent Street, a view clear across the Mall into St James’s Park, Horse Guards Parade. Over the next few weeks I fed him rumours a big shipment of heroin would be passing through the club, smuggled in from the Continent. The Maltese brothers, I assured him, would be there to supervise delivery.
Neville saw it as his chance for the spotlight. The raid was carried out by no fewer than a dozen plain-clothes officers with as many as twenty uniforms in support. One of Neville’s cronies, a crime reporter for the Express, was on hand to document proceedings.
Of course, the place was clean. I’d seen to that.
When the law burst through the door and down the stairs, Vic Farrell was playing ‘Once in a While’ in waltz time and the atmosphere resembled nothing so much as a vicarage tea party, orderly and sedate.
‘Don’t say, you little arsewipe,’ Neville spluttered, ‘I didn’t fuckin’ warn you.’
For the next forty-eight hours I watched my back, double-checked the locks on the door to my room, took extra care each time I stepped off the kerb and into the street. And then I understood I wasn’t the one at risk.
Wouldn’t want to see anything happen to her, would you?
She was lying on her bed, wearing just a slip, a pair of slippers on her feet, and at first I thought she was asleep. And then, from the angle of her torso to her head, I realised someone had twisted her neck until it broke.
He’ll hurt you if he can: just about the first words Ethel had said.
I looked at her for a long time and then, daft as it sounds, I touched my fingers to her upper lip, surprised at how smooth and cold it felt.
And then I left.
Discreetly as I could, I asked around.
The maid had taken a couple of days off sick; only the usual slow but steady stream of punters had been seen entering the building. Up and down the street, nobody had noticed anything unusual.
‘Soho Vice Girl Murdered’, the headline read.
I traced Ethel’s mother from one of her letters and she promised to come to the funeral but she never did. I stood alone in a little chapel in Kensal Green, fingers drumming a quiet farewell on the back of the pew. Outside, the first leaves were starting to fall. When it was over I took the Tube back to Oxford Circus and met Tom Holland round the corner from the Palladium as arranged.
Holland was young for a detective inspector, no more than thirty-two or — three; something of a high-flyer, he’d recently transferred from the City of London police to run one of the CID squads at West End Central.
The year before, ’55, the Mail had run a story about police corruption, alleging that many officers in the West End were on the take. The Met issued a bald denial. Everyone from the Commissioner down denied the charge. What evidence existed was discredited or lost. No one was suspended, cautioned, even interviewed. Word was unofficially passed round: be less visible, less greedy.
Holland was the only officer I knew who wasn’t snaffling bribes. According to rumour, when a brothel keeper slipped an envelope containing fifty in tens into his pocket, Holland shoved it down his throat and made him eat it.
He was just shy of six foot, I guessed, dark-haired and brown-eyed, and he sat at a table in the rear of the small Italian cafe, shirtsleeves rolled back, jacket draped across his chair. Early autumn and it was still warm. The coffee came in those glass cups that were all the rage; three sips and it was gone.
I told him about Neville’s involvement with pushers and prostitutes, the percentages he took for protection, for looking the other way. Told him my suspicions concerning Ethel’s murder.
Holland listened as if it mattered, his gaze rarely leaving my face.
When I’d finished, he sat a full minute in silence, weighing things over.
‘I can’t do anything about the girl,’ he said. ‘Even if Neville did kill her or have her killed, we’d never get any proof. And let’s be honest: where she’s concerned, nobody gives a toss. But the other stuff, drugs especially. There might be something I could do.’
I thought if I went the right way about it, I could get Foxy to make some kind of statement, off the record, nothing that would come to court, not even close, but it would be a start. Places, times, amounts. And there were others who’d be glad to find a way of doing Neville down, repaying him for all the cash he’d pocketed, the petty cruelties he’d meted out.
‘One month,’ Holland said. ‘Then show me what you’ve got.’
When I held out my hand to shake his, his eyes fixed on my arm. ‘And that habit of yours,’ he said. ‘Kick it now.’
A favourite trick of Neville’s, whenever his men raided a club, was to take the musicians who’d been holding aside — and there were usually one or two — and feign sympathy. Working long hours, playing the way you do, stands to reason you need a little something extra, a little pick-me-up. Nudge, nudge, wink, wink. Men of the world. Just hand it over and we’ll say no more about it. Oh, and if you’ve got a little sweetener for the lads… lovely, lovely.
And ever after, if he walked into a club or bumped into them on the street, he would be into them for another fifty plus whatever they were carrying. Let anyone try saying no and they were sorted good.
Inside a matter of weeks I talked with two pianists, a drummer, a guitarist and three sax players — what is it with saxophonists? — who agreed to dish the dirt on Neville if it would get him off their backs. And finally, after a lot of arguing and pleading, I persuaded Foxy to sit down with Holland in an otherwise empty room, neutral territory, and tell him what he knew.
After that, carefully, Holland spoke to a few of Neville’s team, officers who were already compromised and eager to protect themselves as best they could. From a distance, he watched Neville himself. Checked, double- checked.
The report he wrote was confidential and he took it to the new Deputy Assistant Commissioner, one of the few high-ranking bosses he thought he could trust.
It was agreed that going public would generate bad publicity for the force and that should be avoided at all costs. Neville was shunted sideways, somewhere safe, and after several months allowed to retire on a full pension for reasons of ill health.
One of his mutually beneficial contacts had been with a businessman from Nicosia, import and export, and that was where Neville hived off to, counting his money, licking his wounds.
I was at the airport to see him off.
Three and a bit years ago now.
I took Tom Holland’s advice and cleaned up my act, the occasional drag at some weed aside. Tom, he’s a detective chief inspector now and tipped for higher things. I don’t play any more, rarely feel the need. There are a couple of bands I manage, groups that’s what they call them these days, one from Ilford, one from Palmers Green. And I keep myself fit, swim, work out in the gym. One thing a drummer has, even a second-rate ex-drummer like me, is strong wrists, strong hands.
I don’t reckon Neville staying in Cyprus for ever, can’t see it somehow; he’ll want to come back to the smoke. And when he does, I’ll meet him. Maybe even treat him to a drink. Ask if he remembers Ethel, the way she lay back, twisted, on the bed, her broken neck…
