Paul Temple and the Harkdale Robbery

by Francis Durbridge

  ‘Hereabouts. Why?’

  ‘Did Desmond Blane look in during the early afternoon?’

  ‘I shouldn’t think so –’

  Gloria Storm interrupted. ‘He telephoned. He was asking for Betty, but she wasn’t here. Rita told him we hadn’t seen Betty since she gave in her notice.’

  Paul was about to hurry from the dressing room, but as an afterthought he turned back to Gloria. ‘I suppose you don’t know where Betty might be, do you? I think she’s in real danger.’

  ‘No. She was planning to go to Dublin, but something must have gone wrong. Des Blane sounded absolutely frantic.’ She laughed at the absurdity of other people’s problems. ‘He said he would kill Betty when he got his hands on her!’

  ‘He wasn’t joking,’ said Paul as he turned and cannoned into Rita Fletcher. ‘Oh. I’m sorry.’

  ‘What’s going on?’ Rita asked. She took Paul’s hand to restrain him. ‘Is Betty still intending to leave the country with Des?’

  ‘Something like that,’ said Paul. ‘Have you any suggestions to make, before she ends up dead?’

  ‘Only indirectly,’ she said with a wistful smile. ‘Why don’t we have supper together?’

  As they climbed into a taxi and moved off towards Leicester Square, Paul noticed a nervous Tam Coley standing in the club doorway watching them go. He obviously needed a drink.

  Chapter Eleven

  They went to Paul’s favourite fish restaurant, and at that time of the evening it was not too crowded. They were able to sit at the corner table on the first floor. But Rita ate the food as if her mind were on something else, and Paul wondered whether they might just as well have gone to the fish and chip shop round the corner from the Love-Inn. Except that they wouldn’t have had such a delicious Chablis, and Rita Fletcher was drinking that with a little more appreciation.

  ‘I can understand your being concerned about Betty,’ he began remonstratively, ‘but you mustn’t spoil good cooking –’

  ‘I’m worried about the club.’ She looked with direct brown eyes at Paul for a moment. ‘I’ve put in eight years of my life to make Tam Coley a millionaire, and if the little runt has ruined it all –’ She looked away. ‘I don’t know what I’ll do to him.’

  ‘How,’ Paul asked carefully, ‘do you know he’s ruined it all?’

  She was surprised. ‘The police have been there a dozen times and you were there again this evening. Don’t tell me there’s no connection between those bank robberies and the Love-Inn.’

  ‘Oh yes,’ Paul agreed. ‘There’s a connection. How do you find the fish? Are you certain this isn’t red mullet? It’s so similar to the bass that I can’t always tell.’ He ate a little more with approval. ‘What connection exactly did you have in mind?’

  ‘Do you know who runs the gang?’ she asked, with another direct stare.

  ‘Yes, I think so. But for the moment I think it’s more important to find Betty Stanway. She’ll be dead before morning otherwise.’

  ‘Do you think so?’ Her hand trembled a little as she finished the course. ‘Why would Desmond Blane kill her?’

  ‘Because she is no further use to him, and she could now be dangerous to the person at the top. That was reason enough to kill Tony Sampson.’

  ‘Poor Tony.’ She lit a cigarette while the waiter brought them cheese and biscuits. ‘I wish Des had never come to the club. I knew there would be trouble sooner or later. I used to deal with him myself, because I thought Tam would lose his head.’

  ‘You mean when Des was running the protection racket?’ Paul murmured.

  ‘Yes.’ She smiled nervously. ‘You knew about that? He came to the club about five years ago. Or maybe it was six, I don’t remember, and Tam refused to pay. Tam was a fool. He thought because we weren’t in America the protection gangs couldn’t do us any harm.’

  ‘What happened?’ Paul asked.

  ‘I paid protection. Tam was always plastered by nine o’clock, and so Des used to collect at half past nine on Fridays. I don’t believe in being a hero. I carried on paying until last year when the outfit Des belonged to was broken up. What would you have done?’

  Paul nodded non-committally. ‘I carry a few insurance policies.’

  ‘Most of the people Des worked with went to gaol. He came to the club asking for a job after that. We were quite good friends, but it was purely business. I told him we had all the bouncers we needed.’

  ‘You’re suggesting he went to Tam after you turned him down?’

  ‘Maybe.’ Rita looked weary as she sipped her brandy, cupping the glass in her warm hands and glancing at Paul across the rim. She shrugged her shoulders and smiled. ‘Maybe I don’t care if Tam has ruined it all. I’m tired. I feel as if I’ve been running since I was seventeen, and where has it got me? Weary! I could do with a holiday.’ She looked her forty-two years. But Paul could not imagine the spirit in her accepting defeat for long.

  ‘What would make a man like Tam Coley turn to crime?’ Paul asked.

  She laughed, and the life returned momentarily to her body. ‘What do you think the club business is in London? A church youth club with a better floor show? You have to be tough in this business, Mr Temple, and you have to be tough to get up off the floor in New York and come to London with that kind of money. Tam isn’t just a happy little lush.’

  ‘Is the club doing good business?’

  ‘Of course it is. I run the place. I suppose I should have given him a bit more to occupy his mind, but I thought the girls and an unlimited supply of booze would keep him out of trouble.’ She sighed. ‘The girls will be thrown out of work as well, just when they were doing so well. Did you see them on television, or were you too busy fighting off that pompous politician?’

  Paul agreed that they had been impressive.

  Rita herself had started off as a dancer, and over another brandy she told Paul how she had learnt all she knew about the business.

  ‘I was a good dancer,’ she said without humility. ‘But I knew that dancing wouldn’t last forever. I moved over into management, and I’ve been very good at that. I’ve been so good at managing I’ve scared every man away, usually before he even got around to making a pass. So now it’s me who is scared. It isn’t easy to change jobs in middle age.’

  ‘I think you’ll probably get by,’ Paul said sincerely. ‘A woman like you doesn’t often fall on her face.’

  She looked amused and said she hoped so.

  ‘Why don’t you get your own club? Paul asked.

  ‘I don’t have Tam Coley’s money.’

  ‘If Tam Coley went to gaol for master-minding these bank robberies, what would happen to the Love-Inn?’

  She thought for a moment and then shook her head. ‘I doubt whether the Director of Public Prosecutions would give it to me for a birthday present. I suppose it would be sold.’

  Paul smiled sympathetically. ‘The DPP is not very fair, is he? I think you’ve probably earned the club.’

  ‘It’s my destiny to play second lead to people who have to be carried.’ She undid the top button of her ample corsage. ‘I’m feeling quite tipsy, for the first time in years. It’s a shame, because I really quite enjoy it. Shall we have some Irish coffee?’

  Paul ordered two Irish coffees.

  ‘Do you hate self-pitying women?’ she asked.

  Paul shook his head sympathetically. ‘I think you’ve every reason to be fed up.’

  ‘You’re nice, Paul Temple. Has anybody ever told you you’re attractive? You don’t have to work at being poised and charming, which is a change from the men one meets at the club. They’re all so desperately trying to prove something that one forgets they aren’t the whole of the masculine gender.’

  Paul tried not to be too suave with the waiter who was warming the brandy, pouring the coffee and making great play with the business of laying the cream on the top of the mixture. But the waiter seemed to expect an off-hand compliment.

  ‘Has anybody ever told you that people
who work in night clubs have too many hang-ups?’ Paul asked, deciding to put her on the defensive instead. ‘There’s no difference between your customers and the ones who buy plastic flowers or mass produced greetings cards. What’s so degrading about men who need a little impersonal sex?’

  ‘I find our customers depressing. Take Tony Sampson, for instance, didn’t you think he was depressing?’

  ‘Of course. He was a sad little character, and you helped him to approximate his fantasy of himself. A lonely bank clerk who wanted to be a cut price playboy.’

  She said ‘And what’s the harm in that, apart from the fact that he’s dead? He was a sad little character, okay, but he was wildly in debt, and everybody soon knew it. He was just asking for somebody like Tam to put two and two together.’ She coughed and lit another cigarette. ‘Two and two. I hope I’m not too drunk to remember what that metaphor was. Yes, two was Desmond Blane the out of work gangster, and two was a bank clerk who knew about things. Four was a decent bank robbery.’ She grinned with pride in her addition. ‘I suppose you could say that Desmond Blane and Tony Sampson were destined for each other. It would have been perverse of Tam to have kept them apart.’

  Paul sipped his Irish coffee and felt warm. ‘My dear Rita, at this moment I don’t care very much about Tam’s guilt. I’m more worried about Betty Stanway. She is a nice girl and she is likely to be murdered. If you remember what you were like fifteen years ago, when you were worried about being a dancer for the rest of your life, you’ll know why she got caught up in this. She’s a girl like you were yourself.’

  ‘Poor Betty. I thought I was doing her such a favour when I fixed her up with Desmond Blane. I thought he had made good, was going straight. I suppose crooks never do really make good, do they?’

  ‘Not often,’ Paul agreed.

  ‘God knows where Betty is. She probably thinks that Desmond is a much maligned character in the first place, and that she can reform him in the second place. Women are strange creatures. I’m glad I’m not in her place, even though I’m drunk. Will you take me home?’

  ‘Why?’ asked Paul. ‘Have you told me what you were meaning to tell me? Because I knew all about the link between Desmond Blane the protection racketeer and Tony Sampson the man who needed Love.’

  She sighed and wrinkled her forehead. ‘I didn’t intend to tell you anything you didn’t know. That’s not what conversation is all about. I wanted to talk to you, because I like you, and I wanted you to like me. I’m a successful woman, so I don’t ask nonentities to hold my hand when I’m feeling depressed. Did you expect a revelation?’

  ‘No,’ Paul admitted.

  ‘So take me home, and we’ll have a few more drinks. Unless you have somewhere more pressing to go. Make love to me, if you’ve had enough to drink. Anything, only please don’t leave me alone tonight.’

  Paul waved to the waiter for their bill. He explained gently to Rita that she was a fine specimen of womanhood with lots of animal vitality, but that he was contentedly married. It sounded a little square, but he took her by the arm and hailed a taxi.

  ‘Scotland Yard, please,’ he said to the driver.

  Rita looked surprised. ‘Are you giving yourself up or running me in?’ she asked ironically.

  ‘I left my car there this afternoon.’

  She sat back in the taxi and made a conspicuous effort to stop feeling sorry for herself. She asked Paul about the things he had been doing these last few days. ‘The police must find you rather a strain,’ she said, ‘getting involved in their work.’

  ‘Charlie Vosper is an old friend of mine,’ he said, ‘and anyway it was Desmond Blane who involved me in this case. He killed a man in my garage.’

  ‘It’s funny, he doesn’t look like a killer.’

  ‘We can prove it this time,’ said Paul, ‘he was seen in Tony Sampson’s flat at the time of the murder. So even if Arnold Cookson won’t give evidence against his friend it won’t matter.’

  ‘Who is Arnold Cookson?’

  ‘You’d probably know him if you saw him,’ said Paul. ‘He visited the Love-Inn on New Year’s Eve with Blane.’

  ‘I remember, he was an estate agent.’

  They pulled up outside Scotland Yard and paid off the taxi. Paul took Rita’s arm again and went in search of his Rolls. She was slightly unsteady, but her mind was pursuing its main obsession with undiminished power.

  ‘Of course,’ she said, ‘unless you find Desmond Blane you won’t have enough evidence against Tam to arrest him, will you?’

  ‘We won’t have any evidence at all,’ Paul admitted.

  She giggled as she climbed into the passenger seat of the Rolls. ‘In that case I hope you don’t find him.’

  ‘What will you do if this business just fizzles out?’ Paul asked her.

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe I’ll persuade Tam to take me into partnership. I need a little security.’ She grinned with mischievous female guile. It wouldn’t be blackmail to persuade him, her eyes seemed to indicate, because she had earned a place on the board.

  ‘Where to?’ Paul asked.

  ‘I think I’ll go back to the club.’

  Chapter Twelve

  Desmond Blane wasn’t behaving like a man eloping to a new life. He was jumpy. So the telephone had been out of order; what had he expected her to do? She had stayed put, so that at least he would know where to find her. As a child Betty had always been told by her mother to stay put whenever she was lost. Betty had stayed at the hotel.

  ‘What the bloody hell are you doing here?’

  ‘Des! I was so worried about you –’

  ‘Are you packed?’

  ‘Yes. I did ring, but they said the line was out of order –’

  ‘Let’s get going. You can pay the bill while I wait downstairs in the garage. Hurry up, for God’s sake.’

  He gave her a fistful of notes and pushed her out of the lift at the ground floor. Des went down into the basement where the car park gave onto the Thames embankment. He was jumpy. Yet everything he had done so far had been cleverly worked out.

  When the police are likely to be after you in force, he had told her, there’s only one place to hide: in the best hotel in London. The law won’t look for you there. And it had proved true, nobody had bothered her. Betty paid her bill and eventually located the car in the dark subterranean cavern.

  Des was reading the evening paper by the courtesy light. ‘Jump in,’ he snapped.

  She had done something wrong again. Des had been like this when they had spent that last night together in Knightsbridge. And Betty remembered the three weeks of misery that had followed. She wished she knew what to say to him.

  ‘What’s the matter, Des?’

  ‘We’re in a hurry.’ He tossed the three suitcases and the holdall into the boot. ‘The police are onto us.’

  She sat beside him as they drove up into the embankment gardens; Des was concentrating, as if he didn’t want to talk to her. Betty picked up the newspaper which he had been reading and tried to take her mind off her worries.

  She had been looking forward to this for years. Ever since she had become a dancer. A nice rich husband and a nice remote rambling house. She knew exactly the kind of house she wanted, because she had seen a television programme about the west coast of Ireland and there were all of those farmhouses, next to castles and Martello towers and the sea stretching all the way to America. She had bought a big coffee table book which showed pictures of the rural life, with photographs of painters and poets who also lived there.

  ‘Do you want lots of children, Des?’

  ‘Do you mind? Keep an eye on the driving mirror in case we’re being followed.’

  They were driving out through Hammersmith and onto the A4, being followed by several thousand cars and lorries. She wanted four children herself, all boys. Sturdy and independent little boys like Des, with his black hair and dark complexion. She wondered what the schools were like in Ireland.

  ‘Will we be happy in Ir
eland, Des?’

  He had been looking at a photograph of himself in the evening paper. That must have been what upset him. But the photograph didn’t really resemble him. She smiled at the spiky looking man in the picture, and wondered whether he had looked like that ten years ago.

  ‘Have you killed anyone?’ she asked nervously.

  ‘No, of course not. Will you stop asking stupid questions? I can’t stand nagging women.’

  ‘I wasn’t nagging, Des –’

  ‘And don’t argue!’

  Of course he had robbed those banks, she knew that. When he had met her outside her parents’ house that night Des had explained everything to her. He had been completely honest about it, and she had made him promise to give it up if he really wanted her to go away with him.

  The plane left at half past eight from Heathrow. Betty noticed in the newspaper it had said that Des was thought to be planning to leave the country. Perhaps he was coming with her, instead of meeting her over in Dublin as they had arranged. But she didn’t dare ask. They would soon be at Heathrow, and then she would know.

  ‘Are we being followed?’ he demanded.

  Betty turned to look. A blue and white police car had just gone by on the other side of the motorway, but she couldn’t tell whether it was chasing anybody. There were too many cars to tell. Des moved out into the fast lane and increased speed to something frightening.

  Betty didn’t care if they were killed. It would be better than going back to the Love-Inn, to Tam Coley and all those dirty old men, or to that grim little basement flat in Belsize Park. There was only one thing she really wanted, and that was to live with Des in the west of Ireland. And the police were trying to stop her.

  Des wasn’t like all those drooling men in the club. She remembered how they had made love in the caravan, after he had promised that his days of crime were over. That creepy Arnold Cookson had been asleep on the other side, and there were all those holiday makers on every side. She had been rather inhibited to begin with, but they had kept awake until four in the morning, talking and making love and talking, until Arnold Cookson woke up and complained. For the first time in goodness knows how long she had felt proud of herself.