The Long Firm Read online

  I was the closest person to him during this time. Long brooding silences would be punctuated by his morbid reflections. Doping himself with brandy and handfuls of anti-depressants he’d talk of violence, boastful confessions of how he’d hurt people. Awful stories. It was then that he’d told me that he liked to control people by breaking them physically and mentally. It made me sick to the stomach to hear him talk like that. When I complained that he gloated over causing pain he took a knife and drew it slowly and deliberately across the back of his hand. He cut himself quite deeply and I had to get a crooked doctor that the firm used to come over and sew up the wound.

  Once he held a loaded revolver to my head.

  ‘When I go, you’re coming too,’ he said softly as he cocked the hammer.

  I closed my eyes and counted in my head, trying not to move at all until I felt air on the spot made by the pressure of the barrel. I opened my eyes. Harry had wandered off into the bathroom. I traced around the little circular dent in my temple.

  And yet, despite all the delirium, this was the time that I really got to know Harry. He was vulnerable, not a big tough guy any more. For once his guard came down and a frightened little child peeped out at me. He was ill and needed looking after. I’d never felt that kind of responsibility to another human being before. And no matter how difficult it was I couldn’t help feeling emotionally protective towards him. It was a practical sort of affection. I cared for him because, quite literally. I cared for him. I didn’t really have a choice about it and so sensitive feelings that hadn’t really occurred in our relationship before just sort of happened. He needed to be held, to be reassured. A soothing voice to calm him. There. There. There.

  And then, quite suddenly, he came out of it. He started doing exercise to get rid of the fat he’d put on during his illness. We went down to The Stardust for the first time in weeks. The firm started having proper meetings again and Harry got involved in all his big plans once more. He was back to his old self and he treated me. He brought me clothes and took me out. It was as if to compensate for how he’d been in the last few weeks though the period of depression was never mentioned directly. He talked of getting away for a while. Of going on holiday to Greece or Morocco. Everything seemed happy once again. But I found it hard to adjust to his recovery. His illness had seemed more real than anything else. I resented the cheeriness that people greeted him with, as if nothing had happened. And, I suppose, I started to resent Harry too.

  One day a smartly dressed woman came to the flat. She was a shoplifter, a ‘hoister’ as Harry would put it. Harry didn’t usually fence but this woman stole to order. She specialised in thieving haute couture from the fashion houses of Knightbridge and Bond Street. She had Harry’s mother’s measurements so she could lïft whole outfits for him to spoil his dear old mum with. It was worth all the effort, not just for the money Harry paid but also for the protection he could offer should she ever need it.

  ‘Ooh!’ Harry cooed as this hoister woman held up a silk blouse by Tricosa. ‘That’s lovely!’

  I suppressed a giggle. Harry could be quite camp at times but it was best not to draw his attention to it unless you were sure that he was in a good mood. As it happened he was. The woman had brought over a whole bundle of stuff and Harry thought that now was as good a time as any to go and visit Mother. He handed me the clothes and the keys of his brand-new Jaguar Mark II and I went out and put them carefully on the back seat as he paid the woman off. When I came back up to the flat Harry was getting ready to go. He called me into the bathroom.

  ‘Why don’t you come with me?’ he said, looking at me through the mirror.

  I shrugged. It wasn’t something he’d ever suggested before. And I suppose it was then that I got to thinking, not without a certain amount of dread, that Harry was beginning to see me as a permanent fixture. Part of his life that he could take home to Mum.

  We drove out east. Past the Angel and up the City Road to Shoreditch and Hoxton. Harry nodded moodily at the familiar scenery and pointed out a weed-covered bombsite. There was a council sign posted on it: Temporary Open Space.

  ‘That’s where our house was. Where I was born.’

  He sighed.

  ‘Bombed to fuck.’

  Mrs Starks was an immaculately dressed wiry little woman. She was taking tea with Harry’s Aunt May in the front room of her terraced house when we arrived. She made a fuss over Harry as soon as we were in the door. He got out all of the hoister’s ill-gotten wares and there was a shrill fuss made over the clothes as they were laid out on the sofa not least by Harry himself.

  ‘He spoils me, he does, May,’ said Harry’s mother.

  ‘He’s a naughty boy,’ replied Aunt May coming over and stroking his forehead. ‘Born to hang, that’s what he is.’

  ‘Hello dear,’ his mother said to me warmly as we were introduced.

  I wondered what she knew.

  ‘I’ll put the kettle on, make a fresh pot,’ I suggested wanting to appear useful.

  ‘What a nice boy,’ I heard her comment as I went into the kitchen with the tea things.

  While I was in the kitchen a middle-aged man shuffled in.

  ‘He’s here then,’ he muttered.

  He was swarthy looking with greying curly hair. He wore a collarless shirt with braces. A copy of The Morning Star was under one arm.

  ‘I’m the old man,’ he announced. ‘Don’t suppose he’s mentioned me.’

  And it was true, Harry had never talked of his father. He’d often spoken of his mother without any paternal reference. I’d somehow assumed that he was dead or permanently absent.

  ‘There’s some biscuits by the breadbin,’ came Harry’s voice from the doorway. ‘Hello Dad,’ he added flatly, noticing his father.

  ‘Son.’

  They nodded at each other cautiously.

  ‘How’s business?’ inquired Starks the elder.

  ‘Oh,’ Harry shrugged. ‘You know.’

  ‘Yeah, I know,’ he turned to me and shrugged. ‘Still, it’s a shame my only son turned out a gonnif.’

  ‘I make a good living. You and Mum see enough of it.’

  Harry’s father grunted and turned his head to me again.

  ‘He was a bright kid. Could have got an education, done something with his life.’

  ‘Well maybe if you had been around a bit things might have been different. You were on the run half the time.’

  ‘Yeah, but that was on principle. The Party was against the war so I had to avoid the call up.’

  ‘The Party was against the war up until 1941. We didn’t see you till VJ Day.’

  ‘I was a pacifist. I wasn’t going to fight in no capitalist war.’

  ‘Yeah, but you ran a capitalist spieler, didn’t you?’

  ‘I suppose you blame me for your criminal tendencies.’

  ‘No Dad. Fact is we all learned to run rackets in the war. The black market, everyone was in on it, one way or another.’

  Now Harry turned to me.

  ‘I was the youngest spiv on Shoreditch High Street,’ he said proudly, then turned back to his father. ‘Just lay off with all that principled pony.’

  ‘Yeah, well, you can come back here with all your bourgeois trappings, just don’t forget where you’re from.’

  ‘Well, Dad,’ replied Harry, wearily, ‘I don’t suppose you’ll ever let me. Now come in through and have a nice cup of tea and we can pretend at being happy families for a while, eh?’

  ‘Mum liked you,’ said Harry as we drove back west.

  The words chilled me. There was a cold feeling right down in my guts. I realised then that I had to get out, that I would have to leave him. I’d never really thought about how long me and Harry would last but I certainly didn’t fancy myself as part of the family. Perhaps I was scared of the prospect of going through his madness again.

  But fear prevented me from coming up with any properly thought-out way of leaving. It would have been stupid to confront him. I didn’t r
ate my chances in a showdown with Harry. So I resorted to guerrilla tactics. I could niggle him, wind him up, it wasn’t difficult. I somehow figured that if I got up his nose enough he would tire of me altogether.

  I would undermine him. Harry hadn’t managed to lose all the weight he’d put on during his depression. All the booze and lack of exercise had taken its toll. And the anti-depressants. As he sighed at himself in the mirror I would hold back from reassuring him that he didn’t look so bad.

  I started to affect an indifference to the sex that we had together. I got into the habit of sneaking out into the bathroom and wanking off before spending the night with him just to make sure that my boredom seemed genuine. Then I’d deliberately go through the motions in a way that reduced it to just a functional level. Robbed of any illusions it became an empty pleasure for Harry. And I knew that that was not what he wanted. Nobody does, let’s face it.

  And I stopped keeping the flat in the kind of order that Harry insisted upon. He hated mess and so I just let the housework go until it became too much for him.

  ‘Look at this fucking place!’ he finally exploded at me. ‘It’s a fucking dump!’

  I let him stomp about the flat a bit, picking up clothes and papers that had been strewn about the drawing room.

  ‘Well?’ he demanded.

  ‘Well what?’ I replied a bit cockily.

  ‘Well, are you going to tidy this pit up?’

  I shrugged and let out a long sigh and started to collect up some of the debris in a listless way. And he snapped. He came over and clouted me across the ear and I went down on the carpet.

  ‘Behave yourself !’ he bellowed.

  I acted all hurt, which wasn’t difficult with a thick ear.

  ‘You can’t treat me like this,’ I sobbed. ‘I’m not your bloody slave.’

  I looked up at him from the floor as he seethed above me. I had to be careful. I wanted to goad him enough into saying something reckless but not so much so he’d kick the shit out of me.

  ‘It’s not fair, Harry,’ I whined at him.

  He stared down his nose at me, nostrils wide with anger like a double-barrel shotgun.

  ‘Well if you don’t like it, you can piss off,’ he declared and with that I got up off the floor and walked to the door.

  ‘Terry!’ he called after me. ‘Come back here!’

  But I was gone. I didn’t look back once. That was it, I thought, finish.

  So I went back to the bedsit in Westbourne Grove. I’d never officially given it up nor told Harry where it was. He’d never asked. To be honest I didn’t expect that I’d be able to get back into it. I hadn’t paid rent in nearly three months and my landlord wasn’t known for his leniency. Tenants in arrears were likely enough to be called upon by his heavies and a couple of alsatians for good measure. I was surprised to find that my key still fitted the lock and my possessions, meagre as they were, hadn’t been tampered with. Two dingy, damp rooms in a run-down Victorian terrace. Its squalor reminded me of the luxury I had briefly been familiar with. I put a shilling in the meter and tried to make myself at home. The unaired rooms smelt of cat’s piss and sour milk but it was my own place, at least for the time being, and Harry didn’t know where I lived. Or so I thought.

  I’d scarcely taken anything with me when I’d walked out of Harry’s. Just the clothes I was wearing, a Rolex watch he’d bought me and a bit of spending money that I had in my wallet. And I had no work to go to. Thoughts of the leisurely life that I’d almost got used to hung around in my head, mocking me. I’d have to get some kind of dreary job again. I’d go back to being the sort of person that villains would ridicule whilst they preyed upon them. A mug.

  And I couldn’t understand why the landlord hadn’t sent anyone around about the rent. Stories I’d heard from other tenants about his rent collectors were far from reassuring. He wasn’t likely to have merely forgotten one of his godforsaken slum dwellers. He was the type that got rich from counting every penny. Waiting around to be knocked about and thrown out in the street started to drive me crazy. I figured that I had nothing to lose by meeting my fate head on.

  I pawned the watch Harry had given me and sold my Dansette gramophone player to a junk shop on Golborne Road. A few weeks’ rent and some bluffing might hold some sway. I’d learnt from Harry that a direct approach with as much front as possible could often get results.

  The estate agent’s office was in Shepherd’s Bush. The clerk on the lettings desk ran his finger down a ledger and frowned up at me.

  ‘There’s no rent owing on that address,’ he informed me.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  He smiled coldly at me.

  ‘You have an arrangement with Mr Rachman.’

  This threw me. I’d been all geared up to plead my case. Sudden relief, then sudden uneasiness. I got flustered.

  ‘What do you mean, arrangement?’ I demanded.

  The clerk turned the ledger around so that I could read along the row that he had his finger on. There was my name, the address, and RENT FREE written in red ink across the payment columns.

  Just then Rachman himself came out of his office in the back. One of his heavies loomed behind him. Rachman was short, fat and bald. He looked over at the desk sourly.

  ‘Is there a problem here?’ he hissed in a thick Polish accent.

  The clerk pointed at the ledger and Rachman walked up and leaned over. The heavy stayed where he was but stared at me morosely.

  ‘Hm,’ mused the Pole looking to where the clerk’s grubby finger now smudged the page. ‘No problem at all.’

  Rachman smiled at me with dead eyes.

  ‘You see, many of my properties I let without financial remuneration. To my friends, you understand. And friends of friends. Mr Starks has proved to be a very useful friend to have. Don’t you agree? You will give him my best regards when you see him next, won’t you?’

  I grinned and nodded at Rachman and got out of the estate agents as soon as possible. It was midday. I went into the first pub I came across and tried to drink away some of the fear and paranoia. Had I been followed? Had he known for some time about the bedsit? Whatever. I’d underestimated the scope of Harry’s power and the booze didn’t calm me down any. They closed for the afternoon and I staggered back to Westbourne Grove. To where he knew I was.

  Two days later, sure enough, a knock came on the door. It was Jimmy Murphy. He cocked his head towards the street.

  ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘He’s in the motor.’

  I got into the back of the Daimler. Harry scarcely acknowledged me and didn’t start to talk until we’d been moving along for a while.

  ‘You shouldn’t have walked out like that,’ he said softly. ‘It was out of order.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  Harry shrugged.

  ‘Well maybe I was a bit out of order myself,’ he said.

  We looked at each other properly. Harry gave a sad little smile and cupped my cheek with an open palm.

  ‘So are you going to come back and behave yourself ?’

  ‘I don’t think that would be a good idea Harry.’

  His hand dropped from my face and he sighed. He sat back and let his head rest against the leather of the seat, his face turned from mine, gazing out of the window.

  ‘I’m sorry Harry.’

  He shrugged against the upholstery.

  ‘Yeah, well, that’s the way it goes I suppose.’

  He turned to give me a little sneer.

  ‘You’re nothing special,’ he hissed.

  He leant forward and told Jimmy to drive back to my place. We sat in silence as we went around a block. Then, when we were back on Westbourne Grove, he spoke again.

  ‘So, what, you working?’

  ‘No.’

  Harry nodded thoughtfully.

  ‘You want a job?’ he asked.

  ‘What kind of job?’

  ‘One of my businesses. Needs an assistant manager. You’ve been to clever school, should be
able to handle that. What do you say?’

  ‘What kind of business?’

  ‘Electrical goods. Wholesale, retail.’ Harry sniffed. ‘Legitimate.’

  Dominion Electrical Goods occupied a warehouse on Commercial Road. I had to get the tube right across the city. Westbourne Park to Whitechapel on the Metropolitan Line. Manny the Money met me there and showed me around the office. Mr Pinker, the manager of Dominion Electrical, wasn’t in.

  ‘He’s off sick,’ little Manny muttered.

  Manny went through my duties. It was simple. Signing delivery notes and filing invoices. Manny would come in from time to time to keep the books up to date but all the records needed to be kept in their proper box files. Now Manny wasn’t involved in Dominion in an official capacity. Turned out none of the firm was. This he made clear and that Jimmy Murphy would come in every so often to keep an eye on things.

  Mr Pinker wasn’t in the next day. Or the day after that. It was just me and a couple of labourers who genially sat around playing cards until a lorry arrived and there were fridges to shift. There wasn’t much for me to do. It struck me that this was the sort of job I might have ended up doing if I’d stayed on at school. Except that, with Harry involved, there was bound to be some sort of angle.

  Jimmy came around and we had a cup of tea in the office. He brought out a hip flask and gave us both a shot.

  ‘Everything all right?’ he asked.

  I nodded.

  ‘No visits or phone calls?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘Right,’ he said, getting up and draining his laced tea. ‘Keep up the good work. I’ll see you.’

  And he left.

  With time on my hands I started to think about what was really going on. I tried to work out what the angle was. Every aspect of a legitimate business seemed in order. We weren’t doing much trade, that was for sure, but there’s no law against that. I’d thought at first that the warehouse must be fencing for lorry hijacks. I’d heard gossip amongst the firm in the past of how they dealt in gear knocked off that way. The jump up, they called it. But deliveries at Dominion were nothing of the sort. All the paperwork seemed in order, invoices properly made out and everything. The only thing I could think of was that this was a legitimate business funded by dodgy money. That would make sense after all.