September Song (17 page)

I'd first noticed him lumbering after me at Cambridge Circus, but I hadn't really been absolutely sure he was following me until I'd stopped at the phone box and he'd failed miserably to conceal himself behind the railings surrounding the entrance to the subterranean public conveniences about thirty yards back.

Flushing him out was a bit childish, but then so was tailing me.

I hadn't really decided whether to lose him, confront him or just let him follow me out to Ealing. Losing him had its appeal – it was neat, for a start – but then I wouldn't know what he was after. Of course, confronting him didn't necessarily mean that I'd find that out, but it might. I was against letting him follow me to Ealing on principle. The principle being that the less men like James Fitzgerald knew about me the better, and I assumed that his man – who I recognized as Malcolm's mate – would be reporting to him. I had no great liking for Mr Fitz learning about my relationship with Mrs Williams. No good could possibly come of that.

As I leaned against the wall, feeling the cool stone through my jacket, watching the steady procession of people going about whatever business it is people who bustle about churches go about, I saw a figure I recognized.

She was wearing a baggy brown cardigan buttoned up to the neck and a green scarf over her hair and was tidying up a stack of dark-green prayer books, but, even performing such an apparently unlikely act, with her impressive cleavage hidden and her shock of hair under wraps, she was unmistakable.

‘Miss Laurence?' I said. ‘Viv Laurence.'

I don't think I've ever before seen someone, as Jerry sometimes says, start like a guilty thing upon a fearful summons, but I think, if I understand the phrase aright, that Viv Laurence did exactly that. She turned big, startled eyes on me and dropped one of the prayer books on the floor.

I bent down and picked it up. ‘Can I help you with those?' I said, nodding at the pile of books.

She shook her head fiercely and clutched those still in her hands tightly. She looked warily around, but there was no one else near us. ‘Are you following me?' she whispered.

I shook my head. ‘No, no. Of course not,' I said, holding the book out towards her. ‘I just happened to come in here. I'm sorry.' I looked around for a suitable surface to plonk the prayer book. There was a straight-backed old wooden chair up against the wall next to me. I dropped the book on to the seat with a little bump. ‘Sorry,' I said again, ‘I'll, er, leave you to it.'

I offered her a wan little smile and turned towards the door. I'd walked about five paces when I felt her hand on my shoulder.

‘I'm the one who should be sorry,' she said. ‘It's just  . . . I don't know.' She paused. ‘Listen, I could do with a ciggy.' She placed her pile of books carefully on top of the one I'd deposited on the chair, and then she walked with me out of the door and on to the steps outside the church.

I stood looking across at Trafalgar Square while she fumbled in her shiny black handbag for a pack of cigarettes and a box of matches.

She dropped the match, tilted her head up and breathed smoke into the sky with a sigh. The starlings were still tearing about up above us, raucously criss-crossing the air in immaculately choreographed manoeuvres.

‘I've been a bit jumpy ever since last night,' she said. ‘And this –' she inclined her head back towards the church – ‘is a sort of refuge for me. I do a bit of work around the place: cleaning, that sort of thing. It's somewhere I can go and forget about those parts of my life I want to forget about. I couldn't bear it if that was all ruined.'

‘I promise that I wasn't following you,' I said. I looked around nervously for the man who'd been following
me
. I didn't spot him. ‘And I promise that I won't mention to anyone that I've seen you here.'

‘Thanks,' she said and rested her hand on my forearm for a few seconds. ‘The thing is, what happened to those boys was horrible.' She looked around nervously. ‘It's got me worried.'

‘It's all right,' I said, as reassuringly as I could manage. ‘Nothing's going to happen to you.'

She took her hand from my forearm, removed the half-smoked cigarette from her mouth and threw it to the ground. She watched it smouldering there and then delicately stretched out her right foot and stepped on it very gently.

‘You don't understand,' she said, still looking down at the step.

‘No,' I said, ‘I don't. What's bothering you?'

She looked bleakly out at Trafalgar Square and then across to the bottom of Charing Cross Road. ‘I can't talk now,' she said abruptly. ‘I have to finish up in here.' She turned hurriedly back towards the door of the church and then glanced at me again. ‘Perhaps if you could come and see me tomorrow morning?'

I nodded. ‘Of course,' I said.

‘Can you come to my place about eleven?'

I nodded again, but she'd already moved under the portico and was almost through the door.

I wondered where the guy who'd been following me was. I thought he'd be loitering outside somewhere – under the portico, probably – unless he knew I'd spotted him. In that case he'd be hanging about in Trafalgar Square, discovering a hitherto unsuspected, but nonetheless engrossing, fascination with pigeons. But I still couldn't see him. Maybe he hadn't been following me. I couldn't think what Mr Fitz would hope to gain by knowing my movements, anyway. Except that he seemed to think that I knew where his merchandise was. Or knew someone who did.

The starlings swirled around, making a terrible din, and I stood for a moment or two at the top of the steps looking up at them, fiddling with my tie in a futile attempt to make myself more presentable. I even patted at my hair.

Then I saw my shadow.

He wasn't under the portico or in Trafalgar Square with a pigeon on his shoulder. He was leaning against the railings outside the National Gallery opposite, peering over the top of the late edition of the
Evening News
. I considered wandering over and asking him how the Orient had got on at Southend, but he might have thought that I wasn't taking him seriously and got ratty about it.

Mind you, I couldn't be too sure how seriously he was taking things himself. As soon as he saw me looking at him, he folded the paper and stuffed it into the side pocket of his suit jacket, unpeeled himself from the railings and started to walk briskly in my direction, swaying as neatly and effortlessly as a matador avoiding a maddened bull to dodge a taxi as he crossed the road. For a moment I thought that he would walk right up to me, but he stopped at the bottom of the steps and waited for me to do something.

What I did was look at him and worry away at a chip in one of what my National Health Service tooth doctor calls my anterior teeth with my tongue.

When I'd exhausted the possibilities that offered, I walked down the steps and plonked myself right in front of him. OK, it was a change of plan, but I'd've felt silly leading him off to Embankment station.

‘Hi,' I said.

He stared at me fairly phlegmatically. ‘Do I know you?' he said.

‘We were never introduced,' I said, ‘but we ran into each other last night. And then again an hour ago. In Old Compton Street.'

‘Did we?' he said.

I nodded and smiled at him. ‘Bit of a coincidence, running into you again here,' I said.

He sniffed. ‘Is it?'

‘No. I'm not sure that it is,' I said. ‘I think you're following me. And not making much of a fist of it.'

There was a short silence, full of possibilities.

‘All right,' he finally said. ‘I am.'

‘What for?'

He shrugged. ‘Something to do?' he suggested.

He was a big man, maybe five years younger than me, and he looked useful. He certainly didn't appear to be at all concerned at me calling him out.

I worried at the tooth again and watched the people hurrying by and the buses throbbing past.

‘I'll tell you what,' I said. ‘I'll make it easy for you. I'm just on my way out to Ealing to see an old friend. After that, I'm coming back into town. I'll drop in to Pete's Place on Frith Street and listen to the band there for a while. Then I'm heading home for a decent night's kip.' I looked up at the darkening sky. ‘If you want to schlep all the way out to Ealing, wait out in the rain for an hour or two while I eat my meat and two veg, schlep all the way back in, spend another couple of hours listening to some jazz and then spend half an hour on the Central Line, that's up to you, but I imagine you can think of better things to do with your Saturday night.' I paused and waited for him to respond but he didn't. ‘The other thing is,' I said, ‘that I might get browned off with being followed.'

That got his attention. He looked me up and down and sneered. ‘You reckon you can stop me, do you?' he said.

I shrugged. ‘I don't know, but if I get browned off enough we might find out.'

He reached forward and grabbed me by the shirt and tie. I lost buttons. He leaned in to me, and his harsh, sharp cologne stung the lining of my nostrils.

‘Don't threaten me,' he said, ‘unless you intend to follow through.'

I hit him once – a short right jab just under the heart. It wasn't my best shot by a long way, but it did the business. He let go of me and stepped back, allowing me a much better punch to much the same place. That one travelled the requisite six or seven inches and really sank in. He fell to his knees, gasping for breath like a gaffed fish, surprise widening his eyes. A couple of passers-by looked at us long and hard, but I shook my head at them and they gave us a wide berth.

‘There was no need,' I said, ‘to ruin a perfectly good shirt.' I held my left hand cocked and ready to strike if he looked like coming for me. I was actually a bit disappointed that he didn't. I thought he was made of sterner stuff. In fact, he sat back on the steps, very pale and wan.

Oh, well, someone else with a grudge against me. I'd add him to what was becoming a long list.

I saw the paper poking out from his pocket and pulled it out.

It could have been worse. Orient had held Southend to a nil-nil draw.

ELEVEN

P
ete's Place was about as full as it ever gets on a Saturday night by the time I arrived. And that's pretty full. The sharp tang of spilt beer, sweaty bodies and cheap aftershave and scent cut through the thick fug of cigarette smoke. No wonder our lords and masters call us the great unwashed.

I elbowed my way to the bar as the Peter Baxter Band played what was rapidly becoming their signature tune, ‘The Sheik of Araby'. The boards of the little stage were bouncing alarmingly as Peter and the others thumped out the time rather too enthusiastically, Peter's battered old brown suede shoes leading the way. They must have been the same vintage as his suit, bought back when Edward VIII was still the Prince of Wales and a fashion leader rather than the Duke of Windsor with some dodgy allegiances.

Brimming with Mrs Williams' – Ann's – good roast beef dinner (meat and
three
veg as well as Yorkshire pudding), two glasses of Berry Brothers & Rudd's best claret (specially bought for me by Mrs Williams now that she accepted that I really didn't drink beer), and apple crumble and custard, I was prepared to drink warm, flat lemonade for what remained of the night and still beam at anyone and everyone. Ann had even sewed three buttons back on to my damaged shirt, while she had worried away at the unfairness of hanging Ruth Ellis when, ten years ago, Cyril Patmore had only got five years for manslaughter after returning from the war to find his wife pregnant and stabbing her to death. It had been on her mind for a few months. I'd agreed with her. It had been a couple of hours of the nearest I'd ever come to domestic bliss.

But then I saw Philip Graham on the far side of the room, and my mood soured. He was sitting with Ricky Mountjoy, and that could not be good news.

I assumed that young Ricky had got over last night's little fright and was looking for whatever goods he'd lost. Or for revenge. Probably both.

Whether Philip was in the same frame of mind was difficult to tell. He was certainly scowling into his drink when he wasn't fidgeting on his seat or nervously drawing on a cigarette.

I wondered if they'd come mob-handed – little Ricky didn't seem to me the sort for one-on-one combat, and Dave had appeared to have real paternal feelings for his boy – so I looked around for obvious muscle, like George, but I didn't see anyone.

I thought it might be a good idea to lose myself in the crowd, and, as Peter and the boys basked in the warm applause, I eased myself to the rear wall. By the time the band had started ‘Moonglow', in what sounded to me like the Benny Goodman arrangement, I had put most of the room and about a hundred and twenty people between me and them. I couldn't see Philip or Ricky because of the dimmed lights, the largish audience and the smoky fug, so it was a fair bet that they couldn't see me either. But I had the advantage of knowing they were there.

‘Moonglow' finished, and the band roared straight into a barnstorming account of ‘Nobody's Sweetheart Now'. What they lacked in finesse they more than made up for in enthusiasm and noise, and, in fact, they weren't bad. I found my foot tapping along. And I applauded along with everyone else.

The band sauntered off the stage while Peter, trumpet dangling from his hand, sweat dribbling down his face, breathing heavily, waited for the applause to die away to make his announcement.

He kept it short. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, the very wonderful Miss Jeannie Summers.'

The stage lights dimmed to a single startling spot, and there she was in a shimmering blue gown. The woman more than a hundred people had come to see. And there, slouched over the piano, in shadow, tinkling an introduction to ‘Smoke Gets in Your Eyes', was the man three of us had paid our entrance money in the hope of seeing.