‘Jack, don’t ’ave a tizzy. This ain’t nothing we can’t ’andle. We can be in Brixton ’fore the boozers shut, get this Spare geezer to cough up yer book, and it’ll all be good as gold.’

  Not visibly placated by this well-intentioned summary, the gangland potentate scotched back his kitchen chair and, rising to his feet, confronted his unduly optimistic underling.

  ‘No, Sonny. No, we fackin’ can’t. I’ve ’eard about this bloke, an’ ’e’s a fackin’ warlock. ’e does magic, and not fackin’ card tricks, either. I’ve ’ad all the bad luck I can manage, thank you very fackin’ much, an’ I’m not goin’ near ’im.’

  At this, the more fleshy and darkly complexioned henchman, Mr Kankus, tried to introduce a gravel-throated voice of reason to the increasingly noisy interchange.

  ‘All that’s a load o’ pony, Jack, you know it is. You let me ’ave a word with ’im, ’e’ll ’and it over, toot sweet. I don’t give a monkey’s whether I get cursed or not.’

  Spot wheeled to fix his hireling with a furious stare, his voice the warning hiss of steam from an eruptive boiler. ‘Solly, you’re not listenin’. This cunt can make it rain. Can make it rain shit, if ’e likes. There’s no worse place in the ’ole fackin’ country for my fackin’ book to end up.’ Something seemed to strike the racetrack overlord at this point. He scowled into space, and then turned his unfortunate attentions back to Dennis. ‘If that’s where it is, o’ course. ’ow do I know you’re not pullin’ my pisser with this fackin’ rigmarole and tryin’ to put the wind up me, droppin’ that bleeder’s name to put me off me stroke? ’oo says as fackin’ Spare knows you from Adam?’

  Trying hard not to make any sudden movements, Dennis gestured nervously towards the carrier bag that stood forgotten by the mobster’s feet.

  ‘I-In the bag. There’s these cards that he’d done. I had him sign the packet for the lady here.’

  As he was saying this, he nodded his head sideways, and in doing so glimpsed the aghast expression that briefly contorted Grace’s lips and eyelids, although whether this was a reaction to the signed gift or to being called a lady was not easily determined. Spot, meanwhile, stooped to retrieve the nested envelopes from their brown-paper reliquary. Extracting the manila inner packet from its pallid outer counterpart, he glowered in uncomprehending fury at the printed legend, then at the handwritten dedication writ beneath it, then at Dennis.

  ‘What’s this, then? Surrealist fackin’ Racing Forecast Cards? Is this cunt makin’ money out o’ racin’ in a way what I’m not? Because if ’e is, ’e must be fackin’ magic.’ Dennis found he couldn’t offer any pertinent reply to this, and so Spot transferred his unwelcome scrutiny to Grace. ‘And you’re Grace Shilling, then? Well, that’s competitively priced, I must say.’

  Grace calmly returned the gangster’s enraged stare, the same way she returned his disrespectful comment. ‘Yeah. I used to be Grace Tanner, but I’m doing better these days.’

  Which elicited a throaty laugh from Solly Kankus, and permitted the intrusion of brief conversational normality into the otherwise hair-trigger atmosphere. Taking advantage of this opportunity to further her stab at de-escalation, Grace pressed on in the same deadpan tone, gazing unblinkingly into Spot’s fuming fuse-wire eyes.

  ‘Look, if I’m honest, I’m finding all this quite nerve-wracking for some reason. Is anybody bothered if I have a fag?’

  The Whitechapel Napoleon’s colour deepened thunderously, his ire a wave of hot force rushing at the seated woman through his floodgate countenance only to break, confused, against her impassivity. Spot’s face retired from demonism into a disgruntled puzzlement.

  ‘Yeah, actually, that’s not a bad idea. I could do with one meself. Why don’t you flash the ash, and keep yer gob shut?’

  Pouting her resentment at this commandeering of her tightly rationed Craven ‘A’, Grace plucked the pack of ten from a black handbag perched between her ankles and, after she’d pointedly withdrawn her own first, offered them around. Everyone except Dennis took one, and the three gangland intruders bowed their underlit visages reverently over the same match flame as they sparked up, like appalling magi at the manger. Some of the room’s tension was released in gathering smog beneath its plastered ceiling, or as grey precipitate accumulating in the seashell ashtray, on the table next to the still-open razor. Sitting back down, Spot regarded Grace and Dennis pensively.

  ‘Look, just supposin’ all that what you said was on the level, far as I can tell, that still leaves me – well, us – with an enormous fackin’ problem. See, I need to ’ave a word with someone from this … other neighbourhood, let’s say. This is a matter o’ some personal importance, right? So if you’re sayin’ it’s not gunna ’appen, then what good are you to me? Why shouldn’t I just top the pair of yer, and write off this ’ole fackin’ magic-book lark as a load of shit?’

  Having already come to the conclusion that this fucking magic-book lark was far worse than just a load of shit, Dennis could only concede that the question was a fair one, and well put. For lack of an immediate answer, he fell back upon improvisation as he struggled to contrive a plan, or possibly the plan for a rough outline of the first draft of a plan.

  ‘There … look, there might be something I can do to get you what you want. I don’t know, not for certain, but there might be.’ Dennis let his gaze dart up to, first, Glenn Miller, then across to Mr Kankus, then back down to Spot. ‘Perhaps if we could talk more openly about this other place … ?’

  Spot worked his tongue around the inside of his cheek, bulging the mole disruptively as he considered. At length, he fixed Dennis with a warning stare, the gist of which was unmistakeable.

  ‘Fair dos. I can see that there might be sense in your suggestion, young man.’ He glanced up at his associates, offering a perfunctory nod. ‘Alright, then. Solly, Sonny, take this brass outside while me and Master Knuckleyard ’ave our discussion. Sit ’er in the motor, ten or twenty minutes, and no funny business, not until I’ve got a clearer ’andle on this fackin’ can o’ worms.’

  The brass, or brass nail, rhymes with tail, was obviously Grace, while Dennis himself was, most probably, the fucking can of worms. He definitely felt the part, his stomach a container of cold, writhing things that formerly had been intestines. Standing at the mumbled invitation of Spot’s double-act subordinates, Grace carefully enunciated, ‘Fucking nerve,’ as she was led out of her own hard-won accommodation. Unexpectedly, she looked back on the threshold and gave Dennis a tight, anxious smile that seemed to say, ‘I know that your stupidity is bound to doom us both, but good luck anyway.’ It was a look that didn’t set the bar too high, for which he was extremely grateful. Then the door clicked shut and Dennis was alone with London’s overdressed and vicious fixer. Jack/John/Jacob Spot/Comacho/Comer/Colmore flashed a chummy grin, intended to put the eighteen-year-old at his unease and visibly succeeding.

  ‘Well?’ he said. ‘Come on, let’s fackin’ ’ear it. We en’t got all day.’

  Dennis drew in a deep breath while he still had the capacity to manage such a thing.

  ‘The two fellers outside, they were the ones in wait for me up Berwick Street on Tuesday, last night. Am I right?’

  Spot nodded, unimpressed. ‘You are. Sonny the Yank, Solly the Turk, but then they’re not the ’ardest couple to identify, I wouldn’t think. Although they are notoriously fackin’ difficult to get away from if they’re after yer, so ’ow did a long streak of piss like you manage to pull it off ? They said they saw you scarper down some little fackin’ alley and then you were gone. Where were yer?’

  Once more, Dennis hoped the truth would set him free.

  ‘I was in the wrong London, in the part of it that corresponds with Soho. It was horrible. I’d fallen in by accident, and it was all alive and trying to eat me. There were busted crates grown into wooden spiders running at me, there were dustbins with their lids clapping like jaws and metal snakes made out of drainpipe. Look, I’m nowhere near as smart as you are, Mr Comer, but I’m not some dimwit who’d be telling you a half-baked yarn like that, not when you’ve got a razor on the table, if it wasn’t what I saw. The other London is a fucking madhouse that’s not meant for normal living people. Just remembering it makes me want to spew, and I’m supposed to go back there with Spare at ten o’clock tomorrow morning, or I end up inside out like the book-dealer chap, or something just as bad. To be quite honest, if it weren’t for Grace, Miss Shilling – she just took me in and hasn’t heard all this – then I might well be better off if you did me tonight and put me out of my misery.’

  Spot’s expression, set in sweaty alabaster, was unreadable but wasn’t one of open disbelief. He looked as if he might be trying, unsuccessfully, to picture crate arachnids.

  ‘Yeah, and I may very well still do that, if you don’t give me a reason not to. What would ’appen if I did, ay? What would ’appen if you didn’t turn up at your black magician’s billet in the mornin’, because you and your Miss Half-a-crown were bobbin’ with the rubber johnnies down at Wapping stairs?’

  This painted quite a picture. Dennis swallowed unattractively.

  ‘I don’t know. I suppose that Spare would have to take the Hampole book back to the City Heads without me, and then that would be the last that anyone would see of it.’

  The East End kingpin made a grimace of dissatisfaction.

  ‘And what’s that, then? What’s the City Heads when they’re at ’ome?’

  Unable to recall a time of ever being in his depth, Dennis was nonetheless aware that he was getting out of it. He carried on, not quite regardless. ‘I’m not sure, but it sounds as if they’re the ones who run the other London, like they’re some sort of committee, or—’ He broke off. Something had occurred to him, although he wasn’t sure how he should put it. ‘Mr Comer, can I ask you something? I don’t understand why, after all the stuff that I’ve been telling you – the drainpipe snakes and hungry dustbins – why you’ve not cut me already. Is there something that you’ve seen or heard that tells you I’m not lying? Sorry. Perhaps I shouldn’t ask.’

  Spot stubbed his cigarette out in the seashell and deliberated. He subjected Dennis to a long, appraising stare before replying.

  ‘Breathe a word o’ this, and it’ll be yer last. Last word, last breath. You understand me?’ Dennis nodded and the tyrant of the turf went on. ‘It was in 1936, Battle o’ Cable Street. You might ’ave ’eard of it. Sir Oswald fackin’ Mosley and his fackin’ Blackshirts, all dressed up and yiddified – that’s terrified o’ Jews shoutin’ the odds, where I grew up. Well, I’m not ’avin’ that, goes without saying. I was only in me twenties back then, but I went down to the dust-up with a load of other narked-off Jew boys, my lads, and we gave them fascist cunts what for, them and the coppers what was guardin’ ’em. That’s ’ow I got me name, see? Because I was always on the fackin’ spot when there was trouble.’

  Dennis had heard otherwise, but felt that this was not the time to offer any contradictions, or to glance at the distinctive mole that had more probably provided Comer’s nickname. Spot went on.

  ‘Well, anyway, we charged straight through the police bodyguards, tryin’ to get to Mosley and ’is fancy mates. I’d got a sofa leg I’d filled with lead, and I was cavin’ in the cunt next to Sir Oswald when the coppers all piled in on me at once. Put me in fackin’ ’ospital, but just when I was passin’ out, I looked towards the fightin’ what was goin’ on all round us, and I saw the queerest thing: there was this fackin’ woman, twenty foot tall if she was an inch. Redhead, like your Miss Ten-bob-note. She ’ad ’er tits out, and she was just stridin’ through the mob, nice as you like, and everybody looked the other fackin’ way as if they couldn’t see ’er! Twenty fackin’ foot tall, on my life! You might say that was where I first got wind that there was something fackin’ funny goin’ on in London, and the bits and bobs I’ve ’eard across the years since then ’ave only made it funnier. So, you tell me about your fruit-crate spiders, I’m not gunna bat a fackin’ eyelid, am I?’

  Once again, the crime king’s argument was unimpeachable. Chancing his arm, Dennis here made an interjection that he thought could perhaps be of relevance.

  ‘The woman that you saw, I think she might be something that’s called the “Beauty of Riots”. Spare mentioned her to me. He said he’d seen her once, when he was a young lad.’

  Spot chewed this over with a contemplative frown.

  ‘Beauty o’ Riots, ay? Yeah. Yeah, that sounds like ’er.’ Spot gave Dennis a look that seemed so out of character it took the younger man a moment to identify it as both troubled and annoyed. ‘This magic stuff’s a fackin’ circus, ennit? Fackin’ giants and blokes turned inside out. Gives me the fackin’ willies, tell yer that for nothin’. It’s not fackin’ proper, is it?’

  Suddenly, Spot seemed to be in need of reassurance. Dennis shook his head in sympathy.

  ‘No. No, it’s not. From what I’ve seen of it, it’s bedlam. It’s a right chamber of horrors. Look, I know that this is not my business, but if you’ve seen what the other London’s like and you don’t fancy it, then why are you so set on getting in there? You said that you had to talk to somebody from that neck of the woods …’

  This earned another thoughtful pause while the chief crook considered his alternatives. At last, appearing to have come to a decision, he leaned forward with his elbows on the table and fixed Dennis with a noticeably blink-free gaze.

  ‘Son, I don’t know as I can trust yer, but I do know I can kill yer. So, we’ll let that be our understandin’, shall we? Now, you asked me what I wanted from this fackin’ goblins’ picnic, so I’ll tell yer: I want peace o’ mind. I wanna know for certain that some schemin’ cunt’s not gunna knock me off before I’m fackin’ forty. See, all my life, I’ve worked ’ard for what I’ve got. It used to be it was the I-ties runnin’ all the racetracks, Harryboy Sabini and the like. Then fackin’ Kimber an’ ’is Brummy Boys, they squeezed out the Sabinis, and so me and Billy ’ill, we come along and done the same to them. Kimber cooperates with us now, right as ninepence.’

  Spot performed a curious rotation of his head, cartilage crackling audibly, then tightened his blue silk tie by a noose notch.

  ‘O’ course, what with Billy spendin’ so much time away in nick, the upkeep o’ the operation largely falls on me. I like to think that I’ve expanded it into a very profitable business. Trouble is, earnin’ that kind o’ reputation means I’ve ’ad to put me own name forward, in the papers an’ all that. And now that Billy’s out o’ prison, I can tell ’e thinks I’m puffin’ meself up an’ tryin’ to take over. I mean, thanks to me, we’re doin’ better than we’ve ever done, but trouble’s brewin’, I can feel it in me water. See, while Billy was inside this last time, I made what I will admit were one or two mistakes. The London airport balls-up last year, for a kick-off – we thought we’d got the security guards doped up, but we ’adn’t, and they turned out to be dressed-up coppers. Nothin’ tyin’ it to me, but every facker knows I was behind it. Most important, Billy knows, an’ ’e don’t like it.’

  Up beyond the flaking grey of Grace’s ceiling, someone bumped and stumbled on the upstairs landing, probably one of the house’s other tenants on a visit to the loo. Spot sniffed dismissively and fiddled with his cufflinks, ill at ease as he approached his story’s crux.

  ‘My situation en’t as comfortable as what I’d like, and I could do with some assistance gettin’ out o’ shtuck. From odds and ends what I’ve picked up about this other place across the years, I gather nothin’ ’appens ’ere what en’t first been decided there. This other London, that’s the organ grinder, an’ our London’s just the fackin’ monkey, as I understand it. And from what I’m told, all o’ the city’s various endeavours ’ave their figure’eads what run things from this fairyland o’ theirs, and that includes its criminal endeavours. What I’ve ’eard, there’s, like, a god of villains in this different London, an’ I reckon that’s the chap I need to ’ave a word with … or, if I can’t do that, that somebody needs to parlay with on my behalf. Can you see the way my mind’s goin’ ’ere?’

  With mingled hope and worry, Dennis thought he could.

  ‘D-Do you mean these City Heads that I’m supposed to meet tomorrow? Well, I don’t know who they are, exactly, and I’ve not heard anything about this god-of-crime bloke, but, yeah, perhaps I could put your case to them, perhaps arrange a meeting, if that got me and Grace off the hook.’

  They were both leaning in towards each other now, and Dennis noticed that with their long lashes, the arch-felon’s eyes had something feminine about them, almost pretty despite being full of ugly things. Spot shook his head and sighed.

  ‘No. I’m afraid “perhaps” won’t be enough. That won’t get anybody off the ’ook. See, what I’m thinkin’ is, you need a strong incentive if this lark tomorrow’s gunna turn out ’ow I want. This is the way it’s gunna go: you and your bird can stop ’ere overnight, with one of my lads outside, watchin’ front and back. First thing tomorrow, we come round and somebody runs you to Brixton, while the tart stays ’ere with us, all day if necessary. If you turn up ’ere tomorrow night with somethin’ I don’t wanna ’ear, we’ll do the pair of yer. If you run off, we’ll finish ’er, then come and look for you – and we will find you. Let’s be very fackin’ clear on that. Conversely, if on your return you have good news for me, then all of us can reach an ’appy fackin’ endin’, can’t we? So, then, ’ave we settled on a gentleman’s agreement?’