“Saw that in the evening papers too. Murder, eh… I can tell you right off, he’s not one of my tenants, not now. Maybe I’d better explain that before I go on.” He grinned. The lights outside Knightsbridge Barracks glinted on his face, swept flickering shadows through the car’s lush interior. “Ruddy landlord these days — that’s me, among other things.
I own the leaseholds of fourteen properties, big stuff… roughish stuff, slums you’d call ’em, round Notting Hill and Paddington, you know what I mean. But never a room empty, see? Know why? Strict colour-bar, that’s why — no whites need apply. That’s why your contact put you on to me, see. If anyone in London knows the niggers it’s me.” He chuckled. “Them niggers, strewth! They’ll pay the flippin’ earth for just a share of a room, and never ask for nothing to be done. No trouble at all — usually. Well, now, this MacNamara, he was a tenant of mine — until a few weeks back, as I’ve cause to remember. Anyway, he moved, somewhere down by the docks where it was cheaper.” Jiddle sniffed. “Mind, it’s no skin off my nose, if they don’t see the value of a good address. His flippin’ room was let before he’d moved out, and at a bigger rent—”
Shaw interrupted. “You say you had cause to remember him?”
“That’s right. He had a white girl-friend, for one thing, a real classy bit and a good-looker too. Tall brunette. She wasn’t exactly a tart, though I reckon ’er morals weren’t all that far above reproach, as they say.” He shook his head sadly. “I never did understand it, not really. Mind, he’s not the only one who’s managed to take up with a white girl, but there aren’t so many who do, and you remember ’em.” Jiddle hesitated, seemed about to say something else, but evidently thought better of it.
Shaw asked, “Do you know where he is now?”
Jiddle glanced round, “I’m not a flippin’ missing persons bureau. They don’t come round and confide in me either. Nor has the grapevine reached me yet. Dessay I might hear something in time, though.”
“This is rather urgent, Jiddle. Still — if you don’t know, you don’t.” Shaw looked sideways at the man, outlined again in the many-coloured neons as they went along Kensington High Street. “Or — would you remember something now if it was worth your while?”
Jiddle said quietly, “Now look, Mister Shaw. What I’ve told you is the straight truth, see? I don’t want your lolly and I’m not holding anything back. If I knew I’d tell you. But I don’t. I’ll give you a word of advice, all the same,” he added. “Keep your nose out of this. I don’t know, mind, but I reckon there could be something big in it. I know these niggers, see, better’n most people. And whatever it is, it isn’t for the likes of you. You’re still in the flippin’ Navy, aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Well, you won’t be much longer, not if you get mixed up in this. I’m just warning you.” He glanced at Shaw again.
“Not going to be accused of murdering that bloke yourself, are you?”
Shaw laughed. “I hope not! I don’t really think so, Jiddle. It’s not that — but, well, I’ve got a good enough reason for keeping my nose just where it is for a little longer. What makes you think there’s something big behind it, though?” Jiddle pursed his Ups. “Only this: That MacNamara went round with a queer sort of gang… that’s all, really…”
“The tough mob?”
“You mean teddies, like in the boozer? No, not them. This was a gang who kept themselves to themselves, sort of, know what I mean? And they was niggers. Nice and polite on the surface, and most of ’em educated, but you had the feeling they was hiding something. Like a sort of club they were, used to meet in each other’s rooms and yammer away till all hours. Sort of nationalistic, I reckon, by what I heard. Africa for the Africans and all that, see?”
Shaw nodded. He saw only too well, saw that things were really starting to link up with Latymer’s ideas — or could be. He asked, “Can you be more specific, Jiddle? This is pretty important.”
Jiddle thought for a moment, then said, “Maybe I can. This is another reason why I remember MacNamara. He had a room looking out the back, not far off some property on the next street, see, where there was white tenants. Well, I used to get a few complaints from there, put through the other landlord, who was a pal of mine. Seems MacNamara and his mates used to kick up a shindy, weird sort of chanting and that. These whites, they used to see goings-on through the window, too. People dressed up funny. Once some old cow swore blind she’d seen what she said was a bunch of monkey’s-tails or something, and one of the blacks crouching down in front of it, praying, she said. I reckon she must have used opera glasses, but there you are, take it or leave it. My pal didn’t believe her, said she was a proper nosey, interfering old bitch, anyhow.”
“What was your reaction, Jiddle?”
“To all that lark, eh? Well… I don’t know really. I dessay it was a bit of ju-ju. Talk to anyone that hasn’t been to Africa, and they’ll laugh at you… but I went there after the war for a while, engaged on a quiet bit of business on the West Coast, you follow? Diamonds. Very profitable. Lived with a black bit an’ all. Well — what I saw and heard I wouldn’t repeat, not in this country, not unless I wanted to be locked up in a loony bin.”
“You mean — voodoo?”
“I don’t really know what I do mean, and that’s the truth. Voodoo… well, I don’t say I believe in it, not really. But when you’ve spent some time out there and seen what does happen, you just don’t dare to disbelieve altogether, no matter how sceptical you are by nature. Take that black bit I told you of. She used to beat it back to her own people every now and again to attend some sort of tribal ceremony. Tried to rope me in, but I wasn’t having any. Well, she’d come back looking like she’d been on a month’s non-stop belt — honest — proper done in, and a sort of mad look in her eyes. She told me once the kind of thing they get up to, and it turned even my stummick. Sex and blood-lust, that’s what it is.” He was silent for a while, as he turned the Humber off to the left of the Hammersmith Road and ran along quiet, poorly lit streets of little houses. Then he gave a grim laugh and said, “I got sick once, the local ‘wog tummy,’ you know what I mean? Couldn’t sit still for two minutes together, got weaker and weaker. Well, she gives me some muck to drink, and I was too beat to worry what was in it till later on, though the taste nearly made me puke me guts up.” He shuddered at the recollection. “Then she tells me it was stuff called borfina. Know what that is, do you?”
“No.”
“It’s medicine, made from the organs of murdered people. You can laugh! I expected to die any minute after she told me that. Funny thing was, it cured me, which is more’n I can say for the stuff the quacks give me.” He added, “I didn’t come down with the last shower as well you know, Mister Shaw, but I dunno… you don’t believe, see, because reason tells you not to. But like I said, you don’t disbelieve either.”
“You keep an open mind?”
Jiddle nodded. “I reckon so, yes. I’ve kept an open mind, anyway… and I’d say that MacNamara could have been a bit of a ju-ju man, or thought he was.”
Shaw laughed. “Come off it, Jiddle. You don’t get witchdoctors in Notting Hill.”
‘How do you know?” Jiddle stared ahead, driving expertly. “Not that I say you do, mind. I don’t even say MacNamara was that, not necessarily. But I do say he was mixed up in funny goings-on and he isn’t really civilized, not even though he’s had an education.”