Mr. Love and Justice (5 page)

‘You mean he can bash her?’

‘Not only that. If she shops him, when he comes out – if they get him – then he can carve her up.’

‘Oh, sure! And it’s been done! But darling! She moves first!’

‘Or even kill her.’

‘Life imprisonment, dear.’

‘Also,’ he continued, ‘just walk out on her.’

‘If she doesn’t want it?’

‘Sure.’

She kissed his hands. ‘Well, you know best,’ she said, ‘and with a nice girl like I am, I don’t deny it’s true. But if she’s a bitch and he says cheerioh, she can make it very, very awkward for him if she wants to.’

Frankie withdrew his hands. ‘You know,’ he said, ‘I’m beginning to wonder what the poor fucking ponce gets out of it at all.’

She laughed. ‘Well!’ she exclaimed. ‘Nice times if she’s any good, that others have to pay for. Easy money and a lot of it – a great, great deal. A big boost to his ego – doesn’t it make you feel you’re like a king? And then, excitement! They do actually love the life, so many of them.’

‘Born to it, you’d say.’

‘Yes – not like you: you’re not the born type, that’s why I love you.’

‘And have there,’ Frankie asked, ‘been many others before me in your sweet life?’

‘Frank,’ she said. ‘I’ll make a bargain with you. I’ll ask you no questions about anything you did before today: if you’ll agree to do the same so far as my past life’s concerned.’

‘Seems reasonable. Okay.’ He got to his feet. ‘It’s lucky for me,’ he said, ‘that men just can’t do without it. None of them.’

She didn’t answer that but got up too, and they started to clear the table and wash the dishes together.

‘Just one more thing,’ she said from among the suds, ‘and then my little lecture’s ended.’ She turned and faced him. ‘
Do
be careful, please, about the law. Avoid them if you can and don’t provoke them. The only good relations a ponce can have with coppers is just none at all.’

‘I’m not a dope: I’ll remember.’

‘It’s quite surprising,’ she said, ‘how much they’ll leave
you alone, even if they know quite a lot about you, if you keep right clear of them and don’t draw their attention to you in any way at all.’

‘Okay. I’ve got nothing against coppers.’

‘I’m glad to hear it. A lot of ponces are just copper-haters: and that’s so bloody foolish.’

‘Hate them?’ said Frankie, putting down a china plate. ‘Well, me, I don’t – why should I? They’re part of the system just like ship’s officers are – and I never hated them as long as they did their job efficiently and fairly. I didn’t even mind unfairness or even a bit of rough-stuff provided they knew how to keep the old ship sailing on. As for the law – well, I’ve been knocked off once or twice and even bashed up a bit, but I’ve no real reason to complain. The law’s got to be there just like the captain: and I’d say it’s got to be respected, even by anyone who chooses to go against it.’

Edward’s next task was to collect a nark or two: and this was no easy matter. A nark-copper relationship is, in a way, like that of lovers: a particular intimacy that cannot be simply handed over by one officer to another as part of the new officer’s inheritance with the files and addresses and card-indexes. A nark must be personally wooed and won: or rather, he and the copper must
discover
each other, just as lovers do, and establish personal ties – the nark offering facts and admiration, the copper small rewards in kind and privilege.

The nark’s chief asset in the deal is that really good informers – not so strange as it may seem – are rarer by far than really good coppers are. The copper’s asset is not, as one might imagine, the meagre advantages which, in reality, he can offer to the nark, but the power and prestige the nark imagines he derives from
being attached, though indirectly and informally, to an immensely powerful organisation. The nark may be motivated by the love of secrecy (of knowing things that
are
secret from others, however valueless in themselves), and also, it may be, by the almost voluptuous instinct that exists in certain human beings, to betray. There may even (if the nark be intelligent, which he rarely is or he wouldn’t be one) exist the deep attraction of an awful fear: of playing with hot and very unpredictable fires. Fear, that is, of the Force and also, even, of what may happen to himself: for sharp narks can hardly fail to perceive how frequently, if they fall foul of an officer or he merely gets tired of them, they themselves are apt to disappear suddenly, unaccountably, inside the nick. But even this does not prevent the really devoted nark from reassuming, on release, his former role. For narks in their humble way, like the majestic coppers whom they serve, are dedicated souls.

It was a female copper (plain-clothes – and very fetching ones) who gave Edward sound counsel on this point. ‘Wait till they come to you,’ she said. ‘They will.’ And sure enough, soon after his first weeks on the job during which he’d had the sensation all the time that dozens of invisible, unidentifiable eyes had been weighing him carefully up, a man approached him by the telephone boxes of Royal Oak tube station (where he was trying to catch a sex maniac whose habit it was to wait till a girl entered the box next to his own, immediately dial
her
number – which he’d previously noted – and when she raised the receiver in astonishment at the quick sound of
the bell, utter an obscenity), and the following dialogue took place.

‘He’s not here today,’ the nark said.

‘Who isn’t?’

‘Who you’re looking for.’

‘Who am I looking for?’

‘Madcap Mary.’

‘Who’s she?’

‘He: the feller who makes the calls you’re interested in.’

‘What makes you think I’m interested in any calls?’

This exchange, to both officer and nark, had already established some essential factors. For all human conversations hold inside and beyond them other, and often larger, conversations that remain unspoken, of which the exchange is just the seventh part (if that’s the figure) of the iceberg that breaks surface. Ted knew, for instance, this man knew who he was, what he was after, and something about it. The nark knew he knew all this and that Edward took a lively, but always conditional interest in himself. They’d also assessed quite a bit about each other’s characters, and possible utility, and degrees of reliability and of menace. Beyond this there were whole mushroom clouds of supposition, waiting for crystallisation in good time.

‘I could do with a cup of tea,’ the nark said, suddenly feigning a fairly evident mock humility.

Unlike most narks this creature was not small: nor shifty, nor furtive, nor triple-eyed, nor sordid in his attire. He looked like a bus conductor, say, of a suburban line
and nearing retirement. They entered the caff separately, then joined up again after getting their two cups, as if casually, at the table near the window.

There was quite a pause, each waiting for the other to begin. The nark, being the older and the more experienced, held out longer, and Edward broke the silence with, ‘And how did you know about me?’

‘I always do.’

‘Always? No one point me out to you?’

‘Almost always.’

‘How?’

The nark smiled sourly. ‘If you could see yourself now,’ he said, ‘you’d know.’

Vexed, Edward asked him, ‘Why?’

‘You’ve got the
double
look.’

‘The what?’

‘You’re wearing it now: watch your pals, you’ll get to know it. And then, all coppers
stare
. Nobody else in England, except kids and coppers,
stare
.’

‘Go on …’

‘And then, they listen. Even if you’re drunk or bore them stiff, coppers will
listen
to you.’

‘But we have to.’

‘I’m not saying you don’t: only that you do.’

‘All right. Anything else?’

‘Yes, your shoes. I’ve never yet seen a cop, even got up as a down-and-out or something, who can bear to be seen around if he’s down-at-heel.’

‘Really!’

‘Yes. And then you don’t like running.’

‘Come off it! You mean we never chase anyone?’

‘Oh, of course you do: but you don’t like it.’

‘Why would you say we don’t?’

‘I dunno. Maybe because of those helmets. Even if you’re not wearing them you’re frightened they’ll fall off. Or maybe you just don’t like
hurrying
. Or exercise of any kind.’

Edward smiled, quite unpleasantly, too. ‘Is that all?’ he said.

‘There’s also your hands.’

‘What about them?’

‘You’re working-men most of you, but you don’t like manual labour. That’s why quite a lot of you join the Force: to get out of manual labour.’

Edward drained his cup. ‘So we’re easy to spot,’ he said. ‘Stick out a mile, you’d say.’

The nark was unabashed. ‘Most of you do, yes. That is, except for women coppers. Maybe it’s just because they’re fewer, or maybe we’re all not quite used even now to the idea of them, but – well: even I quite often fail to spot them.’

‘Even you.’

‘Yes, that’s what I said: even me.’

The nark eyed Edward with modest but assured professional pride. ‘Don’t take it hard,’ he said, ‘from me. I know you’re just starting, and I’m only trying to be of assistance to you.’

‘Thank you,’ said Edward, meditating in the nark’s near future some thoroughly uncomfortable moments.

‘The fact is this,’ the nark continued, lighting a fag and
not offering Edward one. ‘You may not approve of what I say, but you and me have one big thing in common: neither of us is mugs: both of us sees below the surface of how things seem.’

‘Yeah,’ Edward said.

‘And I’ll tell you something more,’ the nark went on. ‘It’s even the same between you and the criminals, as you’ll discover. Neither they nor you belong to the great world of the mugs: you know what I mean: the millions who pay their taxes by the pea-eh-why-ee, read their Sunday papers for the scandals, do their pools on Thursdays, watch the jingles on the telly, travel to and fro to work on tubes and buses in the rush hour, take a fortnight’s annual holiday by the sea, and think the world is just like that.’

‘I see what you mean,’ said Edward Justice.

‘Well, now,’ said the nark. ‘I don’t want to waste your time. Are you interested in a little case?’

‘I might be …’

‘It’s a small affair but I think it may lead to bigger. In fact, something makes me sure it will do. And if it does I hope you’ll not forget me.’

The nark eyed Edward. ‘Oh, of course not,’ Edward said.

‘Briefly, then, I want you to meet a pimp.’

Edward looked interrogative and said nothing.

‘Here’s the whole tale. This pimp, unless I’m much mistaken, is offering something much more interesting than he seems to be.’

‘Go on …’

‘He works in a saloon bar not far from here: empty glass collector – you know – splendid opportunities for contacts. Well: when the pub closes lots of them, ’specially Irish, still want to go on drinking.’

‘Naturally.’

‘Naturally. So he leads them – some of them – to a Cyprus caff where they can get it after hours.’

‘Not interested. Liquor cases? What you take me for?’

‘
Do
be patient, officer’ (last word uttered in an urgent whisper). ‘In this speakeasy, I think they also gamble.’

‘Still not interested.’

‘
And
make other contacts.’

‘Which?’

‘Girls.’

‘That’s better. On the premises?’

‘No.’

‘Then where?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Oh,
don’t
you. Then how you know they go after girls if you don’t know where they go to – that is, if you really
don’t
know?’

The nark looked pained. ‘You and I,’ he said, ‘are just not going to get anywhere unless we trust each other – up to a point, at any rate.’

‘All right – I trust you: so?’

‘That’s all I ask. Now, listen. He takes them off from the Cyprus caff, this pimp, in
groups
and on
foot
– they don’t take taxis. Also, they don’t come back. Now, then: what else but girls would keep drunken men from going back again to a speakeasy that’s a spieler?’

‘If it’s just single girls they go to, I’m still not interested.’

‘I don’t expect you would be. But
can
it be single girls? Off in a group … no taxi … he can’t distribute them one by one around the area, can he?’

‘So you think it’s a brothel.’

The nark nodded sagely.

‘That
might
interest me,’ said Edward.

‘I thought so.’

‘But you: why haven’t you followed them to make sure?’

The nark looked bland. ‘Tell me – why should I? It might be dangerous, you know. And I don’t want to be observed. Anyway, it’s not what I’m paid to do. That’s where I think possibly
you
come in.’

The Detective-Sergeant had told Edward that ‘if anything at all big comes up’, he was to inform him and not try to tackle it alone. ‘If you prove to be any good,’ his senior had added, ‘something certainly
will
turn up, because a good copper always attracts crime to himself. But don’t forget – it’s only with arrest that the real problem of our job begins. There’s the prisoner to be dealt with for his statement and so on, and beyond that the whole machinery of the courts we’ve got to persuade.’ But Edward had vivid recollections of his disappointments when in uniformed days any discovery of his own produced, if reported, a host of seniors who did all the fancy work and took the credit. And knowing success is never blamed, he decided to chance his arm and handle the suspected brothel case alone.

Accordingly, and by appointment, he met the nark 
at the public-house in question: or rather the nark, as agreed, merely handed an empty glass at 10.15 p.m. (publican’s time) to the individual he accused of being a pimp in order that Edward might be sure of his identity. That, so far as the nark was concerned, ended the proceedings: after this Edward was on his own.

The pimp, surprisingly, was little more than a teenager – twenty-one or two, Edward thought, and looking younger than his age. He was so surprised by the boy’s appearance that against all professional etiquette he ventured a glance, in search of confirmation, at the nark – who very properly ignored it. The pimp, also, was a songster: for between his errands and still holding wallop-stained glasses in casual festoons, he’d pause at a microphone to nasally intone appalling Irish melodies much appreciated by the Celtic boozers who the farther they got from Erin’s isle, adored it all the more.

At closing time, Edward lingered in the street carrying (a subtle touch, he thought) a quarter-filled can of paraffin whose purpose was that wherever he might be observed to loiter, the assumption would be he was visiting or coming from a neighbour to collect or supply this useful household fluid. At the back of his mind there was also the notion it might come in useful to hurl at somebody, if need be. For Edward was now learning what all young coppers do: that their job, at night, and even sometimes in the day, can be very dangerous. The only security he felt was that he was alone: always the safest situation for any probing, nocturnal prowler. This wisdom confirmed the Detective-Sergeant’s diagnosis that he was born to
the purple of the CID: who’ve soon understood the real reason why plain-clothes men are told to work, if possible, in pairs, is not for their own protection but that one can be the witness of an assault upon the other, and bring any vital messages home to base.

By now he was following a carolling party piloted by the pimp, the paraffin in his can playing lapping harmonies to their graceless melodies. The Cypriot café was not far off, and from its exterior Ted had no difficulty in observing they descended immediately to an invisible basement room. After a while of strolling and hesitation he entered, parked his paraffin tin, and ordered kebab and ladies’ fingers. He ate these slowly and drank two Turkish coffees till he was the only surviving customer. Hints began to be dropped, even by the courteous Cypriots, that the time had come for him to be on his way. He therefore retreated to the road again, where he spent a tiresome, embarrassing hour of vigil.

But this delay served a purpose: his mounting irritation was now firmly concentrated on the drunks and gamblers in the cellar. Of course, he knew well – even recruit training had taught him that – you should always try to remain quite
impersonal
in your feelings about suspects, and not ever become too interested in them as individual human beings. On the other hand, a little spite and resentment would spice the eagerness to effect a capture. Edward was soon rewarded by the exaggeratedly cautious appearance of three Irishmen and the pimp. Observing (with recollections of the textbooks) Alternative B, he ‘followed’ them from in
front assisted, like a blind man’s guide-dog (who, after all, doesn’t know either
where
he’s going), by the sound of their lurching feet behind. Soon the feet stopped, and he looked cautiously back to identify the brothel.

This word (brothel) conjured up scandalous, alluring visions. What it in London in most cases consists of is a dilapidated house with several girls in rooms with minimal accessories. But even in this basic, utilitarian form it still has, on account of the ancient mystique of the word and its frankly anti-social purpose (and the curiosity and venom these variously attract), a certain faded glamour. But not to Edward Justice. Edward did not condemn prostitutes because they were ‘immoral’: he did so because they sought to destroy in the most flagrant possible way his own deep belief in love. He therefore approached the establishment with intense interest and disapproval.

Lights shone from curtained windows, but the place was otherwise discreet. He knocked and nothing happened. Then he went away, returned and gave – a happy bow at a venture – three short knocks and one long. A light came on in the hall, the door opened hiding the person behind it, then closed on Edward who found himself confronting a forty-ish man in jeans. ‘I don’t think we’ve met,’ this person said.

‘No. I’d like to see one of the girls.’

‘Busy, mister. What you got in that can?’

‘Oh, that? It’s for the wife.’

‘She know you’re here?’

‘Not likely.’

‘No. Well, there it is. You can call back, or if you like you can have a Maxwell House with me downstairs while you’re waiting for a vacancy.’

Edward accepted. The basement room was scented in a savagely ‘oriental’ manner, and its furnishings were the Harrow Road emporium’s version of Ali Baba’s cave. The stranger put on a kettle, then surprised Edward considerably by trying to give him an affectionate kiss. He preserved his calm, however. ‘You’re one of those,’ he said, disengaging politely.

‘One of the many,’ his host cried gaily. ‘We horrid creatures crop up
every
where!’

‘So you don’t cause jealousies among the girls.’

‘Oh, I wouldn’t say
that
. After all, in a certain way they’re very fond of me, and I’m very necessary to them, too.’

‘You own this place, then?’

‘
Me
? Living in the basement? Silly! No – I’m their maid.’

‘A male maid, like.’

‘Check!’ cried the male maid, pouring water on the Maxwell House. ‘And now,’ he continued, bringing the coffee over, ‘a question or two to
you
, please. Who sent you here?’

‘The Cypriot boys.’

‘Which one?’

‘Dark feller.’

‘Darling!
All
Cypriots are dark! Nicky, was it? Constantine?’

‘Nicky, I think.’

The male maid shook his head at Edward. ‘Naughty!’ he said. ‘There
is
no Nicky.’

‘Well, mate, I don’t know his bloody name but he just sent me.’

Hand on a jeaned hip, the male maid eyed him. ‘Do you know what?’ he said. ‘I think I’ve been a very, very stupid boy. I think you’re quite probably a c-o-p.’

‘Who – me?’

‘You, darling.’

The male maid, darting like a goldfish, had raced through the door, slamming it behind him, and as Edward jumped up he heard the sound from the backyard behind of an outside lavatory chain being vigorously pulled up and down like a ship’s siren. By the time he got to the first floor there were signs of considerable movement. Edward banged on the nearest door whence a loud female voice bellowed at him to fuck off. The second door on the landing opened, and he was face to face with a squat woman of thoroughly unwelcoming demeanour who, blocking the whole doorway, said to him, ‘Let’s see your warrant.’

‘Open that door there,’ said Edward.

‘Listen, young man. Show me your warrant or else hop it. If you don’t, I’m on the blower to Detective-Constable you-know-who.’

‘
Who
?’

‘Who will
not
be pleased you’ve come here pissing in his garden.’

‘What you mean?’

‘Son, I’m beginning to think you’re stupid. What you
suppose I pay twenty a week for to you people? Get going, now. And sort it all out with your own mates: they’ll tell you.’

By now doors had opened, figures appeared, and several very truculent males had gathered at strategic points on stairways. Silence fell a moment, and everybody watched. Edward had never felt so solitary in his life.

‘You’ll hear more of this,’ he said, and walked downstairs. There were shouts of laughter and crude cries of abuse.

By the door, the male maid handed him his paraffin tin. Bursting with rage, Edward knocked it out of his hand, grabbed him and manhandled him out into the street. ‘I’m being
arrested
!’ cried the male maid. ‘First time in
years
. A thrill!’

As he marched his capture up the dark and empty roads, Edward recalled as best he could in his emotion all the golden rules of an arrest: for this, though far from being his first, was his first one in the expert CID. He longed to get at his black notebook, for facts noted down in this, he knew, had a magical effect on juries and even magistrates. An officer, by law, can produce his notebook when in court and consult it (for matters of
fact
alone, of course) when in the witness-box. The conception that these factual jottings may be fantasies or added long after their supposedly immediate inscription – or that the defendant, too, might be permitted to produce a similar jury-impressing book – does not seem to have occurred to legislators. Edward
knew all this: but to him the black book was the reassuring symbol of his office; and he liked to enhance the tenuous reality of the confusing happenings of fact by giving them, as soon as possible, this inscribed, oracular dimension.

But how do you get at your notebook if you’re frog-marching a delightedly wriggling suspect in the dark? The more Edward thought of the whole episode the less he liked it. On a sudden decision he stopped at a corner, let the male maid go and said, ‘All right – I’m turning you loose. Now skip!’

‘Oh,
are
you!’ said the maid, rubbing his skinny arms.

‘Hop it now,’ said Edward.

The male maid stood his ground and cried, ‘Copper, I
refuse
to be released.’

Edward had not quite expected this. ‘Oh?’ he said, as nastily as possible.

‘Look, big boy,’ the atrocious male maid answered. ‘You’ve messed things up for us tonight, and I’m going to mess up a thing or two for you.’

As to his next move, Edward didn’t hesitate. He hit the male maid very hard in the face, and turned and walked away. When he paused after several hundred yards to make some notes of the occurrence (and of others) in his book, he was dismayed to see the maid still following at a distance. He hurried on; and reaching the highway, by the expedient of showing his card to a uniformed man and of declaring the male maid had urinated in a public place, he shook him off and returned (determined to say nothing of all this) to the station.

Immediately on arrival, he was sent for by the Detective-Sergeant. This officer, more in exasperation than in anger, blew him up. ‘You’d like to know,’ he said to Edward, ‘what you’ve done wrong. Well, I’ll tell you: everything.’

‘Sir?’

‘First and foremost – and even
you
should know this, Constable – you don’t tackle
any
case – any case at all – without prior notification and permission unless, of course, it comes up on you suddenly like a smash-and-grab or something.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘This is a
Force
,’ the officer said. ‘Not a collection of Robin Hoods.’

‘No, sir.’

‘Next. If you want to enter a house without a warrant, I’ve no objection: these little matters can usually be ironed out and brothels, of course, don’t expect you to have one anyway. But
please
don’t enter any house at all without first checking if your colleagues happen to know much more about it already than you ever will. Particularly, Constable, any suspect premises we’ve decided to let stay open for our own particular purposes.’

‘I’m sorry, sir, I don’t …’

‘I expect not. Look! That gaff, as gaffs up this way go, is perfectly well conducted and a very useful place indeed to pick up
real
suspects in: the sort of criminal you
should
be interested in.’

‘I see, sir.’

‘You see!’

‘I suppose, sir,’ Edward said cautiously, ‘the woman phoned you … or someone.’

‘Oh – brilliant! Let me tell you something, son. That good woman you upset is much more useful to the Force at present by her information than
you
look like shaping up to be.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘And now you’ve crashed in there like a cow in a china-shop, what use is she going to be to us? Eh? Answer me that! Or
ask
me before you do these things. That’s what I’m here for: come and ask me!’

‘But sir,’ said Edward full of contrition, ‘brothels
are
often raided, aren’t they? Brothel-keeping cases
do
come up …’

‘Naturally, boy! But do use your loaf! You only raid the place when any advantages it may have to the Force are
less
than the prestige of a cast-iron brothel-keeping case. If vice has got to flourish, it had better flourish underneath our eyes until we’re ready to clamp down on it.’

‘Yes, sir.’

The Detective-Sergeant lit his pipe. ‘You’ll soon see how it is,’ he said. ‘Sometimes, of course, the order comes to us from on high, and then we close the place up anyway. Or maybe the Madam forgets her place and fails to be co-operative. Or maybe there’s a change of personnel here at the station and somebody new in charge just doesn’t like her face. Those vice hustlers know all that, and so do we: the whole thing’s perfectly well understood. Except, of course, by idiots like you.’

‘Yes, sir.’

A constable entered, saluted and said, ‘There’s a poof downstairs, sir, wants to bring an assault charge.’

‘Against who?’

The constable looked at Edward.

‘Oh, no!’ the Detective-Sergeant cried. Then, to the constable, ‘Throw him out.’