He turned on his heel and walked out, Horace close behind. They walked through another zone of silence in the gaming room and up onto the deck.
Geordie Armstrong scuttled along close behind and vanished over the gangway before any more misfortune could overtake him.
Before Joe had lumbered out of the deck house, the officers were climbing down into their launch.
‘Watch it, Joe – keep your nose clean,’ called up Leadbitter as Horace cast off. ‘With the form you’ve got, you can’t afford to be up before the beaks too often.’
The diesel roared again as Horace pulled away from the Mississippi. The sergeant took the radio handset from a cubby hole and called up Control in distant South Shields.
‘Tyne Pol Control, D for Dog here, D for Dog. Resuming patrol after being off the air at the Ouseburn … any messages?’
A crackled negative reassured Ernie. He sat hunched in his seat alongside the stolid Horace and wondered what the hell the performance on Jackie’s boat had really been about.
Chapter Two
Back on the Mississippi, Jackie Stott was tearing into his henchman, who ineffectually tried to defend himself.
‘’Ow the ’ell was I to know there was a bloody copper looking over me shoulder?’
‘I didn’t tell you to half-kill him in full view of all Newcastle, did I?’ snarled Jackie. ‘I should ’a left you to go to a mental home, where you belong, Joe, instead of trying to look after you! My good nature will be the death of me one day.’
Joe Blunt looked like a faithful spaniel who had just collected a kick in the ribs from its master. ‘I’m sorry, honest … but Geordie tried to cut up rough after you told me to chuck him ashore.’
‘You never miss a chance to thump Geordie, do you, Joe!’
Stott stubbed his cigarette out angrily and snatched a camel-hair coat from the back of the door.
As Joe hurried to help him into it, he said, ‘I’m going through to the Bigg Market – I’ve got to talk to Thor Hansen about this business of Geordie.’
The club owner marched to the door and made a last plea before he opened it.
‘Now for God’s sake, try to keep out of trouble for the rest of the flaming night – you know the police are dying to get the drop on me for something.’
He hurried through the gaming room, giving nods to many of the regular patrons as he went. Joe lumbered after him, muttering promises of good behaviour, until he vanished over the gangway.
A few minutes later, Stott reached the city centre in his white Mercedes, stopping at a now sleeping parking meter in the cobbled area of the Bigg Market.
The Rising Sun Club occupied two floors above a furniture shop. The premises were narrow but deep, squeezed in between a public house and a tiny lane which led to a court containing another pub and the back entrance of a large multiple store.
Jackie strode up to the narrow entrance of the club with a proprietary swagger and ran up the steep stairs easily – though starting to run to fat, he was still a very powerful man. Over-eating and over-drinking had not yet made too many inroads into his strength and virility.
At the top was another door into a small foyer, where two small rooms were partitioned off. The first cubicle did duty both as cloakroom and sentry box.
‘Evening, sir.’
A tall, thin man with a harelip jumped up from a stool behind the cloakroom counter. This was Herbert Lumley, an old soldier who acted as doorman, cloakroom attendant and chucker-out.
Jackie grunted at him. ‘Where’s Hansen, Herb?’
‘I believe the manager is upstairs, sir – I saw him with Miss Laura a few minutes past.’
The straight-backed old fellow was a stickler for propriety. Once a sergeant in the Northumberland Fusiliers, he seemed out of place in a nightclub, until one saw him ejecting a bunch of troublemakers with a calm efficiency that showed the strength of both his character and his muscles.
Jackie pushed through the inner doors to meet a blast of warm air and the throb of a four-piece group on the low stage.
The big room on the first floor was given over to drinking, cabaret and dancing, in that order of importance. It was after Laura Levine’s first singing spot of the evening, but too early for the strip show.
Turning left, Jackie went up a second flight of stairs to the top floor. Here, another glass door led into the casino, but alongside it was a plain door fitted with a Chubb lock. This was his own flat, which shared the second floor with the gaming part of his establishment. There was even a secret peephole from his lounge into the casino, so that he could keep a personal eye on things.
As Stott let himself in, he heard a woman’s voice from the lounge.
He pushed open the lounge door and nodded at the two occupants. They were sitting as far apart as the room would allow, but only since his key had been heard in the lock.
‘Hi, Laura … hello, Thor. Let’s have a drink.’
He slumped down on to the settee and his big hand dropped possessively onto the woman’s thigh. He squeezed and she smiled mechanically at him.
‘How’s the Mississippi … much of a crowd tonight?’ Thor Hansen’s slight Danish accent contrasted with Jackie’s local one.
‘Crowd’s fair enough – but that blasted Geordie Armstrong is screwing it up for me!’
He half-turned and shot a queer look at Laura Levine, as if expecting some reaction from her. She looked back blankly at him from under her false black lashes and he buried his nose in the glass that Hansen handed him.
Thor brought another drink for the woman, then sat opposite with his own. ‘I told you he needed watching … better have him back up here, where we can keep an eye on him.’
Jackie snorted. ‘You may be needing a bloody magnifying glass to keep an eye on him, one of these days.’
‘What d’you mean?’ snapped Laura.
‘I mean that I’ll be tearing Geordie into little bits if I definitely catch him out.’ Again he gave her a suspicious look. Thor’s calculating eyes watched them both.
‘What’s Geordie been up to, then?’ She spoke nonchalantly, crossing her legs to escape Jackie’s caress.
He scowled at her. ‘Don’t you know?’
She ignored him and the Dane covered up the awkward moment with a question. ‘Joe has been making trouble, I guess?’
Stott threw down his whisky in one gulp and held out his glass for another. ‘Aye, Joe Blunt hates his guts all right. Tried to kick him into the Tyne tonight – in full view of the coppers, silly oaf!’
Thor Hansen’s blond eyebrows rose. He was a typical handsome Scandinavian; tall, slim, with a longish face and crisp fair hair.
‘Geordie’s been fiddling the wheel somehow,’ went on Stott, ‘I can’t figure out how he’s doing it and I can’t catch him at it, blast him!’
‘Are his takings down every night?’
‘Just a fraction – he’s not fool enough to try to twist the house much, but he’s soaking the mugs somehow, I’ll swear. I know the signs – a coupla new suits, bought himself a nearly new Cortina. Where the hell’s he gettin’ it, if he ain’t twisting the table?’
Laura Levine stretched herself back against the corner of the settee and curled her feet under her.
‘Perhaps he’s knocked over a bank or a wages van,’ she said languidly.
‘Very bloody funny!’ snapped Jackie. ‘He couldn’t knock over a blind beggar and steal his tin! Playing the wheel is all he’s got talent for – that and chasing birds,’ he added ominously. He glared at Laura again. ‘And another thing – has he been hanging around here, while I’ve been away in Middlesbrough?’
Thor’s face went blank and he stared at the opposite wall, but Laura came to life with a rush.
‘What the hell are you getting at, Jackie?’ she snapped furiously. ‘Ever since you came in, you’ve been insinuating something … are you going punchy, the same way as Joe Blunt?’
‘Look here, you bitch …’
‘Don’t you �
�bitch” me, Jackie Stott!’ she spat. ‘If you’re trying to make out that Geordie Armstrong and me are having it off, you must be off your bloody rocker. You’re bad enough, but him!’
‘Look, lay off or I’ll fetch you one around the ear!’ yelled the furious Jackie.
By way of reply, Laura pulled off one of her shoes and tried to hit him in the face with the stiletto heel. He parried it easily and slapped her face with a force that almost unhinged her head.
Thor sat with a pale, composed face while the other two fought, each pouring a steady stream of abuse at the other. The Dane was used to such scenes and, much as he disliked them, he had the sense to wait his opportunity without interfering.
This one was shorter than usual. The girl pulled away and stood barefooted, panting and enraged. She tried to straighten her dress and pushed her genuinely red hair back from her face.
‘You bastard – you’ve done that once too often,’ she gasped. ‘Look at the damned mess you’ve made of me and I’ve got my second number in a couple of minutes!’
Jackie grinned up at her from the settee, his bad humour gone. He had obviously enjoyed the fight, getting some mildly sadistic pleasure from it. ‘That’s my girl – red hair and green eyes! Go and get yourself a new dress tomorrow and charge it to me.’
‘Stuff your dress!’ she flared, pulling on her shoes. ‘I’m sleeping at my place tonight and don’t you damn well try to come around there.’
She stalked to the door leading to the bathroom and slammed it behind her.
Jackie leered at Thor Hansen. ‘I like a bit of spirit. I tell you, son, she’s tops at everything, not only singing … if I wasn’t already married, I wouldn’t mind making it legal one of these days.’
As his wife had deserted him ten years ago, this wouldn’t have been much of a problem to Jackie, but he had never bothered. Until recently, Laura either spent her nights at the flat in the Rising Sun or else Jackie went to the flat he had provided her with in Gosforth, just outside the city.
Thor had his own ideas about Laura and her accomplishments, but again he was wise enough to keep them well to himself. ‘What about this Geordie Armstrong business?’ he asked now.
He was a businessman through and through – anything that touched the profits of the clubs might eventually touch him, if things went as he planned. He was officially Jackie’s manager at the Rising Sun, but Stott leaned heavily on his know-how and advice for all his legitimate businesses. As well as this place in the Bigg Market, he had the Mississippi, a couple of betting shops in outlying towns and, on Hansen’s initiative, was just about to open a new and bigger nightclub at Middlesbrough.
Jackie tore his mind from thoughts of Laura’s body. ‘I’ll get Geordie myself – this time, I don’t need your help. He came from the gutter and that’s where he’ll damn well end up. I’d have given him the push tonight, only you know as well as I do that good croupiers are hard to come by – and Geordie is a good one, when he plays it straight.’
Hansen considered this for a moment. ‘If his pay-in is all right, why are you so dead against him? He can’t be cheating us, if he’s getting the normal rake-off for the house.’
Jackie’s bad humour began to gather again. ‘I just got a hunch! He may not be fiddling us direct, but somehow he’s skinning the mugs to his own advantage.’ He prodded the air with a finger the size of a sausage. ‘If we get, say sixty per cent of the cash the mugs bring in with them, then they share the other forty between them … that’s OK. But if another ten per cent is being switched into Geordie’s pocket, that’s bad business for us.’
‘But to do that, he’d have to have a partner hidden amongst the patrons.’ Hansen was too proper to use the word ‘mugs’.
Jackie nodded. ‘S’right! … and when I catch him, I’ll wrap his face around these.’ He held up a handful of great knuckles. ‘And the other hand will be for Geordie. If he’s got any sense, he’ll drop any funny business right now.’ He took another mouthful of neat whiskey. ‘But that’s not all – I think the little swine is after my Laura.’
Thor’s deadpan expression stayed put, while he faced Jackie, but as he turned to put down his glass, a fleeting smile crossed his face.
‘I was in her flat a week last Friday,’ went on the club owner. ‘There was an ashtray half full of fag ends. You know she never smokes, says it’s bad for her voice.’
Thor kept his voice level, but unconsciously stubbed out his own half-finished cigarette.
‘Nothing in that, for heaven’s sake.’
Stott prowled around the room.
‘Suppose not – but it never happened before. For a couple of months past, she’s been coming the iceberg with me. If we got together a couple of nights a week, I was lucky. This last fortnight, I haven’t had so much as a tickle … she’s always got some tale about being tired or ill or going out or summat!’
‘What’s this got to do with Geordie Armstrong?’
Jackie’s face blackened like a thundercloud.
‘Joe Blunt says he’s heard tales around the pubs … Geordie hinting – boasting like – that he’s shacked up with some fabulous bird. In the boozer last night Joe heard him tell someone that he’d be surprised if I knew who it was.’
Thor shrugged. ‘You can’t believe a word Joe says – apart from being punch-drunk, he’d lie his head off to get Geordie into trouble.’
Stott shook his head angrily.
‘I still got a hunch, you know.’ His accent thickened as he got excited and Hansen was hard pressed to understand him at times. ‘Laura’s been my bird over two years now. She hadn’t a bean when I gave her this singing job – now she’s got a car, her own flat, as much cash as she wants. Perhaps I aren’t Richard Burton and Gregory Peck rolled into one, but she flaming well owes me something.’
A moment later, the woman in question appeared again. She had removed the signs of battle and only a faint flush on one cheek showed where her master had hit her.
Jackie looked at her and thought that she was the sexiest dish he had ever seen. Hansen looked at her and thought she was the most desirable woman he had ever met. Four years younger than his own thirty-two, she was beautiful, though a certain hardness spoilt her face. Born plain Edna Dodds in North Shields, she had started life as a barmaid, but her face, figure and disposition had soon brought her into the nightlife of the North. Jackie had met her in a nightclub in Doncaster and soon established her in the Rising Sun as the resident singer, a job about which she had no illusions, as sharing Jackie’s bed was as much a part of the contract as murmuring throatily into a microphone.
She stalked past him now, on her way to do her second number of the evening. Laura was no great singer, but her slinky appearance and sexy delivery went down well with the virtually all-male audience.
‘Ring for a taxi for me, Thor, please. About fifteen minutes.’
‘I’ll take you home, hinny.’
Jackie seemed set to make it up.
‘Like hell you will – I want to sleep tonight. We’re all going down to Middlesbrough tomorrow – remember?’
‘Not till the afternoon – come on, sweetheart.’
‘Fifteen minutes, Thor.’
She went out and slammed the door violently.
Jackie dropped into a chair and glowered at the Dane. ‘See what I mean – if it’s that bloody Geordie Armstrong, I’ll kill him!’
Chapter Three
Alec Bolam threw his hat into the ‘Out’ tray and sank morosely into his chair, staring with distaste at the full ‘In’ tray. Thank God, it can stay full until the morning, he thought. It was Sunday and theoretically he was off duty – as much as any detective chief inspector could ever be off duty, he told himself sourly.
He was only in the office as an excuse to get out of the house. Last night, he’d had another flaming row with Vera. She had the sulks this morning and, rather than risk another flare-up, he had taken the car and come in to Headquarters. A couple of halves at the Corner House la
ter on and get back by half past one for lunch – perhaps his wife might be talking to him by then. And maybe Betty, the cause of the trouble as usual, might have got up from bed.
Angrily, he jumped up and walked to the window. What the hell is the matter with me, he wondered?
He knew well enough, but didn’t want to admit it. He’d had a lifetime of authority – as a senior police officer, as a sergeant in the Military Police … he had always been the boss, the masterful one.
Now he was up against a brick wall – a feminine, solid, unbeatable wall. His wife sided with Betty and he sensed that she was using the situation to get her own back for years of having to give in to him. Home, instead of being a place to run to, had become a good place to get out of – that was why he was hanging about Headquarters now.
He turned back to the room with a sigh. Altogether too tidy, he thought, staring around. The few months of occupation hadn’t yet given it that patina of homeliness – the doors were still unscratched and the walls still perfectly clean. This new headquarters was all very grand and not even jerry-built. But it wasn’t the same as his worn cubby hole down in the old Newcastle City HQ, which now housed ‘A’ Division and the Forensic Science laboratory. Since the amalgamation of the police forces into one huge organization surrounding the Tyne, everything had been turned upside-down. This in itself had done nothing to help his unsettled frame of mind.
Bolam dropped back into his chair and made an effort to feel at ease. Even his job didn’t help him settle down. He had been taken off regular CID work and given odd titbits that needed special attention. Fine from the promotion point of view, he supposed, but not the same as regular work, out with the old team. At present, he was helping on a long-term fraud investigation that had dragged on for over a year and also had this nightclub racket as his special pigeon.
With the present state of affairs at home, the very mention of the word ‘nightclub’ was enough to make him grind his teeth and yet here he was, stuck on a job which reminded him of them all day and often half the night.
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