by John Creasey
CASHIER BADLY WOUNDED
There hadn’t been much more news that day, so this was still the main story. There were photographs: a bad one of the dead man, a good one of the family of the injured man. She looked at the face of Mrs Bennison and the smiling children and thought mechanically: What a shame. One of the boys was a bit like Richard. There was a photograph of Bennison, too, and he reminded her of a film star, who was it? Gregory Peck, that was the one – he wasn’t really like Greg, but there was a likeness especially about the forehead and eyes. What a shame.
“Learning to squint?” Steve asked, his voice very close to her.
She started, looked up, laughed, and said: “Steve! I didn’t see you coming in.”
“You weren’t looking. What’s so exciting?”
“Only another of those wage snatches,” said Joyce. “What are you going to have?”
“On the house?”
“Not likely.”
“Whisky-and-soda,” said Steve. “A double.”
“Getting your strength up?”
“What would I need strength for?” demanded Steve. He smiled at her, and she laughed, just a little uneasy and a little excited, then turned round for the whisky. In the decorated mirror behind the bar she could see him, and when she turned round, with the whisky in the small glass, she saw that his gaze rested on her bosom – he had stared like that more lately than in the past. She put the whisky down, and put a larger glass with some ice cubes in front of him; he liked his whisky on the rocks, American style, although he had never said that he had been to the United States.
“Have one with me,” he invited.
“No, Steve, ta.”
“Don’t you ever relax?”
“If I started drinking behind the bar I’d get fat.”
“Fat and a squint,” he jeered. He raised his glass. “Prosit.” He often uttered a toast in a foreign language, but prosit and skol were his favourites. He looked into her eyes as he drank, and she had the impression that he was more eager than usual for the drink. “Hungry?” he asked.
“I might be, in an hour’s time.”
“That’s a date.”
“All right, Steve, but—” she broke off.
“But what?”
“You don’t have to buy my supper every time you come in.”
“I wouldn’t buy anyone anything I had to,” he said. “There’s something I want to know, though.”
“What’s that?”
“Are you a good cook?”
The two street doors opened at the same time, and there was an influx of visitors. Joyce did not recognise all of them, for they were sailors off a ship which must have come in during the afternoon; Dutchmen, she could tell that from their cigars and something about their heavy jowls. From the other side of the bar came a youth she didn’t like – although occasionally he was with Steve. He was Alec Gool. She had known him ever since his childhood – in fact he had gone to school with Richard, and at one time Richard had started running the streets with him. Then Richard had fallen off a bicycle and broken his leg, and by the time he was about again, the gang of young hooligans had run off. There was something funny about Alec Gool, and always had been; he was cat-like. There were rumours that he was a queer, too – that he never went with girls.
He stood just inside the room, looking about him, clean-cut features, rather on the short side for a man, his fair hair beautifully waved, as if he had come from a hairdresser, although she knew his hair was like that, as natural as it could be, since he had been a child. He saw Steve, but didn’t move towards him. He went to the other end of the bar, where Jack Harris was in charge.
Then the Dutchmen gave their orders in deep, harsh English, and she was busy – too busy even to think much about Steve’s cryptic question: was she a good cook? She knew what he meant, of course; he wanted her to cook a meal for him. She knew Steve, or she thought she did, better than she knew most men. He had a habit of saying a lot in a short, terse sentence. Are you a good cook? As she poured out rum, whisky and schnapps for the lively Dutchmen, Steve stood a little to one side, watching her. His lips were curved as he smiled – he seldom smiled enough to show his teeth. His eyes were half laughing, too, and their expression was different from any she had seen in them before.
He meant: “I want to come home with you.” He probably meant: “I want to come home and sleep with you.” Or was that her imagination? Was she putting words into his mouth? She wished she really did understand him.
The rush was over as suddenly as it began.
“Well, are you?” Steve asked.
“I have been a good cook, in my time,” she said. “I don’t get much practice these days.”
“That’s what I want to put right,” he said. “You shouldn’t leave anything alone too long. You forget how good it is.”
That had a double meaning, surely she couldn’t be mistaken? She forced herself to laugh, and then another influx of sailors and stevedores arrived, and for ten minutes she was pulling the beer handles and opening bottles with the unflurried speed which made her so good at her job. Steve moved away from the bar. When she saw him next, he was sitting by the window, opposite Alec Gool. They were talking, and Gool seemed to be very earnest. Now and again, Steve shook his head. Suddenly, he finished his drink and stood up. Gool did the same. Without a glance round, without the slightest hint of a glance, they went out.
When the door closed, it was as if he had shut her out of his life.
Joyce was surprised, then hurt, then annoyed. She should have been used to that kind of departure by now. He would do whatever he wanted, and would not be deterred by her or anyone else. She hadn’t exactly encouraged him to stop, either. No one less like Tom could be imagined, and yet—
Why had he gone out with Gool? Was Gool a queer?
And what about Steve? There was a lot of talk about sailors, especially sailors who were at sea for a long time without the release of a visit to port. She didn’t really know what to think, and before she closed the door behind her, just after a quarter to eleven, when she was finished at the pub, she told herself that she was wasting her time by giving him a second thought.
But she wished she knew what he and Alec Gool were up to.
Chapter Seven
Threat
“… so I think we ought to do another snatch, quick. Then we can lie low for a few weeks,” Marriott said.
Now, all four of them were together. They were in a corner of a bowling rink, which was used by seamen, dock labourers, stevedores, and casual workers. No liquor was being served, because it was after hours, but there was coffee in front of Marriott and Dorris, and a lemonade in front of Alec Gool. Steve was smoking, not drinking.
“It stands to reason,” Dorris said.
Neither Gool nor Steve spoke.
“I know the very place—” Marriott began. “They draw the dough on Saturdays, they think that will fool us, but—”
“You knew the very place this morning,” Steve said, coldly.
“Well, there was some dough, wasn’t there?”
“Remember you promised us five thousand?”
“I couldn’t help it if a lying son of a bitch told me it was five thou’, could I?” protested Marriott. He was uneasy about Stevens.
“Where is this chap now?” Stevens asked.
“Which chap?”
“Your so-called informant? Can he do us any harm?”
“He’s okay, he wouldn’t ever—”
“Let’s have it,” Stevens said in a hard voice. “Who is he? When he hears about what happened today will he put a finger on you?”
“No!”
“What makes you so sure?”
“I tell you he won’t! We can trust him, even if he puts two and two together.”
“If you
don’t tell me who he is you’ll have to put yourself together, I’ll tear you into little pieces.” Stevens’s voice was low-pitched and hard. “Come on—who was he?”
“You’ve got no right—”
Stevens put his hand to his waist and pulled at the handle of his knife until half-an-inch of the blade showed; glistening. Marriott stared at it, then into Stevens’s eyes.
“Let’s have it,” Stevens said. “Who was he?”
Marriott muttered: “I—I heard a couple of bank guards talking. They – they said he came every Friday and collected five, I—I thought they meant thousands. They didn’t know I was listening.”
Into a tense silence, Stevens said: “So that’s what we took these risks for. You ought to have your tongue cut out.” The glint in his eyes matched that of the knife, blade, and the tension seemed to reach breaking point.
Dorris broke it, nervously.
“Anyone can make a mistake, Steve.”
“That’s right,” Stevens said. “But only a fool makes the same one twice. We were seen by too many people this morning. We stay away from banks and post offices until the trouble’s blown over. And if you think you know better than me, go and jump in the river. We’re not doing another snatch until this one’s been forgotten.”
“Who the hell do you think you’re talking to?” Marriott began to bluster, and a girl at the next table looked round. “If it hadn’t been for you—”
Stevens’s right hand moved. Something sharp jabbed into Marriott’s leg, and he winced, and pushed his chair back. Steve was staring at him fixedly – and Steve’s right hand was out of sight, under the table. Marriott could feel the blood beginning to ooze out of a little stab wound, and he knew exactly what had happened. He thought, fearfully, that Steve was too ready with his knife, that it was dangerous to work with him.
“Don’t make any mistakes,” Stevens said. “We’re going to have a rest.”
Dorris was looking at Marriott, for a lead.
“If either of you start anything you’ll have me to answer to, as well as the police,” Stevens went on. His voice only just carried to the two men, and to Alec. “That clear?”
Marriott licked his lips.
“Maybe that’s the way I want it, too, but—”
“Let’s go, Alec,” Steve said. He stood up, then leaned on the table and kept his voice very low, but both Marriott and Dorris could hear. “We don’t want to be seen together for a few weeks, the cops know that four men were in this morning’s job, and they’ll know what kind of an assortment it was. You keep to yourself and keep out of trouble. Otherwise—”
He didn’t finish.
When the door had closed on him and Alec, Marriott glared into Dorris’s eyes, and asked harshly: “Who does he think he is?”
“Win—”
“I’ll teach him, before he’s much older,” Marriott went on savagely. He was angry and pale-faced, but had the sense to keep his voice low. “One of these days—”
“Want me to do him?” asked Dorris. He clenched his hands on top of the table.
“Not yet,” said Marriott. “The time will come. Who the hell does he think he is?”
Steve Stevens and Alec walked along the narrow road, from the club, Stevens’s strides long and easy, Alec making an effort to keep pace. They passed beneath a gas lamp, and Alec glanced up and saw the way the other’s lips were set, saw how his jaw was thrust forward. Steve was staring straight ahead. Two policemen passed the end of the street, but did not even glance down it, as far as the men could judge.
“Steve.”
“What?”
“Those two can be dangerous.”
“I know who can be dangerous.”
“Know what I think?”
Steve glanced down. “Yes, I know what you think. But it doesn’t make you right.”
“What do I think?”
Steve did not answer at once. They reached the corner, and he looked across at another, where the Hornpipe was in darkness but for a light at a top floor window, in Harris and his wife’s bedroom. Shadows moved against the curtains. The only sound was an aeroplane, droning up high, and distant noises at the docks. To the south, the sky was lighted up by the great lights which played on the ships which were being worked by night, ready for the morning tide. The two men turned left.
“I asked you a question,” Alec said.
Steve still didn’t respond. He knew that if anyone else had talked to him like that he would have slapped their mouths so hard that they would not have been able to talk with comfort for a week. He could take things from Alec which he wouldn’t take from anyone else. There were just two people for whom he had any feeling and with whom he had any patience; one was this youth of eighteen, the other was Joyce Conway. Joyce lived in one of the nearby tiny terraced houses, drab grey grimy places which had survived London’s blitzes and the work of the slum clearance Acts. She had the ground floor, sleeping in the front room and living in the back. Upstairs was let to a middle-aged couple and one unmarried daughter.
“Something on your mind?” Alec asked.
“You think that we ought to put those two away,” said Steve, “and you could be right—later. But not yet. Too many people have seen all of us together. They’re too scared to do anything much yet, but—watch them, Alec. Make sure they don’t try to do another job. If they do a job and get caught they might start talking.”
“You’ve got round to it,” Alec said, half sneering.
“What’s that?”
“You’ve got round to seeing why they ought to be—”
“Alec,” Steve interrupted, “don’t make me lose my temper. Just watch them. They’re too scared to take any chances just now, and they still have a hundred quid or more each, to last them for a week or two. We can decide what to do with them later, but we don’t do anything yet. Got that?”
“You’re the boss.”
“Remember it.”
“Bosses can be wrong,” Alec observed.
They reached a long, narrow street of tiny terraced houses, where they both lived. Alec turned to the doorway of his house, which was in darkness, but a street lamp was just opposite it, and the light reflected on the window. He paused only for a fraction of a second:
“G’night.”
“’Night,” Steve said.
He did not miss a step, but walked with his long, raking impatient stride towards the far end of the street, where he lodged. He had a front room, and was looked after well. He kept the room on even when he was at sea. These days he spent less time at sea. He was tired of wandering, tired of having no settled home, tired of taking his women where he found them. He knew all this. He had a clear mind and a sound intelligence, and also knew that he had one all-consuming weakness: that of giving way to impulse. It had got him into most of the troubles of his active life.
Before today, he had killed twice. Once it had been in a brawl over a woman in a South American port during a voyage on a stinking cargo ship. He could picture her dark-haired snaky beauty now, the way her body had writhed and twisted in a kind of seductive frenzy; and he could remember her tall, elderly husband – his first victim.
The second brawl had been in an Australian port, when a drunken sot had accused him of fixing his cards, at poker.
Stevens did not fix cards.
He knew much of the world. He knew the torment of weeks at sea, in hot, breathless days with a steamer chugging on its seemingly endless voyage. He knew the icy blast of arctic winters, when the sea seemed made of ice. He could remember most things that had happened to him since his childhood, but he could never recall much about that. A drunken kindly father, often at sea. A pretty, fluffy mother who had a lot of men friends—
His impulses were not always simply flares of temper. It had been on impulse, for insta
nce, that he had worked with the others today. He was short of money. Alec had told him what was being planned, and sold him the idea that the job would be worth five thousand pounds. When he had met Marriott and Dorris he had not liked them, but they had seemed tough enough – and they had proved tough enough.
So had he.
Now he realised that he should never have done it. He should never have left the planning to Marriott. That had been due to his other besetting weakness – laziness. If a thing could be done for him, he preferred that to doing it for himself. It had been too much trouble to plan his own job, and now he was at the mercy of Marriott and Dorris. He could not be sure that he judged them aright, but on balance he believed that they would do what he had told them. He was a little uneasy about Dorris, not sure that the ex-boxer had been as cowed as Marriott.
None of this would have been so bad if he had come away with a fair amount of money, but a hundred and thirty-three pounds!
It was laughable.
He hesitated outside the front door of the house where he lodged, but knew that he was not going straight in. It was a quarter past eleven, early yet, too early to he in bed and read, or listen to the radio, or put on some records. He would not be able to relax. He had never felt right, after killing. It seemed to release some pent-up store of energy in him; he had to have an outlet for it before he could rest. Now, he was as wide awake as he had ever been.
He walked on, to Joyce’s place.
His mood kindled at the thought of Joyce. He wondered if she knew the effect she had on him – an effect which had been instantaneous. He could remember opening the door of the Hornpipe, stepping in, looking across the fog of blue-grey smoke, and seeing her. He doubted if she knew what she looked like. In the East End, among all the riff-raff, a real jewel could easily be overlooked because there were so many glittering imitations. All his life he had liked mature women, and this one had a curious look of maturity and also of purity. Virginity, rather. She had the look of a young girl. He had never put it into words, but in fact he sensed that she had a quality of goodness. The word itself would have made him laugh derisively, for goodness, to him, meant weakness and prosiness and smoothness. But virginity – that was something he could understand. Joyce had a complexion you didn’t often see outside of Italy, Spain or the South of France. Now and again you would see a young London Jewess with it, but few women in their middle-thirties retained it. And she had hazel-brown eyes, very clear, not even slightly bloodshot, made up with only a very slight touch of eyeshade. She had the sense to know that her complexion gave her eyes all the brightness they needed. She laughed so easily; happily. That was another thing he realised about her, she was a happy person.