The Mammoth Book of Best British Mysteries (44 page)

An his eyes, pleadin with me. What could I do? He was my brother. My flesh an blood. An you look after your own.

I’ll not be long, I said.

I left the house.

Down to the part of the estate where you don’t go. I walked quickly, went to the usual spot. Waited.

Eventually he came. Stood before me.

Back so soon? Aaron said. Then smiled. Can’t keep away, can you?

I need some gear, I said.

Aaron waited.

But I’ve got no money.

Aaron chuckled. Then no sale.

Please. It’s for . . . it’s urgent.

Aaron looked around. There was that smile again.

How much d’you want it? he said.

I looked at him.

How much? he said again. An put his hand on my arm.

He moved in closer to me. His mouth right by my ear. He whispered, tickling me. My heart was beatin fit to burst. My legs felt shaky.

You’re like me, he said.

I tried to speak. It took me two attempts. No I’m not, I said.

Oh yes you are. We do what our society says we have to do. Behave like we’re supposed to. Hide our true feelings. What we really are.

I tried to shake my head. But I couldn’t.

You know you are. He got closer. You know I am.

An kissed me. Full on the mouth.

I didn’t throw him off. Didn’t call him a filthy nigger. Didn’t hit him. I kissed him back.

Then it was hands all over each other. I wanted to touch him, feel his body, his beautiful, black body. Feel his cock. He did the same to me. That python was inside me, ready to come out. I
loved the feeling.

I thought of school. How I was made to feel different. Hated them for it. Thought of Ian. What we had got up to. I had loved him. With all my heart. An he loved me. But we got found out. An that
kind of thing is frowned upon, to say the least. So I had to save my life. Pretend it was all his doing. I gave him up. I never saw him again. I never stopped loving him.

I loved what Aaron was doing to me now. It felt wrong. But it felt so right.

I had him in my hand, wanted him in my body. Was ready to take him.

When there was a noise.

We had been so into each other we hadn’t heard them approach.

So this is where you are, they said. Fuckin a filthy nigger when you should be with us.

The footsoldiers. On patrol. An tooled up.

I looked at Aaron. He looked terrified.

Look, I said, it was his fault. I had to get some gear for my brother . . .

They weren’t listening. They were starin at us. Hate in their eyes. As far as they were concerned I was no longer one of them. I was the enemy now.

You wanna run nigger lover? Or you wanna stay here an take your beatin with your boyfriend? The words spat out.

I zipped up my jeans. Looked at Aaron.

They caught the look.

Now run, the machine said, hate in its eyes. But from now on, you’re no better than a nigger or a Paki.

I ran.

Behind me, heard them layin into Aaron.

I kept running.

I couldn’t go home. I had no gear for Tom. I couldn’t stay where I was. I might not be so lucky next time.

So I ran.

I don’t know where.

After a while I couldn’t run any more. I slowed down, tried to get me breath back. Too tired to run anymore. To fight back.

I knew who I was. Finally. I knew WHAT I WAS.

An it was a painful truth. It hurt.

Then from the end of the street I saw them. Pakis. A gang of them. Out protecting their own community. They saw me. Started running.

I was too tired. I couldn’t outrun them. I stood up, waited for them. I wanted to tell them I wasn’t a threat, that I didn’t hate them.

But they were screaming, shouting, hate in their eyes.

A machine. Cogs an clangs an fists an hammers.

I waited, smiled.

Love shining in my own eyes.

John Harvey

These things I remember about Diane Adams: the way a lock of her hair would fall down across her face and she would brush it back with a quick tilt of her head and a flick of
her hand; the sliver of green, like a shard of glass, high in her left eye; the look of surprise, pleasure and surprise, when she spoke to me that first time – “And you must be, Jimmy,
right?”: the way she lied.

It was November, late in the month and the night air bright with cold that numbed your fingers even as it brought a flush of color to your cheeks. London, the winter of fifty-six, and we were
little more than kids then, Patrick, Val and myself, though if anyone had called us that we’d have likely punched him out, Patrick or myself at least, Val in the background, careful,
watching.

Friday night it would have been, a toss-up between the Flamingo and Studio 51, and on this occasion Patrick had decreed the Flamingo: this on account of a girl he’d started seeing, on
account of Diane. The Flamingo a little more cool, a little more style; more likely to impress. Hip, I suppose, the word we would have used.

All three of us had first got interested in jazz at school, the trad thing first, British guys doing a earnest imitation of New Orleans; then, for a spell, it was the Alex Welsh band we followed
around, a hard-driving crew with echoes of Chicago, brittle and fast, Tuesday nights the Lyttelton place in Oxford Street, Sundays a club out at Wood Green. It was Val who got us listening to the
more modern stuff, Parker 78s on Savoy, Paul Desmond, the Gerry Mulligan Quartet.

From somewhere, Patrick got himself a trumpet and began practicing scales, and I kicked off playing brushes on an old suitcase while saving for the down payment on a set of drums. Val, we
eventually discovered, already had a saxophone – an old Selmer with a dented bell and a third of the keys held on by rubber bands: it had once belonged to his old man. Not only did he have a
horn, but he knew how to play. Nothing fancy, not yet, not enough to go steaming through the changes of
Cherokee
or
I Got Rhythm
the way he would later, in his pomp, but tunes you
could recognize, modulations you could follow.

The first time we heard him, really heard him, the cellar room below a greasy spoon by the Archway, somewhere the owner let us hang out for the price of a few coffees, the occasional pie and
chips, we wanted to punch him hard. For holding out on us the way he had. For being so damned good.

Next day, Patrick took the trumpet back to the place he’d bought it, Boosey and Hawkes, and sold it back to them, got the best price he could. “Sod that for a game of
soldiers,” he said, “too much like hard bloody work. What we need’s a bass player, someone half-decent on piano, get Val fronting his own band.” And he pushed a bundle of
fivers into my hand. “Here,” he said, “go and get those sodding drums.”

“What about you?” Val asked, though he probably knew the answer even then. “What you gonna be doin’?”

“Me?” Patrick said. “I’m going to be the manager. What else?”

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

Private parties, weddings, 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. Diane, I’m supposed to meet her. Leicester Square tube.” He looked at his watch. “Any time now.
Go down there for me, okay? Bring her to the club; we’ll see you there.”

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

“The tube,” I said. “Which exit?”

Patrick grinned. “You’ll get it figured.”

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

“Diane?” Hands in my pockets, trying and failing to look cool, blushing already. “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 flaw, her eyes were brown, a soft chocolatey brown, I could see that now.

Is it possible to smile ironically? That’s what she was doing. “All right, Jimmy,” she said. “Where are we going?”

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. Diane 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.

Diane 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 went out together, Diane 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 Pêche
with René 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, doing deals, ducking and weaving, and Diane – well, I didn’t
know about Diane. 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 Diane 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 bed-sitter 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 Diane. 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?” Diane 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.” Diane 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 Diane 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 LeSage, 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. Diane 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 Diane 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. Nine years later I was a detective sergeant working out of West
End Central and Patrick had not long since opened his third night club in a glitter of flash bulbs 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: favors 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. Diane, I heard, had walked out on Patrick; reconciled, Patrick had walked out on her. Now they were back together again, but for how long?