“Shut it!” snarled the detective sergeant.
Too late. Alex heard the scrape of a bar stool and, turning — he guessed he was now allowed to do so — was in time to see the stool hurtled across the floor and Bone’s quarry diving through swing doors, with Detective Sergeant Bone sprawling over the obstacle as he headed in pursuit.
No one had ever accused Alex of thinking on his feet so it was probably instinct rather than quick intelligence that made him figure out that instead of dashing up Shaftesbury Avenue, where his flight would be impeded by the drifting crowds and thick traffic, the fugitive might just turn immediately right into Rupert Place along the side of the pub and try to lose himself in the maze of quiet little streets.
Without much idea of what he meant to do with it, except a feeling that he ought to be armed, Alex grabbed the ice-bound copy of Freeze When You Say That from the bar counter and, with Grizzard’s protesting oaths ringing in his ears, crashed through the Rupert Place door of the pub in time to see the wanted man haring across the street.
With a skill he did not know he possessed, he skimmed the frozen manuscript across the Tarmac like an ice-hockey puck. Following the camber of the street, it curled around the man’s feet. Startled, he stumbled, slithered and went flat on his face.
Charging up behind him, Detective Sergeant Bone jumped heavily on his back. “Well done, Alex,” he panted. “Though mark you, if it turns out we’ve got the wrong bloke, he can probably do you for compensation. In fact,” he added as he struggled with his handcuffs, “the way things are going these days, he’ll most likely sue you in any case.”
12
James Flood had got the whole story from Detective Inspector Wills, although to his great disgust all he could use of it was that a man was being held.
The man was Christine’s divorced father, who ran a small jewellery repair business in Hatton Garden, where he also lived in a tiny flat. He had always entertained hopes that his only son Christopher would join him in the family business, and could never figure out why he had opted to take an accountancy course instead. Now he understood: it was so that Christopher, Christine, could lead two lives, as separate from one another as could be.
This was something that Colin Yardley, as his name was, himself well understood. He was, Detective Inspector Wills had established, no stranger to Soho. It was his habit to visit a certain establishment in Brewer Place once a week with the object of having himself tied to a bed and tickled with feathers. It was his inability to interest Mrs Yardley, Christine’s mother, in this bizarre pursuit that had led to the breakdown of his marriage; and it was on one of his regular visits to Soho to indulge in his unusual hobby that he had first seen his son dressed up as a young woman.
Detective Inspector Wills could not entirely understand why a man with a depraved taste for bondage games should react with such disgust at a son who turned out to be a transvestite. It was, to his mind, a classic case of the pot calling the kettle black. But with that smattering of psychological insight that rubs off on most long-term Soho dwellers, the inspector divined that Colin Yardley had transferred disgust at his own sexual antics to disgust at Christine’s. Some such Freudian bollox anyway, he told Detective Sergeant Bone.
Or maybe it was simple shock. In his son’s youth he had surprised him one afternoon in the parental bedroom dressing up in his mother’s underclothes, and had given him such a good hiding that he considered him cured. It was therefore with dismay that he had recognised Christopher as Christine, poncing along Old Compton Street in high heels like a Soho brass.
At all events, he had kept cautious track of Christine over the weeks, familiarising himself with her movements, and finally accosting her in Greek Street where they had sat at an outdoor café table with untouched thimbles of coffee and, in his words, “had it out”.
Colin Yardley found his son unrepentant and unashamed, which made him angrier and even more disgusted than he was already. But it was when Christine, herself angry, hinted darkly that she had no doubt her father had secrets he wouldn’t want the world to know about that her fate was sealed. Did she know about his visits to Brewer Place? This was Soho, where everyone knew everything.
Christine’s father fondled the Swiss Army knife he always kept in his jacket pocket for carrying out small jewellery repairs. As Christine flounced off he rose and took himself down to the Wellington Arms for a much-needed half of Guinness. He knew what time she would be arriving at the Transylvania Club and what time she would be leaving. He knew where she lived in Hog Court, had often stood below her curtained window until the light went out. He was trembling with rage. It was time to get it over with.
Meeting James Flood in the French House, where he was magnanimously tossing little gobbets of intelligence to envious fellow reporters, Alex found the packed pub seething with the news. Christine had been a popular figure and there was universal satisfaction at the early arrest. Inevitably there was someone who had known her father: that weirdo who used the Wellington Arms. Drank halves of Guinness. Alex reflected that if there was ever anybody he wanted to murder — Selby, as it might be — he would commit the crime well away from Soho. The two flymen instigated a debate on the need for the return of capital punishment.
“Can’t understand why he didn’t do a runner, though,” said the first flyman.
“Nowhere to run to, and anyway he’s not the running type,” said James knowledgeably. “Besides, he wanted to stay around long enough to be sure she was buried as his son and not in a dress and fishnet stockings.”
While a Daily Express man tried to tease more information out of James, Alex made conversation with the two flymen. “Wonder if that old Else knows about Christine’s dad being taken in. I mean, considering it was Else who found her.” He had a vague notion that this gave her proprietorial rights in the case.
“Why don’t you ask her?” suggested the first flyman. “No time like the present.”
“But she can’t be in here, can she? I thought she’d be barred.”
“Oh, she is,” said the second flyman. “But they let her drink out in the street. They pass her a glass through the window.”
The first flyman edged his way across to the open window. There was a throng of drinkers on the pavement but, immediately below the window, one small empty patch that was occupied only by a little pool of water.
“She’s been,” reported the first flyman. “But she’s gone, God bless her.”
“Gone? Who’s gone, God bless her?”
This, in commanding, bossy tones, was from the small, sharp-featured woman who had just entered the French — now where had Alex seen her before, oh yes, woman that ran that blurry restaurant, Baldini’s was it called, who’d refused to serve him a steak and chips even though he was blurry starving? Her.
“Who are you saying has gone?” repeated Mrs Powolny. She spoke in the excited, breathless voice of one who has important tidings, and doesn’t want her thunder stolen.
“Old Else,” said the first flyman.
“Oh. Then you’re not talking about Mabel?”
“Which Mabel? Mabel who?”
“Mabel of the New Kismet. She’s gone.”
“Gone where?”
“Dead. Drowned.”
Someone persuaded Mrs Powolny to start at the beginning. Very well. She had just come up from Brighton, where she had been flat-hunting. Although this was by the way, she had put a deposit on a very nice second-floor apartment in Brunswick Square, overlooking the sea. Brunswick Square was, of course, more in Hove, actually. It was now no secret that she had sold the lease of the restaurant and would be retiring, and awkward customers such as Mr Brendan Barton could henceforth go and whistle. She couldn’t see Starbucks putting up with that kind of behaviour.