Maxim Jakubowski - The Best British Mysteries III

And then I left.

Discreetly as I could, I asked around.

The maid had taken a couple of days off sick; only the usual slow but steady stream of punters had been seen entering the building. Up and down the street, nobody had noticed anything unusual.

SOHO VICE GIRL MURDERED, the headline read.

I traced Ethel’s mother from one of her letters, and she promised to come to the funeral, but she never did. I stood alone in a little chapel in Kensal Green, fingers drumming a quiet farewell on the back of the pew. Outside, the first leaves were starting to fall. When it was over I took the tube back to Oxford Circus and met Tom Holland round the corner from the Palladium as arranged.

Holland was young for a detective inspector, no more than thirty-two or -three; something of a high flier, he’d recently transferred from the City of London police to run one of the CID squads at West End Central.

The year before, ‘55, the Mail had run a story about police corruption. Alleging many officers in the West End were on the take. The Met issued a bald denial. Everyone from the commissioner down denied the charge. What evidence existed was discredited or lost. No one was suspended, cautioned, even interviewed. Word was unofficially passed round: be less visible, less greedy.

Holland was the only officer I knew who wasn’t snaffling bribes. According to rumour, when a brothel keeper slipped an envelope containing fifty in tens into his pocket, Holland shoved it down his throat and made him eat it.

He was just shy of six foot, I guessed, dark-haired and brown-eyed, and he sat at a table in the rear of the small Italian Café, shirtsleeves rolled back, jacket draped across his chair. Early autumn, and it was still warm. The coffee came in those glass cups that were all the rage; three sips and it was gone.

I told him about Neville’s involvement with pushers and prostitutes, the percentage he took for protection, for looking the other way. Told him my suspicions concerning Ethel’s murder.

Holland listened as if it mattered, his gaze rarely leaving my face.

When I’d finished, he sat a full minute in silence, weighing things over.

‘I can’t do anything about the girl,’ he said. ‘Even if Neville did kill her or have her killed, we’d never get any proof. And let’s be honest: where she’s concerned, nobody gives a toss. But the other stuff, drugs especially. There might be something I can do.’

I thought if I went the right way about it, I could get Foxy to make some kind of statement, off the record, nothing that would come to court, not even close, but it would be a start. Place, times, amounts. And there were others who’d be glad to find a way of doing Neville down, repaying him for all the cash he’d pocketed, the petty cruelties he’d meted out.

‘One month,’ Holland said, ‘then show me what you’ve got.’

When I held out my hand to shake his, his eyes fixed on my arm. ‘And that habit of yours,’ he said. ‘Kick it now.’

A favourite trick of Neville’s, whenever his men raided a club, was to take the musicians who’d been holding aside – and there were usually one or two – and feign sympathy. Working long hours, playing the way you do, stands to reason you need a little something extra, a little pick-me-up. Nudge, nudge, wink, wink. Men of the world. Just hand it over, and we’ll say no more about it. Oh, and if you’ve got a little sweetener for the lads…lovely, lovely.

And ever after, if he walked into a club or bumped into them on the street, he would be into them for another fifty plus whatever they were carrying. Let anyone try saying no, and he was sorted good.

Inside a matter of weeks I talked with two pianists, a drummer, a guitarist, and three sax players – what is it with saxophonists? – who agreed to dish the dirt on Neville if it would get him off their backs. And finally, after a lot of arguing and pleading, I persuaded Foxy to sit down with Holland in an otherwise empty room, neutral territory, and tell him what he knew.

After that, carefully, Holland spoke to a few of Neville’s team, officers who were already compromised and eager to protect themselves as best they could. From a distance, he watched Neville himself. Checked, double-checked.

The report he wrote was confidential, and he took it to the new deputy assistant commissioner, one of the few high-ranking bosses he thought he could trust.

It was agreed that going public would generate bad publicity for the force and that should be avoided at all costs. Neville was shunted sideways, somewhere safe, and after several months allowed to retire on a full pension for reasons of ill health.

One of his mutually beneficial contacts had been with a businessman from Nicosia, import and export, and that was where Neville hived off to, counting his money, licking his wounds.

I was at the airport to see him off.

Three and a bit years ago now.

I took Tom Holland’s advice and cleaned up my act, the occasional drag at some weed aside. Tom, he’s a detective chief inspector now and tipped for higher things. I don’t play any more, rarely feel the need. There are a couple of bands I manage – groups, that’s what they call them these days – one from Ilford, and one Palmers Green. And I keep myself fit, swim, work out in the gym. One thing a drummer has, even a second-rate ex-drummer like me, is strong wrists, strong hands.

I don’t reckon Neville staying in Cyprus forever, can’t see it somehow; he’ll want to come back to the smoke. And when he does, I’ll meet him. Maybe even treat him to a drink. Ask if he remembers Ethel, the way she lay back, twisted on the bed, her broken neck…

To Professor Moriarty, she is always that bitch.

Irene Adler arrived in our Conduit Street rooms shortly after I undertook to assist my fellow tenant in enterprises of which he was the pre-eminent London specialist. In short, sirrah, crime.

The old ‘bread and honey’ came into it, of course. The professor had me on an honorarium of six thousand pounds per annum. Scarcely enough to make anyone put up with Moriarty, actually, but it serviced my prediliction for pursuits the na’ive refer to as ‘games of chance’. Chronic cash shortage set in early, when Pater cut me off without a sou for an indiscretion involving a matched pair of Persian princesses. Libertinage on an heroic scale is my other expensive vice. However, I own that the thrill of do-baddery attracted me, that blood-running whoosh of fright and delight which comes from cocking repeated snooks at every plod, beak and turnkey in the land. When a hunting man has grown bored with bagging tigers, crime can still jangle the nerves and keep up the pecker. Moriarty, frankly bloodless, got his jollies in the abstract, plotting felony the way you might fill in a crossword puzzle. I’ve known him scorn an easy bank raid that would have netted millions and devote weeks to the filching of a tiny item of little worth that happened to be a more challenging snatch.

That morning, the professor was thinking through two problems simultaneously A portion of his brain was calculating the timings of solar eclipses observable in far-flung regions. Superstitious natives can sometimes be persuaded a white man has power over the sun and needs to be given handy tribal treasures if bwana sahib promises to turn the light on again. Bloody good trick, if you can get away with it. The greater part of his attention, however, was devoted to the breeding of wasps.

‘Your bee is a law-abiding soul,’ he said, in his reedy lecturing voice, ‘as reverent to their queen as the clods of England, dedicated to the production of honey for the betterment of all, buzzing about promiscuously pollinating to please addle-minded poets. They only defend themselves at the cost of their lives, for they sting but once. Volumes are devoted to the care of bees, and apiculture exists to exploit their good nature. Wasps do nothing but sting. Persistently venomous, they fly from one assault to the next. Unwelcome everywhere. Thoroughly nasty sorts. We are not bees, Moran.’