The Laundry Man

by Graham Ison

  ‘I don’t know. Mr Fox, honest.’ Conway sounded desperate. ‘But she asked me if I could lay off the take from a job —’

  ‘When?’

  ‘After we got back from Belgium.’

  ‘Hang on ...’ Fox was determined to get the story right. ‘When you came out of the nick on May Day, you went straight to Belgium. Right?’ Conway nodded. ‘And at that time you didn’t know that Eugenie was mixed up with the heist at Surbiton.’

  ‘No. I never knew nothing about it. Not then like.’

  ‘When one of my policemen got shot.’ Fox sounded very menacing.

  ‘I wouldn’t get mixed up in shooting a copper, Mr Fox, you know that. I might pull a few strokes, but if I’d known that’s what had gone down ...’ Conway shrugged hopelessly.

  ‘You’d better be right, Waldo. Go on, then.’

  ‘Well we had a bit of a holiday in Belgium —’

  ‘Why Belgium? Seems a funny place to go for a holiday.’

  ‘It was Genie’s idea, on account of her being Belgian like. Reckoned she was going to show me some things what I’d never seen before.’

  ‘Is that a fact?’ said Fox quietly, but the sarcasm was lost on Conway. ‘And where did you go?’

  ‘Haven’t a clue, Mr Fox, and that’s straight. Went all over, hut I never knew half the places what we went. Except some place called Wipers. Some name like that. Genie wanted to see the cats.’

  ‘Cats?’ Fox looked searchingly at Conway, seeking some mockery. ‘Never mind. Go on.’

  ‘That’s when it all come on top. The local Old Bill was sitting on our motor when we got back to where we’d left it, and Genie reckoned they was on to us. So we done a runner.’

  ‘Why?’ Fox didn’t believe too much of what Conway was telling him. ‘You’ve more or less said that up till then you’d committed no offences. So why do a runner?’

  Conway shrugged. ‘Well, it’s natural for me, ain’t it? Bit of form. You never know what those bastards have got up their sleeve, do you?’

  ‘Which bastards did you have in mind, Waldo?’

  Conway suddenly realised his mistake. ‘Oh, only them foreign coppers, Mr Fox. Nasty sods, they is. Pull a few dodgy strokes, they will. No, I never meant you. I mean, the English law’s all right. They plays by the rules.’

  ‘Really? You interest me strangely, Waldo.’ Fox spoke mildly, but it still unnerved Conway.

  ‘Yeah, well apart from anything else — ’ Conway struggled nervously on. ‘Apart from anything else, it was then that Genie told me about this supermarket heist down France. And I’d got the bleeding gelt in my holdall. Well, I mean, that’s enough to put the frighteners on anyone, ain’t it? So we done a runner. Seemed like for the best, if you takes my meaning.’

  ‘Did she say that she’d done the heist?’ Fox at last felt he was getting somewhere.

  ‘Nah!’ Conway gave an expressive shrug. ‘Shouldn’t think it’s her style. Can’t see it, somehow.’

  ‘Were you two together all the time?’

  Conway scratched his head. ‘No, come to think of it, we wasn’t. Here, you don’t think she could have pulled that, do you?’

  ‘How often did she go out on her own?’

  Two or three times, I s’pose. I stayed in the hotel, or had a wander round the town.’

  ‘Which town?’

  ‘Search me, Mr Fox. Like I said, I never knew where we was half the time. But it was in Belgium.’

  ‘At about the time of the heist in Armentières?’

  Conway shook his head. ‘Dunno, Mr Fox. I dunno when that happened, ’cept it was before we done a runner.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Fox, ‘it would have been. Tell me about the Surbiton job, then ... and the laundry.’

  ‘Well, Genie lumbered me with taking back the Frog gelt, and when we gets home she bungs me a load more. When I asked her where it come from she said as how it was better I never knew.’

  ‘So you went to see Danny Horsfall.’

  ‘Yeah. I don’t know no one else in that lark, see. Anyway, Horsfall, the bastard, tells me about the French job. Knew all about it. But he never said nothing about Surbiton. Nothing about no copper getting shot.’ Conway sounded aggrieved that he had been let down. ‘Well, when I heard that, you could have knocked me down with a feather.’

  ‘From what you told me last time, that’s exactly what happened.’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘You got knocked down by a feather. Lenny Feather.’

  *

  ‘So what did you make of that lot, guv’nor?’ asked Evans. He and Fox were in a pub close to Scotland Yard, Fox having announced that he intended to get the taste of Brixton out of his mouth.

  ‘I’m sorry to have to say, Denzil, that I think our friend Waldo is telling the truth. Almost.’ Fox drained his Scotch and placed the empty glass pointedly in front of Evans. ‘Whatever else he might do, I think he was right when he said he wouldn’t shoot at a copper. So we’ve got a number of options here. For one, I think that the shameless Miss Vandermeer has got more to do with this business than at first met the collective eyes of the Flying Squad.’ Fox always believed in spreading the blame. ‘Thank you, dear boy,’ he said, picking up his newly charged glass. ‘But what interests me is whether she actually did those jobs herself, which frankly I think unlikely, or whether she had an accomplice. If so, who?’

  ‘Bundy?’ asked Evans.

  ‘Yes ...’ said Fox slowly. ‘He’s got to be a front runner.’

  ‘But there’s no evidence, guv,’ said Evans, back-tracking on his suggestion.

  Fox grinned. ‘And when did that ever stop us, Denzil?’ he asked.

  *

  By the time that he had returned to his office at Scotland Yard, Fox had clear in his mind how the investigation was going to go from there. He directed that enquiries — of a fulsome nature, is how he put it — be made into Bundy’s background and antecedents. ‘And I don’t give a toss how many Obscene Publications toes you tread on doing it, Perce,’ he said to DS Fletcher, who had been unlucky enough to catch the enquiry.

  ‘Right, guv,’ said Fletcher.

  ‘By the way, Perce,’ continued Fox. ‘What happened down at Bookham when you went in with our protectors of public morals?’

  ‘Nothing, guv. Looks like the place where Bundy lives. Nothing of an incriminating nature, as you might say.’

  ‘Really, Perce?’ Fox looked closely at his detective sergeant. ‘I don’t ever recall saying that.’

  Chapter Sixteen

  Every detective has his own way of working and Detective Sergeant Percy Fletcher was no exception. He had a highly individual approach to the problems of rooting out information and had acquired some very useful informants during his apprenticeship at West End Central police station, an awesome edifice that stares reproachfully down New Burlington Street from Savile Row.

  From time to time, he would activate these informants rather as the KGB is said to have aroused sleepers in the distant past of the Cold War.

  He did it now.

  ‘Hallo, Mr Fletcher. Don’t often see you in here these days.’ The barman swiftly wiped the top of the counter and placed a large Scotch on it. ‘Compliments of the house, Mr Fletcher,’ he said.

  ‘I’ll let you know when I want charity,’ said Fletcher, placing a five-pound note prominently on the bar.

  ‘No offence, Mr Fletcher. What can I do for you?’

  ‘The name George Bundy mean anything to you, Harry?’

  ‘George Bundy ... George Bundy ...’ The barman savoured the name and sought inspiration from the ceiling of the dimly lit room. ‘Customer in here, is he?’

  ‘I was hoping you’d tell me, Harry.’

  ‘I can’t think offhand, but I’ll ask around.’

  ‘Well, be careful, Harry. I don’t want him alerted.’ Fletcher knew that to make that request would ensure that he was.

  The barman winked. ‘You can trust me, Mr Fletcher. Just want to know where he is. Is that
it?’

  ‘I know where he is, Harry,’ said Fletcher.

  ‘Oh.’ The barman looked mystified. ‘What’s the problem then?’

  ‘I want to know a bit about him, Harry, that’s the problem. I’ll give you a clue. Used to be a con-artist, so I’m told, but now he’s in the porn video game. Making them, not selling them. Some of the toms you get in here might have been chatted up by him pretending to be a talent scout.’

  ‘Toms? In here, Mr Fletcher? This is a respectable establishment.’

  ‘Leave it out, Harry. You’ll set me off laughing, and that hurts my ribs.’

  Fletcher paid numerous such visits to all manner of establishments in the Soho area in his search for information about George Bundy and was quite seriously hoping that news of his interest might get back to the subject of his enquiry. At Fox’s instigation, he even let it be known that the police were, in some arcane way, linking the name of Bundy with a certain Mr Daniel Horsfall, a well-known local businessman. This, in Fox’s view, would have the dual effect of alarming Mr Bundy, and of making Mr Horsfall very angry, neither of which contingencies was likely to lose Tommy Fox any sleep.

  Eventually, Fletcher had mustered enough information to risk a visit to Fox’s office.

  ‘Well, Perce. What news from the front?’ To Fox and Fletcher it was not a trite phrase. ‘The front,’ to anyone who had served at West End Central, meant the fixed point at Piccadilly Circus where one of the few surviving police telephones still stands outside what used to be Swan and Edgar’s.

  ‘Bit thin, guv,’ said Fletcher. ‘Seems he’s put himself about a bit, looking for talent for his porn films. Mainly does the strip joints, trying to con the girls into taking part in his movies with the promise of great riches. Generally speaking, the professionals are too fly for that sort of spiel, but he’s apparently tempted one or two amateurs who think he’s in the film business for real. Gets them to sign what looks like a contract, or something of the sort. Poor little bitches don’t know it’s not worth the paper it’s written on and by the time he’s got them into his so-called studio with their clothes off, and screwing for his camera, it’s too late. Word is that he comes on a bit heavy if they want out.’

  ‘Sounds the sort of nasty piece of work to whom we should perhaps devote some attention, Perce. Anything else?’

  ‘There was one snippet, guv. One snout of mine reckons he’s heard a whisper that Bundy hasn’t always been Bundy. That he used to be known as someone else, but he got in a bit of bother and changed his name.’

  ‘Bit of bother where?’

  ‘Not quite sure,’ said Fletcher. ‘Birmingham was mentioned.’

  ‘What was his name before, then?’

  Fletcher looked apologetic. ‘That’s the one bit of information that wasn’t on offer, guv.’

  ‘Interesting,’ said Fox. ‘I think we shall have to lay hands on Mr Bundy’s fingerprints somehow. Pity we didn’t know that when Obscene Pubs raided his drum. In fact, it’s a great pity, because word is that he’s taken it on the toes. Gone to ground, so to speak. Never mind, Perce, I’ve thought of a quick way to find him. One that’ll save highly paid police officers wasting their time. Wasting their time looking for him, that is.’

  *

  The Crown Prosecution Service solicitor handling the case of The Queen against Conway was a young man whose faith in British justice had not yet dimmed and whose ideals were still as bright as the day he had ridden out of law school on his dazzling white charger.

  Fox was unimpressed. ‘This Conway I’ve got banged up in Brixton. On an eight-day lay down.’

  ‘Ah, yes,’ said the solicitor, shuffling a few papers.

  ‘I want him out,’ said Fox.

  ‘Out?’

  ‘Offer no objections to bail at the next remand hearing. It’s quite simple.’

  ‘But, Mr Fox, you’re surely not suggesting that he’s been wrongly arrested, are you?’

  ‘Probably,’ said Fox, quite indifferent to the solicitor’s shocked tone of outrage. ‘It’ll teach him a lesson, though.’

  ‘But I thought —’

  ‘Let me explain,’ said Fox. ‘There are occasions when we nick someone just to put the frighteners on him, or to persuade certain other parties to relax enough to give the game away so that we can nick them instead. Them rightfully being the guilty party.’ Fox was joking, of course. He was a firm believer in having a bit of fun at the expense of the legal profession whenever the occasion presented itself.

  ‘But that’s deplorable.’ The solicitor had visions of being involved in a conspiracy to pervert the course of justice. From the defendant’s end.

  Fox grinned. ‘Yes, it is, isn’t it? Now listen. When we arrested Conway there was evidence enough. We had a hint that the money from the Surbiton heist and the French job had both been laundered through Horsfall and that it was Conway who’d made the delivery. Now we know for certain. Well, as certain as we can be at this stage. But it’s looking more and more likely that Conway had nothing to do with either job, other than handling the proceeds. Even the firearm we took from his drum had someone else’s fingerprints on it. It’s all a bit of a dog’s dinner. So, this is the plan. Let His Worship know privately that we are unlikely to proceed on the attempted murder charge, that the possession of the firearm might stick ...’ Fox rocked his hand from side to side. ‘But that handling stolen property most certainly will. No objection to bail. All right?’

  The solicitor shook his head slowly. ‘If you say so, Mr Fox. If you say so.’

  And to Waldo Conway’s surprise, that is exactly what happened. When next he appeared at Bow Street, his legal representative made the usual formal plea for bail, and was quite taken aback when the CPS solicitor bobbed briefly to the magistrate and told him that there were no objections.

  Fox, making one of his rare appearances at court, intercepted Conway in the corridor alongside Number One Court. ‘I hope you’re grateful, Waldo,’ he said. ‘Just make sure you behave yourself.’

  ‘You can stand on me, Mr Fox,’ said Conway.

  ‘That is an option, Waldo,’ said Fox.

  *

  There was, of course, a method in Fox’s apparent madness in arranging the release of a confirmed violent criminal, and when Conway left the court he was accompanied by two Flying Squad officers. He was not aware of this, naturally, because they kept well in the background.

  The two officers, DS Crozier and DC Bellenger, had been briefed by Fox, and assured that they would not have long to wait before things started to happen.

  As usual, Fox was right.

  Following his release from Bow Street, Conway stopped for fifteen minutes in a pub on the other side of the road and then made for Eugenie Vandermeer’s flat in Notting Hill, there being no reason now why he should not openly visit her.

  Fox had guessed that that was where Conway would go, and had arranged for WDC Rosie Webster to be there first. After a few quiet words with Eugenie, Rosie had secreted herself in the Belgian girl’s bedroom with a personal radio.

  There was nothing discreet about Conway’s arrival. As Eugenie opened the door, he seized her by the arm and pushed her backwards into the sitting room. Once there, he faced her and forced her arms up behind her back so that her breasts were hard against his chest.

  ‘Waldo, you’re hurting my arms.’ Eugenie turned her head to avoid the smell of alcohol on Conway’s breath.

  ‘Think yourself lucky that’s all I’m doing,’ said Conway. ‘Who’s this rat-bag Bundy that you’ve been taking your clothes off for?’

  ‘I had no money, Waldo. You don’t understand — ’

  ‘Oh, I understand right enough, girl. You get me banged up in the nick for a couple of blaggings I never had nothing to do with, and while I’m there you’re getting yourself screwed on bloody video ... and again back here when you’re off duty.’ He released her and waved a hand as if to encompass the entire apartment. ‘That’s nice, that is.’

  ‘But Wald
o — ’

  ‘But Waldo nothing. Where’s he live, this bastard?’

  ‘What d’you want to know for?’ Eugenie took a step back, putting a couple of feet between her and Conway.

  ‘Because, you bloody whore,’ said Conway, ‘I’m going to take it out of his hide. And when I've done with him, I’m coming back here to give you a bloody hiding you won’t forget.’

  Rosie Webster, listening to this exchange, hoped that Conway would not start hitting the girl now. If he did, she would have to intervene, and that would upset Fox’s little plan. One of the advantages of Eugenie’s association with criminals, however, was that she knew just how far she could go She gave him Bundy’s Belgravia address.

  ‘Right,’ said Conway, and slapped her face hard. ‘That’s to remind you to stay shtum till I get back, We’ve got some serious talking to do, you and me. Like why you fixed up two jobs and then let me get nicked for them.’

  ‘Waldo, I didn’t. I promise. I couldn’t help it It was George. He made me.’

  ‘Was it really?’ Conway spoke sarcastically. Well, I’ll ask him when I find him. Just before I put him in hospital.’

  *

  Crozier and Bellenger had been alerted by Rosie’s radio transmission the moment Conway left Eugenie’s flat, and took a gamble on his making for Bundy’s house in Belgravia.

  He did.

  Conway, however, got little joy from his brief conversation with Bundy’s ‘French’ maid on the doorstep. That, of course, came as no surprise. The police already knew that Bundy wasn’t there, and were as keen to find him as Conway was.

  Clearly frustrated, Conway stood in the street for a moment or two as if undecided what to do next. Then he walked quickly away towards Victoria Station where he hailed a cab.

  *

  For five days, longer than Fox had anticipated, Waldo Conway searched the centre of London for George Bundy, ironically using the same methods as the police themselves. He spoke to various informants and criminal colleagues until finally the police, who had subsequently interrogated all the people Conway had spoken to, discovered that he had got what he — and they — had been seeking. Namely, Bundy’s whereabouts.