Tiger at Bay

by Bernard Knight

  Lewis Evans’ deep voice brimmed over with morbid complacency.

  ‘Job’s comforter!’ grunted Price. ‘You haven’t said yet how glad you are to see me alive.’

  He sat in his usual place at the bar, but without Dilys this time. She had already been spirited away by one of her numerous boyfriends all of whom were after the same thing as Iago.

  ‘Your head don’t look so bad, man,’ boomed Lewis cheerfully. He rubbed briskly at a pint glass and stared with interest at Iago’s plasters. The enquiry agent gingerly touched the large one on his temple that had replaced the original bandage.

  ‘A nasty graze under here – and on these.’ He held up a hand to show the Elastoplast stuck over his knuckles.

  ‘Still, you’re lucky not to be where that other chap is!’ said the landlord in a sepulchral voice that suggested that Summers was already in the mortuary.

  Iago nodded. ‘Poor fellow is still in a coma, the Infirmary says.’

  Lewis looked around the bar. Apart from the old man with the spaniel, it was empty. Although satisfied that there were no eavesdroppers, he lowered his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. ‘Funny thing, Iago – the other night there was a little chap sitting there at the first table. Came in right after you and I felt he was there for a purpose. As soon as Mr Summers came in and put his head together with you, this fellow took off like a dog out of a trap – didn’t even finish his drink.’

  He shrugged and rubbed away again at the already gleaming glass. ‘May be nothing in it, mind, but I never seen him before and this house only attracts regulars, being off the beaten track.’

  Iago digested this in silence. He had not noticed the man on the previous evening, but Lewis Evans was an observant chap. Could this fellow be connected with the near-fatal onslaught by that car? Today, as the fright and outrage wore off, Iago began to have doubts and wondered if the whole thing really was an accident, as the police seemed to imply, but the landlord’s suspicions about an eavesdropper in the bar brought back his feeling that Summers’ troubles were at the root of it. With the decision came a slow anger.

  Summers was out of the running, maybe for good. The police would do nothing apart from some polite listening unless some new development forced them to believe Iago’s story.

  Something must be done, but what? Iago might have been a slow thinker and have a brain a long way from the Einstein class, but he was no moron. Nor was he a hero bent on suicide in the cause of justice. The next motorcar might do more than bruise him. Something must be done, but he had no intention of doing it personally. He opened his overcoat and settled down on his stool with a mental gesture of determination.

  ‘Lewis, got a minute?’

  The dark, hairy landlord came across and leant over the bar.

  ‘Lewis, do you know any chaps who aren’t fussy what they have to do for a few quid?’

  The black brows corrugated. ‘What sort of thing? A punch-up?’

  Iago shook his head, his straggling hair bobbing on his narrow forehead. ‘I want someone to have a damn good snoop around that cafe in Bute Street; whatever is going on, that place is the centre. I want to know who lives there, what goes on there – that sort of thing.’

  ‘That’s the police’s job,’ objected the landlord.

  ‘Police! They think I’m a nutcase. They’ll do nothing unless they’re prodded into it – and I’d like to do the prodding.’

  Lewis Evans pondered over Iago’s request, drawing wet circles in the spilt beer on the polished top of the bar. Iago thought that he was being reluctant.

  ‘I can’t do it myself – I‘ve been into the Cairo Restaurant already – they know me now,’ he wheedled.

  Lewis still doodled wetly on his counter. ‘I know plenty of young tearaways who’d skin their mothers for half a quid. But this calls for brains, not muscle power.’

  He looked up suddenly. ‘Drop it, Iago, there’s a good lad. You’ll only get hurt again and what else can you expect to get out of it. Summers is hardly likely to be paying anybody from now on, except an undertaker.’

  Iago’s face became stubborn.

  ‘I’m damned if anyone is going to run me over and get away with it,’ he said obstinately. ‘God knows, I’m far from being flush, but I can still afford a few pounds to try to get some satisfaction, even if it’s only seeing the police stir off their backsides.’

  Lewis pushed himself away from the bar and rubbed his hands slowly.

  ‘There is a chap, a fellow called Terry Rourke. Real villain, done time, but he’s been going straight lately. He’s one of these likeable yobs, you know? Mad Irishman, though he’s hardly ever left Cardiff, except to go to the nick. Pinch the shirt off your back, but buy you a pint while he‘s doing it!’

  ‘How old is he?’

  ‘About twenty-three, twenty-four. Working in the fruit market now, heaving spuds and cabbages about. Comes in here most nights, later on when the girls are in.’

  ‘Think he’d be any good at the kind of thing I want? asked Iago dubiously.

  ‘Just the lad! He might even do it for nothing, for the hell of it. But certainly, if you slip him a few quid for beer and birds, he’d be there like a shot. Anything to get him away from real work!’

  ‘When could I see him?’

  ‘I’ll have a word tonight, then he can come over the office tomorrow. Mind, you want to keep Dilys locked away or he’ll have her across the desk inside five minutes!’

  This set off a different train of thought in Iago’s mind and he sat sulking over his drink until it was time for him to slink home to his lonely flat in Cathedral Road.

  Dilys was wetting the instant coffee for ‘elevenses’ when the office door opened. Before she could put down the battered electric kettle, an arm had slipped around her waist.

  ‘Hi, darling, what you doin’ tonight?’

  A total stranger grinned impudently at her from a range of six inches. She brought her hand back for an Olympic standard slap, then found that she didn’t want to do it. Almost reluctantly, she rotated out of his grasp and moved around the desk.

  ‘Didn’t hear you knock, sonny,’ she said with unconvincing coldness.

  Terry Rourke grinned back roguishly. He was a smaller version of Joe Stalin Davies, wavy black hair, sideboards and tight trousers, but he was brighter-eyed and altogether more agile than Tiger’s henchman. The general effect was almost bird-like, a virile bantam cockerel!

  ‘Hello, me love! Is the gaffer in?’

  There was a genuine Irish undertone to his local accent. His parents had come from Cork to have their twelve children in Cardiff.

  Dilys sniffed haughtily, but her eyes were actively sizing him up. ‘Proper yob, but fun with it,’ was her mental verdict. Aloud, she tried to be the supercilious private secretary.

  ‘Have you got an appointment with Mr Price?’ Cut him down to size, she thought.

  Rourke let his eyes travel down her body, undressing her as they went.

  ‘Come off it, pet!’ he pleaded, still looking at her legs. ‘I knocked down better dumps than this when I was on the demolition.’

  The inner door suddenly opened. The partition was about as soundproof as wet newspaper and Iago had heard all the crosstalk.

  ‘Are you Terry Rourke?’

  ‘S’right, guvnor. Lloyd George sent me over.’

  For some obscure reason, Rourke always referred to the landlord by this name, possibly because it was the only well-known Welshman of whom he had ever heard.

  Iago beckoned him into the office. With a last lascivious survey of Dilys, which warmed her up all over, the young reprobate went in and took the solitary chair opposite Iago.

  The enquiry agent slapped a pound note on the desk in front of Rourke.

  ‘That’s for nothing and for keeping your mouth shut. Take it when you leave if we don’t fix anything between us.’

  He had few pounds to throw away like this, but a rare flash of intuition told him that this kind of approach might pay
dividends with an impressionable character like Rourke.

  The younger man whipped it up joyfully. ‘Spit it out, squire! This sort of talk I understand!’

  ‘Did Lewis Evans tell you what it was all about?’

  Terry shook his head and Iago gave him an outline of the story from the beginning.

  ‘So naturally I want to find out what goes on in this crummy eating house,’ he wound up finally.

  Terry sat strangely subdued. ‘This all on the level?’ was all he asked.

  Iago was nettled. No one seemed keen to believe a word he said. ‘What do you think I’m wearing this for – a decoration?’ he snapped, touching the plaster on his forehead.

  ‘OK, OK, I was only asking,’ muttered the Irish boy. ‘For, if you’re talking on the level, it means playing with some very rough boys.’

  Iago stared at him. ‘You know who they are?’

  Terry pulled out a filthy comb and began to rake back the long hair off his temples.

  ‘Yeah – and how! The Cairo joint is the pad of Tiger Ismail and his boys. The guy you followed could only be Joe Davies, Tiger’s main sidekick.’

  He stopped and looked puzzled. ‘This don’t seem like Ismail’s usual line of country. Not blackmail, or knocking over banks. Unless he’s getting big ideas all of a sudden.’

  Iago was excited at this rapid widening of his knowledge without even leaving the office. He pressed Terry for more details.

  ‘Tiger? Sure, everybody knows him down the Bay,’ replied Rourke. ‘He’s got a bit of wog in him, though his brothers don’t look like him. Bloody great family they are, dozens of cousins and uncles and aunts. They got a finger in half the rackets that go on down the docks. Cleverer than most, too.’

  ‘How do you mean, clever?’ asked Iago.

  ‘They don’t get nicked so often. Tiger never gets nicked at all. Only the tiddlers on the edge of the gang ever get knocked off by the fuzz. A few of the girls are on the game and some of the kids spend most of their time on probation for lifting stuff from shops. But the big boys keep their noses clean.’

  Iago didn’t see why such an obvious set of crooks like this couldn’t be capable of a bank robbery, and said so.

  Terry looked uneasily about him. He dropped his voice a little.

  ‘Knocking off lorries full of fags and cracking empty houses is more their line of country – that and exporting pinched motors to the Midlands. Though for Christ’s sake don’t pass that on, will you? I don’t want Joe Davies to come and alter the shape of me head!’

  Iago was unconvinced.

  ‘Well, I know for sure they’re getting up to bigger rackets than that. And I wanted you to get some information that might nail them. They tried to alter the shape of my head, too!’ He touched his temple gingerly to make his point clearer.

  Terry nibbled a fingernail uneasily. ‘What do you want me to do? I don’t fancy getting across that lot, mind,’ he muttered.

  Iago started to scratch his head until he found that it hurt.

  ‘You’ve told me a bit of what I wanted to know already. But what about this running-down the other night? Who would be most likely to have done that?’

  Terry Rourke shrugged.

  ‘I don’t know all the angles, mister. I’ve always kept well clear of the Tiger mob. With all that family, it’s mainly a closed shop, but there are a few outsiders like Joe Davies and Archie Vaughan.’

  ‘What about this cafe? Is that just a front?’

  ‘Naw, it’s full of folks at dinner time or late at night. Some of the girls use it and there used to be a fair trade in betting slips before they made it legal. But it’s a proper “caff” all right.’

  ‘Who runs it, then?’

  ‘Florrie, Tiger’s aunt. Don’t think it belongs to her, but who knows. I tell you, I’ve always kept clear.’

  Iago waited a moment, then took the plunge. ‘Look, if I made it worth your while, could you hang around there and see what you can pick up?’

  Rourke looked shocked. ‘Grass on ’em? I wouldn’t do that, it’s against me principles! Besides, they’d have my guts for garters if I was rumbled.’

  Iago Price leaned over the desk.

  ‘Look, it wouldn’t be grassing; it would be to me, not the police. They tried to flatten me the other night, don’t you think I’ve got a right to a comeback?’

  This appealed to Rourke’s sense of fair play. His good spirits were returning after the first uneasiness of hearing that Tiger was involved. He would have done well in the days of the highwaymen and pirates.

  ‘I’m still on licence after the last stretch, but this ain’t illegal, is it? I’ll see what I can do. But what’s in it for me?’

  After some haggling, Iago agreed to pay him twenty pounds for a week’s work, providing he came up with some useful information. The detective saw himself writing another begging letter to his mother, who was on an extended winter holiday in the Tyrol, but he consoled himself with the thought that a single week should prove if the whole idea was a flop or not.

  With a promise to keep in touch via the phone and the pub, Terry left the office. On the way out, he pinned Dilys to the partition and gave her a ravishing kiss.

  ‘See you in the boozer tonight, love,’ he promised. With a lecherous wink, he was gone.

  Iago stood morosely in his doorway watching the girl coming back to earth. ‘He got further with you in ten minutes than I have in ten months!’ he said sourly.

  ‘Cheeky swine!’ breathed Dilys, but there was a faraway look in her eyes as she ran her tongue around her lips. Iago went back inside and slammed the door so hard that a snowstorm of loose plaster fluttered gently down.

  Chapter Five

  A black Austin Westminster pulled up outside a grimy red-brick building which stood in lonely isolation amongst a sea of tumbled rubble.

  Built in the days when the sun never set on the British Empire, the Bute Street police station was nearing the end of its life. Only the fact that its new glass-and-chrome replacement was not yet ready, reprieved it from the same fate as the surrounding landscape.

  Nicholas Meredith and Bob Ellis left the car and pushed through the battered green doors into the dismal interior.

  ‘Not worth painting, hardly worth even cleaning, by the look of it,’ murmured Old Nick, staring around the moribund building with distaste.

  Ellis had more affection for the old place. He had spent five years as a uniformed constable working out of this Docks Station.

  ‘Wonder how many drunks, whores and thieves have come through those doors,’ he mused. ‘Must be literally bloody millions!’ Certainly, this must surely have been one of the busiest stations in Britain half a century earlier.

  But their business was with the present, not the past.

  Meredith led the way into the absent detective inspector’s room. He was still on the sick, swearing at a new plaster cast on his broken arm.

  The detective sergeant from the division, David Rees, was waiting for them in the room and the diffident, skinny DC Williams was hovering nervously in the background.

  They talked for a few minutes about various cases and about the administrative problems raised by the sudden lack of a divisional DI. Then Ellis brought up the relatively trivial matter of Iago Price and his allegations about the Cairo Restaurant.

  ‘You spent a couple of hours sniffing round there yesterday, Williams,’ he said almost accusingly. ‘Did you get any joy?’

  The constable from Headquarters jerked nervously into life. For some reason, Meredith overawed him to the point of speechlessness. He managed to find his tongue this time.

  ‘Couldn’t get much, sir. I sat in the cafe for as long as I could without looking like a sore thumb. Had my lunch there, though they’ll never make a fortune with their cooking. But I suppose it’s as good as any other dive like that.’

  Old Nick looked at him impatiently. There seemed to be a mutual bond of irritation between them. ‘Damn their cooking, Williams. Who did you
see there?’

  The DC became even more twitchy and looked appealingly at the Docks sergeant.

  ‘I saw quite a few chaps going in and out. From what Sergeant Rees said later, they must have been the owners, Ismail and the man Davies that Mr Price said he saw in the pub in Queen Street.’

  Meredith swung his long face around to the local detective sergeant. ‘You know this manor well, I’m sure. Who uses this cafe? Is it a front? Anything known about it?’

  ‘Anything known’ means more to a policeman than the everyday usage of the phrase. Rees, a wiry North Walian, shook his head.

  ‘No convictions, but a lot suspected. Funny set-up, really. Right out of the old days, a cross between Freemasonry and the Mafia.’

  Old Nick scowled. ‘What the hell d’you mean?’ He liked straight answers, not the parables that this lot seemed to indulge in.

  The sergeant explained about the Ismail family gang. Meredith listened, his dark face scowling. ‘You mean they’re all upright, honest citizens?’ he barked at the end. The DS smiled wryly and pulled his ear.

  ‘I’ve got no evidence to prove otherwise, sir, but it smells! There are about five blokes loafing about that place, never do a stroke of work. They vanish for days at a time, then come back. But they never put a foot wrong. Sometimes we get ’em for drunk and disorderly, but what the hell!’

  Williams plucked up courage and spoke again.

  ‘The cafe seems genuine enough, sir. It was nearly full at lunchtime yesterday. An Arab bloke – an old guy – and a fat woman run it.’

  Meredith walked up and down in the small room, a difficult exercise as it was half full of furniture and large men.

  ‘You must have your snouts, same as the rest of us. What do they say?’

  Dai Rees shrugged. ‘Not much “grassing” down here, sir. The population is as honest as anywhere else these days – more so than many places. But even the good ’uns stick together like glue. It’s more like a village than part of a city, this. Once you come under that bridge from town, it’s a separate little world. They keep their lips buttoned on principle.’

  Old Nick made a face suggesting that this was all sanctimonious claptrap. ‘You must have an ear to the ground somewhere!’