and has no qualms about killing anyone he even suspects of being either.’
Fintan returned with pints and whiskey chasers. I downed my Jameson in one.
‘So let me get this straight,’ I said, still reeling, ‘we’re going to a strip joint owned by London’s most notorious gangland psychopath to ask questions about a girl he’s probably just whacked.’
‘Jesus, don’t make it sound so formal.’ Fintan laughed, a little nervously, gnashing away on his scratchings. ‘We’re just a couple of punters asking after our favourite dancer. You never know what one of the girls might let slip, especially after a few cheap champagnes. I’ve looked at every facet of Liz’s life today. Her death has to be connected to that club.’
‘But what if one of the girls cottons on and tells Jimmy’s apes? Jesus, imagine what they’d do to a prying cop?’
‘Knowing Jimmy, he’d put you on the payroll with all the others. Look, the girls don’t even know she’s dead yet, do they? Why would they find it suspicious? But this is our only window. Once our first edition drops then everything changes. There’ll be journos swarming all over the story. But it isn’t even news yet …’
‘Journos swarming all over a dead hooker? Why will Liz’s murder be such a big deal?’
‘Let’s just say I’ve uncovered a few juicy angles …’
‘Don’t tell me, you managed to get a clip of her from The Bill?’
He nodded.
‘Much of a role?’
‘Blink and you’d miss it. Well, that would be my advice anyway.’
‘Not very convincing?’
‘Let me put it this way, Donal, you won’t see more wood in the Florentine tonight. But this makes her a celeb, so that makes the story upmarket sleaze and the advertisers get a real stiffie over that, not to mention our porn-mag reading, woman-hating demographic. The Daily Mail will go crazy for it Monday, their lower-middle class readership loves a good hate. This one could run and run.’
As Fintan devoured his third pint, my eyes seized upon the last few pork scratchings in the bottom of the bowl. I’d never noticed before how these leathery, wrinkled circular snacks look like mummified arseholes. I couldn’t stop myself imagining my insides being sucked through one of them and shuddered.
‘Jesus, Fint, I don’t know. It feels like we’re walking right into trouble. What if we’re rumbled …’
‘Oh, for Christ’s sake Donal, you’ve been banging on at me for months about having no excitement in your life and not being “a proper detective”. I’m telling you now, this is going to be a massive case. It might be the best chance the cops ever have of taking down a major league villain like Reilly. You didn’t choose this job to act like a fucking politician. You need to take risks. One break tonight – a lead, a potential informant – and you’re in the box seat, indispensable to the murder squad. They’ll be practically begging you to join.’
He scooped up the last scratchings, shovelled them into his mouth and crunched: ‘I mean really, what have you got to lose?’
Soho, London
Saturday, April 3, 1993; 21.40
As we set off up Greek Street, I felt instantly reassured by Soho’s drunken school-playground vibe. Outside the pokey, sticky-carpeted pubs, drinkers clumped obediently between territory-marking velvet ropes; hemmed-in lives cutting loose, drinking, smoking, talking and laughing too hard.
It all happened here. We were just another pair of pissheads who’d run out of pleasure, innocently seeking more.
As we turned left into Old Compton Street, Fintan pointed out a semi-derelict three-storey building on the corner.
‘Reilly owns that place now. A few months back, he sent his heavies in, demanded the deeds, got the deeds. A year or so ago, a similar place on Berwick Street resisted his approaches and got burned to the ground.
‘A turf war, over a cattle shed like that?’
‘If you look closer, there’s a clip joint in the basement, an unlicensed sex shop on the ground floor and three or four prostitutes on the first and second floors.’
I turned to see a red door open to a bare wooden staircase. On the flaky wall, a garish square of pink card announced ‘Models’ in black marker pen.
I couldn’t imagine how any man could take that stairway to farmyard sex with a spent, cowed slave. The very existence of these fleshy wank stations had to be about male power and control: a King Kong, chest-beating, ‘me Tarzan’ fleeting reassertion of authority for men emasculated by modern life and equality. Or maybe they were just horny as hell and this had to do.
Either way, Soho had dozens of these so-called ‘walk ups’. It would be the ‘walking back down again’ I couldn’t handle. Maybe it was the Catholic in me, but how could you face the outside world again after your sordid deed, burning with guilt and shame? What if – blinking into the sun, sticky and dishevelled – you bumped into someone you knew? How could you ever explain away your behaviour? And Soho really is that small.
‘Talk about putting yourself in a vulnerable position,’ I said. ‘Presumably as soon as your keks hit the floor, some muscle jumps out of the wardrobe and robs you.’
‘No, those girls are the real deal,’ he said, and who was I to argue with the Vice Admiral.
‘There’s a menu of services on the wall,’ he went on. ‘You get what you pay for, albeit with varying degrees of skill and enthusiasm.’
‘You seem to know an awful lot about this, Fintan.’
‘I’ve very good contacts in the Vice Squad. And they maintain good relationships with the pimps and the girls, mostly. The cops know they’re never going to get rid of it so they try to make it as safe as possible for all involved. Most of these places have CCTV in the hallways now and covert cameras in the bedrooms. They set it up to protect the girls but it’s helped them in all sorts of ways that they hadn’t bargained for.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Let’s just say men of influence don’t like being caught with their trousers round their ankles. Especially married ones.’
‘I trust a thorough, conscientious journalist like you has insisted on seeing this footage.’
He laughed: ‘Let’s just say it made me feel very conventional. Boring almost.’
‘I don’t understand why a multi-millionaire, semi-legit gangster like Reilly would get involved in something so … tawdry.’
‘According to my snouts in Vice, two reasons. His place back there pulls in two grand cash a week, and he gets to road test all the fresh meat.’
‘Sounds like a fucking animal,’ I said.
The seedy, decrepit underground sex hovels soon gave way to Old Compton Street’s colourful gay sex shops, pubs and clubs – so clean, overt and unashamed. I wondered what this contrast revealed about male sexuality.
We stomped on through more neon-lit alleyways, past joints promising peeps and teasing strips. Under the archway announcing Raymond’s Revue bar in Walker’s Court, a dreadlocked man mumbled offers of crack, his hamster-like cheeks storing the rocks, ready to swallow if police swooped.
Brewer Street’s porn cinemas, weirdo publishing outlets and sex shops eventually gave way to the innocent white-bulb signs of legitimate theatre, and to the trendy restaurants of Glasshouse Street – bouncers on the door, celebrities