Policeman's Progress

by Bernard Knight

  The chief superintendent rubbed his own cadaverous chin. ‘All caused before death?’ he asked.

  Ellison bobbed his head, rather curtly. ‘Of course. He also had seven bad bruises on his chest and side, tallying with the damage around his kidney and some of the rib fractures. My guess is that someone put the boot into him.’

  ‘What about the broken neck?’

  ‘Looks as if he’s had his head cracked against something. No fracture of the skull, but the bruising on the front of the brain shows that he’s fallen backwards on to something hard – that’s how his neck was broken.’

  Potts, the Headquarters man, looked ruminatively at the wreckage of the dead man’s face. ‘All that mess was done after death?’

  Ellison nodded. ‘All post-mortem injuries – he’d probably been in the water a couple of days before that happened. The water is damned cold at this time of year, but a bit of decomposition has started on the stomach wall.’

  MacDonald jumped on this. ‘So what’s the likely time of death?’

  Ellison began peeling the grubby gown from his tubby figure. ‘Very hard to say … more than two to three days, less than ten. I’m only guessing. Damned impossible to be at all accurate,’ he added with a sudden outburst of petulance.

  MacDonald turned to the drooping figure of Gasgoine Burke. ‘Can you help us any more, Mr Burke?’

  The young man shrugged. ‘No clothes, no damn all – only a couple of bits of wire!’ He sniffed disdainfully. ‘Forensic-wise, this is about the most sterile murder we’ve had. Can’t expect much trace evidence, after swilling about naked in the Tyne for days.’

  The Scots detective looked more dyspeptic than ever. ‘What have we got, then? … a dead man, definitely murdered, gingery-fair hair, five foot eight, age …’ He looked across at the pathologist who was struggling back into his outer clothes. ‘Any nearer age, Doc?’

  Ellison paused, one fat arm jammed in a sleeve. ‘More than twenty to twenty-three – all his wisdom teeth are through. The seams in his skull bones suggest he’s less than thirty-five. That’s the best I can do for you. If it turns out to be important, we’ll have to organize some X-rays of his bones, but that’ll be a hell of fag in a place like this.’

  MacDonald got on with his inventory of facts, while Potts made some quick notes in his pocket book. ‘OK. Twenty to thirty-five. No distinguishing marks at all.’ Potts looked up quickly from his book. ‘What about fingerprints, sir? If he’s got “form”, that’s our best bet to get identification.’

  Uncle Mac looked across at the sergeant who dealt with ‘dabs’. So far, he’d had to stand by in frustrated inaction. ‘Any hopes?’ asked MacDonald.

  ‘Not in the present state, sir. I’ll take those and see what can be done with them overnight.’

  ‘Those’ were a line of ten little bottles, each containing a carefully labelled fingertip from the body.

  ‘Useless trying to get prints from them while they’re waterlogged, I’ll try injecting glycerine into them and perhaps formalin if that fails.’

  The chief superintendent nodded at him. ‘Do your best as soon as possible. If you can roll them first thing in the morning, send them down to NECRO1 by car. If they can’t help, we’ll have to try the Yard, but God knows how long that will take.’

  Potts broke in again. ‘About missing persons, sir … I checked an hour ago – nothing reported on Tyneside in the last week that would remotely resemble this fellow. Mostly young girls, in fact.’

  The CID chief’s face became grimmer still. ‘Let’s pray that he’s got a criminal record then.’

  There was a slow exodus towards the door, but Mac suddenly pulled up. ‘Where’s that sergeant from the Tyne? Ah, Milburn, isn’t it? Look, where do you think a body would have to go into the river to end up where it did’

  The River officer thought for a moment. ‘Not very far away, sir, if he was weighted down. I’d say it would have to have gone in along the quarter-mile stretch between Albert Edward Dock and the ferry landing.’

  MacDonald nodded. ‘But certainly on that side of the river?’

  ‘Aye, certainly, sir … there’s no cross current to speak of from one bank to t’other.’

  MacDonald looked at Potts. ‘So it looks very likely that he was thrown in on the North side – the Newcastle side.’

  The superintendent agreed. ‘And you think it more likely that his killers came from there, rather than the Gateshead-South Shields side?’

  ‘Seems more likely,’ said the old Scot, ‘Though they might be extra cunning and come from a hell of a distance off, like Teesside or even one of the big Yorkshire towns. Wouldn’t be the first time that a body’s been brought up to the Tyne for dumping.’

  The drift to the door started again and the theorizing continued as the different groups dispersed, some back to Headquarters and others slipping off for a crafty glass of beer.

  A few minutes later, Alec Bolam heard the latest on the murder as the Headquarters contingent arrived back, but he still had no inkling that it was soon to join up with his own troubles.

  The final scenes of that eventful day were played out in the Rising Sun Club in the Bigg Market.

  Jackie Stott stood with his Danish manager just inside the room on the first floor. The stripper was writhing her last few sequins off on to the floor and four perspiring musicians were hammering out the ‘bumps and grinds’ for her as a hundred pairs of eyes goggled over the brims of tankards and glasses.

  The two men stood at the back of the room while the girl finished her act amid ragged applause. There was no curtain to fall on the climax of her nudity, so she had evolved a routine of having a large red satin cloak flung around her by a helpful Freddie, who leaned over from the dais to settle it around her shoulders. As she ran off to the diminutive dressing room, the two men moved back towards the doors and made their way up to the gaming room above.

  ‘This new croupier seems good – the one from Sheffield,’ observed the Dane. ‘Losing Geordie Armstrong was inconvenient at the moment, having to send Arthur down to the boat from here.’

  Jackie looked covertly at the speaker. If only you knew, lad, he thought.

  Aloud, he said, ‘Try and get another. Geordie’ll not be back. He’s taken off for good; his digs are empty.’

  He didn’t say how he came to know. Thor kept his face as straight as ever, but he promised Jackie a surprise over the matter of young Armstrong.

  Upstairs, the wheels were spinning merrily and several card games were going on with full tables. Jackie enjoyed this room the most and settled down for a night’s patrol up there. Downstairs could look after itself, with the able supervision of his manager.

  A sudden thought struck him. ‘Where’s Laura?’ Perhaps it was a symptom of their relationship that he hadn’t missed her before.

  ‘She’s in your flat – said she had a headache and was going to put her feet up between her numbers,’ replied the Dane.

  Stott grunted, but the thought somehow unsettled him. She should be out here, with him. He wanted to stalk around with her in tow, showing her off as his personal bird – why the hell should she skulk inside – was she ashamed of being seen with him all of a sudden?

  Too damn big for her high heels, is Laura lately, he glowered. But he shook off his sudden black mood and noticed Joe Blunt lurking in a corner of the room. He was due back at the Mississippi soon; it opened much later than the Rising Sun, catering for the hard core of gamblers, who were willing to stay up most of the night. Joe came up to the Bigg Market every night to collect the large cash ‘float’ to distribute to the three croupiers down on the river boat.

  ‘All OK down there, Joe?’ grunted Jackie, winking at him.

  Joe nodded lugubriously, his slack mouth working. Neither he nor Jackie had seen the evening paper nor heard the radio or TV about the finding of a body in the Tyne that afternoon.

  Jackie patted the old pug’s massive arm. ‘Time you got back, Joe. Keep it quiet tonight, eh –
no mixing it with the coppers!’

  They both guffawed. Jackie’s anger over the incident on the previous Saturday had become submerged in the big secret they thought they alone shared.

  He had made another circuit or two of the casino, nodded regally to the regular patrons and wondered more and more where Laura was – damn her and her headache! He suddenly spat his cigar into the nearest ashtray and headed for the door of his flat.

  In the lounge, he found his mistress lying on the settee with a glass in her hand and her shoes on the floor.

  ‘What’s wrong, hinny – the club too low-class for you these nights?’

  She scowled up at him. ‘Don’t start needling me, Jackie – I’m not in the mood.’

  The sight of her lying there languidly, ‘all legs and bosom’ as he coarsely thought of it, touched off something deep inside him. ‘You’re a bloody fine woman, Laura,’ he muttered thickly, going around the settee, and dropping on to his knees alongside her.

  She tried to squirm out of his way, but his powerful arms pinned her to the cushions as his lips clamped over hers. Wriggling violently, Laura tried to pull free, but Jackie was roused too far by now. He gradually let his weight settle on her and, by keeping his mouth on hers, prevented her from spitting out the choice language that was obviously fermenting inside her. His hand fumbled to the zip between her shoulders, which set off another paroxysm of jerking. He let his lips slide down to kiss her neck.

  ‘Get off – get off me, you dirty old bastard!’ she gasped, the weight of his chest making speech difficult. ‘Go and rape – the bloody – barmaid – will you!’

  He lifted his mouth momentarily to grate in her ear, ‘Don’t get so high and mighty, Edna Dodds. Don’t forget that crummy place in Doncaster, hinny – maybe they’d like you back.’

  He kissed her again roughly, stemming her foul language, then took on a more wheedling tone. ‘Come on, love, you haven’t been around nights for weeks – let’s have a bit of fun, like the old days, eh?’

  Her answer was to try to remove the lobe of one of his ears with her talon-like fingernails.

  He grunted with pain. ‘You bitch – if you’re thinking your precious boyfriend is still around, have another think! You won’t be seeing him again.’

  Her eyes widened and she pushed frantically against his chest. ‘What the hell to you mean?’ she gasped.

  He laughed nastily. ‘Darling Geordie – you’ve had him, sweet … “finito”, get it?’

  She dropped back in relief and laughed sarcastically. ‘You silly damned fool, Jackie! What the hell do I care about Geordie Armstrong. Not whether he’s alive or damn well dead!’

  There was a sudden hammering on the door. The sound of a key in the outer lock and another frantic tapping on the lounge door heralded Herbert Lumley.

  Jackie struggled off the settee and furiously brushed himself down. ‘What the hell d’yer mean, barging in like that?’ he snarled.

  The old soldier had never done such a thing before but from the look of him, some emergency was stirring him up. ‘Sorry, Mr Stott, but can you come down at once. I don’t like the look of what’s going on, not at all I don’t!’

  The normally serene doorman was more agitated than Jackie had ever seen him. The club owner’s anger rapidly cooled off and he came across the room to Herbert, as Laura flounced to the mirror to tidy herself up.

  Herbert had already turned to lead the way downstairs. ‘Two men, sir, foreign types. Barges in without membership cards. I tried to stop them, but one stamped on me foot. When I grabbed him, the other pulled a knife on me.’

  Jackie took a deep breath. ‘We’ll soon sort them out, Herb. Where’s Hansen?’

  ‘Downstairs, keeping an eye on them. I tipped him the wink when they forced past me. They went across to the bar.’

  The Rising Sun had had its fair share of hoodlums and layabouts, but Herbert Lumley’s hidden muscles, occasionally helped by Jackie’s prominent ones, kept the place clear without much trouble. No one had ever pulled a knife in there before, but there had to be a first time, Jackie thought, as he followed the old army man down the stairs. The recent inflation of his own troubleshooting image, over the Armstrong affair, made him even more confident that these two characters wouldn’t last half a minute.

  They stopped inside the swing-doors and stared around the big room.

  ‘That’s them, in the middle.’

  Herbert pointed an indignant finger at a table at the edge of the dance floor, opposite the band. All Jackie could see was the back of two stocky, thick-necked men. They had a glass apiece and Herbert anticipated Jackie’s first complaint. ‘The bar staff wouldn’t know there was any trouble, sir. They serve anybody once they’re inside.’

  Jackie scowled. ‘Then they’d better sup up bloody fast … in about five seconds flat.’

  He rolled menacingly across the room towards them, noticing on the way that Thor Hansen was watching warily from the end of the bar. Stott loomed up at the table and glowered down at the two newcomers.

  ‘You blokes got membership cards?’ he grated.

  A pair of swarthy faces looked up at him insolently. One man, with oily black hair and thin moustache, flashed gold-capped teeth as he spoke. ‘You the big man, I suppose – siddown, have one of your drinks.’

  There was such calculated insult in the strongly accented words that Jackie almost took a swipe at him.

  ‘Listen, Gonzales, or whatever you call yourself – get off your arse and beat it – and take your organ-grinder’s monkey with you!’

  He jerked a thumb at the other intruder, a slightly smaller man but with the same dark skin and glossy black hair. Neither of them spoke for a moment, but looked at each other and smiled falsely.

  ‘These mugs in the provinces live in a little world of their own, Bruno,’ said the first, sweetly.

  The smaller, hard-faced man nodded back. ‘Almost a pity to disturb them, Kostas – but better try to educate them before we get accused of exploiting them.’

  Jackie was rapidly going purple with rage. ‘Get out, before I smash your heads together,’ he hissed. He thumped the table with a great fist and one of the glasses toppled over, spilling whisky over the trouser leg of the man called Bruno.

  So fast that Stott saw no movement, Bruno had the point of a knife pressed against Jackie’s wrist. More from surprise than fear, he stood motionless, watching it for a few seconds.

  People on nearby tables began to notice the trouble and started to shuffle uneasily.

  The older man, the one called Kostas, tapped his friend’s arm. ‘Wait a few minutes, Bruno … we’d better go somewhere and have a little talk in private, Mr Stott. We wouldn’t like your customers to be disturbed, would we, Bruno? You might lose some business and that wouldn’t do any of us any good, would it?’

  The two Levantine-looking gents laughed together cynically. The knife vanished. Jackie was in two minds whether or not to annihilate them with a couple of blows from his fists, but the penny dropped with their last few words. ‘Protection boys,’ he muttered to himself. Protection be damned, but what was the best way to teach them a lesson?

  As he hesitated, Herbert appeared at his elbow, having seen the knife appear again.

  ‘Shall I phone for the police, Mr Stott?’

  The two intruders looked at each other again and guffawed.

  Jackie towered over them, boiling with rage, but anxious not to disturb the patrons.

  ‘No, leave it,’ he snapped. ‘Has Joe gone?’

  ‘Just this minute.’

  ‘Get after him and tell him to get back here at the double. There may be some rubbish for him to scrape off the floor.’ He crooked a finger at the two men. ‘I’ll give you one minute in the office – then I’m going to kick you down the stairs.’

  Stott stood back while they got leisurely up from their chairs. He pointed in the direction of the foyer, being careful to follow them, not lead the way. Thor Hansen unobtrusively joined the procession wh
ich filed out to the tiny office, watched by many curious eyes.

  Thor squeezed last into the cubicle and shut the door.

  ‘Don’t sit down – you’re not stopping,’ rasped Jackie sarcastically. He leant against a filing cabinet. ‘Who are you and what d’yer bloody want – and you’re not getting it, that’s for a start!’ he snapped contemptuously.

  The older, more burly, Greek calmly fitted a cigarette into a black holder. ‘I am Kostas Papagos and this is my business associate, Bruno Casella,’ he began. ‘As I said outside, you country bumpkins up in the North don’t know what makes the world go round, so we’ve taken the trouble to come and wise you up – before some objectionable characters get ahead of us.’

  Jackie sighed. ‘And how much did you hope to get, Antonio?’

  Papagos frowned, but kept up the polite charade by turning to his partner. ‘Perhaps they’re not so primitive after all, Bruno – he seems to have caught on to the idea all right.’ Turning back to Jackie, he said, ‘For a mere hundred a week, we guarantee complete insurance.’

  ‘Against what?’

  The Greek shrugged and spread his palms out in an all-embracing gesture. ‘Everything – except bad weather! Mainly against accidental breakages, loss of custom and fire damage,’ he added sarcastically.

  Jackie Stott’s eyes glinted. He had wanted to hear their story to make sure – now he felt he had their measure. ‘That all you got to say? You’re the mouthpiece, Papagos – don’t your monkey here have a tongue of his own?’

  Casella went white and his knife hand twitched. Papagos’s fixed leer faded a little and he spoke softly. ‘Don’t be too clever, Stott – we like our little joke and you can have yours, but don’t push your luck too far. Bruno here is a man of action, not words.’

  The ex-boxer, who stood half a head over both of them, stuck his head out pugnaciously. ‘Well I got some words now, see. You London yobs think you can ride anybody, especially us yokels in the provinces … well, you can stop right here, see!’ He lurched forward from the desk where he had been lounging, making Papagos start back slightly. ‘You can stuff your bloody protection where the kangaroos keep their keys … Now I’m going to throw you both out and if you so much as let your shadow fall on mine again, I’ll kill the pair of yee … I ain’t particular about who I croak, as long as I don’t get my hands dirty!’