Tiger at Bay

by Bernard Knight

  and these acted as earmuffs, preventing him hearing the scraping of the hatch as Joe levered it open after years of disuse.

  Down below, Archie stared fearfully at the disembodied leg. ‘Is it the cops?’ he whispered to Tiger.

  The young Arab was pale, but stony-faced. Things were going from bad to worse, but he kept an iron grip on himself.

  ‘Doesn’t matter if it is or not … we’ve got to keep him on ice until tonight’s job is done.’ He raised his voice. ‘Joe, you up there yet?’

  There was no reply, but a heavy bang as the hatch fell open answered his question.

  Changing his grip on the leg, he snapped an order at Vaughan.

  ‘Get down to the front door and keep an eye on the next shop … he must have got in through there … tell Uncle Ahmed to watch the back, there might be somebody else trying to slip out. We must know if we’ve been rumbled … get a move on, man!’

  As Archie pattered away, heavy footsteps and muffled voices sounded overhead. The leg began wriggling violently.

  ‘Let him go, Tiger,’ came Joe’s distant shout. Ismail released the ankle and it was jerked violently upwards, bits of lath snapping off and a snowstorm of plaster flakes billowing down. The shoe stuck at ceiling level and fell off, but the leg vanished through a ragged hole.

  ‘Who was it, Joe?’ yelled Tiger through the cavity.

  The answer was immediate – and reassuring. ‘Not the rozzers … it’s that bloody feller – the private eye.’

  The clumping reversed across the ceiling and in a moment a dishevelled and dirty Iago was thrust roughly into the room.

  Joseph Stalin had him in a painful grip, his arm twisted up behind his back. The Greek came close behind, clutching a tangle of wire and a tape recorder.

  ‘A flaming spy, Tiger – another of ’em,’ snarled Joe viciously.

  Ismail threw him a venomous look and he dried up immediately, aware of letting yet another bit of evidence fall gratuitously.

  ‘At least it’s not the law,’ murmured Ismail, his dark eyes staring at the petrified Iago.

  ‘What the hell are we going to do with him?’ demanded Joe Davies.

  ‘He had all this stuff up there,’ muttered Nikos Kalvos. ‘D’you want to hear what’s on the tape?’

  Tiger waved him away. ‘I don’t care, as long as it gets lost. Flush it down the loo – or burn it in the kitchen.’

  The Greek vanished and Tiger motioned to Joe to put Iago in a chair.

  The long-haired lieutenant shoved the enquiry agent roughly into a seat and stood behind him. ‘Any messing about and you’ll get done!’ he growled menacingly.

  Iago found his voice at last. Shivering with a mixture of emotion and fright, he made a miserable attempt at bluster.

  ‘You must be mad … the police know I’m here. They’ll be coming to look for me if I don’t get back by six o’clock.’

  Tiger stared at him without a flicker of expression. ‘Shut up … you and your interfering have been the cause of all our troubles. You’re the one that sent Rourke here snooping.’

  ‘And you killed him … go on then, finish me off as well!’ blabbered Iago, in a pathetic bout of bravado.

  ‘Don’t know what you’re talking about – he walked out of here, we never saw him again, did we, Joe?’ Tiger had an eye to the future. Tonight should go well, but if they slipped up and were caught, the last thing he wanted was Iago’s corroboration of the strong police suspicions. Joe had already put one of his big feet in it; that was bad enough.

  ‘What did you hear up there?’ snapped Tiger, changing the subject.

  Iago made a futile attempt to play them at their own game.

  ‘Nothing – couldn’t hear a thing. That’s how I came to fall through, trying to alter the mike.’

  The Arab shrugged indifferently. ‘All the same to me.’

  Iago’s eyes opened like pale blue saucers. His pasty face looked like uncooked bread, with a bacon-rind moustache hung at the centre. ‘What you going to do … look, stop this fooling, you’ve got to let me go. You’re all finished now, you know that.’

  Tiger stared at him and for an awful moment Iago thought that he was going to give Joe orders to take him out and ‘dispose’ of him in true Chicago style. The memory of Terry Rourke came flooding back again in horrific detail and the fright almost stopped his vital functions – like breathing!

  But Ismail put him out of his agony. ‘We’re going to be busy for the next few hours. Until then, you’ll stay here, and make no more damned trouble for us. After that, I couldn’t care less what happens to you.’ Slightly relieved, but still apprehensive, Iago half rose from the chair.

  Joe grabbed his thin shoulder and crushed him back on to the seat. ‘Siddown and shurrup!’ he grated. Then he looked at Tiger. ‘Leave him here? Think that’s safe? What if he’s right about the fuzz being behind him. They might come back with a warrant after this afternoon’s performance.’

  Ismail fiddled with his nail file, but didn’t use it – a sure sign of his inner worries. ‘You may be right – but not because the police are following him.’ He looked expressionlessly at Iago. ‘You were just having a little fun on your own, weren’t you … the coppers think you’re a nut.’ Iago opened his mouth, but no one was going to listen to him. ‘I think we’ll take you with us. You’re cracked enough to do something crazy and we don’t want to get Uncle Ahmed mixed up in this – he doesn’t know what goes on upstairs here.’ He gave a wink to Joe out of sight of Iago’s view, a subtle bit of propaganda for Price to take to the police in due course.

  ‘What we going to do then – take him on the job with us?’ Joe sounded incredulous.

  ‘Tie him up, leave him in the car … we can dump him somewhere when we’ve finished.’

  Archie Vaughan came back into the room, with Kalvos close behind, dangling the empty tape spool in his fingers.

  ‘Nobody else next door, Tiger,’ reported Vaughan. ‘I cracked the back door and went through the place … nothing there except where he climbed up the loft.’

  Ismail nodded and looked at his watch. ‘A couple of hours before we need start getting organized.’ He looked intently at Iago. ‘Listen, mister … you be a good boy and you won’t get hurt. Joe, you stay with him here and see that he behaves. I’m going to have an hour’s kip. You others can do what the hell you like, as long as you stay stone cold sober. Be back here at eleven – got it?’

  The city was quiet at midnight.

  The rain had stopped, but the streets were still wet. The pavements glistened under the yellow light of the sodium lamps, as a solitary policeman went on his rounds of Castle Street.

  The late night traffic was still quite brisk, but there were few pedestrians about. The public houses were long since closed, there were no big dances on a Monday night and the late cinemas and restaurants were mainly at the other end of town.

  The helmeted PC trod his measured steps from shop to shop, flashing a light in the deeper doorways. He hardly expected to find anything – even drunks were a rarity in Cardiff these days. The most he might come across would be a cuddling couple with more than the usual stamina.

  There was nothing by the time he reached the Angel Hotel – the end of his beat, just opposite the County Cricket Ground at the Arms Park. He stopped and looked across for a moment at the imposing mass of the castle, which formed the whole of the opposite side of the street, stretching away to Kingsway. The gilt hands of the clock on its ornate tower were just past midnight and the constable thought of his approaching ‘refreshment period’ back in the Central station.

  He ambled back past the broad front of David Powell’s department store and jumped slightly when a time switch suddenly extinguished all the window lights.

  The main entrance was firmly sealed by a steel grille across the steps. There were four or five other entrances, as the shop ran back through the full thickness of the block to the next street, as well as enveloping two covered arcades which connected the
two streets. He had checked those doors on the way up and had had a word with one of the two nightwatchmen, who was putting out his empty milk bottles.

  As the slow clop of the police boots faded into the distance, a small door opened cautiously just inside the eastern arcade. A face peeped warily out through the crack.

  Betty had been thrown a little, by the appearance of the ‘copper’, but her timetable was not seriously affected. She had been cooped up in ‘Inexpensive Dresses’ since six o’clock, and it seemed more like six weeks than six hours.

  The regular visits of the caretakers had been no more than a bore – they never looked in the changing cubicles, as she had discovered during her week’s employment there.

  She had arranged with Tiger Ismail to open the door of the staff entrance at exactly midnight … that was when the watchmen made one of their many cups of tea.

  Betty looked out now to see if any of the mob was in Castle Street or sheltering under the castle gate opposite. It had started to drizzle again, giving a good excuse for someone to loiter in a sheltered nook. There was at least another five or ten minutes before the watchmen might start their rounds again – she had stayed all last night as a ‘dry run’, to get used to their routine.

  Another four minutes went by without a sign of anyone and she started to worry. Suddenly, something touched her hand, which was on the edge of the door. Only by a miracle did she avoid squealing with fright. Tiger peered in at her from the gloom of the arcade.

  ‘All OK?’ he whispered.

  She glared at him. ‘Christ, where did you spring from – I thought you were going to be in the street. You frightened the bloody life out of me!’

  ‘I came down the arcade – but damn that, let’s get inside.’

  She led him rapidly and silently past the clocking-in racks to the staff cloakrooms and they went into the ‘Ladies’ for a whispered conference.

  ‘The watchmen never come in here,’ she explained, ‘not even in the night.’ Her hard good looks were lost on Tiger. To him, she was just another of the gang – one of the most reliable and efficient members.

  ‘What about the money – that still here?’ This was the most important thing; without that they might as well go home.

  She nodded quickly. ‘I would have rung you if it wasn’t … something else, too. They’ve had a lot more in the jewellery line for Christmas. Not fabulous, but a lot of stuff worth twenty to thirty pounds a time. There must be a thousand quid’s worth of stock there, at least – all small things.’

  His eyes glistened in the poor light. For some reason, baubles interested him as much as money. One of his ambitions was to have been a big diamond thief, but it was too risky.

  ‘What sort of stuff is it?’ he demanded.

  ‘Rings, brooches, costume jewellery … mostly semi-precious, but a few small good stones. Lot of silver, too, but that’s a bit bulky.’

  ‘Where is it?’

  ‘Special little department off the Ladies Fashion … there’s a safe there, but it came out of Noah’s bloody ark. Nikos could crack it with his eyes shut!’

  Tiger weighed up the prospects against the risks … that was the way he stayed out of prison.

  ‘Let’s go and have a look at it first,’ he said.

  She put a hand on his arm. ‘The night men – they keep a pretty sharp eye on it. Their cubbyhole is within sight of the jewellery, that’s why they haven’t bothered with much of a safe, I suppose.’

  Ismail frowned into the dark. ‘You mean we’ve got to knock over the guards before we can collect?’

  She nodded. ‘Unless you can work fast enough to do it while they’re on their rounds. They only stay away about ten minutes at a time, they keep coming back to meet at their little room. Those buggers drink more tea than Joe does beer. If one doesn’t turn up, the other has got strict orders to ring the police.’ Tiger looked admiringly at her. ‘You’ve sure done your homework, kid.’

  She nodded. ‘I know – and I can tell you that there’s a direct alarm from that cubbyhole to the police station. Just press a button and the balloon goes up!’

  Tiger was thinking hard. ‘Is it worth the extra risk of nobbling the watchmen?’ he mused.

  Betty said she thought it was. ‘We don’t know how long Nikos will be, cracking the big safe in Accounts,’ she whispered. ‘If he has to blow it, those chaps will come running anyway – after pressing the alarm. If they’re out of the way from the start, you can spend all night looting the place.’

  He had another deep think, weighing up all the ‘pros and cons’. Then he nodded. ‘You’re right, girl … now listen.’

  He outlined the various disasters that had recently happened and explained that they were all making a run for it directly after the job. ‘You’re all right, Betty,’ he ended. ‘The coppers don’t know you from Adam – or Eve. You can sit tight if you want to … I’d keep on coming to work if I were you, or they’ll get suspicious.’

  She shook her head. ‘I’m going with Joe,’ she said firmly. ‘Where is he, anyway?’

  ‘Cruising around … I’ll go out and flag him down when we decide how to go about things.’

  They spent a few minutes drawing up a plan of campaign, then Ismail glided off into the darkness. He had the knack of moving like the cat that he so often resembled.

  A few moments later he was back with Joe Davies and Nikos Kalvos. Joe took a few seconds off to run his hands enthusiastically over Betty’s body in the darkness, then they were back to business. She bolted the staff door behind them as soon as they were all inside.

  ‘Where will the nightwatchmen be by now?’ breathed Tiger.

  She shrugged. ‘I’ve lost track of them, messing about here – you’ll have to go looking for them, or catch them as they get back to their den … but mind they don’t get a finger to that flaming alarm!’

  Tiger padded away, with the other two behind him. Following Betty’s directions, they passed through two furniture departments which were joined by arched doorways. They kept a sharp eye and ear for the guards, but there was no sign of them.

  A few dim electric bulbs glowed at strategic points, usually where the paths through the various departments crossed. There were a multitude of large displays and deep shadows in which to shelter.

  ‘Could hide a bleeding army in here,’ whispered Joe Davies, but Tiger poked him violently as a signal to shut his mouth.

  Beyond Carpets and Soft Furnishings, they came across a modern piece of shopfitting which was completely closed by metal grilles and plate glass. The faint light showed displays of jewellery and ornaments, with many gaps where the more expensive items had been removed to the safe for the night.

  Tiger held out an arm to stop the others, then pointed ahead to the next corner.

  The clink of cups and the muted buzz of conversation came to them from an oversize sentry box made of hardboard, which nestled in a corner.

  The Arab pushed the others into the shelter of some fabric displays, then put his mouth close to their ears. ‘Get ’em separately after they split up.’

  A few moments later, the door of the cubicle opened and a rather fat man came out. He stretched himself, scratched his armpit and set off in the opposite direction, waving a large torch in one hand.

  Tiger cursed.

  He could not go after this one until the other appeared – if only the first man had come this way.

  In a moment, another younger man appeared and moved briskly in their direction.

  Tiger nudged Joe as he approached.

  As the watchman passed their hideout, Davies leapt out and pinioned him, one big arm around his face and the other gripping his right wrist. Nikos was close behind and grabbed the other arm, kicking his legs from under him at the same time.

  The caretaker made no attempt to struggle – he seemed shocked into paralysis.

  ‘The plaster, Nikos,’ snapped Tiger, and in a moment the man they had attacked was trussed with wide surgical tape around his ankles an
d wrists – the strong, adhesive cloth was far better than any string or ropes. Nikos slapped a generous length across the man’s face, completely covering the mouth.

  ‘Leave his nose free, for God’s sake,’ muttered Tiger. ‘We don’t want another accident.’

  Within thirty seconds the watchman was immobilized and silenced. A few more seconds and he was laid out of sight behind the nearest counter.

  ‘Next, please,’ said Joe, with facetious glee. They all went after the other man and inside three minutes he had suffered the same ignominious treatment as the first. He managed to cry out as Joe grabbed him but, as there was no one to hear, it didn’t matter.

  Betty Thomas had kept out of the way during the combat, not from any feminine squeamishness, but from reluctance to be recognized unnecessarily – like Tiger, caution was her strong point. She came up now, after the two watchmen had been hidden out of sight.

  ‘The dispatch room is this way,’ she said, leading them to a set of swing doors. Downstairs in the basement was a large packing department leading to a loading bay where Powell’s vans were parked for the night. This adjoined a ramp leading up into the back street behind the store, sealed off from it by a wide metal shutter.

  Joe opened a small access door in this and stepped cautiously out into the open. Padding up to the street, he made sure that the coast was clear, then came back to help Nikos wind up the steel roller gate. It rumbled with nerve-rending loudness in the still night and as soon as it was high enough to walk under, they left it.

  Tiger walked out into the road and cautiously waved down the street.

  Archie Vaughan was parked in High Street, a long distance off, but in a position where he had a clear view down the back street behind Powell’s. As soon as he saw the signal, he slid Ismail’s Ford along and turned without hesitation down the ramp and into the loading bay between the lorries. Tiger padded inside and there was another excruciating minute as they wound the door down again.