by J F Straker
‘It was a possibility,’ he said. ‘She knew him in the past. It was worth a try.’
‘I wouldn’t have thought it was worth what you got out of it.’
Johnny grinned. He guessed she was referring to his injuries, and not to the information Alice had given him. The latter did not seem to interest her. Although she was aware that others were all set to obtain the whole of the bullion for themselves, that there would be nothing for Obi if they succeeded, finding Obi still took precedence with Polly. Was she really so dumb? It seemed unlikely. Even though she was not prepared to admit it to Johnny — perhaps not even to herself she must know that Obi was a certain loser: that even if Curlylocks and his mob failed to lift the bullion in advance, and the proposed share-out actually took place, the police would step in and claim it. Either that, or she had privately come to the conclusion that the whole affair was a hoax. So what was she playing at? Could it be that, knowing the situation must either collapse or explode, she wanted Obi to get the letter before that happened, while it still held apparent significance? Was that the way her mind was working? If so, the importance of the exercise, as Polly saw it, was not so much that Obi should benefit from her efforts, as that he should believe she had done her utmost to ensure that he did. He would be unaware that she had known the benefits could not materialize. He would see the debt (if he still thought of it as a debt, which seemed unlikely) as fully repaid. And that was Polly’s object. She had him on her back, and she wanted him off. It was selfishness, rather than altruism, that prompted her.
Oh, well, Johnny thought, a bird can’t have all the virtues. At least she’s got the looks.
‘What’s the good news you were on about this morning?’ he said.
‘I thought you’d never ask.’ She took an envelope from her bag and placed it on the table. ‘There. Take a look at that.’
He picked it up. ‘What is it?’
‘A birthday card from Obi,’ she said, with some complacency.
‘Good Lord!’
‘Well, go on! Read it!’
He slid out the card. The front depicted a young couple dressed in traditional Dutch costume. Inside was a printed birthday greeting and, written in ink, the words ‘Love to all, Obi.’
‘Well, what do you know?’ He examined the envelope. ‘I wonder what he’s doing in Holland.’
‘So do I. But it’s postmarked Amersfoort, so he shouldn’t be too difficult to find. It’s a biggish town, but not all that big. I looked it up. The population is about seventy-five thousand.’
‘Big enough.’ He spoke absently. ‘I didn’t know it was your birthday. Many happy returns.’
‘That was yesterday. Which was why I couldn’t have dinner with you. The parents took me out.’ She replaced the card in the bag. ‘When can you leave?’
‘Leave?’
‘For Holland. Tomorrow? It’s less than an hour by air. You could be there by midday.’
Jesus O’Grady! he thought. What a turn-up! How the devil can I fly off to Holland when I’m supposed to be prospecting for gold in Sussex? And who in Hades needs Obi Bullock? She may, but not me. Obi Bullock is just a flipping waste of time. And time is precious.
‘Be your age, Polly,’ he protested. ‘One in seventy-five thousand, and you expect me to pick him up? It could take weeks.’
Not at all, she said. Obi wouldn’t be on holiday. Who’d go to Amersfoort for a holiday? Especially in October. He would have got a job there, wouldn’t he? That implied a bar or a restaurant, it was about the only kind of work Obi knew. One could get a list of these from a centre called the VVV; she didn’t know what the initials stood for, but her father had told her about it, there was one in every Dutch town. It shouldn’t take long to check through them, two or three days at the most if he kept at it. Thanks very much, Johnny said, but two or three days was more than he had to spare. For one thing, she wasn’t his only client. For another, he had a pressing engagement in Sussex scheduled for the morrow. If he passed it up there might not be any fortune for Obi to share. Didn’t that concern her? Of course it concerned her, she said. But someone had to find Obi. And who else was there? Who else knew him?
‘There’s you,’ he suggested.
‘Oh, don’t be absurd! You think I can take time off whenever I like?’
‘How about your parents?’
She could not see her parents doing a pub crawl through a Dutch town, she said. Pubs were not their scene. And her father had a job, hadn’t he? ‘However, let’s argue about it over dinner,’ she said. ‘I’m starving.’
‘That’s another thing,’ he said. ‘No dinner. I’m broke.’
He had neglected to tell her that his money had been stolen. He told her now. Despite her frustration, she laughed.
‘Which means it’s on me, I suppose. All right, you can take it off the bill. But don’t expect Quaglino’s. A sandwich apiece is about all I can manage.’
‘No beer?’ His glass was empty.
‘Beer, yes. Gin, no. By the way, how do you like the patch? You haven’t said.’
‘It’s an improvement on the shiner. Is the eye still sore?’
‘A bit.’
‘Well, you’re in no danger of a repeat performance. They’re concentrating on me. They think I’ve got the letter.’ He grimaced. ‘They haven’t made a bad start, either: a bruised arm, cracked ribs they feel cracked, anyway — a swollen ankle. Much more, and I’m putting in for danger money.’
‘You forgot the head.’
‘I prefer to. Will you order, or shall I?’
‘I will. You stay there and plan your trip to Holland.’
‘Do you mind? I can’t plan on an empty stomach.’
It did not take him long to reach a decision. If he could not locate the bullion with what information he had — well, that was that. But Curlylocks was in a similar position; he too was minus an excerpt. There could be a stalemate — in which case they would all have to wait until Slade’s fixer arranged for them to meet. Only he wasn’t going unsupported to any meeting with Curlylocks and his mob. He would need covering fire for that lot.
‘Saturday,’ he said, his mouth full of beef sandwich. One way or the other, it should be settled by Saturday. ‘I’ll hop over to Holland for the weekend. Tell you what — why not come with me? I’m not so sure I’d recognize Obi now. It’s ten years since I saw him.’
‘Are you propositioning me?’ she asked. ‘A filthy weekend?’
‘It had crossed my mind,’ he admitted.
6
For once, Johnny was early at the office. But Jasmine was there before him. The door was open, and he walked in to see her standing disconsolately in the centre of the room, tears flowing unchecked down her plump cheeks. But it was not only the sight of Jasmine’s tears which distressed him. The room was a mess. Drawers, boxes, cabinets, trays — every possible receptacle had been overturned and emptied; the floor was carpeted with paper. Some of the drawers and boxes were broken. The table that served as a desk was on its side, the telephone on the floor. Only the typewriter under its cover appeared to have escaped the devastation.
‘Christ!’ he exclaimed. ‘What have you been up to? A bit early for spring cleaning, isn’t it?’
‘It ... it wasn’t me,’ she sobbed. ‘It was like this when I got here. The door was open, too.’ She sank clumsily to the floor and began to collect the paper. ‘Who do you think did it, Mr Inch?’
‘Someone who wanted something we haven’t got.’ The door had been forced. Johnny righted the table and tried the telephone. It seemed to be working. ‘Quite a litter bug, wasn’t he?’
‘Shouldn’t we ring the police?’
‘We should. But I don’t think we will.’
They were together on the floor, sorting papers, when Nicodemus arrived. ‘What’s going on?’ he inquired. ‘A prayer meeting? Or have I disturbed something more carnal?’
‘Lucky for you she doesn’t understand English.’ Johnny sank back on his haunches. ‘She m
ight resent that remark. Come on down and join us.’
They tidied and sorted while Johnny talked. The room was almost back to normal when he had finished. ‘And you think your Curlylocks did this?’ Nicodemus said, dusting his knees.
‘Him and his pals. He didn’t find the letter on me, so he assumed it must be here. Incidentally, I’m claiming on the firm for the money he pinched. Expenses.’
‘You’ll be lucky.’ Nicodemus surveyed the room. ‘So what do you do now? Prospect for gold in Sussex?’
‘Yes. And you’re coming with me. I’ll need support if we meet up with Curlylocks and his mob. Besides, there’s this bloody ankle. It won’t take a lot of road bashing.’
They drove down to Ditchling in the Mule, then turned at the crossroads in the village and drove slowly back up the B2112. After a mile there were scattered houses to their right and open fields to their left, but no turning, and no obvious track. And, as Nicodemus pointed out, one doesn’t bury a fortune on private property. Not on someone else’s private property. One wants to be able to lift it again. That implied forest or heath, common land which was unlikely to be built over. True, the Slades had not intended to leave the bullion for quite so long. Or that was what one supposed. But they must have intended to leave it until the heat was off, or why bury it in the first place? The heat could have stayed on for months. It could even have slipped into years.
Johnny stopped the car. ‘So what you’re saying is, either it’s a hoax, or we’re on the wrong road?’
Nicodemus lit a cigarette. ‘For my money, it’s a hoax.’
‘You’re a pessimist, Knickers. Don’t forget that the introduction is missing. Maybe the track isn’t off this road at all. Maybe it’s off a turning. Anyway, we may as well give it a try.’
They gave it a try. Two miles farther on they crested a bridge. Just beyond it were crossroads, with the B2112 switchbacking straight ahead through a belt of common land. To the left the stretch of common was brief. Johnny turned right, and parked the Mule on the first available space.
‘This is more like it,’ he said. ‘Let’s take a walk.’
They walked, but not for long. Rounding a bank of high scrub they came on a Ford estate car, its nose poked well in among the bushes. The car was empty of occupants.
‘Curlylocks?’ Johnny suggested. ‘No, perhaps not. Snoggers, more like.’
‘At this hour?’
‘At any hour. Would you call that a track?’
‘I might. But it’s nowhere near a mile from where we turned off. Do we go on?’
In a minute, Johnny said. Before leaving his digs that morning he had bandaged his swollen ankle to prevent the shoe from rubbing. Now the bandage had slipped. He sat down to adjust it.
‘Better let me do it,’ Nicodemus said.
He was tying the final knot when Johnny said, ‘I hear voices. The snoggers return, eh? Do they look well satisfied?’
Nicodemus stood up to peer over the bushes. ‘Far from it,’ he said. ‘And they’re not snoggers. Three men and a spade.’
‘Eh?’ Sockless and shoeless, Johnny joined him. ‘Jesus O’Grady! That’s Curlylocks — the one with the spade. The one behind is the chap I laid out at the Frazers’.’
‘The one Frazer laid out, you mean. Who’s the third?’
‘I’m not sure. Could be the other villain.’
If the men had been seeking the bullion their glum faces and empty hands empty save for Curlylocks’ spade made it plain that they had been unsuccessful. They came up the narrow track in single file, and when they reached the car Curlylocks flung the spade on the ground in obvious disgust. One of the others picked it up and put it in the boot.
‘What do we do now?’ Nicodemus whispered. They were less than twenty yards from the car. ‘Introduce ourselves?’
‘Shut up, you goof! Listen!’
The men were arguing among themselves. Snatches of their talk drifted to the two peering at them through the bushes. Then Curlylocks appeared to lose his temper. ‘All right, dammit it, all right!’ he shouted, banging a fist on the car roof. ‘So the bastard fooled us. But he won’t fool us a second time. I’ll bloody well see to that.’
His voice dropped. The three men got into the car, there was an angry slamming of doors, and the car was backed to the road. Johnny and Nicodemus watched it go. When it reached the crossroads and sped off towards London Johnny sat down and put on his sock.
‘What was all that about?’ he asked. ‘How the hell can there be a second time? Slade’s dead.’ He reached for his shoe. ‘I don’t get it.’
Nicodemus said he didn’t get it either, and wasn’t going to try. It had been obvious to him from the start, he said, that the whole set-up was a spoof. A man like Slade didn’t make generous handouts to his enemies, not even on his death-bed. ‘And don’t give me any mush like maybe the reckoning’s out because you’re minus the introduction to Slade’s directions. Your Curlylocks isn’t minus, is he? Or you say he isn’t. And look what happens. He holes out in the same bloody ridiculous spot as we do. If you ask me,’ he said, as they walked back to the Mule, ‘Slade just shut his eyes, stuck his finger into a map of Sussex, and bingo, there was Ditchling. He got the rest of the directions from the map, and tarted them up a bit to make them sound interesting. That’s why some of it fits and the rest doesn’t. Malice aforethought, that’s what it was. And him on his death-bed, too. How nasty can you get?’
Johnny drove in silence. What Nicodemus said was true. It looked like a spoof, it had good reason to be a spoof. Yet two aspects perplexed him. The second excerpt from Slade’s directions, the one sent to Bagiotti, had been simple, the third and fourth more complex. Particularly the fourth. Why include so much detail if it were a hoax? Detail would help to expose the hoax, not prolong it. If Slade had wanted to make his enemies sweat, wouldn’t it have been more logical to keep the directions vague? Or did dying men reason less logically? Even more perplexing, to Johnny’s mind, was Curlylocks’ angry outburst about not being fooled a second time. Slade was dead, so the ‘bastard’ couldn’t be Slade. Yet he had to be connected in some way with the search for the bullion; why else would the outburst have been provoked at that particular time and place? So who the hell was he? Who else, in addition to Slade, could have fooled them?
It was after a stop for lunch that Johnny saw a possible answer. Curlylocks had had a letter from Slade. He was now also in possession of Slade’s letter to Alice. He could not doubt that those two excerpts from the directions were as Slade had written them. But what of the second excerpt, the one he and Johnny had got from Alan Bagiotti? Suppose Bagiotti had lied when he said he wasn’t interested and had burnt the letter? Suppose he was very much interested? Suppose he had guessed what the two ‘policemen’ were at (and had assumed Johnny was at also) and had lied to protect his interest? Suppose that, to mislead his competitors, he had substituted Ditchling and the B2112 for whatever directions Slade had written? Didn’t that make him the ‘bastard’?
‘Hold it!’ Nicodemus said sharply. ‘You’ve missed the turning.’
Johnny’s foot staved on the accelerator. ‘We’re not going to the office,’ he said. ‘We’re going to Kilburn.’
Nicodemus groaned. ‘I knew it! You had that broody look.’
Johnny explained. It was a reasonable assumption, wasn’t it? he said. Nicodemus agreed that it was reasonable in parts, but was Johnny suggesting that Bagiotti was another Curlylocks, out to hog the lot? No, Johnny said, he wasn’t suggesting that. In that case, Nicodemus said, why give misleading directions? Why not simply refuse the information?
‘Bloody fool!’ Johnny swore at an overtaking motorist, who had cut in with only inches to spare. Any threat to his beloved Mule did things to his blood pressure. ‘Why not? Well, if he believed they were police he couldn’t, could he?’
‘Shouldn’t, you mean.’
‘Shouldn’t, then. Whereas if he recognized them for what they were he would know that a blank refusal could bri
ng on after-pains.’
‘He diddled you too.’
‘True. So maybe he doesn’t recognize an honest, clean-living type when he sees one.’
‘Or maybe he does. How did he register with you?’
‘I’d have sworn he was on the up and up.’ Johnny turned into the High Street. ‘But I suppose the truth is, he’s just a bloody good liar.’
‘Well, it’s your baby,’ Nicodemus said. ‘Me, I’d have strangled it at birth.’
A long-haired youth greeted them when they entered the shop. Mr Bagiotti, he said, was upstairs in the flat, he wasn’t well. What was wrong with him? Johnny asked. The youth said he didn’t know. Normally he’d be out in the van; but Mr Bagiotti had telephoned him at lunchtime and had said to come in and look after the shop.
‘He hasn’t had an accident, has he?’ Johnny asked.
The youth shrugged. ‘Might have, I suppose. He didn’t say.’
‘Wasn’t he in the shop when you came back after lunch?’ The youth shook his head. ‘Who let you in, then?’
‘I had me key.’
‘Ah, yes. Well, is it all right for us to go up and see him? We have some rather important business to discuss.’
‘Help yourself,’ the youth said. ‘He didn’t say nothing about visitors.’
They went up. The sitting room door was open, the room empty. Johnny rapped on another door, and a muffled voice within called ‘Who is it?’ Johnny didn’t answer. His name was unlikely to be remembered and would evoke no invitation. He opened the door.
A recumbent figure turned on the bed. ‘What the hell —? Oh, it’s you. What the bloody hell do you think you’re doing, busting in uninvited?’
The words were strong, the voice weak. Johnny wasn’t entirely unprepared for what he saw, but he was nonetheless shocked. Alan Bagiotti’s face was a mess. One eye was completely closed, the other looked as if it would shortly be in a similar condition. Blood seeped from deep slashes carved in his cheeks, his lips were bruised and swollen and bloody. There was blood on his collar, blood on his shirt. When he spoke he revealed torn gums and gaps in his teeth.