49

      Billy knew everyone thought he was dim, but actually he knew a lot. He sat in the snug of The Grapes sipping on a pint of lemonade, his briefcase on his lap, his notebook on the beer-stained table. It was lunchtime and the pub was quiet. Eric was behind the bar polishing glasses. Someone had put Des O’Connor on the jukebox.

      Oh yes, Billy knew lots.

      Like, for instance, he knew Pat Delaney had died four months ago in the Limehouse massage parlour. He’d seen Gary and Steve there, two of Max’s boys, doing a clean-up job and then carting the body out to the car and driving off.

      You didn’t have to paint Billy no pictures, even if everyone did think he was thick as two short planks coated in pig shit. Ever since that night he’d been hearing around town about how Pat Delaney hadn’t been seen since. Easy to put two and two together and come up with four. Easy, even for him.

      He knew about all that had been going on with Max and his beautiful Annie, too. Billy frowned and took a long pull at his drink. He was in a quandary here. He was fiercely loyal to Max, but on the subject of Annie Bailey, Billy found his loyalty tested to the limit.

      He hadn’t liked her doing dirty things in the Limehouse place. He knew what they did there, his mum had told him often enough about what these sorts of women got up to, what Celia Bailey was, and how doing such things with these women would affect a man. He’d go blind, or catch something that would make his knob rot and drop off.

      It was one of his most vivid memories, his mum bathing him when he was a boy, her rough meaty hand grabbing hold of his todger and her saying: ‘Do dirty things with dirty girls and this will drop right off, son. And you wouldn’t want that, now would you?’

      But what about the dirty things Mum did with his many ‘uncles’? He’d wanted to say that, but he was frightened of his mum’s temper. She had a terrible temper. It was best to just nod, agree, keep quiet. Billy was good at keeping quiet.

      Billy had been relieved when Annie had moved out of Limehouse, but his relief had been short-lived. She had moved into that posh place with Max. That was awful. From doing bad things with bad men, she had progressed to doing bad things with Max. That was even worse.

      Then that had come to an end, and now she was at it again.

      Doing bad things.

      Bad, bad things.

      Now she was in Upper Brook Street, a posh place filled with toffs, and he had seen those toffs, people who should have known better, people who had a position in society and ought to have known how to behave, how to set an example to others, he had seen them going in and out of the building, seen the girls too, fantastically beautiful girls, going in and out, laughing and joking and tossing back their lustrous manes of hair.

      They didn’t look like tarts – or at least not the sort of tarts he was used to seeing around Bow and Limehouse; they were a bit raddled, a bit tired. These were luminous, glowing, but somehow still tarty. They were on a par with Annie for their looks and their elegance. So that was how he knew she was at it again.

      Doing bad things.

      It was awkward.

      ‘You all right here, Billy lad?’ asked Eric, coming to gather up his glass. ‘Want another in there?’

      ‘No, thank you,’ said Billy.

      Poor bastard, thought Eric, taking Billy’s empty glass back to the bar. Daft as a brush, sitting there staring into space with his mouth open. But no one gave Billy any real aggro. Everyone knew he was on Max Carter’s payroll and that Redmond Delaney had said hands off, and you didn’t piss around with that lot.

      Billy mulled it all over. It was a knotty problem. Which was the trouble with knowing so much, he’d found. If you knew a lot, you tended to worry over it all. So he was worried about the Pat business because he thought Annie was involved. And he was worried about her doing nasty things all over again. And he was worried about the job Max was planning, because it was big, and things might go wrong.

      Oh, he had lots to think about. He had to work out what he thought about it all, because he had trouble getting it all straight in his head sometimes. It was the medication, it made him feel muddled. But he’d take his time and think it all through. Then, and only then, he would decide what he had to do.