Cash My Chips, Croupier

by Piers Marlowe

  ‘Four months or so.’

  ‘Did she wear an engagement ring?’

  Craig looked startled by the bluntness of the question. ‘Hell, of course she did. You think I’m lying?’

  ‘Not you necessarily.’

  ‘Who, then?’

  ‘The person responsible for her being in the boot of Micky Perran’s car.’

  The other man’s face knotted angrily. ‘That’s another thing.’ He stretched his neck as though his collar was suddenly too tight. ‘How do I know he wasn’t lying? Come to that, how do you know he wasn’t? I read the papers. Seems this Perran was moving around where the action was. I don’t trust that Fleet Street creep, and you okayed his going down tonight to Shoreham and boarding Sea Elf. That’s trespass at the least. It could be breaking and entering. I’ve got rights.’

  Bill Hazard stopped looking gloomy and grinned. Out of the corner of his eye Drury saw the changing expression on his assistant’s face.

  ‘Tell him, Bill,’ he said with a faked note of weariness. He was actually feeling more than usually alert — and distrustful.

  ‘The Super didn’t okay anything, Craig,’ Bill Hazard explained readily. ‘He said to Perran he couldn’t give him any further information tonight. He then said to Perran that Micky had better make contact fast if he went down to Shoreham and came upon anything interesting on the Sea Elf.’

  ‘He didn’t tell Perran to stay away from the boat,’ Craig protested. ‘If he had to tell him anything he should have told him to stay away.’

  ‘Why?’ asked Drury, leaning forward again. ‘What’s he likely to find on the boat?’

  ‘Not a damned thing. Like I told you, I’ve been waiting. I only came up because Harris rang me. I told you. He said he wanted to see me. Had something we ought to discuss.’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘He didn’t get around to explaining before he had that phone call which took him off in a damned hurry. But he expected me to wait. So it must have been urgent.’

  Drury nodded. ‘Must have been. What did he talk about before he was called out?’

  ‘Joanne. She left the flat last night and hasn’t been back. No one’s seen her, and the phone in her flat doesn’t answer. He told me the club downstairs is sealed by you, and said I don’t have to worry about Ebor. Ray Ebor’s the Red Ace manager.’

  ‘I know. Did Harris, while he was confiding this, mention that last night someone K.O.’d Ebor and locked him in his office?’

  ‘Hell, no. What was that in aid of?’

  ‘I suspect a hundred and forty thousand pounds,’ Drury said cynically.

  Craig gaped at him.

  ‘I don’t get it.’

  ‘That’s something we share, Gene. Ebor came to and phoned the police. The timing was damned close. There was time for Cuzak to be chilled and then Micky Perran was in the middle of everything with us being very interested. Only he hadn’t seen your sister, and you know something? I believe him. I also believe him when he said he saw her later. Folded up in the boot of his car. Micky isn’t a medical man. He didn’t think to check if she was dead. He assumed she was, and for my money it was a pretty good assumption.’

  When Drury stopped talking the other man pushed his hands over his face. His fingers were trembling. If it was an act it was convincing.

  Drury looked at Hazard. The big inspector shrugged and shook his head.

  ‘Anyone would think you were engaged to her, not Harris,’ he said.

  It wasn’t a specially bright remark, and it was certainly not uttered with any intention of securing a volatile reaction. But that was what happened.

  Gene Craig sprang to his feet, at the same time wrenching his open hands from his face, revealing the tears in his eyes. His mouth was twisted into an ugly shape, and his voice when it came after two audible attempts to control his disturbed breathing was choked into a huskiness that made it only barely audible. ‘God damn you,’ he said, spilling the words into silence, ‘she wasn’t my sister. That was a stall. Joanne was my wife, and we’d got this thing set up so we could leave with Sea Elf, only we wouldn’t be leaving for a South American port and a rake-off of fifty thousand. We planned to heist the hundred and forty grand plus the special cargo.’

  ‘And of course you knew what that was, didn’t you?’ Drury said quietly, as though he wasn’t a man guessing and hoping to God he was being lucky.

  ‘I didn’t know.’

  ‘An intelligent guess is almost as good as knowledge.’

  ‘Joanne wanted to make sure.’

  ‘Through Harris.’

  ‘Hell, yes. He and Cuzak were using her, weren’t they? But Cuzak was marked to be put out of the way.’

  ‘And whoever did that knew of course where the special cargo was hidden.’

  ‘Toni wasn’t the only one.’

  ‘Harris knew.’

  The man standing staring over the top of Drury’s head drew a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his eyes. His lips moved but no sound came from them.

  Drury spelled it out for him. ‘Harris was in charge of the warehouse which had the lorries and trucks. His own man was nightwatchman, a character named Alf Bradley. Was Bandelli ever at the warehouse?’

  ‘I don’t know. Straight up, I don’t.’

  ‘All right, now this. Any chance Harris knew you and your wife were conning him?’

  ‘You kidding?’ Craig’s surprise was genuine. ‘He didn’t know she was my wife. He fancied her and she strung him along and he pushed a ring on her finger and she let it stay because there was nothing else she could do if we didn’t want the whole bloody caper to fold up.’

  Craig pushed the crumpled handkerchief he gripped tightly at his left eye. But his mind wasn’t on what he was doing. He was working at a mental problem and not getting very far.

  ‘She must have tripped, and maybe that’s why he dragged me up from Sussex. That wasn’t difficult. I phoned him each day at quarter past eleven. It was routine. Used a telephone box in a back street in Shoreham.’

  ‘You think Harris set up Cuzak’s killing, had Ebor knocked out, then dumped your sister in Perran’s car?’

  Craig shivered. ‘He could have,’ he said in a whisper. ‘He just could have. But she wasn’t my sister. She was my wife.’

  ‘So you said,’ Drury nodded. ‘Now give me your intelligent guess about the special cargo.’

  For the first time since arriving in that Scotland Yard office Craig looked unsure of himself. He dragged the moist handkerchief across his mouth. The dark glasses had been pushed into the outside breast pocket of his coat when he covered his eyes with his hands. He now donned them again, and once more they destroyed all the character in a face that seemed older and mapped with more lines than even minutes before. That dark blank gaze remained turned towards Drury’s face.

  ‘If I don’t?’

  If it was a challenge, it came through as a weak one, made by a spirited adversary. There was no real defiance backing the words, which were merely a question with fearful intangibles shading its meaning.

  ‘Then I may not be able to keep you alive,’ Drury replied with gut-wrenching honesty that had the chill of truth dragged from a deep freeze.

  ‘Why not, for God’s sake?’ It was a plea wrung from a numbed brain and the words came out in a husky tremolo.

  Drury continued to be patient.

  ‘You’re not under arrest, Gene,’ he pointed out. ‘You’re helping the police — no more than that. But don’t make it less.’ Drury paused for the meaning to register. ‘And if you want us to help you, and I think you need all the help you can get right now, then stop trying to cover your damned bets. Tell me what I want to know. What I have to know, if it’s not going to be too late to stop a killer striking again.’

  Gene Craig slumped in his chair, his dejection folding around him like a voluminous cloak. But he still had to fight a battle with himself before he could get the words past his teeth.

  ‘All right,’ he mutte
red. ‘But I’m risking my neck.’

  ‘It’s about time,’ Drury snapped. ‘You risked your wife’s.’

  Craig jerked stiffly erect.

  ‘You bastard,’ he hissed softly, but just who was being labelled was not easy to decide. The label could have been pinned on someone not in the room.

  Drury made no comment. He waited, but made the fact register, so that Craig was constrained to continue talking.

  ‘My guess is the special cargo we were to take aboard Sea Elf was the proceeds of a robbery made quite a time ago.’

  ‘Talk plain,’ Drury retorted. ‘You mean the Blaise Manor haul. It figures. Go on.’

  Craig’s mouth sagged until he closed it abruptly.

  ‘What is there left to tell?’ he asked on a note of complaint that made no dent in Drury’s determination to check what the other could tell him.

  ‘Plenty,’ said the Yard man. ‘For instance, where is the stuff hidden at the present time?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Well, continue guessing. You’ve done all right so far.’

  There was a long pause while Craig sat wiping his mouth and twisting the soiled handkerchief in nerveless fingers. Drury cynically hoped to hell he was looking at a man who was on the point of final surrender.

  ‘Well, the stuff could be on a farm.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘In Sussex, I think,’ Craig tacked on to the first words.

  ‘Little Dipper Farm?’

  Drury made the fresh words sound as though they were being rolled towards the other man, like marbles rattling down a slope. Craig jerked upright and swung his blank stare first at Hazard, then back to Drury. The dark lenses of his outsize sunglasses were slightly tilted upwards. Light from the ceiling lamp washed over them like sunlight on blind windows.

  ‘You know. By Jesus, you know!’ Craig was shaken with a fresh mixture of blended fear and trepidation. He felt he had walked into a trap, but didn’t know how.

  Drury got up. The pussyfooting around was almost over. He jabbed a finger at Craig, wagged it at those dark lenses.

  ‘What I know is that Micky Perran found your wife in his car’s boot at that farm. Don’t you agree that was a great deal more than coincidence? Something like, say, bloody clever planning?’

  Craig’s mouth dropped open again. Drury gave him ample time to shut it and collect his wits. However, before the man could accomplish this the phone rang. Drury reached a hand across his desk and snatched up the receiver.

  In the next forty-five seconds he spoke only six monosyllables, not one of which clued in his listeners to what he was being told, though both Bill Hazard and the watchful man in dark glasses could tell, in their different ways, that Drury didn’t care for the information.

  He put down the receiver.

  ‘Bill,’ he said, without turning to look at his assistant. ‘Harris, for all the tearing hurry he was in, didn’t arrive at the Cross Counties Transport Company’s warehouse. What’s more, he hasn’t returned to Soho. Seems we have a new problem.’

  The big inspector shook his head, frowning. A gesture of deep puzzlement rather than of disagreement. The only responsive sound came from Craig. It resembled a choked-off cry of anguish.

  ‘He told me to stay,’ he muttered, mouthing the words.

  ‘Oh, yes, he wanted that all right,’ Drury told him. ‘Fifteen minutes after we left the Sackville a character Joe Apps called Pat turned up. He came looking for you, not Harris. You, Gene. Guess who sent him?’

  Craig seemed to crumple even more.

  ‘Pat Bronley?’

  ‘I’d say that’s the lad. I think his name’s Walter. At least, he used Walter Bronley when he rented a red mini for some interesting night drive recently. And his companion called him Pat. You know him?’

  ‘I know him all right.’

  ‘Good. This time you won’t be guessing. Tell me, Gene.’

  ‘He’s a chiv man. Never uses a shooter.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘What else is there to tell?’

  ‘Where he comes from, who he’s tied up to, what he does, where he hangs out. Don’t pretend you don’t know, Gene. Just don’t let your memory go back on you. I wouldn’t like that.’

  Gene Craig took off the dark sunglasses again. He stared across the room as though he were unaware of the other occupants and his vision was not restricted by four walls and a ceiling.

  He said in a low, sing-song voice, as though chanting words read on some mental screen, ‘He comes from one of the Dublin gangs after being chased across the Irish Sea. He’s tied up with some Cardiff outfit Harris was at one time taking over for Bandelli. What he does is what he’s told, but I’m no more sure about who gives him orders these days than I am where he hangs out. But — ’

  Craig stopped, staring straight ahead without altering his pose of concentration. Drury watched a tic nervously throbbing under the left eye. Had he been wearing the sunglasses the throbbing of his facial muscle would not have been observed.

  When Craig continued silent Drury said inquiringly, ‘But?’

  ‘But he hated Joanne. That was why I agreed she should be in the flat over the Red Ace. I didn’t want her circulating where Pat Bronley would see her. If he saw her he’d tell Harris and our scheme was blown.’

  ‘What could he tell Harris?’

  Craig stared at Drury as though the Yard superintendent was a stranger. He seemed to have difficulty this time in recovering his concentration. The tic under his left eye pounded like an enraged larva grub trying to break free from a confining cocoon.

  Bill Hazard seemed fascinated by such a display of nervous jitters.

  Craig said, ‘He could tell Harris that he wanted to marry Joanne, only she turned him down and married me.’

  The two Yard men exchanged understanding stares of fresh comprehension before Drury walked round his desk and said to Craig, ‘That isn’t the real trouble, is it?’

  Craig shook his head.

  ‘No, damn it. She was attracted to Harris. She could have told him the truth hoping to hold him. Because — oh, my God! — she was a real bitch. I was losing her, I knew. That was why I thought — if I could grab the loot — get away with her — I’d — we’d — ’

  But Gene Craig was through with explanations.

  ‘If she’s dead I don’t care. Don’t you understand? I don’t care!’

  The tears came washing back into his eyes and he slumped down in his chair.

  Bill Hazard turned his gaze away. He had no stomach for watching a man’s masculinity leaking away through his eyes. Frank Drury gave a sigh.

  ‘The problems don’t get less the more we talk. It’s time we shut up,’ he said. ‘So she could have been wrong about Harris. He could have learned the truth from her, had Bronley deal with her, and then waited to have him deal with you. Which is all right except for one detail. Who would have taken over Sea Elf?’

  Craig caught a shuddery breath, held it, then released it very slowly.

  ‘No trouble there. Pat Bronley used to run a craft for this Dublin gang.’

  Drury nodded thoughtfully. ‘I’d say we saved your neck tonight, but I don’t expect gratitude.’

  ‘Just as well. You won’t get it.’ Craig’s civility at that moment was as thin as foil and liable to split apart. He seemed under some fresh pressure stoking up inside. ‘I know the way you work. You’re making me set myself up as a target.’

  ‘You’ve been reading too many thrillers,’ Drury sneered. ‘You’ve got the social conscience of a flea. Turn out your pockets.’

  The sudden sharp command took the man addressed completely by surprise.

  ‘What the hell for?’

  ‘Because I say so.’

  ‘You — you perishing — ’

  ‘Don’t say it, Gene. Not in my own office. It could be tempting me too far. Just turn out your damned pockets and stop making me repeat myself. Give him a hand, Bill.’

  Bill Hazard moved forward
to be stopped by a sharp protest from the man with the tic still working overtime in his cheek.

  ‘Keep your damned hands off me, copper.’

  But when Gene Craig emptied his pockets and piled their contents on Drury’s desk the big inspector moved in and slapped the angry man’s pockets to make sure they were indeed empty.

  ‘He’s clean,’ he said, turning round.

  Drury didn’t reply. He had picked up something from the assortment of objects on the table. It was one of the articles removed from Craig’s left-hand jacket pocket, with a packet of cigarettes and a lighter.

  When Drury turned the marker chip over he saw it was of the same value as well as the same colour as the one he had found in Micky Perran’s bathroom.

  ‘Where did you pick up this little souvenir?’ he asked, turning to stare at Craig, who was in a state of sudden tremellose agitation, his hands shaking, his head quivering above his shoulders as though his neck muscles had ceased their normal supporting function.

  ‘I’ve never seen it before. I swear!’

  Yet sight of it had panicked the man who had produced it unknowingly.

  ‘You know what it is?’

  ‘Hell, yes. Those twenty-pound blue marker chips are what Bandelli used like some damned Mafia mark. Anyone collected one, that was marking him for action by Harris. You know what they used to call him? Bandelli’s enforcer.’ Craig gulped. ‘Someone must have slipped it in my pocket. It means — ’

  But he shied from putting the meaning into spoken words. They were too unnerving.

  ‘It means,’ Drury completed for him, ‘you were marked for some enforcement. Have you seen Bandelli since you arrived from Shoreham?’

  ‘Hell, no.’

  ‘Anything happen at Shoreham?’

  ‘No — well, there was this fellow who brought the case for Joanne.’

  ‘What case?’

  ‘It was a trunk, really. She hadn’t said anything to me about it. But it had this printed label for her, and I helped him aboard with it. Damned heavy, too. But that’s Joanne. She’s crazy about buying antiques. Junk most of it. But once she got her mind made up — ’

  ‘Never mind antiques. What was in the trunk?’

  ‘I didn’t look. How could I? It was locked.’