Impartiality Against the Mob Page 5

  It would have to be someone Rose knew and liked.

  Who?

  It would have to be someone from the office, or someone he could get in touch with quickly. It was now nearly four o’clock, Rose was probably beginning to get her things ready, spreading them out on the bed and gloating over them.

  He had a bachelor cousin who might escort Rose, and Rose had a brother who was living apart from his wife. Either might help him out. He put in a call to his cousin, only to be told by a secretary that he was out of town; and to his brother-in-law, who said no regretfully – he had a club meeting and as secretary had to be present.

  As he rang off, Brill was aware of someone approaching, and of a shadow over the desk and half-turned, to see Maisie. With part of his mind he wished her a thousand miles away, with the other he welcomed her; she was the one person at the office with whom he could talk.

  “Hello, Maisie.”

  “Hi, Malcolm. Been fired?”

  “Not yet,” he said. “Do I look as if I had?”

  “To Maisie’s discerning eye, yes.”

  “Well, Maisie’s discerning eye discerned wrong for once.”

  “Half-wrong,” she retorted, sitting in the secretary’s chair.

  “The half that discerned I am not the happiest of souls this afternoon? All right, half-discerning eye. And as I’d been called to King Edward you thought I’d been banished. No.” He hesitated, never a man to wear his heart on his sleeve, and then found himself saying ruefully: “No. He wants the human story behind the dockers. A new slant worthy of that part of the News which is like the Guardian. And he wants it for tomorrow morning because tomorrow night might be after the event. I mean, strike. So, I’m to go off now.”

  “Oh,” said Maisie, as if her heart dropped, too. “So you can’t take Rose to the ball?”

  “Ballet, really. No.” He looked at Maisie with new interest, and actually sat up straight. “Are you free?”

  “I can just imagine Rose’s face if I were to appear all dressed up and ready to say let’s go! No, Mal, I would gladly go if I thought it would help, but you know it wouldn’t. On such an occasion Rose would need a male escort, anything else would be”—she paused as if checking a word, and then went on—”disappointing. No one would really replace you, of course.”

  “But a handsome and dashing substitute would help, you mean?”

  “A respectable male, anyway.”

  “Name one,” urged Malcolm Brill.

  She had a trick, when she was thinking, of looking away from whoever was with her; it was a form of concentration. She had a round head, short, black, coarse hair, a short neck and a very white skin, and she nearly always wore a dress with a rounded neck which showed a wide expanse and a hint of cleavage. Today her dress was black and the cleavage deeper than usual. Sitting, one was less aware of how short and dumpy she was. She stared past him for a long time, and then looked back and said briskly:

  “Jack Ledden,”

  ”Who?”

  “Jack Ledden – from advertising.”

  “Good Lord!” Malcolm explained. “You mean—” He broke off, seeing in his mind’s eye the man Maisie had thought of and whom he had completely forgotten. Back in December, at the News Ball, Ledden had been one of a party which had haphazardly gathered into one corner and become virtually isolated from the rest. He did not remember how Ledden had happened to join a group which was mostly editorial but he remembered Ledden’s girlfriend had come from Accounts. Ledden was also active in the social activities of the staff, and played in the cricket and football teams. He was a tall, pleasant, nice-looking man in his thirties.

  “I mean Jack Ledden,” Maisie confirmed.

  “Do you know him?”

  “Yes. I’m on the committee of the social club, too.”

  “If I remember rightly,” Malcolm said, “Rose danced with him several times.”

  “Yes,” Maisie said drily. “I believe she did.”

  “But I hardly know him!”

  “Like me to telephone him?” asked Maisie, and even as she spoke she leaned across for the inter-office telephone. She certainly had a full and beautiful bosom, but Brill was completely oblivious, did not speak as she dialled an extension obviously familiar to her, and only when there was a break in the ringing sound did he mutter: “Oh, you might as well.”

  “Jack,” Maisie said. “Maisie . . . yes, wasn’t it . . . no, I can’t manage Friday . . . are you doing anything tonight? . . . you can easily put that off, can’t you?” Maisie laughed lightly. “A very good reason, you can help a friend of mine . . . do you remember Malcolm Brill? . . . I thought you might! He has an assignment which he can’t break and so can’t take his wife to the ballet tonight, a really big night, black tie and all that . . . he’s sitting here with me, hold on.” Maisie pressed the mouthpiece to her bosom and whispered to Malcolm: “He was going to play table-tennis, but I know he’s not keen, and he’d be glad to have an excuse to put it off. Have a word with him.”

  Malcolm took the receiver and said in a curiously choky voice: “I know this is an infernal nerve, but if you could possibly stand in for me . . .”

  By the time he finished, Maisie had gone back to her chair at the News desk. She was hunting and pecking at the typewriter with greater vigour than usual, and didn’t look up when he passed.

  He went straight downstairs, and two taxis approached with their signs alight. He got the first and ordered: “Mallet Street, Camberwell,” and sat back. He still could not be sure how Rose would take it and had some misgivings now; perhaps he should have checked with her first.

  There simply hadn’t been time.

  There was the Pool, the most romantic part of the great port of London, with ships being worked as if there were no thought that in two days they might be standing idle. As the taxi turned towards Camberwell Green, it passed the bank which had been robbed only the previous night, and almost at the same time, two jet aircraft carrying passengers and cargo, including gold bullion, to Heathrow Airport. He did not know these things and was too preoccupied to do what he normally did; go through recent big stories in his mind; wonder whether any feature of them had been missed, whether one could be used in the News. When the taxi pulled up outside the row of small, new terraced houses, built on the site of an old building damaged by bombing, he saw Dorothy, his youngest child, at the window. Her face lit up, he saw but did not hear her call:

  “Daddy! Daddy!”

  When he opened the front door she was in the passage, jumping up and down with the joy at seeing him. She was four, fair-haired, dressed in a pair of pants a shade too tight for her. He hoisted her above his head and tossed her two or three times, while she giggled and gurgled. His other child, eleven-year-old Roger, was probably not home from school.

  “Malcolm!” Rose called from upstairs. “Is that you?”

  “Yes, sweet, I—”

  “Can you take Dot to the Adams’s, Roger’s going straight there. They’re going to stay the night. I’m terribly behind with everything!”

  “I’ll take her,” Malcolm promised. “But—”

  “Send her up to say goodbye,” called Rose, and Dorothy went scrambling up the stairs. There was laughing and “be gooding” and “have-a-nice-timeing”, until at last she was downstairs again. The Adamses lived only a few minutes away. Dot skipped happily, Malcolm carrying the small suitcase which had the children’s night-clothes. Paula Adams, flushed from cooking, offered him a cup of tea but he said no, he must get back.

  “I’m so glad you could get home early,” Paula said. “Rose is so excited about it, she’s bound to be all fingers and thumbs.”

  He forced a smile and an “I’ll bet she will be.”

  The house was silent when he got back; strangely so. He called, but got no answer. There was really very little
time, he must get to the docks, so he called her as he hurried up the stairs. Then he heard water running and realised she was in the bath. The door was ajar and the steam curled out on to the landing.

  “Rose!” he called.

  “I won’t be long!” she called back.

  He pushed open the door and went in, as she was stepping into the tub. She was—beautiful. He loved her body so. There were problems in the marriage but he did not dwell on them. She liked to bath ‘in private’ and indeed liked much more ‘privacy’ than was common between husband and wife, but if she were fastidious, why shouldn’t she be?

  Now, lowering herself into the bath, she said sharply: “You know I don’t like anyone with me when I’m bathing.” ‘Anyone’ was typical of the curiously impersonal way she had of speaking at times.

  “I know,” he said. “But I have to speak to you.”

  “Anything can wait—”

  “No it can’t,” Malcolm said, more sharply than he usually spoke to her. “I shouldn’t be here at all, I’ve an assignment I can’t possibly refuse tonight. I—”

  He broke off, for her expression was so appalling: she looked absolutely horrified, so affected that she crouched there, arms raised, body misted by the steam, her expression such that he could think only of that, for the first time in their lives he became oblivious of her body, of her beauty. In a strident voice, she cried: “You mean we can’t go.”

  “No, I mean I can’t, but you can,” he said. “I hadn’t time to consult you so I arranged with a friend at the office to take you. You’ve met him, and – well, anyhow, there wasn’t any choice. It was either this or you going alone.”

  “And who is this creature who is to stand in for my husband?” Rose demanded shrilly. “Who is this man who can be palmed off on to me as a substitute? Who—”

  Malcolm said brusquely: “He is Jack Ledden. You met and liked him at the News Ball. He will call for you at half-past six, and will take you to dinner before the ballet. I hope you don’t hate him, but it was the best I could do.”

  Before she could speak again, he went out and closed the door.

  Chapter 6

  THE DOCKER

  It was half-past six when Malcolm Brill turned into The Docker, a public house near the gates of the Victoria and Albert Docks. The surrounding walls were of grey stone, and police guarded all the entrances – the Metropolitan Police outside, the Port of London Authority Police inside. Although autonomous the P.L.A. force worked very closely with Gideon’s men. Inside the docks were roads and railway tracks and warehouses, all much the same as they had been a hundred years ago; even the roads were unchanged except for re-surfacing. Many of the warehouses were nearly derelict and even the tall cranes were old.

  But The Docker was of modern red-brick in contemporary design, with a modern – in fact a psychedelic – inn sign. About it were tall modern buildings, blocks of flats and some two and single storey houses, all built within the last five years. The docks were like an oasis of yesterday in the red and yellow bricks, the concrete and the bright paint of today. Another sign of the times was the fact that dozens of cars were parked outside, mostly old but a few of them new and shiny. There were no more than half-a-dozen bicycles, whereas in the days when the original Docker had been built, there would have been fifty or sixty.

  Malcolm Brill, who had come by tube and bus, went into the Four Ale bar, a survival at least in nomenclature. He wore an old trilby hat and a shabby tweed suit. As he entered the big, square, smoke-filled room he saw a man pass another something which looked to be made of brass, and had holes in it. Another man was wrapping a length of cycle chain in some oily rag; he slipped the packet into his bulging coat pockets as the stranger came in.

  A man was saying: “And we’ll give the buggers as good as—”

  Someone hissed: “Shut up!”

  “What’s got into you?” the first man demanded.

  “Just keep your trap shut,” demanded the second.

  There was no doubt at all that his, Brill’s arrival caused that abrupt piece of dialogue; equally no doubt that a silence fell upon the room as Brill moved towards the long bar. He did not know why but knew that he had caused it. Someone laughed on a high note, someone else said: “What’s the price on Fairo?”

  “Tens,” someone answered.

  “I’ll put a quid on her to win.”

  “Okay, quid to win, Fairo.”

  Brill reached the bar. He had been here before and recognised some of the men, including a big fellow with a pale face and a broken nose and wearing, incongruously, a pair of gold-rimmed pince-nez. This was Willis Murdoch, of the London Dockers Union. He put a tankard of pale ale to his mouth as Brill ordered: “Half of bitter, please.”

  “Half of bitter – okay.”

  “Thanks.” The small tankard changed hands, the head overflowing down the glass sides, and Brill drank. He noticed several men take their hands, empty, out of their pockets; he also noticed that many pockets bulged, whether in old coats and jackets or new. There were some lumps against blue, grey and black sweaters, too, as if some bulky object had been tucked underneath. A man laughed. One asked: “Think we’ll be able to afford a pint next week, Jim?” Another replied: “You telling me you can afford it this week, Charlie?” That brought more laughter and there was a general return to conversation, mostly about the strike. “Think the bosses will up any more?”

  “Not a stinking penny.”

  “They’ve got to, or we’ll be out.”

  “They don’t see it that way.”

  “Stand firm, that’s my motto,” remarked a man who sounded as if he’d had plenty of beer already.

  “Gotta come to terms sooner or later,” a small man observed. “Why not sooner?”

  “The flickers never do.”

  “I don’t mind telling you I’m against the strike,” one man declared. “It will only mean more trouble in the long run. We ought to be reasonable, that’s what I say.”

  “Put a sock in it, Micky!”

  “Reasonable! How reasonable do you think I feel when I take home twenty quid to feed six?”

  “Don’t forget the family allowance, Sammy boy!”

  “Buy your missus a pill, Sammy!”

  The guffaws which followed that sally brought the atmosphere back much nearer to normal, and Brill moved further from the bar. Willis Murdoch now had his back to him, but not pointedly, and Brill edged towards the men’s leader. Then he saw a youthful looking, very slim man over in a corner, talking to two dockers. The man wore large horn-rimmed glasses and a lock of dark hair fell over his forehead and lodged between his eyes and the lenses; he kept pushing it back. Brill recognised him as a reporter on the North Thames Times, one of a group of weekly newspapers which served an area stretching from Aldgate Pump to East Ham. This particular man was a stringer for a number of provincial and some other London weeklies and also turned in an occasional story for the national dailies. There was something in his manner which suggested he was scared, but he was probably putting on an act. Brill turned from him towards Murdoch, who was saying in his rough voice: “We’ll come out if we have to and we won’t if we don’t.”

  “Good old Willis,” a man applauded ironically. “You always know where you stand with Willis.”

  “Do you, Mr. Murdoch?” Brill asked the dockers’ leader.

  Murdoch turned slowly and deliberately and looked down on him. The pince-nez could give the pale face a sneering or at least a supercilious expression, and never more so than now; obviously he wanted to make the newspaperman look small. Brill was quite sure that he had been recognised and that this was simply an act.

  “And who are you?”

  Brill answered crisply: “My name is Malcolm Brill and I’m from the Daily News.” He spoke so clearly that a lot of people nearby heard and there w
as another but briefer silence which lasted until a man said: “A bloody newspaperman!”

  “That’s right,” agreed Brill.

  “We don’t want you Fleet Street so-and-sos here,” called someone out of sight.

  “Too bloody true we don’t!”

  “Why don’t you hop it, mate?”

  “Take a powder.”

  “Come sneaking in here—” A big man with reddish hair spoke in a rough Irish brogue. “Why, we ought to smash his face in.”

  In that moment, Brill thought that the speaker had everyone with him; he had never been more aware of hostility in a crowd and it did not console him to know that someone or something else had engendered the hostility. He had a curious flash thought: that they might beat him up and throw him out – literally – if Willis Murdoch gave the word or a sign. On an evening when his own mood was so brittle, when the way he had walked out on Rose tormented him, he felt unable to cope. In any case, he had never been called on to cope in any such emergency. He should never have come. When he had first heard Mesurier and realised what this would do to the evening, he should have refused the assignment; even if Mesurier had forced the issue, do the job or leave the paper, he should have insisted; no newspaper owned a man.

  He did not know how he managed to find his normal voice.

  “You don’t have to answer questions and you don’t have to have your case put before the public. That’s up to you. But I didn’t ‘come sneaking in here’ as you put it. I came in by the main door and ordered my own beer.” He drained the tankard and placed it carefully on the bar. “Same again,” he ordered, looking into the face of a worried-looking man behind the bar. For the first time he noticed that the barman had only one arm.

  Willis Murdoch said: “Have that one on me, mate. What did you say your name was?”

  “Brill. Malcolm Brill.”

  “And you watch your step, Red,” Murdoch said to the Irishman. “We don’t want any trouble in here with anyone, least of all bloody Fleet Street. And Mr. Brill’s right, he didn’t sneak in.” He took the replenished tankard from the bar and thrust it, handle first, towards Brill. “What’s this about presenting our case to the public?”