Кейт Уотерхаус - Soho or Alex in Wonderland

Maybe it was just the booze weeping. Maybe it was the hour — getting on for four by now, a notoriously suicidal time. But he had an urgent need to speak to Selby, hear her voice, even if she told him to piss off.

Would she have left her mobile on? Only one way to find out. It was a long shot, but there was just the possibility that she left it on in the small hours in case of emergency, like her dad having a blurry heart-attack or something. Worth a try, mood he found himself in.

He waited until Barry Chilton went into a huddle with the saxophonist about his next number, flashed his mobile at James to signal what he was doing, and darted up the stairs into the street.

He hadn’t particularly noticed where he was going after they’d left Gerry’s Club but he knew he was on one of those streets leading up from Shaftesbury Avenue — Dean, Frith, Greek; alphabetical order as James had taught him. It was very quiet now, the only sounds being distant, sporadic traffic, ambulance sirens and Barry Chilton’s recitative voice from down in the Blue Note, backed by the plaintive saxophone. Couldn’t make out the lyric but it was making them laugh; maybe he should have stayed down there and snapped out of his gloompot mood.

Greek Street, it seemed to be. A black guy stood on the corner under the street lamp, cigarette glowing — pusher most likely. Or not: if he were, he might as well wear a placard around his neck saying, “Arrest me”. On the other side stood a white guy in a mac, waiting for a hooker. Or a cab, you couldn’t tell which. He would get neither at this hour, if you asked Alex.

He stood in a wine shop doorway and punched out Selby’s mobile number. No result. Shit. Didn’t feel like returning to the Blue Note for a few minutes, he could do with a cup of black coffee if there was one going anywhere at coming up to four. McDonald’s, Leicester Square, someone had said. How far away was that?

Idly, he crossed the street. There was an unlit little alley opposite, no more than an extended gap between the buildings of Greek Street, housing what looked like a block of run-down flats, knocking-shops he would guess, and a porn shop and bed show, very likely the property of Stephan Dance. Hog Court. Bit like Compton’s Yard where he’d encountered Dance earlier. Narrow shave he must’ve had with that bugger. If Detective Inspector Wills had not been in attendance, a dark alley at four in the morning was not the place to meet a Soho pornographer who had undertaken to recover Brendan Barton’s fifty pounds.

Alex shuddered. Whether it was the shudder or the dark inviting proximity of Hog Court that suddenly brought it on he couldn’t say, but he had a pressing desire for a jimmy riddle. When had he last had one? Christ, it muster been hours ago, no wonder he was bursting for a leak. The Wellington Arms, was it? And there’d been wunner them Post-it slips stuck to the bog wall, with the message: “Does anyone ever see Big John who used to come in here and Muriel’s? He liked a drink and a fight.” Underneath, someone had scrawled: “RIP.” Said it all about So-oh, that did.

As he edged furtively towards the little alley, conscious as always on these occasions that he was probably committing an offence by peeing in public, Alex all but bumped into the squint-eyed waiter, now back in mufti and wearing an ankle-length white apron and carrying a tray laden with champagne bottle and glasses. A lone rehearsal runner for the Waiters’ Race, he zigzagged erratically backwards and forwards across Greek Street as he hurried towards Soho Square.

Out of the shadows of Hog Court there now emerged a figure who had clearly been engaged on a similar mission to Alex’s. Dapper, middle-aged, clerkly-looking character carrying a neatly-folded raincoat. Alex thought he vaguely recognised him as he bustled off down Greek Street. Yes, seen the bugger before, where was it now? Wellington Arms, jimmy riddle, Post-it slip for whoever it was, Big John, and he’d come out of the bog and this sad sack was sitting at a table nursing half a Guinness and toying with a Swiss Army knife. As you do. So what was he doing wandering the streets at this God-forsaken hour? Been shagging a hooker, probably. Or trying to, poor sod looked as if he couldn’t get it up. Anyway, nonner his business.

Slipping into Hog Court, Alex was unzipping himself when he heard a rustling sound from some feet away. Oh, shite, who was it this time? Could be Jenny Wise and the randy young telly bloke having it away, too impatient to go round to her place. No, it was the rustle of a plastic raincoat as the lamplight from Greek Street fell on the frightened face of that old bat he’d given the book to. What was she called again? Else.

Didn’t know him from Adam, of course. But she clutched his sleeve and whispered urgently: “Young man, you must come with me!”

Dotty or what? And this was someone else who was out at all hours. Didn’t she have a home to go to? Could be she didn’t. And where was the fookin thirty-quid book he’d bought her? Left it in some pub lav, he shouldn’t wonder.

He allowed Else to take his arm and steer him across the alley, chattering excitedly: “I’d just come down here for a little wee-wee, because I suffer from a weak bladder, you know, I expect when you reach my age you’ll have the same problem. And I was just doing what I had to do, when I noticed a man standing over that young lady there, lying on the ground. He saw me and hurried away and I came over as soon as I was able and looked at her. I thought at first she was drunk, because they do drink far too much nowadays, these gels, but now I’m not so sure, I think she may be dead.”

They had reached the body of Christine Yardley, a.k.a. Christopher, lying face downwards outside the door of her rickety block of flatlets next to the darkened bed show, and clutching a bunch of keys. She was still wearing the backless electric blue satin number he’d seen her in at the Transylvania Club, but it was pulled up nearly to her waist to reveal twisted, laddered stockings that looked pathetically tawdry in the half-light of dawn.

“Or she could well have been raped, although I see she’s still wearing her knickers. Do you know how to give the kiss of life, young man?”

No, did he hell, but in any case she was so still she looked as if she’d already had the kiss of death. Crouching, Alex gingerly clutched Christine’s still-warm shoulder and turned her over on to her side. The electric blue satin was black now with the blood that still bubbled through it from the slashing wound in her stomach. The blood that had trickled from her mouth and down her chin to the crevice of her neck where she had haemorrhaged glistened wetly. Her eyes were staring.

“Oh dear, do you think we should perhaps find a policeman?” twittered Else, nervously rubbing flaking skin from her hands.

Alex staggered to his feet, turned away, tottered a few shuffling steps and was copiously and noisily sick. There was tomato in it, as always.

It had been the last eventful hour of a long eventful day. Or perhaps it was the first eventful hour of a new one, who could say?

Whichever, Alex was shagged out. So, where was he again? Right, the Waiters Club in Gerrard Street, because it said so on the short, plastic-covered egg-and-chips menu on the Formica tables. Did chefs and waiters go in for egg and chips, then, he wondered irrelevantly. Must do. They’d get pissed off with serving that fancy muck all night and would want something plain when it was their turn to eat. Be that as it may, how had he got to the Waiters Club?

Presumably James and that Barry Chilton had brought him here, carried him here for all he knew, because they were both sitting opposite him, James scribbling furiously on some scraps of wrapping paper he had cadged from behind the bar. But he had no recollection of getting here. Not because of being pissed, he’d stopped being pissed when he’d thrown up, or so he told himself. No, it was because of the shock. Trauma. Or so he told himself.