The Toff and the Terrified Taxman

by John Creasey

  “Scared?” Kimber asked, sneering. “You haven’t even begun to be scared yet.” He barked a laugh. “Ever been hoist with your own petard before, Toff? ... Remember your early days when you used to use what you called psychological terrorism against the East Enders? I remember. What’s it like to be on the receiving end of psychological terrorism, Toff? Or should I call you what the yellow press dubbed you – Crusader against Crime?”

  Rollison’s thoughts flashed back.

  Ding Dong Bell had used that same phrase when he had lifted the hammer from the Trophy Wall. Bell was old enough to remember those early days in the Toff’s ‘crusade against crime’ but surely Kimber wasn’t. Or had the light and the colour of his hair and complexion been deceptive in the soft light; was he more grey than fair? Was he nearer fifty or fifty-five than the forty he had looked? Rollison has no way of telling but whatever his age Kimber was well-briefed in the days when Rollison had first begun to work in the East End, where crime had then been concentrated.

  He had used psychological terrorism; he had worked by scaring the wits out of the men he worked against; it had succeeded time after time. And it was now being used against him. Kimber was trying to scare the wits out of him; he had from the moment he had stepped into the big room, when he had unleashed the girls on him.

  “Lost your tongue?” mocked Kimber. “That’s not the first thing you’re going to lose, Crusader. Before I let you go out of here there won’t be much of you left.”

  Subdued laughter sounded in the background, as if all the girls had heard Kimber and were highly amused by what they believed would soon happen to him, the Toff. The voice sounded very near, the mocking, confident note was unmistakable. And if it meant anything it was that he, Rollison, could not get out of here by his own free will.

  Why not?

  How could Kimber stop him?

  He felt his heart thumping again and at once realised that this was exactly the effect Kimber wanted: to unnerve him, to make him fearful. The almost unbelievable thing was that he, Rollison, had come here by chance. Kimber could not possibly have expected him, unless he had taken it for granted that after his visit to Johnny P. Rains the next place would be here.

  What was there to stop him from getting up and walking out of here?

  One thing was certain: he had to try.

  The laughter had faded and Kimber was silent, no doubt that was part of his tactics. Rollison moved slowly and sat on the piano stool, expecting an interruption at any moment. None came. He must school himself to show no reaction if Kimber did speak or more laughter came. He hitched the stool up and spanned the piano keys, remembering the piece from Debussy. He was not a classicist but had played a great deal in his earlier years, and now began to play a tune with strong overtones of the days of the Second World War, a period of some of his most active days in the East End – the Warsaw Concerto. As he played, the piece seemed to call out some quality in him. From playing lightly, little more than strumming, he began to play with heart and fervour. Now and again he missed a key but it did not affect him, he played on and on until the last triumphant bars.

  The sound of music echoed and re-echoed, fading very slowly.

  No other sound followed; it was as if by playing the tune he had hurled defiance and the others had been repulsed at least for the time being. Was that nonsense? He only knew that his nerve was quite steady and he had no sense of apprehension as he got up and went back into the big room. He made sure he had missed nothing, and there was nowhere here to search. There might be downstairs, but he doubted it.

  Then he glanced out of the window.

  Across the road, parked in a driveway to a small building which stood back from the road, was a police car. Standing about nearby were men whom he felt sure were plain clothes policemen. And, marvel of marvels, Jolly was looking across at the house! Rollison threw up a window, leaned out, and called: “Jolly!” He saw his man and all the others start and look up. He had never seen such a smile of delight on Jolly’s face, and on the instant Jolly stepped into the road.

  A car was coming from the Haymarket.

  Rollison’s heart turned a somersault as he bellowed: “Careful!” The brakes of the car screeched, Jolly backed in alarm and the car missed him by inches. A policeman threw up his arms. The driver, while the car still moved, shouted: “Want to get yourself killed?” and then drove on. Jolly, obviously abashed, looked right before he came forward again. Then he crossed the road while Rollison hurried down the stairs. The door was not locked, and he opened it as Jolly and several policemen came in.

  “Just wait until Mr. Grice arrives,” a detective sergeant said to Rollison, obviously in disapproval. He was the tall, pale-faced man, who introduced himself as Moriarty.

  “Do you know why the police are here?” Rollison asked Jolly.

  “Yes, sir. Mr. Jean-Pierre telephoned me and I called them after I failed to get a reply to a telephone call to this house.”

  “How long ago?” asked Rollison.

  “Only half-an-hour or so, sir, about nine o’clock. Jean-Pierre appears to have hesitated for some time whether he should telephone and tell me what he knew – which was simply that Kimber ran up a very substantial account, and did not pay. When there was no reply I telephoned Mr. Grice and arranged to meet the police here.”

  “We have no search warrant—” Moriarty began.

  “I was attacked and might have been seriously hurt—” began Rollison.

  “That’s good enough for me,” declared Moriarty.

  Twenty minutes later, every room in this house had been searched; and the room next door had been entered through a sliding panel operated by the ‘knot’. Everyone of Kimber’s party had gone. The two upper floors of the adjoining house had obviously been occupied by women, there were oddments of make-up, and odds and ends, but all the wardrobes were empty. So were the downstairs rooms, actually offices like those at Number 76. Later there would be a longer and more thorough search, but Rollison felt that the vanishing trick was complete and that Kimber had known well in advance that trouble was on the way for him here.

  When the main search was over and nothing had been found, a car pulled up outside and Grice stepped out.

  Moriarty, a shadowy kind of individual, seemed to fade into the background completely.

  “Hallo, Bill,” Rollison said, as Grice entered the hall. “What made your chaps listen to Jolly?”

  “We discovered that the driver of the car which ran into Daisy Bell at one time worked for the man Kimber,” Grice replied. “We searched the driver’s flat, a small one in Chelsea, and found some instructions from Kimber. There was sufficient to justify coming in a hurry when Jolly called. Our chaps knew Kimber and his wife had left just before we arrived, and were waiting for them to come back before questioning them. Instead, you turned up. Now I’ll have your explanation, please.”

  Grice, obviously, was as disapproving as Moriarty, who stood nearby.

  Chapter 14

  Hand-in-Glove

  Rollison could tell the whole truth, and bow to the wrath of the police for going to Johnny P. Rains’s office; or he could tell part of the truth, and say that he had no particular reason to suspect Kimber, but had played a hunch. Grice would probably believe that, and would not complain so bitterly.

  Rollison told the simple truth as briefly as he could. Moriarty, so curiously negroid in appearance, emerged from his self-induced shadows, and glared even stronger disapproval. When the story was told, Grice said grimly: “You really did want to get your throat cut, didn’t you?”

  “Oh, I don’t know, Bill. It was only a social call, when all’s said and done.”

  “Social call my hat! It was your old trick of getting to a suspect a few hours ahead of us and trying to scare the wits out of him.” Grice was not so disapproving as he sounded, his manner was quite rel
axed. “You shouldn’t have gone to either place without telling me. One of these days, please God, you’ll have the sense not to do things on your own. I would like a written report of what you found at Rains’s place and what happened here.”

  “You shall have it,” promised Rollison, humbly.

  “Tomorrow morning,” Grice insisted.

  “Tomorrow morning,” agreed Rollison. “May I go now?”

  He sounded so meek that Grice actually laughed, but Moriarty simply removed his disapproval further into the background. Jolly, a distant observer of what had been happening, moved forward, opened the street door, and stood aside for Rollison to pass, saying: “The smaller car is outside, sir.” No one in the street seemed particularly interested in what was going on at Kimber’s. The small car, an Austin 100, was parked only twenty yards away, and Jolly asked: “Will you drive?”

  “No. You,” decided Rollison.

  Soon, Jolly was threading his way through traffic in St. James’s Street and then in Piccadilly. No one followed and no one took any notice of them. Neither of them talked. There was a parking place at one end of Gresham Terrace and Jolly slid the little car in, having only inches to spare. A big car passed, very quickly, and for the first time Jolly spoke.

  “That was very careless of me in Jermyn Street, sir.”

  “Yes,” Rollison agreed. “But I’m not sure whether you were as careless as I was.”

  “In going there?” They were walking side by side towards Number 25.

  “Yes,” replied Rollison. “Do you have any idea why Grice was so forbearing?”

  “None, unless it was that he realised that Detective Sergeant Moriarty was too disapproving, sir.”

  They reached the door of Number 25, and as Jolly opened it with his key, Rollison looked up and down as well as across the street. No one appeared to be watching, but there was no way of being certain they were not being observed. Jolly opened the door cautiously, and then allowed it to bang heavily against the wall, his way of making sure that no one was hiding behind it. Rollison needed no telling that Jolly was as much on the alert as he, and so as conscious of potential danger.

  They walked up the stairs, Jolly behind Rollison. At each landing they paused to look both up and down. No one followed, no one was waiting to ‘receive’ them, and the front doors of the other flats, one at each landing, were closed. Even when they reached the top floor and the Toff’s flat they were extremely cautious. The tiny periscope worked in reverse, and Rollison peered into this. As always, Jolly had left a light on in the lounge-hall so that they could see whether anyone lurked in there.

  No one did.

  Yet Jolly opened the door quietly and very carefully, while Rollison went in, half-prepared for attack. None came.

  Jolly went along the domestic passage and Rollison through the study-cum-living room, opening every door. They met at the doorway of the spare bedroom.

  “Everything appears normal, sir,” Jolly remarked.

  “It does here, too,” Rollison replied, and he felt truly relaxed for the first time since Adrian Kimber had entered the big room at the Jermyn Street house. He went into the bathroom, washed, slipped out of his heavy suit, placed all the weapons on the bed, and put on a pair of grey slacks, slippers, and a lightweight smoking jacket. When he returned to the big room, Jolly had set the dining table in the alcove, and was standing by the hot-plate, where a casserole dish streamed.

  “I put this on earlier, sir, in the hope that you would be home. You have had far too many snacks recently.”

  “I’ll bet you have, too. Lay a place for yourself, Jolly. I’ll tell you what happened as we have dinner.”

  “Thank you indeed,” Jolly said, as if it had not occurred to him that Rollison might suggest this.

  The casserole was of oxtail, with haricot beans and small dumplings, perfectly cooked and appetising; there were also boiled potatoes. Rollison helped himself to the succulent mess, and Jolly took rather less. They were halfway through, and Rollison was already through with the visit to Johnny P. Rains’s office, when there was a loud ring and a sharp rat-tat at the front door. Rollison jumped; Jolly placed his hands on the table as if to get up. There were no other sounds as Rollison got up slowly, went to the lounge-hall, and looked up at the periscope mirror.

  The landing and upper staircase were empty.

  Rollison opened the door a crack and made sure no one was hugging the door, then looked down at a packet placed close to the foot of the door. It was wrapped in brown paper, and was about the size of a small tin of biscuits.

  “Be very careful, sir,” Jolly urged.

  “I will. Make sure there’s no one at the back, Jolly.”

  “Very well, sir.”

  “If this thing ticks, I won’t bring it into the apartment,” Rollison promised.

  Reluctantly Jolly went to the back door, which led from the kitchen, to make sure that no one was trying to force entry there, relying on the call at the front door as a distraction. No one was. Rollison, meanwhile, crouched over the brown paper packet, but heard nothing. He picked it up, gingerly, and placed it close to his ear. Then he carried it into the big room, placed it on the desk, and began to tear the Sellotape off. Jolly appeared, and said urgently: “That is exactly what Mr. Grice was doing when he was nearly killed, sir.”

  “I remember,” Rollison said. “But I don’t think this is lethal – at least not in the explosive way.” The tape came off and he pushed the wrapping paper back carefully, fully aware that Jolly had very good cause for fear.

  Swiftly, his immediate alarm faded for this was a tape-recorder, with two spools secured to it, also by Sellotape. There was no sound at all. Rollison took off the securing tape, then opened the recorder; a small cable was tucked inside, and attached to it a bayonet type plug.

  “You know what this is, don’t you?” Rollison asked heavily.

  “A recording of what happened at Jermyn Street, sir?” hazarded Jolly.

  “I think so,” Rollison said.

  Jolly plugged in a table lamp and took out the bulb. Rollison, having examined the recorder and seen how it worked, plugged into the lamp socket, and then placed a spool, marked in pencil ‘1’ on to the spindle and attached one end to the other spindle. He switched on, and immediately the spool began to turn and a humming sound followed, until it was broken by Lila Kimber’s voice, saying: “Darling, we have a visitor.” After a pause she went on in a lilting voice: “You would never believe: it is Mr. Rollison.”

  Faint background noises followed. Rollison could remember the tall, fair-haired Kimber, so much younger-looking than he had expected.

  “Well, well!” he exclaimed from the tape. “The Toff.”

  “Isn’t it a surprise?” asked Lila Kimber, laughter in her voice.

  It was more than laughter: it was laughter at the Toff. That was much more apparent now than when Rollison had actually heard her. The recording emphasised the note of mockery in both voices, and the edge of cruelty, too. Rollison turned up the volume and motioned to the table, and they went back, Jolly taking their half-filled plates away and using fresh ones for more steaming hot casseroled oxtail from the hot plate. They both sat facing the tape-recorder and taking in every word.

  Kimber’s voice, so often harsh and savage, such as when he drank: “To your death.” His, Rollison’s, response: “To all the life you deserve to have.” After a while, the duelling stopped, and there was a curious intensity in Rollison’s accusations which piled up on one another until they sounded utterly damning. And Kimber did not deny a single charge. Even Rollison, who knew so well, held his breath to wait for the man’s reaction, and was taken by surprise by the roar of laughter.

  A moment or two later Lila and the girls were laughing.

  Rollison could ‘see’ what had happened but in a way the scene must have
been as vivid to Jolly, for odd words and phrases, some of which Rollison had not caught, came clearly. Each of the voices came over well, the girls all sounded as if they were thoroughly enjoying themselves; and there was an impression that all of this had been mutual.

  “It is the Toff,” a girl cooed.

  “Isn’t he handsome,” breathed another.

  “And so elegant,” sighed a third.

  Laughter, mockery, the sound of voices from different places so that it was easy to believe that they surrounded him. The sudden: “Take me to bed, Toff. I’ve a lovely one upstairs.”

  Then Topless: “Don’t be mean! Take me.”

  Rollison finished what he was eating. Jolly got up without a sound, to get fruit, salad and whipped cream from the sideboard; and a cheeseboard containing those varieties which he knew the Toff most liked. They ate and listened to the ribaldry, to sounds of the girls tearing into him, and of Kimber saying: “Now take his pants! ... What a headline! Orgy for the Toff!”

  “The Toff’s sex life.”

  “The Toff in his harem.”

  There were a dozen other phrases, and a note more of gaiety than malice, as if they were all really enjoying what they were doing. And Kimber and his wife kept on laughing in the background and urging the girls on. The most conspicuous thing to Rollison, however, and he was sure it would be to others, was his own silence.

  He did not say a word; until quite suddenly and breathlessly the girls began to gasp and cry out with pain. Kimber roared: “That’s enough! ... Now they’ll really tear you apart! You’ll wish you’d never been born.”

  There was gasping; crying; squealing; and, blasting above all other sound, the roar of a shot.

  The sounds which followed were anti-climactic: the closing of the door, Kimber shouting “Open the windows!” and then suddenly silence, as the recorder was switched off. The utter silence was as compelling as the recording at its wildest, and Jolly and the Toff sat without speaking, until at last Jolly said: “A very disturbing experience, sir.”