V
The curtains were drawn. The doors of the pub closed against the vulgar world. The inner circle of the Connoisseurs of Crime paddled yet again through the shallows of forensic legend; traded atrocities. They dominated, complacently, a log fire powered by gas jets. Errlund, his desert boots on Hywood’s chair, was hogging the conversation.
‘“Sir” graciously took me along to the Beefsteak,’ he droned. ‘Too many flapping ears at the Athenaeum. The old pansy didn’t want his posh pals to catch him hobnobbing with a scribbler. Yes, he’d try the fish — a palsied scrape of cod. Difficulties with his choppers. Nearly spat them on to the plate every time he opened his mouth. Une belle horreur!’
‘Spare us the complete rollcall of domestic details this time, old boy,’ Hywood yawned. He’d heard it all before. And it wasn’t improving. Some fool had mentioned Errlund in the same breath as Marcel Proust, and it had gone, quite disastrously, to his head. The reviewer had, of course, been discussing types of morbid pathology, and not literary style.
‘I followed him,’ Errlund continued, impervious to cynicism, or any other form of moral censorship, short of an iron muzzle. ‘I followed him into the dining room. Have you noticed how he walks these days? Waddles, I should say. He lurched between the tables, like a circus elephant with the squitters. Nodded seigneurial acknowledgement to complete strangers. They thought I was doing the decent thing — bringing him out for the afternoon from the nuthatch.’
‘For God’s sake, Errlund. Drop the Chips Channon routine, and get on to the serial killings. Are you going to publish the surgeon’s papers in full, or are you going to “summarize” them, and bend whatever you find there to fit with your own theories?’ Hywood tugged at his earlobe in annoyance. He’d given the advantage to Errlund. He’d betrayed interest. Now the bastard would pad it out until all the chaps forgot it was his turn to get in a round.
‘When we finally eased him into his seat, he had the greatest difficulty remembering where he was,’ Errlund sailed on, serenely. ‘He stared up at me over his half-moons in a perfect rictus of terror. He must have concluded I was his valet, or bumboy, and he simply couldn’t imagine why I was sitting down with him at table. He was far too gentil to mention it, of course. All that shit flogged into him at Eton and Balliol. His fine grey eyes were watering slightly, and there was just a hint of rouge on his cortisone-puffy cheeks.’
Errlund paused. His timing was perfect. Hywood’s eyes were shut. But he was faking. ‘Get on with it, man,’ he growled. ‘Or do you want me to finish it for you? “If you do this thing…” Is that right?’
‘Quite right,’ Errlund conceded. ‘He gazed at me for a few moments, in silence, to convince me of his seriousness. “If you do this thing,” he croaked, “you’ll be blackballed. No decent club will touch you. You’ll never see your name in the Honours List. Your K will remain a pipedream.” Then he excused himself; his “secret sorrow”, problems with the waterworks. One of the waiters carried him back, trouser-cuffs steaming. He counted his cold sprouts and gave me a very significant look.’
A snort from Hywood, followed by a jaw-cracking yawn, indicated that he was crossing the borderland of sleep. Errlund’s narrative was underwriting his nightmare. Hywood had joined them at the table.
‘His concentration was fading fast,’ said Errlund mercilessly, ‘but he managed to signal for the custard. “Make me a promise,” he trembled. “You will never again associate that noble name with those tedious crimes. They can never pay you enough blood-money. Leave it to the Penny Dreadfuls, old chap. What can it possibly matter to the civilized portion of society if a few whores are slit from nape to navel? I’ve never myself cared for sports, but these hulking and vigorous young blackguards must sow their wild oats. Let them keep it to the streets, and pray they do not frighten the horses.”’
Hywood sat up with a start. ‘Did he actually confirm that your man was the guilty party?’
‘Oh no,’ said Errlund, ‘he was much too far gone. He’d wandered off among the yolky richness of Kentish brickwork, honey-coloured Cotswold stone, Winston, Guy, Jim Lees-Milne. “Must say,” he drawled, à propos de rien, “quite surprised, glancing out of the jarvey on the way over — the vast numbers of coloured people passing unmolested down the Haymarket.” Then, without warning, he shoved a bundle of letters towards me, under cover of the cheeseboard; coughing into his sleeve, and fluttering his eyelashes like a Venetian concubine. “You see, Errlund?” he broke out again. “You take my point? You have a contribution to make. Your name is often spoken aloud on the wireless. I can arrange for you to view all the private papers. I’ll give you another man altogether, a sick soul. A much better yarn. What can the “truth” matter now — when you set it against an advance from an honourable publisher? Your fame is assured. Take your time, go down to the country. It will be marked in the right places, I promise you. Drop in, any Thursday, at the Albany. My day, you know.” I had to lift his hand from my knee. When I walked out, he was still talking to the empty chair. The waiter was taking a brandy glass to his lips, then patting him dry with the folded edge of an Irish-linen napkin.’
Bobby, the publican and sinner, the gold-maned ‘television personality’, posed for a moment in the doorway, then tottered to the bar and shot a very large gin into a dirty glass. ‘Cunts,’ he whispered, superstitiously. And pressed his glass against the tiny shoulders of the dispenser.
A Romanesque docker, head slicked with sump oil, sleeves rolled threateningly above the elbow, kept his back to the fireside cabal of Crime Connoisseurs, while he indulged in some serious drinking. He was being talked to, whined at, flattered, flirted with, and altogether patronized by Conlin, the notorious Lowlife photographer. An evil-smelling dwarf who had lost his christian name, thirty years before, in a strict discipline Naval Training Establishment for delinquent boys. His Leica was on the stool beside him. The great Conlin! The man who had shot, and later destroyed, the definitive portrait of John Minton. Beads of salt-sweat rolled down the contours of his coarse-grained skin. Smirking, then sniffing, he began to excavate the docker’s ear with his tongue. Without hurrying, or spilling a drop, the docker finished his drink. He stood up, rolled his shoulders, and clamped his vast hands around the back of Conlin’s neck. He looked for a long moment into the photographer’s eyes: then he nutted him. And watched him drop, screaming, on to the floor.
Gamely, Bobby rushed forward to hook Conlin’s elbows back on to the bar. Blood was dripping from the photographer’s broken nose into his vodka. Bobby teased a cigarette between Conlin’s trembling lips, and lit it with his own.
The board behind the line of inverted spirit bottles was decorated with exotic postcards from Bobby’s collection: jungles, ivory poachers, whips, balconies. Bobby tried to take his mind off things by constructing a fiction that would animate these static images.
Recklessly inspired, he groped for Conlin’s camera. He propped the wilting photographer between the docker and his mate; then fidgeted the group, until the sign, BUOYS, could be clearly read on the left of the composition. He carefully framed out the corresponding door, marked GULLS.
The dockers were rigid, severe; breathless. One of them mimed danger, by fingering a kiss curl; while the other excited a detumescent bicep.
Bobby, the artist, was not quite satisfied. After prolonged meditation, and a final check through the viewfinder of his fingers, he darted forward to unzip Conlin, fumble him, shake him out. The earwig! Now satisfied, he snapped the shutter on another fragment of his one-day-to-be-published tribute to a lost generation: the Tilbury Group. He might give his agent a tinkle.