A Dip Into Murder (David Mallin Detective series Book 10)

by Roger Ormerod

  Peter introduced us. This was Larry Fitch. He gravely bent over my hand, murmuring welcomes, a prematurely-aged young man, tight and drawn ... and frightened.

  And why not tight and drawn, I thought. This was Bernie’s kid brother, who’d been minding the store whilst big brother took a rest inside. Minding it very well indeed, I realised when I saw the menu. He would perhaps be a little resentful at the forthcoming end of his reign. But why frightened? Was Bernie such a tough proposition?

  Peter ordered, and sat back. He was watching me with quiet amusement. Perhaps I hadn’t fully appreciated the place before. After all, the previous evening had been soured by Goodliffe’s company, and we hadn’t actually dined there.

  “Not what it was,” said Peter, looking around. The combo was settling in, not asserting themselves but flowing placidly into the background. The lighting was subtle. “Bernie bought this place as a transport caff, and built it up. But it was rough in those days. A few illegal games in the back, and a team of bouncers. People used to come for the fun of watching the punchups. Nothing illegal now, though. Class, Elsa. Taste and decorum, and people queue up for membership. Bernie used to tame his customers with a leather cosh and the sight of a gun butt. Larry tames ’em with Chicago style jazz and a Haut-Médoc. They used to play poker in the back, under a shaded light. Now it’s vingt-et-un and baccarat, and the dealer calls in French.” He grinned, challenging me to disbelieve one word of it. “Won’t Bernie be pleased!”

  I looked away from him, unable to accept what he implied. In a far corner a fragile old gentleman with beautiful hands was sitting alone and watching me with restrained lechery. Then I realised it was only wistful sadness.

  I looked back at Peter. “But will Larry be pleased?”

  Larry was standing at the head of a low wide flight of stairs, which I assumed led to the gaming rooms at the rear. He was nodding and smiling at the customers. It was his world. Here he had dignity and was treated with deference. I knew the answer to my question, but all the same I looked across at Peter for guidance. He raised his eyebrows.

  “Bernie will expect to take over,” he said gently. “He’ll be surprised by what he finds, but Bernie always had a strong personality. He’ll adapt it to his own ideas.”

  The Crab Créole was delicious. I glanced at Frances, wondering how much she knew of this, and how much it affected her. She was watching Peter with affection and trust. Peter was only a guide to this world. He was not involved in it.

  Then why, if not involved, was he deliberately involving me?

  “I think,” he said, speaking to the wine waiter, “with the Côtes de Veau Poitou, we’ll have a bottle of Lalande de Pomerol.”

  And Frances leaned over to me and whispered: “You’ve made a conquest, Elsa.”

  I saw by the direction of her eyes that she meant the old man in the corner, who met my gaze and raised his glass. Peter grinned.

  “Don’t smile, please, Elsa. Don’t even notice that you’ve seen him, or the old devil will join us here. And I couldn’t stand his conversation until after the coffee.”

  “He looks lonely.”

  “He is. Nobody wants to be seen with Rimlock.”

  They had put a touch of Worcester sauce in the Côtes de Veau. A mistake, I thought, until I tried the wine. Peter had made no spurious demonstration with a sniffing of the cork or a sip of approval. He trusted the wine waiter, who would not betray the trust. The Bordeaux was superb.

  I had recovered from the shock of realising that I was being appraised by an assassin, and believed I’d deprived Peter of any pleasure he might have had from inflicting it. But why was there no rushing-in of detectives and a rapid arrest?

  “He’s a very gentle man,” said Peter, reading my mind.

  “I’m afraid Peter takes a bit of getting used to,” said Frances in apology.

  “I hope you’ve succeeded. I’m sure I can’t understand him at all.”

  She looked at him fondly. “It’s just because he tries so hard to be clever. It’s how he makes his living.”

  “And how does he make his living?”

  But Peter only smiled. It was not yet time to tell me.

  Then he gave me a little grace to get used to the ideas he had been feeding me. His intention was clear: allow the implication to mature.

  And the implication was violence.

  There had been hints of it, vague suggestions, and a tone of concern in David’s voice. In the background there was a growing momentum of aggression, and I was being warned. First there had been the cold treatment at the factory, and now this. Elsa Mallin’s presence was not required. I was to be frightened away.

  After the coffee, we smoked, and a little dancing began on the centre of the floor. The combo’s rhythm settled into something more crisp. Chicago-style, Peter had said. I could almost hear the staccato rap of the sub-machine guns. Peter murmured something and got to his feet. I thought he’d asked Frances to dance, but instead he walked across the floor to a larger table almost behind a column, and joined the five middle-aged men who sat there. Their heads came together.

  Frances touched my hand and nodded towards the entrance. “There she is now,” she said, as though I’d know what she meant. But I did not, and seeing my puzzlement she explained: “Clara.”

  A woman had entered the club.

  “Clara?” I asked.

  “Bernie Fitch’s girlfriend.”

  Not a girl now, though. He must have been inside a long while. She stood alone just inside the door, her eyes running steadily around the customers, as though assessing their worth. She was completely poised, tall and erect, a fur stole negligently around her shoulders, her evening gown a pale fawn with a million glittering hints of gold. She was unescorted, and gave the impression that this was the way it was, the way it should be. She was a woman contained in herself, and no one dared shatter that.

  Then she moved down onto the floor, seemed to flow, and her route was directly across it, not skirting the dancers, and not even aware of them. Where Larry had stood at the head of the stairs there was now a space. She reached it and turned left. There was an office door tucked away there in the corner. She entered it without knocking.

  “When Bernie went inside,” said Frances, “she was a tramp, but he’d got her set up somewhere, and he was keeping her. Since then, every week, regular, she’s come in here and gone to the office, and nobody ever knows what goes on in there. But you can see she’s done well for herself. She’s in a luxury flat now, and she drives an E-type, and every week she comes here and goes into the office. They say Bernie’s sent out orders: look after her, Larry. Larry’s never said.”

  “Not even how happy he is about the arrangement?” I asked.

  “Larry never seems to get angry.”

  “I don’t suppose he’d dare. That was the impression she gave me,” I explained. Clara had seemed to me to be a woman who’d stand no nonsense. She would expect to be looked after, as a right. But maybe she would resent the fact that the assistance came from Larry and not his brother. She might even hate Larry for not being his brother. “Do they get on well, she and Larry?”

  Frances pouted. “You’d have to ask Peter. He’d know.”

  “Peter knows too much.”

  “He says that what he knows keeps him healthy.”

  Over at the larger table the five men had raised their eyes. They had followed Clara’s progress across the floor with eagerness, but she had not glanced at them. Peter raised a hand, indicating that he had not forgotten us. Frances waved back at him.

  “In five minutes she’ll come out,” she said. “She’ll sit alone at the corner table — they keep it reserved for her — and take one drink. And then she’ll leave.”

  “But not,” I said, “on Friday.”

  The quiet, worried Larry would stand no chance against these big guns. Clara wasn’t the sort of woman who would wait all these years for Bernie, unless he was something special.

  “I’d like to be
here for the party on Friday,” said Frances gently, and I looked at her quickly. Her fingers idly twisted an empty glass, but the excitement of the idea inflamed her.

  “I wonder,” she said, “if Peter can get me an invitation.”

  Then I knew about Frances and Peter, and Ian Carefree didn’t stand a chance either. Peter stood at the edge of everything that caught at Frances’s heartstrings, and she had to have him. Peter stood at the edge — or just inside. I didn’t know which.

  Then the deadly old gentleman approached our table and asked me if I’d care to dance. I glanced at the dance floor, hoping that the action there would be the modern mummery that required only an ability to stand and sway, so that I could protest I didn’t know the steps. But it was all sedate and old-fashioned, the couples actually touching each other. I could make no objections.

  He was in his sixties, frail and gaunt and infinitely correct. He led me in a slow fox-trot, with a smooth flow he had learned in the thirties, and said he was a stranger in town.

  “I know.”

  His hands were cool and delicate.

  “I shall not come here often,” he murmured, playing a variation on it.

  I pretended ignorance of what he meant. “Don’t you like the place?”

  “It’s quite excellent. I was pleasantly surprised. But I’m a bird of passage.”

  “Your business,” I suggested, smiling up into his eyes, such sad eyes, “will not keep you here long?”

  “I expect to be gone by Friday. It’s a sad thing, my dear young lady, but my profession does not allow me to remain anywhere very long.”

  “Then you’re confident you’ll have completed it by Friday?”

  He sighed. “The very inevitability of it is a bore.”

  “If it’s so boring, why not do something else?”

  “Unfortunately, I’m too old to learn new skills.”

  The combo seemed not to know when to stop. I wasn’t sure I could keep on slanting the conversation, feeling his trigger finger so gently on my spine.

  “Besides, I have a reputation,” he amplified. “An international one.”

  “So I understand.”

  His poor, strained eyes were smiling. “It follows me everywhere.”

  “You’re proud of it?” I asked, admitting at last that I knew who he was and what we were talking about.

  He thought about that. “To be proud, you need to be able to walk up to people and say: I’m Rimlock. But how can I? They might feel it’s just another way of saying: You’re next. I can hardly be proud all by myself. Pride is a public thing.”

  At last the combo crashed itself to a halt. We applauded dutifully.

  He led me back to the table. Peter looked up. He was now back with Frances. He smiled, pleased that I’d been kept amused during his absence. Rimlock’s head was close to mine.

  “But do they come to my table and shake hands?” he asked softly. “Do they admit they know me, dear lady?”

  He thanked me for the dance and turned to leave, then turned back.

  “Would you care to see my gun?” he asked wistfully.

  I could say nothing. He nodded, lonely and misplaced, realising he could expect no answer. Then, a little stiffly, he returned to his table.

  “Well ... ” I sat down and reached for my cigarettes. When I looked up, Peter’s eyes were following Rimlock. I was surprised to see that his expression was hard and angry.

  “What did he say?” he demanded.

  I do not normally inhale so deeply. To my horror I realised my hand was shaking.

  “That it’s inevitable,” I whispered.

  Frances was looking at me with her head tilted, with just a hint of a frown between her eyes. She didn’t know about Rimlock. This was something Peter had not dared to tell her, the reason for his presence there, anyway.

  “We’ve got to stop him,” I said. Peter nodded thoughtfully. “But how, Peter? I just felt the dedication — something of the sort. Nothing deflects a man like that.”

  Frances spoke uneasily. “Why so serious all of a sudden?”

  I answered her perhaps a little too sharply. “Didn’t you hear what he said to me? He asked me if I wanted — ”

  She nodded. “Lucky you.”

  I looked down at my hand with the cigarette and cursed her for a silly little fool. But then I realised this was all unreal to Frances. It was no more than an exciting fantasy, which she was watching from the outside, something just the other side of a tele screen. And Peter was there to manipulate the switches. But perhaps Peter would not be able to reach the off switch in time.

  I lifted my head. All smiles now. “Who were your friends?” I asked Peter, more as a social remark than a request for information.

  “That’s Bernie’s mob,” he said, and I wished I hadn’t asked.

  Of course, I might have guessed. All five had the rugged extrovert qualities of the unabashed thug, but blunted now by the years. Their aggressiveness was weary, their muscles atrophied. But they were nevertheless Bernie’s old gang, arrived for the coming-out celebrations.

  They were all gathering together in the background of our crime, Bernie’s girl friend, Bernie’s old gang — and Rimlock. I felt cold.

  “Scatto’s living in Manchester now,” said Peter, happily filling me in. “In the secondhand business, he calls it. And Peel lives with Klein on a sheep farm in Dorset, selling stock they collect on dark nights in Wales. The fat one’s Merridew, the lock and safe man. He’s gone straight, working the three-card trick in the Charing Cross Rd. Says his minders are costing him a fortune! Fancy poor old Merry needing minders! And the other’s Bernie’s lieutenant, Ryman. He’s got a mob of his own in Brighton, now, but he says the teenagers are trampling him underfoot. They don’t think much of the Domino. Not what it used to be.”

  “It should be a touching reunion,” I said.

  Then Peter ordered me another drink and took Frances out on the floor. I was left to contemplate the world in which I found myself. No doubt I was intended to decide it was not for me.

  And indeed, Bernie’s mob did not think much of the Domino Club. Not as it was, anyway. Their disgust was obvious and articulate. They leaned back in their chairs and threw comments at the combo, and shouted for action. Perhaps in the old days this would have produced a stripper. This time it produced Clara.

  It had taken longer than the usual five minutes. Larry, who followed her but remained in the office doorway, had obviously found it a strain. There were no parting words of mutual respect. Clara paused at the top of the stairs. She would have known Bernie’s crowd, probably intimately. She simply stood and looked at them.

  Whatever she had been in Bernie’s time, she had now moved on. She looked at them with a calm and unemotional disgust, and the table was stilled. Tilted chairs were restored to their four legs, and hairy hands were suddenly clasped around their glasses. Their eyes fell to the table surface, and there was silence.

  Then Clara left, not staying for her usual drink, and the combo was playing St. James Infirmary Blues. So cold, so sweet ...

  Cold, certainly.

  In a moment’s sudden fear I reached out for Peter with my eyes, and he seemed to have been waiting for it because he immediately steered Frances towards our table. But I had myself in hand by the time they arrived. I could even smile vaguely when she took up her evening bag and said she wished to powder her nose. It was so obvious. Everything was obvious.

  “And now,” I said to Peter, when we were alone, “perhaps we can have the answer to all this.”

  “You already have it. You’re not stupid, Elsa. I’ve been showing you.”

  I felt angry. He was laughing at me, I thought.

  “You’re telling me that this crew — those five seedy tearaways — have stolen our steel in order to acquire £10,000 to pay Rimlock to shoot Ian.”

  “I’m not telling you anything.” It was not laughter in his eyes.

  I admit I faltered. I had been about to demand why he tho
ught all this would frighten me away, was about to mention a large and frightening husband, and his larger partner, who could do terrible things when aroused. Or would do, if only David would take me seriously. I had had my fill of being told so openly that this was not for me and I ought to go home. I would have said so, too, only Peter added gently:

  “I need you, Elsa. I need you to help me save Ian’s life.”

  6

  I shook my head. “I don’t understand you. I’m confused.”

  “Of course you are. If I could just explain ... ”

  “I rather feel your explanations take me further and farther from the truth.”

  “If I could explain about myself.”

  “Oh, I know about you,” I assured him. “But start by telling me why those five thugs over there haven’t been arrested.”

  He shrugged, pouting because the conversation had drifted away from himself. An egotist. But I persisted, holding his eyes.

  “It’s an assumption,” he told me. “You can’t know they did the job.”

  “But I’ll bet Ian does. Do you imagine Ian isn’t aware they’re here?”

  “Of course he knows.”

  “Then he could have them inside. Grill them ... ”

  He smiled. “Your husband teaches you all the correct words. But why assume that any one of that gang would know where it’s got to, this thirty-seven tons of steel! It might’ve taken only one man to shift it, once it was loaded. Anybody could’ve done that. Then where would the grilling get the police?”

  “You’re on their side.”

  “Well ... no.”

  “But certainly not on the side of the law.”

  “Not exactly. Shall we say I’m an agent! A free agent, plying his knowledge — ”

  “All around it again,” I interrupted with impatience.

  His voice hardened. “Very well then. You want the story of my life. I was in crime ... oh, years ago. Minor assistance here and there. But I felt a kind of lack of individuality in it. Human beings are individuals, Elsa, separate entities. It’s degrading to be one of a group ... ”

  “Spare me the philosophy.”