Duffy (8 page)

As a copper, Duffy had been street-wise. He knew the way the place worked, how to get around in it, where the skeins of power ran. You picked it up slowly, partly from other coppers, but just as importantly by finding out for yourself; by getting to know the patch not just physically, but somehow emotionally as well. You sensed it pulsing away. This wasn’t the main part of being a copper: you didn’t stand in the middle of Soho, mystically sniffing the air like Maigret, and then head off and run a villain to ground. It was just background; it was knowing where you were. But to Duffy it was a vital preliminary to the job.

He finished his coffee and went out to get the feel again of his old patch. He walked along Old Compton Street, up Greek, down Frith, up Dean, across little courts and alleys into D’Arblay, down into Broadwick (past West Central on the other side of the street), down into Brewer, along to where it nearly joins up with Berwick in a fetid knot of street markets and escort agencies and cinemas, past Raymond’s Revuebar and back across into Dean. He ate a lasagne and green salad in a corner café, and reflected that he still had almost eighteen quid left for the day (McKechnie, after some protest, had paid him seventy-five pounds in advance).

In four years it had changed a bit to his eyes. There were more bookshops than before, and more sex shops with rubber cucumbers in the window. Massage parlours seemed to be holding steady. Strip clubs were a bit on the decline, and had largely given way to porno cinemas. A few years ago Soho simply had normal cinemas, but showing naughtier films from the regular distributors:
Danish Dentist on the Job, Nurse Call, Catch 69, Vixens Behind Barbed Wire,
those sort of films. If you wanted something a couple of degrees hotter, the only place to go was the Compton Cinema Club in Old Compton Street; and if after that you were still unsatisfied, as you came out there might, if you were lucky, be a tout or two on the pavement offering you a really blue film. Now, though, there were whole series of cinema clubs, called Triple-X and X-Citing and Double Blue and Eros Eyrie and Taboo, with gaudy signs outside offering XXX-rated movies to those over eighteen.

The heat of the early afternoon made Duffy feel, not exactly randy, but definitely a bit interested. Head down, he turned into a dirty bookshop on the corner of Greek Street. At the desk a Mediterranean youth was reading the racing news and watching over the small shelf of dirty movies. On two sides of the shop were racks of mags, arranged by customer interest. The largest section was the Hetero one; then came Homo; then Leather and S & M and Bondage and Big Tits and Schoolgirls; finally a few shelves of paperbacks. The sales technique of the shops hadn’t changed: you left English mags open for browsers to see – let them get turned on by
Rustler
and
Rapier
and
Playbirds
and
Lovebirds
and
New Directions
and
QT –
but sealed up the more expensive American imports so that they looked as if they must be a lot hornier. Duffy smiled at the hopeless self-deceiving gamble which the punters continued to go in for, still trusting in a hot cover, an inflated price and a polythene bag. He glanced at the rack of Big Tit mags, whose publishers had always seemed to work harder at the titles of their mags.
D-Cup
was still going strong, he noted, and so was
42-Plus; Bazooms
was there too, making tits sound like ballistic missiles; and a new one called
Milkmaids.
Duffy remembered one that had started up a few years ago called
Charlies’ Aunts,
which had tickled him at the time; it had folded after a couple of issues – the punters probably thought it contained beaver-shots of old ladies. Maybe the invention had gone out of the industry, he reflected.

Next to the Bondage section – a few copies of
Hogtie
and one or two of
All Roped Up
– was a doorway leading to some cubicles. 10p
X-RATED PORNO MINI-MOVIES CHANGE AT DESK
read the sign. This was something new since he’d been around. He got some change at the desk and went into one of the cubicles; pinned to the door was a torn-off box lid advertising the film he could see there: ‘
LESBO LOVERS
– Two girls all alone and left to their own vices go horse riding and find lots going on underneath!!!’

Duffy sat down on the bench and fumbled with his change. There was no lock on the door, which you kept shut with an extended foot while you watched the film being projected on to a white board on the back of the door. Duffy kicked the door to, and then couldn’t see where to put his money in. He opened the door again and found a metal box near his right hand. 10p and the film began. A large black girl sat in a bath and soaped herself, concentrating on her pubes and her tits. The film stopped. 10p and the girl took the shower attachment and hosed off her tits, then hosed off her pubes, rolling her eyes back as she did so. The film was a bit out of focus, but it might get more interesting as it went on, Duffy thought. Where were the other girl and the horse? 10p and the girl was in the bath still, soaping her tits and pubes again. Whether the film was being long-winded, or whether it had come to an end with his second 10p and was starting again, Duffy couldn’t quite make out. His concentration began to wander. The light from the projector showed up the comments which previous punters had scrawled on the ‘screen’:
NO FUCKING GOOD
one of them had written, and another,
ALLIE’S ARMY
.

As he came out of the booth, Duffy’s heel slipped a bit on the floor. With a pile of change still in his hand, he tried another cubicle. This time there were two girls, kissing each other rather demurely. 10p and they started rubbing each other’s tits as if they were polishing silver. Duffy wondered – was it worth risking another 10p? Well, it’s on McKechnie, he thought. 10p and the girls started stroking one another’s pubes and acted opening their mouths in delight and surprise. The focus was better in this booth, and Duffy found his cock was quite enjoying the show. 10p and one of the girls was lying on top of the other. That wasn’t so much fun. 10p and a skinny bloke with a moustache jumped out of the shower and the girls acted ‘Eeeek!’ 10p and the skinny bloke started smacking their bottoms. There was no fun at all now; his cock told him it had had enough.

As he came out of the bookshop a girl jumped towards him. She was a plump, clean-looking girl with round, gold-rimmed glasses. She stood in front of him and pinned a badge onto his lapel. He squinted down and saw that it read ‘Have a Happy Day’. She chirruped,

‘We’re trying to help poor children all over the world. I’m sure you’d like to make us a donation.’

She was bright in manner, polite, and firm. You couldn’t take objection to her. Duffy could. Fucking Moonies, he thought, can’t even leave the poor old guilt-ridden punters alone. He unpinned the badge and offered it back to her; she was already pulling out a record from her shoulder-bag,

‘We’re trying to help poor children. I’m sure you want to make a donation,’ she repeated.

Duffy couldn’t help saying what he thought. ‘Fucking Moonie,’ he said, dropped the badge and turned away. As he went she hit him over the head with the record.

That was new too, then, he reflected. He walked on down the street past a few Triple-X porno-blue clubs (he’d save them for another day), and came across something else that was new.
PEEP SHOW
, it said,
LIVE GIRLS DANCE NUDE WHILE YOU WATCH
. As he approached the place, head slightly down, he squinted sideways: 50p, the sign said, and
DIFFERENT GIRLS
. He walked on, then did a classic punter’s double-back, putting on speed and suddenly jumping through the door. He changed a couple of quid at the desk and went into a tiny cell. The lock just about stopped the door from swinging open. At eye-level in the opposite wall there was an opening about the size of a letter box. On the floor were Kleenex tissues; some of them were damp. Disco music was being played on a powerful sound system.

Duffy dropped a 50p into the slot and a metal shutter at the level of his face jerked up, revealing a glass slit window. He pressed his nose against the glass and saw a girl dancing. The booths formed an almost complete circle round her, with a gap for her to come on and offstage. She was naked, thinnish, with a noticeable appendix scar and breasts which had probably been siliconed. She played with her tits and rubbed her pubes while dancing, and kept an eye on the row of slits, moving to face each new one that opened for a few seconds. Duffy laid out another 50p on her, though some of the time he spent looking round at the other letter boxes, at the anonymous pairs of eyes.

He’d had about 40p worth of the girl when the music suddenly stopped and she ran off stage. At once the next girl ran on, shedding her track suit as she came. Quick, quick, don’t make the punters angry. She was a black girl, and she seemed vaguely familiar to Duffy. She was thinnish like the first girl, with a hard-looking, impassive face. She danced a lot better than her predecessor, and was a lot more athletic. She was also a lot dirtier. She played with tits and pubes while she danced, as the other girl had done. But she also leaned right over, stuck her bum in the air, and pulled her cheeks apart so that you could see her cunt and her bum-hole. Then she would bounce over towards a letter box and put her leg right up in the air, resting her foot against the wall of the booth while she dabbled at her cunt with her fingers. After a few seconds she would dance away again, then attract in turn the attention of all the punters with their visors raised and appear to pick out one of them. The lucky man, provided his 50p didn’t run out, then had his window squeegeed by the girl’s cunt. This happened to Duffy after he had spent about £1.30. It wasn’t exactly a turn-on (though it certainly wasn’t a turn-off), but it was a bit odd: rather like sitting in your car at a garage while they chammy your windscreen.

Duffy wasn’t quite sure why he dropped the fourth 50p into the slot – after all, he knew he’d seen the best part of the show. With other men the action would have sprung from the generosity of the satisfied punter who’s been ripped off so many times that he likes to show his appreciation for once. With Duffy it sprang from a still lurking curiosity. He somehow felt he’d seen the black girl before. On his final 50p, he didn’t watch her tits or her cunt; he watched her face. There was something familiar about it. Then he switched his gaze and saw it – a thin white scar on the right shoulder. It was the girl who’d been stabbed four years ago, the girl he’d visited in hospital and leaned on a bit.

Duffy waited around outside the Peep Show for a while. He couldn’t do too much of this, he realised. Standing around on street corners in Soho was all right as far as the public went: they just thought you were a pimp. But the other pimps and the blues tended to come by for a closer squint at you. After a bit Duffy looked around for a café and saw one forty yards down the street. Not the best location, but he might be able to get a clear view from there. He sat over a coffee – the boredom of it brought back to him his days with the force – and waited for about half an hour. Then the black girl came out of the Peep Show and started walking down the street in his direction. He abandoned his coffee and stepped outside. She was twenty yards short of the café when she suddenly jumped into a taxi and disappeared.

Duffy went home thinking that there were parts of his job he quite enjoyed. What he really needed to discover was how the new power structure of the Golden Mile worked: who owned what, who dealt in what, who fixed and ran what. He could ask Carol, of course; though he didn’t like to involve her, especially if the case was going to get anywhere near Sullivan. He could try chasing down a few old contacts; he could see if the black girl – what was she called? – would help. Not that he’d been very nice to her apart from taking her some flowers at the hospital when she’d cut her bum on the baked bean tin. There was another possibility – calling on Renée, that is, if she was still working. Renée was a whore he’d always got on well with, a sharp, businesslike whore with a sense of humour; she’d been around the streets for about twenty years now, and must be pushing forty. But she knew most things that were going on, and was willing to sell most of the things that she knew. If McKechnie wanted an invoice, though, he’d have to whistle for it. Renée didn’t exactly fill out V.A.T. forms.

Next morning McKechnie called.

‘It’s gone up,’ was the first thing he said.

Duffy was not surprised. ‘How much?’

‘Hundred and fifty. But I’ve got four days to pay. Salvatore said he was feeling generous.’

‘That’s standard,’ said Duffy. ‘Did you record it all right?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then this is what I want you to do. Turn the tape over and start on side two. Phone Sullivan and record your conversation. Take a tough line with him, say you’ve already lost three hundred and fifty quid thanks to him, tell him the fee’s gone up again and you want some action this time. Tell him that when you make the drop you want to be certain that there’s an officer watching. Tell him you want a description of that officer and his name and where he’ll be, so that you can check that Sullivan is doing what he says he is. Try not to put his back up too much, but pull an outraged-citizen act…’

‘I
am
outraged,’ said McKechnie.

‘Of course; sorry. But act like someone who is getting towards the end of his tether and might do something Sullivan wouldn’t like. Give the impression you might go to his superiors or to the newspapers or something. I’m sure he’ll be hell-bent on calming you down. Do you think you can manage that?’

McKechnie said he thought so.

‘When you’ve made the call, take the tape out, put it in an envelope and give it to your secretary. Tell her’ (Duffy quickly thought up some gumshoe ploy which would make McKechnie feel he was getting his money’s worth) ‘to go to the snack bar at the west end of Paddington Station at three o’clock. I’ll be sitting with my back to the counter with a large brown parcel on the seat next to me. She’s to ask if the seat is free and when I say it is she’s to slip the envelope on to the counter between us. Do you think she can do that?’