Chapter 15 I’ll Swing for You
“My brother?” George stared at Honor, waiting for her to laugh, to say she was joking.
“He is also a criminal, in prison until very recently. So as you see, it’s rather vital that you—”
The doorbell rang, and they both started. George began speaking, but Honor shushed her. Greta’s heavy footsteps were heard as she went to answer the door, then muffled voices as she spoke to the visitor.
“It sounds like a woman, doesn’t it?” said Honor. “George, go and have a peep out the window and see who it is.”
Who cares! thought George, desperate to resume their conversation. But she did as Honor asked, then came and sat back down. “It’s just a girl. A chum of Mina’s maybe. She’s standing there waiting. Rather rude of Greta not to ask her in.”
“Oh, you know Greta. Marvelously unencumbered by decorum. Really, she’s wasted on us. She’d be a great asset to the prison service, I’ve always thought.”
“Anyway, you were saying. Jimmy—”
Greta stuck her head around the door. “A young lady wanted to know if Jack lives here. I said, you mean Jimmy? Is Jack another name for Jimmy? I thought Jimmy was nickname for James.”
Honor concealed her consternation with an expression that said, Why are you bothering us with this?
“I look for Jimmy but cannot find him,” Greta went on. “She say she will come back later.”
“Well, we’ll mention it to him when we see him,” said George briskly. “Surely it’s your home time, Greta? We mustn’t keep you.”
“She was pretty,” pursued Greta. “Not pretty like you, George. But attractive, clean. Good clothes. Maybe she’s Jimmy’s girlfriend?”
“But you said she asked for Jack?” said Honor. “Sounds like she had the wrong house.”
“George, what’s the matter?” said Greta. “Are you not feeling well?” The girl looked like she’d seen an apparition, she thought.
Honor stood up. “Greta, when did you last see Jimmy?”
“It’s opening time,” said George. “He’ll be at the King’s Arms. But Honor, I really—”
As Greta left the room, Honor murmured, “I’m sorry, George. I’m so sorry. We’ll talk about this later, I promise. You won’t tell anyone, will you? No, of course you won’t. I’m sorry,” she repeated. “I must go.”
Honor speed-walked over to Fulham Road. From a hundred or so yards away, she saw Robbie leaving the pub, looking extraordinarily glum. She was about to raise a hand in greeting when he crossed the road, seemingly to avoid her. How peculiar.
Inside, Jimmy was sitting at the bar with a half-drunk pint of beer, talking to the barmaid. “Elsie!” he said. “What are you drinking?”
“Don’t call me that. I’ll swing for you, so help me God, I will. Get me a whisky. I’ll be over there.”
She sat in a booth and lit a cigarette. For the first time since Jack’s return, anger was surpassing anxiety.
“So,” he said, bringing their drinks over. “To what do I owe the—”
“You said no one knew where to find you.” She took a large sip. “That was the whole point. No one is even meant to know you’ve been released. So why did someone just come to the house asking for Jack?”
He looked disbelieving. “Who did? What did he look like?”
“She. Greta answered the door. Said she was young and pretty.”
“Oh.” He half preened, half shrugged. “What are you worried about, then?”
“If she knows, whoever she is, then who else knows? I can’t have this. I just can’t. Imagine if Saul found out. He’s already curious about you.”
“He won’t find out, though, will he? Not unless you tell him, and you’re not going to do that.
” Jimmy leaned back and raised his eyebrows, challenging her to say otherwise.
“Anyway, if it weren’t for your rotten husband, none of it would have happened.
” And if Thomas hadn’t been the first adult to give him any attention, to act like he mattered a measly jot, Jimmy might not have been so willing to do his bidding.
“You knew what he was like,” he went on, warming to his theme, “but you still told him about the cash next door.” Saul losing his wife and child was Elsie’s fault, thought Jimmy.
And he himself lost the best years of his life.
What did she lose? Nothing. “Then you sodded off and left me to rot in prison. For fourteen years. Can you even imagine how that feels?”
It was meant to be thirty years, thought Honor. She remembered the night Jack turned up at Tregunter Road. The gut-punch shock of it. No one had informed her of his release. Then again, she wasn’t easy to trace. So how had Jack managed it?
“They let you out, then?” she’d asked, sitting down next to him in the drawing room. She didn’t know what else to say. He looked the same, she thought with amazement. Taller, and broader, but the same.
“No,” he said. “Someone sent me a cake with a file baked in. Course they let me out.”
“But…”
“But why?” He smiled. “Wouldn’t you like to know.”
“Actually, Jack, I don’t care.” She rubbed her right temple. “You’re out for good, though? That’s it, you’ve served your sentence?”
He nodded. At Her Majesty’s Prison Brixton, he said, he’d befriended a man of around his own age, Ronald Macneice.
Ronald worked for his father-in-law, Albert Cooper, a prolific racketeer whose enterprises snaked like a vascular system through the West End underworld.
(Honor had heard of this man—everyone had—but she remained blank-faced.) Scotland Yard was building a case against Cooper, apparently, and had tried to make Ronald turn queen’s evidence.
“When he wouldn’t, the bastards trumped up a charge against him,” said Jack.
“Claimed he’d burned down an amusement arcade for the insurance. ”
“Heaven forbid,” said Honor.
The evidence Scotland Yard possessed of Ronald’s primary activities, namely running illegal baccarat clubs, was insufficient to use as convincing leverage.
But, as he told Jack, not only were these establishments unlicensed for gambling, they also existed solely to disunite wealthy men from their fortunes.
“And there was me,” said Honor, “thinking that only decent, honest people ran gambling dens.” Even Jack, cloistered from society since 1939, had heard of some of the toffs and tycoons who’d lost tens of thousands of pounds in a single night at Ronald’s tables but were too embarrassed—or too frightened they’d be prosecuted for gambling—to go to the police.
The main trick that duped them: playing cards whose marks signaling high, low, or zero were invisible unless you knew exactly what to look for. Honor had to concede it sounded clever.
She wondered what Jack had done to invite these confidences, whether his friendship with this Ronald had been genuine.
As a child, he was never popular with other boys.
Or maybe it was more that he’d chosen to keep himself aloof.
There was one boy who was his special friend, she remembered—a chubby little lad who was incessantly picked on.
But not by Jack, who got into scraps on his behalf.
Paul Linton, that was his name. Goodness knows what became of him.
“People have this idea,” said Jack, “that men in prison don’t talk about their crimes. What rubbish. They barely talk about anything else. Anyway, I knew what the information was worth, didn’t I?”
“Loyal to a fault,” said Honor.
“Oh, you want to talk about loyalty?”
“Not really, no. Go on.”
Previously, he said, Ronald had been willing to go to prison for eighteen months rather than turn on his overlord and father-in-law.
But were he faced with a much longer sentence, it would likely be a different story.
Jack had a suspicion that Scotland Yard would deem collaring Albert Cooper, who had eluded prosecution for decades, worth the price of his own halved sentence.
“I was right, wasn’t I? Not just a pretty face, you see.
Naturally, my release is hush-hush. I’m going by a new name.
Just in case. And who would ever come looking for me here? It was hard enough for me to find you.”
“How did you?”
He ignored the question. “Nice of you, by the way, to keep in touch.”
She started to speak, but he cut her off. “Do you know, in fourteen years I didn’t have a single visitor? And the only person who ever wrote to me was Mum. Then she died, and there was no one. Got anything to drink?”
She got up to pour them drinks. He continued: “I heard Mrs. Cohen died, too. Pneumonia, was it? Shame.”
“Exactly, you’ve served your time,” said Honor now. “So why don’t you move on with your life? You could go abroad. America, anywhere.”
“I could. That sounds like a good plan, actually. I’d need proper money, of course. To pay for my passage, set myself up once I’m there. Maybe I’ll buy a business. A little going concern.”
Honor blew a thin stream of smoke from the corner of her mouth. “The bank said no to the loan,” she said. “So that’s it for money. You’ve cleaned me out. There’s no point in you hanging around any longer. And whatever’s going on with George, it stops now.”
“Look, I can’t help it if I’m irresistible, can I?”
She looked at him curiously. Did he think she’d be jealous, or fearful that he’d take George away from her? Or did he imagine that she’d want to protect the girl, and therefore be extra motivated, financially speaking, to be rid of him?
“I’m being serious,” she said. “It’s time you moved on. I want you gone by midnight. Tell the world my secrets if you want. I don’t care anymore.”
“That’s not fair. At least give me time to fix up somewhere else to stay. Be reasonable, Elsie.”
“I’ve been more than reasonable.”
He got a look on his face she’d seen before, but not in decades: petulant, defiant, and pitiable all at once.
“You know, I did loads of reading in prison.” He tipped an ice cube into his mouth and crunched it, frowning.
“Especially about the law. Did you know the average sentence for bigamy is nine months?”
“I’m sorry, I don’t follow.” He may be bluffing, she thought. Don’t make it easy for him.