Living in Moor Street extended my education. Soho in the fifties was a place where gangsters did little to hide their profession, neither did the prostitutes. Plump and contented policemen, especially those of the vice squad, were equally evident. Directly opposite my digs – on the corner of Greek Street and Old Compton Street – there was a large empty bomb-site where a polite and pleasant man called Nigel worked from a van serving coffee and sandwiches all through the night. There was always a small crowd there; it was Soho’s nocturnal Athenaeum. Arriving back late one night I was distressed to find I had forgotten my keys. I went across the street and very quietly asked Nigel if he knew anyone who could help me. There was no problem. On Nigel’s introduction, an elderly man put down his coffee, came across the street, put on his spectacles and noiselessly opened both street door and my office door with some small unseen implement. He refused payment and was back drinking his coffee before it cooled. ‘Always ask for a ‘builder,’ Nigel advised me afterwards. Euphemisms abounded in Soho at that time.
It was one of Nigel’s customers who introduced me to a ‘press agency’; a large room on the first floor of a building in Newport Street, round the corner from Leicester Square tube station. The occupant there was a Fleet Street veteran named Gilbert who recycled press handouts that arrived by post every morning. Most of them came from Embassies – Argentina sent bundles of them – plus commercial press releases and invitations to wine and cheese gatherings, which Gilbert always kept for himself. What Gilbert did with the rest of his mail I never discovered but his income was amplified by a pool of regular visitors who for a small fee had their mail sent to his address. I must not say that all of them were confidence tricksters; I think some were errant husbands or debt-plagued fugitives. Whatever they were they proved for the most part entertaining company and I spent many happy hours (when I should have been studying at St Martin’s) in this room nursing a mug of Nescafé and waiting for the islands of dried milk to dissolve. (Brewing tea was too complicated and alcohol verboten by Gilbert.) My entry fee was a regular supply of biscuits; chocolate-covered oatmeal ones were by far the favourite. In those days, tailor-made suits were almost as cheap as ready-made ones and these men favoured dark suits with white shirts and sober ties. Although their anecdotes were guarded and circumspect I soon decoded their stories and learned the mechanics of some of their shady transactions. I also recognized that the rationale behind their operations was that the people tricked were greedy and deserved their losses. It was greed that lured ‘marks’ into their loss, they said. I suppose they were mostly ex-servicemen restless and uneasy in that topsy-turvy post-war world but to my young eyes they seemed calm and confident, their scepticism arming them against any adversity. It was lucky that I was accepted by them but I think they mistakenly believed me to be connected to Gilbert by kinship or employment. I did not discourage this impression.
Some years later when I was writing books for a living, I remembered the men in Newport Street and decided to write a non-fiction book about confidence tricks large and small. I put a classified advert into the Daily Telegraph asking any reader who had experience of confidence tricks or tricksters to contact me at a box number. The response was almost overwhelming. I received so many letters that I had to employ a friend to help me sort and classify them. And I found tricks and swindles of remarkable size and international scope. These people were a far cry from the petty-cash crooks I had met in Newport Street. I took some of the most promising correspondents to lengthy, entertaining lunches and made notes of some of the most amazing and exciting escapades. Names, dates and all necessary references went into my notebook. It was astonishing raw material but writing it as a non-fiction work would be an expedition into that dangerous no-man’s land that divides scandal from libel.
No professional writer ever throws researched material away, so this went into box files and was put on the top shelf to gather dust as I worked hard to fulfil promises and contracts. It might have remained forgotten except for a chance meeting in the Porte de Clignancourt flea market in Paris. I was there researching An Expensive Place to Die, a book about the decadent Paris underworld. It was a long task and without the unstinting help of a detective of the police judiciaire I might never have got started. He served in the brigade mondaine which is the quaint title the French give to their ‘vice squad’. My guide knew everything and everyone; people high and low, people in bars, exclusive clubs and brothels greeted him like an old friend. He showed me the flea markets where stolen goods sometimes came to light. Central Paris was his beat and without his help and guidance An Expensive Place to Die would have been a different book – but that is another story.
I love flea markets, and only locals are to be found at the Clignancourt flea market on Monday, the third and final market day, when unsold items are likely to be marked down. It is especially empty when that Monday is cold and wet. ‘I know you. From Newport Street. Remember?’ Yes, I remembered him, a tall thin pipe-smoker who never let his fine leather document case far from his side. No document case today and no pipe either. His face had reddened since those long-ago days and he had grown a square-ended moustache. He was wearing a tightly fitting cloth cap and one of those short camel-coloured ‘British warm’ overcoats. His appearance suggested an officer of some smart British regiment. I wondered if this was a contrived appearance connected in some way to his precarious profession. But many expatriate Englishmen tend to parody national characteristics and that may have been the case with him. The darkening sky and the bleak expanse of the rain-swept flea market weighed against the chance to talk to a fellow countryman who might share a memory or two; it tempted him to suggest that I join him for a drink.
‘You disappeared,’ he said accusingly as we sat drying off in an otherwise empty café on the Avenue Michelet. We had black coffees and, at my suggestion, small measures of Framboise, a type of Eau de Vie to which I had become dangerously fond during my stay in Paris.
‘I moved home,’ I said. My ‘disappearance’ from the St Martin’s area was due to a scholarship at the Royal College of Art in South Kensington. But since I had never revealed to the men in Newport Street that I was a student, I saw no reason to discuss that now.
‘You didn’t miss much,’ he said. ‘Gilbert’s lease ended soon after Benny went to prison, and there were no more of those mail-order get-togethers.’
‘Benny went to prison?’ I remembered Benny; a middle-aged chain-smoker with a gold lighter, gold signet ring and gold pocket watch complete with chain. Despite his hard face and cold eyes it was always Benny who greeted everyone with a smile and told jokes that required funny accents. It was Benny who always poured me a cup of coffee in those early days when I felt socially excluded from this exclusive gathering.
‘It was the girl,’ he said. I must have looked puzzled. I never saw a woman in that room in all the many hours I spent there. ‘She collected him in a car; a grey Sunbeam Talbot convertible; a lovely little car. That’s why he was always looking out of the window when it got near the time.’
He finished his Framboise and got to his feet. ‘My turn,’ I said, and signalled for two more drinks to delay his departure. He sat down. I didn’t press him for more information but when the drinks came he completed the story. ‘She was only a kid but with all that make-up she looked like a woman of twenty, or more. Benny was mad about her. They took off together for some place where Benny had grown up; Nottingham or somewhere like that. The funny thing was that Benny didn’t even suspect that it might be her father’s car and that she didn’t have a driving licence, insurance or anything. I suppose she was mad about him too, in that silly way you see in young girls. Goodness knows what yarns Benny had spun her.’
‘How did they get caught?’ I asked. Soho during that post-war period was a haven for deserters of all nationalities and furtive men selling booze, drugs and the glittering prizes of ‘war souvenirs’ such as Luger and Beretta pistols (the latter passed on quickly as each buyer discovered they wouldn’t take standard 9mm rounds). Lasting relationships were few and far between and drinking companions were apt to disappear without saying goodbye. I would have thought Benny