‘Ah, the phantom phone caller?’
She had sussed me out already. She did not seem at least perturbed that I had turned up on her doorstep.
‘May I come in?’
She said nothing but gestured me to pass over the threshold.
Sometimes I am the most naïve idiot. Occasionally this can work in my favour. And sometimes not. As I walked into Flat 16, Parkway Mansions, I never contemplated that I might be a very ill-prepared Daniel stepping into this very attractive lion’s den. She was, after all, just a young woman. A pretty one at that in possession of a charming way, but nevertheless, not matter how assured and confident she may appear, a lady on her own is always vulnerable. I was a tough guy detective with a pistol in my pocket and she was just a slip of a thing.
As I said, sometimes I am the most naïve idiot.
‘You are a busy, I gather,’ she said, showing me through to the spacious and beautifully appointed sitting room. It was all white and creams with chocolate-coloured angular furniture.
I smiled. I hadn’t been called ‘a busy’—the slang term for a copper—for years. ‘Not quite,’ I said, standing awkwardly in the middle of this Hollywood set. ‘I’m in the unofficial sector.’
‘Ah, a private tec. Well, do slip off your coat and take a seat. I was about to have a brandy night-cap. Will you join me, Mr...?’
‘Hawke. John Hawke,’ I said, sitting precariously on a small chrome and leather contraption—built for style but not for comfort.
‘John. That’s a nice name. Brandy then?’
‘Thank you.’
She disappeared briefly into what I guessed was the kitchen, emerging a few moments later with two brandy glasses. She had poured me a generous measure. After she handed it to me, she lounged provocatively on the sofa. Her gown spilt to the knee exposing a long shapely leg.
Was it me, I wondered, or was it rather warm in here.
Suddenly, I thought that this whole scenario was surreal. Where, Johnny, old boy, I asked myself, as I took a sip of the brandy, was this all leading? What is your game plan?
There was no reply.
‘So, what is the purpose of your visit, John?’ the girl asked, as though she had read my mind.
‘To clear up one or two things.’
‘Really. Do go on.’
‘I assume I am talking to Gina Bernstein, daughter of Michael Bernstein.’
She smiled sweetly. ‘Indeed, you are.’
‘And you are running a protection racket with the help of your cousins.’
She laughed. It was a delightful, genuine laugh and her eyes twinkled with real merriment. ‘You must be thinking of someone else.’
I shook my head.
‘Your cousin Anthony has been identified. I was there when he tried to extort money from a café owner in Soho.’
‘Really. Well, John, I am not my brother’s keeper. I cannot be held responsible for what that rascal Anthony gets up to in his free time. It certainly has nothing to do with me.’
‘That’s not what Archie Muldoon says.’
This time the laugh did not come. There was a flicker of annoyance in her eyes. I took another sip of brandy while I waited for her response. It was a lame one.
‘I’m afraid I don’t know anyone of that name.’
‘What about Paulo Ricotti?’
She shook her head. ‘Him neither.’
‘That’s strange,’ I said tartly. ‘It was rumoured that he was responsible for your father’s death.’
The face darkened now. I could tell she was trying valiantly to retain her cool exterior but real emotion was crowding in on her.
‘He had his throat cut, didn’t he?’
She turned her head away and remained quiet for some moments. ‘I think you should drink your drink and go now, Mr Hawke.’
She was probably right. There was little else I could do here tonight. I’d satisfied myself that I’d found the right woman. It was now a job for the police. It was time for David to take over.
I drained my glass and extricated myself from the strange chair.
‘As you wish,’ I said.
She turned to face me again. Her smiling mask back in place. ‘What a pity we are seeing each other from different sides of the fence.’ She rose from the sofa and, moving close to me, touched my arm. I could smell her perfume: it was heady and sweet. For a brief moment I felt like climbing over that fence.
I turned to go and suddenly I felt unsteady on my feet and very hot. Suffocatingly hot. It came upon me in an instant. It was as though I had been attacked by a virulent fever. I ran my hand around my collar and tried to loosen my tie but failed, my fingers refusing to follow instructions. In some strange transformation they had turned to rubber. Gina stood before me watching with interest, her face shifting in and out of focus. I stumbled forward a few feet and then felt my legs give way. As I sank to the floor, I caught sight of my empty brandy glass on the table where I had left it.
The brandy. Of course, I thought, as waves of sleep rolled towards me. Of course…the brandy…
Twenty-Four
Anthony Bernstein had lost heavily on the roulette wheel that evening and, as a result, he had been drinking to excess. He was at that stage of inebriation where he was not actually drunk, but his mind was failing to function in a completely sober fashion. The losses had put him in a bad mood and this fuelled his incipient anger: the burning petulant resentment he carried around with him all the time. On this occasion it was Gina who was the target of his burgeoning ire. Ever since she had popped up out of nowhere and stirred up the still waters of his calm pond he had felt aggrieved. She consumed his thoughts and dogged his actions. In fact she was probably responsible for him losing at the roulette wheel. He hated her and hated her with a vengeance. Unlike Vic, he did not have the patience or the subtlety to play the long game. Something must be done about her—not in due course, not soon, but now! That was the conclusion the toxic mix of bitterness and alcohol had brought him to.
Why the hell, he brooded, should she swan in and take over the reins of the Bernstein family interests? They belonged to him and Vic. They were the ones who had put in time and effort. And in fact they were still doing it. At least he was—trailing around with Archie Muldoon scaring the hell out of little shopkeepers and squeezing cash out of them. It was a decent enough wrinkle, but he didn’t need bloody Gina to oversee it for him. In a matter of days he had been reduced to the role of minion. As he considered this scenario, his anger grew and the veins at the sides of his temple throbbed. Part of his fury was aimed at himself for allowing the girl to take such a grip on the Bernstein business and their lives, but most of it was reserved for Gina. What he didn’t know, what lay beyond his mental reach deep in his subconscious was the fact that part of his hatred of Gina was based on the recognition that she had the strong forceful characteristics that he lacked, that he admired and that he envied. Her presence was like a vicious thorn in his flesh. To his simple mind, the elimination of such a creature was the only way to bring him peace and contentment again.
‘That bitch has got to go,’ he told himself with grim determination as he stepped out of the Crescent Moon Club in Store Street. And if Vic wasn’t prepared to do the noble deed, well, he’d have to do it himself. And he’d do it now. Why wait? Strike while the iron was hot.
While the booze gave him courage.
He walked swiftly and with purpose to his car, his mind whirring with thoughts and ideas. It would be best to get rid of Gina before anyone found out about her. At the moment there was no real connection between the family and her. She was living under an assumed name and had kept a low profile. It was an ideal time for her to go, to be disposed of—before connections were made, suspicions aroused and motives constructed. And, bloody hell, he was man enough to do it. He was sure that his dad and Vic would be grateful when it was all over. And he didn’t give a fuck if they weren’t. He slipped into the driving seat and switched on the ignition. The lights on the
dashboard illuminated his face, forming it into the image of a plump skull.
He was grinning.
‘Parkway Mansions, here we come,’ he said cheerfully.
*
Gina dragged John Hawke’s limp frame into the bedroom and left it by the far side of the bed so that anyone entering the room would not see it. Kneeling down, she frisked him and confiscated his gun. She wasn’t sure how long he’d be unconscious. The drug she’d used had variable results so she knew she had to act quickly. Moving back into the sitting room, she made a phone call.
‘Sorry to ring you so late. But I’ve a favour to ask you,’ she said smoothly, with no emotion in her voice. She had managed to suppress her panic and approach her dilemma in a calm and stoical manner. ‘I’ve a body I need you to get rid of.’
‘A body,’ repeated Vic at the other end. ‘What the hell do you mean?’
Gina told him of Hawke’s visit and how he had sussed what was going on. ‘He’s a clever little chappie,’ she said with a sneer in her voice. ‘He knows too much. He’s got me in the frame for Ricotti’s murder and he’s found out about the protection racket. It looks like Anthony’s slipped up there. I reckon the idiot blabbed to Muldoon who in turn did the same to my detective chum here.’
Vic cursed silently. He cursed his stupid brother, but more particularly he cursed Gina. All this would not be going on, blowing up in their faces, if it were not for her. And now she wants me to dirty my hands. Get rid of a body! Damn her.
Nevertheless, while these fiery thoughts ignited in his brain and he gripped the receiver with a grim ferocity, he managed to keep his cool when he replied.
‘What do you expect me to do with Hawke?’
‘Get rid of him,’ she repeated, as though she were asking him to pass the condiments at the dinner table.
‘How?’ Vic had a good idea what she meant but he wanted to hear her say it.
‘Bump him off. Drop him in the Thames or something.’
Or something! The cow was crazy. She might have a calm and assured frontage, but the mechanism inside was all buggered up. If anyone was going to be got rid of—dumped in the Thames—it was her. He knew that it would have to happen sometime, but he hadn’t reckoned that it would be this soon. But things had got very sticky and now circumstances dictated it. And it would be for the best. She had to go before her identity became known and the Bernstein family were implicated in her misdemeanours.
‘I’ll come over and try and sort out your mess,’ he said pointedly. ‘Give me about an hour.’
He put down the receiver and strangely he found himself chuckling.
Twenty-Five
Although it was nearly the pantomime season, I certainly hadn’t expected to play the role of Sleeping Beauty or, more realistically, Drugged Ugly and when consciousness slowly returned to me, my first thought was to curse my idiot self for being stupid enough to get drugged in the first place. I had reckoned on some funny business, probably involving a knife or a gun, but not the old powder in the drinks routine. What an idiot. I had been seduced by a pretty face and a charming manner. Yes, sir, Johnny Hawke, ace detective had been taken in completely by Gina’s apparently civilized demeanour. I hoped I lived long enough for this to be a lesson to me. When consciousness finally and gradually brought me back to groggy life, I tried to raise myself from my undignified recumbent position only to discover that while I’d been out for the count, someone had dipped my body in a very strong solution of starch. As a result my stiffened limbs could hardly move.
I felt rough and disorientated and in other circumstances I would have just turned over and surrendered myself once more to sleep. However, the part of my brain that was working, the portion that deals with self-preservation, told me that I had to get the hell out of here. There was a murderer in the next room and I had as much vim and vigour as a drunken child. It would be disastrous to try and confront her. I would be putty in her hands. Dead putty.
After what seemed an hour, but in the real un-drugged world was less than a minute, I managed to pull my creaky carcass up from the floor and sit on the edge of the bed while I waited for the room to slow down. I checked my coat for my gun. It had gone. So, if she wasn’t before, Gina was armed now. Great! A mild panic set in. I wondered what the hell I was going to do. In simple terms I knew that I had to escape. But how? I couldn’t exactly leave by the front door.
My eyes were inexorably drawn the window. Like a hundred-year-old man with arthritis, I staggered across the room and pulled back the curtains. A clear blue sky with a rich yellow moon greeted my gaze. I looked down and then I remembered that I was four floors up. The frightening reminder of this ignited a few spark plugs in my brain prompting it into sluggish motion. Like an old jalopy. As I couldn’t fly out of the window like a damaged Peter Pan, I was rather stumped. And yet to try and make my way through the flat with gun-toting madam on the loose was not a safe prospect either.
Nevertheless, I had to get out of there quick. Gina could come into the room at any minute. Being shot with my own gun would be the most ignominious of deaths. With that thought in mind, I realized that I just had to go for the crazy option. There was no alternative. Quietly I opened the window wide and gazed out. Sadly the building was too new to have age-old ivy creeping up the wall to provide me with the means of clambering down to safety. Also, I didn’t think there would be enough sheets on the bed to tie together reach the bottom. That sort of thing worked in the movies, but this was the real world and I wasn’t an Errol Flynn nor a Buster Crabbe.
There was, however, a drainpipe some distance to the left of the window. Maybe…But how the hell could I reach it? I clambered on to the sill and leaned out. The fresh air assailed my nostrils making my head feel even woozier and for a frightening moment I thought I was going to lose my balance. My hand shot out and I managed to snatch hold of the side of the window. With gritted teeth, I remained still in the precarious position for some time, acclimatizing to the cold air and forcing my brain to behave itself.
I realized that the only way I was going to reach the drainpipe was to make a leap for it and hope that I could get a firm enough grip on it to stop me falling. If I failed, I would drop like a stone to the courtyard nearly a hundred feet below. I’ve taken some risks in my time, but I reckoned this one would take the prize. Edging my way, inch by inch, I positioned myself on the edge of the window sill as near to the pipe as I could get. It was still some six feet away. I gazed at the black cylindrical pipe for some moments and then, taking a deep breath, I jumped.
My hands reached out in wild desperation for the drainpipe. My heart soared as they found purchase on the cold metal. I was able to grip the pipe firmly but my legs flailed in the air beneath me pulling my body from side to side like some bizarre melting pendulum. I could not bring them to order to give me extra purchase by clamping them around the pipe.
As I struggled, dangling wildly in the air, my hands started to slip. The weight of my body began to pull me down. The pipe was smooth and cold and my hands could not grip any harder. I slid down six feet or so, my fingers burning with the friction and knees banging viciously against the wall sending shooting pains up my legs.
For one crazy moment, I thought I could travel in this fashion all the way down to the bottom, but if I did there certainly wouldn’t be any flesh left on my hands and I doubted if I’d ever be able to walk again.
I slid another three feet and then at last I managed to arch my back sufficiently so that I could raise my legs up and bring the soles of my shoes flat against the wall to act as a break.
At last I came to a halt. Like a human fly, I was clinging to the drainpipe in a hunched position, some fifty feet above a paved courtyard. I waited a while to catch my breath and then slowly, in this rather undignified and hazardous position, I edged my way downwards. It was difficult and painful but I made progress.
I was about twenty feet from the ground when the drainpipe began to move and shudder. Then I heard a sharp cracki
ng sound. I looked up and, in the moonlight, I could see that one of the brackets that secured the pipe to the wall had come adrift. The weight of my body had pulled it from its moorings.
I could feel the pipe slowly dislodge itself from the wall. Soon it would fall way altogether and me with it. I cursed silently and speeded up my hunched descent. I knew that any moment now the pipe would come crashing down.
About ten feet to go.
Then it happened. With an angry, gurgling crack, the section of the pipe I was clinging to broke free and swung out at right angles to the wall, sending a shower of water splashing on to the courtyard below. I was now hanging on to the pipe like a trained chimp. It started to bend and crack as it no longer could resist my weight. There was only one thing to do now. That was to jump.
Luckily, I had had some parachute training during my brief spell in the army when I had two eyes and had some notion how to fall on a hard surface. There was only about eight feet between me and the ground now. With a deep breath and a brief prayer, I let go and dropped to the floor. My body jarred as it touched down, but I softened the pain with a roll. It was a good job I did for had I stayed where I landed, I would have been clobbered on the head by a length of metal drainpipe which clattered to a halt a few feet away.
I lay still for a moment staring at the pale yellow moon. I was still a little woozy from the drug, but the fall had certainly helped to sharpen the old brain. My body was aching in parts I didn’t know I had, but I was thankful I was breathing and still conscious.
Gingerly, I dragged myself to my feet and limped away in the direction of the street. I had escaped. I had survived. It was a bloody miracle.
I soon found a telephone box. I rang David Llewellyn at home. As usual he was irascible at being dragged from his slumbers, but I shut him up and with remarkable brevity I told him my story ending with the words, ‘So get here fast, with some men and bring a gun.’
Twenty-Six
The Darkness of Death Page 15
