Mr. Love and Justice (15 page)

A voice behind Frankie as the barber went to get hot towels said softly, ‘Hullo, ponce!’

He didn’t move an inch because it might be someone else the voice referred to or, if it was to him, he was a good professional, and in any case a
man
doesn’t let a stranger see he thinks he may have been insulted. He looked slowly up at the mirror but could see only a leg reflected. Then, after interminable business with the towels, he looked again and saw on the leg’s knee a hand holding the unknown client’s snuff-box.

This was too much. He got up, much to the hurt indignation of the barber who’d far from terminated his ministrations, and turned to see an extremely ordinary young man who (perhaps because his very nondescriptness made him the perfect substance for the imprint of his trade) had, quite unmistakably, COPPER written all over
his body and the soul that looked through his eyes. The snuff-box had now disappeared, and this person rose, walked outside ahead of Frankie, strolled on a bit then stopped. Frank followed after. ‘Recognise it?’ the man said, whipping the thing out again.

‘I might do.’

‘Ah!’ (Almost a sigh).

It was at once evident to Frankie that the danger was not immediate – for otherwise this cop would have said simply, ‘Come along,’ – and yet that in some deeper sense he couldn’t fathom the danger was actually greater than if he’d been arrested on the spot. The two men stood silent, then the copper said, ‘A junior colleague of mine has turned this in to me.’

‘Oh, has he?’

‘Yes. There’s a reward attached to it, as I dare say you may have guessed.’

‘Oh, is there?’

‘But I’m not taking it myself, of course. Because this reward, you see, is unofficial: and me, I like doing things through channels according to the book. So I’m turning it in myself to my superiors.’

‘Why you tell me all this?’

‘I thought you might like to hear it.’

As Frankie well knew, most ‘questions’ are in reality inverted statements of the questioner that reveal facts he knows (or doesn’t know – another kind of fact) as much as they may ask for them. So far, all of his own had been of the neutral, unloaded, noncommittal kind. But he now could not resist asking one that revealed to
the star sleuth a very great deal indeed (even more than the words, the tone in which it was uttered) – in fact at this juncture, all he really wanted to know: and that was, ‘Why did he turn it in to you, this colleague of yours you mention?’

The star sleuth smiled. ‘Got windy, I expect. Shaky. Lost his nerve. Decided this thing was too hot for him to hold and he’d better surrender it and forget about any possible private arrangement.’

Frankie said nothing: but his face, the star sleuth was delighted to observe, wore the expressionless look which in strong men of generous temperament denotes a mounting anger.

‘There may be repercussions, naturally,’ the star sleuth added.

Frankie stood waiting for something more to happen, but nothing did. He turned and walked off, his loose lithe body unnaturally stiff. The star sleuth saw him hail a taxi.

Then he himself returned to the barber’s shop and went to the public telephone. He dialled a Walthamstow number and said would they please pick up the woman he’d mentioned earlier and have her sent over, but if the man showed up not to bother about him at all or answer any questions. The customers in the shop (and the proprietor) made a great show of not listening to this, and after the officer’s departure burst into speculative chatter.  

The summons, for Edward, to the office of the Detective-Sergeant reached him while he was reading back files in the CID records room. One of Edward’s greatest delights since he had won himself this job was to retire, in spare moments, to the records section (presided over by a sour, grizzled, gnomic officer who was pensioned already in all but name) and there read over ancient ‘cases’. These dead tales written in the stereotyped language of reports delighted him; and he loved to read into the enormous spaces between their amateur-typed lines, and fill in the wealth of probable, actual details that his imagination and his brief experience suggested to him.
‘Sir: I have made discreet enquiries concerning the above-named …’
had, for him, all the childhood fascination of ‘Once upon a time’.

These folders, dating back for years (and even more
so – could he have but seen them! – the massive stacks of antique files assembled in steel cabinets at faraway headquarters), confirmed his belief that within the Force there is guarded and enshrined a principle which is eternal: that power is given by societies to enforce their order in a state of secrecy. Secrecy, order and might, for Edward, were almost holy things and all admirable
in themselves
. And of their dignity and virtue, the files and manuals and card-indexes were the sacred books that he revered.

Indeed, it was not enough to say of Edward – as might be of many excellent men among his colleagues – that he was well-qualified to be a copper: that he had strength, common-sense, intuition, and obedience to hallowed ritual and his superiors. These of themselves would have made him a man marked out for good and worthy things. But Edward possessed two rarer qualities that made his senior officers (as abbots might, or generals of an Order) observe him closely: a moral sense which, though strong, was entirely empirical and would draw its strength uncritically from the institution that he served; more precious still, an attitude towards the Force which could be described without mockery or a great exaggeration, as mystical. Powerful, secret orders of whatever kind attract such men: and the lay Force in this respect was no exception.

It caused, therefore, the Detective-Sergeant (who’d recognised in Edward a man of the same qualities, but far greater potential gifts than he possessed himself) some pain to see so born a novice do such foolish things. And 
being old in the Force and not far from retirement (and so already almost beyond ambition), the Detective-Sergeant had decided that if he could, he’d give this young postulant the penances and scourging which alone at a critical time of his novitiate might save a born copper for the Cause. He looked up from his typewriter, told Edward severely to sit down, remorselessly banged on his page to its conclusion then whipped it out and said, ‘Now look, son, this won’t do. I’ve had more than one complaint about you.’

‘Sir?’

‘Yes,
sir
: several. The first is this: a telegram of all things. Take a look at it, please, and tell me just what it means.’

Edward did. ‘It’s evidently, sir,’ he said, ‘an ill-wisher who’s hinting I’ve been staying at the flat in Kilburn with my girl I told you of already.’

‘And you have been
staying
there? I mean as man and wife?’

‘Yes, sir. But that’s over now. She’s back with her father, sir, until he goes away.’

‘With her father? Going away?’

‘Yes, sir. My girl’s father’s emigrating, and I wanted to consult you about that, sir, if I may.’

‘One thing at a time. Now what about this?’

The Detective-Sergeant had lifted the plastic cover of his typewriter to reveal, sitting on his potent but unglamorous desk, the snuff-box.

Instantly and calmly (for which the Detective-Sergeant gave him points) Edward said, ‘I’ve never seen that thing yet in my life, sir.’

‘No?’

‘But I shall tell you all I know about it.’

‘I’m listening. I might tell
you
I’ve had it checked for prints …’

‘You won’t find mine, sir. But you might find my girl’s.’

The Detective-Sergeant covered it once more with the moulded plastic box. ‘As a matter of fact,’ he said, ‘we didn’t find anybody’s: it’s been wiped.’

This brief respite (for which Edward gave the Detective-Sergeant no points) enabled Edward rapidly to readjust his theory. ‘I’m not surprised to hear it’s been wiped, sir,’ he said steadily, ‘if I’m right about who I think last had it and turned it in to you.’

‘Go on …’ said his superior.

‘A colleague of mine, sir,’ Edward said, his voice rising slightly (for after all, what harm
had
he done to the star sleuth? His indignation was entirely authentic), ‘who saw fit to interfere in a case you gave me that I was handling in my own way one hundred per cent according to regulations, as I understand them.’

‘Go on …’ said the Detective-Sergeant.

Edward now told his tale. Experience and native wit had taught him that the closer your story adheres to the truth the more convincing it will sound, and the more difficult it will be to demolish; and that having decided on a story, one must tell it (whatever it may be) with complete assurance and conviction.

His tale tallied with reality in most essential respects. He had visited the ponce Frankie on a tip-off from the
Madam, and suggested he’d better find the box, or else. The ponce Frankie who, presumably, had recovered it from his woman, had later given it to Edward’s girl, fearing, probably, to hand it to Edward personally. During his girl’s absence from her flat the box had been purloined by, he suspected, the star sleuth.

‘Why do you think
he
took it?’ said the Detective-Sergeant.

‘Well, sir,’ said Edward, risking a throw, ‘didn’t he?’

The Detective-Sergeant smiled slightly. ‘Yes. As a matter of fact, he did.’

‘And why did he say he did, sir?’

‘We’ll come to that … Meanwhile, I’d like to go over your story once again. You got this box from the ponce, you say – or your girl did. Was it your intention to turn it in?’

‘Of course, sir.’

‘You hadn’t any other plans for it?’

‘Such as what, sir?’

‘I’ll do the questioning. And if you thought this ponce or else his whore, which are one and the same thing, had got the box, you didn’t think of searching their place for it?’

‘I hadn’t a warrant, sir.’

‘You don’t need a warrant if there’s strong suspicion of a felony. You didn’t know
that
? And you didn’t think of
arresting
anybody?’

‘I had no evidence of theft, sir.’

‘Or of consulting me or
anyone
as to procedure?’ Edward was silent. ‘And tell me Constable, please. Why haven’t I heard of all this from you before?’

‘Look, sir! Put yourself in my position, please. I get the box – or my girl does. Then it disappears. I think I know
who’s
taken it, and I think I know
why
. But how could I prove that to you, sir, or to anyone, until this man who stole it from me did whatever I thought he was going to do?’

‘And what was that?’

‘Make some use of it to harm me, sir.’

The Detective-Sergeant looked at his protégé, head on one side, then said, ‘If there’s one thing I detest here in the Force, it’s personal feuds mixed up with what’s supposed to be our duties.’

Edward slightly hung his head and said, ‘Yes, sir.’

‘And secrets among ourselves, so that you don’t know who in the Force knows what.’

Edward still bowed his head.

‘Avoid it yourself, then. Now. The report I have when this thing was handed to me, is that it was confiscated from you when it was found you hadn’t turned it in yourself immediately as you should have done. Now …’ the senior officer raised (as if halting a two-ton truck) a hand ‘… I’ll be checking up on both your stories and I’d like a word, please, very early, with that girl of yours. Is she on the phone?’

‘Yes, sir. At her father’s place, she is.’

‘Very well. Please ask her to step round. Now for you, we’ve got work for you: I want you to get a statement from the girl.’

‘Which girl, sir?’

‘The ponce’s: the girl that stole this little object, as we’ve reason to believe.’

‘I’d have to find her, sir.’

‘You’ll find her in the cells.’

‘Sir?’

‘We’ve brought her in.’

‘Here, sir?’

‘That’s what I say.’

‘And the man too?’

‘No: I want you to pick him up when you’ve had a go at the woman who kept him in tobacco.’

‘But, sir … who nicked her?’

The Detective-Sergeant looked with kindly irony at his junior. ‘I do wish,’ he said, ‘you younger constables would
not
use slang terms when you’re on duty. It was your colleague that arrested her: the one you say has got a down on you.’

‘And he hasn’t questioned her, then, sir?’

‘No.’

‘Why?’

‘Look, son.
You’re
asking
me
a great many questions. He hasn’t questioned her because he’s lying on his bed.’

‘Why, sir?’

‘Why? Because he’s gone sick, and our doctor has okayed it. Ulcers, he says, he’s had them before – though I must say I thought only old men like me were entitled to convenient illnesses when there’s a bit of work to finish.’ The detective rose. ‘However,’ he continued, ‘that’s how it is: so get down to the cells, please, and see what the painted lady’s got to say.’

Edward rose also, and hesitating (or seeming to) said, speaking suddenly rather fiercely, ‘Sir, I hope when my
girl comes here you remember that she’s pregnant.’

‘Oh – ho! And how can I remember that if I didn’t know it? Well! You’ve been cutting things a bit fine, haven’t you?’

‘I’m hoping, sir, my application for a marriage permit will go through quite quickly.’

‘It had better, sonny, hadn’t it. Well, get on down.’

Finding his girl was gone and that he himself had not yet been molested, Frankie experienced the most unpleasant of anxieties – the sensation of being
conditionally
free: of knowing that sooner or later at some unexpected moment the tap might come upon his shoulder (or, to modernise the metaphor, the twist might come upon his biceps). No state is more unnerving: which is the reason why the Force sometimes lays in wait before it pounces.

There had also been a most unpleasant session with his girl’s faith-healing mum when he had called at Walthamstow and found the old girl prostrated. As his girl’s mum saw it … what on earth was a ponce
for
if not to get arrested – if arrest there must be –
instead
of the girl he batted on? To the ancient wrath of an
ad hoc
mother-in-law towards her daughter’s companion was
added an outraged sense of what was, professionally, appropriate.

In this confusion Frankie recalled a skipper’s maxim about what to do if the ship was overtaken by a hurricane. However urgent the case may seem (this old mariner had said), and however thick and black the clouds may gather, before you
do
anything take a few minutes off, at least, and
think
.

This Frankie did in a back room at the Bengali’s house in Stepney, for he’d already decided not to set foot again at Kilburn in any circumstances. He reflected on what he might owe to his girl – in the sense of loyalty – and decided he owed nothing: she’d used him, and would have dropped him if need be; he’d used her, and now he would do the same. That was the deal their life together had been based on, and now the deal was over. He’d miss her, yes, and those dawn sessions, but that was all part of being ‘in business’. So now he would cut out, leave her, ‘the game’, and England too for quite a while.

Only two things troubled Frankie slightly about this analysis: that the girl had been knocked off for doing something which – essentially, if not technically – she had not done, that is, helping herself to the fucking snuff-box. Still, he’d done his best to straighten that out for her and she’d been a bloody fool ever to accept it. The other thing was this mean-minded bastard who had shopped her. He’d done all the cop had asked – got him back the box so that he could collect … well anyway, although admittedly he’d stacked it on the girl to try to scare the pair of them away, they’d
got
the thing and him,
he’d kept his mouth shut about the whole performance: whereupon this treacherous sod had turned it in and told them to knock off
his
girl. He’d like to
get
that copper, he decided: but though revenge was sweet, freedom was sweeter, and the thing to do now was get aboard a plane.