Tiger at Bay

by Bernard Knight

  Leaving the office, Joe had got down to the ground floor unobserved but while working his way around to the front entrance, he had heard voices and saw flashing torches coming towards him. He ducked under the nearest counter and lay doggo amongst boxes of nylons and ladies underwear while two policemen went past. The shop lights came on, their brilliance nearly blinding him, but no one came near.

  He thought he had got away with it when two new voices approached.

  ‘We’ll have to start combing the place from end to end, Ellis.’ Meredith had come into the ground floor main hall from the opposite end to the inspector, who had a uniformed constable with him.

  ‘There are a dozen salesrooms the size of this, sir – take half the police force to box them in!’

  ‘Then we’ll have to use half the police force,’ snapped Old Nick. ‘There are two of them still on the loose – the most important two!’

  ‘Where are we going to start, sir … the fire brigade have just moved in, they’re crawling all over the first floor. They say it’ll be easy to get under control, but they’ve got a couple of doors open for hoses and extinguishers and that … we don’t want to lose our friends through there!’

  Joe pricked up his ears. The added confusion of firemen tramping through the store might be his salvation.

  He had to work fast, as Meredith was starting to comb the salesroom already. ‘We’ll work from the front entrance inwards … call some more men and let’s get this place checked out.’

  Davies waited no longer … doubled up, he ran behind the row of display cases along the wall, dashing past the occasional openings, trusting to luck that no one was looking for the split second he needed to pass each gap.

  His luck held until he got to the end of the row.

  Then he had to dodge around a corner with no cover, in order to get into the next sales area.

  Though his feet made no sound on the thick carpets, Bob Ellis saw something move from the corner of his eye.

  ‘Hey – you! Sir, there’s one of ’em – around that corner!’ As he bellowed, he started running and four heavy pairs of feet were soon pounding after Joe Davies, who had about fifteen yards’ start.

  Ellis still had the police whistle and he blew it as he ran, shrilling an alarm through the ground floor.

  The next department was Menswear and at the end was a narrow passage leading on to some changing rooms.

  As he neared it, Joe suddenly swerved as he saw two uniformed men appear in the gloom. The only other way was down a staircase to the basement. He went down six steps at a time and hammered away along the centre aisle.

  Though he was no coward, the continuous pursuit was telling on him and he was working up a state of panic. He turned several corners aimlessly, having no plan of escape except blind flight.

  There appeared to be no other stairs going up and in a few seconds Davies found himself actually running back towards his pursuers. Meredith and a mobile sergeant suddenly appeared right in front of him. They dropped to a crouch as they blocked the alleyway ahead of him. He skidded round and found himself facing Ellis and a constable.

  Cornered, he acted just like the animal that was never far beneath his swarthy skin. His mouth pulled back to expose teeth bared in a desperate grin of defiance as he looked about him for a weapon. There were plenty to be had, as they were in the kitchenware department. Prominent amongst the wares displayed nearby were kitchen knives of all shapes and sizes.

  He leapt to the nearest shelf and grabbed a wicked-looking meat knife with a riveted wooden handle and an eight-inch razor-edged blade.

  ‘Right, coppers … come and get me!’ he screeched, his eyes glaring like organ stops and spittle flecking the corners of his mouth.

  ‘Drop that, Davies,’ cracked out Meredith. ‘There are about twenty of us in the store … you’ll only be done for theft as it is … don’t add manslaughter or GBH to it, for God’s sake!’

  ‘Get stuffed!’ screamed Joe, hysterically. ‘You’re going to do me for that Rourke job, ain’t you … so what I gotta lose?’

  He stood half-crouched in the passage between the shelves, the knife point waving ominously from side to side.

  The constable with Ellis began moving ponderously towards the cornered man. He was a great ugly fellow, apparently quite without fear. He seemed quite prepared to fall on Joe, knife or no knife.

  ‘Get back, will you!’ snapped Meredith. ‘He’s not worth getting injured for … he can’t get away, so don’t let’s have any heroics.’

  The PC stopped, looking slightly aggrieved. He was the sort that got most of the medals in wartime – often posthumously.

  Davies looked sideways at him, then back at Meredith and the sergeant. ‘Can’t get out, can I? … You bloody see if I can’t, mister!’

  He lunged towards Meredith with the knife and the chief superintendent jumped backwards with surprising agility. He was no coward either, but could see no point in getting slit open merely to arrest a man a few moments sooner than was inevitable.

  It was Bob Ellis who brought the deadlock to a rapid finish.

  Right alongside him were some mincing machines, the sort with a heavy crank handle. They must have weighed at least seven pounds apiece, being made of cast steel.

  With a sudden movement, he grabbed one in each hand and hurled them at Joe Davies.

  The first one was fended off by an upraised arm, but the second caught Davies on the side of the head with a sickening thud.

  Before it had even dropped to the floor, the oversized constable had uttered a bull-like roar and rushed in on Joe. He grabbed his knife arm, paralyzing it so that the weapon fell harmlessly to the ground. The other three officers dashed across to pinion his arms. In spite of the shattering blow on the head, Davies fought like a madman. No one had any handcuffs and a new clothesline from the shelves was pressed into service to truss him up until they could get him to a police van.

  ‘Only Tiger on the loose now,’ said Ellis a few moments later, when they had got their breath back and their collars straightened.

  ‘Make sure all those damn doors are shut … Ismail’s got more cunning than a bag full of monkeys.’

  They went back to the ground floor where firemen and more police were thrashing around. ‘This place is getting like the January sales,’ he snapped. ‘Sergeant, run round all the exits and make sure that there’s a man on each … and see if anyone’s seen a sign of Ismail.’ The sergeant went off at a gallop and Old Nick turned to Ellis. ‘We’re getting disorganized, Ellis … and I hate it. Now where the hell is Ismail?’

  At that moment, Tiger was crouched in the darkness at the back of a window display, at a corner where one of the arcades joined the back street.

  He had worked his way around part of the ground floor, hoping to slip out through one of the doors in the confusion created by the arrival of firemen. But policemen rapidly appeared to guard each exit and he sank back into the darkness.

  Working his way along the wall behind the elegant displays of the arcade windows, he got to the nearest point to where he would like to break out. There was no door here, but neither was there a police guard.

  The windows had plywood screen cutting them off from the shop, but here and there were hinged panels or narrow entrances for the window dressers to get through. He peered through one of these and saw two dummies dressed in cocktail gowns. Beyond these was the plate glass of the window and, in the light of the street lamps, he could see a deserted police car parked at the kerb.

  The back street carried on to his left until it joined High Street, which met Castle Street at right angles. Earlier that evening he had left a second car parked in High Street. It was near a couple of casino clubs and late parking would not arouse the suspicions of the nosiest constable. This was part of his private getaway plan, typical of his calculating mind. He had rented an almost new Vauxhall Cresta as an insurance against a major snag … and now he was thanking his stars for his foresight. If only he could get the hu
ndred yards from the store to the car. The keys were in his pocket and if he could get away from the immediate vicinity without the car being identified, he still stood a good chance of slipping clean away.

  The problem was getting out of the shop itself … it looked as if there was only one way – through the window.

  He crept through the gap in ply screens and crouched between the dummies. There was no one in sight outside and he began looking around cautiously for an implement.

  As well as the mannequins, there was a display of evening accessories on a metal stand. This was supported by a metal rod screwed into a heavy cast iron base. He tore off the glittery handbag and gloves and gripped the rod determinedly.

  After another glance through the window to make sure that no bobby was standing watching him, he stepped boldly up to the glass and struck it a resounding blow with the metal base. To his dismay nothing happened, apart from a deafening clang and a tingling up his arms.

  In desperation, he took the end of the rod in both hands and swung it high over his shoulder like a golf club.

  This time, it did the trick!

  There was a minor explosion and a shattering sound like a multiple motorway collision. Most of the window fell out, and after kicking free one large piece at the bottom, he jumped out into the street.

  Seconds later, he was racing away up the side street, already feeling for the car keys in his pocket as he ran.

  Tiger was just about to congratulate himself on getting clear away when a series of yells and blasts on a police whistle came from the mouth of the arcade.

  Without looking around, he hammered around the corner into the brightly lit High Street, praying that no loitering policeman was nearby.

  He had fifty yards start from the store and the Vauxhall was now almost in front of him. He threw himself into the driving seat and blessed the engine when it started from cold at the first touch. He was facing down towards the castle and by the time he had covered the few yards to it he was already doing forty-five. The traffic lights at the junction were red, but he hardly noticed, swerving around to the right, accelerating and changing up to top as fast as the big three-litre engine would allow.

  Immediately ahead of him was another set of lights where the main east-west and north-south roads of the city intersected. Here a one-way system began and he should have swung left, but the escape route to the east – which meant England and the Continent – was straight on. He hesitated for a fraction of a second, then forged on over the lights, again at red. To turn into the one-way loop would add another quarter of a mile to the escape route and any pursuing police car could cut him off by racing up Queen Street the wrong way, as he was doing now.

  So Ismail charged on at sixty-five miles an hour, headlights blazing into the eyes of a succession of astonished late night drivers coming down at him in the proper direction. He tore up the centre of the road, the oncoming vehicles shying away, one actually mounting the pavement in consternation.

  His luck held until the far end of the main shopping street, where the one-way system rejoined it again. As he was passing the Capitol Cinema, the sound he had been dreading hit his ears … the hee-haw of a police siren.

  He flicked his eyes up to the driving mirror to try to gauge the distance of the police car. This could not have distracted him for more than a quarter of a second, but it was a quarter of a second too much.

  A large lorry, carrying a great steel container for industrial waste, came lumbering around the corner from the bypass, right into the path of the Vauxhall. It was only doing about twenty and even after the shock of finding a car almost under his windscreen, the driver was able to pull up within a few yards.

  Tiger never actually hit the lorry, but in avoiding it, he pushed the Cresta beyond the limit of its road holding.

  The car screeched around in a half circle, all brakes locked and then somersaulted twice. It came to rest on all four wheels on the pavement, its front bumper ironically having smashed in the door of the City Police Social Club a few yards from the cinema.

  Seconds later, the patrol car screamed to a raucous halt alongside and the police officers leapt out to help the lorry driver drag Tiger Ismail from the wrecked Vauxhall.

  He was unconscious, but otherwise seemed to have hardly a scratch.

  The policemen looked at the shattered door of their club and then at the limp body of the fugitive.

  ‘This bugger had it in for us all ways, Dave’ muttered the sergeant.

  The next day was one for tying up loose ends and picking up the pieces.

  ‘Poetic justice, that’s what it is!’ said Bob Ellis with obvious satisfaction, as he put the phone down. ‘Ismail’s in the next cubicle to poor old Summers!’

  ‘What’s the score with them?’ asked Dai Rees.

  ‘Summers is showing signs of coming back to this world … the doctors never give you a straight answer, but I think they expect him to start coming round before long. The other swine is all right, just concussion for an hour, but hardly a mark on him. Still, he‘ll be nice and fit to stand trial.’

  Meredith came into the main CID room. He had just been telling the tale to the Chief Constable.

  ‘Chief sends his compliments,’ he muttered grudgingly. ‘Good night’s work.’

  Ellis grinned. ‘Worth a night out of bed to see Joe Davies catch that mincer across the side of his head. Are those four up before the stipe1 this morning?’

  Meredith nodded. ‘Joe needed a stitch in his head, but he’s all right otherwise. Ismail will have to wait a few days, but we’ll get the others remanded out of the way. I don’t know what the DPP will make of the charges. Last night’s party will put them all away for a year or two, but the rest of the business is a bit dicey.’

  Ellis tapped angrily on his desk with a pencil. ‘Be a damn shame to see ’em get away with anything. There’s Summers and Terry Rourke to be squared up somehow.’

  Old Nick shrugged. ‘If none of them cough, we’ve had it!’ He pulled at a black eyebrow pensively. ‘We haven’t a clue which one of them did what, but I should think we might squeeze enough out of ’em to get them a fair stretch – apart from the girl, she won’t cop much.’

  Ellis suddenly grinned, his fair, rosy face lighting up.

  ‘That Price character – he turns up everywhere. We’d better offer him an honorary appointment on the Force.’

  Old Nick scowled one of his darkest scowls.

  ‘If he crosses my path again, I’ll kick in his other ribs for him. He can’t do a thing right. He’s lucky not to have ended up like Rourke.’

  The same sentiments were being bandied about in the saloon bar of the Glendower Arms. Lewis Evans was propped belligerently behind the bar, glaring at Iago Price.

  ‘What’s going to happen about my tape recorder, then? The police have confiscated it as an exhibit, as well as the casing being bust!’

  Dilys studied herself intently in the mirror of her compact as she threw in her own drop of acid.

  ‘Right blooming hero, our Iago! Sounds the alarm after the coppers get there! Good job David Powell’s don’t know that, or they’d take their cheque back again.’

  She was busy deflating Iago’s ego over the gratitude the store had showered on him that morning. Meredith had mysteriously exaggerated the part Iago had played and the managing director had handed him twenty-five guineas and the promise of all future enquiry business from David Powell’s.

  ‘You can sneer, but I earned that tip the hard way,’ he said, nettled by their lack of hero-worship. ‘That damned woman, Betty, nearly kicked a hole in me after I pressed that button. She must have been wearing stiletto toecaps, not heels.’

  Dilys hauled her mascara-laden eyelids up and looked at him. ‘You stick to randy husbands and never-never dodgers, chum. You’re out of your class with people like Tiger Ismail.’

  Lewis nodded solemn agreement.

  ‘How’s your leg? Fallen through any more ceilings since yesterday?’ he asked evill
y, still simmering over his beloved tape recorder.

  Iago shot to his feet and forgot to wince with the alleged pain. ‘I’m going to find another pub where the landlord isn’t so damn familiar. You coming, Dill?’

  ‘No,’ she said calmly. ‘And you sit down, you haven’t finished the drink I bought you.’

  Iago subsided on to his stool and sulked. His face still had red lines across it, his leg was scratched, his chest ached and his moustache was sore, but all he got for his honourable wounds was sarcasm and abuse. But hope sprang eternal and he turned back to the blonde.

  ‘What about coming out with me tonight to celebrate and all that?’

  Dilys studied her pink fingernails as if she had just discovered them.

  ‘Sorry, pet, I’ve got a date already. With a policeman – a real one, with a whistle and all.’

  Iago swallowed his drink and slunk away.

  * * *

  1Magistrate

  The Sixties Mysteries

  by

  Bernard Knight

  The Lately Deceased

  The Thread of Evidence

  Mistress Murder

  Russian Roulette

  Policeman’s Progress

  Tiger at Bay

  The Expert

  For more information about Bernard Knight

  and other Accent Press titles

  please visit

  www.accentpress.co.uk

  First published in Great Britain by Robert Hale Ltd 1970

  This edition published by Accent Press 2016

  ISBN 9781910939901

  Copyright © Bernard Knight 1970, 2016

  The right of Bernard Knight to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  The story contained within this book is a work of fiction. Names and characters are the product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the written permission of the publishers: Accent Press Ltd, Ty Cynon House, Navigation Park, Abercynon, CF45 4SN