The Bee's kiss

Chapter Twenty

Joe strolled down the Strand, both intrigued and disconcerted by Cyril’s flourish. His recipe for good relations with pressmen was a measure of co-operation blended with a strong dash of scepticism and a twist of humour and, on the whole, it seemed to go down well. While resenting their ever more powerful presence in public life, he acknowledged that they did an essential job with some skill and he managed to stay on fair terms with the ones he encountered. And, occasionally, as now, he would be rewarded with a nugget of information. But it was the warning that troubled him.

Sir Nevil had growled the same message and he’d decided to ignore it. Dangerous perhaps. You could get too familiar with the same old sniper who never changed his position. But when you heard enemy fire coming at you from a fresh direction — time to get your head down. And what about Bill? He was more exposed in the firing line than was Joe. He’d tried to warn him, without giving away the details of the plundered file, but Bill had just shrugged it off. He’d said something half-hearted about visiting an aunt in Southend but Joe hadn’t believed a word of it.

Tuesday evening. Joe looked at his watch. Seven. On impulse he struck off to his right and made his way up the Charing Cross Road and just before he got to Oxford Street, he plunged west into Soho.

He always felt he was invading these streets. Once off the broad avenues, they became narrow and crooked. Here and there were glimpses of the remains of centuries-old rookeries, tumbledown houses that had been overstuffed with people, throbbing with crime and stinking of poverty. Now, thankfully, almost all had been demolished to make way for workers’ houses though these themselves were fast degenerating into slums. In spite of the chill of apprehension and the sharpening of his senses which always accompanied him when he walked along these alleys, Joe knew that life and limb and the wallet in his pocket were in far less danger here in Soho than they were on Oxford Street.

Through these few acres flowed a motley population of uncounted thousands from dozens of different countries. You could even occasionally hear a native cockney voice. Joe was amused to hear one hail him as he strode towards Dean Street:

‘Corns and bunions, your honour? Try a dab of my special tincture!’ The hawker waved a bottle filled with vivid green liquid. ‘Nothing goes into this but pure herbs and the sweat of my brow. . oh, go on, sir! Man in your job — he’d need a bit of relief for his feet.’

How the hell had he known? Joe crossed the road to avoid the stench of decaying horse-flesh from a cat’s meat man’s barrow and found himself running the gauntlet of pair after pair of dark eyes and importunate hands that stole out from darkened doorways as he passed. ‘Silk dresses, sir? The best in town!’ Samples of their work fluttered from poles over shop fronts, relieving with their vivid Eastern colours the sooty façades.

Now what accent was that? And how on earth did you ever keep track of the movement of the races within this small world? One week the shops were all French with primeurs, pâtés and pastries. The next they might be Italian, Jewish, Russian. . His copper’s eye took in a chalked sign on a door as he passed and he automatically noted the number. One cross meant opium was available, two offered cocaine as well. So — the Levant was moving north? But he was looking for a Russian enclave. Bordeaux Court off Dean Street, Bill had said.

A shop front announcing ‘Imperial Vodka’ told him he must be getting close. He listened to a band of children who were plunging about the streets, kicking at empty cans, orange peel and something that could just have been a dead cat. The chatter and squeals were in a mixture of cockney and Russian. These back streets, he knew, had given birth to Bolshevism. In 1903. Over twenty years ago. Lenin, Trotsky and Karl Marx had all lived here. But he was looking for an unknown Russian.

Bill’s teacher was somewhere about but if he were to stop someone and ask where he could find a Russian waiter who also taught the language, he’d be given a dozen different names, all wrong, or a dusty answer. The rozzers were not welcomed in these streets and if a passing quack could recognize him for what he was, he’d get nowhere, or worse — sent around in circles.

He looked at his watch. Nearly seven thirty. He’d come on a wild-goose chase. With some vaguely chivalrous urge to protect and warn the sergeant, who probably knew better than he did how to take care of himself, he’d be wasting a good hour. He admitted that what he really wanted was to share his news about the deaths in the Hive: potentially explosive information which deserved to be evaluated by two professionals and not left to the cocktail-fuelled imaginings of a journalist.

He stood at the entrance to Bordeaux Court and looked down the alleyway. It was dirty, untidy and seething with activity. A mother leaned out of a first-floor window and called her children inside. . in Russian. This was the place but which room above which shop? Joe studied the lie of the land. A cul-de-sac. If Bill were going to turn up for his evening lesson as usual, he’d do it at a regular hour which would be after his working day and allowing time for his tea and a wash and brush-up. He should be here within the next half-hour, Joe calculated. Unless, of course, he had indeed gone to visit his auntie. He’d have to approach from Dean Street, past the lamp-post where two little girls were swinging about on ropes, squealing with excitement.

A sudden scent of minestrone and the thought of Bill tucking into his tea reminded Joe that he’d eaten nothing since his breakfast at the Lyon’s Corner House. The delicious Italian aroma was coming from a tiny frontage in the street facing the head of the court. Joe went in. The room was so small he feared he had invaded a private home but the presence of a smiling waiter in a white apron reassured him. He asked for the table in the window, delighted to have at once an observation post and an opportunity to order a dish of their soup and a glass of red wine.

The kitchen appeared to be below the dining room and its chimney, a piece of metal piping, rose through the floorboards and conducted the spicy vapours outside into the street. Joe’s dish of minestrone and hunk of peasant bread came creaking up in a small lift through another hole in the floor.

He was so delighted with the experience, he almost missed Bill.

Whoops and shrieks from the street drew his attention. The footballing boys had gathered in welcome around the tall figure of Armitage as he entered the court.

Joe got to his feet, preparing to dash outside and hail the sergeant, but he hesitated, watching the scene develop, apprehensive and puzzled. A ball had been produced and the sergeant was making his way, dribbling with the skill of a professional down the alleyway. This was obviously a weekly occurrence. Bill scored a goal by hitting the lamppost squarely in the middle then they all moved into a circle and performed feats of sleight of foot that amazed Joe. Bill did another solo turn, weaving nimbly around the bollards that closed off the alley, the ball never more than an inch from his feet. After ten minutes of this Armitage called goodbye and walked away down the alley, fending off the raucous pleas to do it all over again.

Joe didn’t bother to watch where the sergeant went. It hardly mattered now.

Hastily, he paid for his soup, pronouncing it the equal of anything he’d had at Pagani’s, left a large tip and walked, deep in thought, back to the taxi rank on Oxford Street.

Time he was in Surrey.