A Darker Shade of Blue (32 page)

‘Me?' Patrick said. ‘I'm going to be the manager. What else?'

And, for a time, that was how it was.

Private parties, weddings, christenings and bar mitzvahs, support slots at little clubs out in Ealing or Totteridge that couldn't afford anything better. From somewhere Patrick found a pianist who could do a passable Bud Powell, and, together with Val, that kept us afloat. For a while, a year or so at least. By then even Patrick could see Val was too good for the rest of us and we were just holding him back; he spelled it out to me when I was packing my kit away after an all-nighter in Dorking, a brace of tenners eased down into the top pocket of my second-hand Cecil Gee jacket.

‘What's this?' I said.

‘Severance pay,' said Patrick, and laughed.

Not the first time he paid me off, nor the last.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

That November evening, we'd been hanging round the Bar Italia on Frith Street pretty much as usual, the best coffee in Soho then and now; Patrick was off to one side, deep in conversation with a dark-skinned guy in a Crombie overcoat, the kind who has to shave twice a day and wore a scar down his cheek like a badge. A conversation I was never meant to hear.

‘Jimmy,' Patrick said suddenly, over his shoulder. ‘A favour. Anna, I'm supposed to meet her. Leicester Square Tube.' He looked at his watch. ‘Any time now. Get down there for me, okay? I'll see you at the club later.'

All I'd seen of Anna up to that point had been a photograph, a snapshot barely focused, dark hair worn long, high cheekbones, a slender face. Her eyes – what colour were her eyes?

She came up the steps leading on to Cranbourne Street and I recognised her immediately; tall, taller than I'd imagined, and in that moment – Jesus! – so much more beautiful.

‘Anna?' Hands in my pockets, blushing already, trying and failing to look cool. ‘Patrick got stuck in some kind of meeting. Business, you know? He asked me to meet you.'

She nodded, looking me over appraisingly. ‘And you must be Jimmy, right?' Aside from that slight, quick flicker of green, her eyes were brown, I could see that now, a soft chocolatey brown.

Is it possible to smile ironically? That's what she was doing.

All right, Jimmy,' she said. ‘Where are you taking me?'

When we got to the Flamingo, Patrick and Val had still not arrived. The Tony Kinsey Quintet were on the stand, two saxes and rhythm. I pushed my way through to the bar for a couple of drinks and we stood on the edge of the crowd, close but not touching. Anna was wearing a silky kind of dress that clung to her hips, two shades of blue. The band cut the tempo for ‘Sweet and Lovely', Don Rendell soloing on tenor.

Anna rested her fingers on my arm. ‘Did Patrick tell you to dance with me, too?'

I shook my head.

‘Well, let's pretend that he did.'

Six months I suppose they were together, Anna and Patrick, that first time around, and for much of that six months, I rarely saw them one without the other. Towards the end, Patrick took her off for a few days to Paris, a big deal in those days, and managed to secure a gig for Val while he was there, guesting at the
Chat Qui Peché
with Rene Thomas and Pierre Michelot.

After they came back I didn't see either of them for quite a while: Patrick was in one of his mysterious phases, ducking and weaving, doing deals, and Anna – well, I didn't know about Anna. And then, one evening in Soho, hurrying, late for an appointment, I did see her, sitting alone by the window of this trattoria, the Amalfi it would have been, on Old Compton Street, a plate of pasta in front of her, barely touched. I stopped close to the glass, raised my hand and mouthed ‘Hi!' before scuttling on, but if she saw me I couldn't be sure. One thing I couldn't miss though, the swelling, shaded purple, around her left eye.

A week after this Patrick rang me and we arranged to meet for a drink at the Bald Faced Stag; when I asked about Anna he looked through me and then carried on as if he'd never heard her name. At this time I was living in two crummy rooms in East Finchley – more a bedsitter with a tiny kitchen attached, the bathroom down the hall – and Patrick gave me a lift home, dropped me at the door. I asked him if he wanted to come in but wasn't surprised when he declined.

Two nights later I was sitting reading some crime novel or other, wearing two sweaters to save putting on the second bar of the electric fire, when there was a short ring on the downstairs bell. For some reason, I thought it might be Patrick, but instead it was Anna. Her hair was pulled back off her face in a way I hadn't seen before, and, a faint finger of yellow aside, all trace of the bruise around her eye had disappeared.

‘Well, Jimmy,' she said, ‘aren't you going to invite me in?'

She was wearing a cream sweater, a coffee-coloured skirt with a slight flare, high heels which she kicked off the moment she sat on the end of the bed. My drums were out at the other side of the room, not the full kit, just the bass drum, ride cymbal, hi-hat and snare; clothes I'd been intending to iron were folded over the back of a chair.

‘I didn't know,' I said, ‘you knew where I lived.'

‘I didn't. Patrick told me.'

‘You're still seeing him then?'

The question hung in the air.

‘I don't suppose you've got anything to drink?' Anna said.

There was a half-bottle of Bell's out in the kitchen and I poured what was left into two tumblers and we touched glasses and said, ‘Cheers.' Anna sipped hers, made a face, then drank down most of the rest in a single swallow.

‘Patrick …' I began.

‘I don't want to talk about Patrick,' she said.

Her hand touched the buckle of my belt. ‘Sit here,' she said.

The mattress shifted with the awkwardness of my weight.

‘I didn't know,' she said afterwards, ‘it could be so good.'

You see what I mean about the way she lied.

*

Patrick and Anna got married in the French church off Leicester Square and their reception was held in the dance hall conveniently close by; it was one of the last occasions I played drums with any degree of seriousness, one of the last times I played at all. My application to join the Metropolitan Police had already been accepted and within weeks I would be starting off in uniform, a different kind of beat altogether. Val, of course, had put the band together and an all-star affair it was – Art Ellefson, Bill Le Sage, Harry Klein. Val himself was near his mercurial best, just ahead of the flirtations with heroin and free-form jazz that would sideline him in the years ahead.

At the night's end we stood outside, the three of us, ties unfastened, staring up at the sky. Anna was somewhere inside, getting changed.

‘Christ!' Patrick said. ‘Who'd've fuckin' thought it?'

He took a silver flask from inside his coat and passed it round. We shook hands solemnly and then hugged each other close. When Anna came out, she and Patrick went off in a waiting car to spend the night at a hotel on Park Lane.

‘Start off,' Patrick had said with a wink, ‘like you mean to continue.'

We drifted apart: met briefly, glimpsed one another across smoky rooms, exchanged phone numbers that were rarely if ever called. Years later I was a detective sergeant working out of West End Central and Patrick had not long since opened his third nightclub in a glitter of flashbulbs and champagne; Joan Collins was there with her sister, Jackie. There were ways of skirting round the edges of the law and, so far, Patrick had found most of them: favours doled out and favours returned; backhanders in brown envelopes; girls who didn't care what you did as long as you didn't kiss them on the mouth. Anna, I heard, had walked out on Patrick; reconciled, Patrick had walked out on her. Now they were back together again, but for how long?

When I came off duty, she was parked across the street, smoking a cigarette, window wound down.

‘Give you a lift?'

I'd moved upmarket but not by much, an upper-floor flat in an already ageing mansion block between Chalk Farm and Belsize Park. A photograph of the great drummer, Max Roach, was on the wall; Sillitoe's
Saturday Night and Sunday Morning
next to the Eric Amblers and a few Graham Greenes on the shelf; an Alex Welsh album on the record player, ready to remind me of better times.

‘So, how are things?' Anna asked, doing her best to look as if she cared.

‘Could be worse,' I said. In the kitchen, I set the kettle to boil and she stood too close while I spooned Nescafe into a pair of china mugs. There was something beneath the scent of her perfume that I remembered too well.

‘What does he want?' I asked.

‘Who?'

‘Patrick, who else?

She paused from stirring sugar into her coffee. ‘Is that what it has to be?'

‘Probably.'

‘What if I just wanted to see you for myself?'

The green in her eye was bright under the unshaded kitchen light. ‘I wouldn't let myself believe it,' I said.

She stepped towards me and my arms moved around her as if they had a mind of their own. She kissed me and I kissed her back. She was divorcing him, she said: she didn't know why she hadn't done it before.

‘He'll let you go?'

‘He'll let me go.'

For a moment, she couldn't hold my gaze. ‘There's just one thing,' she said, ‘one thing that he wants. This new club of his, someone's trying to have his licence cancelled.'

‘Someone?'

‘Serving drinks after hours, an allegation, nothing more.'

‘He can't make it go away?'

Anna shook her head. ‘He's tried.'

I looked at her. ‘And that's all?'

‘One of the officers, he's accused Patrick of offering him a bribe. It was all a misunderstanding, of course.'

‘Of course.'

‘Patrick wonders if you'd talk to him, the officer concerned.'

‘Straighten things out.'

‘Yes.'

‘Make him see the error of his ways.'

‘Look, Jimmy,' she said, touching the back of her hand to my cheek, ‘you know I hate doing this, don't you?'

No, I thought. No, I don't.

‘Everything has a price,' I said. ‘Even friendship. Friendship, especially. And tell Patrick, next time he wants something, to come and ask me himself.'

‘He's afraid you'd turn him down.'

‘He's right.'

When she lifted her face to mine I turned my head aside. ‘Don't let your coffee get cold,' I said.

Five minutes later she was gone. I sorted out Patrick's little problem for him and found a way of letting him know if he stepped out of line again, I'd personally do my best to close him down. Whether either of us believed it, I was never sure. With or without my help, he went from rich to richer; Anna slipped off my radar and when she re-emerged, she was somewhere in Europe, nursing Val after his most recent spell in hospital, encouraging him to get back into playing. Later they got married, Val and Anna, or at least that's what I heard. Some lives took unexpected turns. Not mine.

*

I stayed on in the Met for three years after my thirty and then retired; tried working for a couple of security firms, but somehow it never felt right. With my pension and the little I'd squirrelled away, I found I could manage pretty well without having to look for anything too regular. There was an investigation agency I did a little work for once in a while, nothing too serious, nothing heavy, and that was enough.

Patrick I bumped into occasionally if I went up west, greyer, more distinguished, handsomer than ever; in Soho once, close to the little Italian place where I'd spotted Anna with her bruised eye, he slid a hand into my pocket and when I felt where it had been there were two fifties, crisp and new.

‘What's this for?' I asked.

‘You look as though you need it,' he said.

I threw the money back in his face and punched him in the mouth. Two of his minders had me spreadeagled on the pavement before he'd wiped the mean line of blood from his chin.

At Val's funeral we barely spoke; acknowledged each other but little more. Anna looked gaunt and beautiful in black, a face like alabaster, tears I liked to think were real. A band played ‘Just Friends', with a break of thirty-two bars in the middle where Val's solo would have been. There was a wake at one of Patrick's clubs afterwards, a free bar, and most of the mourners went on there, but I just went home and sat in my chair and thought about the three of us, Val, Patrick and myself, what forty years had brought us to, what we'd wanted then, what we'd done.

I scarcely thought about Anna at all.

Jack Kiley, that's the investigator I was working for, kept throwing bits and pieces my way, nothing strenuous like I say, the occasional tail job, little more. I went into his office one day, a couple of rooms above a bookstore in Belsize Park, and there she sat, Anna, in the easy chair alongside his desk.

‘I believe you two know each other,' Jack said.

Once I'd got over the raw surprise of seeing her, what took some adjusting to was how much she'd changed. I suppose I'd never imagined her growing old. But she had. Under her grey wool suit her body was noticeably thicker; her face was fuller, puffed and cross-hatched around the eyes, lined around the mouth. No Botox; no nip and tuck.

‘Hello, Jimmy,' she said.

‘Anna's got a little problem,' Jack said. ‘She thinks you can make it go away.' He pushed back from his desk. ‘I'll leave you two to talk about it.'

The problem was a shipment of cocaine that should have made its way seamlessly from the Netherlands to Dublin via the UK. A street value of a million and a quarter pounds. Customs and Excise, working on a tip-off, had seized the drug on arrival, a clean bust marred only by the fact that the coke had been doctored down to a mockery of its original strength; a double-shot espresso from Caffé Nero would deliver as much of a charge to the system.