London Blues (32 page)

‘OK. Now you, Desmond, couldn’t have got a story out of Christ on the Cross, could you?’

‘Steady on, old man. I’ve been in the street for over thirty years! And I’ve had my own byline for twenty!’

‘So how is it that you have all this? Where did all the photographs come from? Who handed them to you? Who put the spin on the story?’

‘Resourceful journalism. Thirty years’ experience ferreting out the full and fearless truth!’

‘Stuff that up your arse. This was all given to you. I know that. Tell me who.’

‘A journalist never reveals his sources, old boy.’

‘Tell me who? Tell me because I’m the centre of it.’

‘I don’t think …’

‘Somebody walked in and gave you a great big package and said Desmond, here it is. All you’ve got to do is read it!’

Nick’s remark starts running through my mind as though it’s on an endless loop: who are we not supposed to be noticing? It’s the same people we’re not supposed to be noticing elsewhere.

The fearless and frank journalist is uncharacteristically quiet. He’s going to shift ground and try another tack.

‘Tim. You can be a very rich man if you go along with this. And you’d be making some very good friends too.’

‘So you keep saying.’

‘You won’t know about Sonny, but perhaps I should tell you.’

Sonny! Believe it or not, I don’t think I’ve thought of Sonny once this year. I thought about him plenty of times immediately after Caroline Street, but that was it. This year, not at all. One’s mind can just block out whole areas when it wants to. Sonny!

‘You won’t know about Sonny, but perhaps I should tell you.’ Desmond says it again.

‘Let me know all about Sonny, Desmond.’

‘It’s like this. I can’t be too specific, you know how these things are, but Sonny proved himself very useful to … very useful ….’

‘To they … them?’

‘Yes. They found him very useful. Very pleased … indeed.’

‘And?’

‘And? Well, that’s why he was spirited back to the West Indies. He got a right royal amount of cash for his trouble and he lives the life of Riley out there now … surrounded by all those other niggers.’

‘He does, does he?’ I want to say something more but I can’t right now. Not this very minute.

‘You know this about Sonny for a fact, do you, Desmond?’

‘I most certainly do.’

I’ve got a question. A stab in the dark.

‘Does the name Vicky Stafford mean anything to you?’

Desmond freezes. The forkful of oyster and mushroom pie remains fixed about six inches in front of his face. He stares at me. His eyes seem to be getting ever bigger. The name rings a bell somewhere in Desmond’s polluted head.

‘I’ll tell you about Sonny, Desmond. Sonny is fucking dead and he’s been fucking dead for a year. He was shot through the head like Vicky Stafford. I saw them. Saw them both together.’

Desmond drops the fork. He’s still staring at me, food and saliva dripping from his mouth.

Let Desmond stew in that for a while. See what he’s got to say for himself then.

I take another bread roll and break it in half. I reach over to the butter dish with the knife and scrape some butter. I begin to spread it on the roll when the plate seems to begin moving towards me. It starts rising. I seem to accept this initially and then I wonder
why
?
Now I realise it is the table that is moving upwards and towards me, and at an angle. Slowly at first. Now faster. The table is moving. Plates, cutlery, glasses, ashtrays and oyster and mushroom pie are falling towards me. A pitcher of water flies past and smashes as it hits the floor. Glasses break. Plates smash. There’s a frightening noise. A long, tortured scream as if from an animal in endless pain. I don’t know where it is coming from – the sound envelops me. It comes from all directions.

I sit as a spectator. A passive member of the audience wondering what is going to happen next.

‘Oh, my God. They’re out of control!’

Who said that?

‘They’re out of control!’ It’s Desmond’s voice.

Slowly and deliberately, as if controlled by someone else, I raise my eyes from that point where a little earlier my plate had been.

I see Desmond standing. His eyes are bloodshot and look like they will burst from their sockets. There’s a frenzied maniacal look in them. Desmond is a man who has glimpsed the future and seen his own final moments. The horror is hastening him towards his terminal destination – his extinction.

Whatever unhealthy redness was in his face has now gone. It is white and pallid and wet. All colour and emotion drained. Life is leaching away from it. There is saliva foaming in the corners of his mouth – bubbling and frothing up and lazily dribbling down his chin.

‘They’re out of control!’

The last word is strangled in his throat.

His body begins trembling. Trembling so fast it almost becomes a blur. He screams. A screaming glissando racing ever higher in pitch until it becomes inaudible.

Colour seeps back into his face. It is a dark rich blue. Veins down his temples spring into relief, stretching the skin almost to bursting point.

Blood spurts from one of his eyes.

Desmond falls forward, staggers sideways, spurred on by physiological processes over which he no longer has control. These are his final moments. There’s a lingering odour from the descending Angel of Death.

He careens through the restaurant, ricocheting from one table to another, propelled by the hastening end that is now enveloping him, spewing vomit, blood and the last vestiges of life. Women scream and try to avoid him; their boyfriends are paralysed by an inability to comprehend what they are seeing.

This is Desmond’s final late edition. That wonky heart of his, after years of abuse, has now gone on strike.

I cannot remain here.

I rise from the chair. I look past Desmond towards the door.

Effortlessly and unnoticed I glide through the shadows and confusion and out of the restaurant on to the street.

I’m running now down towards Sloane Square.

Running.

I’m being watched.

Someone is following.

The feeling is persistent. I can’t shake it off.

The curtain is about to come down or go up. I don’t know which.

Where did it all start to go wrong?

I’ve got to keep going.

Can’t stop now.

I’ve kicked a horse’s skull ….

THE CURTAIN
seems to come down on Timmy Purdom on Saturday, 17 October 1964.
Seems
to come down, that is. But we cannot be sure. The final chapter here could be the opening chapter elsewhere. The past is prologue.

It is hard to differentiate fact from fancy, to sort out what a witness actually saw from what his reconstructed memory
thinks
he (or she) saw. Difficult indeed.

But what about the ‘tramp'? This unknown (and incongruous) figure who dogs the early hours of that Saturday morning? Am I, are
we
, seeing a connection where there is none? Is happenstance seen as design, chance as purpose?

The tramp (I'll drop the quotes) is first seen by a cab driver at around 5 a.m. lurking … no, that is a loaded term,
standing
might be better … standing in a doorway of the Royal Oak. The cabby sees him there again an hour later and this time he appears to be holding a brown paper bag to his mouth.

At around 6.35 a.m. the tramp goes into Terry's, the newsagent's opposite Timmy's house. The tramp, in an educated voice, asks for the
Telegraph
and pays for it with a threepenny bit. Terry Dixon, the eponymous newsagent, thinks there is something odd about him, that he is dressed up to
look
like a tramp. His shoes are muddied and scuffed
but the heels are hardly worn. His trousers are splattered with what appears to be white paint and are ripped in several places, yet they have sharp creases. His army
greatcoat
looks new and clean beneath the ‘applied' dust and chalk. His shirt collar is clean and freshly starched. His hair is short under the old fedora. His skin looks clean beneath the day's growth of stubble.

Terry wonders what's in the brown paper bag the tramp holds against his chest with his left hand.

‘But the thing that really alerted me was his manner … his gait. All tramps have a slow sort of slouch … a shuffle sort of thing. This geezer didn't. He just strode in and then strode out … a bit like he was, you know,
busy,
or
something
.'

The tramp strode out and strode next door, to Enzio's Rendez-Vous Café (Prop. Enzio Salandria).

Enzio is behind the counter at the far end of the café frying eggs and bacon for himself and his brother, Franco.

The tramp strides towards him.

It is now 6.40 a.m.

The tramp is Enzio's first customer of the day. Enzio looks at the tramp apprehensively. There are plenty of them about here: mendicant hoboes, derelicts, winos, dossers, down-and-outs. Paddington and Bayswater are full of them. Enzio always dreads them coming to the café. They beg food, upset other customers, cause a disturbance … and smell. The tramp stops at the counter. Enzio tries to make him out behind the glasses, within the turned-up collar and beneath the hat, but with little success. He waits for the figure to speak.

The tramp smiles at Enzio and looks at the menu on the wall behind the counter.

‘I would like the egg, bacon and sausages … with some toast, marmalade and a cup of coffee …
if
you please.'

An educated voice indeed.

Enzio says nothing.

The tramp takes a wallet from inside the greatcoat,
produces a crisp £1 note and hands it to Enzio.

‘Yes, sir,' says Enzio. ‘Sit down … I will bring it to your table. And your change.'

The tramp says nothing, turns and walks back to the front of the café. He sits at a table that has been placed at right angles to the plate glass of the frontage.

The inside of the glass is thick with condensation and it is not possible to see out. The first thing the tramp does is wipe the window so that he can have a clear view of the street. He remains motionless, just staring out.

Enzio delivers the breakfast and change. The tramp thanks him by nodding. Enzio notices several things: the tramp is wearing a very expensive watch, he seems to be having trouble with a hearing aid that looks quite different from any aid Enzio has ever seen before and, despite the generally dirty appearance of the man, his shirt is
spotlessly
clean (thereby corroborating what Terry next door had said). Enzio wonders about the hearing aid. It looks more like an ear radio receiver he remembers from his army days.

The tramp begins to eat his breakfast.

The café is slowly filling up with other people.

At 7.30 a.m. the tramp has finished eating. Enzio clears away the cup and plates and the tramp asks for a further cup of coffee.

Enzio sees a brown paper carrier bag on the tramp's lap that he has not noticed before. The tramp clutches it with one hand. An antenna-like wire projects from it.

When Enzio gets back to the counter Franco says to him that there is something very odd about this tramp.

7.45 a.m.

The tramp is now casually reading the newspaper: the
Daily
Telegraph
.

A photograph of Harold Wilson dominates the front page. It measures seven inches by six inches and is
positioned
very nearly in the centre of the uppermost half of the page immediately below the masthead (there are
smaller pictures of George Brown and Patrick Gordon Walker to the left). Wilson is standing in the doorway of 10 Downing Street with his left hand raised in a wave. The caption reads:

The Labour victory dominates the front page:

WILSON'S EARLY START

ON CABINET MAKING

MORE MINISTERS TODAY

The youngest

Premier since

Rosebery

The tramp continues reading the paper for nearly an hour, his reading interrupted only by long stares out on to Porchester Road.

It is now 8.55 a.m.

He continues staring across to Albert Terrace.

It is now overcast and raining steadily.

Dave Finney (19), a maintenance worker at Whiteley's store, puts a coin in the jukebox and plays the first record of the day, the Kinks singing
You
Really
Got
Me
.

Finney notices the tramp gazing intently out of the window, thinks he is looking for something or somebody. Enzio and Franco think the same thing. There's an
alertness
he cannot disguise.

Now some conjecture.

The story as I see it.

A figure hurries up the path of No. 16 Albert Terrace, takes a key from his pocket and lets himself into the house. The door closes behind him.

The figure might be Tim.

The house is still.

A few moments later the light comes on in Tim's room.

Is this what the tramp was waiting for? It could well be.

But enough conjecture.

Finney sees the tramp ‘whispering' something into the paper bag before he, the tramp, gets up and walks quickly out of the café. Finney is intrigued by the figure and goes to the window. He wipes the condensation away and sees the tramp getting into a white Jaguar car that then speeds northwards up Porchester Road.

Finney turns to Enzio who is at the other end of the café and shouts, ‘He's got a walkie-talkie in that bag!' These are the last words Dave Finney ever utters.

Several seconds later there is a noise, like distant rumbling thunder. Distant but getting nearer. It increases in volume.

If you were standing out on the street you would now see the window-panes of Tim's room stretch and bend outwards until they suddenly fragment into a million shards of glass which arc up and over Porchester Road. Pieces of curtain rise in the air, hover momentarily and then begin falling like lazy autumn leaves.

Then the solid wooden window-frames move forward, but the solidity is illusory for they are instantly
transformed
into a myriad splinters, joining the triumphant arc of glass.

An engulfing ball of fire shoots forwards, rises, and dissolves, leaving in its wake an acrid pall of black smoke.

Another rumbling now. A rising rumbling that
transmutes
into the splitting crack of an explosion.

The outside wall of Tim's room bows out, the stucco bursts and is propelled forward.

The balcony is now disengaged from the wall.

The brickwork is becoming unbonded as the force of the explosion rips through the mortar.

The balcony tilts forward and splits vertically in half before beginning its tumbling descent.

The roof lifts slowly, hesitantly, and seems to hover. The slates rise in unison and are then shot upwards.

A blanket of dust and debris covers Porchester Road.

Masonry now smashes through the plate glass of Enzio's Rendez-Vous, propelling Dave Finney with it.

The story might now be continued through a montage of newspaper headlines:

The explosion made the inside pages of several of the national daily newspapers but thereafter it was left to the local West London papers and the
Standard
and
News
to pursue the story:

KENNETH THEODORE
: I'd been with the old
Paddington
Weekly
Advertiser
for about six months when the story
broke. My first newspaper job. Alfred Dare was the editor then. He'd been editing it for fifty years, perhaps more, and he called me in and put me on it because Cyril Reddington, the chief reporter, had had a heart attack.

I was round at Paddington Green when the copper on the case, Jim Munby, a chief inspector, announced the deaths … and here it is, as we reported it:

There was a lot of pressure on Munby to find out what caused the explosion. He had his forensic lads going over the house day and night for a week and then they
disappeared
into the laboratory. While they were there the
Telegraph
ran a couple of paragraphs saying the police now believed it was a build-up of gas that had caused the explosion. Munby was furious. He was the investigating officer and he hadn't made any announcements, one way or the other. I was quite pally with him by this time and he asked me to find out where the story came from (he knew I had a friend on the
Telegraph
). I got in touch with my friend there – we'd been to school together – and it turns out the story originated in an off-the-record Home Office briefing. Jim blanched when I told him. He was furious. Anyway he kept his own counsel and about two weeks later was taken off the case. He never quite got over it. You see, he was a copper of the old school. He regarded himself as a public servant and saw his job as discovering the truth and seeing that justice was done. Just a good copper, that's all. Didn't understand politics and couldn't play the game like the smoothies at Scotland Yard.

Then the Gas Board who had been doing their own investigations stepped in and announced that there was no evidence to suggest it was a gas explosion. They effectively
threw a gauntlet at Scotland Yard and said, put up or shut up.

So that put paid to the gas theory.

We were all waiting for the next development … and it wasn't long in coming.

The reason Jim was taken off the case was that the forensic boffins had discovered, so Scotland Yard said, traces of gelignite in Albert Terrace. Special Branch stepped in and started their own investigations. I didn't have any ‘in' with those boys so I just turned up at press conferences like any other journalist.

The fact, of course, that it was Special Branch on the case now alerted us to some ‘political' dimension to the story. Rumours went around, inspired no doubt by Special Branch, that some South African blacks had been staying in Albert Terrace and were storing explosives there which they were going to use to blow up the South African Embassy in Trafalgar Square.