Cash My Chips, Croupier

by Piers Marlowe

  ‘So?’

  ‘So it checks out as Micky Perran’s.’

  She opened her mouth and the words came in a rush. ‘I remember. He’s the man who was outside the Red Ace Club last night where this Cuzak was stabbed in the ear and — ’

  She was stopped by a kiss.

  ‘I told you,’ he said gently as he removed his mouth. ‘Just don’t believe all you read. Me, I don’t even believe all I hear on the telephone. Now I’m in a hurry, but thank God I’ve one of your breakfasts inside me.’

  He grinned and left the kitchen.

  She picked up a dirty plate and ran a dishcloth over it. As she did so she shook her head.

  Why should he have grinned like that? After all, it wasn’t as though he didn’t like scrambled egg and bacon. It was his favourite breakfast, especially after a short night home. So why grin as though it was comic?

  And it wasn’t as though he was the sort of hard-boiled cop who found murder funny. He wasn’t like that at all, although it couldn’t be said murder had ever put him off his food. Certainly not his breakfasts.

  Shaking her head, she attacked another greasy plate with a sudsy cloth.

  An hour later Frank Drury and big Bill Hazard sat in the superintendent’s office checking the information phoned in by Inspector Dunmore from Sussex. They had a typed-up report that a Mrs. Bowden of Little Dippers Farm had made a statement about rescuing Micky Perran from a cowshed, where she had found him tied up and gagged and covered in hay.

  ‘Slip knots for God’s sake!’ said the large-framed inspector sitting on the edge of Drury’s flat-topped desk. Hazard sounded disgusted, like a man whose humour has drained away after he has discovered he has been made the unwitting victim of a prank in bad taste. ‘What’s he playing at? What’s he trying to put over?’

  Drury eased back in his chair and spoke without looking up to meet his assistant’s angry gaze.

  ‘If I knew that I’d feel a lot easier, Bill,’ the superintendent said quietly. ‘As it is I’m not sure he’s playing at anything. The playing could be done by someone else.’

  Bill Hazard stroked his broad face while his look grew arch to the point of being openly sardonic.

  ‘The girl,’ he said, ‘the body in the Ford’s boot. You don’t think she’s dead?’ Hazard stopped his stroking and held his chin as though he feared it might drop off. ‘A car with a locked boot. She could even have been suffocated.’

  Drury still didn’t look at the face above his head.

  ‘True, Bill,’ he nodded, ‘and of course that would leave her the body described by this farmer’s missus. But I’ve got no reason for assuming, without some extra evidence, that she’s been murdered.’.

  ‘Except it was Perran’s car and the man was Perran, and Perran was around when Toni Cuzak cashed his chips.’

  ‘There are such things as coincidences,’ said Drury patiently.

  ‘Some are more coincidental than others,’ growled Hazard, and was surprised when his superior laughed.

  ‘Have I said something funny?’ he asked.

  ‘Almost. But you said something damned perceptive, Bill. If you can see what I mean,’ Drury added drily.

  The inspector was frowning over the implication concealed in Drury’s last remark when the phone rang. He dropped his hand from his chin and picked up the instrument.

  Drury watched his blunt face register complete surprise.

  ‘Just a minute,’ Hazard said and clapped a hand over the mouthpiece before bending down towards the man in the swivel chair. ‘They say it’s Perran on the line and he wants to talk to you because he claims to have a complete answer why he shoved off in his car with the girl in the back. Only he’s running out of small change, so will we not waste time? Of all the bloody nerve!’

  Drury stood up and snatched the phone from Hazard, who slid off the end of the desk and retreated across the room.

  ‘Put him on,’ Drury told the operator, ‘and make sure he isn’t cut off.’

  There was a short interval and some connection clicking and then Perran’s recognisable voice said, ‘Is that you, Super?’

  ‘This is Drury. Now what’s it all about? But one word of warning first. Don’t get clever. I want facts — simple facts. Anything else I’m not interested in.’

  However, it wasn’t going to be all that cosy.

  ‘Look, I can’t talk on the phone. We must meet, Super. I’m in a jam.’

  ‘You mean that girl in your boot?’

  ‘She’s only part of it.’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘Well, I’ve lost the car.’

  ‘You’ve what?’ shouted Drury and the words bursting in bewildered surprise from his mouth caused Bill Hazard to spin around on his heels and frown across the room inquiringly.

  ‘Someone’s pinched it, and the body’s inside.’

  ‘She was dead, then?’

  ‘I’m not a doctor, but I’m convinced she was dead. I think murdered, in fact I’m pretty damned sure she was, but without the body I don’t see what the hell — ’

  ‘You’re talking too much about nothing,’ Drury rapped out. ‘Where are you?’

  ‘Still in Sussex. Don’t ask me where. I don’t want to say it. But meet me in two hours. O.K.?’

  ‘In the Smoke?’

  ‘No. There’s a village south of the Dorking-Reigate road. Newdigate. It’s got a pub called the Surrey Cricketers. There in two hours in the garden at the back. That all right?’

  ‘I’ll be there. God help you if you don’t make it.’

  ‘I’ll make it.’

  ‘Without a car?’

  But Micky Perran had squeezed all the concession he was likely to obtain from Frank Drury and suddenly decided he could be talking too much as Drury had suggested. He hung up.

  Drury replaced the phone.

  ‘You’re right, Bill. Perran has a bloody nerve. Well, it won’t be long before we know what else he has.’

  ‘Did he say why he shoved off while the Bowdens were ringing the police?’

  ‘That’s one of the things he still has to tell us. Meantime I suppose we’d better get the number of his car circulated.’

  ‘Will that be necessary if we’re meeting him?’

  ‘Very necessary. He claims someone’s pinched it and with it whatever was in the boot at the time.’ Drury picked up the typed reports and shook them into a neat pile. ‘Of course, Bill, that’s a claim our friend has to make good — in fact, very very good. Pinching Perran’s Ford with a girl’s body in the boot is one of those coincidences that are more coincidental than most I’m ready to accept.’

  Chapter 6

  The Surrey Cricketers was a pleasant country inn set back behind a screen of leafy oaks. It had mullioned windows and low gables and the swinging painted sign near the road was a sprightly portrayal of a batsman with a familiar chocolate-coloured cap stepping forward from his crease and about to take a mighty swipe at an invisible ball, rather in the manner of Surrey’s Bill Hitch of half a century ago.

  Inspector Hazard turned the dark police saloon he had driven from London into the inn’s car park under the shady oaks, and he and Frank Drury walked around to the side of the inn and passed through a gate in a tall well-clipped hedge to find themselves in a garden with large cages of bright-tinted budgerigars that chattered like magpies as they made rainbows of colour leaping from perch to perch.

  In front of the cages holding the noisy birds were a number of green tables with rustic seats arranged around them. At one of the tables, the solitary occupant of that leafy oasis, sat Micky Perran, a half-depleted pint of brown ale in front of him. He stared at the two Yard men as they crossed the garden to join him.

  ‘Nice timing,’ he said. ‘But there’s nothing else nice about this meeting, Super. Even these damned birds make me want to yell.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ said Drury, ‘that looks nice ale, Bill, collect a couple of glasses for us.’

  Hazard took
the hint to leave his superior for a few minutes alone with the man who had phoned him. Micky Perran wore the look of a man who had no reason to be content with his lot. He was unshaved and his clothes were wrinkled and he wore a look of tiredness that seemed ingrained in his flesh.

  When his inspector had walked back through the entrance to order some ale, Drury sat down opposite the journalist. His face was set and his gaze stern.

  ‘Straight up, Mick,’ he said. ‘How does this caper shape?’

  ‘I’ve been conned, but whoever did it conned themselves — I think,’ said Perran.

  ‘Don’t tell me what you think. What you know,’ Drury insisted.

  ‘All right, what I know.’

  Succinctly, in a few well-chosen words Perran related what had happened to him the previous night up to the time he was knocked cold in his own flat.

  At that point he stood up, peeled off his coat and rolled up his right shirt-sleeve and pointed to a clearly visible needle jab that covered a vein in his upper arm and had swollen.

  ‘It hurts still. Feel the bump,’ he invited.

  ‘I don’t need to,’ said Drury after a quick glance at the bared arm. ‘So you were given a real knockout dose.’

  ‘Then dumped in my own car, which was in my garage at Putney, and taken to this damned farm, tied up, my mouth taped, and covered with hay in a cowshed stall.’

  ‘The tying was done with slip-knots.’

  ‘So the farmer’s wife talked. Well, that figures. She told me. It was one of the reasons that made me scarper when I found the keys in the car. I didn’t want to stop and try explaining fancy stuff to a crowd of country coppers when I had no explanation.’

  ‘Have you one now?’

  ‘No.’ Perran shook his head. ‘It looks bad all through. I’ve been set up as a right patsy. I’ve been given such a damned clever treatment I suspect Bandelli.’

  ‘Give me a reason. A good one.’

  Perran nodded. ‘I can just about do that — I think,’ he said, pushing his chin out. ‘And don’t tell me not to think. It’s all I can do — until now. I’m dumping it all in your lap. Beginning with this, Super.’

  Perran reached down the side of his chair and brought up a bag of soft black leather. It had a lock, Drury could see, and the lock was broken.

  ‘The bag the girl produced and took along to your flat,’ said the Yard man.

  ‘I thought so. I found it in my car. But, like I said, we’d arrived at my flat in a red mini.’

  ‘Which is now in your garage at Putney. We’ve had that checked,’ Drury told him.

  Perran winced. ‘Someone’s been thinking of everything,’ he said. ‘If I wasn’t in this up to my neck and unable to wriggle without getting deeper down I’d admire the teamwork. Look.’

  He opened the black bag he had placed beside his beer.

  ‘Take a look inside.’

  ‘Open it for me, Micky.’

  Perran grinned sourly. ‘You don’t want to smudge fingerprints, copper. But I’m an obliging type. Look — no gloves.’

  He opened the bag, holding it by the broken lock. Drury stared inside. It was stuffed with old newspapers and a couple of phone directories.

  ‘You broke the lock?’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I somehow wanted to see the hundred and forty thousand pounds that had been left in my car. It’s what used to be called burning curiosity.’

  For the first time a grin twisted one side of Drury’s face.

  ‘I imagine that particular fire’s been quenched.’

  ‘Doused would be a better word.’

  There was no responsive grin on the face of the journalist.

  ‘All right,’ said the Yard superintendent, replacing his grin with another look of firm inquiry, ‘so someone wanted you picked up without a good story, with a bag that could have held money collected by Cuzak, only instead held junk, in your own car, and with the woman who drove you to your own flat in the boot of your car — dead.’

  ‘No.’

  Drury’s brows started to climb.

  ‘What have I said wrong, Micky?’ he asked softly.

  ‘The woman in the boot of my car wasn’t that one. She was someone who was a stranger to me. Yet the hell of it is, I think I know where she came from.’

  ‘Now,’ said Drury, drawing his breath, ‘that does begin to sound interesting.’

  As though the words were a cue to reappear, at that moment Bill Hazard came back into the garden carrying two pints of ale. He kept his gaze on the black bag as he approached. He put the glasses he carried on the table, drew up a rustic chair, and sat down. He felt for a cigarette, lit it, said, ‘Cheers!’ and lifted his glass.

  They all drank.

  Drury said, ‘Tell the inspector what you’ve just told me,’ and smiled at Perran as he produced his pipe and started to pack it. The journalist looked put out at the request, and then he too grinned.

  ‘You crafty devil,’ he said. ‘You want to see if, this time, I come up with something different.’

  Drury had his answer shaped. He felt he had the weight of Micky Perran nicely gauged.

  He said, ‘This time, for variety, you could include the bit you’ve omitted so far. The bit about your call on Bandelli. That’s where you found this woman, wasn’t it?’

  ‘You haven’t gone clairvoyant, have you?’ Perran asked, but the sarcasm scarcely registered. He was worried and showed it.

  Drury shook his head.

  ‘We don’t overlook the obvious kind of clues. You were given away before you left, Micky. A little matter of a book of club matches.’ Hazard coughed, but his superior took no notice and added, ‘You prefer your own lighter, I know. It was all a bit too obvious.’

  Micky Perran listened nonplussed, aware that while Drury managed to remain noncommittal in attitude, Hazard couldn’t conceal his own personal doubts. When Drury had finished giving the journalist as much as he thought advisable Perran drank the remains of his beer and said, ‘Very well. Now listen to this.’

  He went through it again from his arrival at Bandelli’s until his being uncovered in the cowshed by Mrs. Bowden.

  Hazard would have spoken, but Drury waved him to silence.

  ‘All right, now the woman in the boot of your car. This stranger who you think you know where she came from. Make it simple. First, her name.’

  Perran shook his head. ‘That I don’t know. But I saw her once at the Red Ace, I’m sure, talking to Ray Ebor.’

  ‘Why should you specially note that?’ Drury asked.

  ‘I didn’t specially note it, unless you include wondering if she had come from that flat over the club.’

  ‘You wondered that?’

  ‘I did. Because I hadn’t seen her in the gaming rooms, and suddenly there she was. I don’t know who used the flat. I guessed it was one of Bandelli’s boltholes. He’s reputed to have a dozen in different parts of London. But Ray Ebor should be able to tell you about her.’

  The two Yard men exchanged glances and the exchange wasn’t missed by Perran, who said, ‘I’ve only mentioned Ebor. What did I say that was so full of interest?’

  ‘We’re still waiting to hear it,’ Drury rejoindered. ‘How you came to lose your car — with the body in the boot.’

  Micky Perran made wet circles on the table top with the bottom of his empty glass. Suddenly he pushed the tumbler against the black leather bag and sat back, staring at the Yard superintendent.

  ‘I took off before that damned farmer could come and stop me. His wife was still screaming. I just drove blind, keeping to secondary roads and making a circle. I’d covered about ten miles before I told myself I was behaving like a damned fool.’

  Hazard sniffed. The sound could have meant anything that wasn’t particularly complimentary.

  Perran went on, ‘I headed back for Horsham. I had some idea of parking the car, catching a train to Victoria, seeing you, Super, and telling you the crazy way things had wo
rked out. Then I thought that was stupid. My car’s number would have been reported by the Bowdens, you might not be available, and I could land myself in a bigger mess just by trying. So I decided the train was out. I started back to my car from Horsham station. I’d parked it in a side street not far from the station itself. There’s a new estate, and I’d left the Ford at the kerb in one of the new streets. When I got back it was gone.’

  Perran paused, rubbed his neck. He didn’t look at Drury or Hazard. He stared at the black leather bag. Neither of the Yard men spoke.

  The journalist clasped his hands on the table, and from the whiteness of the knuckles he was exerting considerable pressure on them, as though he was inwardly fighting to retain a grip on his feelings. And perhaps his fears.

  He said, ‘I’d taken the bag with me when I walked to the station. If I’d caught a train I would have wanted it to hand over.’ It sounded thin, and he appeared to realise as much for he added, ‘Doesn’t come out very convincingly, does it?’

  ‘Just keep telling us,’ said Drury, blowing smoke from his pipe. ‘You haven’t fallen flat on your face yet.’

  It was the last word that jarred, something Drury had not overlooked when saying it.

  ‘But when I got back to where I’d left my car I realised something I’d been putting out of my mind or trying to. It sounds crazy just mentioning it this way, and anyway I’ve no proof, only my feelings. But from shortly after I left Little Dippers Farm I had a feeling of being followed. I didn’t actually discern a car keeping to my tail, but it was a sort of awareness that didn’t decrease. You know what I mean?’

  ‘I know what your words mean,’ Drury amended quietly.

  ‘You’re not very encouraging, Super.’

  ‘I don’t feel I have to be,’ Drury retorted bluntly. ‘If you hadn’t been so damned clever last night we could all have been saved this session. As it is, you’re just adding to my problems. Start solving a few of them and I’ll be very encouraging.’

  Hazard rose, rubbed out the butt of his cigarette, and stood standing by his chair, hands in his pockets. There was a deep frown on his face and he avoided catching Perran’s questing eye.

  ‘I was sure of it,’ Perran said tightly, using a minimum of words and managing to sound resentful, ‘when I found my car gone. So I phoned you. I took a train to Dorking and a bus to Newdigate. There was plenty of time.’