“I wouldn’t know,” she said, raising an eyebrow over a second éclair.
Even Azzopardi found it necessary to answer the demands of a Coker eyebrow. “The law exists to be broken, you of all people must know that.”
Nellie frowned at the last bite of the éclair in her hand and placed it back on her plate.
“Something the matter, Nellie—may I call you Nellie?”
“I’d prefer it if you didn’t, if you don’t mind.” Was he trying to flirt with her? Better men than Azzopardi had tried and failed. The man was oily. She supposed he was after the clubs. Probably heard that Maddox was going to make a move on her and decided to pre-empt him. Why didn’t he just get down to business and make her an offer, instead of all this flimflam? She calmed herself down with a scone.
“I would like to offer you fifty thousand pounds,” he said, sensing her impatience.
“For what?” she said innocently, the butter knife her only weapon of defence.
“Your nightclubs. What do you say?” He blinked slowly, like a tortoise.
The clubs were worth twice that, at least. Another testudinal blink from Azzopardi. “More tea?” he said, signalling to a hovering waiter.
“Don’t mind if I do,” Nellie said.
* * *
—
Azzopardi asked for the bill. “May I offer you a lift somewhere?” he asked Nellie.
“No, thank you. I shall go to the powder room before I leave.”
“And you will consider my offer?”
“Of course.”
“And give me your answer next week?”
“Of course.”
They both rose from the tea table. Azzopardi proffered his hand, but when Nellie reached out to shake it he alarmed her by grabbing her hand and pulling her closer—close enough for her to smell his eau de cologne. Rather disconcertingly, it was the same one that Niven wore. He alarmed her further by kissing her on the cheek, one-two. Not usually xenophobic—she would have had no business if she had been—nonetheless Nellie couldn’t help thinking, Bloody foreigner.
* * *
—
In the Ladies’ (very pleasant), Nellie frowned at herself in the mirror. She felt breathless, as if she’d been running (an unlikely occurrence). I am not for sale, she thought grimly. She had the strange feeling that Azzopardi was toying with her. A cat with a mouse. He didn’t want to pay money for the clubs. Did he even want them? She suspected he was after something else altogether, but she couldn’t imagine what. Whatever it was, she sensed he would be relentless and what he couldn’t acquire through persuasion he would take by piracy. First Maddox, now Azzopardi. The barbarians were at the gate. Nellie sighed. Deauville was clearly going to have to wait until after the dénouement of this affair. She fluffed up her feathers and left the powder room.
The doorman at the Goring helped Nellie into the Bentley. Hawker, the chauffeur, glanced at her in the rear-view mirror when she huffed onto the leather. He worried that there was a crack in her shell since prison. A strong Nellie was predictable, but a weak Nellie might do anything.
Hawker lived in a small flat above the garage in the mews behind the house in Hanover Terrace. He was keen to retire—he fancied an allotment—but had nowhere else to live. He’d be fit only for the knacker’s yard by the time he found somewhere, he said to his daughter. He’d been with Nellie for five years now. Sometimes he worried that he knew too many of her secrets for her ever to let him go. In a series of tortuous negotiations with Nellie, Hawker had managed to secure one day off every fortnight. “It’s like being a medieval serf,” he said to his daughter.
“Where to, Mrs. Coker?” he asked.
“The Crystal Cup,” Nellie said.
Voilà!
It was peaceful in Hanover Terrace, even Kitty was quiet, although that was often a bad sign. These were ideal conditions for the creation of his magnum opus, and Ramsay was hammering on the Remington’s keys and shuttling its carriage with abandon, fuelled by nothing more than Lipton’s tea and a tin of cocaine throat pastilles that he’d cadged off one of the dancers at the Sphinx. He was no longer thinking—he was writing! It had come to him in a kind of coup de foudre—he should write a crime novel—a “murder mystery”—they were all the rage, after all. He had just finished reading the new Christie, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, and, yes, yes, it was very clever in its twisty-turny way, but Ramsay was aiming for something more real, more gritty.
A corpse was necessary to set the ball rolling, he thought. Someone pushed out of a window, perhaps. Defenestration, he had noticed, was popular in the crime novels of the day. A body lying mysteriously on a pavement. But whose body? And why?
And for a crime novel he would need a detective, one who would take his place in the pantheon of celebrated sleuths—Poe’s Dupin, Sherlock Holmes, even Christie’s Poirot. Ramsay did not want someone elegant or clever or well mannered—no, he wanted a Scotland Yard detective, someone who was jaded and well acquainted with the seamy side of life.
Write what you know. Betty had said that he didn’t know anything, but she was wrong, he did know something—he knew the Saturnalia that was London after dark, didn’t he? The streetwalkers, the dope, the gangs, the mad parties, the fancy dress, the nightclubs, the gambling, even the awful Bright Young Things—from the sordid to the glittering and everything in between. Given his profession, his detective would move unhindered between these worlds. And in a further lightning stroke of genius, Ramsay had finally found his title—The Age of Glitter. The whole fictional enterprise was spread out ahead of him like a shimmering woven tapestry!
Down to business. First of all, his detective should have something that marked him out as different, unique even. Perhaps one of those memorable characteristics or tics that they all seemed to have—a violin, a moustache and so on. Welsh! Ramsay couldn’t think of any Welsh detectives, couldn’t even think of anyone Welsh, for that matter, apart from Lloyd George, and even he hadn’t been born in that benighted country, had he?
And as God created Adam, so Ramsay created Jones.
Detective Chief Inspector George Jones—or “Jones the Policeman” as he was known back home in the Valleys where he came from (from whence he came?) was waiting on a platform in Paddington Station for the 5:05 from Taunton. He checked his pocket-watch. Police-issue pocket watch. (Did the police issue pocket-watches? Did it matter if they didn’t? It sounded right.) He checked his police-issue pocket-watch—his trusty police-issue pocket-watch. (Better.) The 5:05 was on time (NB—find out if there is a 5:05 from Taunton), steaming slowly towards the platform. Jones smiled to himself
Why? Why is he smiling? And why, for that matter, would a master criminal have been in Taunton? Ramsay had chosen Taunton at random. Perhaps somewhere like Bristol or even Manchester would have more credibility as a hotbed of lawlessness? Birmingham certainly, the city’s gangs came down for the Derby and treated the Amethyst like Liberty Hall. He supposed he could decide later. He wondered if there was a Bradshaw’s anywhere in Hanover Terrace. It seemed unlikely. No one ever caught a train.
Jones smiled to himself because he was looking forward to confronting Reggie Dunn. As if on cue, the doors of the train opened and the passengers began to alight onto the platform. First-class carriage, Jones noted. Dunn, the reprobate head of a Soho crime racket, walked nonchalantly along the platform without a care in the world—strolled nonchalantly along the platform, unaware that his nemesis was waiting to greet him. “Hello, Reggie,” Jones said. “Been to the races?” (That sounded rather flat. Been up to mischief? Been up to no good?)
“Been up to your old tricks, Reggie?” (Better.) “How about we take a little walk and discuss—Discuss what? Creativity was surprisingly tiring. Ramsay yawned and lit a cigarette.