Bolam, seated at the back of the court, could hardly hear a word the man said, but he managed to gather that this was Geordie’s father. His evidence was entirely negative. His son had not set foot across the family threshold in Jarrow for three years, having been ‘a right disappointment’ as he had done time in prison.
Dr Ellison puffed up the stairs at the last moment, in time to gabble the oath and tell the coroner that the cause of death was multiple injuries including a broken neck and fractured ribs. The deceased had been dead between three days and a week.
The reporters wrote frenziedly at this, but this was all they were going to get from the doctor, who scribbled his signature on the deposition and vanished as quickly as he had come.
Bolam was the only other witness. He took the oath in a hard, even voice.
‘You are Alec Heath Bolam, Detective Chief Inspector in the Tyneside Constabulary?’
‘I am, sir.’
‘And you can identify the body as that of George William Armstrong?’
‘Not directly, sir, though I knew him during life and the body shows no features inconsistent with that identity, though it has suffered severe post-mortem injuries. However, I am in possession of a report from the North-East Criminal Records Office which establishes beyond doubt that the deceased was in fact George Armstrong.’
Bolam handed over the flimsy message form for the coroner to study.
He handed it back. ‘Er – that seems good enough. I understand that certain investigations are taking place?’
‘Yes, sir – no one has yet been charged.’
There was a slight emphasis on the ‘yet’ which sent the reporters’ pens skidding across their notebooks.
‘In that case, I shall adjourn the inquest for six weeks under Section Twenty of the Coroner’s Amendment Act. If I hear from another court that proceedings are being taken, this enquiry will, of course, not be resumed.’
The business was over and a few minutes later Alec Bolam was back in Headquarters. In the afternoon, MacDonald called another conference.
‘Are we sure we’ve got nothing to pull Stott down with?’ he began. His wrinkled, long face radiated annoyance over the group of detectives.
Bolam rocked his head slowly from side to side. ‘Not a thing – that statement he made this morning was a complete farce. Denied setting eyes on Geordie after the Saturday night – denied sending any telegram – in fact it was a waste of ten minutes, that interview – Abel Lupin put Jackie up to it – sat there and blocked half my questions, damn him!’
MacDonald scowled. ‘And no hope of a voluntary statement from Joe Blunt, either?’
Bolam shook his head. ‘Lupin’s told him to keep his face shut too. If we could prove even one of our suspicions, it would be a start, but at present the DPP2 would laugh at us if we sent him a file on it – and Lupin would jump on us for malicious prosecution and unlawful arrest.’
MacDonald nodded wearily. ‘I know, you’re right. But we know the bugger did it – how are we going to nail him!’
Potts, the expert police lawyer, chipped in. ‘What about the lab? With all this circumstantial stuff, we need some real physical evidence from somewhere if we’re to get this one off the ground.’
Alec grimaced. ‘We’ve been over the Rising Sun with a toothcomb today – not a thing. Jackie was grinning all over his mug – he knows there’s nothing there to find.’
‘And the Mississippi is under the bloody river,’ moaned MacDonald. ‘No chance they did it to destroy any evidence, I suppose?’
Bolam threw up his hands. ‘God knows … I doubt it; Jackie’s the wrong sort to destroy his own property. In spite of being a fly bastard, he’s got a streak of arrogance that might pay off for us in the end – thinks he’s God’s right-hand man. I can’t see him scuttling his own boat.’
‘Papagos and company are behind that, no doubt,’ observed Potts. ‘So that line’s dead – we’ll never get a smell of whoever did it. But what about Armstrong’s movements that Sunday night?’ he demanded.
Jimmy Grainger spoke up. ‘We traced him finally to the Berwick Arms on the Quayside. He was in the bar there about ten o’clock – no one saw him after that.’
‘The Berwick … not far from the boat,’ mused MacDonald.
‘But useless as evidence,’ reminded Bolam. ‘We can’t tie in Jackie or Joe Blunt with the boat that night.’
‘Where do they say they were?’ demanded the Chief Superintendent.
‘They don’t – not a word from either of ’em since Lupin shut them up,’ snapped Bolam.
MacDonald scratched his thin grey hair.
‘Where do we go from here?’
There was a heavy silence for a moment.
‘What about that telegram?’ he asked again.
Jimmy spoke up once more. ‘No luck, sir. The Met chaps showed pictures of Joe and Jackie from Records to the Post Office staff, but no one recognized them. Not surprising, I suppose.’
‘So that line is dead,’ grunted the detective chief.
Alec cleared his throat. ‘We had a word or two with the “Creeper” – this Archie Lee that Geordie was hanging around with. He was as scared as hell – I couldn’t gather who he was frightened of; it wasn’t us, though.’
‘I thought he’d vanished,’ said Potts.
‘He did – as far as Blaydon … went to ground in his sister’s place.
‘Get anything out of him?’ asked MacDonald.
‘Only that he and Geordie were working some little fiddle at Jackie’s expense. He was playing the tables with Armstrong as croupier, and Armstrong slipped him a few extra chips or moved him on to a winning square when nobody was looking.’
‘So that’s why Jackie gave him the push!’ summarized MacDonald.
‘And probably why Joe was giving him a belting on Saturday night – but I can’t see him getting killed for it,’ objected Bolam.
The chief superintendent pursed his lips. ‘Never can tell. Though it does seem a bit drastic. And why belt him on Saturday and then wait until Sunday to kill him?’
There was another heavy silence.
‘And the lab have turned up nothing?’ persisted Potts.
Bolam took a deep breath. ‘Very little. There was a small amount of alcohol in the body, no more than from a steady night’s boozing. The wire around the legs was a common type of galvanized fencing wire. Made in Britain, according to the lab people. They’re comparing it with a few samples from different manufacturers, but they need a lot more time before they could have a chance to pin it down to one factory. Even if they do, there’s a hell of a lot of fencing wire used all over the North, so I don’t see that bringing it much nearer Jackie Stott.’
‘The dredger didn’t fetch up anything more?’ asked MacDonald.
‘No – they scratched around for half a day, but no joy.’ This time it was Potts doing the answering. ‘I asked about the possibility of using police frogmen, but they say there’s ten feet of mud on the bottom, it would be a waste of time.’
MacDonald succumbed to temptation and hauled his old pipe from his pocket.
‘Nothing in Jackie’s place or in the back of his car?’
‘Not a speck of anything to help us – the car looked too clean to be true, but that’s neither here nor there.’
‘Any tie-up with this other business – Papagos and crew – I wonder?’
Bolam sighed. ‘God knows, sir … I can’t see how. Geordie was dead long before the Greek turned up in Newcastle.’
After a few more minutes of fruitless talk, they broke up. MacDonald had agreed to allot more men to the routine drag of asking around all the public houses and places on the Quayside, to see if they could pin Geordie’s movements down more accurately. They were also very interested in the whereabouts of the two men from the Rising Sun on that Sunday night and the enquiries ‘on the knocker’ were designed to try to get a lead on that aspect as well. All motor patrols were to be questioned in case Stott’s conspicuous Mercedes had been
seen anywhere that night – in fact, all the tedious routine of a murder investigation began to roll.
Back in his office, Bolam kicked his waste-paper basket in disgust. ‘Looks as if Jackie will be able to sit back and laugh at us, blast him,’ he snarled.
‘He won’t have much time for sitting back, with the Greek on his tail,’ countered Jimmy. ‘Which fox are we going to chase – Jackie or the Papagos mob?’
Bolam settled for the latter – the killing seemed to be stagnant until they got some sort of break.
‘We’ll stake out the Rising Sun for a few hours tonight – sit outside in a car … that old Austin won’t be noticed at one of the meters in the Bigg Market.’
‘All night?’ queried Jimmy in dismay.
‘From about eleven till two – that’s the peak customer time. If the London yobs are going to try anything on, it’ll be in that period.’
‘And if nothing happens?’
‘We try again tomorrow – and the next night. Get one of the younger lads from downstairs – a newish fellow, that won’t be recognized in the club. Tell him to go in and wait – give us the tip if anything starts.’
Jimmy looked unsettled. ‘What about the murder angle? Are we just going to let it ride?’
Bolam shrugged. ‘Uncle Mac is running that – he’ll have you on the pub routine unless you stick to my bandwagon, chum! Wearing out their boots on doorsteps seems to be the menu for most of the CID for the next week. Never know, something might come of it, too … hard graft usually brings in more rewards than flashes of inspiration in this game.’
With this Jimmy had to be satisfied and they parted until the late evening.
Bolam left the house in his usual sullen rage at about eight thirty, after stonily refusing to be drawn by taunts about yet another night spent in club-crawling.
His daughter had gone upstairs soon after tea and kept out of the way until she heard the front door slam and the Morris reverse noisily from the drive. Then she came down and joined her mother in a cup of tea in the kitchen.
‘I’ll bet he’s gone there again tonight – he knows I always go to see Freddie on a Saturday,’ she said almost tearfully.
Vera Bolam felt torn between sympathy for her daughter and an almost reflex need to make excuses for Alec as soon as he was out of earshot.
‘I know, pet, but he is mixed up with that murder … I gather that this man Stott is suspected of killing the Armstrong fellow.’
Betty stared stubbornly into her cup. ‘I don’t care!’ she murmured. ‘I only know that I want to see Freddie as usual.’
Vera fiddled with her spoon. She felt awkward – her previous backing of Betty’s infatuation was mainly a weapon to use against Alec. But now things had gone a bit too far. This was no ordinary ‘boy meets girl’ affair – Betty’s attitude was almost pathological; she ate, slept and lived Freddie. Three times a week, the girl went to the club, just to look at him and sit at a table for a few minutes of his company.
‘Why do you always have to go on your own, Betty?’ she began gently. ‘After all, it’s almost entirely a man’s club – gambling and striptease and that … couldn’t you at least go with a friend from the office?’
Betty looked up suspiciously. Now she’s changing her tune, is she, the girl thought. ‘Did you ever go courting and take a girlfriend along, Mum?’ she asked coldly and went back to staring glassily into her teacup.
Vera Bolam hardened her voice. ‘Well, I don’t know that it’s all right, Betty. Not now that there’s been all this trouble at the club. It’s not safe for you to go there, really, Betty. Your father flatly forbade you to go; he said there was sure to be more trouble in the next day or two.’
Betty raised her head again and snapped at her mother. ‘That’s right – you start siding with him, now that it suits you! I’m mad about Freddie, I tell you … I don’t care if all the gangsters in the world come there – I’m going to see him!’ She jumped up and grabbed her handbag from the table. ‘I’m over twenty-one now, I can do what I like. If you try to stop me, well … I’ll leave home. I’m fed up here, anyway, with you and Dad always fighting.’
With this parting jibe, she ran sobbing from the room. Her feet pounded on the stairs and there was the slamming of a bedroom door.
Vera started after her, then stopped and walked slowly back to the kitchen. She felt alone, deserted.
This had been on the boil for a long time, she told herself. Alec was right, blast him. This Freddie, whom she had seen only once at the party, was a worthless lout, but after defending him for so long against her husband, she was having a job to climb down.
She sat down at the table and cried – not from real misery but from frustration at having a happy, pleasant life handed to her on a plate, yet knowing full well that she would not enjoy taking it.
A few minutes later, Betty came back down the stairs and the front door slammed with almost prophetic finality.
The young detective constable planted in the Rising Sun had not long to wait for trouble to start. He settled himself at the bar and kept a sharp lookout from behind a glass of McEwen’s’ Export Ale. Then he began chatting up the barmaid, Freda, while keeping his eyes skinned for any characters who might be infiltrating on behalf of Papagos and Casella.
There were three or four tough-looking men distributed around the room at the moment and he felt uneasy about them until Freda put him wise.
‘Like our Defence Corps, love?’ she chirped, hanging her prominent and over-exposed bust across the bar. He raised his eyebrows enquiringly and she jerked a thumb in the direction of the big men. ‘Some of Joe Blunt’s pals – recruited as Jackie’s bodyguard until this protection scare is over. Glad they’re there, really – I had half a mind to jack it in when that bloody bomb came in … but we gotta stick by old Jackie in a bad patch like this … though some I could name don’t seem to care.’
She sniffed and looked pointedly across to where Laura Levine sat at a table with Thor Hansen.
The detective took the opportunity to pick up some local gossip. ‘She’s Jackie’s girlfriend, isn’t she?’
‘Was, you mean … if “girlfriend” is the right word. Every day of thirty, she is … and girlfriend means jumping around a bed with him to get top of the bill at a few clubs. The other feller’s her latest heart-throb.’ She nodded across at the Dane. ‘They been playing it real quiet until now. That damn fool Jackie can’t see further than his nose, but this last day or two, they been canoodling as bold as brass. If he catches them at it, there’ll be some fur flying – as jealous as hell over her, is Jackie!’
The constable filed away this bit of knowledge for Bolam, but his main interest was the gang war and about twenty minutes later, things began to happen.
On that Saturday night, in spite of the previous disturbances earlier in the week, there was an almost full house. Jackie and his manager had noticed this an hour before with some gratification, putting it at least partly down to curiosity, and the lack of any trouble on the previous night.
Jackie was upstairs at the moment, keeping an eye on the gaming tables, which were also attracting a record house.
‘Have to have a bomb-throwing every week, eh, Thor!’ he said almost gaily to Hansen.
The fiasco of the police investigation into Geordie’s death had restored his spirits, especially as he had had a favourable forecast from the insurers of the Mississippi.
Downstairs, the stripper was just starting her routine. Encouraged by the big audience, she was sweating herself into even more enthusiastic contortions than usual, as she swayed and squirmed amongst the tables nearest the stage.
The crowd was thick around her, most of the men standing up for a better view. The lights were out except for the brilliant spot that was focused on the dancer and the detective constable lost sight of the men who were supposed to be Jackie’s private army.
The band was thumping out the rhythmic beat with which the girl’s generous hips moved synchronously, punc
tuated by whistles and lewd remarks from the front row.
Sudden the erotic atmosphere was ruined by a piercing shriek. The stripper stopped dead and yelled the most obscene series of words the policeman had ever heard.
The band croaked to a wheezing halt as the girl swung a tremendous slap against the face of a man sitting at the edge of the dance floor.
In the sudden silence, she swore again. ‘You lousy swine, I’ll teach you to stub your fags out on my backside!’ and she hit him again, then ran back to the platform and vanished through a door at the side.
The man she had slapped guffawed and threw a beer bottle after her. It went wide of the door and smashed against the wall above Freddie’s head. He screamed with fright and there was an echoed scream from Betty Bolam, sitting alone in a corner.
The man with the roving cigarette whistled shrilly and threw another bottle, which crashed through the skin of the band’s big drum, making a tearing boom.
Instantly, all hell was let loose.
The lights were still down and Thor Hansen, who was standing near the switches, made no move to snap them on.
Four or five men, who had been sitting quietly in various parts of the room, suddenly upturned their tables, began yelling and screaming and followed their leader in throwing empty bottles at the stage and lashing out indiscriminately at their neighbours in the gloom.
The terrified musicians ducked and staggered away, the organist getting a cut head in the process.
The audience degenerated into a yelling, screaming, swearing mass and Jackie’s paid protectors were paralyzed by the darkness and the lack of anyone to fight.
Within seconds, there was complete pandemonium. The young detective had had his orders – no joining in, just get out and raise the alarm. Sprinting to the doors he headed off the first would-be escapers and clattered down the stairs. A few yards down the road, at the top of the Cloth Market, stood a blue Austin, with no outward signs of a police car about it. As he ran up to it, Jimmy Grainger was already getting out.
‘It’s started, bottle-chucking and all – hell of a shemozzle!’
Bolam grabbed the radio handset. ‘Q-Four to L-K … hello, L-K, expected disturbance at Rising Sun Club. Please send the cars as arranged. Q-Four out.’
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