As they went round into Park Lane and took it a little slower, Shaw asked, “Where are we going?”
“Anywhere we can talk private, see. Stay in the car and just drive.” Jiddle stared ahead, his lean features hard in the passing lights. “I’m not fussy. You?”
“Not a bit!”
“I want this meeting to look as unarranged as possible, see. You never know who’s watching in this life.” He added, “I’ve got reasons. Don’t question ’em. That way, it suits us both best. Check?”
“Check,” said Shaw, smiling faintly. Jiddle knew his business best. Jiddle didn’t say anything further just yet, and Shaw let him take his time. Meanwhile, his mind went back a few years. This car was an expensive model, a lush job . . . so Jiddle had made out all right, despite his record—or more probably because of it. Trust Jiddle! It had started, so far as Shaw was concerned, during the war-time days afloat. Shaw, who had broken his ankle, had been put aboard the depot ship in Scapa when his destroyer had sailed on convoy-escort duty. At about the same time Jiddle, a ‘hostilities only’ rating, had been landed from a cruiser in which he’d been serving as a supply assistant, to be accommodated in cells, also aboard the depot ship, and to await court-martial on a cast-iron charge of flogging Government stores on a scale which had staggered the whole naval command. (Even in those days Jiddle hadn’t done things by halves.) Soon after his cruiser had entered Scapa she had received urgent orders to proceed to sea. That had had to take precedence even over evidence at courts-martial; written depositions were left behind, and so, of course, was Jiddle.
There had been a desperate shortage of available officers in the command at that time, and the semi-mobile Shaw, though a very junior officer indeed, had been stuck with the job of Accused’s Friend. In this capacity he’d had several long talks with Jiddle so as to prepare the defence, had at once realized that the man was a bom racketeer, but had done his best in an obviously hopeless case. Jiddle had seemed pretty grateful, considering how little Shaw had been able to help him, and he’d gone to three years imprisonment with a smile on his face and an impudent offer of a job in Civvy Street for Shaw once the War was over. Shaw had never set eyes on him since, had never even given him a thought, and he’d certainly never expected to meet him like this.
He reflected, as they slowed into Piccadilly and Hyde Park Corner, that Latymer had an odd sense of humour at times. . . .
Jiddle asked suddenly, “Come after that job, have you?”
So Jiddle remembered too! Shaw said, “Not exactly.”
“Whatever it is, let’s have it.” Jiddle engaged his gears, moving forward into the stream of traffic and turning down towards Knightsbridge.
Shaw asked lightly, “I suppose you’re still mixed up in all the rackets you can find?”
“Definitely. Only way to live, these days.”
“Well, I’ll have to take your word for that!”
“You can and welcome. Look now. I don’t know where the tip-off about you wanting to see me come from originally, and I’m not curious. Can’t be, not in my line. But I thought to meself: well, now, here’s a bloke who once did me a good turn and now he’s in a spot of trouble himself. I may look at things different from what you do, but that don’t stop me being grateful for favours received. Don’t stop me trying to repay a debt, see?”
“Thanks, Jiddle.”
“And I read the papers, same as anybody else. Saw your name, Commander Esmonde Shaw, who I knew when he wasn’t much more than a kid. Brought it all back straight off. So when I heard you wanted to see me, I was flippin’ surprised, I’ll admit, but I guessed it’d be about that little lot last night. Right?”
Shaw nodded. “Quite right, Jiddle. There’s . . . one or two things I’d like to clear up, seeing I’m likely to be called as a witness. Briefly, I’m trying to find the guard who was on that train. He’s a Nogolian—and his name is Patrick MacNamara.”
“Saw that in the evening papers too. Murder, eh... I can tell you right off, he’s not one of my tenants, not now. Maybe I’d better explain that before I go on.” He grinned. The lights outside Knightsbridge Barracks glinted on his face, swept flickering shadows through the car’s lush interior. “Ruddy landlord these days—that’s me, among other things.
I own the leaseholds of fourteen properties, big stuff. . . roughish stuff, slums you’d call ’em, round Notting Hill and Paddington, you know what I mean. But never a room empty, see? Know why? Strict colour-bar, that’s why—no whites need apply. That’s why your contact put you on to me, see. If anyone in London knows the niggers it’s me.” He chuckled. “Them niggers, strewth! They’ll pay the flippin’ earth for just a share of a room, and never ask for nothing to be done. No trouble at all—usually. Well, now, this MacNamara, he was a tenant of mine—until a few weeks back, as I’ve cause to remember. Anyway, he moved, somewhere down by the docks where it was cheaper.” Jiddle sniffed. “Mind, it’s no skin off my nose, if they don’t see the value of a good address. His flippin’ room was let before he’d moved out, and at a bigger rent—”
Shaw interrupted. “You say you had cause to remember him?”
“That’s right. He had a white girl-friend, for one thing, a real classy bit and a good-looker too. Tall brunette. She wasn’t exactly a tart, though I reckon ’er morals weren’t all that far above reproach, as they say.” He shook his head sadly. “I never did understand it, not really. Mind, he’s not the only one who’s managed to take up with a white girl, but there aren’t so many who do, and you remember ’em.” Jiddle hesitated, seemed about to say something else, but evidently thought better of it.
Shaw asked, “Do you know where he is now?”
Jiddle glanced round, “I’m not a flippin’ missing persons bureau. They don’t come round and confide in me either. Nor has the grapevine reached me yet. Dessay I might hear something in time, though.”
“This is rather urgent, Jiddle. Still—if you don’t know, you don’t.” Shaw looked sideways at the man, outlined again in the many-coloured neons as they went along Kensington High Street. “Or—would you remember something now if it was worth your while?”
Jiddle said quietly, “Now look, Mister Shaw. What I’ve told you is the straight truth, see? I don’t want your lolly and I’m not holding anything back. If I knew I’d tell you. But I don’t. I’ll give you a word of advice, all the same,” he added. “Keep your nose out of this. I don’t know, mind, but I reckon there could be something big in it. I know these niggers, see, better’n most people. And whatever it is, it isn’t for the likes of you. You’re still in the flippin’ Navy, aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Well, you won’t be much longer, not if you get mixed up in this. I’m just warning you.” He glanced at Shaw again.
“Not going to be accused of murdering that bloke yourself, are you?”
Shaw laughed. “I hope not! I don’t really think so, Jiddle. It’s not that—but, well, I’ve got a good enough reason for keeping my nose just where it is for a little longer. What makes you think there’s something big behind it, though?” Jiddle pursed his Ups. “Only this: That MacNamara went round with a queer sort of gang. . . that’s all, really. . . .”
“The tough mob?”
“You mean teddies, like in the boozer? No, not them. This was a gang who kept themselves to themselves, sort of, know what I mean? And they was niggers. Nice and polite on the surface, and most of ’em educated, but you had the feeling they was hiding something. Like a sort of club they were, used to meet in each other’s rooms and yammer away till all hours. Sort of nationalistic, I reckon, by what I heard. Africa for the Africans and all that, see?”
Shaw nodded. He saw only too well, saw that things were really starting to link up with Latymer’s ideas—or could be. He asked, “Can you be more specific, Jiddle? This is pretty important.”
Jiddle thought for a moment, then said, “Maybe I can. This is another reason why I remember MacNamara. He had a room looking out the b
ack, not far off some property on the next street, see, where there was white tenants. Well, I used to get a few complaints from there, put through the other landlord, who was a pal of mine. Seems MacNamara and his mates used to kick up a shindy, weird sort of chanting and that. These whites, they used to see goings-on through the window, too. People dressed up funny. Once some old cow swore blind she’d seen what she said was a bunch of monkey’s-tails or something, and one of the blacks crouching down in front of it, praying, she said. I reckon she must have used opera glasses, but there you are, take it or leave it. My pal didn’t believe her, said she was a proper nosey, interfering old bitch, anyhow.”
“What was your reaction, Jiddle?”
“To all that lark, eh? Well. . . I don’t know really. I dessay it was a bit of ju-ju. Talk to anyone that hasn’t been to Africa, and they’ll laugh at you. . . but I went there after the war for a while, engaged on a quiet bit of business on the West Coast, you follow? Diamonds. Very profitable. Lived with a black bit an’ all. Well—what I saw and heard I wouldn’t repeat, not in this country, not unless I wanted to be locked up in a loony bin.”
“You mean—voodoo?”
“I don’t really know what I do mean, and that’s the truth. Voodoo... well, I don’t say I believe in it, not really. But when you’ve spent some time out there and seen what does happen, you just don’t dare to disbelieve altogether, no matter how sceptical you are by nature. Take that black bit I told you of. She used to beat it back to her own people every now and again to attend some sort of tribal ceremony. Tried to rope me in, but I wasn’t having any. Well, she’d come back looking like she’d been on a month’s non-stop belt—honest—proper done in, and a sort of mad look in her eyes. She told me once the kind of thing they get up to, and it turned even my stummick. Sex and blood-lust, that’s what it is.” He was silent for a while, as he turned the Humber off to the left of the Hammersmith Road and ran along quiet, poorly lit streets of little houses. Then he gave a grim laugh and said, “I got sick once, the local ‘wog tummy,’ you know what I mean? Couldn’t sit still for two minutes together, got weaker and weaker. Well, she gives me some muck to drink, and I was too beat to worry what was in it till later on, though the taste nearly made me puke me guts up.” He shuddered at the recollection. “Then she tells me it was stuff called borfina. Know what that is, do you?”
“No.”
“It’s medicine, made from the organs of murdered people. You can laugh! I expected to die any minute after she told me that. Funny thing was, it cured me, which is more’n I can say for the stuff the quacks give me.” He added, “I didn’t come down with the last shower as well you know, Mister Shaw, but I dunno. . . you don’t believe, see, because reason tells you not to. But like I said, you don’t disbelieve either.”
“You keep an open mind?”
Jiddle nodded. “I reckon so, yes. I’ve kept an open mind, anyway. . . and I’d say that MacNamara could have been a bit of a ju-ju man, or thought he was.”
Shaw laughed. “Come off it, Jiddle. You don’t get witchdoctors in Notting Hill.”
‘How do you know?” Jiddle stared ahead, driving expertly. “Not that I say you do, mind. I don’t even say MacNamara was that, not necessarily. But I do say he was mixed up in funny goings-on and he isn’t really civilized, not even though he’s had an education.”
‘I dare say that’s true enough,” Shaw murmured. “Look, you couldn’t put me in touch with any of his friends, could you—that gang you spoke of?”
“No. They’re all split up and gone. The usual lark, I reckon, falling out among themselves. I tell you again and I tell you straight, I’m not a ruddy inquiry bureau. I don’t get to hear everything, not by a long chalk. I don’t know where any of ’em are now. Can’t even remember their names—if ever I knew ’em.”
“They weren’t actually your tenants?”
“I tell you I don’t know. I didn’t inquire all that closely. It was only those complaints that made me take any interest, and one nigger’s like another so long as he pays up.”
Again Shaw glanced sideways. Jiddle was looking slightly worried and anxious; Shaw had the feeling he was playing safe now, had suddenly decided he might already have said too much. Shaw knew the reputation of the area in which Jiddle worked; lives were at stake around those areas, when a man indulged in rackets that spelt big money to some one whose nose might be put out of joint by careless talk, and kid-glove methods weren’t customary. Nevertheless, Shaw decided to chance another question.
He asked casually, “That girl-friend you were talking about, Jiddle—the white one. Was she mixed up in any of this?” Jiddle shrugged indifferently. “Couldn’t say. Maybe, maybe not. I wouldn’t think she was, not to look at her. I believe she was real gone on him, and that’s all I do know.” He drove in silence for a while after that, swinging into the Fulham Road, then he said, “Tell you what. I said I wanted to help and I meant it, only I got to be careful. Why not have a word with the girl? Only never say I sent you. Right?”
Shaw said quietly, “That’s a promise, Jiddle. I can find a way of squaring that.”
“Mind, I don’t know her address or her name, come to that, but you’ll find her easy enough. She works in the King’s Road, Chelsea—a place called Helene’s. It’s a dress-shop, not a big place—you know the sort of thing I mean—where you get the class stuff, see? You’d get her there any day. Only remember what I said: I don’t come into this.”
They turned for home then, and within a few minutes they were heading towards Knightsbridge again. Jiddle said he would drop Shaw the moment he got either an absolutely clear road or one so busy that Shaw wouldn’t be noticed getting out, and then he would beat it fast. But as luck would have it the conditions didn’t suit Jiddle anywhere, and it was as they came past the Albert Memorial, intending to head south again into the quieter streets around Pimlico, that the other car ran up close and Jiddle spotted it at once in his driving-mirror.
He said tautly, “We’re being tailed. Hold tight.” A string of vicious oaths ripped out, and then he went silent and tight-faced; he accelerated and then a little later swung the wheel over hard, tyres screaming, into Sloane Street and then hard left at the first turning, then right again, disregarding all traffic regulations and losing the car behind. Half-way down the street he pulled up towards the kerb, but kept moving, and snapped, “Out, chum.”
“But—”
“You heard. Out. There’s an alley just there—get up it, get lost. It’s me they’re after, a thousand nicker to a penny. I know ’em. Don’t want you to get hurt.”
Shaw looked down as he felt the hard rim of a gun-muzzle dig into his side. He shrugged, pushed the door open, and got out. The moment his feet touched ground Jiddle leaned over and yanked the door shut and then accelerated. Dodging back into the alley which ran between two small, exclusive shops, Shaw watched from cover. Jiddle was nearly at the end of the street when the other car came round the corner on two wheels, tyres screaming, straightened, and hurtled down towards him. No one had seen Shaw, and he edged out when he heard the rattle of gunfire, saw Jiddle’s car slew round almost in its own length, run up on to the pavement, hit a lamp standard, then over once . . . twice . . . three times, and then burst into a roar of flames. As the other car swept past, it slowed, and a stream of bullets tore into the Humber.
Then the car accelerated again and was gone.
A police whistle shrilled, and almost at once the crowd gathered, Shaw, his face white, slid back into the shadows, went up the side alley. He couldn’t help poor Jiddle now; those men would have done an efficient job and he would be as dead as mutton, and there was far too much in the balance for Shaw to get mixed up in yet another murder. He would have to leave this to the police and keep his name right away from Jiddle’s—it was the only thing he could possibly do. This was another of the occasions on which Esmonde Shaw found himself detesting his job with every fibre of his being.
Sick at heart, Shaw walked qui
ckly into Sloane Street and picked up a taxi, wondering if Jiddle had been right about who those men were really after.
CHAPTER SIX
Next morning Shaw went carefully through the papers, and in the Late News he found what he was looking for.
A car had been fired at off Sloane Street and a body had been found, charred, in the wreckage. The body had not so far been identified as being definitely that of the owner of the car—in other words, Jiddle—and whoever had fired the shots had got clear away in a fast car, a stolen car which had later been found abandoned a little way beyond Eccleston Bridge. No arrest had been made.
And none would be, Shaw thought savagely. Those men would simply vanish.
After that, Shaw made a telephone-call to Albany Street, and when he got through he didn’t waste any time. He said, “Deb, it’s me. I want to see you urgently. Can you talk Eastern Petroleum into giving you the day off, d’you think?”
“Darling,” she said, “I was just on the point of leaving for the office. Is it really important?”
“Yes, very.”
There was the briefest of pauses and then, because Debonnair Delacroix knew Esmonde never said things lightly, she told him she would fix it. She said, “Leave it to me. I’ll ring Pauline right away.” Pauline was her secretary, a girl who was still a little overawed at working for a girl who’d once been in the Foreign Office. “Coming round?”
“Right away, if that’s all right.”
She said fondly, “Never too soon for me, darling, and you know it.” He rang off, let himself out of the flat into Gliddon Road, walked down to the Hammersmith Road, and found a taxi. He was soon ringing Debonnair’s bell at the Albany Street flatlet. He heard high heels clicking along the short passage that formed the hall, and then she’d let him in and he was taking her in his arms. As she kissed him, her hazel eyes were wary, anxiously searching his face. As they went together into the sitting-room she asked, “I suppose it’s still to do with the night before last?”
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