Walking down Fleet Street is like going back in time. The straggling lines of buildings are black with soot but still have that air of lofty grandeur I associate with top hats and carriages. There were plenty of bowler hats about, and wigs – lawyers from the Inns of Court – but the air was thick with traffic smoke, and the stink was enhanced by the odd steaming pile of horse manure. Hard to imagine the old river somewhere under the road, burbling down to the Thames.
The best view, through the arch of the railway line that sliced across the street, was the dome of St Paul’s. No one knows how it survived; it’s not as if Jerry was trying benevolently to miss our cathedrals. Look what they did to Coventry.
The Wren was dark and low-ceilinged; their original customers must have been a lot shorter. I settled in with my papers and beer. I read the Trumpet from cover to cover, got stuck on The Times crossword, and finished a pint and two Players before Eve materialised next to my table.
“You’re reading the wrong rag, you know.” She flicked my Times. She was flushed but not a bit embarrassed at being half an hour late.
I sprang to my feet. My memory hadn’t betrayed me; teasing eyes and turbulent hair. Something flipped inside me, a forgotten thrill. I’d be quoting Burns to her next.
She slung her coat over the spare seat and sat down opposite me. She looked round to get her bearings. I’d chosen a corner spot and we were sufficiently far from the next table not to be overheard. Not that the two old boys had any interest in anything other than their next domino. It was war; they clutched their tiles to their chests like they held details of Hitler’s last secret weapon in their hands, silent except for the occasional crash of a tile on the wood table or muttered oath before “chapping”. Eve caught me eyeing them and smiled at me. A good smile. A conspiratorial smile.
I pulled the Trumpet out from under my coat and flourished it. “I’ve already done my homework. Yesterday and today.”
“Good. That’s how to butter up your clients. What did you think?” She put on her inquisitorial look.
“The truth, or do you want me to make you happy?”
She laughed. “The truth makes me happy.”
“There are some very, very good… cartoons.”
“Bastard.”
“And… some of the writing is pretty good too. I’m not just saying this. Your column is about the best in the paper. It’s well written, and makes its point.”
“Hmmm. I think you’re being sincere.” Her head lifted and her sallow eyelids narrowed like a haughty face on a Pharaoh’s tomb. “But I don’t know you well enough, Daniel McRae.”
“Trust me, I don’t know why you’re worried about losing your job. I don’t see any competition. Not in here.”
“Remind me to introduce you to my editor. I need to be ten times better than the next man. That’s how it is. I need new material, new angles, new stories. All I do is report what I hear sitting in the Old Bailey.” She pointed up towards the Aldwych. “And then some follow-up with the victim’s family. The personal angle.
Any fool can do that. I want to report stories before they get to court.” She had that gleam in her eye again, the one I saw in my office when she got enthused at the idea of patrolling the dark side of town with me.
“Right, then. Have you got your walking shoes?”
She looked down at her leg and lifted her foot.
“Will these do?”
I admired her slim brown leg for a moment longer than I needed. “They’ll do nicely,” I grinned.
“I meant the shoes,” she said dryly. “Where are you taking me?”
“Tea with Mary.”
We cut through the green stench and slippy cobbles of the market at Covent Garden. Several stalls are still serving fruit and veg, but the real business finished long before sun-up, unloading the fresh produce from the lorries and carts. The bars down Longacre are full of the porters who breakfasted on full fries and stout, and stayed on for the fun of it.
We resist their siren calls and cross Charing Cross Road into Soho. Along Rupert Street, trying to look businesslike rather than furtive. But a red-light district on a sunny afternoon isn’t an easy place to blend into. The denizens of the night are creeping about in mufti pretending to be normal citizens doing normal things like shopping, getting a haircut and chatting with their mates on street corners. It feels like a stage-set before the evening performance. We get the odd offer: two for the price of one, guv? You and your girl looking for a threesome, luv? But there’s no conviction in the solicitations, just practising their lines for when the curtain goes up.
“And this Mama Mary, you know her purely through business?”
I pretended not to hear the irony in her voice. “I helped her with a little thieving problem. Then she helped me over the Caldwell case.” That was as far as I would go. I just hoped that Mama Mary would heed my phone call plea to stick with that line. It was no business of Eve Copeland what I got up to in my private life, but I didn’t want her thinking badly of me.
We stopped outside the green door. “Now remember our bargain, Eve. Whatever is said in here is off the record. No mention of Mary or her girls in anything you print. Or all bets are off…”
“Relax, Danny, I’m like a priest.”
“You are nothing like a priest. Shall we?” I knocked and waited. Mama Mary must have been watching for us. The door eased open, a bird-like head darted out, looked each way, and a tiny but strong hand dragged us both inside. We crowded into the hall with its tasteful fake Rubens, a big fleshy girl with dimples in her rear.
“Scared what the neighbours might say, Mary?”
“Scared of big fat rozzer. Always sticking nose in.”
My blood cooled. “Not Wilson? Don’t say he’s back on the beat?”
“No, no. Silly man. You stopped him plenty good. Shoulda stopped him dead. Tea for you too, missy?” she asked Eve as she brought us into her private room.
Eve was too busy gawping at the sea of crimson to respond.
“Sorry? Tea would be lovely. This place of yours, Mama Mary, it’s very… very…”
“Red,” I whispered.
“… charming,” she finished.
We slithered among the silk and satin cushions, and Mary smiled at us as she poured the tea.
“Danny say you write in paper. Not ’bout us!”
“No, no. Mary. I promise you. I just need some help. Some advice.”
“I got advice. Stop. Don’t you go looking for trouble. Enough come to you.”
“It’s my job, Mary. All I want is to get a little closer to the action. Danny tells me you know everything that’s going on in…”
“… in bad part of town? That what you mean? Sure, lady. I got best ears in business.” She giggled, which might have looked charming in someone half her age. Though with her tiny physique, her black wig and her thick painted face, I couldn’t begin to put a year on Mary.
“Mary, one thing before we get started. I know how much you like silk…” I glanced round the room. “The redder the better, eh? Do you mind telling me where you get it?”
She screwed up her face so that her eyes became cunning slits.
“Why you interested, Danny? I paid all this.” She swept her hand round the room festooned with shiny hangings.
“I’m sure you paid for it, Mary. But maybe not full price. I’m not going to report you and this is off the record for Eve here. A customer of mine keeps losing some silk. I want to know where it turns up. I have my suspicions.”
Mary sat thinking for a second or two. “OK, Danny I trust you. But if I get in trouble ’cos you, then I send boys to cut off balls, OK?”
I coughed and dodged Eve’s stifled laugh. “Fair enough, Mary. What do you know?”
“Place in Whitechapel. On top of shop. Always got plenty stuff. Got stall in Petticoat Lane, but that rubbish. Good stuff, you need to know right man.” She tapped her head indicating she was in the know.
“Do you have a name, Mary? Just between these four walls. Promise.”
“I tell.” She shrugged. “No do you good. Big top guy too big to touch. Gamba, they call him.”
“Gamba? Gambatti? Pauli Gambatti?”
I whistled but it was no surprise. Gambatti had his finger in every dirty pie from Stepney in the east to Gray’s Inn in the west, and from the Thames up through Whitechapel and Bethnal Green to Hackney in the north. The western edge of his territory collided – in frequent bloody disputes – with Jonny Crane, boss of Soho and Holborn. His patch covered the warehouse area of Wapping. Out of the corner of my eye I caught Eve’s face. Her eyes were alight and her teeth were bared.
“Know him?” I asked her.
“I know of him. A name that comes up a lot in conversation. But I’ve never been able to use it in a story. He’s got expensive lawyers.”
I left it at that. We drank more tea, and Mary told us of dark rooms where poker was played, drinking dens that were open all hours, dog races where both dogs and punters were drugged, and pubs where you could arrange for a business rival or straying spouse to be fixed – permanently if required – for less than fifty quid. Eve wrote and wrote and when we emerged Soho was dipped in a golden glow from the last of the sun, and Mama Mary had broken off twice to welcome her first guests of the day to the pleasure palace: men dropping by on their way home from work.
“I need a drink,” Eve said as we stumbled into the light.
“As long as it’s not tea.”
“Never. I will never drink another cup of tea.”
“I know a place.” I checked my watch. “And they’re open in ten minutes.”
I steered her through Soho noting the subtle changes that were taking place.
Lights coming on in dark doorways, bouncers rolling their shoulders, heavily made-up girls beginning their patrols. The streets were filling with men with hats pulled down despite the early summer warmth. As we walked, we touched occasionally; I even held her arm from time to time to see her across a road or past a pushy procurer. She didn’t seem to mind.
We joined a small queue outside the Dog and Duck in Greek Street. Neither of us looked at each other, not wishing to advertise our need. At exactly six o’clock the bolts rattled; the door gaped open and a rush of stale air wafted over us. I got us drinks and led the way upstairs. We were the only customers in the small dark room. It smelled of two hundred years of beer and smoke.
“Cheers!” I raised my pint glass.
She smiled and clinked her vodka and lemonade. “Cheers, Danny. Thank you. I liked Mary.”
“She’s a tough little cookie, but honest. As honest as a madam can be, I suppose.”
“She seems to like you.”
“I told you, we helped each other.”
“But I’m not sure if I got anything that will make my readers sit up and buy more papers.” She took out her notebook – a black leather-bound pad that fitted into her raincoat pocket. She flicked through it, frowning. “Sorry, I don’t mean to be ungrateful. It’s just I need more…”
“… excitement? Look, if you’re up to it, we could grab a bite and then try one of the clubs or illegal bars. I think I can get us in.”
She shook her head, and I felt curiously let down at the prospect of saying goodnight.
“I can make something of it.” She raised her hand and drew a headline in the air. “Illicit gambling den! All-night bars of Soho! But it’s been done. And everybody knows it goes on. I need action. Bring me the head of a gangster,” she challenged. “Crime boss captured in shoot-out. That’s what makes the news.”
“If only we had Prohibition.” I sat back and examined her, trying to see the situation dispassionately, as if what I was about to suggest was simply business. I digested her quirky features – nose too long, eyes too big and mouth too full. Some women – not always the prettiest – set your blood racing. You want to do foolish things in front of them to keep their interest: cartwheels, picking fights with strangers, robbing a jewellery store. Eve had that quality.
I wanted to impress her, to keep her near me.
Yet I knew nothing about this woman. I looked down at my beer and tried to picture her climbing a wall, running for cover, perhaps swimming for her life. I thought of the agents I’d worked with – women so brave and selfless it made you feel namby-pamby. Was she up to their mark? No one ever knows until they’re tested. And by then it’s too late.
But Eve Copeland seemed to have fire in her belly. Look what she had achieved.
And the way she’d sought me out. It said a lot about her determination. I lifted my gaze again into her questioning eyes. Unless I had failed to get the measure of her, I’d seen this sort of steel in only a few people in my life.
“Are you scared of water?” I asked.
“I’m a fish. You should see me at the Lido.”
“I’d like to.’ I smiled at the thought. “OK in boats?”
“Big ones or little ones?”
“Little to start with. Can you take a risk?”
“Life’s a risk. What is it?!”
“What I’m about to propose is dangerous. You could get hurt… badly. Depends what we run into. Who we run into.”
“Are you going to tell me before I start screaming?”
“There’s going to be a raid. On a warehouse.”
She was sitting forward now, her dark eyes gleaming. “That’s more like it.” She looked round the empty bar and lowered her voice theatrically. “Tell me more.”
“Bales of silk. Mary described the end result. We’ll have a ringside seat at the start. The warehouse owner’s being robbed blind. Tomorrow there’s a fresh shipment in from Holland on the goods ship Clever Girl. I’m going to try to stop them.”
“Count me in!”
“There’s one thing. Mary mentioned a name. It shook you. Pauli Gambatti. I think he’s behind this. If he is, he won’t be happy. In fact he’ll go berserk. And he’ll know you were on the inside if you write the story. Still want in?”
She handled it well, barely blinked. But I could see her pupils dilate. She forced a smile.
“I’m in! Look, I’m starving. One more of these and I’ll fall over. How about an early dinner? My treat. It’s on the paper. You can tell me all about it.”
She knew an Italian restaurant just off High Holborn. It was one more Italian than I’d ever been in, if you don’t count Glasgow chippies. She told me it had been shut for much of the war after Churchill had ordered the internment of “enemy aliens”. The aliens seemed pleased to see her. I just hoped they harboured no hard feelings as they stirred their pots. We took a corner table, and I had to ask the stupid question: “Do you come here with your boyfriend?”
She looked amused. “That’s very personal.”
“You’re joining my gang. I need to know a bit about you.” It was only half a lie.
“No boyfriend. Too busy. And even if I had the time, not enough good men to go around. Single men. Why aren’t you married?”
Back to her defensive tricks again. “I’ve been busy too.” I tapped my skull.
“Before the war.”
“There were girls.” I shrugged, and thought of the sparky mill lassies in Kilpatrick on a Saturday night, mad for dancing, mad for men. Get a man, get pregnant, get married, get old. Not like the cerebral ones I met at university who were more interested in the meaning of life than living it. “And you?” I asked.
She looked distant for a moment, and I was about to change the subject. “There was a boy. I don’t know what happened to him.” She shook her head.
“Sorry. Any sisters? Brothers?”
“Someone you can invite to the funeral?” she parried.
“It’s not going to be that risky.”
“Shame.” She relented. “No, no family. Only child. Mum and dad both gone.” Her jaw tightened and for a second, I glimpsed a different Eve Copeland. Then the barrier came back up. She picked up her fork and jabbed the back of my hand, hard enough to leave a mark. “This really is a job interview, isn’t it? Next it’ll be hobbies and interests. Then why do I want this job and what my qualifications are, and…”
“OK! Enough! I give in.” I laughed and rubbed my hand.
We broke off the swordplay and ordered some lasagne and a glass each of red wine. I took her lead on the food. The Tally caffs in Glasgow only served fish suppers and ice cream. The wine was better than the camel piss I’d tried in North Africa when I had a forty-eight-hour pass, but not much. I’m a Scotch drinker through and through. But the acid red seemed to mellow her.
“Danny, I’m very boring. I work hard at the paper. Any spare time I have, I read. I read till my eyes bleed. That’s my life.”
“That’s not boring. What do you read?”
“Anything. Everything! There’s so much.” Her face glowed.
“Library?”
She shook her head. “I love being the first to open a book. It is a complete indulgence. But at sixpence a go…”
“Penguins!” Without thinking, I stretched out my hand and laid it over hers. She didn’t seem to notice, just nodded sheepishly as though admitting to a cocaine habit. I left my hand over hers.
“You too?” she asked.
“I’ve had to put up a new shelf. Who do you read?”
“Hemingway, Linklater…”
“Mackenzie, Christie…” I raised her.
She riposted with, “Orwell, Priestley…”
We were showing off. But isn’t that what you do when you find a fellow clan member? In the excitement, our fingers seemed to become laced.
“OK, OK. Here’s the test.” I squeezed her hand. “Steinbeck.”
“Tortilla Flat, Of Mice and Men…”
“Grapes of Wrath! What did you think of Grapes of Wrath?”
“I wept,” she said simply.
“Will you marry me?”
“And share my Penguins? Never!”
They tried clearing our table and sweeping up around us. Finally they put upturned chairs on the tables, so that we sat in a forest of thin columns. We took the hint at last and I walked her home through Bloomsbury to her digs in Russell Square. It felt companionable and right to hold hands all the way. Her fingers were long and slim and hot. We weren’t sure what to do on the doorstep and ended up with a brush of lips on lips. It was enough to get a taste of lipstick and wine and cigarettes, and I wanted more. But she seemed to blink, as though coming out of a dream. She backed away and slipped inside. Yet something had begun. It was easy to involve her in my business. Easy to get involved with her, period. That’s my excuse.