The Long Firm Read online

  THE LONG FIRM

  Jake Arnott

  www.hodder.co.uk

  Copyright © 1999 Jake Arnott

  First published in 1999 by Sceptre

  An imprint of Hodder and Stoughton

  An Hachette Livre UK company

  The right of Jake Arnott to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  A Sceptre Book

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  British Library C.I.P.

  Arnott, Jake

  The Long Firm

  1.GEN

  I.Title

  823.9’14[F]

  Epub ISBN 978 1 84894 656 9

  Book ISBN 978 0 340 74878 7

  Hodder & Stoughton Ltd

  An Hachette Livre UK Company

  338 Euston Road

  London NWl 3BH

  www.hodder.co.uk

  What’s a jemmy compared with a share certificate?

  What’s breaking into a bank compared with founding one?

  Bertolt Brecht, The Threepenny Opera

  CONTENTS

  The Long Firm

  Copyright

  Dedication

  1. The White-Hot Poker

  2. Dissolution Honours

  3. Jack the Hat

  4. The Rank Charm School

  5. Open University

  1

  The White-Hot Poker

  ‘You know the song, don’t you? “There’s no business like show business”.’ Harry gets the Ethel Merman intonation just right as he heats up a poker in the gas burner.

  ‘“Like no business.”’

  Turning the iron slowly, sheathing it in blue flame.

  ‘You know?’

  I nod with enough emphasis to cause the chair I’m tied to to edge a little across the room. This only brings me closer to Harry. The gas roars softly. Blue flame looking cold. Poker looking hot. Glowing now, already brighter than the fire that feeds it. Getting red hot, white hot.

  ‘Well what if there was a business like show business. Like show business. You know?’

  Nod nod edge edge.

  ‘There is, Terry. There is.’

  I can feel the heat of it on my cheek now as he points it at my face. I feel sick.

  ‘You know what it is, don’t you?’ Harry asks in a hoarse whisper. ‘It’s what I do.’

  ‘Harry,’ I croak.

  ‘Shh,’ he insists. ‘You’ll have a chance to talk. Don’t worry. You’ll want to tell me the whole story. But first the show. I’m going to show you something.’ My brain is throbbing with terror. I’ve got to think. Work out how all of this happened. Put it all together and find a way out. Think. Remember.

  Johnny Remember Me.

  The Casbah Lounge. Pine panelling, tattily upholstered benches around the walls, a fish tank embedded in the central partition. Sipping bitter black espresso. Boys sitting or standing around in groups clattering transparent glass cups and saucers. Looking. Checking out who was in the place. Checking out who other people in their group were checking out. And checking out who was being checked. Dull eyes twitching, slightly glassy from speed and coffee and cigarettes.

  ‘Johnny Remember Me’ wailing mournfully from the jukebox. Last year’s hit still haunting. Strange girl’s voice calling out of the echo-chamber wilderness.

  My first year in London. I had to start somewhere. A crummy bedsit in Westbourne Grove. Working as a messenger in an advertising firm. I’d escaped suburbia, that was the main thing. I found places that I could go. A handful of theatrical pubs and seedy coffee bars. The Casbah Lounge was one of them.

  A group of Earl’s Court queens there with cheap polari sophistication. Vada this, vada that. Casual bitchiness judging anybody’s fleeting object of affection.

  Then he came in. Thick set in a dark suit and tightly knotted tie. Looking out of place amidst all the loud clothes the young homos were sporting. Standing out sombre and heavy among the bright shirts and hipster slacks from Vince or Lord John. He looked around the coffee bar, negotiating all the signals, all the brief flashes of eye contact with a weary frown as if his imposing presence was a burden. He looked clumsy and awkward, intimidated for all his toughness. All the looks, the staring. In places he was more used to, spielers, drinking clubs, heavy boozers like the Blind Beggar or the Grave Maurice that level of eyeballing would have seemed an affront, a prelude to combat. Here, he had to get used to the fierce looks and learn a new way of staring. He had to come off guard in order to make contact.

  He had dark, oil-slicked hair, a battered face that made him look older than he was. An extra tuft of hair joined his eyebrows so they furrowed in a single line. You couldn’t say he was pretty. Handsome, in a brutal sort of a way. Impressive. Something about him I found rather attractive. Something dangerous. The style he had in the way he held himself, holding himself up against any embarrassment. The way he looked. Like he meant it. It inspired some arch glances amongst the queens. Get her, someone murmured.

  As I looked over he caught my stare. His face tightened and drew back a touch. I smiled and his frown narrowed for a second then opened up. A lopsided grin brought out the crease of a scar in his right cheek, then thinned out to a sad smile as he continued to scan the room.

  His gaze moved into a more professional line of vision and a flurry of communication flashed from one face to another. Trade, another voice muttered coldly. Johnny Remember Me, howled the jukebox. Someone coughed significantly and went over. As I watched the casual intensity of the negotiations the man seemed to look over at me. I turned away thinking not so much that it was rude to stare but that it was bad for business. I didn’t want to interfere. So I looked at the fishtank. Huge carp mouthed silently. A stream of silvery bubbles trailed to the surface.

  Someone nudged me. The queen had returned, a faint smile on his lips. He nodded petulantly at me

  ‘He wants you dear.’

  The poker throbs with heat and light. Harry blows on it and a few tiny sparks fly off and quickly die in the cold air of the lock-up. He plunges it back into the brazier.

  ‘You stupid fucker,’ he says. ‘Thought you could have me over, didn’t you?’

  I start to say something. Harry slaps me hard across the face.

  ‘Shh,’ he hisses at me again. ‘I know, I know, you want to explain it all. But I ain’t interested in some story you’ll come up with. I want the truth. The whole truth. And by the time I’ve finished with you by Christ I’ll get it.’

  Harry comes up close to me. My head is twisted to one side from the slap, one cheek still sore from the blow. He grabs my jaw and forces me to look directly into his stare.

  ‘You’ve been a naughty boy, Terry,’ he whispers into my face. ‘We need to teach you a lesson.’

  Breaking a person’s will, that’s what it was all about. He’d explained it to me once. Harry didn’t like to do business with anybody that he couldn’t tie to a chair. He liked to break people. Sometimes it was a warning, sometimes punishment. Always to make one thing very clear. That he was the guvnor. That’s what all the violence was for. That was the point of it. That was the one gruesome detail that was missed out in the trial. All the press reports, the TORTURE GANG BOSS headlines. All the lurid stories to tease the punters. The beati
ngs, the pliers, the black box for giving electric shocks. They all missed the point. He liked to break people.

  ‘But how can you tell?’ I’d asked him back then. ‘Don’t people just fake it?’

  And Harry had laughed. A little spasm of knowledge.

  ‘Oh, you can tell,’ he had assured me softly. ‘They become like children. Crying and that. Calling for their mummies.’

  The Casbah Lounge. That’s where it all began. I walked across the floor, nodded at the man and we went out together into the night air. He had a big black Daimler parked outside. A driver awaiting instructions. He held the door open for me. I felt flash. And completely reckless.

  I’d never done it for money before, never even thought about renting it. I was a nice boy from the suburbs, passed the eleven plus and everything. But I’d always been drawn to trouble. Ended up getting expelled from Technical High School. I left home, left a semi-detached life for the longed-for city. I craved some sort of excitement. I think carrying around the secret that I was a homo had something to do with it as well. That part of me didn’t really exist until I moved down to London.

  We got into the back of the motor together. The man nodded to his driver. As we pulled away I felt a sudden surge of trepidation in my stomach but I tried to ignore it.

  ‘Harry,’ he whispered as introduction, taking my hand in his.

  ‘Terry,’ I responded.

  ‘Hello, Terry,’ he breathed huskily, stroking my leg.

  I remember us pulling up somewhere off Sloane Square. Harry had an expensive flat in Chelsea. He poured us both a large brandy and showed me his photograph collection. Harry with Johnnie Ray, with Ruby Ryder, Tom Driberg MP, Sonny Liston. Pictures of him looking stern faced next to film stars, singers, boxers, the great and the good.

  Then we had sex. He fucked me up against a full-length mirror. My breath misted the glass but I could make out his reflected face clenched in need as he came into me. Afterwards we had a smoke and he spoke softly. His voice lost some of its gruffness and took on a high-pitched almost child-like tone.

  ‘You’re a nice-looking kid,’ he whispered.

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘I ain’t very pretty am I?’

  He touched his battered face sadly.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ I replied, not quite knowing what to say.

  He drew a finger across his brow.

  ‘And me eyebrows join. I look like a bloody werewolf. You know what my Aunt May told me? What it means if your eyebrows join?’

  I shrugged.

  ‘It means you’re born to hang.’

  The next morning he saw me off, casually handing me a five-pound note. He said he’d like to see me again. He was a businessman, he claimed, and a club owner. He invited me to a party at his club, The Stardust in Soho.

  ‘What do you think I’m going to do with this?’ Harry asks, waving the poker in front of me. ‘Eh?’

  I squirm about a bit against the ropes that tie me. Tony Stavrakakis stands behind me. It was him that had secured me to the chair. The big Greek rests a heavy hand on my shoulder to stop me from moving about too much and to concentrate on what was going on. Harry fiddles with the brazier thing. I don’t want to think about it. I don’t want to think at all. I want to break down and blubber uncontrollably. To give in and give up the truth that Harry would insist upon. I want to break. But Harry’s right. You can’t fake a thing like that.

  ‘Show business is in my blood, Terry. Did I ever tell you about my grandad? Billy Sheen. The Canning Town Cannonball they called him. Champion bare-knuckle fighter he was. But he wasn’t just a fighter, he was a showman as well. Had a strong singing voice and did a strongman act in the music halls. He could leap out of a barrel, break a stack of house bricks with his bare hands. But you know what the climax of his act was? Licking a white hot poker. Yeah, that’s right. Has to be white-hot mind. Just red hot and it’d shrivel your tongue off and no mistake. He learnt it off this big black fellah doing it before a crowd on Mile End Waste. And he taught it me.’

  Harry laughs and moves the poker in the flame again.

  ‘You watch this carefully now,’ he insists

  He brings the metal to the tip of the flame, its hottest point. At the same time he moves his lips and tongue, making spit in his mouth.

  ‘Have to make sure your gob’s good and wet too. Hard to do if you’re scared. Nothing like fear to make your mouth dry. Nah, you have to make sure your mouth’s good and wet and the poker’s white hot. Then you can’t go wrong.’

  He chews and sucks, moving his tongue to the front of his mouth as he watches the poker glow. Tiny bubbles of sputum dribble at the corner of his mouth and his tongue darts out to draw them back in again.

  ‘You watch carefully now.’

  The Stardust. Harry was out front, flanked by two huge doormen, greeting people. He grabbed my hand with both of his. Gave me a wink as I passed through into the club.

  ‘Glad you could come, Terry. Get yourself a drink, I’ll see you later.’

  The Stardust. Not exactly my scene. Mostly an older crowd, overdressed and out of style. Heinz and The Wild Boys were performing that night. I went to the bar and ordered a rum and Coke. A modernist kid to the left of me in a two-piece tonic mohair. Three-buttoned single-breasted jacket, narrow lapels, flap pockets, from Harry Fenton’s no doubt. He wore his hair en brosse, in a french crew. He nodded at me. I felt shabby standing next to him. I want some of that, I thought to myself. Something more than that.

  Bleached-blond Heinz was dragging his backing band through a medley of Eddie Cochran songs.

  ‘Pretty, ain’t he?’ said the mod kid.

  ‘Yeah,’ I shrugged. ‘I guess.’

  ‘Shame about the voice. Still, Joe Meek’s so in love with him he’s convinced he’s going to be big.’

  He nodded at a tall quiffed man sitting at the main table watching the performance intensely. Joe Meek, record producer, famous for his ice-rink-in-space electric organ sound. He’d had a big hit with ‘Telstar’ by The Tornadoes.

  ‘Joe should stick to instrumentals,’ muttered the modernist as the blond singer crooned ‘C’mon Everybody’ slightly off key. ‘So should Heinz for that matter.’

  Harry had come into the club with his entourage. He beckoned me over with a jerk of his head.

  ‘Come over and join us,’ he said and led me to a large table.

  The party was an assortment of celebrities. Along with Joe Meek there was a boxer or two, someone from television and Ruby Ryder the film actress. Equally famous and with their own brand of glamour were the people pointed out with names like Alibi Albert and Jack the Hat. ‘Faces’, Harry referred to them as. And as it turned out that was what Harry was. A face. Mad Harry, I was slightly disconcerted to learn, was his also known as. Every so often a flashbulb would go whoosh and the main group would go into a fixed expression for a second. Showbiz eyes and teeth. Underworld jaws and suits.

  I was introduced to Joe Meek. Being the official young person present, he was keen for my opinion on Heinz. I hesitated.

  ‘Love the peroxide riah,’ I declared with genuine conviction.

  ‘It’s great ain’t it?’ Joe had a high-pitched west country accent. ‘Got the idea from Village of the Damned. You know, those spooky kids from outer space.’

  He was as tall and thick set as Harry but his movements had a kind of jerky thinness to them. He had big farmboy hands that fluttered at you. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that I didn’t think Heinz was going to work. The dyed hair, the shiny jacket with silver piping. Wonderfully camp. Woefully out of date. Something new was happening. The Beat Boom, people were calling it. Rock and Roll, well, that was for the die-hard leather crowd and Heinz certainly didn’t impress them. Apparently in Birmingham a gang of rockers had chucked tins of beans at him. Rhythm and Blues, that was what everyone was talking about. Something new was happening but Heinz definitely wasn’t it.

  Heinz finished to polite applause. He came over t
o the table grinning awkwardly. Joe fussed around him for a while and then chatted, wide-eyed manic, to Harry. Pupils like sharpened pencil leads. Pilled on amphetamine, no doubt about it. Blocked, we called it. They talked business. Management. Heinz sat between them and they furtively eyed him like confection as they talked. Harry was drawn to Tin Pan Alley, a way of breaking into legitimate show business. Maybe thinking of becoming the next Larry Parnes or Brian Epstein. And why not? He was a homosexual Jewish wide boy just like them. But maybe a bit too wide. Not quite smooth enough. Harry would never look right in a camel-hair coat somehow. He was too much of a performer to be a successful impresario. You could never see him in the background. Too conspicuous, too much of an act himself. In fact all the faces seemed to have more confident a turn than any of the showbiz lot. The gangsters were the real stars at The Stardust.

  I got drunk. I wasn’t used to boozing. I staggered into the gents, splashed some cold water in my face and dried it on the towel machine. Jack the Hat was handing over a huge bag of pills to the modernist child.

  ‘Fancy a doob, mate?’ he called over to me.

  I rejoined the party with a purple heart melting on my tongue. Around the table stories were being offered up. Showbiz secrets and behind the scenes gossip swapped for tales of fixed fights and doped dogs. Frauds and rackets and heavier jobs were alluded to as all the tricks of the trade seemed open for discussion. Like conjurers taking apart an illusion confident that their public was elsewhere. The audience, the punters. The mugs.

  One of the villain’s women got up and gave us a song to much encouragement. She had a clear sad voice. You could see that she had been pretty once but now looked a bit washed out. As she sang ‘Cry Me A River’ without accompaniment I wondered what kind of a life it would be being the woman of one of these hard-faced men.

  When she’d finished there was applause and banging on the tables. Everyone was far gone by now. Music started up and Jack the Hat got up and danced on the table. I could hear Joe Meek next to me bawling about the record industry in the mod kid’s ear over the noise.