by Jack Murray
Sturdily built, she would have made the light heavyweight division comfortably. Standing up to her full six feet, which, unusually, was actually taller than Wellbeloved, the hungover Amazonian put her face inches away from his and let rip a volley of abuse.
Wellbeloved recoiled, as much from the alcohol fumes as the violence of her words. And to be fair, they were pretty violent.
‘Out of my way, you mad gypo,’ snarled Wellbeloved trying to sweep her out of the road with his left arm. This move failed. Theresa was in no mood to be moved. Eventually Wellbeloved had to walk around the angry Irish Valkyrie and into the office shared by Jellicoe and Ryan.
The phone was ringing as he entered. He went towards it immediately and picked it up.
‘Hello, Wellbeloved.’
He listened for a few minutes as Chief Inspector Jellicoe summarised what had happened and what he needed to do. When the call finished, he put the phone down and then instantly picked it up again. He gave the operator a number. He waited for almost a minute and then there was an answer.
‘It’s Lestrade. Lestrade, I said, you idiot. I want Wag, moron. Now,’ shouted the irate detective down the phone.
-
Wag McDonald sat in an office overlooking Waterloo Road. He peered through the drizzle on the windows at the glistening umbrellas of commuters reeling around the street. He was glad to be inside. This was a mother and a father of a cloudburst. He enjoyed watching the pedestrians spinning to avoid being splashed by the passing cars. This light mood was to end in a few moments as his phone rang.
‘Yes?’ answered McDonald.
He listened for a minute and then replied, ‘Look, I never told them to lift the child. I only told them to take the girl. It was Johnny Mac and Rusk. No idea where they’ll be holed up. They might have taken him to the factory. He’s probably counting on us not knowing.’
When the call finished, McDonald slammed the phone down and shouted, ‘Wal, you out there?’
Wal McDonald, his brother, came into the office. The features on his brother seemed almost a blur of rage. In such moments it was best to allow Wag a chance to collect his thoughts. He was the brains of the family. He waited for his brother to speak.
‘You’re not going to believe this,’ started McDonald, ‘it seems Johnny-boy has decided to go it alone. The girl was picked up by the police at Ryan’s house before Johnny could grab her. So, he’s gone and kidnapped Ryan’s kid. The brother has the diamonds apparently and he’s going to meet Johnny to make an exchange. No doubt that’s the last we’ll see of him.’
‘Bloody hell, Wag. What are we going to do?’
McDonald scratched both sides of his temple and swore. Then an idea seemed to hit him.
‘Perhaps he’s going to follow the original plan. He’ll have the shop to contact him directly when the copper arrives. Yes, that makes sense. Call Wellbeloved. Tell him to meet us at the factory.’
‘What are we going to do?’ asked Wal.
His brother smiled and said, ‘We’re going to meet the police.’
-
Three police cars arrived at the prison around ten minutes after the phone call between Jellicoe and Wellbeloved. From one of the police cars stepped Wellbeloved. A rapid conference followed.
‘We’ve had a tip off. It’s Johnny Mac. We have an address, too,’ announced Wellbeloved.
Kit climbed into one of the cars with Jellicoe. Bulstrode joined Wellbeloved in the second car and the third car took Caroline and Mary away, to the obvious chagrin of both ladies who wanted to join the others.
Mary and Caroline went reluctantly to the police car. The anger felt by Caroline towards Mary had been suspended briefly by the sudden departure of Ryan. Now, alone in the police car it returned full bore.
‘Don’t speak. I can’t bear to hear you,’ snapped Caroline as she saw Mary about to say something.
‘Not even sorry?’
Caroline glared at Mary. She could see the distress on Mary’s face. There was no doubting the remorse. Mary had befriended her, misled her, and then would have happily seen her imprisoned. Or not. Caroline accepted that she too, had been part of a deception. She was also an accessory to a robbery, albeit one tacitly sanctioned by the state. She had done what she’d done for her father. For this, no apology would ever be uttered by her.
The two ladies rode in silence, each lost in their own thoughts. Occasionally Caroline would glance at Mary. The rain streaming down the window, perfectly reflected the tears she could see on Mary’s cheek. Caroline felt an emptiness. Worse, a sense of loneliness. This was selfish she knew, but her world had been torn apart.
Again.
Ben’s actions had been explained by Jellicoe in the office. The thought of the child caused her eyes to sting and then the tears became sobs. The poor child. Ben had been trying to protect her and now it had endangered the life of this little boy. She didn’t resist when Mary’s arms enfolded her. Her face against Mary’s shoulder, all she could think to say was, ‘It’s all my fault. It’s all my fault.’
-
‘Don’t ask,’ was all Ryan could say to his brother as they both ran forward to the Rolls. ‘I have the diamonds. We have to go to a shop called Bennett’s on Lambeth Road and receive instructions there.’
Ryan sat forward in the Rolls and directed Alfred as they drove along Walworth Road. Less than a few minutes later, Joe Ryan spotted the shop.
‘Over there,’ he said pointing to a shop further up.
‘Pull over here, Alfred, please,’ said Ben Ryan, leaping out of the car. He ran into the shop and demanded to see the manager. It was fairly clear to the young assistant that Ryan was with the police. The manager came immediately.
‘I was told to ask for Donald Bennett.’
‘By whom?’ asked the shopkeeper.
‘Mac. That’s all I know. I was told you’d know what to do.’
The shopkeeper nodded. This was not how he wanted his day to go. Upsetting the coppers was never a good idea but then upsetting the ‘Elephant Boys’ was even worse. Bennett walked to the front of the shop and pulled a yellow blind halfway down the window.
Bennett turned back to Ryan. It was clear the policeman was in a highly agitated state. This was even more worrying.
‘Look, I know nothing all right? I was told to pull the blind down if someone came asking for Mac. You’ll have to wait.’ Ryan nodded, and they stood there looking at one another. ‘I don’t know how long it’ll be.’
‘I’ll be outside in the car,’ said Ryan and walked out.
With something approaching amazement, Bennett watched Ryan climb into Kit’s Rolls Royce.
‘Bloody hell,’ or something quite like this, said Bennett out loud. ‘D’you see what we’re spending our taxes on, Hilda?’
-
In the lead police car, Kit glanced at the Chief Inspector who was deep in thought, looking out of the misty window, as it exited through the gates of the prison. Kit’s knowledge of London, south of the river was, to say the least, hazy. He hoped the journey would be quick because it sounded as if time was of the essence. But another thought was swirling around his mind. He wondered if the same thought was also with Jellicoe.
‘Remarkable we should rceive such a tip off, don’t you think?’
‘I was just thinking this,’ volunteered Jellicoe. ‘Remarkable indeed.’ He turned to face Kit and it was clear they were thinking the same thing.
Finally, Kit asked the other question that was on his mind.
‘Who is this Johnny Mac?’
Jellicoe looked troubled as Kit asked this.
‘He’s a hoodlum from Ulster. He’s associated with the ‘Elephant Boys’, a gang based in the Elephant and Castle area of London. They’re involved with illegal bookmaking at the racecourses in the south of the country and other things no doubt. They’re run by the McDonald family.’
‘I see. Do their interests extend to kidnapping children?’ asked Kit.
‘There’s always a
first time, I suppose,’ said Jellicoe, however his tone suggested he thought otherwise.
‘Johnny Mac is just a nickname, I take it,’ suggested Kit.
‘Yes. His real name is John…’
-
Three men approached the Rolls Royce as it sat on Waterloo Road. A rap on the window and then the rear passenger door opened as well as the passenger door at the front. Two rough looking men and one dressed in a suit climbed in to join the Ryan brothers and Alfred. Ben Ryan quickly reached inside his pocket for his gun.
‘Don’t,’ warned the man in the suit reaching towards Ryan’s arm and putting it in a vice-like grip. ‘My name is Wag McDonald. I presume you know me.’
The young policeman moved his arm away from his pocket and nodded, ‘Yes. What’s the game here?’
‘Look, this isn’t anything to do with us. Wal and me, we run some bookies, fine. You know, we know, punters are safe, everyone’s happy. We don’t kidnap kids, understand?’
‘Fine, I understand,’ said Ryan, ‘But someone has.’
‘Yeah right. We think we know who it is and where he’s taken the kid. Who’s this by the way?’ asked McDonald, nodding towards Joe Ryan.
‘My brother, Joe. The little boy’s father.’
Joe Ryan spoke up, ‘We have to hurry. My boy needs medicine. He has asthma.’
McDonald nodded, recognising the urgency. He gave Alfred an address and the car moved off along the road in the direction of Southwark.
‘Nice car you have here,’ said McDonald, looking around the inside of the Rolls. ‘Who says crime doesn’t pay?’
Ryan ignored McDonald’s comment and asked, ‘So who has the boy?’
McDonald looked at Ryan and replied, ‘Have you heard of Johnny Mac?’
‘The name’s familiar but don’t know him,’ responded Ryan. ‘What’s his real name?’
‘McGuffin. John McGuffin,’ said McDonald, noticing Alfred looking at him in the mirror.
Chapter 32
Johnny Mac stared at the telephone. There’d still been no contact. This was not good. In fact, this was a problem. His senses were tingling and the tingle they gave was bugger, bugger, bugger. Rationally, there was no reason to suppose that the girl had the diamonds, although it sure as hell looked that way. In addition, it was possible that she was still out of contact with lover-boy. All of this was possible, but it did little for the big Ulsterman’s peace of mind. He wanted the diamonds, he wanted rid of the little tyke and he wanted all of this to happen immediately.
None of this was helped by the increasingly unstable Rusk. A few hours spent with the admittedly difficult child seemed to have reduced the hard man to a shadow of his former self. Gone was the hoodlum who could intimidate factory workers, women, and old men. In his place was an erratic, vacillating cretin who could also break arms. Not a dream combination for a babysitter, reflected Johnny Mac.
In truth he was spending more time down here to take refuge from the continuous whine of the child. Then he had a brainstorm.
Food.
Children liked food, he seemed to remember. Well, if he was anything to go by anyway. His experience of children since that unhappy time had been deliberately kept to a minimum, both out of personal choice as well as through the desire of the many parents who used to rush their children indoors when he was around.
He found some milk used for making tea and rich tea biscuits. This was bound to be a success. What child would refuse milk and biscuits? To Rusk, he would appear as nothing less than Santa Claus.
Mounting the stairs three at a time, courtesy of a six-foot stride, he arrived at the top floor as quickly as carrying a glass of milk and a plate of biscuits would permit. Inside the room, the birds flew away as soon as he entered.
He called out into the gloom, ‘Rusk?’
No answer.
‘Rusk, where the hell are you?’ shouted Johnny Mac walking forward. The sofa was empty. There was no sign of Rusk or the boy. To his right he heard cooing. ‘Damn birds.’
Then he heard a laughter then a child’s coughing. He set the glass and plate down and walked towards the sound of it. It was coming from the other end of the long room. His view was obscured by wooden support pillars.
And then he saw it. Or him to be precise. The little boy had either crawled or walked towards the open window at the other side of the room. There was no sign of Rusk. The child was standing on a wooden chair looking out of the window. No, correction. The devil child was trying to climb out the window. Johnny Mac’s heart stopped for a moment before he shouted, ‘Stop!’
At one year of age, young Ben’s vocabulary was still some way short of Shakespeare’s. An Ulsterman shouting at him to stop climbing immediately made as much sense as the pigeons cooing nearby. Moments later, after having successfully opened the window, baby Ben found himself being lifted bodily from this fun activity and carried back into the other room.
Young Ben Ryan wasn’t going to take this kind of treatment without protest. He remonstrated in the only way he could: a combination of tears, shouting and effective kicking. Tempting as it was to throw the little monster out the window, Johnny Mac kept his mind focused on the prize. However, the appeal of the prize in question was beginning to dim with every howl from the hateful child. In addition, and more worryingly, he had a strong feeling that his getting hold of the diamonds was becoming more and more unlikely.
Now a new problem had presented itself: where was Rusk? It was criminally stupid to leave the child on its own, even if he did need to answer the call of nature. Johnny Mac planted the crying child back on the seat and showed him the milk and biscuits. This heralded hurricane-force howling from the toddler.
Johnny Mac was officially at his wit’s end, which in truth wasn’t the longest of journeys. The end of his tether, a similarly limited voyage, had also been reached and he shouted back at the child in language more traditionally associated with working men’s clubs in Belfast than childcare.
Incredibly the child stopped crying immediately. Both child and adult were shocked by the intensity of Johnny Mac’s incandescent impotence. Using the window of silence, Johnny Mac shoved the glass of milk towards the child’s mouth in the hope that it would drink. He tipped the glass towards Ben’s mouth and, at last, the child began to drink the milk greedily.
‘There,’ said the Ulsterman, ‘what was all that crying about?’
Silence.
He, Johnny Mac, had mastered the art of parenting. Feed the child. Show it who is boss. It really was that simple.
Or so he thought.
And then two things happened that undermined his recently obtained sense of achievement. Far from solving the problem of baby Ben’s misery, the milk only served to hasten a further fit of coughing. Suddenly, the baby looked as if its head was going to explode such was the intensity of the red and, of more concern, the seeming asphyxiation. The child was unable to breathe, and panic had set in, for Johnny Mac as well as baby.
‘Oh, for the love of…’ screamed Johnny Mac, lifting the child up in the air and patting its back. As he did this the coughing seemed to ease and he held the child up in front of him to get a better look at his handy work. This coincided with Ben choosing this moment to expel the contents of his stomach with the force of a bullet into the poor giant’s face.
Momentarily blinded, Johnny Mac staggered towards a small hatch which opened into a chute leading down to the factory floor. Still holding the child, he wiped his face with his right bicep. Eyesight restored he heard a noise from the corridor. He held his breath. So did Ben. Then the door to the room flew open. Johnny Mac was confronted by a sight that was certainly not Rusk, nor any more welcome.
-
The prison was relatively close to the factory. No more than a couple of miles. Traffic was light, and they made good time. As they drove down the road leading to the factory, Kit looked around him at the desolate buildings either side of the road.
‘Nice area,’ he commented.
A few toughs looked at the police car speeding past and made obscene gestures.
‘Nice people,’ replied Jellicoe.
Kit smiled and then he saw it up ahead.
‘I think we’ve arrived.’
‘How do you know?’ asked Jellicoe.
‘I can see my Rolls,’ pointed out Kit.
Not quite the answer Jellicoe was used to in crime cases but at least it meant they were closer to their quarry. The police cars pulled over and the men streamed from the two cars through the factory gates, much to the confusion of the workers sitting outside taking a fag break. One or two looked at the sight of the police nervously before realising that they were not of interest. One of the policemen came limping towards them. As detectives went, he looked a bit better dressed. His voice, when he spoke to them, was certainly not typical of a rozzer.
‘Hello, gentlemen. Would any of you be so kind as to take me to Johnny?’ The man held out a few five-pound notes. The three men leapt to their feet in moment.
-
The arrival at the factory had presented Alfred with a dilemma. He wasn’t sure if he was enjoying the experience of chasing down a notorious criminal. He unquestionably wasn’t enjoying chauffeuring, what sounded like, London gang members in pursuit of said criminal.
At the same time, he was excited. Nervous, yes, but excited also. Perhaps he could use this in his art. When the crunch came at the factory gates, taking his life and future in his hands, he followed the passengers into the factory. They split up into groups. The Ryan brothers went to the offices at the side of the factory floor. The gang members chose instead, to head upstairs. And here was the dilemma. To go with the brothers or with the hoodlums?
The brothers both looked well able to handle themselves, but Alfred’s decision was almost instantaneous. He followed the gang members at a safe distance. By the time he arrived, they would hopefully have matters in hand. More practically, Alfred was not able to keep up with them.
Wag McDonald led his men through a door at the back wall of the factory floor. When Alfred went through the same door, he realised it was a stairwell leading up several flights. He gazed upward to the sky light. This gave him pause to think. The stairs were wooden and appeared to be far from safe. It looked an awfully long way up for someone not in the peak of condition, which Alfred would have been the first to concede he was not.
