that?”
I offered her the rest of my cake and she looked to either side like a guilty schoolgirl before sliding the plate over to her side of the table. “I’ve never been very good curbing my appetite,” she said. “I suppose I’m compensating rather for when I was younger—we were terribly short of all sorts of things back then.”
“Back when?”
“Back when I was young and foolish,” she said. There was a dab of chocolate on her cheek and without thinking I wiped it off with my thumb. “Thank you,” she said. “You can never have enough cake.”
You certainly never have enough time. I paid the bill and she walked me back to where I’d parked the Asbo. I asked her what she did for a living.
“I’m a journalist,” she said.
“Who with?” I asked.
“Oh, I’m freelance,” she said. “Everybody is these days, apparently.”
“What do you write about?”
“Jazz of course,” she said. “The London scene, music, gossip, most of my work goes overseas. To the Japs mainly, very keen on jazz, the Japs are.” She explained that she suspected some sub-editor in Tokyo translated her work into Japanese—her name being one of the things that got lost in translation.
We reached the corner.
“I’m staying just up there on Berwick Street,” she said.
“With your sisters,” I said.
“You remembered,” she said. “Well of course you did, you’re a policeman. No doubt they train you to do such things. So if I tell you my address you’re sure to remember it.”
She told me her address and I pretended to memorize it—again.
“Au revoir,”
she said. “Until we meet again.”
I watched her walk away on her high heels, jaunty hips swaying back and forth.
Leslie was so going to kill me.
B ACK IN the old days my dad and his mates used to hang out on Archer Street, where the Musicians Union used to be, in the hope of getting work. I’d always imagined it as little knots of musicians dotted along the pavement. Then I saw a photograph that showed the street awash with men in porkpie hats and Burton suits toting their instruments around like unemployed Mafiosi. It got so crowded and competitive, my dad said, that bands would have secret hand gestures to communicate across the crowd, sliding fist for a trombonist, flat hand palm-down for a drummer, fluttering fingers for a cornet or a trumpet. That way you could stay friendly with your mates in the crowd even while undercutting them for a gig at the Savoy or the Café de Paris. My dad said you could have walked down Archer Street and assembled two full orchestras, a big band, and still have enough bodies left for a couple of quartets and a soloist to tinkle the ivories at Lyon’s Corner House.
These days the musicians text each other and arrange their gigs on the Internet and the Musicians Union has crossed the river to set up shop on the Clapham Road. It was a Sunday but on the basis that music, like crime, never sleeps I gave them a ring. A guy at the main office, once I’d convinced him this was a police matter, gave me the mobile number for Tista Ghosh, the Jazz Section’s welfare officer. I rang her and left a message identifying myself and giving an impression of urgency without actually saying anything concrete. Never record anything you wouldn’t want turning up on YouTube is my motto. Ms. Ghosh rang back just as I was reaching my car. She had the kind of precision-tooled middle-class accent that only comes from being taught English as a Second Language in the cradle. She asked me what I wanted and I told her that I wanted to talk about unexpected deaths among her members.
“Does it have to be this evening?” she asked. Behind her I could hear a band playing “Red Clay.”
I told her I’d try and keep the interview as short as possible. I love using the word
interview
because members of the public see it as the first step up the legal staircase that goes from “helping the police with their inquiries” to spending time at Her
I offered her the rest of my cake and she looked to either side like a guilty schoolgirl before sliding the plate over to her side of the table. “I’ve never been very good curbing my appetite,” she said. “I suppose I’m compensating rather for when I was younger—we were terribly short of all sorts of things back then.”
“Back when?”
“Back when I was young and foolish,” she said. There was a dab of chocolate on her cheek and without thinking I wiped it off with my thumb. “Thank you,” she said. “You can never have enough cake.”
You certainly never have enough time. I paid the bill and she walked me back to where I’d parked the Asbo. I asked her what she did for a living.
“I’m a journalist,” she said.
“Who with?” I asked.
“Oh, I’m freelance,” she said. “Everybody is these days, apparently.”
“What do you write about?”
“Jazz of course,” she said. “The London scene, music, gossip, most of my work goes overseas. To the Japs mainly, very keen on jazz, the Japs are.” She explained that she suspected some sub-editor in Tokyo translated her work into Japanese—her name being one of the things that got lost in translation.
We reached the corner.
“I’m staying just up there on Berwick Street,” she said.
“With your sisters,” I said.
“You remembered,” she said. “Well of course you did, you’re a policeman. No doubt they train you to do such things. So if I tell you my address you’re sure to remember it.”
She told me her address and I pretended to memorize it—again.
“Au revoir,”
she said. “Until we meet again.”
I watched her walk away on her high heels, jaunty hips swaying back and forth.
Leslie was so going to kill me.
B ACK IN the old days my dad and his mates used to hang out on Archer Street, where the Musicians Union used to be, in the hope of getting work. I’d always imagined it as little knots of musicians dotted along the pavement. Then I saw a photograph that showed the street awash with men in porkpie hats and Burton suits toting their instruments around like unemployed Mafiosi. It got so crowded and competitive, my dad said, that bands would have secret hand gestures to communicate across the crowd, sliding fist for a trombonist, flat hand palm-down for a drummer, fluttering fingers for a cornet or a trumpet. That way you could stay friendly with your mates in the crowd even while undercutting them for a gig at the Savoy or the Café de Paris. My dad said you could have walked down Archer Street and assembled two full orchestras, a big band, and still have enough bodies left for a couple of quartets and a soloist to tinkle the ivories at Lyon’s Corner House.
These days the musicians text each other and arrange their gigs on the Internet and the Musicians Union has crossed the river to set up shop on the Clapham Road. It was a Sunday but on the basis that music, like crime, never sleeps I gave them a ring. A guy at the main office, once I’d convinced him this was a police matter, gave me the mobile number for Tista Ghosh, the Jazz Section’s welfare officer. I rang her and left a message identifying myself and giving an impression of urgency without actually saying anything concrete. Never record anything you wouldn’t want turning up on YouTube is my motto. Ms. Ghosh rang back just as I was reaching my car. She had the kind of precision-tooled middle-class accent that only comes from being taught English as a Second Language in the cradle. She asked me what I wanted and I told her that I wanted to talk about unexpected deaths among her members.
“Does it have to be this evening?” she asked. Behind her I could hear a band playing “Red Clay.”
I told her I’d try and keep the interview as short as possible. I love using the word
interview
because members of the public see it as the first step up the legal staircase that goes from “helping the police with their inquiries” to spending time at Her
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