Banker's Draft

by Clive Mullis

  Frankie had shot back in to pick up the box and hurried after Rose and the cat. ‘You sure?’ he asked, when he caught them up. ‘Looks a bit risky to leave stuff around here.’

  ‘My domain,’ answered Fluffy. ‘If youse ever needs me again youse will always find me here, or if I’m not here, then the cat that is will be waiting just for me, if youse get my drift. Hur hur.’

  MacGillicudy waited for them with a fresh bunch of feelers when they returned, having now dismissed the night-watch. He stood in the front hall, leaning nonchalantly with his back against the wall.

  ‘Morning Frankie, Rose.’

  ‘And a good morning to you as well, Jethro,’ replied Frankie, and then got straight down to business. ‘Cornwallis wants all the paperwork taken away and put somewhere safe, we need to keep it in some sort of order so that we can go through it all later. Do you think your lot are capable of doing that?’

  ‘Got two wagons outside already waiting. Do you think I’m a complete idiot?’

  Frankie turned to Rose and smiled. ‘Do you think I should answer that?’

  Rose looked sympathetically at MacGillicudy, but replied to Frankie. ‘I think it would be safer if you didn’t. Aren’t you going to show me the scene of the crime?’

  ‘Body’s already gone to the morgue,’ interjected MacGillicudy. ‘And I’ve got someone looking for the relatives. This is Roland Goup’s home address. I’ve already been around there and the housekeeper hasn’t seen him. Dewdrop said the artist will drop the pictures off at your office later today, and I think Rose is right, Frankie, don’t answer.’

  Frankie grinned and patted the sergeant on the shoulder before pocketing the address. ‘I wouldn’t dream of it. C’mon, Rose, let’s take a look upstairs.’

  Thankfully, someone had cleaned the puke from the landing, but the office was just as he and Cornwallis had left it last night, with the only missing entity being the late Miss Knutt. The blood had dried nicely now, so Frankie didn’t worry too much about where he stepped. He went over to the desk and looked at the ledger, tapping his finger on the last entry, the Mr Morris Bezel. He showed Rose and then sauntered over to the filing cabinet. Cornwallis had already gone through it, so it wasn’t open on the letter “D”, instead, the letter “C” stared back at him. Frankie turned away, then a thought occurred to him. He stepped back, flicked the file and then gave a low whistle, looking at the name of Jocelyn Cornwallis. Rose came and stood next to him, and both were silent as they looked at the file.

  ‘What do you think it means?’ she asked quietly.

  ‘Means? It means our friend and employer knows a little bit more about this than he’s told us,’ replied Frankie, equally sotto voce. He felt betrayed and an overwhelming sense of disappointment washed over him. His boss knew Roland Goup, had probably sat in this very office talking finance with him, so why hadn’t he said anything?’

  ‘I don’t know about that,’ answered Rose sadly. ‘But I assume that the reference number leads to another file, so perhaps we should take a look.’

  ‘There’re hundreds of files in the back room so it’s probably in there,’ replied Frankie, his anger beginning to rise. ‘C’mon, let’s find out what the little bastard’s been up to.’

  Frankie snatched Cornwallis’ file out the cabinet and then marched next door with Rose hot on his tail. The great wall of filing cabinets looked daunting at first until Rose deciphered the reference number.

  ‘83, 7, 16. Looking at this I should think it means cabinet number 83, the rest should become apparent when we open it.’ She walked along until she came to the right cabinet and opened the door. Inside there appeared to be around a dozen boxes, each with a number on it. She withdrew box 7 and laid it on the table behind her.

  They hesitated now, neither of them wanting to open the box. Frankie’s initial burst of anger had subsided and he was scared of what they might find inside. Rose decided to take the initiative and untied the piece of string holding the lid on. She found file number 16 and slid it out, placing it on the table.

  ‘Okay, here we go.’ She opened it and began to read. Frankie, in a last semblance of respect for his boss, turned his head away. ‘How old would you say Jack is?’ she asked, after a few moments reading.

  ‘How old? About thirty four, I think, why?’

  ‘Well, if he is, then he had meetings with Roland Goup when he was about two years old. This is his father, you twonk.’

  Frankie whipped his head back around and stared at the file. ‘I knew that,’ he said eventually, ‘I just wanted to see if you were on the ball.’

  ‘Frankie,’ admonished Rose. ‘No, you didn’t; so don’t try that one on me. Look at the amount of money listed here.’

  ‘Shit,’ exclaimed Frankie, looking at the totals. ‘I’ve never seen so many noughts on the end of a number, and that’s just the amount filed for his tax; there must be oodles and oodles more that he hasn’t declared.’

  ‘And is Jack going to inherit the lot?’

  ‘He sure is. Gods, in that case he can give me a pay rise. ‘Ere, are you thinking that you might want to get to know him a little bit better, so to speak?’

  ‘Frankie,’ exclaimed Rose, ‘What a thing to say, I hardly know him.’

  He grinned and then winked. ‘Well, sorry. It just came into my head looking at all that money. I’ll tell you one thing though,’ and he tapped his finger on his chest. ‘For all those noughts, I’d bloody shag him!’

  Back downstairs and now in a much better mood, Frankie and Rose joined MacGillicudy, who patiently waited for the office to become available so he could shift all the paperwork down to the station. He figured that the only safe place would be in one of the spare cells, where at least he could keep it under lock and key. Frankie agreed. The only thing left to do here now was to go and bang on a few doors and see if he could shake out a few memories.

  The next couple of hours were a pretty fruitless exercise as nobody had seen anything untoward. Frankie became frustrated and it began to show. Rose had quickly picked up that there were various ways in which to question people and that Frankie’s methods were not necessarily conducive to getting results. After Frankie had pinned a smart-arse costermonger up against the wall by his throat, Rose had gently suggested that perhaps she should have a go instead.

  Rose found it interesting that she hadn’t found Frankie’s methods distasteful. People did find him intimidating, and he used that to his utmost advantage, but now knowing him a little, she realised that a lot of it was for show. True he could be menacing and she had no doubt that he wouldn’t flinch from ripping someone’s head off, should the need arise, but then again, neither would she.

  Her problems had begun quite early in life. The village of Dawling may have been a backwater but it had all the elements of a large town with all the undesirable features. The fact that she had matured early brought about a serious amount of unwanted attention. The young boys she could handle, but when some of the older men started taking an interest, then it became a lot more serious. There were a couple of very big reasons why, and she started to hide those reasons under as much cloth as she could. Apart from family, she felt safe with only one person, an old priest who lived in an old tumbledown barn just outside the village. She didn’t know where he came from, but as he had almond shaped eyes, she surmised that he came from somewhere out east. He would come into Dawling to her parent’s shop for supplies every few weeks and would always stop to talk to her. During one of these chats, her life took a new turn. Some older lads were trying to look big amongst their peers, so began to tease her as she talked to the priest; but the teasing changed as the lads goaded each other on, the comments became nasty, and the gestures that went with them left no doubt in the mind as to what they referred. The priest watched, listened and then finally stepped forward, warning them to stop. Being small and thin, the lads thought he posed no threat to them whatsoever, so they laughed at him and then began to push him around too. Rose pleaded with the lad
s to stop, but they just ignored her and carried on. However, within a few frantic seconds the five lads had changed their minds, the priest had floored every one of them in a lightening blur of intense activity.

  Rose had stood open-mouthed in astonishment as the priest’s arms and legs whirled about with a deadly grace; a kind of poetry in the movement, balanced and coordinated, every punch, every kick, timed to perfection. It was effortless, and she could have sworn that she saw sparks flying: the dance mesmerised her. She made a decision.

  When he’d finished he just turned to her, and with a gentle bow of his head, smiled shyly. Not a grin of victory, but a gentle smile, full of warmth and humility; and he wasn’t even out of breath.

  ‘Thank you,’ she had said, and he inclined his head in acknowledgement. ‘Could you teach me to do that?’ she had asked hopefully.

  He had taken a deep breath before replying, as though all the woes of the world were upon his shoulders. ‘There is much that I can teach you, should you be an able pupil. I can give you an inner peace; enlightenment; a sense of being; an affinity with the world; a feeling of contentment; the certainty of knowing.’

  ‘Bugger that,’ she had replied. ‘Couldn’t you just teach me how to kick their gonads into their necks?’

  For the next three years, she spent all her spare moments at the tumbledown barn with the priest. He taught her everything he had promised, and she felt a spiritual peace that she couldn’t explain. She felt at one with the world; she was seventeen, but had the mind and the wisdom of a person far far older. But, most importantly of all, he had taught her not only how to kick the lads’ gonads up into their necks, but to go way further and blast them out their ears.

  The priest had disappeared the day after he had told her that she had now learnt enough. She now had to make her way in the world, but armed with the skills he had taught her, he said that she would always know the right thing to do. And she had too. She stayed at Dawling for a few more years and despite a couple of instances where she had to utilise her skills, she earned a new respect. The men learnt to keep their distance, excepting, of course, the one or two that she decided were not too troublesome, and she found that everybody wanted to be her friend.

  At twenty three, she decided that the time had come to leave home. Her uncle had a pub in Gornstock and her family suggested that she should see life before life passed her by.

  Primrose Morant packed her bags and headed off to the big city.

  It may have said “Coffee Shop” on the outside of the establishment, but the inside told a different story. Little old ladies taking afternoon cream cakes and biscuits were now a thing of the past, they had been forced out, and in return, this coffee shop had become a drug dealers’ paradise. When they entered the establishment, Frankie had to look twice, as he thought all these types of places were consigned to the slums; to have something like this in the posh bit of the city was a shock to the system. Smoke rose thickly to the ceiling with the pungent aroma of coffee intermingling with the even more pungent aroma of undiluted gaseous expulsions. Rose took it all in her stride as they stood at the entrance and waited until the buzz of conversation died in the throats of the patrons. There were around thirty or so men and youths sat around the bare wooden tables, and they all looked up at the new arrivals with varying degrees of distrust and hostility.

  Frankie cleared his throat to speak, but Rose laid a hand on his sleeve and gave a brief shake of her head. ‘This is mine, don’t forget,’ she whispered into his ear.

  ‘Okay,’ he replied quietly, ‘but if it turns nasty then it’s going to be mine.’

  Rose nodded her agreement and then scanned the sea of faces again. ‘An incident across the road yesterday afternoon, at the accountant’s,’ she called out to everyone there, ‘resulted in the death of a cleaner; does anyone here know anything about it, who went in, who came out?’

  The silence following her question went on for a few seconds, then one or two began to chuckle, and before long, all of them were laughing, until a voice from the back bellowed across it all. ‘You is taking the piss little lady, come on, yer not really one o’them feelers are ya, darling? Yer one o’them strip-a-thingy’s, aren’t ya? Come on, get yer jugs out. I’m a’ready and a’waiting for ya.’

  The laughter increased to a level that threatened to raise the roof. Frankie’s face set as hard as stone as he fought with his temper. Rose gently touched his arm. ‘Mine, remember,’ she said into his ear to remind him.

  Rose smiled, and then flicked off the band that held her hair in a tail behind her head. She shook her head to let the tresses fall languorously around her shoulders before undoing a couple of buttons on her shirt. She slowly walked forward, emphasising a wiggle as she made her way through the cacophony of crudity the like of which made even Frankie wince. She eased her way to the back of the room where the speaker sat, holding court with three other men. A greasy looking specimen in his forties, he had a large gut pushed up hard against the table, stinking of stale sweat and halitosis. He wore a brown stained shirt with a loose neck tie and his flesh appeared ingrained with dirt. Rose sauntered up to him in a most suggestive manner, smiling all the while. She caressed his arm then eased behind him, and then rested her hand on his shoulder.

  ‘I told ya lads, she’s one o’them strip-a-thingy’s. Come on, who bought ‘er fer me?’

  The laughter continued as everyone waited for something to happen, and then Rose made sure something did. She gripped the man’s neck tie and swung it around, tightening the knot and deftly tying the ends to the back of the chair just as his hands came up to protect his throat. His face quickly turned the colour of beetroot and he spluttered from the lack of air. The coffee shop fell silent as they all watched the grease-ball frantically struggle for breath. One of the man’s friends jumped up from the table and Rose kicked out, sending him crashing to the floor, another got up, and Rose spun around with her arm and rendered him instantly unconscious, a third got up and Rose kicked him hard in the unmentionables; the man’s eyes bulged just for a moment before he collapsed, groaning in agony. Frankie, meanwhile, had grabbed another and proceeded to use his head as a punch-ball. The silence of the room then erupted in a cacophony of noise as the rest of the clientele scrambled for the door in a sudden mass exodus. Shortly, everyone had gone, all except for Frankie and Rose and their victims. Frankie continued to punch his man, with a distinct thunk-tap-thunk-tap-thunk-tap noise, the tap-tap-tap being the back of the head bouncing off the wall with every punch.

  ‘I can’t hear you,’ yelled Frankie, into the face.

  ‘Freddie the Weasel,’ spluttered the reply. ‘I saw Freddie the Weasel.’

  ‘That’s more like it, my friend. Now don’t you feel better for telling me that?’

  As Frankie let go, the informant slumped to the floor in an untidy heap. He turned away and grinned at Rose. ‘Now, that’s what I call a proper interrogation.’

  The only noise left now came from the back table where a gentle snoring emanated from the unconscious man, and a panicky whine came from the other, moaning that he couldn’t feel his leg. The grease-ball could only utter an increasingly demented ‘N, n, n, nnngh,’ as the stricture continued to bite into his neck.

  ‘You going to let him loose, Rose? Jeez, but you’re quick. I’ve never seen anyone move so fast. Jack is going to be chuffed to bits when he hears about this.’

  ‘He’s got about another half hour before he expires,’ she replied, quite calmly. ‘I think that maybe he would like the time to reflect on his manners, especially where women are concerned.’

  The door crashed open and Sergeant MacGillicudy strode in. He quickly took in the situation and grinned broadly. ‘Well, well, well, Frankie, what have we got here? I saw everybody running out, and I thought, hello, Frankie and Rose have just gone inside there.’ He took a quick look at Frankie’s punch-bag and gave a brief tut-tut, before moving over to Rose to take a look at her victims. ‘Oh, oh, oh. Look at who it is; I’ve
been looking for this one,’ he cried triumphantly. ‘As I live and breathe, it’s Samuel Snodgrass; but if I’m not mistaken, you might not be breathing for much longer.’

  ‘I’ve heard the name,’ responded Frankie, taking a renewed interest. ‘But I never had the pleasure. What’s he doing around these parts, Jethro?’

  ‘Been forced out, Frankie. Dealers like him are the scum of the city; they all scarpered when the feelers came down hard on the trade. He’s wanted as three kids died after buying some gear off him. He cut the good stuff with cleaning fluid and they burnt away from the inside out. Didn’t know he set up here, but I do now.’

  ‘Bonus time then, Jethro. You’ll have to speak nicely to Rose though, as she’s the one who’s sort of tied him up.’

  ‘He’s a lucky fella then… Sorry, Rose, force of habit,’ he added quickly.

  ‘Not to worry, Sergeant. I’ll leave him in your capable hands; I assume you want these others as well?’

  ‘Oh yes, It’s like having all my birthdays rolled into one.’

  The police wagons bounced along the road with Frankie and Rose sitting in the back, together with all the files and paperwork removed from Roland Goup’s office. Up ahead, another wagon had more paperwork, but also five prisoners trussed up like turkeys. They were both feeling pleased with the morning’s work, and Frankie eagerly anticipated having a word with Freddie the Weasel. The informer had informed them that Freddie had gone into the accountant’s, coming out a little while later. He waited for a time in the coffee shop, and then when Mr Goup went out, Freddie went back again.

  He knew Freddie from long ago, a nasty little sneak thief who came from the Brews, a slum area south of the river near the docks. If the poor people lived in the Warren, then those who lived in the Brews could only aspire to live in the Warren. It was the lowest of the low, the cesspit of Gornstock, a broken lawless society with a ramshackle collection of tenements and small cottages and deep dark alleys. Sometimes, even its inhabitants feared to tread its streets.