Chapter Eight

There was a lull in the affair for the first couple of days of the new week.

Benbow started to move the machinery of formal investigation into the contacts of Rita Ronalde, the divisional detectives and Sergeant Bray going out into the Newman Street area to follow up the few obvious leads given by the cleaning woman and local garages.

But late on the Sunday night, a prostitute was strangled in an alley behind Poland Street and much of the police effort was diverted to catching the suspect. Even when this was settled twenty-four hours later, there was little that Benbow could do until he had the reports from the Yard laboratory.

At the Nineties Club there was also a period of uneasy waiting. In spite of his threat, Conrad did not turn up with his hoodlums on the Monday night, but at lunchtime the next day, when Silver was eating a huge spaghetti bolognese at his favourite trattoria. A tall and evil-looking Italian sauntered over and stood at his table.

He waited until Silver had a forkful of food almost at his mouth then jogged his elbow so that a couple of yards of the pasta fell into the club owner’s lap.

Silver looked up angrily, an oath on his lips. It froze there as he recognised Luigi, one of Conrad’s sidekicks.

Luigi leered down at the podgy Eurasian.

‘Draper said for me to tell you,’ he said in a throaty Neapolitan accent, ‘He’s coming around tonight – so you gotta be a good boy, eh?’

He picked up the salt cellar, pulled the top off, and emptied the whole contents into the middle of Silver’s meal. Then he laughed and sauntered out into the street.

The waiters, fellow countrymen of his, had watched the whole performance but, whether from fear or approval, made no attempt to interfere.

Silver cleaned himself up as best he could, then walked back to the Nineties. As he trotted through the streets, cold anger stung his waspish little mind into schemes for revenge.

He wondered what was behind this sudden interest of Draper’s in Paul Golding. He himself had spoken nothing but the truth about his ignorance of the dope smuggler’s whereabouts. That made this present persecution all the harder to bear.

‘What the hell am I to tell him tonight? The bloody man is plain crazy!’ Revenge took second place to anxiety as he padded down Gerrard Street. Everything he had was tied up in the club. He had recently ploughed all his profits from the narcotics business into having the premises lavishly redecorated, to attract the better class of customer – and addict.

He knew that in a few minutes of rough stuff, he would lose both the decorations of the place and the more important goodwill of the clients, who wanted peace and anonymity to conduct their affairs.

He failed to see where Conrad Draper fitted into the Golding scheme. He knew that the betting shop boss took small doses of heroin. Was it conceivable that he was trying to break into the selling game himself?

Draper had a ready-made system of distribution in his chain of gambling offices all over the West End, and Irish O’Keefe had some experience of pushing the stuff. But it seemed all wrong, this approach. He would hardly burst in on what would be his closest rival and demand to meet the wholesaler in such a violent way.

Everyone knew that Draper was a bit touched – if he had been a boxer and not a wrestler in the past, Silver would have put it down to being punch-drunk. But there must be something else going on, something important enough to make Draper threaten him with the treatment usually reserved for the Soho protection rackets.

By the time the half-caste owner had mulled all this over, his short, quick footsteps had brought him to the closed door of the Nineties. He let himself in with his key and found the lights already lit on the staircase.

His heart gave a bound and he stopped to listen, afraid that Draper’s louts had already arrived. But the distant clink of bottles from below reassured him. It was Snigger doing his weekly bar stock account.

Downstairs, all the chairs were up on the tables and the harsh lights reserved for the cleaners were full on.

Gigal was dressed in a roll-necked sweater, a legacy of his days on the turf, instead of his Victorian get-up.

‘Hello, Mr Silver, you’re in early. What’s happened to your suit?’

As soon as the owner had opened his overcoat, the remains of the spaghetti were all too evident. Ray Silver told him bitterly of the incident in the trattoria.

‘What the hell am I going to tell Draper tonight? If I don’t pitch him some yarn, he’ll have those yobs of his around here before we close. And if I do spin a pack of lies to satisfy him for tonight, he’ll soon find the truth and come beating me up tomorrow.’

He stalked up and down, beating a fist into his open hand.

‘I’m going to be ruined, Snigger. One punch-up in here with an audience and that’s my lot – I’d have to close up.’

Snigger scratched his head with a pencil.

‘I wish Golding would turn up – let him do the worrying,’ he said, with complete honesty.

He badly wanted to get in touch with Golding himself, to tell him of the developments that made it almost certain that Conrad Draper was the man whose voice Paul had heard on the hidden tape recorder.

‘Think Draper’s boys really will come tonight?’

Snigger shrugged. ‘Gawd knows – if he wanted to do a real good smudge job on you he’d send them late at night when the place is full up.’

The Eurasian looked sick with anxiety. His round moon face was bleached with worry and his slightly slanted eyes glistened.

Snigger was struck by an idea. ‘Tell you what, if you’ll risk it and don’t mind forking out a few quid …’

He took a few minutes to outline his plan and at the end of it the club owner was on the point of swooning with undiluted fear.

‘If it goes wrong, Draper will kill me … you know what he’s like … mad as they come, thinks he’s some sort of Al Capone.’

‘You’re going to catch a packet in any case,’ shrugged Snigger indifferently. ‘A big shindig here and the regulars will be off like a shot. They come here to enjoy a bit of peace and quiet with other people’s wives, but there’s plenty of other clubs waiting to take their custom.’

He was also about to mention the loss of the drug racket, but stopped himself just in time. He wasn’t supposed to know.

‘OK, OK, we’ll do it … what’ll it cost?’

Desperation drove Silver into accepting Snigger’s last ditch scheme.

‘About a hundred quid, all told … and cheap at the price,’ the barman reassured him.

After they had fixed the details of the plot, Snigger went back to his bar stock and finished his totting-up of the liquor sales.

About five o’clock, he pulled on his raincoat and made his way up Tottenham Court Road to Ferber Street, which was really one side of a Bloomsbury square.

On the third floor of a block of flats, he halted at a door which had a blank space alongside the bell push. Snigger rang half-heartedly, being certain that Golding would not be there. After a moment’s silence had confirmed this, he took out a sheet of paper and a ballpoint and wrote a hasty message. He slipped it under the door, gave a last futile peal on the bell, and walked back to the automatic lift.

Having done his best to give his senior partner as much warning as possible, the ex-jockey went home to his bachelor flat above the Queen of Scots public house in Fulham, to get ready for the evening stint in the Nineties.