“What’s your blood group, Alex?”
“No idea — why?”
“I think you know why. What can you tell me about a bloodstained raincoat found under a park bench in Soho Square?”
Alex saw a straw to clutch at. “Neatly folded, was it?”
“Might’ve been, why?”
“Because he was carrying a neatly folded raincoat when he came out of Hog Court.”
“Well, let’s say somebody was carrying a neatly folded raincoat,” said Bone grudgingly. “What size d’you take, Alex? Medium?”
“No idea — I’ve told you, I don’t own a raincoat.”
As they progressed from pub to pub, Detective Sergeant Bone having greatly extended the rerun of last night’s tour with the seeming intention of covering every one of Soho’s forty-eight pubs, their path continued to cross and recross that of Kim Grizzard, who was growing ever more agitated, ever more belligerent and ever more drunk.
There had been no sign of anyone resembling the owner of the Swiss Army knife, no reported sightings in response to Bone’s oblique enquiries.
By the time they reached the Wellington Arms Alex, with more drinks inside him than was good for him on a near-empty stomach, had quite forgotten what the man they were seeking looked like, or indeed who they were seeking at all, and why. Of one thing he was tolerably sure, and that was that he had never set foot in this pub before. It was on the corner of Shaftesbury Avenue and Rupert Place, and he could remember, during the course of last night’s epic pub crawl, James Flood advising him that no true Sohoite ever set foot in Shaftesbury Avenue except to cross over into Chinatown. He had said it several times.
Then Kim Grizzard wasn’t a true Sohoite, for he was lolling at the marble and mahogany bar of this Shaftesbury Avenue gin palace, nursing a large Scotch and showing an easy familiarity with the place. “Tell Mr O’Reilly it’s Kim Grizzard,” he was instructing the barman in thick tones. “I’ll only keep him a moment.”
“But he’s upstairs having his lunch, Mr Grizzard.”
“He can drink that later. Tell him it’s urgent. Go on, be a good chap.”
As the barman reluctantly took himself up the stairs, Alex looked around for the gents’, and was at once struck with the sensation of deja vu. For if he had not been in this pub before he had certainly seen that heavy varnished door before, with the inscription “Gentlemen” in black Gothic lettering.
And as he passed through the door it all came back. The Post-it slip on the urinal wall. “Does anyone ever see Big John who used to come in here and Muriel’s? He liked a drink and a fight.” To which the PS “RIP” had been added. And now there was a further addendum: “Balls. He is on remand in Brixton for GBH.”
Alex came out of the gents’ and looked as casually as he could towards the corner table by the Shaftesbury Avenue entrance to the pub. Yes, he had a result. Dapper, middle-aged, clerkish, sipping half a Guinness and reading the latest edition of the Evening Standard, which had changed its headline: SOHO MURDER KNIFE FOUND.
He rejoined Detective Sergeant Bone at the bar and rather over-conspiratorially murmured: “Bloke in that corner near the bogs. Half a Guinness and the Evening Standard.”
Without looking round Detective Sergeant Bone glanced up into one of the heavily engraved mirrors that festooned the Victorian pub.
“Sure?”
“Positive.”
“All right, don’t look round. Make conversation.”
Quite taken with the role he had been assigned in this little drama, Alex said jauntily, if far too loudly: “Man U were shite on Saturday, didn’t you reckon?”
“Dunno about that, I’m an Arsenal man myself,” said Detective Sergeant Bone with appalling stiltedness, his eyes fixed on the mirror. Alex racked his brains for something conversational to add to the conversation.
Meanwhile Kim Grizzard had positioned himself towards the end of the bar, opposite the caryatid-littered curving staircase down which the landlord could be expected to make his appearance, which he now did. With a napkin tucked into a yellow plaid waistcoat, and bristling handlebar moustaches, he obviously regarded himself as a bit of a character.
“Ah, Master Grizzard himself!” boomed mine host, as he no doubt described himself. “I was expecting you at breakfast time, not lunch time.”
“Sean! You’ve found it!” In his relief Kim Grizzard mimed an elaborate heart-attack.
“Found what, Kim?” The landlord winked owlishly down the bar at Detective Sergeant Bone, who was ploddingly discussing with Alex the merits and demerits of Leeds United.
“Come on, Sean, stop pissing me about. Where was it?”
“Right here under the cider barrel, where your young friend left it.” Yeh yeh yeh yeh, it was all coming back now. They had come in through the Shaftesbury Avenue entrance, had the one, had a slash, and gone out through the Rupert Place door. Completely forgetting about the script. And that little bloke was sitting over there fiddling with his Swiss Army knife. So why didn’t Detective Sergeant Bone go over and nick him, then? What was he waiting for? To finish his drink, most likely.
“He’s no friend of mine, Sean. So what have you done with it?”
“Well, now.” The landlord paused weightily. Alex, listening, felt almost sorry for Kim Grizzard, saddled as he was with the publican’s determination to wring the last drop of juice out of the situation.
“Yes, well, get on with it, Sean. Is the script safe, that’s all I want to know?”
“It’s in the safest place you could ever dream of, Kim. I took one look at your title, Freeze When You Say That, and I thought, There’s only one home for this till he comes in for it.” The landlord paused drolly for effect, his tongue plunged into his cheek.
“Oh, fucking come on, for Christ’s sake!”
“Well, where would you put a book with a title like that, if you wanted to keep it safe and sound?” asked the landlord, in the slightly sulky tones of one whose joke is being spoiled.
“All right, Sean, I’ve got it. Come in, Kim. The deep freeze, right?”
The landlord allowed himself a beam of self-congratulation. “Mind you, I’m not saying it won’t be smelling strongly of lasagne or fish pie by the time you’ve got it thawed out.”
He went over to the deep freeze in a cubby-hole behind the bar. A cloud of dry ice rose as he slid back the lid and extracted what looked like, and in fact was, a solid block of A4 ice about two and a half inches thick. “Jesus, haven’t I been saying this thing’s turned up too high?” exclaimed the landlord as he plonked the ice parcel down on the bar counter like a frozen chicken. Through it, as in a distorting mirror, could be seen Kim’s wilting title page. Freeze When You Say That, a novel by Kim Grizzard, in a typescript that waved and curled as if it were under water, as of course it would be once it had thawed.
Kim didn’t speak, probably couldn’t speak, but simply sank on to a bar stool and began to caress the A4 ice pack until his palms grew moist.
Having extracted all the entertainment value he could out of the frozen manuscript, the landlord, twirling his moustaches, moved along the bar to ingratiate himself with Detective Sergeant Bone.
“Morning, Sergeant Bone, and how’s Sergeant Bone? Haven’t seen the good Inspector Wills of late. Do give him my —”
Even Alex could see that he might just as well have held up an illuminated sign flashing “Police”.