I walked along Rupert Street. It looked different to the other times I’d come here; daylight versus dark anonymity. I entered the little hallway and knocked on Mary’s door. Silence, but it was still only late morning: time for rest, especially if there had been some new year celebrations. I knocked again, harder.
“Wat you want?! We no open, yet. Come back later!” Mary’s high thin voice cut through the door like a dentist drill.
“Mary, it’s me, Danny. It’s business.”
I heard nothing for a minute then grumbling and catches being taken off and bolts sliding. Mary’s little round face showed round the crack of the door. She wasn’t wearing make-up. She had no eyebrows. It was a shock to see how old she was. Blessed night-time.
“Wat you want, Danny? Girls not up. They need beauty sleep. Like me.”
She did.
“It’s about these murders, Mary. I need some information.” I was calling in a favour I’d done her a couple of months back. There had been a spate of stealing from the girls’ rooms. Mary thought one of them was the culprit but didn’t want the boys in blue rampaging through her house. I caught the thief on the fire escape round the back; he was the neighbour’s kid. Justice was meted out according to local custom: the kid was given a good hiding and cash changed hands in reparation. The problem stopped.
She opened the door a little wider. She was in a blue silk dressing gown that fell to her tiny feet. Her hair was tightly held in a net. She looked even shorter today, shrunken. I thought of my mother. “Why you interested, Danny? You private dick, not real Bobby.”
I smiled at Mary’s sing-song cackle; we suffered the same degree of incomprehension by the English at times.
“Call it professional curiosity, Mary. Can I come in for a minute.”
Her eyes narrowed even further, then she stood back and let me in. She glanced outside to see who might have spotted me – the neighbours, and hence the police, didn’t like callers much at any time, far less during the day.
The familiar smell of incense and cheap perfume hit me like a shovel. I would catch a whiff on my clothes for days after one of my visits. I didn’t come here often, and when I first knocked on Mary’s door it wasn’t so much about the act itself as proving something to myself. They beat the shit out of me in the camp;
I wondered what else they might have knocked out.
Mary was a psychologist. She’d give Doc Thompson a run for his money. She took my measure that first time like a chef inspecting fruit at Covent Garden. She gave me green tea and talked to me, drew out a little of the story, a little of the need. Then she introduced me to Colette, a lippy dyed blonde with a happy heart. A natural at her profession. She told Colette to take her time, no rush.
I guess it worked as I’ve come back a couple of times since. Mary runs a clean house and it’s only for a wee while, till I can face up to the rejections on the dance floor.
Besides, I’d also dropped in on Mary on business, my business. I’m new to London, and it’s important in my line to know who the bad guys are and what they’re up to. You don’t want to be crossing anyone important when you’re on the scent. I learned that the hard way when I got mixed up in the affairs of a certain Annie MacGuire whose old man turned out to be making hay with the lady wife of a rival mob leader in the East End.
Annie was a brazen-haired, big-breasted girl who laughed a lot and wore more jewellery than Hatton Garden. She stormed into my office, bangles clashing like cymbals, demanding that I tail Mr Stanley MacGuire. Stanley seemed to be spending too many nights at the office. Which was tricky; Stanley’s line of work – putting the arm on late payers of the loan shark he worked for – placed his office in the back seat of a big Humber Hawk.
So I spent a couple of weeks and a lot of shoe leather finding out that Stanley was not so much putting the arm on people as putting it round a certain Laura Dayton, who had the edge on Annie by about ten years and twenty pounds. I didn’t know Miss Dayton was a Mrs and also fooling around. Or that Mr Dayton was well known for his trademark habit of breaking people’s shins with the iron bar he kept up his very big sleeve. It was an effective deterrent to folk who thought they might like a cut of his fag and booze racket.
I made my report, Annie threw a fit, but instead of – or maybe as well as; I never heard – taking it out on Stanley, she tracked down Laura Dayton to the Brickie’s Arms in the Old Kent Road and took a slice out of her rival’s younger face with Stanley’s clasp razor. Poetic justice, she must have thought. Gang war broke out, two pubs got wrecked, five people ended up in hospital, some with bits missing that would never grow again. And I began vetting my clients a little more carefully.
Mary’s ears were tuned to the jungle drums and she was happy to gossip except when it came to clients, for whom she would undergo torture to avoid naming or shaming. I followed her through to her tiny living room, and remembered to duck as we came in through the door to avoid the huge wind chimes that dangled from the ceiling. As ever, I was mildly shocked at the amount of junk on every flat surface and every wall. And, apart from the enormous pile of old newspapers in one corner, the overwhelming preference for red junk. I think the colour of my hair was the other factor in her being helpful to me.
I pushed aside an avalanche of red satin cushions and perched on the edge of her couch. Tea appeared to lubricate the conversation. “You sure you no wanna girl?
Can get one up, lazy cows sleep all day and night too if can.”
I grinned and shook my head. “What’s the story on the streets, Mary, about these killings?”
She turned her mouth down. “Very bad, very bad. Bad for girls bad for business.
Men stay away ’cos they scared of bobbies.”
I bet. “Does anyone know anything though? Anyone see anything?”
“Dead girls all work for one man. Big time pimp. No like my place. You safe here. I kill anyone who hurt my girls!” She raised her little arm and dropped it in a swift chopping motion. It was a threat not to be dismissed lightly. I doubted if Mary herself had the strength to squash a bug but she had good connections in China Town where the Tongs held sway. I also knew that Mary’s concern for the half dozen girls who worked here was more than just business or posturing; the girls themselves talked of her kindness to them. Mama Mary they called her.
“Do you know the name of the man? This pimp?”
“I know, I know all right. He Jonny Crane. Hard man. Don’t you cross him, Danny.
He chop you into chow mein. Eat you up for dinner!”
I stored the name away. “What else? Any sightings? Any disturbance?”
She shook her head. “Only bobbies. Big chief, big fat bastard. He come round, throw everything up in air. Make questions. Scare customers. Scare girls.”
A thought struck me. “What’s his name?”
“Wislen. Somet’ing like that.”
“Wilson? You mean, Inspector Wilson?”
“That him.” She nodded hard. “Stinky bad man. Always round here. He like girls, but no pay for them.”
“Wait, wait, Mary. Are you saying that Wilson comes round here and uses the girls? And that he doesn’t pay for it?”
“That right. He pig! But not here. Other houses. He know not come China Town house. Chop, chop!” She stabbed the air. “They say he hit girls and make ’em do bad stuff.” She shrugged. “That OK if girls say OK and he pay. But not for no money.”
A businesswoman to the roots of her dyed-black hair. I thought of Wilson and shuddered at what he might demand of a girl. Fat bastard indeed. I remember the first time I met Detective Inspector Herbert Wilson of the Yard. I’d been going for about six weeks and was starting to make some headway; a few clients, enough to pay the rent anyway.