It’s one thing snooping around someone’s place when you’ve been given permission; another thing altogether when you haven’t. The police generally refer to it as breaking and entering. For this reason I walked over Anna Jennings’ threshold with a degree of trepidation. Had one of her neighbours seen me then the cops could already be on their way. They would take some persuading that my intentions were benign.
The door led straight into a tiny kitchen. A tap dripped steadily into a sink containing a couple of unwashed mugs and a dirty plate. On a freestanding cooker was a pan of congealed baked beans. Loaded into a toaster were two pieces of bread that hadn’t taken the plunge and never would. My guess was that Anna Jennings had left home in a hurry, which accounted for her forgetting to lock the gate.
The bathroom made the kitchen seem large by comparison. It contained a Perspex pull-across shower stall and an avocado-coloured lavatory and basin. The last time it had been given a makeover had been at least twenty years ago. Either Anna rented the place or wasn’t that fussy when it came to interior décor. I blew into my hands to warm them up – the flat was as cold as a witch’s tit – and ducked out of the room.
Whatever I was looking for would likely be in the studio. A futon-style bed stood in one corner. On the wall above the pillows hung a poster of a large oak, its branches covered in snow. Beneath the tree was written: Enjoy the little things in life for one day you may look back and discover they were the big things.
So much for the hard-bitten journo.
The surface of a pine chest of drawers was strewn with a variety of potions and cosmetics. It also had a dozen or so paperbacks ranged across it. Half were Penguin Classics, their spines in pristine condition. The rest was a selection of well-thumbed crime novels and bodice-rippers. A framed photograph of a couple in their sixties could have done with a bit of a dust. Otherwise the room and its contents were scrupulously clean.
The main focus of my attention was the desk by the window. To its right stood a laser printer, to its left a two-drawer filing cabinet. A Victorian marmalade pot held a selection of pens and pencils. Most relevant was the MacBook Pro. I flipped its lid and pressed the power switch. The screen flickered into life and demanded a password. I tried Anna Jennings’ name and then her initials. Nothing.
Odeerie would probably have been able to crack the code in minutes. I was reluctant to add burglary to trespass, though, and there was no guarantee that the machine held anything about Frank in its files. Indeed, no guarantee that Anna Jennings had a big story about him at all. Roger Parr’s track record wasn’t exactly spotless when it came to separating fact from fiction.
I powered the machine off and turned my attention to the filing cabinet. The top drawer was full of back copies of financial magazines. The one underneath was far more interesting. A single file was fat with clippings and photocopied documents. Everything in there had something to do with Frank Parr or his company.
Anna Jennings might return at any moment. With that in mind, I sorted through the documents quickly. Some went back as far as the seventies and eighties and marked the turning points in Frank’s burgeoning empire. A feature from the Telegraph dealt with his acrimonious split with Callum Parsons. The photograph showed a jowly Callum with long brown hair and tinted glasses. He looked like a member of a prog-rock band who had blown his royalties on donuts and pizza.
What I didn’t find was anything not widely known or comprehensively documented. I grouped the clippings together and was about to dump them back in the cabinet when I noticed a stray document in the bottom of the drawer. It was a copy of a piece that had appeared in the Evening Standard almost forty years ago.
Three people smiled at the camera in a way that suggested they hadn’t a care in the world. Anna Jennings had neatly recorded two of the subjects’ names – Frank Parr and Kenneth Gabriel – above their heads in pencil. The young woman to Frank’s left had April Thomson? written above hers. Enlargement had diminished the photograph’s clarity, but I could confirm the mystery woman was April. What had become of her since I last heard from her back in 1978, I had absolutely no idea.
TWENTY-SIX
Soho, 1978
By the mid-seventies, Frank’s porn interests were ramping up. The profit was phenomenal. So was the hassle. Bribing the Vice Squad to look the other way didn’t come cheap and there was the constant risk of a competitor firebombing your premises. Sensing that the real money didn’t lie in sex shops, Frank had set up a mail-order business. For a cheque sent to a PO Box you could get a copy of whatever tickled your fancy by return without the bother or the embarrassment of having to schlep over to Soho to buy it in person.
Mezzanine became the first magazine Frank published to carry proper editorial and advertisements. In ’78 it was still being distributed in brown paper envelopes, although the title’s list of subscribers was growing steadily. So was membership of the Galaxy. More punters meant more staff, and in January that year he took on a couple of new waitresses. One of whom was April Thomson.
At first glance there wasn’t anything exceptional about April. She was tall, slim, and usually wore her dark-blonde hair in a ponytail. Her skin was lightly freckled and she had dark-blue eyes. In the Galaxy there were women so glamorous it made you nervous standing next to them. It took a while before you really noticed April.
She was a nineteen-year-old English lit student who had registered with an agency to supplement her grant. They tried her at the Galaxy first as it paid a higher wage than most places. Frank offered her a job. April was pretty enough to interest the men without being flagrant competition for their women. Her Scots accent was soft and she was smart – a quality Frank appreciated in everyone bar customers and business rivals. Most of the guys on the staff tried it on with her, including me. We were gently rebuffed in a way that didn’t piss us off at the time or make us feel resentful afterwards.
In late March I took a call from Frank. A pipe had burst in the club and flooded the restaurant. The damage was so bad he was going to close down for at least a month and refurbish the interior entirely. Everyone was to be kept on wages until the place opened again, when it would be business as usual. It was hard to inject a note of disappointment into my voice. I’d miss out on tips but that was a small price to pay for what was essentially a six-week holiday.
The Standard did a puff piece on the Galaxy’s makeover. Frank insisted that April and I flank him for a photograph taken outside the club. The blurb read: