by Joyce Porter
The entrance to the saloon bar loomed up before him and Dover had to steel every nerve in his body before he could bring himself to push open the door. His heart plummeted as he stepped over the threshold. His worst fears had been realized for the bar was empty except for a couple of rather flashy women, desultorily dripping cigarette ash into their vodkas and lime. They automatically gave Dover the once-over as he stood dithering in the doorway but they were hardened women of the world and knew a cheap skate when they saw one. They returned to discussing the various shortcomings of their husbands.
Dover closed the door behind him, taking as much time over it as he dared. A barmaid popped her head round the partition, saw that she had a new customer and came down the counter. She was quite a pleasant looking, motherly type of woman but she couldn’t have produced a more paralyzing effect on Dover if she’d been old Medusa herself.
He answered her raised eyebrows and half smile with an ingratiating leer.
The barmaid tried again. ‘Can I get you something, love?’
Dover shook his head with such violence that his jowls swung from side to side like pendulums gone beserk. ‘ Not at the moment,’ he croaked. ‘I’m – er – waiting for a friend.’
The barmaid had seen them come in all shapes and sizes and if this fat old scrounger thought he was going to make a convenience of her bar, he’d got another think coming. She was just about to explain the economics of the licensed victualler’s trade when the door opened again and she decided to hold her peace, for the moment.
Dover turned eagerly in the pious hope that his salvation had arrived just in the nick. Apparently it had. A very small, wiry man, no longer in the first flush of youth, came whippily into the bar.
‘Evening, Mr Dover!’ he cried, extending his hand of friendship as though he had not only known Dover all his life but liked him, too.
Dover was equally effusive, with relief. ‘Ah, good evening!’
‘Nasty night!’ commented the little man, rubbing his hands together.
‘Stinking!’ agreed Dover, removing his bowler hat and flinging back his overcoat. The saloon bar had suddenly become a warm and hospitable place.
The barmaid looked expectantly from one gentleman to the other. Both gentlemen studiously avoided catching her eye.
‘Don’t know what’s happened to the weather these days,’ said the little man, fixing his attention on a glass jar containing packets of potato crisps. ‘ It never used to be like this.’
Dover was busy reading the advertisement displayed round the rim of an ashtray. ‘It certainly didn’t,’ he agreed.
The barmaid got fed up. ‘Can I get you something?’ she asked.
The little man turned hopefully to Dover only to find that Dover was turning equally hopefully towards him. It was a situation that called for action.
The little man nodded reassuringly at the barmaid. ‘ Just a sec, ducks,’ he said and beckoned Dover down to the far end of the counter where the problem could be resolved in comparative privacy.
Dover inclined an apprehensive ear.
‘You,’ hissed the little man, ‘are supposed to buy the drinks!’
‘Me?’ Dover goggled, dismayed at such bluntness.
‘Of course! It’s always the scuffers what pay.’
‘Is it?’ Dover felt sick. ‘Are you sure?’
The little man bounced up and down with frustration. ‘ Sure I’m
sure! Look, don’t start coming the old soldier with me, squire! You
know the score!’
Dover nodded – though what the effort cost him no-one will
ever know – and the pair of them trooped back down the bar to
where the barmaid was still waiting.
Dover coughed a harsh, dry cough but the unaccustomed words
still stuck in his throat.
‘Well?’ demanded the barmaid who was beginning to doubt the
evidence of both her eyes and her ears.
Dover swallowed hard and turned to his companion. ‘What,’ he
rasped in a strangled voice, ‘is yours?’
Men have been awarded the Victoria Cross for less.
‘I’ll have a double scotch!’ said the little man quickly.
Dover clutched the counter. When his head had cleared he found
that the blasted woman was still waiting.
‘And the same for you, sir?’
Dover’s morale had taken a severe pounding but he could imagine
how much two large whiskies would cost. A bloody king’s ransom!
‘I’ll have a small bottle of ginger ale!’ he gasped.
The barmaid wasn’t going to argue. She got the drinks and
accepted a pound note from Dover’s trembling hand as though it
was the most natural thing in the world.
‘We’ll go and sit down over there,’ said the little man, taking
Dover firmly by the arm and preventing him from counting his
change for the third time.
Dover allowed himself to be steered into a corner alcove. He
still couldn’t believe that two lousy drinks had …
‘Cheers!’ said the little man who, in spite of a certain savoir
faire, clearly had his blind spots.
Dover pulled himself together and took a solemn vow to get even. ‘What’s your name?’ he demanded.
The little man’s eyes twinkled. ‘Call me Josh, squire!’
Glumly Dover watched the bubbles rise in his ginger ale. ‘Well, what have you got to tell me?’
‘Ah, now that depends on whether you’re prepared to make it worth my while, don’t it? I mean, I’m taking a risk, coming here and talking to you like this.’
Dover had few scruples at the best of times but, where Josh was concerned, he had none. ‘How much?’
The little man pursed his lips and tried to calculate what the market would stand. ‘Twenty nicker?’ he asked doubtfully.
‘You’re on!’ said Dover.
The little man relaxed and removed his muffler to reveal a very crumpled bow tie and a small battered metal badge in the lapel of his jacket. He was relieved that the tiresome preliminaries were now over. So relieved, in fact, and so eager to rat, that he failed to ask for any more surety for his twenty pounds than Dover’s unsupported word. ‘Ah,’ – he beamed happily – ‘ it’s a pleasure to do business with you, squire! You’re a man after my own heart, straight you are!’
Dover grimly kept his mouth shut and let the insult go unchallenged.
Little Josh took another sip at his whisky and smacked his lips appreciatively, a sound which pierced Dover to the heart. ‘Well, now,’ he began cheerfully, ‘I daresay you’ve been spending a fair bit of time these last couple of days trying to find out what sort of a joker Gary Marsh really was, eh? Asking his auntie and his girl friend and Lord Crouch and Uncle Tom Cobley and all, eh? Well, whatever yarns they spun you, forget ’em!’
Dover raised his eyebrows.
Josh chuckled. ‘Would you believe wine, women and song?’
Dover thought it over. ‘No.’
Josh’s chuckles became estatic. ‘I knew it! Soon as I laid eyes on you, I knew you weren’t as thick as you look, squire!’
Dover received the compliment with little pleasure. ‘ Get on with it!’ he warned.
‘Marsh was short of the ready,’ muttered Josh sulkily.
‘Who isn’t?’
‘Ah, but he didn’t just sit back and moan about it. He was a bright lad. He went out and did something about it.’
Dover frowned. ‘You a friend of Marsh?’ he asked.
‘Hell, no!’ Josh could see the gaping chasm opening in front of that question. ‘Don’t you try and pin anything on me, squire! I’ve only spoken a couple of words with him in my life.’
‘Then how come you know so much about him?’
‘Ah, well, that’s my job, isn’t it?’
‘Is it?’ said Dover.
J
osh grinned again and leaned forward so that his words should fall exclusively into Dover’s ears. Tm what you might call the trouble-shooter for Taffy O’Sullivan,’ he whispered proudly.
‘Taffy O’Sullivan?’
‘The bookie! Oh, come off it, squire! You’ll be telling me next you’ve never heard of him. Taffy O’Sullivan! The bookie! He’s the coming man in the betting shop world, believe you me. Three branches scattered throughout the country already. Give that boy another couple of years and hell have the betting scene tied up so tight they won’t know what’s hit ’ em.’
Dover sat down heavily on Josh’s euphoria. ‘He’s news to me. Here, are you telling me that Marsh was a betting man?’
‘He’d have had a wager on two bloody raindrops trickling down a windowpane.’
Dover absentmindedly abstracted a cigarette from the packet Josh had thoughtlessly deposited on the table while he searched for his matches. ‘First I’ve heard about it,’ he grumbled.
‘Well, of course it is, squire!’ said Josh eagerly as he gave Dover a light. ‘I told you, they don’t know nothing in Beltour. Mind you, Marsh did his level best to keep it all a dark secret. That auntie of his would have killed him if she’d known the half of what sonnie-boy was up to. Bloody unfair, really, because when you come to think about it, it was her what drove him to it.’
Dover thoughtfully blew a mouthful of smoke into Josh’s face. ‘How d’you mean?’
Josh rubbed his finger and thumb together in an expressive mime. ‘Money, squire! She’d got Marsh by the short hairs. He had to hand his wage packet over to her every week and she collared the bleeding lot, apart from a couple of quid or so she gave him back for pocket money. Well, what can you do with a couple of lousy quid, these days?’
‘Not much!’ said Dover, remembering with feeling what one round of drinks had cost him.
‘So, six days a week, you might say, Marsh was dead skint. And there was nothing he could do about it. He couldn’t hold out on auntie, see, because she was fly enough to check his pay-slip every time. Of course, what really got Marsh’s goat was that he was actually worth a packet. Auntie used to stash away his money in the bank for him, see, but she’d fixed it somehow so’s he couldn’t get his hot little hands on it without her say-so.’
‘So Marsh started betting to try and make some money?’
Josh nodded. ‘ Poor sucker! Mind you, it didn’t work. Well, it never does, does it? The only jokers who make money out of the gee-gees are the bleeding bookies.’
‘And that’s where you came in?’
Josh nodded again. ‘He was in to Taffy O’Sullivan for nearly forty quid. And that’s a lot of money in anybody’s book.’
Dover swirled the dregs of his ginger beer round in his glass. ‘So you put the frighteners on him?’
‘I did not!’ Josh was highly indignant. ‘Do I look like one of your strong arm mob, for God’s sake? Besides, that’s not Taffy O’Sullivan’s style – well, not until everything else has failed, it isn’t. No, I approached Marsh – a week before he cashed his chips in, it’d be – on a reasonable man-to-man basis and told him if he didn’t cough up toot sweet I’d have to go to his auntie for the cash. Worked better than a kick in the guts, that did. Christ, you should have seen his face!’
‘He paid up?’
Josh averted his eyes sheepishly. ‘Well, no, not actually.’
‘Not actually?’ snorted Dover. ‘What the hell’s that supposed to mean?’
‘He didn’t pay up at all,’ muttered Josh.
‘So?’
Josh’s tiny face hardened. ‘So Taffy O’Sullivan didn’t like it one bloody bit, did he? Blamed it all on me, the lousy bastard. Give me over the weekend to get the cash or he’d have me carved up when they did Marsh. I was at my bleeding wits’ end, I can tell you. I’d asked a few questions round about Miss Marsh and I reckoned it was a waste of time trying to put the screws on her. She’d have set the cops on me, soon as look at me. I had another go at Marsh, of course, but you can’t get blood out of a stone. All that welsher could suggest was that I waited till he got married because his auntie’d promised to let him look after his own bleeding money then. Jesus! I asked him if he couldn’t touch his girl friend’s family for a bob or two, but he didn’t like the sound of that. Thought the Tiffins might cut up rough if they found out they were going to have a gambler for a son-in-law.’ Josh sighed. ‘ Poor bugger! I could feel for him. I’ve been in the same fix myself a couple of times and I know what it’s like. Soon as you ask ’em for a bit of a helping hand, they start looking at you like you’re something that’s crawled out from under a bloody stone.’
Dover consulted the bar clock again and turned back to Josh with some weariness. ‘When did you speak to him?’
‘To Marsh? The Friday night before he was croaked on the Sunday. I finally caught up with him at the bus station in Claverhouse here. Ruined my bleeding weekend, it did,’ he added resentfully.
Dover scratched his head and then studied his fingernails with considerable interest.
‘Still,’ – Josh had a basically optimistic nature and never let things get him down for long – ‘ every cloud has a silver lining.’
Not in Dover’s experience it didn’t. He invited Josh to explain.
‘Well, Marsh went and got himself bumped off, didn’t he? Believe you me, squire, I started breathing again when I heard that bit of news.’
‘Oh?’
‘Well, it wiped the slate clean, didn’t it?’
Dover eyed Josh with intense dislike. ‘Did it?’
‘Of course it did!’ Little Josh seemed impressed in spite of himself. ‘Rule of the house with Taffy O’Sullivan! All outstanding debts cancelled if a client dies on him. Well, up to a couple of hundred, anyhow. Taffy O’Sullivan runs a very classy business, you know.’
There is no doubt – well, not much – that Dover would have followed up this interesting development if he hadn’t been fatally distracted by the way Josh was rattling his empty glass on the table top. It was a hint Dover himself had dropped too often not to know what it signified and he was infused with fury. If this little rat thought he was going to get another double whisky, he was about to be sadly disappointed. By the time Dover had got over his irritation at Josh’s presumption, he’d forgotten what they were talking about.
Josh once again pushed his glass into what he hoped was Dover’s line of vision. ‘So you’ll give O’Sullivan the works, will you?’
‘Might,’ said Dover, gloomily unhelpful.
‘Might?’ Josh was horrified. ‘Look, I’m telling you, squire – it’s that rat O’Sullivan you want. The lousy punk’s been chucking his weight around for years. It’s about time somebody put him through it for a change. Besides,’ – he glanced round nervously – ‘what’s going to happen to me? He’ll gut me! I’d have never come within a mile of you if I hadn’t thought you were going to fix him. Look, you’ve got to run him in, squire, and bloody quick.’
Dover scowled. ‘ You trying to teach me my job?’
‘’Course not, squire!’ Josh managed an ingratiating smile. ‘ I’m just trying to help you, aren’t I? But you can’t blame me for trying to save my own neck, can you? I’m telling you, you don’t know what a murdering bastard Taffy O’Sullivan is. He’ll stop at nothing and, if he thought for a moment I’d …’
‘Oh, shut up!’ said Dover.
Chapter Thirteen
MacGregor came back from the bar and placed a foaming tankard of best bitter in front of his lord and master.
Dover clutched it with both paws. ‘’ Strewth,’ he exclaimed, ‘ I reckon I’ve earned this!’
MacGregor slid into the seat on the opposite side of the table and hid his face as best he could in a glass of dry sherry. Everybody in the bar was staring at them – and with good reason. For five glorious minutes there had been more excitement in the saloon bar than those smoke-stained walls bad seen since the place opened.
The real fun and g
ames had begun when a bewildered Josh finally realized that Dover wasn’t going to pay over the promised twenty nicker. The little man took the disappointment badly. His voice grew louder and louder as the aspersions he began casting on Dover’s honour and ancestry got nastier and nastier. Indeed, so angry did he become that Dover, in spite of the marked difference in their respective fighting weights, began to fear physical violence.
‘You great fat double-crossing old welsher!’ screamed Josh, leaping to his feet and banging his little fists on the table. ‘You’re cheating me, that’s what you’re bloody well doing! Well,’ – he sucked in a steadying lungful of air – ‘you won’t get away with it! I’ll get even with you, you swindling old bugger, if it’s the last thing I do!’
‘Oh, shove off!’ urged Dover, shuffling awkwardly along his bench so as to keep the table between himself and Josh. ‘I’ll run you in for causing a disturbance, else,’ he threatened.
Josh got his second wind. ‘You’ll run me in?’ he repeated scornfully. ‘You and whose regiment, mate!’ He leaned forward across the table and thrust his tiny, flushed face to within an insulting couple of inches of Dover’s nose. ‘You lay so much as one finger on me, you over-blown baboon, and I’ll …’
Posterity, and the handful of fascinated gawpers in the saloon bar, never discovered what dire threat Josh had in mind because it was at this precise moment that MacGregor came mincing diffidently to the rescue. He had been hovering outside the door for some time, waiting with an anxious eye on the second hand of his watch. When Dover said half an hour, he occasionally meant half an hour.
‘Chuck him out!’ shouted Dover, growing more resolute when he saw that MacGregor had got a firm grip on Josh’s collar. ‘Get shut of him!’
Josh twisted round and spat his next threat as best he could into MacGregor’s face. ‘ I’ll have you for bleeding assault, sonnie! You want to watch it, you do! I’ve got witnesses!’
The hitherto avid spectators had other ideas, though. They turned away immediately and became deeply engrossed in their own affairs. Well, a bit of excitement was a bit of excitement, but one didn’t want to get involved, did one?
MacGregor, meanwhile, was busy propelling a dangling Josh towards the exit. ‘You just keep quiet!’ he advised sternly. ‘And don’t come round bothering Mr Dover again or it’ll be the worse for you.’
