A voice behind Frankie as the barber went to get hot towels said softly, ‘Hullo, ponce!’
He didn’t move an inch because it might be someone else the voice referred to or, if it was to him, he was a good professional, and in any case a man doesn’t let a stranger see he thinks he may have been insulted. He looked slowly up at the mirror but could see only a leg reflected. Then, after interminable business with the towels, he looked again and saw on the leg’s knee a hand holding the unknown client’s snuff-box.
This was too much. He got up, much to the hurt indignation of the barber who’d far from terminated his ministrations, and turned to see an extremely ordinary young man who (perhaps because his very nondescriptness made him the perfect substance for the imprint of his trade) had, quite unmistakably, COPPER written all over his body and the soul that looked through his eyes. The snuff-box had now disappeared, and this person rose, walked outside ahead of Frankie, strolled on a bit then stopped. Frank followed after. ‘Recognise it?’ the man said, whipping the thing out again.
‘I might do.’
‘Ah!’ (Almost a sigh).
It was at once evident to Frankie that the danger was not immediate – for otherwise this cop would have said simply, ‘Come along,’ – and yet that in some deeper sense he couldn’t fathom the danger was actually greater than if he’d been arrested on the spot. The two men stood silent, then the copper said, ‘A junior colleague of mine has turned this in to me.’
‘Oh, has he?’
‘Yes. There’s a reward attached to it, as I dare say you may have guessed.’
‘Oh, is there?’
‘But I’m not taking it myself, of course. Because this reward, you see, is unofficial: and me, I like doing things through channels according to the book. So I’m turning it in myself to my superiors.’
‘Why you tell me all this?’
‘I thought you might like to hear it.’
As Frankie well knew, most ‘questions’ are in reality inverted statements of the questioner that reveal facts he knows (or doesn’t know – another kind of fact) as much as they may ask for them. So far, all of his own had been of the neutral, unloaded, noncommittal kind. But he now could not resist asking one that revealed to the star sleuth a very great deal indeed (even more than the words, the tone in which it was uttered) – in fact at this juncture, all he really wanted to know: and that was, ‘Why did he turn it in to you, this colleague of yours you mention?’
The star sleuth smiled. ‘Got windy, I expect. Shaky. Lost his nerve. Decided this thing was too hot for him to hold and he’d better surrender it and forget about any possible private arrangement.’
Frankie said nothing: but his face, the star sleuth was delighted to observe, wore the expressionless look which in strong men of generous temperament denotes a mounting anger.
‘There may be repercussions, naturally,’ the star sleuth added.
Frankie stood waiting for something more to happen, but nothing did. He turned and walked off, his loose lithe body unnaturally stiff. The star sleuth saw him hail a taxi.
Then he himself returned to the barber’s shop and went to the public telephone. He dialled a Walthamstow number and said would they please pick up the woman he’d mentioned earlier and have her sent over, but if the man showed up not to bother about him at all or answer any questions. The customers in the shop (and the proprietor) made a great show of not listening to this, and after the officer’s departure burst into speculative chatter.