They paid him off and he passed them a dog-eared business card.
“See you agin mon.”
“Not if I see you first, sunshine!” said Mike, through clenched teeth.
They arrived at Benny Baker’s place with five minutes to spare so seated themselves in the restaurant section within sight of the entrance.
“Morning boys, what can I get you today?” It was the proprietor himself.
“Hi Ben, this is my old mate from schooldays, Mike.”
“Pleased to meet you, Mike.”
“Two teas and two of your breakfast specials should do the trick Ben.”
“Cash?”
“If you can spare any,” quipped Hymie. Mike nodded his assent.
“Coming right up.”
While the waitress made up their order Benny took off his apron and crossed to the other side of the counter for a chat.
“How’s the case going, H? Made any progress?”
“Fair to middlin’, Ben. Did you get a visit from the Boys in Blue?”
“Yeah, some vicious-looking sergeant called Terse. He wanted to know if I knew you and whether I knew where you were.”
“And you said?”
“Oh, you know, I just told him I knew you by sight, that you came in the Bakery from time to time and I hadn’t seen you recently.”
“And that was it? He left?” asked Hymie, incredulously.
“Pretty much; at least, the police circus on your doorstep moved out of town, but I’m sure I’ve seen a few more plain-clothed detectives around than usual.”
Suddenly the party was over.
It was one of those “JFK assassination” moments, where years later, those present remembered every last detail of where they had been and what they had been doing. Even if they did choose to embellish.
As the clock on the wall struck eleven there was an almighty explosion.
BOOM CRACKA THOOM!! KABABOOM!!!
The front of the restaurant imploded into a gigantic fireball. The plate glass windows shattered into a million splinters, flying in all directions, the frames melted and warped. Mike hit the deck first, pulling his friend and their host to the ground with consummate skill and practiced ease. It was a timely manoeuvre as no sooner had the glass fallen than the front of the Bakery was deluged with wave upon wave of machine-gun fire. The noise was apocalyptic. Everywhere tables, chairs and catering equipment were torn asunder and scattered far and wide. Nothing moved in the carnage.
Suddenly, Hymie became aware of a pulsing sensation in his trouser pocket. His mobile phone, which was never switched on, must have been activated when he hit the floor.
“Hello, Mr Goldman, Sarah Chandar speaking. I wondered if you had had time to reconsider my outline proposal for your business?”
“Yes…er no, I’m afraid you’ll have to excuse me Sarah, I’m a little busy right now.” He switched her and his mobile off.
Alarms sounded upstairs and in the neighbouring premises. In short order police, fire engines and ambulances started to arrive. The army of hell-raisers responsible for
the atrocity seemed to have just melted away.
“I don’t think they were from the Total Disaster Insurance Corporation,” said Hymie.
“If they were, they certainly lived up to their name.” rejoined Mike.
Benny was in too much pain to talk, having taken a deflected bullet to the shoulder. He was escorted away to Edgeware General in an ambulance with a couple of his staff. Mercifully there had only been one fatality, a regular customer of 83, whose arteries were too hardened to allow for fast evasive action. Mike and Hymie miraculously suffered only minor injuries, although Mike was removing fragments of broken glass from his hair for days afterwards.
The restaurant looked like it had lost a fight with Lennox Lewis. Restaurants rarely faced such tough opposition.
“Is there something you haven’t been telling me Hymie?” asked Mike. “It’s becoming clear that some heavy duty villains really don’t like you. Who have you upset?”
“Where do I begin? Old Mrs Timmins, Sergeant Terse and Inspector Decca, Janis Turner, the whole of the North London criminal fraternity…”
“The Triads?”
“Well, I’m not exactly on their Christmas list, but this is a bit much.”
“Mister Goldman! I’d been wondering when we’d be seeing you again.”
“Hello Inspector. Good of you to drop by. This is my friend, Mike Murphy,” added Hymie. “Mike, this is Inspector Ray Decca, known to his friends as Clueless…sorry, Cluedo.”
“Well it’s lucky for you we were passing, sunshine, or you’d be pushing up the daisies by now.”
“Very kind, I’m sure,” remarked Hymie.
“No trouble. Now, I’m sure you gents. will both be only too happy to join me down at the station for a little chat, because you’re both decent law-abiding citizens who would hate to be accused of obstructing the course of justice.”
“Or any other trumped up charges he can think of,” murmured Hymie.
“You what, Goldman?”
“Nothing…nothing, Inspector.”
They were escorted into the back of an unmarked police car and driven away to Finchley Road police station. Conversation dried up as Hymie tried to work out what he should and shouldn’t tell Decca, and Mike wondered what on earth he had allowed himself to get involved in. Time alone would tell.
Part Fourteen
The place: Police Interview Room One, Finchley Road nick; the time: later that day. Hymie Goldman sat staring into space as usual. On the other side of the desk, Inspector Ray Decca was trying hard not to lose his patience.
“Stop the tape, Reidy, when I want to hear book at bedtime I’ll switch on Radio Four. You have heard, I suppose, of wasting Police time, Goldman?”
Hymie smiled the kind of smile that inferred it was one of his hobbies.
P.C.Reidy, who had been on the verge of mastering the ancient art of sleeping through a witness interview, sat bolt upright in his chair, reached over to the Taiwanese cassette recorder and pressed the pause button.
“I’ve a good mind to charge you for it at that, Goldman, failing first degree murder of course. Incidentally, we’ve noticed that the incidence of motoring offences has dropped significantly of late, have you sold your car?”
“I haven’t seen my car for a few days, it’s true…my assistant, Janis had it last, but as for the murder, give me a break! You ought to be out there trying to catch the scum that destroyed Benny’s Bakery, not hauling me over the coals for something I clearly never did. I nearly got killed…or do you think that was just an elaborate suicide attempt?!”
“Reidy, switch the ruddy tape on!”
“I want to see my solicitor,” said Hymie.
“So do we, he jumped bail on a fraud charge six months ago.”
“I wondered who that postcard from Alicante was from.”
“Are you ready to tell us what you know, or would you like to spend a few more hours in the cells?” asked Decca, dismissively.
“Okay, I’ll tell you what I know. It isn’t much. The way my life’s going at the moment, police protection is better than nothing. Is there any news of Benny Baker?”
“He’s stable. He’ll be fine in a few weeks.”
“Good. Right, where shall I begin?” queried Hymie.
“At the beginning.”
Down the corridor in Interview Room Two, Sergeant Barry Terse was applying all his ingenuity to the task of interviewing Mike Murphy.
“You did it, didn’t you?”
“I don’t understand the question. Was it a question, sergeant?”
“You know damn well what I’m talking about. You killed Lee and destroyed Benny’s Bakery to make it look like a gangland killing.”
“Yes, that’s right, you’re too smart for me. I should have known I was no match for your clever interview techniques.”
“Blast it! Switch on the recorder now, Potter!”
Mike
’s tongue had talked him into as many scrapes as his fists had fought him out of. Usually he was big enough and ugly enough to get out on the side of the Angels, but Barry Terse was built along the same lines. His response to heavy sarcasm was a smack in the mouth and he administered it before Mike had time to reflect that winding up coppers in a police station was a mug’s game. Murphy reeled back in his seat, bounced off the wall and leapt to his feet brandishing what was left of the interview room chair.
“Switch off the tape, Potter!”
In the Mexican stand-off that ensued, Terse and Potter prepared to overpower their desperate witness, while the latter came belatedly to his senses.
“Happy Birthday, Sergeant” he said, handing the chair fragments across the desk to Terse with a broad grin.
He wasn’t going to give them the pleasure.
Back down the other end of the corridor Hymie was warming to the task of spilling the beans. He could easily have become a confirmed bean bunger.
“…that’s all I know about Lucy Scarlatti,” he said, a few minutes later. “She was my client for three wonderful days before she died in a hail of bullets. As I said, she hired me to recover some memento of mainly sentimental value which her sister had stolen from their dead father.”
“A pig?”
“Well, I don’t like to speak ill of the dead, but he wasn’t very popular, apparently.”
“No, the memento; was it a statue of a pig?” asked Decca.
“Yes, so she said.”
“Not a diary?” continued Decca.
“No, different things entirely…pigs, pink and fat with a leg at each corner, diaries, small and rectangular, made of pulped wood,” quipped Hymie, ill-advisedly.
“But last time we met, Goldman, you told me she was trying to recover her father’s diary, as it contained a treasure map.”
Hymie smiled sheepishly.
“Ah, yes…sorry, I wasn’t feeling well at the time.”
“So let’s get this story straight, you went to visit your client on the night she died?”
“Yes.”
“Alone? or with someone else?” resumed Decca.
“With my assistant, Janis Turner.”
“Again Mr Goldman, that’s not what you told me earlier. You said you were alone.”
“Well, she stayed in the car so in a sense she wasn’t really there.”
“It’s you who’s not all there, Goldman.”
“I have reason to believe that Janis Turner and Steffie Scarlatti are one and the same person and that she murdered her sister; my client, Lucy Scarlatti,” said Hymie.
“Over a statuette of a pig?” queried Decca.
“Yes.”
“Not over a diary with a treasure map in it?”
“No.”
“You’re sure?” asked Decca. “You don’t want to change your story just one more time?”
“Yes...I mean no,…I mean yes and no,” said Hymie, confused.
“Okay, tell me again; what happened on the night of the murder?” Decca felt like he was making progress at last.
“Janis Turner, aka Steffanie Scarlatti, and I drove over to Lucy Scarlatti’s apartment,” repeated Hymie.
“In your car?”
“Yes. The Zebaguchi 650.”
“Never heard of it,” said Decca. “What’s the registration number?”
“R256 HOG.”
“Colour?”
“Mainly silver.”
“And what was the address you drove to?” Decca was nothing if not thorough.
“Riverside Drive…over in Docklands,” hesitated Hymie, “but I can’t remember the number offhand.”
“But you’ve previously identified it as number thirty-five,” added Decca. “And when you got there, what happened?”
“I’ve told you, Inspector, I went into the flat to tell my client I hadn’t made any progress with the case and that she was wasting her money…”
“A pity you didn’t tell her that the first time you met; she may still be alive.”
“…and then, and then…I don’t know. I remember, sometime later, hearing she was dead and that I’d been shot; as if I needed telling, but I couldn’t recall what happened at the time. I heard these things after I came to in hospital,” concluded Hymie.
“So you have no idea who killed Lucy Scarlatti?”
“All I remember is my client’s last word; ‘Steffanie!’”
“Just that?”
“Just that.”
“And what happened to Janis Turner aka Steffie Scarlatti?”
“She told me she drove away, but I don’t have any evidence for that and if she did, I don’t know when she left or where she went.”
“Do you think she killed Lucy Scarlatti, Mr Goldman?”
“Yes. She had the motive, the opportunity and the inclination. She gunned down a Triad hit man only the day before.”
“You saw her kill Chiu Mann?” queried Decca.
“Chiu Mann? Was that his name? He was barely human; a vicious killing machine. Incredibly I didn’t catch his name as he was trying to cut me into little pieces with a ruddy great sword at the time.”
“Did you ever meet Tony Martino?” continued Decca.
“What is this, twenty questions, Inspector? No, I never met him, should I have?”
“He had been murdered by Chiu Mann shortly before you arrived at the scene.”
“In that case, I did meet the poor slob…although he was already dead when I met him,” explained Hymie.
“What were you doing there?”
“I’ve always wanted to see South MimMs”
“Goldman! Just get on with it,” Decca snapped.
“My client gave me the address. She said it was the last address she had for her sister Steffanie.”
“You went alone?”
“Yes, but I was followed by Janis,” surmised Hymie.
“Did you ever find the pig statuette?”
“No.”
“Stop the tape, Reidy. Thank you, Mr Goldman. If you’d told me all this earlier you might not be looking at a charge of obstructing a Police investigation.”
Decca stood up and left the room. Back in his office he rang through to Interview Room Two for Terse to join him.
“So, Terse, what have you got for me?”
The Golden Pig Page 8