The Man From the Diogenes Club Read online

  Zarana nodded. ‘He has a ton of clubs. Chi-Chi’s, the Hot-Lite in Dean Street, Dirty Gertie’s (at Number Thirty), the Prefects’ Hut, the National Girlery…’

  She had taken off her Carry On Cleo gear (on stage, not that Fred had caught her turn), and now wore a lime-green mini with matching knit waistcoat, Donovan hat and shaggy boots. She had nondescript, shortish brown hair – pinned so she could get the wig back on quickly for her 5.30.

  They sat in Froff, a Greek Street café. Gleaming, steam-puffing espresso machinery was held over from when it was called Mama Guglielmi’s. A new vibe was signalled by deep purple tactile wallpaper, paper flowers stuck to mirrors and sitar muzak. Waiters wore tie-dye T-shirts and multi-coloured jeans wider at the ankles than Fred’s sta-presses were at the waist. The staff were wary of Fred. His grown-out skinhead haircut (a ‘suedehead’) made him look like the natural enemy of all things hippie, but he sussed that they had Soho antennae that twitched if there was a non-bent policeman about. He had pointedly been asked if he’d like a bacon sarnie. As it happened, the one that turned up was excellent, even if he had to make a conscious effort to blank out the memory of Boot Boy Booth’s death-site to face his nosh.

  Two tables over, a rat-faced herbert in a fringed Shane jacket two sizes too big for his thin shoulders sold silver-foil slivers to fresh-from-the-country kids who were going to be disappointed when they tried to smoke the contents.

  ‘Mr Gates strikes me as somewhat traditional for these environs,’ said Richard.

  Zarana drew four corners in the air and sniggered.

  ‘Indeed,’ said Richard. ‘The original Soho Square.’

  ‘Burly Gates started out as meat-cutter,’ said Fred. ‘Then was a bouncer, for Schluderpacheru.’

  ‘Yeah, for Popeye,’ said Zarana. ‘Now there’s a real creep.’

  ‘Fred, you are familiar with this foreign-sounding person.’

  ‘Konstantin Schluderpacheru. Vice Lord back when we had rationing. Soho was overrun by demobbed blokes with money in their pockets and bad habits picked up in the War. No one’s sure where he comes from, but he claims to be Czech. Besides the striptease places, he was – probably still is – landlord for a lot of first- and second-floor properties with single female tenants.’

  ‘Knockin’ shops,’ said Zarana, with distaste. ‘Don’t gawp, Freddy. I show it, I don’t sell it.’

  Richard patted a hand over Zarana’s large fist.

  ‘I’m amazed you have such a command of local history,’ Richard told Fred.

  ‘It’s what Every Young Copper Should Know. Faces and statistics. At the Yard, they print them on cigarette cards.’

  Fred was pleased that for once he was filling in Richard on arcana. Usually, it was the other way around.

  ‘Pray continue, Frederick.’

  ‘Come the late fifties, Mickey Gates is a jumped-up Teddy boy rousting drunks at Schluderpacheru’s places. He was a double act with a cove by the name of Grek Cohen, who used to be a wrestler. One of those man-mountain types. The story went that you could stick a flick-knife into Grek over and over for five minutes and he wouldn’t even notice. Burly and Grek worked up a nice little protection racket, originally targeting Schluderpacheru’s competition. Also, they started smut-peddling – brown-paper-wrapped little mags and pics. Gates calls himself a “publisher” now, which means the same stuff on glossier paper. You saw his stuff in Booth’s reception area. Knight, Whoops!, Cherry. Those are the “respectable” ones.’

  ‘You’re well up on this.’

  ‘Where do you think all the stuff confiscated in raids winds up? Night shifts at police stations get very boring.’

  ‘I was in Knight once,’ said Zarana. ‘A Roarin’ Twenties set, shimmerin’ fringes, long beads.’

  ‘Schluderpacheru thought porn was peanuts, and let Burly and Grek scurry around picking up grubby pennies. Big mistake. Pennies add up to a grubby pile. They acquired leases to half the district. They were the new Vice Lords.’

  ‘How did their erstwhile employer take that?’ asked Richard.

  ‘That’s the funny part. Schluderpacheru was in the Variety Club of Great Britain by then. He got into the film business, as an agent and then a producer. He leased his “talent” to quota quickies. Pony-Tail played the victim in a murder mystery, Soho Girl. After she got killed and before Zachary Scott found out Sid James did it, audiences lost interest. But when she was on the screen, they sat up to attention. Schluderpacheru reckoned he had the next Diana Dors under exclusive contract. Well, maybe the next Shirley Anne Field. Blond and British, you know. This made him feel like the unpronounceable answer to Lew Grade. He planned to build a whole film around her—’

  ‘Brighton Belle,’ said Zarana. ‘Mavis was goin’ to be in it.’

  ‘He was going to give her a proper name. Gladys Glamour, or something. But it didn’t happen. Schluderpacheru became a producer, but not with Pony-Tail as his star. She disappeared about that time – presumably wriggling out of the lifetime contract, and making things easier for Shirley Anne Field. Burly and Grek were taking over the clubs and Schluderpacheru had to put up some sort of fight or lose face. If people weren’t respectful, which is to say terrified, of him, his empire would tumble. But he also knew he needed to ditch girlie shows if he wanted to be invited to the Royal Film Performance. So, in 1963 or thereabouts, Soho had a not very convincing gang war. In the end, Schluderpacheru divested himself of the clubs – retaining enough of an interest to claim a stipend from Gates.’

  ‘And Grek Cohen?’

  ‘When the dust settled, Grek was nowhere to be seen. His missing persons file at the Yard is still open. In order to make friends again, Schluderpacheru and Gates had to agree neither were to blame for their disagreement. But someone had to be, to satisfy pimps’ honour or whatever. Grek was handy, stupid and expendable. That said, God knows how they got rid of him. Not with a flick-knife, obviously.’

  ‘Mavis says it was her,’ blurted Zarana.

  Richard and Fred looked at the girl. There was a long pause.

  ‘I’m not goin’ to be a grass,’ she said. ‘Life expectancy is short enough in this place.’

  ‘I’m not a policeman,’ said Richard. ‘And Fred barely counts as a plod. Look at the crimes he’s ignoring just by sitting here.’

  The rat-faced bogus dealer pricked up his ears, took a good look at Fred and headed for the hills.

  ‘This is all gossip. Mavis tells it different every time. She gets it mixed up with Samson and Delilah. The big thing is that Grek Cohen was besotted with Pony-Tail, devoted like a kid to a kitten, the whole King Kong scene.’

  ‘“It wasn’t the airplanes,”’ quoted Richard, ‘“it was Beauty killed the Beast.”’

  Zarana nodded. ‘How else could Popeye and Gates get to Grek? They took Pony-Tail away, threatened to carve her face up unless Grek turned himself over to them, lay down for whatever was comin’ – an express train, most likely. Then, the bastards probably did her in anyway, no matter what they say about her now.’

  ‘So, at the bottom of it all, there’s an unwilling femme fatale, a lure and a sacrifice.’

  ‘It makes sense,’ said Fred, ‘two mystery disappearances about the same time. Bound to be a connection.’

  Richard clicked a spoon against his teeth.

  ‘It seems singular to me that this Pony-Tail person is so frequently mentioned. As if she were a presiding spirit, patron saint of stripteaserie, the Florence Nightingale of ecdysiasts.’

  Fred remembered the girl in the stables. He slowed the film down in memory. Pony-Tail was looking beyond the camera, fixing her eye on one face in the darkness, undressing just for him.

  ‘She can’t have been that good,’ said Zarana. ‘She just took her clobber off to music. It’s not astrophysics.’

  Richard and Fred were still thinking about her.

  ‘Men,’ said Zarana. ‘What a shower!’

  Something exploded against the window like a catapulted octopus,
splattering black tentacles across the glass.

  ‘Interesting,’ said Richard.

  V. THE FESTIVAL

  The girl Fred had scared earlier staggered into Froff, one heel broken, halterneck torn, hair dripping. Tarry black stuff streaked her face and arms.

  Outside the star-splattered window, a black-uniformed army marched down Greek Street, lobbing paint-grenades. Advance scouts whirled plastic bull-roarers. Voiceless screaming and sticky missiles generally cleared the way.

  A waiter tried to shove the tom back onto the street, but she wasn’t shifting. A runnel of blood mixed in with black on her face.

  ‘Assault with a deadly weapon, miss,’ said Fred, raising his voice. ‘Could you identify the culprit?’

  She shook her lopsided head, and said, ‘I don’t want to get involved. It’s not healthy.’

  ‘Nothing you do seems healthy. Have you considered going home to Mum?’

  ‘Who do you think put me out in the first place, PC Plod?’

  She sat down at a table and asked for tea, spilling odd coins from a tiny, long-handled purse to prove she could pay for it. She fished out some safety-pins and made emergency repairs to her top. Then, she picked at her hair. The drying, setting goo made unusual spikes. If she kept at it, she might set a new fashion.

  A second wave of marchers passed, waving banners. It was less like a parade of protest than a show of force.

  ‘They do this once a bleedin’ week,’ groaned Zarana.

  Fred saw slogans – ‘Down with Sin!’, ‘Heed the Wrath’, ‘Harlots Out’, ‘Smite the Flesh-Peddlers’.

  ‘Booth went spare about that little lot,’ said Zarana.

  ‘The late, lamented?’ prompted Richard.

  ‘Someone must lament, though you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone to own up to it.’

  ‘We never did establish why the Obscene Publications Squad was headquartered in “Skinderella’s”. If you remember, I did ask.’

  Zarana looked to Fred for the nod. He gave it.

  ‘It was a payoff to Boot Boy from Mickey Gates. Booth took a fat profit out of the place. In Soho, the coppers are full partners in the smut rackets. They get all the perks. Law’s in the way of folk who want to sell and other folk who want to buy, so who’s to complain if the law ducks aside? Then sticks out its greedy hand?’

  Richard looked disappointed. His battles took place beyond the ken of the rest of the world, and he hadn’t kept up on tediously everyday crime.

  ‘She’s right, guv’nor,’ said Fred. ‘It’s an open secret. Every new broom at the Yard promises to sweep clean, then lifts the rock in Soho, takes a look at what’s squirming, and decides to do something else. More parking meters.’

  ‘You’re telling me that the squad charged with regulating obscenity is actually responsible for disseminating it?’

  ‘More or less.’

  ‘Good grief,’ said Richard. ‘I assume our friends in black take objection to this laissez-faire situation?’

  Zarana nodded. ‘When this mob showed up, Gates bent Booth’s ear off. He was payin’ for protection, so he thought he was entitled to it.’

  The marchers wore plain unisex boiler-suits, and had wound black scarves around their heads and lower faces. It must get steamy in those outfits on a hot day, but they were also indistinguishable from each other come an identity parade. They were well-drilled – placard-wavers, bull-roarers and paint grenadiers all in place and working with brisk, brutal efficiency.

  ‘You can’t buy them off,’ said Zarana. ‘Booth tried that straight away. They’re god-bothered loonies.’

  ‘There’s no explicit mention of God in their various slogans,’ mused Richard.

  ‘They call themselves the Festival of Morality,’ said Zarana.

  Richard looked at the protesters. He steepled his fingers and closed his eyes, reaching out to get a deeper impression of them. Then he snapped to.

  ‘Frederick, are you up-to-date on this movement?’

  ‘Only what I read in the papers. You can imagine why they’re here – to take a stand against immorality and licentiousness. They’re a reaction to the “permissive society”. When blokes like Booth get too blatant, and stop keeping seamy stuff out of sight, someone else will step in and call for a bonfire of the bleedin’ vanities.’

  ‘Lord Leaves,’ said Zarana.

  ‘Of course,’ said Richard. ‘Algernon Arbuthnot Leaves, Lord Leaves of Leng. Him, I know of.’

  ‘That’s the bloke,’ she said, pointing. ‘High Lord Muckety-Muck of Killjoy.’

  An open-top black limousine decorated with white symbols crawled along at the centre of the procession. Sat on a raised throne-like affair in the back was an old, old man in long black robes and an ear-flapped skullcap. It struck Fred that he really had copied his look from Savonarola. His hands were liver-spotted and gnarled, but he could hold up a megaphone and bellow with the best of them.

  ‘Is he singing?’ asked Fred.

  ‘Not exactly Gilbert O’Sullivan, is he?’ sniped Zarana.

  ‘You have to applaud the effort,’ said Richard. ‘He’s not afraid of seeming ridiculous.’

  Zarana, who obviously took the Festival personally, kept quiet.

  Lord Leaves continued to give vent. In the front passenger seat, next to a uniformed chauffeur, sat a twelve-year-old blond boy with a black blindfold over his eyes – presumably to save him from sights that might warp his little mind. The lad strummed an amplified acoustic guitar, accompanying the Father of the Festival. Looking up beside His Lordship was an adoring young woman dressed like some sort of nun, hair completely covered by a wimple, blue eyes blazing with groupie-like adoration.

  Fred made out the words.

  ‘Sin and sodomy, lust and lechery… bring about man’s fall,

  ‘Filth and blasphemy, porn and obloquy… I despise them all!’

  The woman rattled a black tambourine. It struck Fred that she was the most genuinely aroused person he’d seen all day – certainly more turned on than the tarts and punters on the streets.

  The insight gave him a weird thrill, which Zarana noticed. She tugged his sleeve, drawing attention to herself with a cattish little frown.

  ‘Not often one hears the word “obloquy” used in a lyric,’ said Richard. ‘I shall consider writing a letter to The Times.’

  The tambourine woman’s electric gaze passed over the street, as if scouting (quite sensibly) for assassins, and hit on Froff. Fred thought for a moment she was looking exciting hatred directly into his bowels, but then sensed the attention was for Zarana.

  He put an arm round her (again).

  ‘Don’t let them bother you, luv,’ he said.

  ‘Easy for you to say,’ she sniffed. ‘It takes a week to get that gunk off, and you can’t work. In my line, there ain’t exactly paid sick days or invalidity benefits.’

  ‘Is that Leaves’s granddaughter looking daggers?’ Fred asked Zarana. ‘High Priestess in charge of ripping out hearts.’

  ‘You should glance at the society pages when flipping through the paper to the racing results,’ said Richard. ‘That is Lady Celia Asquith-Leaves. His Lordship’s wife.’

  ‘Dirty old sod,’ breathed Zarana.

  ‘One mustn’t rush to judgement,’ said Richard, which was quite comical in the circumstances.

  An image of His Lordship’s wedding night sprang up in Fred’s mind. He did his best to try to expunge it completely.

  ‘I bet they read the magazines before throwin’ them into the fire,’ said Zarana, not helping at all. ‘Then get worked up into a lather and…’

  ‘You’re making our Fred uncomfortable, Queen of the Nile,’ said Richard.

  ‘Sorry, I’m sure,’ said Zarana, wriggling close to him.

  Fred wished he were somewhere else. Say, sinking knee-deep into freezing mire on Dartmoor with hooded slime-cultists puffing poison thorns at him through blowpipes and ichorous elder things summoned from the bog-bottom padding after him on yard-long, mos
sy feet.

  The parade came to a halt. Uniformed police constables moved in. Their path was blocked by serried ranks of bull-roarers and placard-wavers. The Festival had a solid grasp of demo tactics.

  Lord Leaves finished his song and tossed his megaphone to a minion.

  He flung back his robes like the Man With No Name tossing his poncho over his shoulder. He wore what looked like a black body stocking, circled with the white symbols that were also marked on his car. He picked up something that looked a lot like a sten gun fed by a thick hosepipe.

  Zarana darted under the table.

  Fred realised the girl knew more than he did and was probably being sensible, but couldn’t resist the street theatre.

  Soho residents – ‘denizens’, really – were mounting some sort of counter-attack, ponces linking arms with toms, bruisers emerging from sex shops and strip clubs to put up a stout defence. They jostled the foot soldiers of the Festival.

  Lord Leaves of Leng twisted a nozzle on his gun.

  A high-pressure stream of black liquid squirted in an arc, splashing down on the counter-protesters – who scattered.

  A disciplined, scripted cheer rose from the black-clad ranks.

  ‘I defy,’ yelled His Lordship, unamplified but booming. ‘I shall smite.’

  He played the jet-spray against windows and hoardings.

  Wheeling around, back and forth, Lord Leaves scrawled thick, dripping lines across signage and come-on posters, upping the flow whenever an image of an unclad woman got in the way. The black liquid was thinner than paint but lumpy and staining. Neon tubes fizzed and burst. He aimed his jet at a porn-broker’s window, pushing in the glass and smashing down racks of 8mm film loops, Swedish magazines, plastic novelties and brown-paper-bagged glossies. An angry manager lost his footing as he tried to protect his merchandise. He scrabbled around in the wet mess, falling heavily.

  The cheers became more genuine. Harsh, mocking laughter.

  Zarana peeped up again. ‘Tell me when it’s over,’ she said.

  ‘His Lordship enjoys taking the fight to the fallen,’ observed Richard. ‘He is something of a showman.’