Chapter Nine

Conrad Draper lolled in the back seat of his immense American Ford as Irish drove him slowly down Gerrard Street. He rolled his unlit cigar to one comer of his mouth and spat orders through the other.

‘Drop me now, then go back for the others – an’ don’t be all night about it. Park the barrow and come straight to the club.’

‘Luigi and Harry ain’t got membership cards,’ objected Irish.

Draper swore at the small-mindedness of his lieutenant.

‘For God’s sake, this isn’t a courtesy call – if the flunkey on the door opens his trap, ram your fist down it. I should be in the bar when you come, but if I’m not, come straight through to the office at the back and no stopping off for a crafty booze on the way.’

The car drew up and the doorman of the Nineties hurried across the pavement to open the door for him to get out.

‘It’s half eleven now,’ said Conrad as a parting shot to Irish. ‘So get back here inside five or ten minutes.’

The car, looking like a spaceship on four white-walled tyres, glided away and the turf tycoon went down into the club.

The doorman hurried to his house telephone and pressed the button marked Office. He spoke in an urgent whisper, though there was no one to overhear.

‘He’s just come in, Mr Silver … yes, on his own.’

Snigger watched the large figure of the ex-wrestler stride past the bar and heard the line of protests as he marched unheedingly over feet and against tables in the gloom. The lights were down as the cabaret was in progress. The sultry blonde was crooning away, but Conrad, oblivious of everything but his mobster reputation, forged on towards the stage.

For a moment his broad silhouette was outlined alongside the slinky singer as he clambered up on to the platform. He vanished through the side door in the wings and groped his way up the corridor to Silver’s office door, which showed a sliver of light beneath the panels.

Without any pretence of knocking, he barged in and stood blinking in the light of the desk lamp which had been deliberately turned towards the door to blind him. The other lights in the room were out and he felt a sudden surge of alarm.

‘Hey – what the hell?’

His arms were suddenly seized and he was dragged into the centre of the room. Simultaneously, the lights came on and the door was slammed shut.

The astounded bookie found himself held in a vice-like grip by two large and ugly men. They lugged him to the desk, where a pale but shakily triumphant Ray Silver stood waiting.

Conrad fell to swearing, more out of rage than fear. His American façade gave way to the more descriptive language of Stepney and Whitechapel as he ran through his repertoire of blistering obscenity.

The thugs gave him a moment or two to let off steam then one of them wrenched his elbow violently.

‘Shut yer gob!’ he growled expressively.

Conrad nearly exploded in a shower of outraged blood and flesh. No one had spoken to him like that for nearly ten years.

‘I’ll cut you to little pieces for this,’ he rampaged, ‘I’ll bloody kill you … you … smash you …’

He ran out of words bad enough to express his feelings and ended with a sob of frustrated rage, his face purple with emotion. He failed to recognise either of the toughs as local men and tried to soothe his shattered pride by telling himself that they couldn’t possibly know who he was. He started to put that right as soon as the thought entered his head. Draper snarled at the two men who were stoically hanging on to his writhing arms.

‘You don’t know who I am, eh … you better find out quick!

‘Yes, butch … we know all about that … you’re Draper the Chicago Kid. That don’t cut no ice with us,’ growled the first man, who looked as if he used concrete as an aftershave lotion. ‘Now shurrup and listen to the man over there.’

He gave another excruciating twist to Conrad’s elbow. The ex-wrestler realised from experience that he had no hope of breaking their hold.

Ray Silver did not share his opinion. He kept his hand on the automatic in his jacket pocket and when he had the chance to speak, he lugged it out. Using it to boost his shaky nerves, he pointed it waveringly in the direction of Conrad’s navel.

The bookie’s jaw dropped when he saw the gun. Even his gangster complex hadn’t driven him as far as carrying a gun around with him. He had earned a year’s corrective training in his youth for being found in illegal possession of a pistol and this had encouraged him to keep clear of them ever since. To see the Eurasian pointing one at him now was a physical shock.

‘Silver, you must be cracked! What y’doing with a rod?’

The club owner began to speak. His first attempt was a high-pitched squeak but he tried again and managed to make a tremendous croak.

‘You started it, Draper – you and your ideas about busting up my club.’

‘I’ll eat you alive, you little squirt,’ roared Conrad. ‘What the hell are you up to? And stop pointing that damn shooter at me.’

‘I want to know why you’re so interested in Golding.’ The club owner’s confidence increased as he saw how powerless Draper was in the hands of the two thugs.

Conrad’s blood pressure had come down a little by now after the first shock had worn off. He had not the slightest trace of fear; nothing could happen to the great, the invincible Conrad – nothing like what was going to happen to Silver and his bunch of amateurs as soon as Irish and the boys got here. He began reasoning with the half-caste, partly to pass the time away.

‘Now be sensible, Ray … tell your yobs to take their hands off me and slide away. I’ll forget the hard words we had about roughing your place up. All I want to know is where to find Golding.’

‘And I tell you I don’t know. Can’t you get that into your thick head?’

‘All right, now put that rod away, it might go off accidentally – you wouldn’t want to be topped just because your finger slipped, would you?’

Ray Silver shook his head emphatically. Now that he was in the saddle, he wanted to stay there. The internal telephone rang urgently but he ignored it to concentrate on Conrad.

‘Come on, tell me – why do you want Golding so badly? Are you trying to cut in on the peddling game?’

Conrad gave another experimental shrug to his arms, but they were held as if in a vice. The two men stood impassively at his side, apparently bored by the whole proceedings.

‘Tell these punks to scram and I’ll talk to you,’ he grated.

Silver shook his head. ‘You do the talking from there. You’re in no position to bargain.’

He was wrong. For the second time in a few minutes, the door burst open and Harry and Luigi erupted into the room. They stared around for a split second and then jumped at the thugs that held Conrad. These two promptly let go of his arms to defend themselves and the bookie hurled himself at the desk.

He brought his fist down in a great chop which pinned Silver’s wrist to the desktop and sent the gun spinning across the floor.

While the four heavyweights were mixing it in the middle of the room, Conrad was belabouring the Eurasian about the head with the flat of his hand. Silver rapidly slid to the floor and lay blubbering with fright and pain. Conrad scooped up the automatic and turned his attention to the main battle.

Big Harry and his opponent were about evenly matched and were slugging away as if they were enjoying it. The second, a burly fellow with a scarred face, had Luigi in a half-nelson and was hammering his left kidney into a fine pulp.

Conrad stuffed the pistol into his pocket, got a professional wrestling hold on the man and dropped him clean onto his head on the floor, where he passed out cold. The other thug saw this from the comer of his eye and promptly dodged for the door before Conrad had a chance to repeat the treatment on him.

Unfortunately for Irish O’Keefe, the escaping man met him in the corridor outside and gave him a tremendous thump in the chest as he made his getaway. Harry dragged Irish inside and dumped him in a chair to recover.

‘What the hell kept you?’ demanded Conrad, breathing heavily and restoring his oily waves with a comb. Irish gasped while he tried to get his lungs working again and Harry had to explain for him.

‘He stopped to show the doorman his razor – the guy was trying to use the house phone.’

Conrad grunted and went to look behind the desk at the fallen owner. He was still lying on the floor, moaning and trying to look mortally injured, but a flash of his shifty eyes told Conrad that he was shamming.

‘Get up – we got talking to do.’

The pasty-faced man dragged himself slowly to his feet and pulled his dishevelled dinner jacket together. He was shivering like someone with malaria. Conrad pulled out the Webley and took careful aim at Silver’s stomach. The club owner screamed. ‘Please – no!’

Conrad laughed and, leaning forwards, prodded him hard with the blunt muzzle.

‘All right, you double-crossing little creep, I’m not going to perforate you – yet!’ He raised a hand and gave the other a resounding slap across the cheeks, which were already swollen and bruised.

Silver yelped and began to sob.

‘Shut up – you’re breaking my heart. Now you can see you’re not in the same class as the big boys – stick to snow peddling and your song and dance acts.’

Harry interrupted to ask what they should do with the other bruiser who was just regaining consciousness.

‘Take him round the front and dump him in the street – he should have learnt his lesson like slit-eyes here.’

Harry and Luigi dragged the body away and Conrad put the automatic back into his pocket.

‘Look, Silver, I want to know the minute Golding shows up here or as soon as you hear anything from him – see?’

Silver nodded mutely

‘He must show up soon,’ went on Conrad in his mood of expansive forgiveness, he’s got to flog his stuff to someone or starve. And when he does, you get on the blower to me as fast as your fat legs’ll carry you – see?’

Silver saw and nodded and gulped eagerly.

‘But why – what’s the game?’ he cringed.

The bookie seemed to swell before Silver’s eyes.

‘The bastard croaked my dame – and I’m going to get him for it.’

He pulled out the pistol and began playing with it.

‘I’m going to kill him when I catch up with him.’

Ray looked with fascination at the Webley.

‘But the police … they said it was an accident.’

‘Yeah – so why are they nosing about asking questions today?’

‘You got no proof that Golding had anything to do with it!’ objected Silver, getting bolder now that the brunt of Draper’s anger had been deflected onto Golding.

Conrad tossed the gun carelessly from one hand to the other.

‘No, not yet. That’s where you come in. I want to talk to Golding – by the time I’ve finished with him I’ll know everything I want to know.’

He suddenly poked the gun right into the Eurasian’s face.

Ray backed away hastily.

‘I think he’s got some sort of legit business somewhere – probably outside London. Does he know you’re on to him?’

Draper waved the automatic dangerously.

‘He knows somebody’s on to him – but he doesn’t know who – and you’re not going to tell him, are you? You wouldn’t want to come to a sticky end, Silver.’

The viciousness in the last words cut like a knife as Draper wheeled around and went to the door. He turned again in the opening for a last word, in true Bowery style.

‘Get me on the blower the minute you hear – and remember, chum, you’re living on borrowed time until I get Golding.’

He strode away down the corridor, followed by Irish, who still grunted with pain every time he breathed.

Silver stared blankly at his writing pad, seeing nothing but trouble written there.

Inspector Turnbull came down from the laboratory on the top of the new building of Scotland Yard and crossed over into the dingy red-brick monstrosity that housed many of the senior officers. He found Archie Benbow’s room and squeezed into it, clutching a sheaf of papers.

‘Good job you haven’t got a cat, Archie, you couldn’t swing the damn thing in here.’

Bray was toiling at a big filing cabinet that seemed to fill half the room and Benbow was staring out of the window. He swung round to greet the liaison officer.

‘Hi, George … you’re damn right about this place.’ He waved aggrievedly towards the window. ‘In all these TV plays, the detective has a lovely view of the river and the County Hall from his spacious apartment,’ he complained. ‘All I’ve got is the blank wall of an alley leading to Cannon Row.’

Bray looked up and grinned. ‘Oh, I don’t know, sir – if you lean out far enough, you can see the toilets on the comer quite plainly.’

Turnbull waved the papers he held.

‘Got some results on the Laskey woman,’ he announced. Bray slammed his cabinet shut and came to stand at Benbow’s elbow as the Admiral sank down behind his desk. Turnbull drew up a chair, which just about used up all the remaining space in the room. He was a tall thin, perpetually pipe-smoking man, never in a flap, but always intent on getting on with the job with the least possible fuss.

‘She had a load of alcohol in her, as we expected,’ he began, ‘the blood level was three hundred and twenty milligrams per cent – getting on towards the coma level – if she wasn’t absolutely dead to the world, she’d have been so groggy that she wouldn’t have cared if she’d been coshed with forty starting handles!’

Benbow’s beady eyes flashed. ‘Ah-hah! The handle … you got anything definite on that?’

‘Yes, Archie, we’ve come up trumps with it.’

Turnbull dived into a large envelope and came out with some glossy prints.

‘We’ve compared some of the fibres caught on the rusty part of the handle with samples from several samples of yellow household dusters and the sort they sell for cleaning cars. Several of them correspond exactly with the strands on the handle and with the fibres that the pathologist picked from the girl’s head wound.’

‘That doesn’t prove that she was hit with that particular handle,’ objected Benbow.

‘No, I agree, but it all helps,’ said Turnbull.

‘Can you narrow down the source of the particular fibres?’ asked Bray.

‘No, the dusters are sold all over the place – Halfords and Woolworths, that kind of shop.’

‘So it doesn’t help one damn bit,’ snarled Benbow. Turnbull ground his teeth on the stem of his pipe.

‘Wait a bit, wait a bit – there’s more to come yet … blood, glorious blood.’

He lit his pipe with infuriating slowness and spoke again through a barrage of blue smoke. ‘The knuckle of that handle looked clean enough – it had probably been wiped over with a wet rag – perhaps the same or a similar yellow duster. But the steel still gave a strong positive benzidine reaction for blood It’s hellishly sensitive – will pick up about one part in three million. This handle crank gave a whacking strong positive. Then they used some fancy tests on the rust scrapings in case it was just the iron giving a false reaction, but it was still a bonanza.’

‘What then?’ asked Benbow, always a little suspicious of the scientist’s expertise.

‘The boys upstairs used the usual grouping techniques and this new mixed agglutination test to show that the ABO and MN groups were the same on the handle and the specimen from the post-mortem on Laskey. She was group A, not that it matters to you.’

Benbow digested this. ‘Does that mean she was definitely hit by that handle and no other?’

Turnbull shook his head. ‘No … have a heart, Archie; we’re workers, not wizards. But it means that that handle was dipped in human group A blood at some time, and it’s hardly likely to be anyone else, is it, considering she’s got a hole in her head the exact shape of the said bit of metal.’

‘Got anything else?’ grunted Benbow.

‘Soames has had another look at the fracture and agrees that the starting handle would do very nicely for the offending weapon. He says that she must have been hit from the left side, so that almost certainly means she was in the passenger seat when her killer took a swipe at her.’

‘Why?’

‘The pathologist says – and I agree with him – that if she was in the driving seat, the murderer couldn’t get a good enough swing to fetch her such a smack as that … the roof of the car would be in the way, it would be too cramped altogether. Looks as if he got her stinking drunk, opened the door on the nearside, and whacked her from there. The yellow fibres were some from a car duster when he attempted to clean a bit of the blood up – or perhaps he put it over the head before he socked her. That would be more like it, it would explain why there were fibres deep in the wound and why there was so little blood matted on the hair.’

‘Charming … I bet you think up lovely bedtime stories for your kids, chum,’ said Benbow dryly.

Turnbull grinned.

‘She couldn’t have been driving anyway … I defy any slim young dame to control a car for a hundred yards with a blood alcohol of three twenty … she’d have been flat out, snoring her head off.’

Benbow beamed. ‘Ain’t science bloody marvellous, Bray?’

The fresh-faced sergeant nodded obediently.

‘So there’s no doubt about our having a murder on the books, sir … we can pull out all the stops to try to get some sense out of the yobs around the top end of Dean Street.’

Benbow’s smile faded. ‘Huh – some hope. We can pound those streets till our feet show through the soles of our boots, and not get so much as the time of day.’

Turnbull puffed away calmly.

‘You still haven’t heard it all: she had a load of drugs in her as well as the hooch.’

Benbow looked up sharply. ‘Hard stuff?’

‘Heroin.’

‘Those marks on her arms were the real thing, then,’ said Bray.

Turnbull grinned. ‘Yes, lad – and she wasn’t a diabetic having insulin injections, as you suggested at the time.’

He opened a folder and looked at a copy of Soames’ post-mortem report.

‘The most recent injection mark was into the main vein in the left arm – had a little blob of clotted blood on it, so it probably was only a few hours old when she died – looks as if she had a mainliner soon before she was killed. All the others were just under the skin.’

Benbow nodded thoughtfully.

‘Filled up with grog, then drugged and finally beaten over the head … nice company she kept!’

He riffled through the documents that Turnbull had produced then slapped the desk with a dumpy fist.

‘We’ve got to find this bastard; he’s in the professional class. He kills when it suits his book, not on impulse.’

‘Where’s the motive?’ asked Turnbull, calmly sucking his pipe.

Benbow threw up his arms dramatically.

‘God knows, but where there are drugs, there’s crime … every one in the book. I’ll lay an even fiver with you that the narcotics angle comes into this somewhere.’

Bray was looking as chirpy as a schoolboy.

‘What about the Drugs Squad? Shall I nip over and have a natter to them, sir?’

The department known loosely as the Drugs Squad was more accurately the Narcotics Office, a small group of detective sergeants whose main job was to regulate the proper usage of dangerous drugs and make spot checks on druggists’ and manufacturers’ records. But apart from this, they held a considerable interest in all forms of importation, both legal and otherwise and had a close link with the Customs people over the problem of smuggling.

Benbow bobbed his jowls in agreement. ‘May as well, lad. They’ve got their own contacts, something might turn up. We’re never going to get any joy out of that bunch of yobs up the street.’ He jerked a thumb in the general direction of Soho.

Turnbull hauled himself out of his chair.

‘Any good trying to trace where she got her dope?’

Benbow looked glum. ‘Just a few decks? There are a hundred places in the West End where she could have got them. Still, Bray can see what the narcotics boys can suggest.’

Turnbull turned to go back to his scientific wonderland upstairs.

‘The lads are going over the dust and other stuff from the car for contact traces – if anything comes of it I’ll give you a shout.’

After he had gone, Bray went back to finish his filing and Benbow mournfully thumbed through the thin folder on Rita Laskey.

‘There’s something about this one that gives me the creeps,’ he muttered. ‘Too damn cold-blooded – the chap that did this has killed before, I’ll bet – and he’ll kill again as soon as it suits him.’

Paul Jacobs made a different entry into London on the following Friday afternoon. He came by train to Paddington as before, the typical provincial businessman. But this time there was none of the toilet and left-luggage routine. He intended to keep clear of Soho for the time being, so he openly took a taxi to his Ferber Street flat.

He got to his door without seeing a soul except the taxi driver. Once inside, he was as effectively insulated from London as he had been in Cardiff. There was no cleaning woman to pester him and he was delightfully alone.

The envelope on the mat told him that Snigger had been there; no one else knew of the place. He went into the kitchen and made some coffee while he read and digested the contents of the barman’s message. They disturbed him considerably and he paced the room uneasily, trying to fit this new information into his plans for the coming weekend.

‘Conrad Draper, I – I’ve heard of him but never laid eyes on him as far as I know,’ he muttered to himself. ‘I’ve got to know more about this.’

He went to the telephone in the lounge and rang the landlord of the Queen of Scots in Fulham.

Twenty minutes later, a taxi dropped the ex-jockey outside and he hurried up to Jacobs’ flat.

‘I’m in a spot,’ admitted Paul, after he had settled Snigger down with a glass and a bottle of whisky. ‘I’ve got to get the orders for this weekend; I’m off to Germany tomorrow.’

‘You’ve grown a moustache, then,’ observed the barman.

During the ten days he had been away, Paul had allowed a fair military-style line of hair to grow on his upper lip. It was some help in altering his appearance.

‘That ain’t going be half enough disguise if you’re thinking of showing your face around Soho,’ added Snigger.

‘Why – only this Draper is looking for me, isn’t he?’

‘I hear tell that the police have been asking around a bit since last Saturday. Nothing much at first, but there’s a steady bit of questioning going on. They took the cleaner from Newman Street in for questioning and a few of the tradespeople from around that part.’

Paul pondered this carefully. ‘Heard any reason why? Your grapevine usually knows everything.’

Snigger shook his head.

‘The dicks have been real canny about this one. They’ve had their hands full of other things this week. A tom got croaked and there were another two bank jobs pulled. But they haven’t dropped a whisper yet about the Rita business.’

He looked up sharply at the other man, his bright Cockney eyes questioning.

‘Did you rub her out, Mr Golding?’ he asked quietly. ‘I know she helped put the black on you with Draper, so she had it coming. You can tell me, you know, my mouth is tight enough.’

Paul looked down at him for a moment then nodded abruptly. He trusted Snigger more than anyone, and needed him as an ally more than ever, now things were going to be more difficult.

‘Yes, Snigger, I fixed her. I had to – she had got dangerous. It was nothing personal, but she had to go.’

He paused, stared absently into his glass then told the barman the whole story.

‘So you see, Paul Golding can’t exist any more. I’m Paul Harrap from now on. I’m going to lay low for a bit, then work up a new front for myself when I get back from the next trip – take another flat, build up a whole new identity for myself.’

‘What about the club?’ asked the ex-jockey. ‘Are you laying off there?’

‘I’ll have to go this once to get Silver’s order … after that I’ll avoid it like the plague. You’ll have to do the go-between business for me where Silver is concerned.’

‘Where are you going tomorrow – Brussels again?’

‘No, Munich this trip.’ Paul Jacobs wearily smoothed back the hair from his forehead. He felt like chucking the whole game up and going straight back to his nice comfortable house, his placid wife and his genuine antique trade.

But he knew he never would. The little devil deep inside him would always prod him into just one more venture and he couldn’t really afford it, anyway.

He slumped down beside Snigger and poured another pair of drinks.

‘You think he’s after me because he believes I killed Rita?’

‘Yes – I dunno if he wants to erase you altogether, but I’d say he wants to let his boys rough you up until you weren’t fit to walk for a month. That’s more his mark … he does it to his non-paying clients – more effective than dragging them to court.’

Jacobs got up from the settee and went to the window. He stared out pensively at the white tower of the University. ‘He’s the only one who knows about me being involved in drugs?’

‘And Ray Silver – and Irish O’Keefe – and me,’ he added as an afterthought.

‘Silver will keep his trap shut – it pays him to. You’re OK and O’Keefe I can’t do much about. But it’s Draper who’s the danger … he sounds cracked enough to cause me real trouble.

Later that evening, Paul slipped as unobtrusively as possible into the Gerrard Street club and made his way straight to the back office. He found the tubby owner adjusting his bowtie before a mirror, in preparation for the announcement of the first cabaret act.

‘Can’t spare you more than a minute, Golding.’

The Portuguese-Chinese mixture in Silver’s blood seemed more than usually prominent tonight, thought Paul. The fat man appeared even more uneasy and twittery than usual.

‘I won’t spoil your big moment, Ray,’ he growled. ‘Just give me your order and I’ll be off – I don’t want to hang around myself, as it happens.’

Silver turned from the mirror and lifted his shoulders in supplication. His sweaty palms were turned to Paul in an age-old gesture of sorrowful regret. ‘Sorry, I can’t take anything this time.’

‘What the hell d’you mean? You always want something!’

‘I’m pretty well stocked up … and the bobbies have been a bit too active this last day or two, since your girlfriend got herself killed. I’m laying off for a bit. I don’t want to be turned over by the police and have them find drugs on the premises.’

Paul shrugged in annoyance.

‘OK … so you don’t want anything?’

The Eurasian’s eyes took a crafty glint that was not lost on Jacobs. ‘Not this time, but I might be wanting a special order soon – quite a big one. May be before you show up again, so can you give me an address or phone number where I can get you, huh?’

Paul ignored the artless attempt to get hold of something to buy off Draper. He went to the door and flung a parting shot over his shoulder.

‘I hope you’re not going to back out altogether – it costs a packet to organise these trips to the continent and a few duff orders like this knocks all the profit out of it.’

Silver did some more hand spreading. ‘Sorry, but I’m playing it nice and safe. Where are you going tomorrow that’s costing you all that much?’

‘All the way to Munich … a hell of a long train journey just to buy stuff that I may not be able to sell when I get back,’ snapped Paul. He cut short the club owner’s fawning apologies and stalked away in a bad temper.

Jacobs climbed the stairs to Gerrard Street and went back to his flat. Fifteen minutes after he had left the Nineties Club, Conrad Draper arrived in his flashy limousine and made his way to Silver’s office.