Excerpt Teaser

CHAPTER ONE

London, 1929

George Harley locked eyes with the fox which stood motionless in the frowzy Soho courtyard, the silver lustre of moonlight giving it the appearance of a bronze sculpture left out for the binmen.
    ‘How’s your luck, mate?’ he said softly, then tossed it the remaining nub of saveloy from the hasty supper he’d grabbed from the all-night café in Lisle Street. He’d always felt a certain affinity with these urban scavengers, who eked out their living among the city’s shadows. 
    The fox gobbled up the offering then slunk past him to peruse the dustbins with the cool insouciance of the streetwise. 
    Smiling, Harley sucked the grease from his fingers and got back to the job in hand. He took out the photograph of the runaway. She looked the epitome of a well-brought-up suburban girl. God only knew what the kid had had to endure in the last few weeks on the streets of the capital. Still, if his information was correct, he might have her safely back home by the following evening. 
    He transferred his trusty brass knuckleduster to his side pocket, sparked up a smoke from a pack of Gold Flake and made his way towards the iron staircase in the corner of the yard. The stairs led to the Pied Piper nightclub – though calling such a drab little joint a nightclub was stretching it a bit. This particular dive was not much more than a ‘bottle party’ open to anyone desperate enough to hunt it out in the dingy back streets of Soho.
    Once inside the club, Harley took stock of his surroundings. It was a meagre affair: a simple, rectangular room; wooden tables and chairs scattered around a small dancefloor; the musty tang of sweat, alcohol and tobacco smoke. The standard of punter was equally uninspiring: wide-boys and petty criminals; a few down-on-their luck musicians and theatrical types; a group of provincial travelling salesmen (looking the worse for wear in their cheap, ill-fitting suits) and two university students, whose cut-glass accents and drunken braying would no doubt single them out for special attention at the end of the night. And then there were the ‘hostesses’. In some of the more fashionable West End establishments these would have been professionals of a different type – genuine graduates of social and theatrical dancing schools, employed by the club to offer their skills to the good-time Charlies and jazz-mad scions of the upper classes. But in the Piper their provenance was of a far more dubious nature, and they wore their credentials on their louche, powdered faces.
    It didn’t take Harley long to spot the pimp Vern Slater. There he was, leaning against the makeshift bar in the typical wide-boy uniform: the garish checked suit with its oversized lapels, the gaudy American silk tie – the ubiquitous toerag ponce, keeping an eye on his new acquisition, no doubt. But where was she? It was likely he’d have attempted to change her appearance somehow, but a quick scan of the club failed to reveal anyone who looked remotely like young Alice Pritchard from Woking.
    Harley looked back at Slater and noticed he’d been joined by a forlorn-looking character in a decaying lounge suit. The newcomer was pointing in Harley’s direction while whispering in the ponce’s ear. Slater hitched his waistband and began to saunter over. 
    He’d been clocked. 
    ‘Well, well. What have we here, then?’ 
    ‘Evening, Vernon,’ said Harley, offering a casual smile while surreptitiously teasing his fingers into the heavy brass knuckles in his pocket. 
    ‘Oh, Vernon, is it? Well, I don’t know you, pal. But my mate over there reckons you’re the sherlock who’s been sticking his fat nose in where it don’t belong.’ 
    Keeping his smile, Harley looked over to the door, to make brief eye contact with the club’s strong-arm – a young West Indian named Jensen, known to have a calm head on his well-developed shoulders. 
    ‘The smart thing to do here, Slater, would be to play nice with me. See, I’m here to help you resolve your little problem. But I guess you demonstrated your reluctance to do the smart thing when you bought that suit.’ 
    The ponce sneered at him. 
    ‘What little problem?’ 
    ‘The one you’re about to have with the bogeys, when I tell them your latest acquisition is only fifteen. You probably didn’t even know – they look so grown-up in their glad rags, don’t they? But now you do know, I’m sure you won’t mind me taking Alice off your hands, so I can get her back to her old mum. What d’you say? After all, a bit of poncing’s one thing, but corruption of a minor? You don’t want to be getting your collar felt for that kind of thing.’ 
    Slater’s response was to conjure a cut-throat razor from his inside pocket – the lower portion of its blade covered in sticking plaster, to make it easier to wield. This was hardly
a surprise to Harley – with this kind of lowlife a razor was almost a given.
    But before the private detective could respond to the threat, the impressive figure of the club’s bouncer appeared, looming large over Slater’s shoulder.
    ‘Everything alright here, gents?’
    ‘Nothing I can’t handle thanks, Jensen.’
    ‘Glad to hear that, George. But this can’t be happening in here.’
    ‘You’d better explain that to Sweeney Todd,’ said Harley, keeping his eye on the blade in Slater’s scrawny fist.
Jensen turned to the ponce, retaining his beatific smile. ‘Vernon, I’m afraid you’re going to have to leave now.’
Slater tried his best to give the bouncer a dismissive once-over – made all the more laughable by the contrast in their stature.
    ‘Oh yeah? And who’s going to make me?’
    Jensen answered this with a quick flash of the machete tucked into his waistband.
    The pimp curled his lip and spat on the floor, then pushed his way through the small crowd which had gathered to watch the altercation.
    ‘Did that cockroach come in with a girl tonight?’ asked Harley.
    ‘Yeah,’ said Jensen. ‘A clean-cut little number. Looked a bit green for one of Vernon’s pals.’
    ‘That sounds like her.’ Harley offered a cigarette. ‘Where is she now?’
    ‘Left with a punter. ’Bout twenty minutes before you came in.’
    ‘Anyone we know?’
    The bouncer lit his smoke on the proffered match, then shook his head. ‘No. But the boss mentioned something about the fella. I got the feeling she didn’t like him too much.’
    Harley made his way over to the small dancefloor, where the proprietor of the club – an ageing platinum blonde by the name of Shelly Carboys – was attempting a foxtrot with one of the theatrical types.
    ‘Mind if I cut in?’
    ‘George! What a nice surprise. We’ve not seen you in ages.’ Carboys’ make-up looked a little more Hackney than Hollywood at close quarters. ‘Business or pleasure?’
    ‘Business, I’m afraid, Shelly.’
    ‘No peace for the wicked, eh? What can I do you for?’
    ‘Vern Slater.’
    She pouted with disdain. ‘Oh, that little toerag. No doubt it’s about that new little mott of his.’
    ‘You got it in one. Jensen tells me she went off with a punter a little while back. Someone you know?’
    ‘Tell me, George – how old is she?’
    ‘Fifteen.’
    Carboys let out a weary sigh then led Harley to a secluded table in a darkened corner, where she slumped into a chair and splashed a generous slug of gin into her glass. ‘Fifteen? I swear I’m getting too long in the tooth for this game.’ She took a restorative gulp of her drink then placed her hand on Harley’s. ‘Listen. The bloke that poor kid’s gone off with? He’s a wrong ’un.’
    ‘In what way?’
    ‘In quite a few ways, I’d say. His name’s Turpin, Alfred Turpin. He used to be a regular at the Fitzroy Tavern, that is until Pop Kleinfeld barred him. He got obsessed with Pop’s daughter, Annie. Started bombarding her with gifts and letters. Oh, it began all innocent enough – romantic poems and such. Turpin fancies himself as a bit of a tortured artist, you see. Anyway, Annie didn’t want anything to do with him and told him as much, in no uncertain terms. Well, that’s when things started to get ugly.’
    ‘How so?’
    ‘Well, instead of love letters, Annie started to receive these creepy packages. Queer stories that Turpin had penned, and obscene drawings, all featuring poor Annie as the victim of some demented killer. And there was other stuff in the parcels too. Clumps of his hair, toenails and…’ Carboys gave a little disgusted shake of her shoulders and paused to cleanse her palate with another swig of gin. ‘Anyway, a few of the regulars at the pub decided to take the law into their own hands; went round to Turpin’s one night to warn him off. Things turned a bit nasty and Turpin pulled a gun; shot one of the lads in the hand.’
    ‘Did he do time for it?’
    ‘No. Not for that – the family had some fancy brief who got him off on a claim of self-defence. But when the bogeys searched his place, they found all sorts. Dirty books and pictures – and not just those saucy smudges they knock out in Old Compton Street; real perverted stuff, you know? And more of the drawings he’d made, and the stories, not just about Annie but about other girls as well. There was enough evidence to have Turpin put away for a while in the funny farm. But he’s been back in Soho a couple of months now. And by all accounts he’s as loony as ever: preaching in the street from some paperback novel as though it were the Bible. Looks like he hasn’t slept in weeks. I don’t know what Jensen was thinking, letting him in here, really I don’t.’
    ‘And this is the punter who’s just gone off with my client’s fifteen-year-old daughter?’ Harley grabbed his hat from the table and stood up. ‘Where does this character live?’
    ‘Not far from here. Above the newsagents in Bridle Lane. He’s got the set of attic rooms. But be careful, George. I’m telling you, Alfred Turpin’s not right in the head.’

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* * *

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The lock on the communal street door next to the newsagents was a simple latch affair and offered little resistance to Harley’s deft application of a small strip of celluloid, which he kept in his jacket for just such occasions. After a quick check of the list of named bell pushes it was just a matter of a quiet climb to the top floor.
    On reaching Turpin’s apartment, he took a moment to catch his breath.
    There came a sharp squeal from inside the room.
    He placed his ear to the door: a man’s voice, cursing… a plaintive sobbing… and, underneath it all, a kind of low hiss.
    What was that? Like the sound of a gas bracket before it’s lit. Was this madman trying to gas himself, and take little Alice with him?
    Harley made a quick assessment of the door: two locks on this one, both of a superior quality to the latch on the street entrance. But the doorframe had seen better days – patched and filled from a previous forcing by the look of it.
    The first hefty kick did significant damage: there was the satisfying sound of splintering timber and the door yielded a quarter of an inch or so. But the locks weren’t fully breached yet and now he’d shown his hand.
    ‘Turpin!’ he shouted, hearing panicked scrambling from inside. ‘Give the girl up and I promise it’ll end there!’
    Another boot saw the bottom third of the frame break free. He took a step back, hurled himself against the door… and he was in, stumbling across the room, grabbing at the foot of the bed to steady himself.
    There, amongst the tangle of soiled sheets, chained to the bedstead by her ankle, lay a girl. Pale and thin. Naked, apart from a cotton shift, rucked up to reveal a white thigh as slender as a hare’s. It took a moment for Harley to work out what was wrong with her face. Then he realised where the hissing was coming from. 
    He ripped the rubber mask from her mouth and shut the valve on the cylinder. The sweet, sickly odour hung in the air. Ether. Enough to knock out a horse. He placed a finger to the carotid artery – to his relief, he found a pulse, surprisingly strong in the circumstances. But this wasn’t Alice Pritchard. 
    He took stock of the room. The wall above the bed was plastered with pages torn from a book, notes scribbled in the margins, and phrases ringed and underlined. Other walls were adorned with sketches and paintings, and poetry scrawled in erratic capitals. Most of the artwork was figurative – nudes, executed in a naive style with a bold hand; but their poses and distorted genitalia hinted at a fevered brain. Harley thought he recognised the unconscious girl on the bed in a couple of the more shocking images. He glanced over at her forlorn figure, hoping they hadn’t been drawn from life. 
    A cold draught blew in from the corner of the room, where a rickety flight of steps led up to an open door. It was almost certainly the way Turpin had escaped, but Harley decided to make a quick check of the kitchenette first – he didn’t want to be crowned with a frying pan on the way up. 
    Less than a minute later, he was tentatively stepping out onto a flat roof, slick with a light rain that had just begun to fall on the Soho night. The building was high enough to catch a glimpse of the illuminated billboards of Piccadilly Circus, the neon light fizzing and squirming in the distance. 
    ‘Get out, copper! This is private property!’ 
    Harley span around to find Turpin balanced on the parapet wall. His jacket had been slung over a grubby vest, his eyes were wired with bloodshot veins. Around his neck there was a noose; expertly tied by the look of it. A prop for his sick fantasies? Or part of the plan for some dramatic final scene? The other end of the hemp rope was hitched to an iron ring bolted to the chimney stack. 
    And there, clasped tightly to Turpin’s side, was little Alice Pritchard. Her eyes were fixed, unfocused, her face set with a sickly pallor; this may have been due to shock, or a dose of Turpin’s ether. Whatever the reason, the girl seemed dangerously unaware of the fatal drop behind her.
    Harley made a lightning assessment of the situation, his brain fizzing like the neon in the distance. Force was out of the question.
    ‘Listen, Alfred. I’m not the police. My name’s George, George Harley. I’m here for her, for Alice.’
    ‘You can’t take her. It’s her destiny, together with the other one. My work…’
    Harley noticed Turpin’s focus drift. His head jerked to the side, as though he were listening to something.
    ‘Your work? Yes, of course. Are those your pictures in there? They’re good, you know, you’ve got a talent. And the poetry, is that yours?’
    Turpin gave a derisive laugh and hitched Alice up to get a better hold of her, both of them stumbling a little closer to the parapet’s edge. He took a deep breath, turning his face up to the rain and mumbled something to the night sky.
    ‘What was that?’ With Turpin’s gaze diverted, Harley risked taking a step closer.
    ‘I said, it’s not my poetry, it’s from the universe. But it’s hidden, don’t you see? Hidden by our banal rationale.’
    ‘The poetry of the universe, eh?’ Harley took another surreptitious step forward. ‘Sounds interesting. Explain that to me.’
    Turpin chuckled. ‘The pale girls lay chained in dreamy languor in the starlit loft.’ He fixed Harley with a delirious grin and repeated the line, bellowing it out to the night: ‘The pale girls lay chained in dreamy languor in the starlit loft! Don’t you see? The starlit loft… the girls…’
    Harley tensed as Turpin’s hand disappeared into his jacket pocket.
    ‘Cassina has it all in here!’ he yelled, pulling out a tattered paperback. ‘He’s given us instructions. You just have to know where to find them.’ He pushed the book against his forehead and closed his eyes again. ‘At first, I didn’t know how, couldn’t work it out. But then it came to me. It’s so simple, really. So simple. You just have to stop looking, d’you see? Embrace the randomness!’ 
    Turpin’s yell seemed to rouse Alice and, although still groggy, she began to squirm a little in his tight embrace. The artist stuffed the book back into his pocket and grabbed at the girl’s wrist. The rain was falling harder now and he continued to shout, so he could be heard against its clattering. 
    ‘I allowed the universe to reveal its messages to me!’ 
    ‘I’d like to know how you did that.’ Harley moved another step closer, watching Turpin’s feet, which were beginning to slip on the lichen-covered coping stone. 
    ‘I’m no amateur, you know, Harley. I’ve been to Paris. Met with Breton and the Dadaist Ernst. Supped at their table, drank it all in: the automatic drawing, the dream reading, expressions of the subconscious. But my work was still dross. Hackneyed, clichéd…’ He paused to rearrange his grip on Alice, who had begun to moan and toss her head about. ‘But the moment I read Cassina’s book, I knew it held a message for me. A key to unlock it all. I went back to my notebooks from Paris, you see. And there it was, Le Cadavre Exquis – the Exquisite Corpse, creating random poetry. So, following Cassina’s lead, I allowed it to guide me. My life became the work of art—’ He stopped abruptly, snapping his head around as though expecting to find someone behind him. 
    ‘Alfred?’ 
    Harley watched anxiously as Turpin released his grip on the girl in order to pull the noose tight around his own neck. 
    ‘The Exquisite Corpse…’ 
    ‘Alfred, no!’
    Turpin nodded, thrust Alice away from him, grasped at the wet rope and stepped back into the night. 
With a desperate lunge, Harley just managed to grab a handful of damp trouser tweed. He clung doggedly to Turpin’s right leg as he scrambled back to his feet beside the parapet. Turpin was thrust out horizontally before him, his body suspended by the noose attached to the chimney stack, one hand clutching desperately at the rope just above the knot. For a moment the man lay still, a look of perplexed surprise on his face. Then he began to kick out against his saviour. 
    ‘Cheese it, you bastard!’ growled Harley, fending off the blows from the artist’s free foot. 
    The delivery of a swift punch to the stomach soon put a stop to his struggling. Winded, Turpin lay still again, his face turning a shade of puce. 
    As the slate sky cracked to unleash its full torrent of freezing rain, Harley hooked his hand around the artist’s belt and began to haul him in. It was then he cast a glance over at Alice. 
    The girl was on all fours on the parapet wall, heaving up the contents of her stomach in a watery stream. 
    ‘Alice! Get off the wall!’ he shouted. But she seemed oblivious to her surroundings, rising clumsily to her feet. 
    ‘Get down, girl!’ 
    As if in a dream, Alice closed her eyes and thrust her hands out to her side, her fingers splayed out in the torrential rain. Then, to Harley’s horror, she began to stagger along the slippery parapet. 
    It was at this moment that Turpin began to lash out again with his feet. Harley parried the blows for a while but, by now, with the girl in such jeopardy, it had become a case of priorities. 
    He released his grip and vaulted across the roof to drag the fifteen-year-old to safety. On looking back, he found Turpin gone, the wet rope taut over its new load.
    Once he’d secured Alice in the safety of the apartment, Harley returned to the roof’s edge. There was Turpin below him – a gruesome pendulum swinging in the dismal night; his pallid face scuffed from its collisions with the brickwork. 
    ‘What a sodding mess!’ he muttered, then got out of the rain to spark up a cigarette, before going off in search of a telephone.