Duffy by Dan Kavanagh

got to the end of my run.’
    ‘Where was that.’
    ‘A place called the Double Blue. It’s a cinema club in Frith Street. The bloke vanished inside. Somewhere upstairs. I couldn’t follow him.’
    ‘So what do we do now?’
    ‘Dunno for the moment. I’ll nose around for a bit. By the way, the cinema cost me eight-fifty.’
    ‘Got a receipt?’
    ‘I’ve got a membership card.’
    ‘I said receipts, Duffy.’
    ‘I’ll tell you about the films in incredible detail if you like.’
    ‘It wouldn’t be the same.’
    ‘No – it’d probably be better.’ McKechnie laughed.
    Duffy wasn’t sure what line to follow. He sat down to review what had happened so far. Some things were certain, some things were hopelessly ambiguous. Someone had cut McKechnie’s wife for a start. Someone was now trying to presh him, though how far was anyone’s guess. Someone with a sense of humour was using a dead racketeer’s name. Then there was Sullivan – what was he up to? Was he simply taking the easy way out by missing the pick-ups, or was he taking a cut? What was Shaw doing – old Rick? Was he just doing what Sullivan told him, or was he being cut in? He’d always remembered Shaw as a copper who didn’t go in for accepting too many Christmas turkeys. Still, every year around the Golden Mile brought different temptations. He knew how it happened: you didn’t take the free booze even if everyone else did; you didn’t take the first girl you got offered; you turned down the smokes and the snort; and then something quite trivial happened, like you asked for a couple of days to pay at the bookie’s. Quite suddenly, the place had got you. It wasn’t necessarily that there was a particular gang always on the look-out to bend coppers (though sometimes there was); it was somehow the place that got you. It was one square mile of pressure, and everyone had a weak point.
    Duffy felt he had to know some more background. He really needed to talk to someone like Shaw, but that was out of the question. Maybe Carol; or maybe that wasn’t fair, well, maybe he could ask her about the place without letting her know what he was up to. Apart from Carol, there was Renée: he ought to go and have a chat with her, if only for old times’ sake. That was a dangerous phrase, ‘old times’ sake’ – if he started thinking like that he’d be sentimentalising about Sullivan before he knew where he was. And then there was the black girl at the Peep Show. What was she called? Something with a B or a P. Belinda? No, that was McKechnie’s dumb secretary. That was it – Polly. Not that she owed him any favours.
    And then there were a few other things which Duffy wondered about. One was that McKechnie didn’t seem as worried by everything as Duffy thought he ought to be; he even seemed to find parts of it almost exciting. No, maybe he was just phlegmatic; and he had seemed genuinely upset when he’d told Duffy about what had happened to his wife. Perhaps McKechnie was really much richer than he thought, and could soak up a lot more presh; though you’d never guess, to look at the shack he operated from. It wasn’t exactly buzzing with clients, either. Still, maybe that sort of business was mainly mail order. But then – there were so many buts in the case – what about the gap on the tape? McKechnie had been completely plausible about it; but was it Sullivan’s style to call a member of the public a ‘syphilitic sheep-fucker’? Well, that again was possible; actually, quite probable. And finally there was the little incident at Paddington Station that nagged at Duffy: if the secretary had managed to remember about getting there, arriving at the right time and the right place, and recognising him, could she be so thick that she didn’t carry out the rest of the instructions he had given McKechnie? Or what if McKechnie had changed those instructions, what if she’d actually been doing exactly as she’d been told? That was an undermining