Soho Dead (The Soho, #1)
Greg Keen
If you get Sohoitis, you will stay there always, day and night, and get no work done ever. You have been warned . . .
—J. Meary Tambimuttu
ONE
It had been a week since my best friend, Jack Rigatelli, had died and six days since I’d answered my phone. The furthest I’d ventured out was the pharmacy on Wardour Street to cash in my script for the pills Dr Leach had said would lift my mood. They hadn’t kicked in yet, but that was probably because I hadn’t opened the box. Maybe I was too depressed to take my antidepressants.
When the good doctor asked why I felt so down, I kept it brief. I was three years away from turning sixty, had forty-three quid in the bank, and was occasionally employed to find people who would rather not be found. Add to that the recent death of my best friend and it wasn’t a cause for unbridled optimism. She nodded a lot and said something about it being a long wait for cognitive therapy, but that the pills would tide me over. Which raised the question: why wasn’t I taking them?
Part of the answer was the side effects. The official website admitted that night-sweats, insomnia, nausea, dizziness and impaired sexual function would probably come my way. More disturbing was the feedback from user groups. AP from Fort Worth had experienced hallucinations and Bjorn from Osaka had tried to hang himself after only a fortnight on Atriliac.
But you can spend only so much time staring at the ceiling. It was Monday morning. I had a wake to go to and a life to get on with. So when the intercom buzzed, I got off the sofa and picked up the handset. ‘What?’
‘Kenny Gabriel?’
‘Who’s speaking?’
‘Come down and I’ll tell you.’
‘Tell me and I might come down.’
‘It’s business.’
‘Did Odeerie Charles send you?’
‘No.’
I felt like telling my mystery caller to sling his hook, but forty-three quid isn’t enough to retire on. ‘Hang on,’ I said, and went downstairs. I opened the door.
Farrelly was standing in front of me.
Things had changed on the Charing Cross Road since I’d last seen Farrelly almost forty years ago. Outlets selling expensive coffee, or snide luggage, had replaced most of the second-hand bookshops, and the Astoria had been demolished to make way for Crossrail.
They say old age is a clever thief. He steals things without you noticing, until there’s nothing left. The same goes for urban development. It seemed like yesterday that Soho was a charming parish boasting peep shows, gambling dens and pubs full of pornographers and poets. Now it was all private members’ clubs and would you like a cinnamon sprinkle on your skinny macchiato, sir?
At least I was travelling in style. The Bentley’s cream leather upholstery was flawless. Its carpet supported my feet like well-nourished turf, and the air in the limousine’s interior had a faintly resinous tang.
‘Why does Frank want to see me?’ I asked Farrelly as we crossed Oxford Street.
‘He’ll tell you.’
‘Business or pleasure?’
‘You’ll see.’
‘Can’t you give me a clue?’
The Bentley’s privacy screen rolled up. Farrelly was the same surly bastard he’d always been. The Harrington and jeans had been replaced by a suit and tie. His torso was still a V-shaped wedge of muscle. I wondered if the vein in his forehead was a regular feature, or if it only stood out when he came into contact with me.
Griffin Media was headquartered in an award-winning confection of concrete and glass on Tottenham Court Road. Farrelly drove into an underground car park, came to a halt and released the central locking system. He got out of the car and marched me towards the lift. The seventh-floor suite was discreetly lit and panelled in oak. Half a dozen meticulously pruned bonsai trees formed a guard of honour in the corridor.
Farrelly walked past an unquestioning PA, and rapped on his boss’s door. ‘Come in,’ said a voice I’d last heard on Question Time the previous week.
Attached to the walls in Frank Parr’s office were industry awards and framed covers of his more successful magazines. Half were computer titles, which was where Frank had made his fortune in the early eighties. In later years, he’d diversified into cooking, golf, music, travel and classic cars. Notable by their absence were the covers of the titles he’d published in the seventies and subsequently sold. But they weren’t the kind you put up on the wall. Not the boardroom wall, anyway.
Farrelly waited until his boss looked up from his computer screen before saying, ‘He’s here’, as though I was the bloke who had come to bleed the radiators. He left without waiting to be asked.
‘Good to see you, Kenny,’ Frank said. ‘Thanks for coming.’
‘Farrelly didn’t give me much choice.’
Frank picked up his phone, pressed a single digit, and said, ‘No calls, Lucy.’ He’d put on weight over the years that not even a three-grand suit could hide. That said, he had a full head of slicked-back hair, a wrinkle-free complexion, and the confident demeanour of the truly minted. We shook hands and he gestured for me to take a seat on a nearby Chesterfield.
‘Scotch?’
‘Irish,’ I said. ‘Bushmills if you’ve got it.’
Frank selected a bottle from the drinks cabinet and poured a generous shot into a chunky tumbler. He uncapped a soda bottle and emptied its contents into another. ‘Ulcer,’ he explained after a rueful smile. ‘Don’t bleedin’ get one.’
‘I’ll try not to,’ I said, taking the whiskey.
Frank settled into the sofa opposite. ‘When was the last time I saw you?’
‘December 2006.’
Frank took a sip of his soda. ‘Seem to recall you were a journalist then.’
I nodded.
‘But now you’re some kind of private detective?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Legit?’
I nodded again.
‘What d’you do, exactly?’
‘Mostly skip-tracing work for a bloke called Odeerie Charles.’
‘Skip-tracing?’
‘People who’ve done a runner on their gas bill or not returned a hire car.’
‘Didn’t I read about some MP you found . . . ?’
Peter Carlton-Harris had been the Honourable Member for Haversham West. His clothes had been discovered on a Spanish beach with a suicide note. Everyone assumed he was sleeping with the fishes, apart from Mrs Carlton-Harris. Suspecting an affair, she had retained Odeerie to look into things. A fortnight later, I found Carlton-Harris holed up with a parliamentary researcher in a village five miles inland of Barcelona.
His family had holidayed there for the last twenty years. When people run, it’s usually to a place they’re familiar with, so it hadn’t been any great feat of detection. But the high-profile nature of the case meant that my name had made it into the papers and I’d had my fifteen minutes of fame before going back to combing Canvey Island for panel-beaters late with their child support.
‘Is this leading anywhere?’ I asked.
‘I might have a job for you.’
‘I don’t think so, Frank.’
‘My daughter’s missing.’