Кейт Уотерхаус - Soho or Alex in Wonderland

Detective Inspector Wills got to his feet. “Come along, Else, we’ll give you a ride home, we don’t want you wandering the streets when there’s a murderer about. But I don’t want you wetting your knickers in the back seat.”

“Oh dear, I’m afraid it’s too late for that, Inspector,” said Else coyly, lowering her eyes.

The detective inspector instructed Detective Sergeant Bone: “Ask the barman for the lend of a tea-towel. And tell him if he doesn’t boil it when he gets it back, I’ll have the environmental health officer down here.”

So was that it, then? No, was it heckers like. Detective Inspector Wills turned back to Alex.

“I’ve a lot more questions to ask about how you slot into this business, Alex, but I’ve got other fish to fry just now. Where are you going to be kipping down?”

“I don’t know, I haven’t made any arrangements.”

“Not sleeping rough, are we?”

Why, was that an offence? Alex could see himself in a police cell if he didn’t play his cards right.

“He can stop with me if he likes,” said Barry Chilton helpfully. Kind of him, but what did he want?

“Where’s that, Barry, the Ritz? No, I don’t even want to know where you’re staying. Just have him on parade after breakfast, fail not. If he does a runner, I shall be making a very keen inspection of the ashtray arrangements at the Blue Note tonight, got that?”

“So what time do you want to see me?” asked Alex.

“I don’t know, son, I haven’t got my appointments diary about my person. We’ll send for you.”

“How will you know where to find me?”

“Oh, we’ll find you all right. You’re in Soho.”

Alex did wish people would stop telling him that. Where did they think he supposed himself to be? Fookin Buenos Aires?

“This is an island you’re on, son. Oxford Street up there, Charing Cross Road down there, Regent Street that way, Coventry Street that way, there’s no way off it without I know about it. Soho Island.”

“Just like Alcatraz,” said James Flood sycophantically.

“Yes, with the great difference that on Alcatraz the sharks are all offshore. Come on, Else — now are you sure you don’t want another wee-wee before we go?”

“I’ll just see,” said Else, toddling off towards the ladies’. “Better safe than sorry.”

Alex had never had breakfast out in his life. If you were at home, your mother made it. If you were in a bed-sit, you made it yourself, or the girl-friend did. If you were on holiday, it was the all-in buffet, wasn’t it? Failing that, you ate a doughnut on the hoof.

What you didn’t do was to go to a caffy. Complete waster money. Yet here he was in the Patisserie Valerie on Old Compton Street, wolfing down a croissant and slurping cappuccino. Very Parisian, not that he had ever set foot in Paris, but he imagined it must be much like this at breakfast time, though more out of doors. The room was buzzing. Shared tables, people passing little jam-pots backwards and forwards, bit like a student refectory really. A student lot in fact they seemed to be mainly: James had told him there was an art school nearby. Foreigners mostly, some fanciable chicks, could be a good pick-up joint. He wished Selby were here.

Apart from that, and apart from the threatened cloud of Detective Inspector Wills’s resumed interrogation hanging over him, Alex was feeling ridiculously euphoric. He imagined that under it he must be well shagged out, considering that he’d had no sleep whatever after what Barry Chilton had told him about where they’d put their heads down for a couple of hours upon leaving the Waiters Club.

Parting company with James Flood who had to finish his story on the Hog Court murder and phone it through to the Evening Standard , Barry Chilton had led Alex back along Old Compton Street to Compton’s Yard, where they found themselves outside the derelict building next to Stephan Dance’s porn shop. It had begun to rain again.

“As Benny Wills would put it, it’s not exactly the Ritz,” explained Barry unnecessarily as they skirted the ruin. “But it’s cheaper, although you’ll find there’s no room service.”

They rounded the building to a narrow alleyway backing on to, although Alex did not know one street from another, Romilly Street. The windows had been bricked up with breeze-blocks, and where the back door had been was sealed off with a stout arrangement of what looked like railway sleepers, as impregnable, it would seem, as any castle keep.

“Now what?” asked Alex, turning up his collar. It was raining seriously now, in fact it was blurry pissing it down.

With a wink, Barry Chilton rubbed the tips of his fingers together in the manner of a safe-breaker. He then quite gently pushed at the middle of the five upright sleepers protecting the doorway. The sleeper edged ajar. A shove of the shoulder and it swung open like a secret panel, which effectively was what it was.

“It’s a good job yow’s as skinny as a slice of Melba toast,” said Barry, for the gap he had created was no more than seven or eight inches across. “Let me gow first, then yow can give me a shove in case I get stuck. And watch where you put your feet when you follow me.”

“Why, is it fuller dog-shit?”

No, a better reason than that: there were no floorboards. And a ten-foot drop to the rubble-filled basement. Alex wondered how Barry got on when he arrived home pissed in the dark.

But there was a staircase, much of it intact. The pair picked their way across the skeleton of joists where the floor had been and, with no banister rail to hang on to, gingerly made it to the upper storey.

This had a floor, but what it lacked was a ceiling. The rain was now bucketing down. Alex flattened himself against the wall, shivering, but there was no shelter. Like the floor downstairs, what was left of the roof consisted only of beams or joists.

“Well, this isn’t going to be a barrel of laughs, Barry,” he felt bound to say.

“No probs, kid,” responded Barry cheerfully. “Just so long as yow down’t mind roughing it.”

Alex now saw that there was what had been an iron fire-exit door leading to whatever was on the other side of it. The past tense was appropriate, for it was now padlocked. Christ — that must be directly above Stephan Dance’s porn emporium next door. What a place to choose for a pad. Still, with an address like that there should be little fear of burglars.

The padlock snapped open easily, without the aid of a key or even a bent hairpin. “Rust,” explained Barry. “Anyway, who’s gowing to risk his neck coming up to this dump?”

He swung the door open and in the chilly light of post-dawn Alex saw not the simple bed-sitter he had been expecting but what was evidently a storeroom or stockroom, lined with rough wooden shelves on which were stacked cardboard boxes and brown paper parcels. Peering into a box at random Alex saw that it was filled with grotesque black dildoes. The next one with vibrators. The next with novelty rhubarb-flavoured ribbed condoms. He wondered if Dave’s boss back in South Higginshaw was on to this market. The next with X-rated video cassettes: Millie and Tillie Learn the Hard Way; Nymphette Nuns; Wet Nurses . Yeh yeh yeh yeh, you could get all this in Leeds if you had more money than sense.

Considering the prices this stuff fetched, he wondered that Stephan Dance bothered to sub-let his top room. Still, they were miserly buggers, these porn kings. Noted for it.

“So where do you kip down?” he asked, looking round in expectation of at least a sleeping-bag, which he trusted Barry would not be expecting him to share.

“On the floor,” said Barry. “I used to get my head down on that bottom shelf there, but he’s just filled it up with a new consignment of porn mags. Useful if yow want to wank yourself to sleep.”