Bent

by Joe Thomas

Genres: City Life; World War II

Synopsis

Guardian Best Book of 2020
Irish Times Best Crime Fiction of 2020
Times Book of the Month
Mail on Sunday Thriller of the Month
The Spectator Crime Fiction of the Month
Crime Time Book of the Year 2020

'Vivid, stylish, funny' Mick Heron


The first time I met Harold Challenor, he frisked me for weapons - I was ten years old.

Bent is the explosive story of the rise and fall of SAS commando, and notorious Detective Sergeant, Harold 'Tanky' Challenor.

During the Second World War, Challenor was parachuted behind enemy lines into Italy and France, performing remarkable feats of bravery.

In the grimy underbelly of 1960s Soho, he was a ferocious and controversial presence, mediating between factions of club owners and racketeers, and cultivating informers.

But just how far will he go to break the protection gang that has a grip on his manor?

It can be a fine line that divides hero and villain.

PRAISE FOR JOE THOMAS

'Brilliant' The Times
'Feverish energy' Guardian
'Wonderfully vivid' Mail on Sunday
'Sophisticated, dizzying' GQ
'Vivid and visceral' The Times
'Superbly realised vivid and atmospheric' Guardian
'Original' Mail on Sunday
'A stylish, atmospheric treat an inspired blend of David Peace and early Pinter' Irish Times
'Sparse, energetic, fragmented prose' The Spectator
'Vibrant, colourful, and complex' Irish Independent
'Stylish, sharp-witted, taut. A must for modern noir fans' NB Magazine
'Definitive confident and energetic' Crime Time
'Brilliant manic energy' Jake Arnott
'Wildly stylish and hugely entertaining' Lucy Caldwell
'Vivid, stylish, funny' Mick Herron
'Gripping, fast-paced, darkly atmospheric' Susanna Jones
'Snappy, thoughtful, moving' John King
'Exciting, fresh, incredibly assured' Stav Sherez
'Happy days!' Mark Timlin
'Utterly brilliant' Cathi Unsworth
'Had James Ellroy and David Peace collaborated on a novel they'd have written something like this' Paul Willets

Release date: April 30, 2020

Publisher: Quercus Publishing

Print pages: 202

Sample

PRAISE FOR BENT

‘Brilliant. Bent compellingly re-imagines a shocking true story of bravery and deception with all the manic energy and terrifying presence of its subject’ Jake Arnott, author of The Long Firm Trilogy

‘A wildly stylish and hugely entertaining read, Bent brings the worlds of sixties Soho and Nazi-occupied Italy thrillingly to life. It's taut, evocative and laugh-out-loud funny - and, like its anti-hero, Challenor, slick, pacy and just crooked enough to keep you guessing, right up until its gut-punch of an ending’ Lucy Caldwell, winner of the Dylan Thomas Prize

Vivid, stylish, funny’ Mick Herron, author of the Jackson Lamb novels

‘From the cool spine of Italy to the burning heart of London, Bent merges war and peace as it shows how our traumatised heroes helped shape Britain in the decades following the Second World War. While the sixties swing, one man's need for order is undercut by a seething anger and some righteous violence. Written with love and respect, Bent is a snappy, thoughtful, moving novel’ John King, author of The Football Factory

‘Bent makes me remember Fridays bunking off work early, slipping and sliding on mashed fruit and veg through a deserted old Covent Garden, down to Berwick Street market to buy a few ex-jukebox 45s for half a dollar each, then to the Nellie Dean for a couple of pints of Guinness, followed by a nap in Soho square gardens if the weather was clement. Shoot off home to change into something sharper, and back up for an all-nighter at the ‘mingo, all pilled up and glassy-eyed. We were far from innocent, but they seemed like innocent times. Not bent at all. Happy days!’ Mark Timlin, author of the Sharman novels

‘Perhaps the most notorious copper of the postwar era, Harold “Tanky” Challenor has taken many literary guises, his contradictory, charismatic presence and catchphrase “You’re nicked, me old beauty” muscling its way into work by Joe Orton and Jake Arnott. But no one has delved so deeply into what turned a wartime hero of the SAS into a peacetime detective whose attempts to “clean up Soho” led to ignominy and the epithet most readily applied to him - Bent - until Joe Thomas braved his way into Tanky's skull, effectively channelling Challenor in this vivid recreation of the events that forged and then destroyed his reputation. Utterly brilliant’ Cathi Unsworth, author of That Old Black Magic and Bad Penny Blues

‘Had James Ellroy and David Peace collaborated on a novel about a corrupt 1960s Soho copper, they’d have written something like this. Bent has left its Size 12 boot-prints across my memory’ Paul Willetts, author of Members Only, filmed as The Look of Love

One

‘A big showdown for power is coming and when it does come it will be a bloody battle.’

Challenor scarfs prawn dumplings. He wolfs brown ale. He's sat at the counter of the Chinaman's copper-friendly crab shack on Lisle Street, Chinatown. This place was set up by Brilliant Chang, Chan Nan, the first oriental gangster to run the roost in these fine parts - then cut the roost's neck and sell it in a pancake.

Brilliant Chang didn’t last long. Show-off, he was, no discretion. Did a fourteen stretch for drug trafficking, then was stuck straight back on the long-haul junk across the ocean for home.

Challenor is off-duty happy and gulping beer. He eyes the calendar: Year of the Tiger. He slurps a bowl of noodle soup.

He nods at the Chinaman. ‘What year are you?’ he asks.

The Chinaman smiles. ‘Year of the Rat.’ He gestures at the room, the kitchen. ‘Why we don’t have a pest problem. Only room for one.’ The Chinaman laughs hard. ‘The elegant way you’re applying yourself to the chow, friend,’ he says, ‘I’m guessing you’re a different animal.’

‘I fear a punchline,’ Challenor says.

The Chinaman grins. ‘I’ll leave you to think about it.’

Challenor checks the calendar.

1922: Year of the Dog. Well-played.

The Chinaman's back. ‘How's the Mad House?’ he asks.

‘Busy,’ Challenor says.

The Mad House. West End Central. The busiest nick in London, CID, and Challenor's base. Covers Mayfair and Soho. Brass don’t let him anywhere near Mayfair.

‘Well, you’ve a rum crowd putting the bite on in these parts, Harry. You deserve a promotion, boy.’ The Chinaman looks around. ‘Here, you know what?’ he says. ‘You could eat in a better place than this, that's for sure.’ He points at Challenor's brown ale. ‘One for the road? On the house, mind.’

Challenor smiles, shakes his head.

‘Suit yourself The Chinaman floats off to drink the health of some other punter.

It's all God's honest, of course, Challenor thinks. Soho at the end of the 50s was a jungle. The Street Offences act of ‘59 saw to that. No more women of the night on the public prowl; all behind the clubs now. And the clubs all a front. Italian Albert Dimes saw off poor old Jewish Jack ‘bother’ Spot with a razor. He found himself in a spot all right, that night. The Kosher King fucked off sharpish after that. And it's gone from there, Challenor thinks. Ronnie Knight at the A&R on Charing Cross Road; the Krays at the Stragglers, off Cambridge Circus.

And that's why I’m here, he thinks -

Detective Sergeant Harold ‘Tanky’ Challenor.

What's a couple of wide-boy thugs to an ex-SAS paratrooper?

Challenor wipes his mouth. He sees off the rest of his brown ale. He throws coins on the counter.

Challenor's off duty, but he's never off duty. He wraps up in a long, summer coat. Not the most subtle of disguises, but it’ll do.

What are you going to do about it?

Challenor means business. He doesn’t mess about, Challenor.

He's following Flying Squad Rule no. I: catch the jokers at it.

That way you can always sus them, bring them in on a possible, a charge.

Red-handed is stone-cold cell time, Challenor's learnt that rule well enough.

And you have to get up pretty early, as the saying goes, to catch the poxy bastards round West End Central way.

He's out the Chinaman's place, turns right down Lisle Street. He glances at the knocking shop on the corner, a sign, ‘Models’, on an open door. Not the most subtle of disguises.

He crosses Shaftesbury Avenue, and shuffles along Dean Street aiming for Wilf Gardiner's place, the Geisha club, on Moor Street, just off Cambridge Circus. He keeps his head down as he passes the French House. He's heard there are a couple of faces about and he doesn’t want anybody the wiser regarding this little off-duty jaunt. Research trip, he's calling it.

The Geisha club, Challenor thinks.

Not the most subtle of disguises.

Old Wilf Gardiner is no sweetheart, Challenor knows this. Convictions for violence, dishonesty. He tuned up a traffic warden not long ago, and his strip clubs are rife with solicitation, short-time brass in upstairs rooms and whatnot. No, he is not a very nice chap at all, old Wilf Gardiner, and it strikes Challenor now that it's an unlikely set of circumstances that has led them to become something like accomplices.

He's passed the Three Greyhounds on the corner of Moor and Old Compton, and it's quiet in there, this early-afternoon booze slot isn’t too busy, no, but he keeps himself to himself, doesn’t call out to Luciano - Lucky Luke - owner of his favourite Italian canteen, his very favourite trattoria, to be precise, Limoncello, across the road, like he sometimes does. He wants to know what exactly it is Wilf wants -

Yes, it seems that old Wilf Gardiner is having a spot of.

A week before, Challenor is at Wilf's other place, the Phoenix.

‘I’m telling you, Harry, these fuckers are taking the right old Mick,’ Wilf says.

Challenor sits and listens. He swallows beer.

‘They’re round the Geisha early July, right,’ old Wilf is saying, ‘and Ford - that's Johnnie Ford, yeah, local face, a decent-looking lad I’ll give him that, a two-bob villain sort, you know him, course you do — so this Ford has told me to hire some of his mob, you know, working, bar staff, delivery lackeys, that kind of thing. Except their jobs will be on the books, but they ain’t gonna be punching in, know what I mean? So you see where this is going.’

Challenor does see. Protection.

‘So I’ve told him we could talk about it, and he's told me no, no discussion. And that I need to watch where I walk and watch every way.’

‘And?’

‘They fancy coming back and giving me a belting,’ Wilf says. ‘Same day I’ve come across him and a couple of his monkeys on Charing Cross Road and he's butted me, and I’ve struck him, and it's got a touch tasty, but I reckoned that’d be the end.’

‘But it wasn’t.’

‘No.’

The following day young Ford and his mate Riccardo Pedrini head over to the Phoenix for a pow-wow to square things.

‘Giving up on protection then, are you?’ Old Wilf says, smirking.

Ford grins, and turns, and does one. Scarpers.

Pedrini points his finger at Old Wilf and says, ‘You try and get Johnnie Ford nicked, and I will cut you up.’ He turns away. Turns back. ‘And I get nicked for that, my lover, I’ll get out and cut you up again.’

‘Yes, darling,’ Wilf says. And he winks, and he heads in, head high.

Pride comes before one, and blah blah blah and all that jazz, Challenor thinks now, as he heads towards the Geisha. Course it's not the charming Italian waiter Pedrini that Challenor wants. He's just a wannabe with a blade who's known Ford for donkeys. And Ford is a cutthroat chancer who won’t last.

No, Challenor's after bigger fish, and he's using Old Wilf here to lure them out of the weeds and into clear, running water.

Challenor's after a certain racketeer named Joseph Francis Oliva.

King Oliva.

*

You’re itching. You’re drunk and you’re itching. Algeria, 1942, and fuck all happening. Punch-ups with Yanks in the bars. Lying around getting a soldier's suntan, itching and waiting.

You’re drunk in a bar.

‘So you’re an orderly?’

You hear: oi-duh-ly.

You grunt.

‘What's that, a nurse?’

You hear: a noi-ss.

Smack. Have that, you Yank cunt. You turn. Plant your bonce on his pal. Crunch. And we’re off. Glass smashes. Cheers. Head down, fists up. In seconds, tables crash. You pick up a chair leg and turn. Then whistles, shouts, cheering, laughter.

Military Police, or some Yank nonsense.

‘Nah, it was nothing, was it, Harry? Just a laugh, guv.’

Nods. Hands raised, drinks gathered, sipped. Your Yank pals grinning. Yeah, have that. You grin back. MPs fuck off out of it, and you shake hands with your new friends, clap their backs.

‘What the fuck is a noi-ss?’ you say.

You all get good and drunk, brothers in arms and all that.

If you want something enough, you’ll get it. You repeat the phrase to yourself again and again: if you want something enough, you’ll get it. And you want it, all right. This medical orderly business is not what you signed up for. Held in reserve, attached to the First Army, just a mass of bodies and equipment to keep Rommel from heading east while Monty cleared El Alamein.

Least the booze is cheap. Algiers, cheers; cheers, Algiers. Every night you’re cracking that gag, toasting the sky and the sand. Bored out your skull. Not what you signed up for.

Then, things change for you: a touch. Young Randolph Churchill, son of Big Winston, rolls into the camp looking for likely lads for 62 Commando. You’re straight in there like a Yank desert rat up an Algiers whore. They like the look of you. And you’re in. There's a catch: you have to remain an orderly. An oi-duh-ly. Fuck. But you do all the drills, all the training, you’re top marks across the board, the most aggressive oi-duh-ly the Commandos ever had.

And before too long, you’re in, you’re fully fledged, and it's on.

You have no fear of death; if you die, a whole fucking bunch of their mob is going with you.

‘Where's your cap, orderly?’ An officer asks you.

It's a good question. You’ve lost yours, and the famous Green Berets ain’t turned up yet.

‘You’ll have to wear this, Tanky.’

The officer hands you an old Tank Corps hat.

Tanky. Now you’re Tanky.

*

Challenor shuffles on towards the Geisha club. He grimaces, growls to himself.

There are quacks after him, talking about him, doctors, you know, that lot -

Psychiatrists.

They’re giving it the Battle Fatigue, the Combat Stress Reaction. Brass at head office are worried about Challenor, want him examined, assessed.

Course, he's got form, Challenor.

His childhood was what you’d call peripatetic, he thinks now, you know, if you wanted to give it a positive spin, a gloss. His old man had to uproot the family time and again, what with the bailiffs and bookies and landlords and whatnot always calling, all hours. Late-night-run-for-it type of thing. Challenor and his sister, sleepy-eyed in the boot of the car, meagre possessions packed around them.

It was only when Challenor's old man got a job at Leavesden Mental Hospital in Hertfordshire that they had any sort of stability. He was a nurse, which is a laugh, considering the little care he ever showed at home.

‘You’re a mistake, boy, you got that?’

Was the kind of thing.

Challenor got a job there too, which he admits smacks of a bit odd, but there was a characteristic bit of his own dodgy logic to it. The young bachelors, your single male nurses, got lodgings there to sweeten the deal.

So it was a way out of home.

It definitely smacks of a bit odd, Challenor knows this, when you consider the contempt with which Challenor holds his old man, this father in name alone who let himself succumb to drink, and who expressed his own brand of contempt, of fury, with his fists.

Mean, sadistic, cruel, a tyrant - are a few words Challenor's used.

Taking this job got Challenor away from those furies, those rages, those fists.

He would aim low, Challenor's old man, no visible marks.

He didn’t fancy giving young Harry a belting in public, so that was that.

Not so much as following in his footsteps as getting out from under his shadow.

Course, the institutional experience, the medical experience Challenor gathers there, is considered invaluable when he signs up.

So he's not a soldier, frustratingly, but a medical orderly.

Boy from Watford, a drinker and skirt chaser, in the Royal Army Medical Corps.

Which doesn’t last long, of course.

Don’t let Brass fob you off, Challenor thinks now. You’re Tanky, boy.

What are you going to do about it, eh?

Box it, that's what, shelve it, that's what I’ll do, Challenor thinks, what I’ve done every day, I’ll box it, I’ll shelve it.

So he does.

He ducks down the stairs of Wilf Gardiner's Geisha club.

Here we go, he thinks. Here we go.

*

You’re boxed in tight on a submarine, hammock-bound, discussing the weight and the length and the depth of the pop of the explosives you’ve got stashed below you in an odd-looking tin fish. Submarine's name: Safari. You’re on fucking safari, old chum. First mission: Marigold-2SAS to connect with an agent nearby on the Sardinian coast and take a prisoner. What you do with that prisoner is what you’re looking forward to: interrogation to ascertain German strength in Sardinia pre-launch of Operation Husky, the Allied invasion of Sicily.

You’re in, lad. It is all on.

But it's high summer and the daylight hours are long, so you and yours are submerged for very, very long periods. And the air is close, and there ain’t . . .