Chapter 26 My Enemy’s Enemy Is My Friend
“Don’t be sad, dear girl,” said Saul.
Mina watched dolefully as he folded up shirts and placed them in a suitcase.
“Just because I’m moving out,” he said, “it doesn’t mean we won’t still be friends. I’ll be coming to the cinema every week as usual. You won’t even notice I’ve gone.”
“It won’t be the same, though, will it? And won’t you be lonely, living in rooms by yourself?”
“A little, perhaps. But I’ll manage. Before long, you’ll be moving out yourself, I’m sure. You’ll be getting married, or traveling abroad, or doing any number of exciting things.”
“We were meant to all stick together. That was the plan. Supposing Detective Inspector Comyns comes back? Or those other policemen?”
Saul put down the shirt he was holding and sat next to Mina on the sofa.
“If any of them come back, or if you’re even a little worried, you’ll tell me immediately.
I’ll never let anything happen to you. It’s just…
it’s Honor I can’t live with.” She had told him, in what seemed to be a desperate plea for mitigation, that Jack was really her son and how he came to be born.
Tragedy begets tragedy, thought Saul, now even more determined to get away from her.
Mina pursed her lips in an unhappy moue. “Do you hate her that much?”
He half nodded, half shook his head. “I can’t see her. I can’t be around her. Now that I’m not legally confined to this address, I… I must go.” Poor Mina. He didn’t want to desert her. After all, he had embroiled them in this present disaster.
“Mina,” he said, “you don’t ever think about it, do you? The night Jimmy died? You mustn’t.”
“I do try not to. Sometimes pictures come into my mind for no reason. It’s strange. But whenever that happens, I quickly think of nicer things. Why, do you think about it often?”
“No,” he said truthfully. “Not often. Occasionally I’ll be reminded. And then I tell myself it wasn’t our fault. That’s all that matters.” He squeezed her hand. “We’ll soon forget it altogether, won’t we?”
It was the night before Jimmy died, when the first dominoes were toppled, that played on a loop in Saul’s head.
Over time, the evening had taken on an ever more artificial and hallucinatory quality, like a half-remembered Hitchcock film.
Only the beginning remained sharp, lifelike.
He could see himself on the District line, Mina’s filched photograph of adolescent Jimmy in his overcoat pocket.
Then he had exited Whitechapel station, walking purposefully, any fatigue or trepidation blotted out by his ferocious resolve.
There were two public houses within spitting distance of Honor’s childhood home: the White Hart and the Blind Beggar. Neither was Saul’s sort of place. But for his purposes, the more disreputable the better. He looked at his wristwatch: just after eight thirty. Hopefully a busy drinking time.
Moving from the freezing dark street into the Blind Beggar was like being embraced by a warm, fusty cloud.
In the public bar, the vegetal smell of rain-damp wool mingled with acrid shag tobacco and the occasional enlivening waft of women’s scent or hair lacquer.
Saul’s eyes stung, and he wanted to sneeze.
Pretending to clear his throat, he pressed a finger to his nose and edged his way through the throng to the bar.
The barmaid, he saw as he ordered a drink, would be too young to remember residents from the 1930s.
A dark zaftig girl in a low-cut red frock with a starched white collar, she barely looked old enough to be serving.
Yet she carried herself with remarkable poise, casually fielding quips while pulling the tap handle, no drop spilled nor hint of fluster aroused.
“Oi, Agnes,” said one young man with a badly scarred cheek and too much hair oil, “you tryna give me a heart attack, leaning forward in that getup? You know I got a murmur. Too much excitement and I’ll fall off me perch.
” Agnes, placing a pint on the bar, inquired, “Isn’t Reenie carrying again, Raymond?
How’d she manage that, then, immaculate conception? ”
As Raymond clarified that “a bit of the other” when you were married was as thrilling as having a tooth stopped, Saul turned away and spotted a very old man sitting slightly on the outside of a group, seemingly deep in his own thoughts.
“Excuse me,” Saul ventured, “I wonder if I can ask, have you lived in this area a long time?”
The man looked up at him and breathed in wheezily, as though to gather the strength to speak. “I was born around the corner on Sidney Street. And I’ll be ninety next year. Is that a long time?” A mischievous twinkle entered his eye. “I’d say so, wouldn’t you?”
Saul smiled and agreed he would. “Do you recognize this boy?” He handed him the photograph. “He’s older now, but he used to live nearby, on Redmans Road.”
The man held the photo at arm’s length and squinted. “I’m not good with faces,” he said apologetically. “Is he your boy?”
“Oh no, nothing like that. Thank you anyway, I—”
“Hold up. Davy! Have a look at this fella’s picture. He’s looking for this lad.” He turned back to Saul. “Davy’s my boy.”
Davy was indeed a younger, more vigorous version of his father, smartly dressed in a three-piece brown suit and red tie, a half-drunk pint of frothy bitter in his hand. “Let’s have a gander, then,” he said.
“He lived in Redmans Road, the fella says,” supplied Davy’s father.
“Do you know,” said Davy, “he don’t half look familiar. But… no, sorry, mate. I can’t place him.”
“The photo is old,” said Saul. “It must have been taken sixteen, maybe seventeen years ago.”
“D’you have a name for him?” asked Davy.
“I’m not sure,” said Saul. “But it might be Jack Shaughnessy.”
Recognition spread across Davy’s face. “But isn’t that…” He turned toward the bar. “Mick, come here a minute.”
Mick bounded over. Around Davy’s age, sixtyish, he was skinny and gangling with a jutting Adam’s apple.
“What was the name of that kid, only a nipper, who got a lifer for murdering that bloke? It was him and someone from the same family. Fifteen or twenty years ago.”
“It was Conor Shaughnessy’s son, weren’t it?” said Mick, Adam’s apple bobbing like a red buoy at sea. “Good thing he weren’t alive to see it.”
“Mick,” said Davy, “look at the picture. Is that Jack as a kid?”
Mick peered at it and frowned. “Yeah, I reckon so. Don’t you?”
Saul tipped back the rest of his whisky.
He’d known Jimmy was Jack. Of course he’d known.
But so long as there was reasonable room for doubt, he’d held his emotions at bay.
Now, only a sliver of doubt remained. Hot sweat prickled under his shirt collar.
He gripped his glass tumbler. “I am indebted to you both,” he said calmly.
“If I can trouble you with one more question. As Davy says, Mr. Shaughnessy was sentenced to life imprisonment. And yet he’s been released.
Can you offer any speculation as to why that might be? ”
Davy and Mick exchanged a glance. “I can think of one reason,” said Davy. “He’s a squealer.” Seeing Saul’s face, he went on: “He’s told things to the police. In a bargaining arrangement, like.”
“If you really want to know,” said Mick, “there are certain people who… who might’ve heard about it. Or who’ll be able to find out for you, at least.”
“If you ask them nicely,” added Davy. “They’re not very nice people, though.”
“Where might I find them, these people?” said Saul.
He was given directions to a billiards hall not half a mile away. “Talk to Bill White,” said Davy, “or his cousin Terry White. If it’s all the same to you, don’t say we sent you.”
The billiards hall stretched across the basement of a redbrick building.
Evidently once grand, it had columns flanking the raised main entrance and Grecian-style stone reliefs on the curved window pediments.
But the stucco was filthy, and at least two windows were taped up with cardboard.
Saul lit a cigarette. Then he stepped down from pavement level and pushed open the double doors beneath a red enamel sign proclaiming, in jaunty white script, BILLIARDS Club and Café Bar.
He blinked and looked around the cavernous space.
Eight or ten billiards tables, ornately carved from mahogany, were each lit by a low-suspended roof-shaped lamp.
Drinks were served at a rectangular hatch in the wall.
Around forty men were spread out, either playing a game or sitting at small round tables.
An atmosphere of vague menace seemed to hang in the air.
Perhaps it was his imagination, his expectations having been primed by Davy and Mick.
A few glances came in his direction, but no one appeared to take his presence amiss.
He asked the elderly barman for a whisky and, handing over the extortionate sum of two shillings, asked if Bill or Terry White were in attendance that evening. Before the barman had a chance to respond, a thick-necked man in his early middle years spun around and said, “Who wants to know?”
Saul introduced himself. “I’m told either Bill or Terry might help me with…” He wasn’t sure how to continue. “Some information I’m seeking.”
“You’re not a copper, are you?”
“Course he’s not a copper, he’s a Yid, int he?” This was from a younger, carroty-haired fellow who was only slightly taller than his billiards cue.
“Yids can be coppers, don’t be so prejudiced!”
“Gentlemen,” said Saul hastily, “I can assure you, I’m not a policeman. If you could assist me by pointing out either of the Mr. Whites, I’d be most grateful.”
The younger man, chastened, said he’d fetch Bill.
From where was unclear; he left the building and was gone for some ten minutes.
When he returned, he was accompanied by a slender, dark-suited man, no older than thirty-five, with tortoiseshell spectacles and a soft, almost gentle voice.
“Pleased to meet you,” he said. “Billy White. Mr. Reznikov, is it? What are you drinking?”