The Laundry Man

by Graham Ison

  ‘What, Conway?’ Rosie smiled sweetly.

  ‘Well, there’s a first time for everything,’ said Fox. ‘So they tell me.’

  *

  At first, the observation on Eugenie Vandermeer proved to be unproductive, apart from confirming Rosie Webster’s information. George Bundy was a tall, good-looking man in his early forties. He drove a Mercedes, and wore elegant suits that undoubtedly cost a lot of money. He seemed to have no visible means of support, but that, if anything, also confirmed Rosie’s information that he lived by his wits. He also lived with Eugenie Vandermeer. At least for the first week of the observation.

  ‘He’s got his own pad in Belgravia, guv,’ said DS Fletcher. ‘And he’s got another bird.’

  ‘Excellent,’ said Fox. ‘That could come in very useful.’

  ‘She seems to be absolutely straight, guv.’

  ‘What, missionary position and nothing kinky?’

  Fletcher grinned. ‘Don’t know about that, sir. They always keep the curtains drawn.’

  ‘Keep it going for a few days more, Perce, and then we’ll think about talking to the happy couple. Who is this bird, anyway?’

  Fletcher thumbed open his pocket book. ‘Unidentified as yet, sir. About twenty-eight, I should think. Short blonde hair — ’

  ‘Got any form, Perce?’

  Fletcher grinned. ‘Yeah. 38-24-36 at a rough guess.’

  ‘Get out,’ said Fox.

  *

  In a street in Belgravia, DS Fletcher and DC Crombie were sitting in the front of a clapped out van, observing. They had been observing for five days now, and were heartily sick of it. They had changed vehicles frequently, and they had changed the place they parked, but there was a limit to the number of locations that would still give them a view of the abode of George Bundy and the unknown blonde.

  ‘Blimey!’ said DC Crombie. ‘It’s the Belgian bird.’

  Fletcher eased himself up from the recumbent position in which he had been sitting and peered through the windscreen just in time to see Eugenie Vandermeer disappearing into the Bundy residence. ‘Well I’m buggered,’ said Fletcher, which seemed adequately to cover the situation.

  Then something quite distressing happened. Both doors of the van were suddenly yanked open and the two Flying Squad officers looked out at a pair of scruffily dressed youths. The one nearest Fletcher was clad in jeans and a sweat-shirt.

  ‘What’s your bleeding game?’ asked Fletcher.

  ‘Police officers,’ said the spokesman. ‘We have been keeping you under observation for —’

  ‘Oh, bloody leave off, you prat,’ said Fletcher. ‘We’re in the job.’ But knowing the violence sometimes offered by the less mature of his professional brethren, he kept his hands on top of the dashboard.

  ‘Oh, yeah?’

  ‘Oh, yeah!’ said Fletcher. ‘And if you care to insert your grubby fingers into my top pocket, you’ll find suitable proof ... signed by the Commissioner himself.’

  The jeans-and-sweat-shirt officer did as he was asked and withdrew Fletcher’s warrant card. For a moment or two he studied it before handing it back. ‘Sorry, skip,’ he said.

  ‘Now, you prat, what are you up to?’ asked Fletcher, getting out of the van.

  *

  Fletcher knocked on Fox’s door. ‘Got a minute, guv?’

  ‘What news, Perce?’

  ‘Nearly a nasty accident, sir.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘George Bundy, Eugenie Vandermeer and the unknown blonde, guv.’

  ‘You speak as though it’s a ménage à trois, Perce.’

  ‘I do, sir?’ Fletcher looked vaguely mystified.

  Fox nodded. ‘To put it in more basic language, Perce, three in a bed.’

  A huge grin of comprehension spread across Fletcher’s face. ‘Yeah, well you’re nearly right there, guv. We almost finished up treading on toes.’

  ‘Like whose toes?’

  ‘Obscene Publications Squad.’

  Fox stood up and stared out of the window. He thrust his hands into his trouser pockets and then took them out again, realising that it might unduly stretch the expensive cloth of his suit. ‘I don’t believe this,’ he said, turning. ‘We start off with a PC getting shot in a building society heist, and now it looks as though we’re going through the whole bloody calendar of criminal activity. What then?’

  ‘Don’t quite know how to put this, guv,’ said Fletcher, ‘but we were sitting on Bundy’s drum in Belgravia and we got pulled by a couple of hooligans from Obscene Pubs.’

  Fox shook his head wearily. ‘And how did they manage to creep up on you, Perce?’

  Fletcher took this as censure and looked hurt. ‘We were concentrating on the target, guv. They were watching us. Pair of prats,’ he added.

  ‘So, what was it all about?’

  ‘Porn. Obscene Pubs have had an interest in our friend Bundy for some time now, it seems.’ Fletcher looked miserable. They thought we were something to do with it as well.’

  Fox laughed. ‘What exactly is their interest?’

  ‘Wouldn’t say, guv. Frankly, I don’t think they knew. Couple of PCs in plain clothes, they were. I reckon they’d been told to do an obo and report back. You know how touchy that lot are. Probably their guv’nor is the only one who knows the whole story.’

  *

  ‘Tell me about George Bundy, Ray.’

  Superintendent Ray O’Brien, head of the Obscene Publications Squad, gazed up at Tommy Fox and sighed. ‘I don’t believe the Flying Squad are taking an interest in porn again,’ he said.

  It was a barbed comment that was not wasted on Fox. ‘I’ve not come up here for smart-arse remarks,’ he said. ‘I’m investigating the murder of one David Pogson, and the attempted murder of a PC at Surbiton. Now then, your George Bundy is associated with one Eugenie Vandermeer, whose former sleeping partner — and I speak carnally — is now awaiting trial for the aforesaid attempted murder.’ There was no chance of Conway being tried for the attempted murder of the PC, but Fox wasn’t going to tell O’Brien that. Not yet, anyway. He sat down in an armchair and waited.

  O’Brien stood up and went to a filing cabinet. ‘We haven’t got a lot, sir,’ he said, dropping a manilla folder on his desk and sitting down again, ‘but you’re welcome to what we have.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘We’re pretty certain that George Bundy is making porn videos, and one of his stars is the blonde with whom he lives. But he’s got others who’ve been with him for some time ... like Eugenie Vandermeer.’

  ‘Oh, Christ!’ said Fox. ‘Yeah, go on.’

  ‘We’ve been keeping observation on his place in Belgravia for some time, on and off, and Surrey police have been watching his other place in Bookham. In fact, we’re about to raid both places.’

  ‘When?’

  O’Brien looked doubtful. ‘Well ...’

  ‘Oh, come on, Ray, don’t ponce about,’ said Fox. ‘You may find this difficult to believe, but there are actually more important things than porn ... like the murder of a villain.’ He paused. ‘Or more important still, the attempted murder of a PC.’

  ‘I thought you said you’d got someone in custody for that.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Fox thoughtfully. ‘But I’m beginning to believe that it’s not down to him. Incidentally,’ he continued, ‘has the name Danny Horsfall featured anywhere in your enquiries?’

  O’Brien shook his head. ‘It’s not a name I’ve heard,’ he said, ‘at least, not in connection with this enquiry.’ He grinned. ‘It’s a name not unknown in Soho, of course.’

  ‘You’re telling me,’ said Fox with a certain amount of feeling. ‘Is he mixed up with your murder enquiry, then?’

  ‘Almost certainly,’ said Fox. He sighed. ‘All I need is evidence. However, when are you going to spin this little lot?’ He waved a hand at the papers on the desk.

  O’Brien closed the file. ‘I’m not trying to blank you here, guv,’ he said, ‘but we haven’t decided when t
o hit him. Ideally, we’d like to catch him at it, but so far we haven’t seen any males entering the premises and, frankly, what’s a porn video without at least one of each sex?’

  Fox raised his eyebrows. ‘How long have you been in this business?’ he asked.

  Chapter Fifteen

  It took a fair bit of high-level negotiation. Commander Alec Myers was singularly unimpressed when Fox told him that he wanted to go along on a porn video raid, but that the Obscene Pubs Squad wouldn’t let him play. Myers asked one or two pertinent questions like what the hell had that to do with the murder of Pogson? And what had it to do with the attempted murder of the PC at Surbiton? And hadn’t Tommy Fox got a body banged up on remand in Brixton for that, anyway? And don’t tell me it’s a long story.

  But eventually, Fox persuaded his commander that Eugenie Vandermeer’s involvement was relevant to the enquiry into Pogson’s death, and Myers talked to the commander of Obscene Publications Branch who talked to Superintendent O’Brien.

  Even so, O’Brien didn’t put all his cards on the table. He just eased them away from his chest a fraction.

  Not that it mattered. Fox had informants all over the place, and the moment that O’Brien applied for a search warrant, Fox got a telephone call from the warrant officer at the magistrates court. But then, that’s how the job gets done.

  ‘Right,’ said Fox. ‘Mr O’Brien and his merry men are raiding these premises at three o’clock this afternoon.’ He looked at the four officers seated in his office. ‘Which makes it more of a soirée than a spin, really,’ he said. ‘Mr Evans and Rosie will come with me. Information is that Bundy, Vandermeer and the other girl are at the Belgravia address at this moment. You, Perce,’ he said to Fletcher, ‘can go on down to Bookham with young Crombie and the rest of Mr O’Brien’s team. Don’t suppose there’ll be anything of interest to us ... not in a dead and alive hole like Bookham.’ Fletcher groaned.

  It was the sort of operation that Fox enjoyed. In fact, as far as he was concerned, it was more of a social event.

  At three o’clock exactly, O’Brien’s team silently entered the walled front garden of Bundy’s Belgravia house — the curtains were drawn, as Fletcher had said they would be — and knocked at the door. With a last-minute flash of inspiration, Fox suggested to O’Brien that Rosie Webster be put in the forefront of the team. Surprisingly, the door was opened by a maid, who enquired, in a French accent heavily interspersed with pure Stepney, if Rosie had come for the filming.

  ‘Yes, and so have all my friends,’ said Rosie, entering into the spirit of the thing. Before the maid could shout a warning, she was bundled out of the door and eight police officers swept into the house.

  The first person that Fox saw as the police went up the stairs was Eugenie Vandermeer. She stopped, gave a small scream and quickly went back into the room from which she had just emerged. Fox was unsure whether her startled reaction was because she had recognised him. Or because she was stark naked. Or both.

  O’Brien, obviously skilled in such matters, rapidly followed her through the door and found all that he wanted. Professionally speaking, of course.

  Apart from Miss Vandermeer, there were three other nudists and a fully dressed cameraman. One of the unclothed turned out to be Bundy’s blonde companion who was heavily engaged in some very physical grappling with an equally naked man. The other man was either being held in reserve, or was recovering from a similar bout with Eugenie.

  ‘And which one of you is George Bundy?’ asked O’Brien.

  ‘I am,’ said the cameraman. ‘And who the hell are you?’

  ‘Police,’ said O’Brien, waving his warrant card.

  ‘Thank God for that,’ said Bundy. ‘For a moment I thought you were VAT inspectors.’

  *

  Fox was not interested in any profit there had been in the raid for the Obscene Publications Squad, and quickly detached his officers from the tiresome tasks of taking names and addresses and loading a lorry with several hundred video tapes. He knew from experience that some poor policeman would be directed to view them all, hour after hour, making notes of their content until he pleaded to be let off because his wife thought that he had gone queer.

  The important thing was that the raid had provided Fox with some ammunition to put the arm on Conway.

  ‘We had a jolly afternoon out yesterday, Waldo,’ he said when they were seated in one of the interview rooms at Brixton prison.

  ‘Oh yeah?’

  Fox nodded amiably. ‘Went and saw your girlfriend, the voluptuous Eugenie.’

  ‘What for?’ Conway’s eyes narrowed. He didn’t like the sound of this at all.

  ‘In connection with our enquiries,’ continued Fox loftily.

  ‘What did she say?’ Conway enquired nervously. He was convinced that Fox was about to stitch him up by pretending that Eugenie had grassed on him.

  ‘Not much to start with,’ said Fox. ‘She was doing a lot of grunting and groaning when we arrived, having it off with some smarmy-looking jessie.’ Fox saw no harm in gilding the lily slightly in the interests of ultimate justice.

  ‘I don’t bloody believe it.’ Conway gripped the sides of the table.

  ‘Oh, you needn’t worry. It was purely commercial,’ said Fox. ‘Nothing in it at all. She’s in the film business now, you know. As a matter of fact, Waldo, we’d’ve brought you a video of her doing it, but the prison governor’s a bit touchy about that sort of stuff being brought in, even by the police. No sense of proportion,’ he added.

  ‘I don’t bloody believe it,’ said Conway again. He did, but he was trying to convince himself.

  ‘Oh, a lot of girls are at it these days. Getting screwed on video pays better than being a secretary.’

  ‘Who was this geyser?’ asked Conway. He had a very nasty look on his face.

  ‘Merely a passing player,’ said Fox. ‘A sort of naked Thespian, I suppose you’d call him. But he’s no problem, not to you. It’s the bloke who was making the films that you ought to be interested in. Pure exploitation, if you ask me. Goes by the name of George Bundy.’

  ‘Oh, does he.’ Conway appeared to be making mental notes, which for him was very difficult.

  ‘Who is now living with her,’ continued Fox, intent on putting the boot in.

  ‘What?’ Conway half rose in his chair.

  ‘Yes, indeed,’ said Fox, waving him down. ‘I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad tidings, Waldo.’ Even he couldn’t keep the insincerity out of his voice. ‘But there’s more.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Informed opinion is that Danny Horsfall is behind this film-making enterprise.’ Fox unhesitatingly threw in another lie.

  ‘That bloody does it.’

  Fox held up a hand. ‘Now don’t do anything rash, Waldo,’ he said.

  Conway paused for some time. To those who did not know him it gave the impression that he was thinking deeply. ‘Is this going to help me out, Mr Fox?’ he asked at last.

  ‘Is what going to help you out?’

  ‘If I give you the business.’

  ‘Depends what the business is, Waldo.’

  ‘I told you Horsfall laundered the money from the Surbiton job.’ Fox nodded. ‘Well, he took the Frog money an’ all, from the job in ...’ Conway paused, unable to remember the name.

  ‘Armentières.’

  ‘Yeah, right.’ Conway paused again. ‘But I never did them jobs, Mr Fox.’

  ‘1 know.’ Fox pushed his cigarette case across the table. Conway lit a cigarette and puffed hungrily at it. ‘I can understand you being a bit septic about it, Mr Fox — ’

  ‘The word is sceptic, Waldo,’ said Fox mildly. ‘Well, as you didn’t, who did?’

  ‘I dunno.’

  ‘Try again, Waldo.’

  ‘Straight, Mr Fox. I ain’t got a clue.’

  ‘That makes two of us. So start talking about the shooter, Waldo. We know you had it to do the bank raid that earned you seven-and-a-half. And, lo and behold, it was use
d in the Surbiton job and in the job at Armentières. Now, talk your way out of that.’

  ‘All right. I’ll put it to you straight. I hung on to that shooter after the first job. The one I got sent down for. Left it with Genie, the cow.’ It was evident that Conway was already putting distance between himself and the Belgian girl. ‘That weekend I got leave from the nick —’

  ‘Easter, you mean?’

  ‘Yeah, that’s right. Well, it never crossed my mind to ask what happened to it.’ Conway grinned. ‘I was a bit busy, see.’

  ‘I can imagine,’ murmured Fox. ‘But suddenly you remembered. Ah, Genie, you said, whatever happened to that old shooter I left here?’

  ‘Yeah, well I suppose I must have done.’ Conway smiled nervously. ‘Anyway when we went across to Belgium, I took it with me.’

  ‘What for?’ Fox was looking for a statement of intent to commit robbery.

  ‘Thought I might knock it out to some punter over there. Raise a few readies, see.’

  ‘But instead, you did a supermarket in Armentières, yes?’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Waldo,’ said Fox patiently, ‘I hate to pick holes, but just now you said that Horsfall laundered the money from both jobs. If you now claim to know nothing about them, how come you know that Horsfall was the launderer?’

  Conway shook his head like a punch-drunk boxer. ‘I did it for a friend.’

  Fox leaned back in his chair and laughed. ‘Did you hear that, Denzil? He did it for a friend.’ He turned back to Conway. ‘Don’t tell me. You met him in a boozer and you don’t know his name. You’ll have to do better than that,’ he said.

  ‘It was Genie.’ Conway had obviously done a lot of soul-searching before giving Fox the name.

  Fox leaned forward so that his face was inches from Conway’s. ‘Are you telling me that the elegant Eugenie Vandermeer knocked over a building society and a supermarket, Waldo?’ His tone implied that if Conway was thinking of having him over, he’d better think again.