Mr. Love and Justice (10 page)

The attraction of wrestling is not so much the sport itself (if it be one), as in the survivals it enshrines of ancient customs. If anyone wants to know what an old Music Hall audience was like (when gallery boys hurled pease puddings and pigs’ trotters over the cowering heads of the grilled-in musicians on to the performers), or going back a bit, what a bear-baiting public may have resembled, or further still, the spectators of a gladiatorial show – he may probably capture some of their atmospheres at a wrestling match. The audience, indeed, are much more arresting than the fighters: the faces of mild, respectable men in business suits are twisted into vicious snarls, those of women, shrieking violent obscenities, wear masks of gloating, ferocious glee. The bouts themselves seem to fall into two categories: comparatively straight matches of incomparable boredom in which huge hunks of
living meat lie locked in painful and contorted postures; and then the ‘villain-and-hero’ bouts, sorts of popular moralities, wherein one wrestler becomes, presumably by pre-arrangement, St George, and the other (usually the more polished performer) the odious dragon. It is a tribute to the artistry of these thespian practitioners of grunt-and-groan that though all but the dimmest-witted of the audience know the performance is a fake – or, one might say, an allegory – they accept the convention of this Jack-the-Giant-killer world entirely. So that when Jack, attacked basely from the rear by the treacherous giant who just a second ago was pleading on his quavering knees for mercy, outwits the monster and hurls him four feet high and six feet wide with a resounding crash on to the groaning mat, the audience yells the applause that may have greeted David as he returned from his encounter with Goliath.

Among the spectators of the bout between Boris the Bulgar and the Tasmanian Devil were Frank and his girl, now reconciled and firmly reunited and comfortably ensconced in ringside seats; and also among those present in ringsides likewise (complimentaries, in this case) were the newly installed tenants of their Kilburn flat, Edward and his beloved woman. Surrounding them was a cross-section of that part of the London populace which is rarely to be seen elsewhere (except at race meetings, certain East and South London pubs, and courts and jails), and whose chief characteristics are their uninhibited violence, their heartless bonhomie, and their total rejection alike of the left-ish Welfare State
and the right-ish Property-owning democracy: a sort of Jacobean underground movement in the age of planned respectability from grave to cradle.

Up in the ring it was Boris the Bulgar (need one say?) who was cast for the role of villain. He was short, squat, bald and lithe, and probably hailed from Canning Town or Newington Butts. His face, if such one could call it, wore a built-in scowl when all was in his favour, a contortion of dreadful agony when his opponent secured a grip, and a look of abject ignominy when fortune momentarily failed to smile upon him. With the referee (a huge, sandy, mild-eyed man of tough but exquisite manners) he was on the worst of terms, perpetually disputing his decisions; and with the crowd even more so for he hurled back, in reply to their hoots and screams, base insults by voice and scandalous gesture. What a contrast was the Tasmanian Devil! A large, sad, slow-moving man whose whole bent, bruised body suggested a life of unjust suffering dedicated, much more in sorrow than in anger, to a resigned forgiveness of the world’s worst treacheries and wrongs. How often did the Devil not break away, voluntarily, and release his victim from an impossible posture, chivalrously to show that even an animal so base must be given yet another chance! How obedient he was to the least remonstrance of the wise and patient referee! And how earnestly he looked up at the audience, apologising with a wry smile for any faulty manoeuvre that had caused him untold agonies at the Bulgar’s hands, shrugging sadly his red and massive shoulders at some outrageous piece of wickedness of
his adversary, and occasionally, the fierce light of battle appearing in his brow-locked eyes, appealing to the masses as he held the atrocious Bulgar at his mercy for
their
impartial judgement (free from the prejudices that momentarily marred his own) to decide the exact nature of Boris’s so richly merited fate.

This sealed, between contests and amid the patrons’ recapitulative buzz, Edward’s girl squeezes his hand and moved her hips even closer to his off-duty gaberdine. But Edward was staring into space. ‘It ought to be suppressed,’ he said.

‘What ought, dear?’ she said, surprised.

‘All this,’ said Edward, frowning. ‘It’s a disgrace.’

‘But I thought you liked it.’

He looked round at her. ‘Oh, yes, well I do: I mean the fight. But it’s the audience I’m speaking of. I’ve seen more wanted men in here this evening than any day in the line-up.
And
flashing their money about – somebody’s money, anyway.’

‘They’ve got to go somewhere …’ she suggested.

‘I know where they all ought to go …’

She squeezed him again. ‘Well, don’t complain too much,’ she said. ‘You’re doing a bit better yourself since you got your danger money.’

‘Mustn’t talk shop here, dear,’ he said softly.

‘Oh, I’m sorry. I liked the Tasmanian one, Edward. I think he was sexy.’

‘That hunk of meat? Well, that’s what the whole thing’s meant for, I suppose. I notice there’s nearly as many women here as men …’

‘Oh yes, we love it! Those big men tied in knots!’

‘Lovers’ knots.’

‘Oh, Ted! You can be so crude!’

A stir in the audience, and the incomprehensive barking from the man in a hired tuxedo at the mike, both heralded the next pair of warriors. Frankie looked round expectantly, but his girl chewed her cashew nuts in silence. ‘Stay for this one, babe,’ he said.

‘Okay, Frankie, if you say so, but never again. It’s such a drag.’

‘This will be better: younger fellers, more your type.’

‘No wrestler’s my type. They all look like blown-up balloons. Me, I like lean men.’

‘Skinny like me?’

‘You’re not skinny – not since you’ve been with me, anyway.’

‘Not in here, darling. Watch what you say …’

‘“Been with me”. What’s wrong with that? And Frankie, just look at the audience! All those old bitches: I bet they’ve not had a man in years – apart from hubby.’

‘What’s wrong with hubby? Look! Here they both come – young kiddies, like I said.’

‘Yeah?’ The girl scanned them casually. ‘I’ll wait till they get their gowns off,’ she said, ‘before I pronounce judgement.’

‘It’ll be a real fight,’ said Frankie. ‘There’s nothing to beat a fight between two young men, provided they’re reasonably matched.’

‘You think they will be – in a place like this? Listen,
Frankie. There’s only one kind of fight I like, and that’s with you on a six-foot divan.’

‘This’ll give you an appetite,’ said Frankie.

By the unexacting standards of the grunt-and-groan game, the fight seemed to be a fair one. At any rate, plenty of things happened that surely no one could possibly have predetermined or predicted. When the two men bounced individually off the ropes to gain momentum, they collided and knocked each other out (apparently). At one moment a wrestler was sitting
on
the other’s head, though this man was standing, and contrived to remain there for at least forty seconds. And at another, when one man staggered in dazed pain this may have been simulated, but hardly the sudden gesture of concern with which the man who’d hurt him ran up and stroked his arm. As the fight developed, two distinct personalities emerged. One fighter would attack sharply, and even when his hold seemed powerful and secure he’d break away abruptly, of his own accord, to mount a different, unexpected hostile manoeuvre. The other, in sharp comparison with the two earlier wrestlers whose expressions in combat had been perpetually bestial, wore a certain grace and freedom in the savagery of his face. When they were locked tight it was often quite impossible to tell, at moments, who was who and which limbs belonged to which: though the different-coloured shorts they wore were something of an indication. The nicest thing about them both – and professionally the most convincing – was their apparent indifference to the audience around them to whom they paid little or no court, entirely intent on battle. The bout,
which lasted (most unusual in wrestling) all its rounds, seemed inconclusive, although the referee did raise one tired arm: by the audience this was of course disputed, but rather languidly, as the fight had been too good for them to enjoy it.

At the interval most patrons went out in the long bars for some solid boozing. Criminal aristocrats, all wearing hats (they looked as if they wore them in their baths, beds and tombs), stood in little squares to talk so that there was no direction from which a stranger might approach the party unobserved. Women of hideous splendour – looking like actresses in a banned play who’d strayed outside the pass-door a moment – stood absolutely motionless with a gin glass, ignoring their escorts and ignored by them. The wrestlers of the earlier bout appeared in mufti, but betrayed by squashed ears and colossal shoulders, to have a quick one and talk contracts with alarming men who never blinked and spoke with a fraction of their mouths in voices inaudible from more than eighteen inches.

Frankie and Edward glanced at each other, their eyes locked, held for a second then fell away. Then each, as men do to assess a man, looked at the other’s woman, and across both their faces there passed a flicker of slight disdain.

A change in the laws does not fundamentally affect a copper’s work: the only things that could do that are profound social and political changes, or (if such a thing, in mid-twentieth-century England, is conceivable) essential religious changes – not just of fashion (which happen so frequently and meaninglessly) but of basic form. Otherwise, if the moral structure of the nation does not alter, a change of its laws means merely, for the Force, a modification of its tactics, not its strategy (nor of its very self): the same crimes remain and the same criminals, but merely operate in different ways which have to be anticipated and assailed with fresh techniques.

This was the reason for a ‘conference’ (as he called his staff meetings) in the Detective-Sergeant’s office. There were present the star sleuth, Edward Justice, a plain-clothes copperess and one civilian: or rather, a
hybrid creature – a former copper, now retired from the Force, who’d gone into business (quadrupling his income) as a private detective, while still (very naturally) maintaining his contacts among his former comrades who (knowing that only death could sunder one of their kind for ever from his calling) were prepared to trust – and use – him up to a certain point.

The Detective-Sergeant addressed the little group. ‘The problem as I see it’s this,’ he said. ‘We’ve got to crack down on the Madams. More and more of these girls are going on the phone, and it’s the Madams who are picking out the best earners among them and organising these high-grade semi-brothels. They’re crafty, of course. There’s no girls
living
on the premises, and they change them round so much, by calling them on the blower for a particular appointment with a client, that it’s hard to log their visits if you keep watch – and play it straight, of course – to get the necessary number for a prosecution. Then there’s the clients, too. The particular Madam we’ve chosen as our trial target seems to specialise in the bowler hat and rolled umbrella category, mostly elderly and – from the enquiries we’ve already made – the sort of mug you have to handle carefully, as they’ve got connections. So that’s why,’ the Detective-Sergeant continued, eyeing the ex-copper detective with a friendly, mocking air, ‘we’ve thought of enlisting the aid and assistance of our friend here.’

They all looked at the semi-civilian who smiled and said, ‘Always happy to help you beginners out of your predicaments.’

‘Now, here’s the plan,’ said the Detective-Sergeant after a wry, polite, and not very pleasant smile. ‘It’s a three-pronged attack, as you’ll see. Number one, we keep watch in the routine manner, naturally, and for that we’ll be using the bread-delivery van.’

There was a muffled groan.

‘Yes?’ said the Detective-Sergeant sharply.

‘Sir,’ someone said. ‘If that van of ours keeps breaking down on bread rounds in every suspect street in north-west London, won’t someone soon start to rumble us?’

‘It’s all we’ve got,’ the Detective-Sergeant said severely: as with so many strategists, ‘the plan’ already was, for him, a reality to which reality itself must needs conform; besides which – as he was scarcely able to divulge – the watchers outside were not really one of his ‘prongs’ at all, but were intended to serve as a decoy to the sharp-eyed Madam who, he hoped, would imagine them to be her only danger.

‘The second attack,’ said the Detective-Sergeant, ‘will be from this lassie here’ – and he indicated with a sexy but official leer the horse-faced copperess who sat primly on her kitchen chair, showing a regulation inchage of her bony and well-exercised legs. ‘Her task will be to follow the girls home, try to locate their addresses, if possible identify their ponces and – well, I wouldn’t put it past so experienced an officer – get on friendly terms with them.’

There were discreet and cordial chortles, and the copperess, smiling slightly, showed her teeth in a grimace 
that hinted this feat was far from being beyond her professional (and womanly) competence.

‘There’s only one thing,’ said the star sleuth, who hitherto had maintained an aloof and almost disdainful silence.

‘Well?’

‘I’ve checked on one or two,’ he said, ‘and this Madam’s got a thing about using girls whose ponces we’d find it difficult to get at.’

‘Lesbian girls?’ said the ex-copper detective.

The star sleuth nodded.

‘Yes, that’s a difficulty,’ the ex-officer said. ‘You can get them for procuring if you’re lucky, but with a living on immoral earnings charge, juries just wouldn’t understand the situation. Even magistrates are sometimes a bit slow to grasp it.’

‘Also,’ the star sleuth continued, ‘there’s one girl, I know, who’s shacked up with a teenager: and you realise how hard it is to pin a thing like that on one of them.’

‘These teenagers!’ said the ex-copper, sighing. ‘They’re a caution!’

The Detective-Sergeant broke in with some vexation. ‘I’ve considered these various angles,’ he said, ‘and as for you’ – and he pointed a blunt index in the star sleuth’s direction – ‘I hope your private investigations haven’t buggered up the situation prematurely.’

The copperess looked at the varnished ceiling. ‘Oh, pardon,’ the Detective-Sergeant said. ‘It’s still hard, after all these years, to remember we have ladies in the Force.’ He gave her a cracked grin, and proceeded: ‘So 
– attack number three: the place itself, and that’s where our friend here (smile at the ex-copper) comes into the picture. Perhaps, then, you’d just tell these young officers in your own words the essential gist of our earlier private conversation.’

The ex-cop, his moment come, beamed with the bonhomie of someone who knows all the inner secrets but is freed from the servitude demanded to acquire them.

‘As I see the picture,’ he explained, ‘I’m a randy guinea-pig.’

He paused for effect: but the laughter coming from the gallery, not the stalls or circle, he continued – suddenly very grave – ‘The spiel is this. I’m a client – yes? I’ve got her phone number, and I’ve got the name of a kosher client that you pinched for parking as my alleged sponsor, so my call to the premises won’t seem untoward. I get in the place on several occasions, over a period of time, until I know the set-up in all its aspects and we’re ready for the raid. When that comes – well, I’m the Roman legionary inside the Trojan horse.’

‘We won’t ask,’ said the Detective-Sergeant gaily, ‘what, apart from your duties, you actually
do
in there.’

‘Oh, I should think not! My report on
that
part of the business is strictly private for my missus.’

‘Any questions?’ said the Detective-Sergeant.

After the traditional pause, the star sleuth said, ‘So we don’t touch the clients?’

‘Not at all. Strictly not at all.’

‘You’ll excuse me, sir,’ said the star sleuth very
deferentially, ‘but I do think there’s one reason why you should consider it. It’s this. They’re the weak link. They’re not doing anything illegal, as we know, like the girls and Madam are, but unlike them they’re mugs, after all, and have their
respectability
to consider. And when a man’s attached to that I’ve always found he’ll talk with very little persuasion.’

‘They’re not guilty of anything,’ said the ex-copper.

‘I know that: I’ve just said so. But don’t forget, sir. You can always
arouse
a sense of guilt, especially in a respectable man. Almost everyone feels guilty about
some
thing. And you can work on that.’

‘All a bit over my head,’ said the Detective-Sergeant nastily. ‘The orders are as I said. Anything else?’

Edward Justice said, ‘Sir: what about the lawyers?’

‘What lawyers? I don’t get it, sonny.’

Edward looked round, feeling a lot of eyes on him, gulped, and said, ‘These girls, sir, some of them, are earning several hundreds untaxed every week – they or their ponces are, I mean. And this Madam, sir, she must have a fabulous income and I dare say she’ll try to protect them to a certain extent. Well, sir, if they’re raided that means lawyers – big ones. And all I wanted to ask was, what the procedure in the event of arrest should be.’

Like so many young men new to a business, Edward had committed the solecism of asking a highly intelligent question that it was not appropriate he should ask, for several reasons. Firstly, because that wasn’t what the particular briefing was about: one thing at a time in the Force as anywhere else. Next, because the whole subject 
of the triangle of criminal, copper and the courts is so intricate, practically and philosophically, that it can’t possibly be explained in a short answer. Thirdly, there were aspects of this relationship so delicate that they have, in the Force, to be learnt by experience rather than taught specifically.

The Detective-Sergeant, eyeing Edward and remembering his own young days, said quite kindly, ‘The procedure, Constable, is as laid down: just follow that.’

‘All I wanted to get at, sir,’ said Edward, feeling from the slight electricity in the atmosphere he was ‘on to’ something and unable to resist the risk of burning his fingers on it, ‘was this. When we detain them, how long do we keep them before we let them see their lawyers?’

The Detective-Sergeant looked at him hard. ‘As long as the book allows,’ he said. ‘Any further questions?’

There were none, and the little group dispersed. The ex-copper wanted to stay and chat to the Detective-Sergeant but this officer, exercising the privilege of an active if junior rank to a retired even if formerly senior colleague, turfed him politely out, detaining Edward. ‘Sit down, son,’ he said, ‘I want to talk to you.’

The Detective-Sergeant lit his pipe and said, ‘Your question was quite all right, lad, but it wasn’t quite the time and place to ask it. Now as for lawyers we have them too, you know, as well as anyone else; they’re very good ones, believe me, and in the more important cases we get the services of the top brains in the land.’

‘Yes, sir,’ said Edward.

‘I see, of course, the point you were getting at and I
don’t object at all to you considering it. A good man in the Force like I believe you to be – or getting to be with time – very naturally wants to secure a conviction if he can. That’s what we’re here for, after all; it’s our duty to the profession and, if you like to put it that way, to society at large. We have also, of course, certain rules and regulations as to how you can get a man convicted – and as to how you can’t – drawn up I don’t know by who and don’t much care because there they are, they exist, they’ve got to be observed.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘
Observed
I said, mark you. But not necessarily, always, in every case to be
obeyed
.’

Here the Detective-Sergeant stopped, removed his pipe and contemplated Edward in a fatherly way.

‘But the point you’ve got to grasp,’ he continued, ‘is this one. If you knock a man off and don’t follow the book and get a conviction, and no one asks any questions – then, well and good. And if you do it often enough you’ll probably get quick promotion. On the other hand if you chance your arm and do something that’s not in the book of rules and come unstuck in court or elsewhere, please don’t expect anyone to protect you or excuse you; not me or anyone else, and I want to make that perfectly clear.’

‘I understand, sir,’ Edward said.

‘I hope so. Now, about the particular question that you asked. Obviously, as I need hardly tell you, the longer you can keep a prisoner from his lawyer the better it’s likely to be for your particular purposes. Most cases,
in my experience, are lost or won in the first hour of the arrest – or at any rate in the first twenty-four of them. If you can keep the lawyers away from him in this critical period your battle’s already more than halfway over.’

‘I see, sir. But … well, sir. If he asks to see his lawyer? What do you do then?’

‘Come now, boy, that’s up to you! Don’t ask me to
be
your brains on top of everything else … It depends on the man, the case, the circumstances – everything! Remember the book – remember the case – and use your judgement. To give you a simple instance. Take formally preferring a charge or warning the person that anything he says will be taken down, etcetera. Well! How many cases couldn’t tell you of when I haven’t bothered to do either! In the matter of the charge, you often don’t know what it’s going to be until you’ve talked to him quite a bit. And as for the warning … well frankly, in most cases I’ve simply forgotten it – I mean
forgotten
it – and there’s no possible come-back there, because no one outside the Force believes that we
don’
t
warn them. They believe we do just like they believe we wear helmets in our sleep and can tell them the correct time without looking at our watches.’

‘Yes, sir, I see.’

‘I’d sum it up like this. If you’re a good copper, I mean both as a man and an officer, more or less and allowing for human failings, and you’re alone in a cell with a man who you know for certain is evil and
anti-social
, well, you must establish your moral right to prepare him for punishment as best you can. That, in
my experience, is usually what the situation is: him and you; very simple, really. There are those who believe (and the Detective-Sergeant glanced towards the door whence the others had departed) and who’ll tell you a really good copper, professionally speaking I mean, has no conscience: can’t afford to have one, or something. Well, there are wiser heads than mine in the Force, and admitted, I’ve stuck hitherto at Detective-Sergeant. But all the same my personal conviction is that it’s untrue. To be a good copper, in any sense of the word, you’ve got to have
certain
basic principles and stick to them.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Good. Now hop it, sonny, I’ve got work to do.’

When Edward was at the door, however, the Detective-Sergeant said to him, ‘That girl of yours, by the way. Any developments?’

Edward blushed, and hoped the reasons for it would be mistaken. ‘I think things are working out, sir,’ he said. ‘I’m bringing her gradually round.’

‘Ah. Just another thing: perhaps I shouldn’t tell you this, but I will. One of our colleagues – I leave to your imagination who – has told me – unofficially, if such a thing exists – you’ve set up house already with the lady.’