It was a miracle nobody was killed. The heavy drapes inside the front doors caught most of the flying glass, but the force of the explosion rocked the place. Plaster showered from the ceilings: a chandelier broke away from its fastenings and fell with a sickening crash: bottles were smashed and a tray of crockery fell from the hands of a startled waiter. Women screamed - and the whole scene shuddered like the segments of a kaleidoscope.
I was nearer the door than anyone and after pushing Lucia into the arms of a waiter I pushed past the velvet drapes into the street.
Dover Street is a quiet place at ten o'clock at night. It lacks the bright lights of nearby Piccadilly and has never rivalled Park Lane's plushness. Oliver's is almost its only restaurant. During the day the street comes alive with the advertising men who work in the offices, and the fine art dealers who can't quite afford the rents in nearby Bond Street. But at night it is quiet - as a rule.
That night was different. I stood in the wrecked doorway and looked about me. Windows were smashed for forty yards in every direction. Behind and above me came the shouts and screams of hysterical people. Dust hung in thick grey clouds in the pale light cast by the street lamps. The acrid smell of explosives caught in my nostrils. Opposite, on the other side of the road, I saw the cause of the explosion. Jack's Rolls-Royce was a gutted, smoking mess of twisted steel and gaping windows.
The next half hour was a nightmare. Police cars arrived within minutes but I was back in the restaurant by then, trying to quieten the general hysteria. The Italian head waiter went completely to pieces, babbling away and waving his arms like a windmill - until Lucia took over. She was magnificent. She delivered some very sharp-sounding Italian to the staff in general, then helped usher people back to their tables, where they were encouraged to remain until the police had finished outside. Lucia arranged for large brandies to be served all round, compliments of the management, and shortly after that she even persuaded the band to play again softly and jerkily, like a dirge of off key notes, but music nonetheless. Waiters cleared some of the debris and after a while people's voices lost the raw edge of panic. It was like a scene from the blitz, and I had just finished explaining to the Bomb Squad that I had been the driver of the Rolls, though not its owner, when Chief Inspector Davis stepped through the wreckage of the entrance. He gave me a sour look but refrained from speaking immediately. Instead he directed the three men with him to begin taking statements and interviewing people.
Of course, the story of the punch-up came out. It had occurred almost immediately before the explosion, so the two events were linked in most people's minds. People pointed at me and I heard whispers behind my back. The odd thing was that the man who attacked me was not to be found. I was quite sure he had not left by the front door, which meant he had gone out the back way - but nobody remembered seeing him go. And the waiters said he was a stranger, they had never seen him before. He had arrived ten minutes before the incident and gone straight to the bar to have a drink until some friends joined him. After which nobody took any notice until he appeared on the gallery with me.
Eventually Davis came across to where I was standing. "I ought to run you in, Harris," he growled.
"For what?"
"Assault. Causing a disturbance. Any number of things."
"Really? Well this time I've got witnesses - so just you try."
He flushed angrily. I thought he would arrest me for a moment witnesses or otherwise. Then he leant forward so that only I could hear him. "You're trouble, Harris. Out thirty-six hours and in the middle of a punch-up and a bombing. Do us a favour and go and play somewhere else."
"Someone should straighten you out, Davis. You're supposed to protect the public - not persecute them."
"Take my advice," he growled back. "Get out of town."
"When I'm ready. Right now I'm ready to take this young lady home. If you've quite finished?"
He turned and walked away. I looked across to the inspector from the bomb squad who had been doing his best to eavesdrop. "Okay if we go now?"
He nodded. "Don't leave town without letting us know."
That was rich. Davis wanted me to go and this joker wanted me to stay - how's that for teamwork? I took Lucia's arm and led her into the street. She gave a little gasp when she saw Jack's car. I can't say I blame her. It lurched drunkenly on a broken axle, with its doors blown out and without a square inch of glass in its windscreen. The police had rigged up arc lamps and were taking photographs. I turned Lucia away and steered her towards Piccadilly. The street had been roped off and a few young constables were doing their best to restrain the usual crowd of morons who gravitate to disasters like vultures round a corpse. Someone grabbed my arm, "Anyone killed, Mister?" I pushed him away and shielded Lucia as best I could.
We caught a cab outside the Ritz. I gave Jack's address and Lucia sat back in the seat with a sigh of relief. Strain showed as dark bruises beneath her eyes. We had barely spoken since our dinner table had been knocked over. I wondered how much of the evening she blamed me for? It had been a disaster from start to finish except for a couple of hours in the middle, when we were getting to know each other. We travelled in silence while I tried to think of something to say. Then she reached over and took my hand, clutching it tightly, the way a child might grasp the hand of a parent. "Quite an evening, Sam. Do you always go to so much trouble to impress a girl?" Then she kissed me briefly and the moon glinted on the river as we crossed Chelsea Bridge.
Chapter Three
I overslept the following morning. After taking Lucia back to The Dog's Home Jack and I had talked half the night away. He took the news of his car without batting an eyelid. "Time I had a new one anyway - let the insurance boys worry about it." But he had been worried sick about Lucia and me, and as soon as the girls went to bed he came right out with it. "That was a warning, Sam. You'd be a fool to ignore it."
"So what the hell do I do? Run away and hide?"
He shrugged and poured himself more coffee.
When he remained silent, I said, "What I can't understand is why - and who!"
We sat there until five in the morning trying to fathom that out. Then we admitted defeat and I caught a cab back to Rex Place, where I went straight to bed. But not to sleep. The events of the evening were too vivid in my mind for that. The car which had pulled out when we left Rex Place - the man who had attacked me in the restaurant - the smoking wreckage of Jack's Rolls-Royce. Even Jack himself. Funny to be disturbed by Jack, but his manner had been odd somehow. He was shocked of course, but at one point I formed the distinct impression that he knew something, that he was holding something back, not telling me. Then I forgot about him and thought of Lucia. Lucia Serracino-Torregianni. The family name - hard to say and hard to live with - or so she had whispered, so softly that I had almost missed it. Finally I dozed off, until the telephone woke me at ten o'clock.
"Harris?"
It took me a moment to recognise his voice: "Tomlinson?"
"You've seen the newspapers, I suppose? What the devil are you playing at?"
I shifted the phone to the other ear and swung my feet onto the floor. I was still only half awake. Not that Tomlinson cared. He was barking, "You'd better get across here straight away. I'll expect you in half an hour."
It took me forty minutes and he was still simmering when I arrived. His secretary left a pile of press cuttings on his desk, gave me a funny look and then scuttled off to make some coffee.
Tomlinson was even whiter than usual; not from shock but temper. "I never gave much for your chances to begin with," he snapped, "but what on earth possessed you to get mixed up with that?"
That was the pile of press clippings. I picked up the top one. It was the front page of the Express. A photograph of what was left of Jack's car appeared beneath a stock one of me taken years ago. But the picture below that was even more startling. It showed me with raised fists, standing over the man in the restaurant. Two waiters looked on, while in the background Lucia's lovely
features were caught in an expression of alarm. The headline read: Winner Harris is back in town!
All the papers carried the same story. Most of them even had the same pictures. The Mail broke the pattern with a shot of Lucia descending the staircase from the gallery, and a story speculating on the identity of 'Winner Harris's lovely new girl-friend'.
Tomlinson barely gave me time to read them. "Well?" he demanded. "I'm waiting for an explanation."
"Don't treat me like a bloody schoolboy, Tomlinson. I'm the client - remember? And it seems to me the papers give a pretty full account of what happened."
"You undertook to stay out of trouble. Only yesterday for Heaven's sake! And now - now this!"
His girl arrived with a tray of coffee and reduced us both to a state of smouldering silence. Tomlinson's attitude sparked my own temper. It took self-control not to have a go at him, but something told me I would need him before this mess was cleared up.
I waited until the girl closed the door behind her. "All right - let's calm down. Any undertaking given by me was abided by. Trouble is we didn't get an undertaking from the other side."
"What other side?"
"The other side who attacked me in a restaurant. The other side who blew up my car! That other side, Tomlinson! Would you feel any better if I had been knocked cold in Oliver's? Or blown up in Dover Street? It was a put-up job - can't you see that?"
Temper made dagger points of his eyes. "Mr Harris," he said sharply. "You claimed it was a put-up job when you were last in trouble. Now you're in trouble again - and again it's a put-up job. Is that what you're asking me to believe?"
"One." I ticked the points off on my fingers. "A man attacks me in a restaurant. He attacked me - not the other way about. Witnesses will testify to that. Two - he came there for that express purpose. He arrived, had a drink until the staff forgot about him, then he came looking for me. Three-"
"That's supposition!" Tomlinson said sharply.
"Like hell it is. He wasn't led upstairs. He wasn't shown to a table by a waiter. He came looking for me. What's more he knew exactly where to find me." I glared, but Tomlinson's blank stare might have meant anything, so I continued: "Three. At least two people in that restaurant had cameras and flash guns. When was the last time you took your camera out to dinner? Think about it!Two people there expected to photograph something. And when they did they delivered prints to every paper in Fleet Street."
I was ticking points off like a fighter throwing punches. "Four the man who attacked me vanishes afterwards. He's a mystery. Even the photographs don't show his face, just his body crumpled on the floor. And five - the car I was using gets blown to pieces." I ran out of arguments but that seemed enough to go on with, so I said, "If you think I organised that to draw attention to myself you're out of your bloody mind."
Some of the anger faded from his face. "Well...put like that-"
"Put like that! For God's sake! What other way can you put it? That's what happened. Even the papers say that."
He nodded thoughtfully, hesitantly. "Yes...yes they do...don't they?"
I gulped some coffee and tried to define the look he was giving me. Certainly it was less angry. Even the doubt was beginning to fade. Finally he cleared his throat and said, "I may have been wrong about you, Mr Harris. In which case I apologise."
I sighed. An apology was irrelevant. I said, "Forget it. You were angry because it makes your job harder. This won't help our case with the magistrates one little bit, will it?"
"I'm afraid not." He steepled his fingers and moistened his lips in that characteristic way of this. Then he spoke slowly and carefully. "In fact, I think it probably destroys what slender chance we had."
"Even though it was a put-up job?"
He barely hesitated. "Even though it appears not to have been your fault. Violence seems to follow you around, Mr Harris. That fact alone will worry the magistrates."
I stood up and walked to the window. I knew what he was saying. Pull out now. Avoid the expense of counsel's fees. Take my money back. Use it more profitably. Start again, somewhere else. Exactly what Davis had said. Even Jack was beginning to gauge the odds.
"Would it be such a blow?" Tomlinson asked softly.
Tony Field's words came back to me: 'Id like to get out, Sam it's no fun these days.' Would I feel that if I got my licences back? Maybe all I was doing was trying to recapture the past? That would be stupid - times had changed, I no longer had someone to share things with.
I sighed and walked back to my chair. "I don't know - that's the truth of it - at least about the licences. I'd like them back because I think it proves something - though don't ask me what. But this pressure - harassment, intimidation if you like - from the police and other people - that's something else. Whatever I do next is for me to decide. Dammit, I won't be pushed!"
"Stubborn pride can be an expensive commodity in a court of law."
"Stubborn pride, rubbish! A sense of justice might be nearer the mark."
He let that pass. "So we go on?"
"Yes."
The word was out before I could stop it. I glared defiance across the desk, half expecting him to say I was wasting time and money. But instead he gave his wintry smile and said he had arranged to see counsel at the end of the following week. "And yesterday I sent off our application for a court hearing. They'll get it this morning," he tapped the newspapers, "after reading these over breakfast."
I shrugged. "Who's the QC?"
"Tim Hastings," he said quietly, and watched for my reaction. Even I had heard of Hastings. His reputation for cross-examination scared most people rigid even before they took the stand. I grinned spitefully at an imagined vision of Davis being hammered unmercifully. It would be worth the thousand - just to see that.
Tomlinson looked at his diary. "Ten thirty on the twelfth at his chambers. Perhaps you'd call here first, say at ten, and we'll go round together."
I nodded. Then I told him about the stuff I was writing at Rex Place. He listened politely, but when I finished he said, "Do you think it's really necessary for Hastings to read your memoirs before appearing on your behalf?"
"Material. That's what you said yesterday. How can he show me a 'fit and proper person' if he doesn't know me?"
"He'll make his mind up as to that when he meets you."
"Judge my life on an hour's interview?" I shook my head. "Sorry, that's not good enough - not this time."
He met my look with a shrewd one of his own. "There can be no question of re-opening the matter of your trial. You do realise that? If that's your purpose you're wasting your time."
"Stop complaining. You asked for material and you'll damn well get it."
"I don't guarantee he'll read it."
"No? Well you get it onto his desk before we meet and say I'll be bloody angry if he doesn't know it off by heart."
He gave a tiny smile of acceptance. "I'll put it more tactfully than that - for your sake."
The meeting was over and I was about to leave when I remembered the other matter. "There's something else you could do for me. I want a company search on an outfit called Tuskers. Usual stuff - directors, share capital, copies of balance sheets."
He made a note of it and said it would take about a week to get the information from Companies House - then he took me downstairs. "I know," I said, as we shook hands. "Stay out of trouble."
He smiled with unusual warmth. "I'm beginning to suspect that is impossible - but try your best. It's awfully important."
The telephone was ringing when I returned to Rex Place. It was Lucia, reaffirming her willingness to play secretary. I looked at the pile of notes and breathed a sigh of relief. Time was short if Tomlinson was to read them before passing them to Hastings. But I hesitated about involving Lucia further.
"Have you seen the newspapers?"
She giggled. "Sam Harris's lovely new girlfriend? Don't worry, I'll come in disguise."
"Maybe you shouldn't come at all?"
"I w
on't, unless you want me to," she said quickly. The husky voice lost some of its warmth.
A better man would have stopped her there; someone less selfish would have turned her away rather than risk her getting hurt. But I felt in need of company and the prospect of her company was especially appealing. In some ways it would be embarrassing to work on the notes with her. There were parts of my life I would prefer her not to know — but if that was the price of having her around I knew I would pay it. So I said, "Of course I want you to come."
"Good. I'll have lunch and be straight over. Oh, and Sam - let's eat in tonight, shall we? It might be easier on the nerves."
Afterwards I made coffee and sandwiches, and then settled down to work on the notes. I fiddled about for a while, numbering sheets, wondering where to start, what to leave out and what to put in.
But reviewing my life had taken on a new urgency. Only part of it was to provide Tomlinson with what he called material. Now there was another reason. I felt like a running man, looking back over his shoulder. Jack had said it - the car bomb was a warning! But from whom? And why? Who was trying to push me out of the West End? Questions gnawed at my brain and all I could do was to try to remember.
Casinos are machines for making money and we made a packet at the end of the sixties. I raided our cash flow to buy amusement arcades and more restaurants, and before 'sixty-nine was over we moved into betting shops by acquiring a chain of forty from a company called Winwright. It was a heady time and hardly a week passed without mention of Apex Holdings in the financial press. And while I made news in the 'heavies' Kay became the darling of the gossip columnists. It was inevitable really. She was England's number one party-giver by then and it seemed that not even a Labour Government could stifle people's curiosity about the lives of the rich - even the moderately rich like us. So Kay became a willing target. She was articulate, outspoken, and very photogenic if not beautiful. Her heavy-lidded eyes promised seduction to every camera pointed at her. She became an up-to-date composite of Mae West and Elsa Maxwell, with the same gift of answering a simple question with a quotable headline. 'Winner's Wife' they called her, and the chat shows loved her.
Ian St James Compendium - Volume 1 Page 44