Fires of London (The Francis Bacon Mysteries) Read Free

preference. It was a dusty, squalid place, one of a number I know, but I like contrasts; they get the blood going and I can’t live without them. I like the cold, pure city of moonlight and the smoky fug of basement rooms. I like luxury and a few grand relatives, and I like squalor and hungry boys and rough trade.
    I made my way into the club that night and put my tin hat on the bar to a good deal of joshing and whistling—they’re all mad for uniforms—until I pulled up my pant leg to flash my fishnet stockings. This promoted such laugher that the barman, red-faced with curly black hair and a drinker’s discolored nose, offered a glass of champers gratis for “cheering them up.”
    “Such a moaning tonight,” he said. “You wouldn’t believe.”
    “Bad night? Darlings, a warm, moonlit night in the blackout?”
    “You hadn’t heard, then?” A little pause. I shook my head. “Damien’s bought it.”
    “Damien? The skinny blonde with the violet eye shadow? That Damien?” We’d had a drink together not three nights before. Not my type, but I hate to drink alone and I believe in helping the needy with the needful.
    “Found him this morning—yesterday morning, I’d better say now.”
    “No! Had he—” First thought, of course. A slight, underfed boy with slim legs and a consumptive cough, Damien sometimes slept rough in the park. He had blue circles under his eyes from his illness and often a fine set of bruises from his livelihood.
    “Someone did for him. Beat his head in.”
    “Some cheap thug.” Opinion courtesy of a hollow-cheeked punter in a gaudy striped jacket and elaborately made-up eyes.
    “Killed for a few shillings?” Possible. We all knew Damien was on the game. And fair game for any predator: timid as a mouse, the boy couldn’t have weighed eight stone.
    “Why else?” An ill-chosen greenish paint gave striped jacket lizard eyes.
    Let me count the ways! I was about to say, then stopped. Too much knowledge can get you into trouble. I’m rarely discreet, but a man at the far end of the bar gave off a distinct whiff of cop—and of something else, more elusive, that slipped away as soon as it surfaced. “Some madman,” I said.
    “You’re right there. You’re right there!”
    “Now, don’t you start again, Connie. Don’t start,” the barman appealed.
    Connie, a short youth with bad teeth and garnet lipstick, ignored this plea. “He was me mate,” he wailed. “If I got down, he cheered me up. He’d have given me his last mascara.”
    Laughter at this, but not unkind.
    “You knew him,” he said to me, and I nodded. I’d painted him, as a matter of fact, a little sketch of him and Connie sitting on the sofa in my studio. A couple of years ago, that was. “You knew the sort he was. No trouble to anybody. Harmless as they come. He wouldn’t have hurt anyone.” He gripped my arm and began sobbing against my uniform.
    “What about a drink to Damien’s memory, eh?” I gestured to the barman with my glass.
    “He did so like Champagne,” Connie conceded, wiping his nose on his sleeve.
    “Someone promise him Champagne, you think?” I asked.
    “So he said. He said this one was gold. He should have taken me with him.” A touch of resentment. “More fun. Safer, too.”
    “But not necessarily better,” I suggested. Particularly for dark-hearted folk. You get them in all cities—countryside, too, no doubt, but I avoid the pastoral like the plague. I’m drawn, myself, to a certain darkness of soul, but unlike poor Damien I’m tough. I managed London on my own at sixteen and Berlin, auf Deutsch no less, picked up gratis from a lot of elderly steamers. I did even better in Paris, my finishing school, where I had contacts and fluent French and developed an eye for the main chance. Of necessity, I’ve been a quick study. I was expelled on suspicion of immorality after two years in a minor public school, and I’ve learned most of what’s been useful to me, including furniture