The Man Who Hated Banks & Other Mysteries

by Michael Gilbert

  “It certainly sounds like it,” said Hazlerigg. “It might be food poisoning. Would you like me to get the town hall on to it?”

  Hodges looked quite upset. “Oh, no,” he said. “I wouldn’t want that. He’s a decent little man, really. I wouldn’t trouble about it. Not unless there are other complaints.”

  There were no other complaints and Hazlerigg forgot the matter. It came back to his mind three days later when he found himself in one of the small streets behind Bury Market, and saw the name “Luigi Donatello” in gold on white, and underneath in smaller letters, “Cooking in the Italian manner.” It was past seven o’clock and, as Hazlerigg’s new landlady had no mind above Irish stew, he pushed in.

  He found himself in a big, single, ground floor room, with a curtained staircase at the back leading to the upper parts of the house, a partitioned doorway to the kitchen in one corner, and a door leading to the manager’s office in the other. There were bad oil paintings of Italian beauty spots on the panels round the walls, and everything was very new and clean and had that smell of chicory and garlic and fresh coffee which makes up most of the charm of Soho. It was certainly an unusual smell for Bury Market.

  While he was waiting for his food to come, he tried to answer a question that had been puzzling him. If Luigi was the master chef that Hodges made out, why had he come to Bury Gate? It wasn’t a slum, by any means, but its inhabitants were people whose normal idea of dining out was fish and chips. Perhaps Hodges was right. They had come to laugh and stayed to pay. Maybe Luigi had reasoned it out for himself that they would do just that. And certainly this way he would avoid the cut-throat competition (and mad overheads) of the West End.

  It was an interesting speculation, interrupted by the arrival of Luigi himself. The restaurateur was an olive-skinned Italian of medium height, whose long nose, shrewd eyes and plumb, firm chin, combined to give him an appearance curiously like that of the young Bonaparte.

  He brought the ravioli-au-jus and the river trout which followed it. He decanted the red wine from a wicker flask with a care and reverence which suggested a Chateau-bottled claret – which it certainly was not, though very drinkable – and he filled and refilled Hazlerigg’s cup with strong, black coffee, all with a sort of dynamic cheerfulness. But somewhere behind his grey eyes there lurked an abstraction, something which, in a less composed person, might have been described as an anxiety.

  Hazlerigg wondered at first if Luigi had identified him. He thought not. He had only a few days in the division and had never worked in that part of London before. He made up his mind that he would take the opportunity of introducing himself when he congratulated his host on the dinner, and he had raised his hand to call for his bill when he checked the movement. A group at a table in the corner caught his eye.

  The big man with the sleek, shiny black hair and the big nose, he had met before. His name was Sparks; he was a minor racketeer. One of his companions, a thick, stupid-looking man, with a red face, was an ex-boxer called Coulan. The third, a smaller, quieter person, with the look of a lawyer gone to seed, was unknown to him.

  Sparks said something in his loud voice, and Luigi hurried across to his table. Sparks had half risen to his feet and was about to repeat his words when, across the width of the room, his eye caught Hazlerigg’s. He broke off the sentence and sat back in his chair. He said something to Coulan and they both looked in Hazlerigg’s direction. Luigi backed away from the table, and hurried into his office. That was all.

  Hazlerigg paid the waiter and went thoughtfully back to the station. Hodges was on late duty, and he put a question to him.

  “Yes,” said Hodges, “I know Sparks. It’s difficult to say exactly what he does, but I should describe him as a troublemaker. He’s got a finger in most of the dirt in this division. Coulan’s his bodyguard. I can’t place the little chap, but we can probably turn him up in Records.”

  “Do you think Luigi might be in with them?” asked Hazlerigg. “They seemed to know each other – the restaurant might be a rendezvous – something of that sort.”

  Hodges looked surprised. “I never thought about it,” he said. “We’ve never had any complaints about Luigi.”

  “Well, he hasn’t been here very long, has he?” said Hazlerigg. “He might be worth keeping an eye on. I think I’ll drop in from time to time myself.”

  Having formed this resolution, Hazlerigg found so much to do in his new job that he forgot all about it, and it was chance and hunger again, not design, which brought him to Luigi’s restaurant two weeks later.

  It was a visit he had every reason to remember. It started with an excellent minestrone and it ended in a shower bath.

  He had a table at the far end of the room, beside the rise of the staircase. He had finished the first course and was studying the long, handwritten menu in purple pencil when something dropped on the back of his head. It felt like a fly and he was about to put a hand up to brush it away when a steady jet of cold water hit him on the nape of his neck, just above his collar.

  He jumped to his feet, knocking the chair sideways into the married couple sitting on his left, and looked round him for an explanation. He saw at once that the water was coming through the ceiling directly above his head.

  Next moment he was overwhelmed in a flurry of management. Luigi arrived at a trot, spat something at the waiter, muttered something incomprehensible, but clearly placatory, to Hazlerigg, and disappeared up the stairs. The waiter seized a napkin with one hand and started to mop Hazlerigg’s head, and with the other hand swept an empty soup bowl under the downpour, which was increasing.

  In the excitement, a carafe of wine got knocked on to the floor and the married couple removed themselves to an empty table on the other side of the room. As they went, the man remarked to the woman: “Never a dull moment here.” He didn’t sound amused, all the same.

  The next thing that happened was that a woman appeared from the kitchen, grabbed Hazlerigg by the arm and led him out into the office. She didn’t seem to speak much English, but she produced a towel. Hazlerigg took it from her and assured her that he was quite all right. This was not strictly true, because his collar was a damp rag and he had a feeling that some water had got down into the small of his back, but the woman was so obviously distressed that most of his irritation vanished.

  At this moment, Luigi reappeared. “It was the bullcock,” he said.

  “I beg your pardon?” said Hazlerigg.

  “The bullcock in the cistern.”

  “Oh – the ballcock. Yes. Very tricky things, ballcocks.” Hazlerigg was combing his tousled hair and looking into a mirror over the mantelpiece. Without turning his head he added: “Someone wedge it down?”

  He saw all the answer reflected on Luigi’s expressive Latin face, and he turned slowly. “Hadn’t you better let me in on this?” he said.

  “I do not understand.”

  “You know who I am, don’t you?”

  “Si – you are the head of the detectives.”

  “Well, not yet,” said Hazlerigg. “But I’m head of them in this district. If you were having any trouble”—he chose his words carefully—“I should be the person you would come to first.”

  “Trouble?” said Luigi. “Now what sort of trouble would you mean?” His eyes looked sick.

  “Brawls in your restaurant, foreign matter in your food, water all over your customers. That sort of trouble.” Still Luigi said nothing.

  “Trouble,” Hazlerigg went on, “caused by people who have warned you that if you report it to the police you will get it twice as hot – and have suggested, too, I dare say, that the only result of your dealings with the police will be that they will oppose your licence and have you shut down.”

  He saw that this one was right on the mark.

  “We won’t mention any names,” he said, striking while the iron was hot, “but if you’d like to tell me exactly what Mr. S—shall we call him?—is up to, I’ll see what we can do.”

  “Clear
ly you know everything,” said Luigi. “I was a fool not to come to you sooner. These men terrify me.”

  “What do they actually do?”

  “All that they can possibly do to drive me out of business. This evening you saw – you felt—”

  “This evening I felt,” agreed Hazlerigg.

  “Someone must have broken in upstairs. It would not be difficult. During dinner we are all busy. A wedge was pushed in under the arm of the float. The overflow pipe had been blocked, also.”

  “Have they played any more tricks like that on you?”

  “Many. Some weeks ago they ruined my wine. I buy the ordinary white and red wine in six-gallon flasks. They ruined a whole flask.”

  “What did they put in it?”

  Luigi told him, and Hazlerigg wrinkled his lip in disgust. “Yes,” he said. “Not pretty. That must have been the night Inspector Hodges and his wife were so ill. I wonder why no one else complained.”

  “Inspector Hodges was the first I served from the new flask. When I was clearing the table, I smelt the wine that was left in the glasses. I knew something was wrong. I threw away all that was left – nearly six gallons. It broke my heart.”

  “It won’t only be your heart that will be broken if you go on at that rate,” said Hazlerigg. “Has anything else happened?”

  “Yes, much else. Often much worse. One night those three men came in. They complained of the food and one of them sicked.”

  “Sicked?”

  “Yes. He vomited.” Luigi sounded so comically distressed when he said this that Hazlerigg almost laughed, but a look at the little man’s face stopped him.

  “You’re sure it was nothing in the food?”

  “The food was of the best. Also, they told me afterwards that it had all been arranged. The red-faced man told me that he could vomit when he wished. It was an accomplishment, you understand?”

  “Did they say why they were doing it? Have they asked for money?”

  “They do not ask me for money.”

  “Pity,” said Hazlerigg. “It might make it easier if they did – easier from my point of view, I mean. What are they after?”

  “They wish to drive me out of business.”

  Hazlerigg nodded slowly. It was much as he had thought. A foreigner, coming newly into the district and opening a highly successful restaurant, was bound to make enemies. Other restaurant owners, less successful or less scrupulous, might think it worth their while to hire Sparks and his circus. It tied in, too, with his previous idea that the North London fish-and-chip brigade represented fairly solid money to the man capable of exploiting them.

  Nevertheless, it was difficult. A Divisional Detective Inspector in his division is like a headmaster in a school. He must keep order, but he must draw that firm, invisible line that runs between discipline and interference. He must put down flagrant bullying, but he must not seem to go out of his way to protect the person who is being bullied. Too much protection may, in the long run, hurt the victim more than too little. And apart from all that, what offence does a man commit if he is deliberately sick in a restaurant?

  Hazlerigg tried to convey some of this to Luigi. “One of the difficulties is,” he concluded, “that even if you asked for protection, it couldn’t go on forever. All they’ve got to do is to bide their time. The difficulty is to get them to fight on your ground and in your time.” Luigi listened with exaggerated deference as the Inspector spoke. At the end of it his face lit up. “Bemissimo,” he said. “I understand exactly.”

  “Well, I only wish I did,” said Hazlerigg.

  “It is as you say. We must not tell tales. We must be sportsmen. That is the British way. And we must choose our own time and our own ground. That is right?”

  “That’s right,” said Hazlerigg. He wondered exactly what ideas might be moving in Luigi’s Napoleonic head.

  Two months later he found out. He received a card. It was a handsome card, with a gilt-deckled edge, and it announced that Luigi Donatello, proprietor of Luigi’s Italian Restaurant, intended to have a gala dinner on the Wednesday following, to celebrate the successful conclusion of his first six months in business. “Good Will and Good Cheer to all our Regular Patrons,” it concluded. “Balloons will be Released.”

  “Balloons will be released,” Hazlerigg repeated thoughtfully to himself. It seemed to be Luigi’s idea of a gala occasion. And in Luigi’s situation, a gala was plainly asking for trouble. He looked at the invitation again. There was an unmistakable air of cockiness about it.

  He said to Hodges: “I don’t see the boys resisting an invitation like that. I should imagine the balloon will go up and no mistake.”

  Then he noticed some writing on the back. “You will see, Inspector, that I am choosing my own place and time. It would cause me much pleasure if you would consent to be present – unofficially. Please arrive at eight o’clock – and might I ask you to come by the back entrance?”

  At eight o’clock, on Wednesday evening, Hazlerigg made his way, unobtrusively, to Luigi’s restaurant. He was admitted through the service door at the back by Luigi’s wife. He took a quick look over his shoulder as he entered. He had been careful to use the back streets and was reasonably certain he hadn’t been observed. But he couldn’t be too sure.

  Luigi’s wife led the way into the office, where Hazlerigg saw that a table had been laid out for him. It was so placed that, without moving, he could see, through a crack in the door, the whole of the left side of the restaurant and, by means of a well-placed mirror, most of the right side, too.

  Already, the party in the restaurant was beginning to warm up. Without any notable extravagance, Luigi had created a scene full of light and colour. The new, white tablecloths shone against the dark gold and red of the walls. There were chrysanthemums in vases, and high up, in the middle, hung the promised cluster of balloons. A wireless was playing softly and the room was already quite full.

  Then it struck Hazlerigg that there was a curious waste of good floor space. The middle of the room, from the swing door which opened on the street to the stairs at the back, was clear of tables, which were crowded into the remaining space round the outside. It was too small a space for a dance floor. It almost looked as if Luigi was planning some very intimate cabaret turn.

  The next thing he noticed was that Luigi had hired a new waiter for the occasion. He was above normal height and carried a good pair of shoulders under his evening coat. Hazlerigg was certain he had seen his face before.

  His thoughts were interrupted by the entrance of Sparks and Coulan. Neither was drunk, though clearly both of them had been drinking.

  Luigi hurried affably out of the shadows and, somewhat to Hazlerigg’s surprise, offered them one of the most prominent tables in the room on the edge of the cleared space.

  It was not difficult to see that both men were in for trouble. They laughed too loudly and too often, and some of their remarks had already caused offence to their neighbours. The climax came when the new waiter placed in front of them the dish they had just ordered.

  “What do you call this?” said Coulan.

  “Goulash, sir.” At this moment, someone turned off the wireless, and in the sudden silence the waiter’s voice sounded loud.

  “Messed-up horse’s guts,” said Coulan. “Take it away and give me a steak.”

  “You do not like our food?”

  “I hate the food, and I hate the place, and I hate to see a pretty boy dressed up like a performing monkey,” said Coulan, and moving in his chair, he took a swipe at the waiter’s face with his open hand. Only, by the time it arrived, the waiter was somewhere quite different.

  He moved back a couple of yards, took off his tailcoat and hung it carefully over an empty chair.

  Some of the diners were already edging towards the door, and Hazlerigg wondered if there was going to be a stampede. Suddenly, Luigi spoke from the service door. One of the overhead lights shone directly on him, and, in his evening dress, he looked like some stage
manager coming forward to collect the applause.

  “Please do not move,” he said, pleasantly. “There will be no trouble. I, myself, guarantee it.”

  It was a remarkable feat of personality. People sank back in their chairs. There was a scattered and uncertain laugh.

  As the waiter moved forward again towards Coulan, who was now on his feet, Hazlerigg heard a name going round the now silent room like a whisper in a field of corn. Morelli.

  “Of course it’s Morelli,” said a stout man who was dining with two friends. “I’ve paid half a nicker often enough at the Hoxton Baths to watch him fight. This ought to be good.”

  The waiter had started by manoeuvring his opponent deftly out into the open space in the middle of the floor. Then he really got to work on him. Coulan had been a boxer once, and he was still an Irishman, and he had plenty of fight in him.

  In the opening minutes, the waiter contented himself with hitting Coulan on the body and avoiding his returns by neat footwork. This sort of fighting is apt to be exhausting for a man who is not as fit as he used to be. Coulan began to show signs of distress. The waiter then started to hit him on the face.

  After a little of this, Coulan lost his temper and did a thing he would never normally have done. He put his head down and charged.

  The waiter sidestepped to the left and put all his heart and soul into one right handed uppercut. Propelled equally by the weight of the blow and the momentum of his own rush, Coulan performed a short, flat dive and landed on the staircase. His head and body went through the curtains. His feet twitched.

  The waiter turned, still polite, still unruffled, to Sparks, who sat apparently nailed to his chair. “You had a complaint about the food?”

  “No,” said Sparks. “No. The food is quite all right.”

  “Eat it then,” said the waiter.

  Sparks took one look at the lukewarm goulash on the plate in front of him. Then he looked at Coulan’s feet, which were still twitching.