Fires of London (The Francis Bacon Mysteries) (15 page)

“Every indication! Do you think I’d have let her out of the house with a case otherwise? I wasn’t found yesterday in the cabbage patch, you know.”

I asked if she had any idea where the disgraceful hussy might have gone.

“London, and good riddance, I am sure. If one of the bombs gets her, it’s no more than she deserves. What I’m to do for the rent is beyond me. You find her, you see she sends me seven and six.” She elaborated on this until the pips again sounded and I hung up, feeling slightly more sympathetic to my inspector. I’d spent four days in concentrated effort and all I could be sure of was that Connie hadn’t met a bad end at the Brighton Arms. I should have been happy about that, but I was vaguely dissatisfied. If Connie had returned to London, why hadn’t I run across him in one of his old haunts?

Perhaps his landlady was wrong. Perhaps he had headed for parts unknown or met disaster in Brighton. Perhaps he’s even now floating out to sea or rotting under the pier.
Somebody behind him
, my crippled informant had said. Somebody from Brighton? No, logically, someone from London who might have followed him to Brighton. I began to feel more suspicious of Teck again. It was funny. Suspicion had a way of evaporating in his presence and regrouping in his absence. But then he was a man of the theatre. Just because he was a lousy Clytemnestra didn’t mean he wasn’t able to act a part. I thought I’d very much like to follow him around London, and the next night, I set out for the Gargoyle again.

I had no luck for several nights, and I began to fear that Teck had returned to Brighton and his Greek theatricals. Then, on Thursday, I finished up the dining-room trim early in the afternoon. The next project was the foyer, featuring a curving formal staircase with a twenty-foot ceiling over the stairwell. I told Bella that I wouldn’t attempt it without scaffolding, and, with every bit of pipe, plank, and scaffolding going for essential repairs, it looked to be some time before I could resume work. Bella paid me for the two rooms completed, and I promised myself dinner in Soho.

I smartened up my appearance as best I could—Nan, god bless her, is resistant to the charms of makeup—borrowed a torch from Bella, and ventured out into fog with drizzle, the best kind of weather for the new dispensation. If the tide was in, the firemen would have an easy time on the pumps tonight, and with the heavy cloud cover, we might get a break. Might or might not—the sirens were going when I emerged at Leicester Square, and I ducked back inside. Waves of bombers rumbled overhead, the sound of their engines shaking the earth, but their payloads had been farther east, and when I emerged into the gray twilight, there were only the normal quotient of fires, a scattering of white hot incendiaries, and a single massive crater that was tying up the buses and forcing the fire engines and ambulances onto the sidewalks and down alleys. A fine nuisance, but we’d lost the panic of early days: dust and smoke and sudden death were just the way of the world. I had money in my pocket and fancied a French meal.

I was running through a variety of menus—mostly wishful thinking—when I spotted Teck. There was no mistaking the tall, angular figure, the dreadful hair, or the curious gliding walk that hinted Clytemnestra lurked in some obscure wing of his psyche. I turned on my heel and trailed him to the tube station where, amid the crowd of passengers and shelterers, I managed to follow him through the passages of the Embankment station to the District Line. When he took the eastbound train, I figured Stepney, and although I lost sight of him several times, I hopped out confidently at Stepney Green.

No Aubrey Teck. Platform jammed, of course: the poor lack gardens with Anderson shelters, and even if they’d had them, the district had been hit so hard that few gardens were left. Could he have slipped out at Whitechapel or ridden on to Bow Road? I’d had my eyes peeled at all the earlier stations, but in the crush anything was possible. Go on? Go back? I was hesitating between the exit and the train when I saw him far down the platform. He had gotten into an altercation with an old fellow carrying an accordion for tonight’s entertainment in the Underground. I dodged into the exit tunnel and up to the street. Five minutes later, half hidden by a bulwark of sandbags, I saw him emerge from the station and head east.

I had been in the area only recently with Wee Jimmy, but already the physical landscape was quite altered. The usual fire watchers and wardens were about, along with ambulances, bomb disposal trucks, auxiliary fire equipment, and rescue workers. Moving among them, I missed my tin hat and badge, my passport to the night, my stamp of legitimacy. Along the side streets, dubious types readied for
their
night’s work—looting was lucrative, especially when big shops and nightclubs were hit. The alcoholic, homeless, and bomb-shattered drifted aimlessly until corralled by the wardens, who urged them into the Underground or one of the public shelters. A cloak of mist and smoke swirled over all this misery, but fortunately Teck kept his torch lit. I switched my own off and followed his yellow point of light as closely as I dared.

We passed into a warren of cramped tenements and small shops, all shuttered and boarded, some badly damaged, mere hulks. I was struck by how swiftly and confidently Teck moved; clearly he was no stranger. And though now that I thought of it, there was a hint of Cockney under his theatrical English, the district changed so quickly that he must come here often. After stumbling for the third or fourth time, I was sorry that I couldn’t say the same. I was dusting myself off and checking for damage when I realized all was dark ahead. I ran forward, seeking an alley or a doorway, and banged into a protective hurdle. My heart jumping, I switched on my torch. The light shot into a bomb crater fifteen or twenty feet deep with water at the bottom. Not a cheering sight for a non-swimmer.

Had Teck turned off somewhere unseen, or had he known of the obstacle and hoped anyone following him would not? Unpleasant prospects all ’round. I switched off my torch to let my eyes adjust. The street had taken a direct hit, and I was facing a rubble-filled lot with no lights anywhere. Then I noticed what appeared to be warehouses across the wasteland and a brief flicker of light like the opening of a door. I waited several minutes before picking my way around the bomb site. When I reached the block, I found most of the buildings shuttered tight, but faint sounds of music—rhythmic, American, jazzy—issued from behind one otherwise-anonymous door. I knocked but got no answer, and, after scouting around to be sure there was no other entrance, I had resigned myself to waiting for Teck to emerge when a pair of torches approached, carried by two heavy, prosperous-looking chaps. They were laughing in a knowing but nervous way, and I heard one say he could smell tea burning, and the other that danger is the spice of life.

They went straight to the door and instead of knocking began fumbling with their keys. “Evening,” I said. “I’m in luck.”

They froze.

“Forgot my key. Damnable nuisance. A night like this a man needs some distraction.”

“You’re not a member.” It always amazes me how clubmen scent one another, as if membership came with some sharp new aroma. He swung his light insolently into my face.

“Well, not yet, but George thought I’d do.”

“George?”

I thought perhaps I’d made a mistake, but no. Another close inspection of my features.

“You might do indeed.” This from the taller of the two. He had a shock of white hair and a red face with a massive nose and pursed lips.

There was no mistaking the slightly flirtatious tone.

“George is never wrong, is he?”

The hitherto silent one, dapper in a touring cap and an ascot, started to giggle. George’s infallibility seemed a great joke. “George will break your neck if you’re lying about him,” said the first man.

“Or
to
him,” said the second, and giggled again. A man who’s so jovial in the Blitz is either drunk or a psychopath.

“George is a special taste,” I said, and this time they both laughed. The first man stuck his key in the lock and gestured me to follow them inside.

Excellent blackout preparation, that was the first thing. I approved; this ARP warden will give them a commendation. If you’re going into the lion’s den, so to speak, you don’t want to be hit by some sharp-eyed Jerry cruising at ten thousand feet—such double jeopardy seems quite unfair. Very dim lighting for another thing, excellent in my opinion. I don’t know that I’d have spotted George if he’d been three feet from me, and I figured Teck would have as hard a time picking me out. And then the bar: large and well stocked, though the room itself showed signs of bomb damage in the residual tarpaulins and bracing. I decided to let one of my randy and well-to-do acquaintances buy me some champers and see what developed. They looked a bit soft and easy for my taste, but careful, Francis! Danger is so seductive I find it easy to slide from business to pleasure. I drank some bad bubbly and allowed the genuine clubmen certain liberties before I said that I should find George. “I know you think I’m dubious.”

“I know you are,” one said, giggling. “I only like dubious boys.”

We had something in common there!

The big, red-faced chap was very keen to “adjourn,” as he put it, to somewhere private, but though that might be amusing, I already knew as much as I needed to know about him.

“I’d better see George. You know what he’s like.”

Oh, yes, he did, he did. A vigorous nodding of his heavy head. I mistrust a man who retains jowls during rationing. He had a face like a side of beef, and my hand twitched for a brush: cad red and white lead with a touch of ochre; dark underneath, purples and umbers like the darkness of the soul. One big swirl for his nose; the paint pulled into folds, and folds rippling into flesh. I saw it in an instant, then caught myself: to dream here with dragons all around was dangerous. “Where am I likely to find him?”

“Up the stair.” He pointed into the distant reaches of the club, over the dancers, the crowded bar, the couples locked in frantic embraces in the booths. “‘Come back with your shield or on it!’”

Another poof besotted with the classics. I wiggled my ass at him and made my way through the throng of punters and painted boys, many with bruised faces or cut lips. Oh, this was a select and special clientele, one doubtless made in heaven for my friend George, whom I hoped, at all cost, to avoid. Up the stair, rickety, I noted; I was becoming, thanks to my ARP training, a bit of an old woman as far as safety went. Down a corridor, lighting also not up to any known code; this must once have been part of the storerooms. Closed doors on either side emitted noises of pleasure and pain: the delightful sounds of extreme emotion. Steady on, Francis! To be dutiful, as Nan says, is sometimes a virtue. Dear Nan, with her inflexible manners and flexible morals.

I suspected that Teck was not thus engaged. How did I know? I didn’t, but Blitz life was such a lottery that hesitation was a chief danger. I was surprised that “Dithering Costs Lives” had not joined “Be Like Dad, Keep Mum” or “Go by Shank’s Pony” and the various injunctions against waste and in favor of a cabbage-based cuisine.

Various empty rooms. I checked one out: a bed, a chair, a washstand, a little cupboard with a nice line of whips, a few badly done pornographic pictures on the wall. I suspect sex will become my subject, but, the Muse willing, nothing so unimaginative as these. It’s the emotions of the act I’m interested in; the rest is just the collision of so much meat. We are flesh, and there’s the end of the matter. Anyone who’s worked a bomb site knows that.

Another stair; our masters choose to live on high. I started up, soft-footed, to what I guessed had been the original warehouse offices. Voices above, but no pleasurable pains here. And no theatrical English, either. Stress had sent Teck’s plummy vowels all to hell.

“ . . . a crap position. I thought he was going to beat my head in.”

A baritone rumble. He was keeping his voice down admirably.

“You said you’d take care of it before!”

A threatening sound; in a dog, it would be a growl. The human equivalent was at once softer and nastier. I moved several steps closer. The door above was closed, but age and blasts had disturbed the casement so that a broad, uneven sweep of light issued over the sill.

“It wasn’t enough, though, was it? And the park! The park, of all places.”

“Weren’t bomb craters then, were there? A man can disappear now, and if he’s found at all, the Jerries take the blame. It’s a great time for my line of work.”

“That may be all right for you, but a man in my position—”

I recognized the sound of bodies colliding; George had a low flashpoint and a very low opinion of Teck’s “position.”

The designer showed more pluck than I’d expected. “All right, all right,” he said. “Remember what pays the bills. You hired him, it was your mess, and you didn’t clean it up. But water over the dam; no more said. Now there’s another problem, that’s all I’m saying.”

“Yeah? And the other one? The little blonde? Whose idea was that?”

“He seemed a good sort of lad—”

“You wouldn’t smell a rat until he shat on your shoe.”

“If you hadn’t flown off the handle. I warned . . . ”

The other speaker did not wait to answer this observation. “Not to mention your other little problem. What raised questions in the first place but your fucking play acting?”

“ . . . you, but no, no. You’d do it your way, heavy handed . . . ”

I heard the clatter of a chair going over; George clearly believed in his own infallibility. But was it George—or was memory deceiving me? At the moment, for reasons I cannot now recall or imagine, it seemed important to know for sure. I climbed the rest of the way, my heart jumping with each creak of the treads and peered into the semidarkness. I was in a sort of attic, one part finished—the office where Teck was having his conference—the other a sort of lumber room. As I picked my way over some dusty boxes, I felt the familiar tickle in the back of my throat, followed by a nasty rattling wheeze. I stopped mid-stride and looked around for cover. The voices in the other room were silent.