Cardiff Docks, or more precisely, the West Dock, opened on 9th October 1839. On that day, thousands of people lined the procession route from Cardiff Castle to the dock, including children, artisans and the nobility. In the 1850s, coal made the journey from the Rhondda Valleys to the dock and by the 1890s, Cardiff was Britain’s largest coal exporting port, distributing over ten million tons in the year before the First World War. The industrial boom attracted workers from Europe, the Middle East, the Far East, the Americas and Africa. In a far-sighted act of social development, the planners hoped that people from various social backgrounds would settle in the area. No chance. As the transport system developed and new suburbs spread, the middle and upper classes moved out, leaving the workers isolated in a community known as Tiger Bay.
After the Second World War, industrial decline set in leading to redevelopment. Some of those redevelopments were short-sighted and ugly – get-rich-quick schemes for the developers – while others had a lasting, beneficial effect. Furthermore, many of the dockside warehouses fell into disrepair and were demolished while those in prime locations took on a new lease of life.
With my sunglasses perched on my nose, shielding my eyes from the bright morning sunlight, I made my way to a redeveloped warehouse, known locally as Taff Green. The warehouse was situated beside the River Taff, near a patch of waste ground and a mass of riverside shrubs and trees.
Inside the warehouse, a long, green building with a grey, corrugated iron roof, I discovered an assortment of sports and exercise equipment, some encased in packing crates, the rest on shelves or freestanding. I also spied two familiar faces, Harry ‘the Hat’ Pearson and Nudger Nicholls. Harry and Nudger had spent their lives on the dark side, so I sensed that there was something crooked about the warehouse, that the merchandise wasn’t legit. With that in mind, I stepped towards an office, a glass-panelled cubicle at the rear of the building.
Inside the cubicle, I spied a busty brunette and a man in his early thirties. The man had dark, narrow eyes, nothing more than slits, a shaved head and a full, fleshy face with dark stubble on his chin. His arms were heavily tattooed with swastikas and military images, images that ran from his wrists to his neck. He wore a brown, short-sleeved shirt, a narrow white tie and black trousers. His shoes were chunky, with metal toecaps.
“I’m looking for Naz,” I said while tapping on the office door.
“Who are you?” the man asked.
“Sam. I want to talk business, sensitive business; private.”
He eyed me for twenty seconds then glanced at his female companion. “Okay, Cassandra,” he said, “go file your nails someplace else.”
Cassandra slipped off her perch – she’d been sitting on the edge of a desk – gave me an unfriendly glare, then strolled into the warehouse, swinging her hips in provocative fashion. The man, presumably Naz, watched her go, offered a lecherous leer.
At Naz’s invitation, I closed the door and entered the office. Instantly, two Rottweilers growled at me. The Rottweilers were chained to the wall, either side of the desk. Behind the desk, Naz had decorated the wall with posters: Hitler, in a familiar manic pose, Goring and Goebbels. I also noticed a poster depicting men and women in wheelchairs; the wheelchairs were rolling towards a gas chamber.
“So,” Naz said, sitting behind his desk, placing his heavy boots on its deeply scarred surface, “you want to talk business.”
I nodded. “I’m an enquiry agent. I’m looking for Frankie Quinn.”
“Why come here?” Naz asked. He stared at me through narrow, hostile eyes; absentmindedly, he removed dirt from under his fingernails with a playing card.
“A friend of a friend said you and Frankie are close.”
“Your friend of a friend is wrong,” Naz said. He tossed the playing card, the seven of diamonds, on to his desk, then leaned back in his chair, resting his head against the wall. “I don’t know Frankie, got nothing to do with him.”
Once again, I allowed my gaze to wander over the posters on the wall. Nearly a hundred years since Hitler came to power, nearly a century since the world tolerated, then opposed, his evil. Enough time to make a legend of the man, enough time for people to look away and ignore. History repeats. We forget that at our peril.
While gazing at the posters, I asked, “Do you believe in that crap?”
Naz leaned forward, a violent act, catapulted by the springs in his chair. While snarling and jabbing a finger at me, he said, “Hitler’s the man. He got it right; hit the nail on the head. It’s time we introduced his ideas.”
“And murder the innocents.”
“If a man can’t pull his weight, he’s got no business on this planet. Burn ‘em, I say!”
“And you pull your weight,” I said.
He waved an expansive hand towards the warehouse. “I run my business.”
“Is it legit?”
He offered me a twisted grin. “Why do you ask?”
I shrugged, “I don’t know; maybe I’ll buy some equipment.”
“You lift weights?” he asked, while eyeing my slender frame.
“I run, occasionally.”
“Shall I set the dogs on you,” he grinned, “see how fast you can run?”
The threat, presumably made to many, acted as a cue and the dogs began to snarl. I sensed that a lot of snarling went on in this office, from man and beasts. However, Naz raised a hand to pacify the dogs and, while eyeing him, they fell silent.
“My business is legit,” he insisted. “Wanna see my tax returns?”
I offered a casual shrug of my right shoulder. “So you know a dodgy accountant.”
“You trying to wind me up?” he snarled. See, I was right about the snarling; Samantha Smith, ace investigator, reading the crease lines on ugly faces a speciality.
On the subject of wind-ups, I held my tongue. Instead, I said, “So you haven’t seen Frankie Quinn.”
“Don’t know the guy,” Naz insisted, leaning back again, placing his boots on his desk.
“I understand that Frankie was a big man in his day.”
“He was small fry,” Naz scoffed, “still is.”
“Thought you hadn’t heard of him,” I said, my tone innocent, my expression angelic; butter wouldn’t melt in my mouth.
“I have heard of him,” Naz said, sighing, speaking slowly, “but I don’t know him, right.”
“And he’s a nobody,” I said.
“Yeah.”
“And you’re a somebody.”
“Yeah. I’m going places, me.”
“This is Vincent Vanzetti’s patch,” I pointed out.
“You know Vanzetti?”
“Like I know my own father,” I said; a statement that was painfully true.
“So you’re connected,” Naz shrugged, “hence the brass.”
“In a manner of speaking, yeah.”
Vincent Vanzetti, the local Godfather, was well known to me, though we were hardly bosom friends. However, it wouldn’t hurt to offer Naz the impression that Vanzetti and I were big buddies.
“Vanzetti’s past it,” Naz scoffed.
“You reckon?”
“Vanzetti, Rudy Valentine, the Bishop brothers...has-beens.”
“I’ll tell them you said that.”
“You do,” Naz snarled. On reflection, the snarl served as Naz’s default expression. I could picture him in the morning, shaving his head, practicing his snarl in the mirror. “Those has-beens have ruled the roost for too long, stifled up-and-coming talent, like me. It’s time for a new generation to put the old farts in their graves.”
“You plan to elbow Vanzetti et al aside?” I asked.
“Who’s Et Al?” Naz scowled. “A Spaniard? Bastard Europeans. Bastard foreigners.”
“Et al,” I explained, “it’s an abbreviation, meaning ‘and others’; originates from the Latin, et alii.”
Naz sprang forward again, propelled by his chair. If he kept doing that, he’d put his back out. “You taking the piss?” he asked.
“Look it up if you don’t believe me.”
He shook his head while his fingers ripped the playing card to shreds. “I got better things to do with my time.”
“Like reading Mein Kampf,” I said.
He grinned. “After sex, every night.”
From the warehouse, the sound of laughter, clanging and cursing drifted into the office. Naz’s men were packing up his wares, preparing to ship them out.
Standing, I thought it best to take my leave, before I became the dogs’ dinner. Though as I stepped through the door, Naz called out, “Listen, scrubber; the new broom is gonna sweep clean, clear the old junk away. And if you get in the way, it will sweep you aside too. Unnerstand?”
“Understand,” I said, “the word contains a d, two in fact, one near the beginning, the other at the end.”
“Beat it,” he growled, “before I set the dogs on you.”
A wise man once said, if you win an argument with an idiot, all you can pride yourself in is that you’ve won an argument with an idiot. I didn’t see the point of arguing with Naz any longer, so I turned on my heel and left his warehouse.