"Kim Newman - Soho Golem" - читать интересную книгу автора (Newman Kim)

Soho Golem

by Kim Newman


"Of all quarters in the queer adventurous amalgam called London, Soho is perhaps least suited to the
Forsyte spirit тАж Untidy, full of Greeks, Ishmaelites, cats, Italians, tomatoes, restaurants, organs,
coloured stuffs, queer names, people looking out of upper windows, it dwells remote from the British
Body Politic."
John Galsworthy


1: Spoiling the Barrel

On a fine May day in 197тАФ, Fred Regent and Richard Jeperson stood in Old Compton Street, London
N1. The pavement underfoot was warm and slightly tacky, as if it might retain the prints of Fred's scruffy
but sturdy Doc Martens and Richard's elastic-sided claret-coloured thigh-high boots.

Slightly to the north of but parallel with the theatrical parade of Shaftesbury Avenue, Old Compton Street
was among Soho's main thoroughfares. Blitzed in the War, the square-mile patch had regenerated
patchwork fashion to satisfy or exploit the desires of a constant flux of passers-through. People came
here for every kind of "lift." Italian coffeehouses had opened on this street a century ago; now, you could
buy a thousand varieties of frothy heart attack in a cup. This was where waves of "dangerous" music
broke, from bebop to glitter rock. Within sight, careers had begun and ended: Tommy Steele strumming
in an espresso skiffle trio, Jimi Hendrix choking in an alley beside The Intrepid Fox.

Also, famously and blatantly, Soho was a red-light district, home to the city's vice rackets for two
hundred years. Above window displays were neon and plastic come-ons: GIRLS GIRLS GIRLSтАФLIVE
NUDE BED REVUEтАФGOLDILOXXX AND THE THREE BARES. Above doorbells were hand-printed cards:
"French Model One Flight Up," "Busty Brunette, Bell Two," "House of Thwacks: Discipline Enforced."

Fred checked the address against his scribbled note.

"The scene of the crime," he told Richard.

Richard took off and folded his slim, side-panelled sunglasses. They slid into a tube that clipped to his top
pocket like a thick fountain pen.

"Just the one crime?" he said.

"Couldn't say, guv," replied Fred. "One big one, so far this week."

Richard shruggedтАФwhich, in today's peacock-pattern watered-silk safari jacket, was dangerously close
to flouncing. Even in the cosmopolitan freak show of Soho, Richard's Carnabethan ensemble attracted
attention from all sexes. Currently, he wore scarlet buccaneer britches fit tighter than a surgical glove, a
black-and-white spiral-pattern beret pinned to his frizzy length of coal black hair, a frill-fronted mauve
shirt with a collar-points wider than his shoulders, and a filmy ascot whose colours shifted with the light.

"I certainly feel a measure of recent turmoil," said Richard, who called himself "sensitive" rather than
"spooky." He flexed long fingers, as if taking a Braille reading from the air. "It certainly could be a death