Colin Dexter - Death Is Now My Neighbor

It was, one may say, a satisfactory transaction.

Her glass was empty, and without seating himself he drained his own beer at a draught.

“Same again?”

“Please!” She pushed over the globed glass in which the semi-melted ice cubes still remained.

Feeling most pleasantly relaxed, she looked around the thinly populated bar, and noticed (again!) the eyes of the middle-aged man seated across the room. But she gave no sign that she was aware of his interest, switching her glance instead to the balding, gray-white head of the man leaning nonchalantly at the bar as he ordered their drinks.

Beside her once more, he clinked their glasses, feeling (just as she did) most pleasantly relaxed.

“Quite a while since we sat here,” he volunteered.

“Couple o’ months?”

“Ten weeks, if we wish to be exact.”

“Which, of course, we do, sir.”

Smiling, she sipped her second large brandy. Feeling good; feeling increasingly good.

“Hungry?” he asked.

“What for?”

He grinned. “An hour in bed, perhaps — before we have a bite to eat?”

“Wine thrown in?”

“I’m trying to bribe you.”

“Well... if you want to go to bed for a little while first...”

“I think I’d quite enjoy that.”

“One condition, though.”

“What?”

“You tell me what you were going to tell me — on the train.”

He nodded seriously. “I’ll tell you over the wine.”

It was, one may say, a satisfactory arrangement.

As they got up to leave, Storrs moved ahead of her to push open one of the swing doors; and Rachel James (for such was she), a freelance physiotherapist practicing up in North Oxford, was conscious of the same man’s eyes upon her. Almost involuntarily she leaned her body backward, thrusting her breasts against the smooth white silk of her blouse as she lifted both her hands behind her head to tighten the ring which held her light brown hair in its ponytail.

A ponytail ten inches long.

Then the smiling hookers turned their attention to our shocked reporters.

“Don’t be shy! You paid for a good time, and that’s what we want to give you.”

Our men feigned jet lag, and declined.

Geoffrey Owens had a better knowledge of Soho than most people.

He’d been only nineteen when first he’d gone to London as a junior reporter, when he’d rented a room just off Soho Square, and when during his first few months he’d regularly walked around the area there, experiencing the curiously compulsive attraction of names like Brewer Street, Greek Street, Old Compton Street, Wardour Street... a sort of litany of seediness and sleaze.

In those days, the midseventies, the striptease parlors, the porno cinemas, the topless bars — all somehow had been more wholesomely sinful, in the best sense of that word (or was it the worst?). Now, Soho had quite definitely changed for the better (or was it the worse?): more furtive and tawdry, more dishonest in its exploitation of the lonely, unloved men who would ever pace the pavements there and occasionally stop like rabbits in the headlights.

Yet Owens appeared far from mesmerized when in the early evening of February 7 he stopped outside Le Club Sexy. The first part of this establishment’s name was intended (it must be assumed) to convey that je-ne-sais-quoi quality of Gallic eroticism; yet the other two parts perhaps suggested that the range of the proprietor’s French was somewhat limited.

“Lookin’ for a bit o’ fun, love?”

The heavily mascara’d brunette appeared to be in her early twenties — quite a tall girl in her red high-heels, wearing black stockings, a minimal black skirt, and a low-cut, heavily sequined blouse stretched tightly over a large bosom — largely exposed — beneath the winking lightbulbs.

Déjà vu.

And, ever the voyeur, Owens was momentarily aware of all the old weaknesses.

“Come in! Come down and join the fun!”

She took a step toward him and he felt the long, blood-red fingernails curling pleasingly in his palm.

It was a good routine, and one that worked with many and many a man.

One that seemed to be working with Owens.

“How much?”

“Only three-pound membership, that’s all. It’s a private club, see — know wha’ I mean?” For a few seconds she raised the eyes beneath the empurpled lids toward Elysium.

“Is Gloria still here?”

The earthbound eyes were suddenly suspicious — yet curious, too.

“Who?”

“If Gloria’s still here, she’ll let me in for nothing.”

“Lots o’ names ’ere, mistah: real names — stage names...”

“So what’s your name, beautiful?”

“Look, you wanna come in? Three pound — okay?”

“You’re not being much help, you know.”

“Why don’t you just fuck off?”

“You don’t know Gloria?”

“What the ’ell do you want, mate?” she asked fiercely.

His voice was very quiet as he replied. “I used to live fairly close by. And she used to work here, then—Gloria did. She was a stripper — one of the best in the business, so everybody said.”

For the second time the eyes in their lurid sockets seemed to betray some interest.

“When was that?”

“Twenty-odd years ago.”

“Christ! She must be a bloody granny by now!”

“Dunno. She had a child, though, I know that — a daughter...”

A surprisingly tall, smartly suited Japanese man had been drawn into the magnetic field of Le Club Sexy.

“Come in! Come down and—”

“How much is charge?”

“Only three pound. It’s a private club, see — and you gotta be a member.”

With a strangely trusting, wonderfully polite smile, the man took a crisp ten-pound note from his large wallet and handed it to the hostess, bowing graciously as she reached a hand behind her and parted the multicolored vertical strips which masked from public view the threadbare carpeting on the narrow stairs leading down to the secret delights.

“You give me change, please? I give you ten pound.”

“Just tell ’em downstairs, okay?”

“Why you not give me seven pound?”

“It’ll be okay— okay?”

“Okay.”

Halfway down the stairs, the newly initiated member made a little note in a little black book, smiling (we may say) scrutably. He was a member of a Home Office Committee licensing all “entertainment premises” in the district of Soho.

His expenses were generous: needed to be.

Sometimes he enjoyed his job.

“Don’t you ever feel bad about that sort of thing?”

“What d’you mean?”

“He’ll never get his change, will he?”

“Like I said, why don’t you just fuck off!”

“Gloria used to feel bad sometimes — quite a civilized streak in that woman somewhere. You’d have liked her... Anyway, if you do come across her, just say you met me, Geoff Owens, will you? She’ll remember me — certain to. Just tell her I’ve got a little proposition for her. She may be a bit down on her luck. You never know these days, and I wouldn’t want to think she was on her uppers... or her daughter was, for that matter.”

“What’s her daughter got to do with it?” The voice was sharp.

Owens smiled, confidently now, lightly rubbing the back of his right wrist across her blouse.

“Quite a lot, perhaps. You may have quite a lot to do with it, sweetheart!”

She made no attempt to contradict him. “In the pub,” she pointed across the street, “half an hour, okay?”

She watched him go, the man with a five o’clock shadow who said his name was Owens. She’d never seen him before; but she’d recognize him again immediately, the dark hair drawn back above his ears, and tied in a ponytail about eight or nine inches long.