Mistress Murder

by Bernard Knight

  ‘Going over tomorrow?’ he asked instead.

  ‘Yes, Brussels this time. How much do you want?’ Snigger, his name an obvious parody on his unfortunate real one of Leonard Gigal, looked cautiously over his shoulder to see if the door was shut. Heroin … as much as you like. That last lot of morphine you dumped on me will take months to get rid of.’

  Paul nodded. He straightened his back and pulled the plug out of the basin.

  ‘Right – can you take five hundred grams?’

  The barman whistled.

  ‘Five hundred! OK, I’ll take it. They all seem to be after the hard stuff these days … it may take a few weeks to palm off, mind.’

  Paul nodded and went to dry his hands at a roller towel. ‘I’ll be back on Thursday … come up Friday night for it, usual place.’

  Gigal looked curiously at the other man. Golding was affable, but drew a strict line about the limits of his confidence in people. Snigger tried again, tentatively.

  ‘How you going this time, Rotterdam routine again?’ Paul looked hard at him, his jaw muscles tensing.

  ‘No, I’m not,’ he said harshly. ‘The less you know, the less you can spill when you get picked up.’

  Snigger smiled weakly. He accepted the brush-off and the hint that the Metropolitan Police would catch up with him sooner or later. The innuendo that when he was nicked he would do well to keep his mouth shut was not lost on him either. He decided to change the subject.

  ‘Rita’s looking smashing tonight – smartest bird that comes in here.’ He grinned ingratiatingly, showing his loose oversize dentures.

  ‘Shut up – let’s get out of here. Folks’ll wonder what we’re up to.’

  Just outside the toilet, Paul stopped in the shadow of a supporting pillar and looked towards the bar. Rita was still on her stool, openly searching the club with her eyes. Paul waited a moment to see if she had any success. The tape recorder had given him the sound of the other man’s voice, but it had not been one he recognised. And, infuriatingly, never once had either he or Rita spoken his name, not even the Christian name. Paul remembered the endearments – and worse – that had passed between them.

  He felt no jealousy, only annoyance at the enforced break-up of a carnally satisfactory arrangement. But more serious, there was the anxiety about the safety of his identity and his drug smuggling business.

  He saw no sign that Rita had recognised anyone and he made his way back to her.

  ‘Shall we dance?’ he said.

  They spent the rest of the time until the 11.30 cabaret, clinging together on the tiny floor, swaying to the smooch music of the four-piece band. There was no twisting or shaking here. This was strictly a hideout for the tired and not-so-tired business man who wanted to get to grips with his social life in the shape of a young woman.

  There was nothing about the place that would attract the attention of the Yard Vice Squad, but an unaccompanied tired businessman had only to cross Snigger’s palm with a fiver for an attractive girl to appear within five minutes, to be his drinking and dancing partner. What she chose to do when the club closed at two thirty was her own business, as far as the club was concerned.

  Half an hour before midnight, the already dim lights went down even further and a blue spotlight appeared on the stage. For the first time, the club owner appeared, his shirt front glowing in the eerie light. There was a desultory burst of applause and he held his hands up for silence.

  Snigger snorted from behind the bar where he was polishing a glass.

  ‘Think he was going to conduct Beethoven’s Fiff in the Albert ’All!’ he growled in his broad Cockney. ‘One night I’m going to wrap a bottle round his bleeding ’ead!’

  Paul Jacobs’ bland face stared hard at the barman. ‘It would cost you some if you did, Snigger,’ he said enigmatically. He turned back to the stage. Ray Silver, a plump Eurasian and owner of the club, was giving a build-up patter for the cabaret.

  All the acts had changed since Paul’s last visit a few weeks before and he listened to the new artistes with interest. The third and last performer riveted his attention even more firmly.

  Ray Silver bounced on to announce Fraulein Elsa and amid a roll of drums, a tall blonde drifted on to the stage. The cloud of silver hair was accentuated by the harsh blue light as she sung ‘Lili Marlene’ huskily and sensually in the style of the ageless German-American star, Marlene Dietrich. Her voice alone would never have made her fortune, thought Paul as he carefully looked her over, but the meaning she put into the words and the way she moved her long body inside the glittering sheath of her dress more than made up for an indifferent set of vocal cords.

  Elsa followed ‘Lili Marlene’ with a couple of even more glowing numbers from Eartha Kitt’s repertoire. Paul’s attention was so rapt that his usually steel-willed caution slipped for a few minutes.

  His eyes, focussed on the swaying silver figure, failed to notice Rita making furtive signs to a man who had just come through the swing doors. The man stood, as Jacobs had done, in the shadow of a pillar, staring intently at the pair at the bar.

  Behind Paul’s back, Rita made a little warning motion with her cigarette, pointing fleetingly at her escort. The stranger, a tall, broad man in his early thirties, gave a slight nod. Then he went to the other end of the bar and completely ignored the other pair for the rest of the night.

  Paul watched the Austrian singer intently until the end of her act. Already the germ of an idea as to Rita’s successor was taking root in his calculating mind. When she left the stage in a burst of applause Rita left to powder her nose. Paul swung back to the bar and called Snigger for some more drinks.

  Gigal leered at him.

  ‘Nice bit ’o stuff, eh? The “frowline” stunt is on the level too – she really does come from Vienna.’

  ‘Know anything about her?’

  The little cockney shrugged. ‘She’s only been here a week. No bloke hanging around her yet, if that’s what you mean.’

  ‘Where’s she live?’

  Again Snigger shrugged. ‘Search me! I’ll put the whisper around, if you like.’

  Paul nodded then leant forwards across the bar.

  ‘Snigger, have you noticed anyone hanging around Rita this last couple of weeks?’ He dropped his voice as he spoke.

  The ex-jockey’s brows went up again.

  ‘A feller? No, she ain’t even bin in here … no, wait a bit, she was once. But on her own, she was. Straight up, that is.’

  Paul accepted his word and let the subject drop. He slid off the stool and stubbed his cigarette out.

  ‘I’m going in to see Silver for a minute. Tell Rita I won’t be long.’

  The barman, looking incongruous in his whiskers and armbands, nodded. ‘Want me to keep my eyes skinned when you’re away?’ he offered tentatively.

  Paul scowled at him. ‘Don’t bother … I’m taking care of it.’

  Snigger shied off the delicate ground of Golding’s personal affairs. Theirs was a purely business relationship. The ex-jockey was a middleman in the dope business in the West End. He bought the stuff wholesale from Golding, broke it down into smaller packages and sold it at a handsome profit to the dealers.

  They had a series of safeguards which made it virtually impossible for the police to trace the supply back to Golding. For eight years now they had carried on this rewarding game without a whisper of trouble. Snigger knew that he was by no means the only distributor for Golding’s imports from the Continent. Ray Silver was another, for instance.

  He was a big-time middleman and through his interests in a chain of seedy dance halls through London, he got rid of a much larger quantity than Snigger himself. Silver dealt mainly with teenage pep pills and reefers, but had a fair trade in the hard stuff: heroin, morphine, and cocaine. Snigger also knew that Paul’s visit now to the office at the back of the stage was to take Silver’s order for the next consignment from Brussels.

  Golding left the bar just before Rita came back, her curvaceous
body sidling between the crowded tables. The barman looked covertly at her as she approached and wondered what had made Golding suspect that she was two-timing him.

  ‘You’re soon going to get your cards and week’s money, sweetheart,’ he muttered to himself as the dark beauty pirouetted onto her stool.

  He leant back against his mirrored shelves and looked around the big room, now thick with cigarette smoke. His two full-bosomed assistants were serving as fast as they could go, and Albert, the waiter, rushed around the tables, his speed in serving varying with the expected size of his tip. He was a small cog in the drug market, being one of Silver’s distributors. Under cover of serving drinks, he would pass over packets of dope, the profits largely going to the club owner. Silver had no idea that his barman was a competitor under his own roof. Albert had a shrewd idea how Snigger passed his stuff across, but the barman paid him a regular sub to keep his mouth shut.

  Snigger leisurely polished an already gleaming glass as he looked around the big room, now full of chattering voices, the drone of the band and the click of fruit machines from the other corner. He looked up and down the bar – every stool except Golding’s being occupied. Amongst the line of tired businessmen, he noticed an M.P., a couple of stage and TV people, and a sprinkling of showgirls and strippers. The Nineties was no club for the mugs and tourists who crowded into Soho – it existed for the hard core of the West End population, a place where business and vice rubbed shoulders with sophisticated pleasure.

  His eye passed from a couple of attractive chorus girls to the man next to them. He recognised him as Conrad Draper, a big-time bookie who had benefited from many hundreds of pounds of Snigger’s money in past years.

  Like Gigal himself, Conrad was a product of the East End. He had catapulted to affluence and dubious fame about three years ago. Before that, he had been a wrestler and a strong-arm man for several unsavoury gentlemen of the turf. By means of some smart takeover bids, together with a deal of physical intimidation, he had rapidly ousted many of the smaller bookmakers and built up a monopoly of betting shops in Soho and the back streets of the West End. He had a finger in the protection rackets of the area and he was doing his best to become the A1 Capone of Central London.

  Snigger watched him out of the comer of his eye as he sat idly twisting a whisky glass in his fingers. He had a large unlit cigar in his mouth. It fascinated the barman to see him take it out occasionally, lay it carefully on the edge of the ashtray, and take out a cigarette to smoke. After a few draws, he would crush it out and put the cigar back between his fleshy lips. He was a good six foot two in height and had the shoulders of a wrestler, as well as the experience. He was handsome in a heavy sort of way, but his features were already thickening and he had a slightly bent nose as a legacy of his days in the ring. Since he had got near the top of the Soho mobsters, he affected an American drawl and style of dress. He wore a flashy blue drape suit with narrow lapels and was liberally decked out with tiepins and signet rings. In the cloakroom hung an expensive camel-hair coat and a wide-brimmed Chicago-style hat.

  Paul came back from his business with the club owner and disturbed Snigger’s browsing by asking for more drinks. Rita and he sat talking while they finished them then went off to the dance floor.

  After a few more smoochy dances, the couple came back to the bar. Rita had drunk quite a lot in the course of the evening and was getting sentimentally tipsy. She lolled against Paul a little too obviously and began stroking his sleeve. He frowned and gently pushed her upright.

  ‘Come on – time for bed … you’re getting high.’

  It was a quirk of his dual personality that in spite of his organised adultery, his immoral drug dealings and his crooked friend, he still had a wide streak of prudery which rebelled against seeing her drunk in public.

  Rita giggled and tried to kiss him. He scowled, drew away, then his face cleared. The first glimmerings of a plan for her elimination came to him at that instant. He stood up, slid an arm around her bare shoulders and aimed her towards the door.

  ‘You’ve had enough for tonight, gorgeous,’ he murmured gently. He piloted her to the cloakroom and got their things from the girl. He slipped the mink around her, reflecting that it had cost him the whole proceeds of a trip to Marseilles the year before. He steered her up the stairs and the pugilistic doorman called a cab.

  While they waited, she buried her face in his chest. ‘I want to kiss you, darling,’ she pouted tipsily.

  He smiled grimly above her head into the neon jungle of Soho. ‘You can kiss me all you like, once we get home,’ he promised.

  He added silently, ‘And you can kiss him tomorrow, Rita, as arranged … make the most of it!’

  Chapter Two

  Paul Jacobs had plenty of time for reflection and planning on the following day.

  He made his usual cover-up visit to a silver vault in St. Martin’s Lane in the morning and made purchases worth a few hundred pounds. For the short time that he was in the vaults, he partly reverted to his Paul Jacobs identity, having left his fancy hat and coat in the flat. He paid by cheque drawn on a legitimate account in Cardiff and arranged for the silver to be insured and delivered to his antique business in Cardiff’s dockland.

  Having finished this genuine excuse for spending the better part of a week in London, he went back to Newman Street. He packed a case, took some documents and money from a wall safe and kissed Rita goodbye.

  She had learned to show no curiosity about either his business affairs or his erratic comings and goings. Clinging to his arm, she went with him to the lift.

  ‘See you on Saturday, sweet,’ he said, as he stepped inside. ‘We’ll have a special night, eh? Be good till then!’

  He smiled grimly as he went down to the foyer. He knew the sort of goodness she would be indulging in with her new boyfriend the moment he was gone.

  At the top of the shaft she stood looking down, her mind filled with her own private thoughts.

  ‘Going to Glasgow, be damned! I wonder which passport he’s using this time.’

  As she went back into the bedroom and picked up the telephone, Paul was walking to a nearby lock-up garage to take out his Jaguar.

  After an hour’s difficult driving to get clear of Greater London, he got the grey Mark X onto the motorway and put his foot down for Dover. The big car slid quietly along in the outer lane with the needle steadily hovering on the ninety mark. The traffic was light on this dull November day and he could let his thoughts wander around his immediate problems.

  He blessed the foresight which had prompted him some six months before to hook up the tape recorder to his telephone. At the time, he had no reason to suspect Rita of any double dealing, but the idea had come to him and his razor-edged sense of self-preservation had made him act on .it. For five and a half of those months, the spools had picked up nothing suspicious. He supposed that unless the affair between Rita and Mr X had been a whirlwind romance, the first stages had gone somewhere outside the flat – especially as the conversations on the tape had started abruptly on a most intimate level.

  He could still hear them now, as if the recorder were inside his head.

  ‘Darling – how are you feeling this morning?’ – meaningful sniggers – ‘Look, you shouldn’t ring me here.’

  ‘Why not? You told me he’s not back for a week.’

  ‘Well, he usually only comes about once a fortnight – but you never know.’

  ‘Oh, to hell with him!’ More nauseating giggles and innuendos about the previous night.

  ‘But we mustn’t get careless, honey … and I’m coming round tomorrow – only until Saturday, we mustn’t risk leaving it till later, he’s due any time after that.’

  There followed several feet of tape that caused Paul no jealousy, but intense annoyance to think that the woman had been using his bed, clothes, and telephone to carry on with another man.

  Then the important business began.

  ‘Look, honey, I rang you for something
special,’ said the unidentifiable voice. ‘If it comes off, it won’t matter a damn about him finding out about us – he’ll have too much else to worry about.’

  ‘What are you on about, for God’s sake?’

  ‘This sugar daddy of yours – Golding. Know who he is?’

  The rough East End voice with a thin veneer of Americanised club drawl held an expectant note of triumph.

  ‘No, why should I?’ answered the girl. ‘He always brushes me off when I get nosy – so now I don’t. I suppose he’s some well-heeled business man from out of town, with a wife and kids – he naturally wants to keep me well out of his private life.’

  ‘So you don’t know.’

  The man’s voice kept the suspense up and Rita became ratty.

  ‘Look, lover, cut the mystery will you? What are you trying to say?’

  ‘Sweetie, have you any idea what his business is?’ The sham cultured overlay in the man’s voice cracked under the strain of his excitement.

  ‘No, I bloody well haven’t – he can sell ladies’ underwear for all I care, as long as he keeps me in nylons and mink.’

  ‘Gorgeous, your boyfriend is a big-time dope peddler!’

  The unknown voice, exasperatingly unknown to Golding, reached an exultant peak.

  Rita was incredulous, but the voice went on to explain that one of his boys had recognised him in the Nineties Club the week before. This boy had once been pushing drugs himself and had dealt with Golding as a supplier. Paul cursed – this was a loophole that could not be sealed. He had to deal with so many people that it was impossible to avoid every risk.

  Reaching Dover, he passed through the Customs and Immigration to reach the ramp leading down to the Ostend ferry.

  This time he was travelling on a forged passport made out in the name of Peter Meadows, an industrial agent from North London. The officials at the barriers had no particular interest in him and soon he was idling over a late lunch and a bottle of wine.

  The grey dunes of the Belgian coast came into sight whilst he was still sitting in the dining room. As he stared out at them over the sea, his thoughts strayed back to the other phone calls from Mr X.