My night with a murderer

My father met a murderer once; a carrot-topped former chorine called Ann Woodward, who gave her veddy veddy posh husband both barrels after discovering he intended to divorce her for someone more upper-class. She got off after her mother-in-law, Elsie, who preferred a killer in the family to a scandal, bought off the American cops. That was back in 1955, and Ann is now one of the subjects of the new Ryan Murphy FX series, Feud: Capote v the Swans.

These days, murderers generally get what they deserve, which is a relief to me, as not so long ago I had one in my bedroom. My homicidal maniac, though I was ignorant of his proclivities at the time, was a neighbour called Sandip (Sam) Patel. Short, wiry and with cobalt eyes, he was a dead ringer for Sajid Javid, albeit with a complexion that seemed drenched in unguents. I had always found his relationship with self-control a tenuous one; Patel’s, that is.

Nonetheless, I had agreed to put on the nose bag with him and his girlfriend. At the restaurant, a French eaterie in St John’s Wood, whose customers possess unerring snobbisme, they rowed like the blazes. He then exited after ordering a £90 bottle of wine and creating such a scene over its price that the owner turned puce. I was even more aghast when his girlfriend mincingly begged to repair chez Wyatt and offended my pathetically bourgeois sensibilities by trying to call her dealer. I had always wondered why her face had such a moronic look. She was a moron, or damn near.

After allowing her to borrow a pair of my pyjamas, which she never returned, I ejected her from the house before slumping into bed, relieved that the nightmarish evening was over. I was wrong. At three in the morning, I was awakened by my dog, Maxi, yapping dyspeptically. I turned on the light and there he was, illuminated like some shade in Hades, standing in the doorway. I don’t know how Patel had got in. When I asked, he claimed someone had left the front door ajar. In a voice refrigerated with menace, he insisted I was concealing his girlfriend and announced his intention of searching for her.

I began to sweat, if you’ll pardon the tearjerker note. His egg-like eyes were staring and his speech was a staccato shout. He swivelled, before snarling – in a tone scary with cute sarcasm – that he had always wondered what my bedroom looked like, and advancing towards me. I summoned up a reserve of courage and shouted back at him. A small transference of power must have occurred, as he retreated, before going into room after room, upturning chairs, while looking for his partner.

After half an hour of this, I managed to cajole him into leaving, and bolted the front door. Then he disappeared off into the streets of my neighbourhood.

I wondered what had become of him. Then a friend rang to say he had been arrested for knifing a woman to death in 1994, in what was described as a ‘frenzied’ attack. Five weeks ago, he was found guilty and given life with a minimum of 19 years. The strange thing was, Patel didn’t look like your typical killer, whatever that is. Spankingly educated and sprucely dressed, he might have been a city trader – or a former health secretary. You never can tell with people.

Well, that’s that then. The first – and I hope last – murderer I have known. I am more familiar with billionaires. But in my opinion, the latter are becoming dirty, rotten cheapskates. Recently, I was approached by one who said he was looking for a girlfriend. As he was in his eighties and wheelchair-bound, I was surprised by the enthusiasm with which he talked of the hurly-burly of the chaise longue and his enterprise in amour.

Curious as to which currency the modern billionaire spoke in, I agreed to have lunch. Fish-belly pale, with the beady eyes of a Berlin hausfrau, my suitor was not an ingratiating sight. Nonetheless, over a glass of Bordeaux, he informed me that he sought a purely sexual relationship. I was further confused when he said that in return he would ‘help me with my holidays’. His family owned a couple of ritzy hotels and I assumed he was offering me one of them, or at least a gratis trip to the Caribbean, with a pearl-escent suite down to the sea and silver buckets sweating champagne.

He wasn’t. ‘What I can do,’ he continued, as if he was holding out the riches of Solomon, ‘is get you a room upgrade.’ A room upgrade? I almost lost control. So I was to cough up for the flights, the hotel and whatever food I chose to consume, and if the wretched hostelry wasn’t full, I might be upgraded from a car-park view to a partial view of the garden? What an extraordinary proposition.

So billionaires aren’t what they used to be. They’ve become as tight as a miser’s fist. In the days of Lorelei Lee, it was diamond necklaces and penthouses in Manhattan. Now it’s room upgrades, off season.