Кейт Уотерхаус - Soho or Alex in Wonderland

“And what does he charge you for using this place? As you rightly say, the Ritz it ain’t.”

Barry Chilton guffawed. “Charge me? Charge me? Yow down’t think he knows I come up here, dow yow? Be your age, kid.”

Christ on crutches. “You know what he’ll do to you, don’t you, Barry, if he catches you up here?”

“I down’t like to think about it, it makes my eyes water. But he won’t. He hardly ever gets here till after ten and I’m long gone by then.”

“What do you mean by hardly ever?” asked Alex nervously.

“Once in a blue moon he comes in early to cook the books, but touch wood I’ve always heard the Roller out in the yard and done a quick runner across the wall into Romilly Street. Now yow’d better get some shut-eye, because this could just be one of those mornings,” added Barry mischievously. “G’night, kid.”

Alex did not sleep at all, or even try to. By eight thirty he was off the premises, leaving Barry Chilton dozing fitfully, his head on a parcel of porn. Barry had told him that he could get a shit-shave-and-shower in the Piccadilly Circus tube-station gents’, so that was where he headed first, on the assumption that Piccadilly Circus was not off limits so far as Detective Inspector Wills was concerned.

The streets were already busy, the shops opening, shutters coming down, the cafés filling up. You couldn’t even get a cupper tea in Leeds at this timer day. Punctuating the comings and goings, there seemed to be casually dressed men loitering on every corner. They couldn’t all be plain-clothes officers, for Chrissake. Was he being followed? A CCTV camera mounted over a sandwich shop swivelled as he ambled along Old Compton Street. Was Detective Inspector Wills, or one of his minions, tracking him?

This was getting ridiculous. He had a good mind to jump on a bus and just bugger off out of it, call Wills’s bluff. Trouble was, there seemed to be no bus service in So-oh, and he was buggered if he was going to take a taxi, even if he knew where he wanted to go.

He wandered on, turning up Wardour Street and then into Berwick Street. In Walkers Court a couple of shysters were already setting up an orange box for a Find the Lady game. Nah nah nah, been there, done that, you didn’t catch Alex out again with that one, and anyway they were probably plain-clothes men.

The rain clouds had cleared away leaving the streets bright and fresh-smelling in the early sunlight. The fresh smell, it proved, was a medley of ground coffee, newly baked bread, and the fruit and veg on the Berwick Street market stalls. The pungent odours gave the morning air a whiff of anticipation, but Alex couldn’t say he went a bundle on Berwick Street Market, it wasn’t a patch on the great glass-covered market up in Leeds. Seemed to him they didn’t know what a blurry market was down here, although he could have done with wunner them thick bacon sarnies that so many of the stallholders were getting their teeth into.

Hunger drove Alex on. Dodging the electric dustcart methodically mopping up the cabbage leaves, he meandered on until the cries of the market traders were distant sounds eventually drowned by traffic. Now he was in Broadwick Street, Lexington Street, Brewer Street with its vintage magazine store — big plastic statuette of Ringo he would’ve bought for Selby if he had any money and knew where she was — and thus, having come full circle without realising it, back to Old Compton Street. Seemed to be the centre of the blurry world round these parts, Old Compton Street did.

The aroma of Jamaican Blue Mountain wafting out of the Algerian Coffee Stores reminded him of the need for breakfast, so presently he established himself in Patisserie Valerie. This was the life, eh? He could really take to this caffy lark. They could do with wunner these places in Leeds — all they had was blurry Starbucks.

Finishing his croissant and mopping up the crumble of buttery flakes, he reached for the freebie newspaper that was lying across the table. Metro — yeh yeh yeh, they had something of the sort in Leeds, SOHO MURDER, MAN DRESSED AS WOMAN SLASHED IN ALLEY. By James Flood.

Jesus. That editress of his on the Examiner would have his guts for garters. Alex could almost smell the stench of fat sizzling in the fire.

He was wondering whether the dwindling budget would run to another cappuccino — pleasant though the prospect was, you practically had to take out a mortgage to get a cupper coffee down here — when into the café walked Ellis Hugo Bell of Bell Famous Productions. He was wearing dark glasses: nothing unusual about that, but normally he sported them on the top of his head while today he had them clamped firmly over his eyes. As he came nearer Alex saw why: he was trying to disguise a swollen, purple eye that looked as if he had done twelve rounds at the old Great Windmill Street gymnasium. The split lip and the grazed cheekbone he could unfortunately do nothing about.

Alex grinned. With what he imagined to be the Soho insider’s crafty knowingness he said: “Your mate Kim Grizzard finally catch up with you, did he?”

“Wait till I catch up with him !” snarled Bell. “Where’s Simon, I mean James Flood? Have I got a story for him!”

“He’s already got a story. I expect he’s with that Detective Inspector Wills.”

“Yeah, well, this is a better one.”

Despite having been duffed up, it was plain that Bell had something to be pleased with himself about. His hand hovered over his inside pocket until, with simulated reluctance, he withdrew a bulky and official-looking letter on several typed pages of classy-looking A4.

“If you do see Simon, James rather, tell him about this and say he’ll find me in the French, getting well trolleyed.”

Arts Council of England. In further response to your application of blah blah blah, the Arts Council has now had the opportunity to consider in depth your proposal for blah blah blah. Alex didn’t have to read it all, couldn’t in fact, for it was more soporific than any exam dissertation he’d ever flammed together. Luckily Bell had marked two passages in yellow highlight. The first said that the project as described in Appendix I would qualify for a National Lottery grant of £12,500 (twelve thousand five hundred pounds only) provided always that he could match said sum by such and such a date. The second said that the grant was also conditional upon whatever doorway in which he mounted his rostrum camera possessing or being provided with approved wheelchair access.

“How do you raise the other half, then?” asked Alex, playing the canny Yorkshireman.

“Easy-peasy. This letter is bankable.”

“So you’re in business?”

“Of course I’m in business. I always was in business. Never a shadow of doubt about it. Don’t you wish now you’d bought one of those hundred-pound seed-money units, because as of today the price is two-fifty?”

“I thought that was for the other thing — what was it called again?”

“ Kill Me Nicely , working title. First draft script by Kim Grizzard, after some discussion. The poor bastard couldn’t write fuck in the dust on a Venetian blind but at least he’ll give me something to work on. No, I shall do them as a twin project. No reason to bother the Lottery Fund with the small print. Walk On By will seed-capitalise Kill Me. Kill Me will capitalise Walk On By .With this letter,” crowed Bell, brandishing it before stuffing it back in his pocket, “I’m laughing and giggling.”

It all sounded a bit dodgy to Alex but what did he know? He was trying to think of a way of sliding that question of seed-money units back into the conversation — well, his grandma had after all left him five hundred in Premium Bonds and they had earned him sod-all so far — when both he and Bell became aware of something of a commotion outside.