Desmond Barry - London Noir

I took a right down White Horse Street and into Shepherd Market, a twisty-turny little red-lit corner where all Mayfair’s dirt had been swept to, out of sight. Like a mini Soho but better-spoken and wearing a blazer. By day, the place wasn’t really that special — a bit too twee for my taste. But come night — proper night, that is, once the after-work lager’s been drunk and the late-night diners have fucked off — that’s when it happens. When it reveals its true identity. The perfect place for a discerning maverick street thief artist.

I stopped to hitch my rucksack up, then turned left, then right into Market Mews. Stopped at the open door marked Model 1st Floor and made my way up the stairs. Up the wooden hill to Shagfordshire. Another good one, Jonny boy. On the way up I waved at the CCTV camera on the wall and pressed the plastic doorbell helpfully labeled Press . Rita opened up. A short round woman with enormous sagging tits, bald but for a few patches of yellowy-gray hair. She was sporting worn-out pink slippers and a loose-fitting cream-colored tracksuit topped with an off-pink toweling dressing gown. Rita is Vanya’s maid, the woman who welcomes the punters.

“Hello, Jonny love, she’s with a gentleman at the moment, be about ten minutes, that all right?”

“Fine,” I said, unhitching the rucksack and plopping myself on the foam two-seater sofa in the living room. The only other rooms in the flat are a tiny kitchen with a kettle and microwave and a small bedroom.

The TV was on so Rita and I sat watching the ITN news report of the millennium celebrations. I broke a Marlboro open to pad out a joint while Rita puffed on her B&H.

“Looks bitter out,” she said, nodding at the TV images of the crowds along the Thames. She got up to turn the thermostat to one hundred.

“Yes,” I said, twisting the end of my newly constructed joint before lighting it up.

“Aren’t you playing a show tonight, love? Thought you’d be busy tonight of all nights.”

“Nah. I could’ve had a gig but I wanted to check out the River of Fire,” I said, watching the end of my joint glow as I toked on it.

I’d often chat with Rita while Vanya was otherwise engaged. She thought I was a bit glamorous cos I was a magician.

“Been busy?” she asked.

I told her about the last gig I’d done — a Christmas party for an accounting firm in the city. I’d been booked with an illusionist called Damon Smart to entertain the staff before dinner. I’d worked with Smart before. His real name was Dave Smith. He was a cheesy cunt, but skillful.

We would approach a group of five or six of the accountants as they enjoyed some preprandial quaffing and introduce ourselves as so-and-so and so-and-so who’d just joined the firm. After a while Smart would start behaving oddly, grimacing and rubbing his stomach, complaining of indigestion. Then he’d do some pretend-wretching and — this is the particularly cuntish bit — start pulling a thread of razor blades from his mouth. Yes, it was that shit. Shitter, in fact, cos once his shtick was over I would then produce a selection of items I’d lifted from them while they were busy watching Smart hamming it up. “And I believe this watch is yours, sir...” I fucking hated it. I fucking, fucking, fucking hated the fucking fuck out of it.

Not that I let Rita know this though. She was happy to think of me as some kind of Paul fucking Daniels, so I figured, why upset her? Nothing to be gained.

“So, yeah, it was a good night,” I lied, and took another draw on my spliff.

“You’ll be on the telly next,” she said, nodding toward the box.

We watched the news coverage for another minute or so, then Rita nodded toward the bedroom door. “That’ll be it then, love,” she said.

She meant it was time for me to step into the kitchen — out of sight so the punter could leave without the embarrassment of seeing another male in the place. I don’t know how the fuck she knew it was time — I hadn’t heard a thing from the other room — but her orgasm-detector was spot on. I went into the kitchen and shut the door, leaving it open a tiny crack so I could see who was coming out without him seeing me. I always liked to get a look at the bloke Vanya had been with immediately before me. Just natural curiosity, I suppose.

Half a minute later Vanya appeared from the bedroom and left the flat for the communal toilet on the landing.

Then out he came.

I knew I knew him as soon as he came into view. Someone famous, but I couldn’t think who. A newsreader maybe? No, not that well-known. An MP? Not sure, but someone...

He picked up the overcoat he’d left on the settee, then pulled out a tenner and handed it to Rita.

Rita smiled and took the tip. “Safe journey now, it’s bitter out.”

“My overcoat will guard me against the cold, my dear,” he said. “And I shall savor your delicious non sequitur the length of my secure passage home.”

The name hit me.

I waited till I heard his footsteps disappear down the staircase before coming back into the room.

“Do you know who that was?” I didn’t wait for an answer. “Nicholas Monroe. The lawyer. He’s...”

Vanya teetered back in from the toilet.

“He’s famous. Well, for a lawyer anyway...”

“Fahmous? Fahmous who? Frederick?” Vanya asked, taking the £60 I had ready for her.

I followed her into the bedroom.

“No, yes — no — his name’s Nicholas Monroe. He’s always on the news. He got that gang off who killed that black kid in East Ham a couple of years ago. And that gangster from where you’re from...”

“From Croatia?”

“Somewhere like that, I don’t know. Albania maybe, it doesn’t matter,” I said, shutting the bedroom door. “The point is, he’s fucking well-known, got shitloads of money.”

“He’s not from Croatia, silly, he’s English,” she said. “Very fine English man. Now what shall we do? Talking or fucking?”

“I mean, what the fuck’s he doing here?” I said, ignoring the question.

Vanya plopped herself down on the bed and started inspecting her fingernails.

“If he wants a shag he could go to some discreet high-class place in Kensington or somewhere. What’s he doing coming here?”

Her eyes narrowed. “He like me,” she said. “He like the way I speak and how I—”

“What, has he been here before? He’s a regular?”

“Yes, of course.” She said it as if it was obvious, as if I was the stupid one. “He come to here every week nearly. I speak to him in Croatian and put my finger up his ass and he...”

Fuck me. “You put your finger up his arse?”

“Yes, of course, this is normal, what’s wrong with this?”

“Fucking hell, Vanya — it’s not what’s wrong with it, it’s what’s right with it. He’s rich. He can’t afford this to get out. He’ll pay us not to tell anyone.”

Vanya had a habit of being a bit “kooky,” like she wasn’t quite all there. Like everything was a game, everything was happening in some surreal Eastern European kiddie film. But now she became more serious, more real. I felt a rise of something in my belly.

“Pay us? How much pay us?” she said.

“Dunno. Ten grand. Maybe more.” Fifty, at least. “It’s nothing to him. He can earn that in a week probably...”

“In a week? Nemoj me jebat!”

“Exactly.” I spoke calmly now, took the tempo down a notch. “We just have to do it properly. Plan it right...”

I didn’t know a lot about Vanya, but I knew she wasn’t a whore by choice, that she hadn’t known this was what she’d be doing when she was brought to England. And I knew that, like Anna and Katarina in the flats upstairs, she wasn’t seeing much of the five grand or so a week she was earning for the management. She listened carefully as I went through the plan, nodding slowly as I showed her how to work the camcorder, where the record button was, and how to tell if it was on or not. Then I marked the exact spot on the wardrobe where she should put it next time Monroe visited. She would phone me as soon as he’d gone and I would come and collect the camcorder and tape and put Phase 2 into operation.