Policeman's Progress

by Bernard Knight

  The contract was signed and witnessed, then the Greek produced a suitcase filled to the brim with bundles of five-pound notes.

  ‘Here you are, sixty bundles of a hundred notes each … check it if you like, but I wouldn’t twist you. I might burn your place down and Bruno here might stick a knife in your ribs, but I wouldn’t stoop to fiddle you over cash.’

  He said this half in jest, but Jackie believed him. He was past caring, anyway. When Joe Blunt hefted the case and stood up Jackie was already on his way to the door.

  ‘I thought Thor Hansen would have been in on this,’ said Kostas Papagos.

  Jackie’s brow darkened. ‘We don’t exactly see eye to eye – not since I found he was a stoolie for you!’ he growled. Stott was no great actor, but he carried this off quite well.

  Leaving the Greek and his partner with their makeshift contract, the two Tynesiders had slipped out into the gloom with their precious case, to risk the hazard of the Darlington streets. Now Jackie waited impatiently for Joe to fix up the car, keeping his back to the gateway leading to the police infested roads.

  To his relief, a three-year-old Vauxhall with his henchman behind the wheel appeared from the garage and stopped to pick him up.

  ‘Right – back to Newcastle, the long way around!’

  Joe set off on a devious route that more than doubled the distance, going away from the Great North Road into the moorland country that led westwards to the Pennines. They aimed for Bishop Auckland, Tow Law and the more pastoral parts of the upper Tyne valley, to circle north and approach the big city from the opposite direction.

  During the long journey, Jackie took the opportunity to count the bundles of notes in the dim light from the dashboard.

  ‘That bloody wop was right – there’s exactly thirty grand here – not ten bob more or less!’ he grunted to Joe, whose piggy eyes were squinting ahead at the deserted road.

  ‘It looks OK?’ growled the old sparring partner.

  Jackie sniffed. ‘I’ll lay evens that it’s “hot” … all used and dirty notes. But the numbers are all over the place, none consecutive, so it’s sure to be untraceable.’

  ‘Think they’ll be all right?’ persisted Joe, in a worried voice, swinging his big head to look at the cash.

  ‘Keep yer flaming eyes on the road,’ snapped Jackie. ‘You get us in the ditch now and we won’t be needing any bloody money for the next fourteen years or so.’

  He clicked the case shut and dropped it between his legs. ‘Yes, it’ll do … we’ll be changing it bit by bit all through Holland and down France into Spain.’

  Joe digested this in silence. Then he said, ‘I haven’t got a passport. Never bin outta the country before, see.’

  Jackie sighed. ‘I said I’d fix all that, din’t I? We take the boat into Amsterdam and I contact this chap I know, runs a casino there. He’ll flog the boat for us, fix us some fake passports and get us a good car with the proceeds. He’s a real villain, do anything for me – I knew him in the war.’

  Joe still sounded dubious.

  ‘Then what we do? Neither of us speak the lingo. We’ll get picked up, sure as hell.’

  Jackie snapped at him. ‘Bloody moaner, you are! Look, that boat of mine will cross the North Sea as if it was a duck pond. We’ll be in the south of Spain inside a week.’

  ‘Then what?’ Joe sounded unconvinced.

  ‘Tangier, boy! I had a holiday there, a coupla years back – smashing place, plenty of graft, no questions asked, no extradition. We can grow ourselves a couple of beards, nobody’ll know us from Adam. With this thirty thousand we can get set up in a little club. Start modest, we could clean up a fortune in a year or two. Better off than doing fourteen years in the nick, I tell you.’

  They drove on in silence for some miles while Jackie’s brain tried to work out all the angles and possible snags in his bid for freedom and one of the first he spotted was fuel.

  ‘Stop at the next filling station,’ he ordered and, at a garage in a lonely hamlet, they drew up at the petrol pumps. After having some in the tank of the Vauxhall, Stott asked the attendant if he had any empty oil drums that could be filled with diesel fuel. ‘Need it for our farm generator up at Allendale,’ he explained.

  The man produced two ten-gallon drums and filled them from the DERV pump, Jackie managing to stow them in the boot. At another garage ten miles further on, they repeated the process, this time putting three drums on the back seat.

  ‘That should be enough to get the Bella to America, let alone the Dutch coast,’ exaggerated Stott in satisfaction, after they had driven off. ‘Her main tank is full – that’s fifty gallons – and I’ve already got a couple of spare drums aboard.’

  Eventually, they approached Newcastle and began cautiously to enter the suburbs from the west. Jackie took over the driving, telling Joe to lie flat on the floor at the back. The police might be looking for two men leaving Newcastle, but Stott calculated that they would be much less interested in one man entering the city. He found an old pair of sunglasses in the glove compartment and, after pushing the lenses out, wore the empty frames as an apology for a disguise.

  Sedately, they travelled through the streets without challenge, the Vauxhall making its way steadily towards Scotswood, about two miles upstream from the bridges between Newcastle and Gateshead.

  Here, at a dismal mooring between two factories, a dozen private craft dozed on the black water. Some were lifeboat conversions, used mainly by fishing parties, and others were proper motor cruisers.

  The biggest and best was Jackie’s boat, the Bella. She was not a heavy-weather boat but, as long as the present weather held, she could cope with the crossing to Holland.

  Jackie ran the car down a lane between high walls and coasted quietly to the wharfside. The Bella was moored twenty yards from the bank, to be out of the reach of marauding children. There was a ‘pram’ dinghy belonging to one of the other boats tied to the quayside and within a few moments, Jackie had paddled out and hauled the cruiser to the wharf. The tide was high and the strong arms of the two ex-boxers soon dumped the oil drums down on to the deck.

  Jackie’s seafaring eye looked them over critically. ‘Better lash them together on the after-part of the deck – they’ll keep her bottom well down in the watter!’

  He left Joe doing this while he reversed the Vauxhall well back into the shadows on the quay. When all was secure, they went into the cockpit and a moment later the whine of the electric starters and the splutter of the cold engines broke the late evening silence of the river.

  The diesels fired and began to run smoothly as they warmed up. Jackie switched the navigation lights on and gently moved astern from the moorings, into the main stream of the Tyne.

  ‘Cheerio, England – and bloody good riddance,’ he muttered, patting the suitcase that lay on the locker alongside him.

  Chapter Twelve

  ‘Everything is going perfectly,’ growled MacDonald. ‘Hansen seems to be pulling through; we’ve got a solid case against everyone concerned – the only small point is that the two principals involved have vanished from the face of the blasted earth!’

  He spoke through the window of his car, just before driving off from Headquarters. Bolam and Grainger stood outside and raised their hands in a salute of farewell as he drove away.

  ‘He’s right, you know … I didn’t think those two thick bastards would have the savvy to keep out of sight as well as this,’ said Jimmy, as they went back into the building.

  ‘Jackie’s not thick, not by a hell of a way,’ corrected Alec. ‘Granted, Joe Blunt is a bit of a zombie, but Stott’s as cunning as they come. He’s arrogant and vain and thinks he’s too clever to be caught … but where the blazes are they?’

  It was late evening by now and the two detectives went to the canteen for tea and biscuits. One of the photography sergeants was there and they began the inevitable discussion on the case.

  ‘Where would you go if you were wanted for murder, Sam?’ ask
ed Jimmy.

  ‘A long way abroad – South America or Canada, to join the Train Robbers,’ said the other sergeant promptly.

  ‘Come off it, Jackie’s only got a few hundred quid, not a few million.’

  ‘Well, anywhere abroad – you can get all over Europe for that sort of money.’

  ‘The singer girl suggested Ireland,’ put in Bolam, thoughtfully. ‘We’ve asked for a special watch on the Irish packet terminals and the airports … two big thugs like them could hardly go unnoticed.’

  ‘The Met are keeping an eye on King’s Cross and places like that, but it’s a hell of a job to watch everywhere,’ added Grainger.

  ‘What about passports?’ asked the photographer. ‘Jackie’s is missing from the safe, according to the Levine woman. Joe never had one, by all accounts.’

  ‘They must be holed up somewhere – probably under our noses in Newcastle.’

  ‘What about this taxi driver who says he took them to Durham this afternoon?’

  ‘Beats me … I can hardly believe it, to be honest,’ sighed the chief inspector.

  ‘The cabbie seemed definite enough, but why the hell would they pick Durham?’

  There was a silence, broken only by munching and sipping.

  Neither Bolam nor Jimmy felt like going home. They somehow felt that by staying on, they might charm events into going right for them. Alec had no particular wish to go back to face a barrage of questions from Vera about Betty’s lost hours the previous night. The girl herself had become withdrawn and silent since she returned – the brief period of tenderness with her father had been short-lived but her infatuation with Freddie seemed to have vanished and Bolam prayed that the experience hadn’t twisted her against men permanently.

  He went back to his office, and for a time there was a brooding silence in the room, until it was broken by the clamour of the telephone.

  ‘Leadbitter here – Tyne Division … switchboard told me you were still in.’

  ‘Ernie … what the dickens are you doing this time of night?’

  ‘Changed shifts – doing a spell of nights while Andrews gets his haemorrhoids fixed … Jimmy Grainger rang up earlier today and left a message asking about tide times on the day Geordie Armstrong was killed.’

  ‘That’s right – we found the clothing and we wanted to check that it could have been retrieved at the time Hansen was supposed to have found it on the mud bank.’

  The River Sergeant quoted some times over the phone and Alec jotted them down.

  ‘No sign of them villains yet, sir?’ asked Leadbitter, conversationally.

  ‘Not a trace, Ernie … they’re bound to surface sometime, though. We had a suggestion that they might have stowed away on a ship from the Tyne … any Dutch or German coasters in the river tonight?’

  There was a silence, then a thoughtful voice came over the line. ‘No-o, I can’t think of any of the masters touching a job like that.’ His voice became brisker. ‘But look here, sir, I just ruddy thought of something! What about the Bella?’

  Bolam was in a fog. ‘Bella? … who the hell’s she?’

  Leadbitter sounded really agitated now. ‘No, the Bella … Jackie’s own boat, sir … a big twin-screw diesel.’

  Bolam felt a pulse suddenly begin to beat in his neck.

  ‘He’s got his own boat? … Christ, why didn’t someone tell me!’ He calmed himself with an effort. ‘Ernie, look … tell me about it.’

  ‘That’s about all to tell … a big cruiser, best part of forty foot. He only bought it last summer. Moored up the river.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘At the Scotswood pool … beyond the Vickers factory.’

  Alec stood still, holding the phone. ‘I’ll be straight down, Ernie. Probably nothing in it, but we’d better check. Can you take me up there, just in case? They may have been there, or they may be aiming to hide out on it. I’ll be with you in five minutes, get a boat standing by.’

  He jiggled the phone button and rang the Information Room, requesting the nearest motor patrol to go to the moorings at Scotswood. Then, scooping up Jimmy, he took a CID car to go down to the River Police Station at the Swing Bridge.

  Halfway there, the ‘beep-beep’ standby signal of the radio was replaced by the impassive voice of Information Room calling them.

  ‘L-K to Q-6 … L-K to Q-6.’

  Bolam snatched up the handset. ‘Q-6 to L-K … over.’

  ‘G-8 wishes talk-through with you … go ahead, G8.’

  An agitated Geordie voice came through direct from the police car that Bolam had sent down to Scotswood. ‘G-8 to Q-6 … that you, Mr Bolam?’

  ‘Yes – what’s the panic?’

  ‘That boat, sir – the Bella. She’s gone!’

  Alec’s heart seemed to rise and stick somewhere below his chin. ‘Are you sure you’ve got the right one?’

  ‘Yessir … I’ve got the local PCs here in the Panda van … they know the boat. She was here yesterday. They check up for vandalism and that. It was definitely here then, it’s the biggest one on the moorings.’

  Alec swore into the radio, momentarily paralyzed by the news.

  The patrolman spoke again, almost apologetically. ‘One thing, Mr Bolam … there’s a Vauxhall car parked nearby, in a queer spot. Radiator’s still warm. There’s a sticker on the window says “Salter’s Car Hire, Darlington”.’

  Alec got a grip of himself. ‘Right, thank God for something. Get through to Information to check on who hired it.’

  ‘Will do – G-8 out.’

  The CID car was in Pilgrim Street by now, with Jimmy driving and bursting with anticipation.

  ‘Step on it, Jimmy … it looks damned likely that Jackie has made a run for it in his boat.’

  The Austin shot forward to rip around into Market Street and race down the elegant slope of Grey Street.

  ‘Surely they’re not going to risk running abroad in a motor boat?’

  ‘Jackie was a sailor – this Bella seems to be a big, powerful craft. Why the hell didn’t somebody tell us he had a bloody boat?’

  They tore down the steep hill of Dean Street towards the Tyne, screeched around the bends near the Guildhall and shot across the deserted Swing Bridge to the old red brick police station.

  Almost before Jimmy had stopped, Bolam was out and was clattering into the building. In the front office he found Leadbitter and two constables drinking the inevitable tea before a glowing stove.

  ‘Jackie’s on the run in his blasted boat,’ he blurted. ‘Has anything passed here?’

  The river policeman looked at him incredulously.

  ‘Not a thing in the last hour – the ash hopper was the last craft through the bridge,’ said Ernie.

  He hurried to the window and looked out into the segment of river that lay between the High Level and Swing bridges.

  ‘Nothing to be seen … they can’t have passed down.’

  ‘Could you see a boat as small as that? He might have his lights out,’ said Bolam.

  ‘He’d not risk getting stopped just for that … I reckon he’d leave ’em on. No, I’ll swear nothing’s gone down since the hopper.’

  ‘Got a boat ready?’

  ‘Right at the door – we were going on patrol when you phoned.’

  He grabbed his hat and made for the door, followed by the phlegmatic Horace, his crewman once again. Bolam and Jimmy hurried after them, Bolam turning as he reached the door to speak to the duty constable.

  ‘Will you ring Information, tell them that Stott and Blunt are thought to be on the run in a boat – inform Chief Superintendent MacDonald. Tell them we’ll radio further information as soon as we have any.’

  He ran after the others and clambered down slimy wooden steps to the lapping water. Leadbitter held the launch close to the jetty for him and as soon as he was aboard, Horace gunned the engine and swung off upriver.

  The wind had freshened a lot during the last hour and the policemen stood huddled on the open after-deck, collars turn
ed up and hands deep in their pockets, as they stared ahead at the river.

  ‘Have to take a chance on going upstream – but I’ll swear nothing’s come down past us,’ yelled Leadbitter against the noise of the Perkins engine at their feet. ‘It’s about fifteen minutes run from here to the moorings.’

  ‘What if he has gone through already?’ shouted Bolam.

  Ernie moved towards the cabin. ‘I’ll call up Shields and warn them.’

  They roared up river while the sergeant radioed the distant River Headquarters at South Shields. A few moments later he was back.

  ‘Mike Milburn is on patrol halfway down the river, somewhere around Wallsend. Control have given him the story – nothing has passed him down there, he says.’

  ‘So Jackie is still on the river?’

  ‘Unless he left hours ago – though I’m sure someone on patrol would have noticed him. That Bella is a big, fine boat. You don’t get many pleasure craft on the river in December!’

  They were interrupted by a shout from Horace. ‘Navigation lights! … just beyond Dunston Staithes!’

  They all peered ahead and twinkling faintly against the gloomy background, they eventually picked out two lights, the higher one yellow and other red. The hull was invisible at that distance.

  ‘Take her over that side, Horace,’ commanded Leadbitter. The police launch began slanting across the river to the downstream channel and the distance between the two craft rapidly lessened.

  Both Horace and Ernie Leadbitter shouted simultaneously. ‘It’s her – it’s the Bella!’

  ‘That high cabin and the canvas canopy give her away – nothing else like it up this part of the river,’ hollered the sergeant excitedly.

  The gap between them lessened every second.

  ‘What the hell do we do now?’ asked Jimmy, ‘Jump aboard with cutlasses in our teeth?’

  ‘We’ve got to catch her first,’ shouted Leadbitter. ‘That boat can run rings around us when it comes to speed. Our engine is governed down to twelve knots in case we hit floating wreckage.’

  He stood to the cabin entrance and shouted at Horace. ‘Come up ahead of her and try to force her in towards the bank. Don’t give her any sea-room and for Gawd’s sake don’t let her get abeam of us or she’ll be away like a dose of salts.’