Chapter One

Paul Jacobs walked sedately up from the subway of Cardiff railway station and paused on platform one to consult his wristwatch.

The waiting London-bound diesel had three minutes to go. He gave a little satisfied smirk at his impeccable timing then climbed aboard to claim his reserved seat in a First Class compartment.

Jacobs put his expensive suitcase on the rack and fiddled with it until it sat exactly right. Then with a deliberation that made the passenger opposite want to scream with exasperation, he neatly folded his light overcoat, placed it immaculately on the case and finally, with the air of a master conjurer at the climax of his act, crowned the lot with his black homburg. He turned and nodded briefly at the other two businessmen who shared the compartment and sat down.

The fellow opposite, the one who was growing the duodenal ulcer, swallowed his nerves and gave him the quick meaningless smile that un-introduced first class travellers use, then dived back into his Western Mail. Paul Jacobs shook out a pink Financial Times as the diesel rolled slowly out of the station, dead on eleven twenty-six.

For an hour, the three gentlemen sat in a silence as holy as that of the British Museum. Then Jacobs got up and followed the steward’s advice about first lunch.

He had a good meal in the restaurant car, enjoyed a brandy and a cigar then came back to his seat for the rest of the journey to Paddington.

If either of his travelling companions had been asked on oath to say what they remembered about him, probably the only thing that would have stuck in their minds was the fact that the magazine that he took out after lunch was in German. Otherwise they would have had to describe him – to the despair of the police – as ‘of average height – medium build, brown hair – or was it rather fair? Oh yes, he wore glasses.’

A woman might have done better, for she might have thought him as definitely fair with a high forehead and quite good-looking.

This anonymity of appearance was part of Jacob’s professional stock-in-trade. It helped him to keep his income in the six-figure range. But none of this was ever to be put to his fellow travellers. He read his German magazine undisturbed until they reached Paddington. Then he took down his case, made farewell smiles at them and stepped onto the platform.

Jacobs walked leisurely down the platform, across the crowded area at the top and back down to the toilets on platform one. There, in the cramped but complete privacy of a cubicle, he shed his carefully assumed role of a sedate provincial businessman. Paul Jacobs went into storage in the suitcase. His dark overcoat, briefcase and umbrella were stowed away. He took everything from the pockets of his grey suit – everything that his wife expected him to carry: diary, letters, wallet, keys – they all went into the suitcase. All he kept was some loose change and a wad of banknotes. The last things to go were his heavy-rimmed spectacles, the lenses of which were almost plain glass.

He snapped the case shut with a satisfied click and walked back up the platform to the Left Luggage Office. There he exchanged the identity of Paul Jacobs for a pink ticket and called a taxi at the rank.

For the next ten minutes, he was in a personal no-man’s-land as the taxi took him across London to Euston, but at the other station he reversed the process with a ticket carefully retrieved from the bottom of his breast pocket.

He took the new case, a large and ostentatious lightweight, to the nearest gents’ and extracted from it the personality of Paul Golding. He put on a cream-coloured waterproof overcoat of an expensively rakish cut, fitted another wallet and diary into his pockets, and took out some more keys and a few papers. Finally, he put on an American-looking pork pie hat with a wide band and changed his shoes for grey suede with elastic sides.

When he stepped out of the lavatory a few moments later, swinging the empty case, he was an utterly different man from the one who had arrived at Paddington half an hour earlier. Though he had no false beard or cheek pads, his golf and business acquaintances in Cardiff would have passed him in the street without a second glance.

The second taxi took him to a block of flats in Newman Street, literally within a stone’s throw of the edge of Soho. As he stood paying off the driver, he could see the top end of Dean Street beyond the milling traffic in Oxford Street. Paul had picked this place with great care. As he went into the entrance hall, there was no curious porter to mark his comings and goings; the lift that whisked him up to the fourth floor had no gossiping attendant, only a row of buttons.

He reached his flat and let himself in with a key from the Euston suitcase.

‘Paul? Paul, is that you, darling?’

A woman’s voice came from the room on the left of the tiny hallway. As he pushed the door open, she ran towards him across the carpet, barefoot, her arms wide open. Now she was in his arms, her hands on his neck and her lips burrowing into his. Paul felt the warmth flowing through him as she strained against his chest. Her mouth moved excitingly and sensually on his, but, as he gave himself up to enjoyment, a part of his mind stayed detached. It was comparing her kisses with those of his wife, now probably playing bridge with her friends in a Cardiff suburb. He decided that if Barbara practised for twenty years she could never kiss like Rita. Eventually his mistress pulled away and leant back, holding on to his hands, looking like a sleek cat after some long overdue cream.

‘Paul, you’re three days later this time – over a fortnight.’

She pouted delightfully, her lips quivering, ready for more.

‘Miss me, sweet?’

‘Of course – I always do.’

‘I expect you found something to do, beautiful.’

‘What is there to do?’ Her voice had a foreign huskiness.

‘Come and sit down, we can’t stand up all the time.’

A little warning bell rang in his mind. His exquisite sense of self-preservation hovered over her words. Had there been a little hesitation there – was she covering up?

‘What have you been doing, anyway?’ he asked as they moved to the settee.

‘Same damn things,’ she pouted. ‘Hairdressers, a couple of shows … what else is there to do when you stay away so long?’

Nothing there, he thought. His early warning system stopped buzzing, but stayed watchful. Rita pulled him to her on the settee, the focal point of the small but beautifully furnished lounge. She tossed back her hair carelessly and slid her arms around his neck. He pressed his face against her hair, which was as genuinely black as her fiery Italian blood.

‘Kiss me again, Paul … two whole weeks, you swine!’

As he obliged, he wondered whether she was overdoing this ‘happy return’ routine. With the print of her lips fresh on his, he rebelled at the need to be suspicious, but his cautious mind told him to get to his secret box in the bedroom as soon as he could. They kissed again, the woman’s enthusiasm lulling his doubts. When they drew apart, he sank back against the cushions and looked her over. His brows came together in a frown.

‘Why d’you wear those damn trousers, sweet … you know I can’t stand them?’

She looked down at her long legs sheathed in skin-tight jeans.

‘Sorry – but I didn’t know you were going to come today, did I?’

She looked at him with her dark spaniel eyes and he laughed.

‘OK, I’m not going to leather you this time – come here.’

They went into another passionate clinch. After a decent interval, Rita broke away and jumped up.

‘I must be getting old – I can’t hold my breath that long!’

She laughed gaily and stretched luxuriously in front of him. Was she breaking it off sooner than usual? He cursed his suspicious mind and reached forwards to grip her round the waist.

‘What about changing out of these abominations?’ He pinched her through her tights.

‘Aoww … swine!’ She bent down and bit him hard on the ear. Before he could retaliate, she had skipped away to the door of the bedroom.

‘I’ve got to have my hair done at four, so I’ll have to change anyway.’

She vanished and Paul sat brooding for a few seconds. She’s going out – good! A chance to have a look in the box. He got up quickly.

‘I’ll come and help you change.’

Moving fast he reached the bedroom door before she could slam it and lean against the other side.

He grinned, pushed it open with his shoulder and chased her round the big bed. She ran squealing with delight, barefoot over the coverlet, but let herself be caught without much trouble. He brought her down with a thump on to the bed.

‘I’ve told you before not to wear these when I come home.’

His hands were busy at the waistband of her jeans and she was kissing him again.

‘Hairdresser’s by four, darling!’ she whispered practically.

Paul listened at the door until he heard the whine of the lift taking her down.

‘She should be gone a good hour and a half,’ he muttered as he took a beer from the refrigerator. He spent ten minutes over it to make sure she didn’t come back for some reason, then got down to business.

He went to a drawer and took out a screwdriver. Going into the bedroom, he knelt in front of a built-in wardrobe and pulled the doors open. Parting a row of expensive dresses, he cleared the floor of shoes and hatboxes to expose the boards. Taking out six screws, Paul lifted the floor out entirely and laid it on the carpet. The cavity beneath was lined with a thick layer of sound-proofing sponge. In the centre was a tape recorder with unusually large spools. Fine wires led from it to the back of the nearby skirting board, where the junction box of the bedside telephone was fixed.

Paul looked at the amount of tape that had passed on to the take-up spool. He frowned and the cold part of his brain said, ‘I told you so!’

On previous occasions when he had come to his ‘bugging’ apparatus, there had been hardly any tape used at all. This time, well over half of the big spool had passed over and as he pressed the rewind button, he felt already resigned to the inevitable. This had to happen sooner or later, he thought regretfully.

Paul Jacobs picked up a little earpiece and thrust it in place. With a sigh, he pressed the playback button.

That evening, he took Rita to the Nineties Club, in Gerrard Street, on the side of Soho furthest from their flat.

In spite of the revelation of the tape recorder, Paul’s manner towards his mistress was the same – a mixture of affection and domination. In turn, Rita showed her usual vivacity and coquettishness. She had no idea that he had heard every word of her telephone conversations for the past fortnight.

He helped her out of a taxi in front of the Nineties at about nine thirty. They walked to the door, sandwiched between a brash amusement arcade and a smart Chinese restaurant.

‘Evening, Mr Golding.’

The doorman, his physique suggesting his real function of bouncer, saluted them smartly. They passed through the narrow doorway under the neon Can-Can sign that flickered over the entrance.

The uninspiring exterior of the place gave way to an imaginative and expensive decor. The club proper was in the basement and they walked down a heavily-carpeted stairway to reach it. The walls were hung with Victorian draperies with many heavily ornamented mirrors. There were framed theatre posters from the last years of the old century, to set the atmosphere that gave the club its name. Even the chucker-out doorman wore a top hat and side whiskers to mimic the ‘good old days’

At the bottom of the stairs was a small cloakroom with an attractive girl to take Paul’s coat and Rita’s mink cape. Paul wore a dinner jacket and Rita a slinky cocktail dress. She looked very different from the sweater and jeans of the afternoon, but even more alluring.

Jacobs looked at her back with regret as he followed her through the padded swing-doors into the club itself. This was a long room which extended the whole length of the building above. At the further end was a small stage for the band and cabaret, and along the left-hand wall was a long and ornate bar. Paul shepherded his mistress towards it and found a couple of high stools still vacant.

The barman hurried up, his leathery face crinkled in smiles.

‘Mr Golding … Miss Ronalde … nice to see you!’

He sounded as if he really meant it.

‘The usual, Snigger,’ replied Golding. ‘Brandy ginger for Rita, gin and French for me.’

The barman bustled off to get the drinks. He had two barmaids and a waiter to assist him, but he dealt with this order himself. He was a little man, who looked like an ex-jockey, mainly because he was an ex-jockey – ex because he had been caught doping his competitor’s steeds a few years before.

He came back with the drinks and waved away Paul’s offer to pay.

‘First one’s on me, as usual, Mr Golding.’

‘Everything all right, Snigger?’ asked Paul.

There was more in the casual remark than anyone other than themselves realised.

Snigger winked and gave a thumbs-up sign.

‘Fine … same with you?’

Golding nodded shortly, but the barman recognised the lack of conviction. A barmaid came up to him with some query and he moved away down the bar.

Rita was looking around the room, which was almost full to capacity – a typical Saturday night crowd. She tried to make her inspection look like idle curiosity, but Paul knew that she was hoping to catch a glimpse of someone special – the other voice on the tape.

‘Ready for another?’

His voice jerked her attention back to the bar and she gave him a bright, but mechanical, smile.

‘Mmm, please, same again.’

She finished her drink quickly, gave him another dazzling smile and slid her arm through his.

He smiled back, patted her arm and said, ‘Bitch,’ to himself. She prattled on about nothing in particular, making the sweet talk that he had enjoyed, along with her Latin-style lovemaking, for the past eighteen months – since he had picked her up in this very bar, in fact.

But, more sensitive than ever tonight, he noticed that, even as she talked, her eyes kept straying to the big mirrors behind the bar, searching the reflection of the people in the crowded room.

The bar and the rest of the club repeated the late Victorian motif of the entrance. The barman wore the striped shirt, collar, cravat, and armbands of the period, and even had a pair of false side-whiskers and moustache. His attractive barmaids were dressed in bustled full-skirted dresses with alarmingly low necklines. The draperies and bar fitments were all authentic and the huge ornamented mirrors which Rita found so interesting were from a demolished London pub of the eighteen-eighties.

Snigger was still busy down the bar and his assistant, an adenoidal man dressed in a similar outfit, fixed their second drinks. After a few minutes, Paul casually excused himself and strolled in the direction of the toilets, which played such a big part in his double life. As he passed the lower end of the bar, he gave Snigger an almost imperceptible jerk of the head. The barman responded by raising his eyebrows a sixteenth of an inch and after a moment or two, followed him out.

They met in the washroom and waited until another man left. Then they stood washing their hands unnecessarily at adjacent basins while they talked.

‘How’s tricks?’ asked the ex-jockey.

‘Bloody awful – but don’t worry, it’s nothing to do with – the racket.’

Snigger allowed his George Robey eyebrows another excursion up his forehead, but said nothing. He knew better than to push his curiosity with Paul Golding.

‘Going over tomorrow?’ he asked instead.

‘Yes, Brussels this time. How much do you want?’ Snigger, his name an obvious parody on his unfortunate real one of Leonard Gigal, looked cautiously over his shoulder to see if the door was shut. Heroin … as much as you like. That last lot of morphine you dumped on me will take months to get rid of.’

Paul nodded. He straightened his back and pulled the plug out of the basin.

‘Right – can you take five hundred grams?’

The barman whistled.

‘Five hundred! OK, I’ll take it. They all seem to be after the hard stuff these days … it may take a few weeks to palm off, mind.’

Paul nodded and went to dry his hands at a roller towel. ‘I’ll be back on Thursday … come up Friday night for it, usual place.’

Gigal looked curiously at the other man. Golding was affable, but drew a strict line about the limits of his confidence in people. Snigger tried again, tentatively.

‘How you going this time, Rotterdam routine again?’ Paul looked hard at him, his jaw muscles tensing.

‘No, I’m not,’ he said harshly. ‘The less you know, the less you can spill when you get picked up.’

Snigger smiled weakly. He accepted the brush-off and the hint that the Metropolitan Police would catch up with him sooner or later. The innuendo that when he was nicked he would do well to keep his mouth shut was not lost on him either. He decided to change the subject.

‘Rita’s looking smashing tonight – smartest bird that comes in here.’ He grinned ingratiatingly, showing his loose oversize dentures.

‘Shut up – let’s get out of here. Folks’ll wonder what we’re up to.’

Just outside the toilet, Paul stopped in the shadow of a supporting pillar and looked towards the bar. Rita was still on her stool, openly searching the club with her eyes. Paul waited a moment to see if she had any success. The tape recorder had given him the sound of the other man’s voice, but it had not been one he recognised. And, infuriatingly, never once had either he or Rita spoken his name, not even the Christian name. Paul remembered the endearments – and worse – that had passed between them.

He felt no jealousy, only annoyance at the enforced break-up of a carnally satisfactory arrangement. But more serious, there was the anxiety about the safety of his identity and his drug smuggling business.

He saw no sign that Rita had recognised anyone and he made his way back to her.

‘Shall we dance?’ he said.

They spent the rest of the time until the 11.30 cabaret, clinging together on the tiny floor, swaying to the smooch music of the four-piece band. There was no twisting or shaking here. This was strictly a hideout for the tired and not-so-tired business man who wanted to get to grips with his social life in the shape of a young woman.

There was nothing about the place that would attract the attention of the Yard Vice Squad, but an unaccompanied tired businessman had only to cross Snigger’s palm with a fiver for an attractive girl to appear within five minutes, to be his drinking and dancing partner. What she chose to do when the club closed at two thirty was her own business, as far as the club was concerned.

Half an hour before midnight, the already dim lights went down even further and a blue spotlight appeared on the stage. For the first time, the club owner appeared, his shirt front glowing in the eerie light. There was a desultory burst of applause and he held his hands up for silence.

Snigger snorted from behind the bar where he was polishing a glass.

‘Think he was going to conduct Beethoven’s Fiff in the Albert ’All!’ he growled in his broad Cockney. ‘One night I’m going to wrap a bottle round his bleeding ’ead!’

Paul Jacobs’ bland face stared hard at the barman. ‘It would cost you some if you did, Snigger,’ he said enigmatically. He turned back to the stage. Ray Silver, a plump Eurasian and owner of the club, was giving a build-up patter for the cabaret.

All the acts had changed since Paul’s last visit a few weeks before and he listened to the new artistes with interest. The third and last performer riveted his attention even more firmly.

Ray Silver bounced on to announce Fraulein Elsa and amid a roll of drums, a tall blonde drifted on to the stage. The cloud of silver hair was accentuated by the harsh blue light as she sung ‘Lili Marlene’ huskily and sensually in the style of the ageless German-American star, Marlene Dietrich. Her voice alone would never have made her fortune, thought Paul as he carefully looked her over, but the meaning she put into the words and the way she moved her long body inside the glittering sheath of her dress more than made up for an indifferent set of vocal cords.

Elsa followed ‘Lili Marlene’ with a couple of even more glowing numbers from Eartha Kitt’s repertoire. Paul’s attention was so rapt that his usually steel-willed caution slipped for a few minutes.

His eyes, focussed on the swaying silver figure, failed to notice Rita making furtive signs to a man who had just come through the swing doors. The man stood, as Jacobs had done, in the shadow of a pillar, staring intently at the pair at the bar.

Behind Paul’s back, Rita made a little warning motion with her cigarette, pointing fleetingly at her escort. The stranger, a tall, broad man in his early thirties, gave a slight nod. Then he went to the other end of the bar and completely ignored the other pair for the rest of the night.

Paul watched the Austrian singer intently until the end of her act. Already the germ of an idea as to Rita’s successor was taking root in his calculating mind. When she left the stage in a burst of applause Rita left to powder her nose. Paul swung back to the bar and called Snigger for some more drinks.

Gigal leered at him.

‘Nice bit ’o stuff, eh? The “frowline” stunt is on the level too – she really does come from Vienna.’

‘Know anything about her?’

The little cockney shrugged. ‘She’s only been here a week. No bloke hanging around her yet, if that’s what you mean.’

‘Where’s she live?’

Again Snigger shrugged. ‘Search me! I’ll put the whisper around, if you like.’

Paul nodded then leant forwards across the bar.

‘Snigger, have you noticed anyone hanging around Rita this last couple of weeks?’ He dropped his voice as he spoke.

The ex-jockey’s brows went up again.

‘A feller? No, she ain’t even bin in here … no, wait a bit, she was once. But on her own, she was. Straight up, that is.’

Paul accepted his word and let the subject drop. He slid off the stool and stubbed his cigarette out.

‘I’m going in to see Silver for a minute. Tell Rita I won’t be long.’

The barman, looking incongruous in his whiskers and armbands, nodded. ‘Want me to keep my eyes skinned when you’re away?’ he offered tentatively.

Paul scowled at him. ‘Don’t bother … I’m taking care of it.’

Snigger shied off the delicate ground of Golding’s personal affairs. Theirs was a purely business relationship. The ex-jockey was a middleman in the dope business in the West End. He bought the stuff wholesale from Golding, broke it down into smaller packages and sold it at a handsome profit to the dealers.

They had a series of safeguards which made it virtually impossible for the police to trace the supply back to Golding. For eight years now they had carried on this rewarding game without a whisper of trouble. Snigger knew that he was by no means the only distributor for Golding’s imports from the Continent. Ray Silver was another, for instance.

He was a big-time middleman and through his interests in a chain of seedy dance halls through London, he got rid of a much larger quantity than Snigger himself. Silver dealt mainly with teenage pep pills and reefers, but had a fair trade in the hard stuff: heroin, morphine, and cocaine. Snigger also knew that Paul’s visit now to the office at the back of the stage was to take Silver’s order for the next consignment from Brussels.

Golding left the bar just before Rita came back, her curvaceous body sidling between the crowded tables. The barman looked covertly at her as she approached and wondered what had made Golding suspect that she was two-timing him.

‘You’re soon going to get your cards and week’s money, sweetheart,’ he muttered to himself as the dark beauty pirouetted onto her stool.

He leant back against his mirrored shelves and looked around the big room, now thick with cigarette smoke. His two full-bosomed assistants were serving as fast as they could go, and Albert, the waiter, rushed around the tables, his speed in serving varying with the expected size of his tip. He was a small cog in the drug market, being one of Silver’s distributors. Under cover of serving drinks, he would pass over packets of dope, the profits largely going to the club owner. Silver had no idea that his barman was a competitor under his own roof. Albert had a shrewd idea how Snigger passed his stuff across, but the barman paid him a regular sub to keep his mouth shut.

Snigger leisurely polished an already gleaming glass as he looked around the big room, now full of chattering voices, the drone of the band and the click of fruit machines from the other corner. He looked up and down the bar – every stool except Golding’s being occupied. Amongst the line of tired businessmen, he noticed an M.P., a couple of stage and TV people, and a sprinkling of showgirls and strippers. The Nineties was no club for the mugs and tourists who crowded into Soho – it existed for the hard core of the West End population, a place where business and vice rubbed shoulders with sophisticated pleasure.

His eye passed from a couple of attractive chorus girls to the man next to them. He recognised him as Conrad Draper, a big-time bookie who had benefited from many hundreds of pounds of Snigger’s money in past years.

Like Gigal himself, Conrad was a product of the East End. He had catapulted to affluence and dubious fame about three years ago. Before that, he had been a wrestler and a strong-arm man for several unsavoury gentlemen of the turf. By means of some smart takeover bids, together with a deal of physical intimidation, he had rapidly ousted many of the smaller bookmakers and built up a monopoly of betting shops in Soho and the back streets of the West End. He had a finger in the protection rackets of the area and he was doing his best to become the A1 Capone of Central London.

Snigger watched him out of the comer of his eye as he sat idly twisting a whisky glass in his fingers. He had a large unlit cigar in his mouth. It fascinated the barman to see him take it out occasionally, lay it carefully on the edge of the ashtray, and take out a cigarette to smoke. After a few draws, he would crush it out and put the cigar back between his fleshy lips. He was a good six foot two in height and had the shoulders of a wrestler, as well as the experience. He was handsome in a heavy sort of way, but his features were already thickening and he had a slightly bent nose as a legacy of his days in the ring. Since he had got near the top of the Soho mobsters, he affected an American drawl and style of dress. He wore a flashy blue drape suit with narrow lapels and was liberally decked out with tiepins and signet rings. In the cloakroom hung an expensive camel-hair coat and a wide-brimmed Chicago-style hat.

Paul came back from his business with the club owner and disturbed Snigger’s browsing by asking for more drinks. Rita and he sat talking while they finished them then went off to the dance floor.

After a few more smoochy dances, the couple came back to the bar. Rita had drunk quite a lot in the course of the evening and was getting sentimentally tipsy. She lolled against Paul a little too obviously and began stroking his sleeve. He frowned and gently pushed her upright.

‘Come on – time for bed … you’re getting high.’

It was a quirk of his dual personality that in spite of his organised adultery, his immoral drug dealings and his crooked friend, he still had a wide streak of prudery which rebelled against seeing her drunk in public.

Rita giggled and tried to kiss him. He scowled, drew away, then his face cleared. The first glimmerings of a plan for her elimination came to him at that instant. He stood up, slid an arm around her bare shoulders and aimed her towards the door.

‘You’ve had enough for tonight, gorgeous,’ he murmured gently. He piloted her to the cloakroom and got their things from the girl. He slipped the mink around her, reflecting that it had cost him the whole proceeds of a trip to Marseilles the year before. He steered her up the stairs and the pugilistic doorman called a cab.

While they waited, she buried her face in his chest. ‘I want to kiss you, darling,’ she pouted tipsily.

He smiled grimly above her head into the neon jungle of Soho. ‘You can kiss me all you like, once we get home,’ he promised.

He added silently, ‘And you can kiss him tomorrow, Rita, as arranged … make the most of it!’