The Taming of Tango Harris

by Graham Ison

  Melody’s make-up failed to disguise that she had gone ashen white. ‘What d’you mean? I haven’t done anything.’ Panic-stricken, her fingers started to intertwine nervously as the sheer enormity of her predicament set in. Until now, she had thought that being a gangster’s moll was all romantic make-believe, like it was on the videos she spent much of her time watching, but slowly the fact that the police were not playing games began to sink in.

  ‘On your own admission, you’ve been living with Tango Harris for the last six months, during which time he’s been up to all sorts of villainy. He has murdered people, tortured them — women as well as men — and set fire to their property when he couldn’t get his own way. You might just be next. And, my girl, there’s no way you’re going to walk away from that. You must have been involved, must have helped, aided and abetted.’

  ‘I didn’t. I didn’t.’ The full implications of living with a villain like Tango Harris suddenly hit Melody. ‘I didn’t know what he was doing. I knew nothing about his business. I was just having a good time.’

  ‘How old are you, Melody?’

  ‘Twenty-three. Why?’

  ‘Be a shame to spend the best years of your life in Holloway, wouldn’t it?’

  The girl burst into tears. ‘I don’t know anything,’ she sobbed. ‘Really I don’t.’

  ‘That’s a pity,’ said Rosie. ‘Because it’s just possible that if you helped us, you could be helping yourself.’

  ‘I’ll tell you anything,’ said Melody, tears still coursing down her cheeks. ‘Anything at all. What d’you want to know?’

  ‘For a start,’ said Rosie, ‘you can tell me if you were out with Tango in the West End on the twelfth of October last. Harris claims that you, he, and four others, namely Terry Quincey and Des Nelson and their two girlfriends Tracey Ogden and Cindy Lewis, went out together that night.’

  Melody stared at Rosie, wide-eyed. ‘I’ve never even heard of them,’ she said. ‘And Tango never took me up the West End. Never.’

  *

  ‘You’re in a bit of tricky situation, Trevor,’ began Gilroy.

  Harris’s butler sat with his legs crossed and his hands folded neatly in his lap. ‘I don’t see why, sir,’ he said.

  ‘Well, Trevor, the fact of the matter is that your Mr Harris is probably the biggest villain at present outside one of Her Majesty’s prisons, and right now I’m considering what part you played in all this.’

  Trevor seemed unconcerned by Gilroy’s statement. ‘I think you must be mistaken, sir,’ he said mildly, ‘if you don’t mind me saying so.’

  Gilroy surveyed the man opposite him and wondered. Trevor was one of the most reserved and self-confident prisoners he had ever interviewed. Brought somewhat unceremoniously from Buckhurst Hill that morning, he had made no protest at all. He had asked Gilroy if he could lock up the house and set the burglar alarm, and then allowed himself to be escorted to the police car, all the time giving the impression that he was showing out an honoured guest, rather than being arrested. ‘How many times did Randy Steel come to the house, Trevor?’ Trevor folded his arms and stared briefly at the ceiling. Then he looked back at Gilroy. ‘Would that be the coloured gentleman, sir?’ he asked.

  ‘That’s the fellow,’ said Gilroy.

  ‘Ah yes, I remember him. Mr Steel came to the house a couple of times, as a matter of fact.’

  ‘Can you remember dates, by any chance?’

  ‘Not from memory, sir, I’m afraid. If I could consult my household diary, then I would be able to tell you.’

  ‘What’s your household diary got to do with it?’

  ‘I always recorded visitors in my diary, sir.’

  ‘Why?’

  Trevor looked slightly guilty. ‘It’s a question of wines and spirits, sir. I’m afraid that Mr Harris was a stickler for keeping check on the stocks and if there was a sudden rise in consumption, he would want to know why.’ The butler paused. ‘I’m sorry to have to say, sir, that Mr Harris was not above suggesting that the staff may have been helping themselves. They never did, of course,’ he added hurriedly. ‘I myself am a teetotaller.’

  ‘Yes, but why the diary?’

  ‘It was so that if Mr Harris raised the question, I could tell him that so-and-so was here that night and that several bottles of Scotch, or whatever, were consumed, sir.’

  ‘Good God!’ said Gilroy, surprised that a villain like Harris, who would help himself to anyone else’s property without a qualm, would as readily accuse his butler of stealing. ‘Did Harris know that you kept this diary?’

  ‘Oh no, sir. A well-trained butler never reveals the secrets of his profession.’

  ‘Quite,’ said Gilroy with a chuckle. ‘And I can imagine that your Mr Harris wouldn’t have been too pleased to know of its existence. However, what I am going to do now, Trevor, is to send you back to Buckhurst Hill with

  one of my officers to collect this diary of yours and bring it back here.’

  ‘I don’t know about that, sir.’ Trevor looked doubtful. ‘It is confidential, you see. What I mean is that Mr Harris would be most upset if he knew about it, particularly if he knew it had been shown to a third party.’

  ‘Most commendable,’ said Gilroy, trying not to laugh. ‘But perhaps I should explain the machinery of the law to you. Either you collect it voluntarily, or I get a warrant from the Bow Street magistrate and go to Buckhurst Hill and seize it … along with anything else I can find.’ Gilroy felt that it was unnecessary to tell Harris’s butler that he was going to do that anyway, but Fox had insisted that the case against Randy Steel be sorted out first.

  ‘Oh, well, sir, if you put it like that … ’ Trevor shrugged. ‘I’m sure Mr Harris will understand my wishing to help the police. I think he would have wanted to do so himself if he had been here.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Gilroy, ‘I’m sure he would.’

  *

  ‘Trevor turned out to be a bit of a gold mine, guv’nor.’

  ‘You could have fooled me, Jack,’ said Fox.

  ‘The diary he kept shows that Randy Steel called at Buckhurst Hill on the evening of the nineteenth of October—’

  ‘That reckons,’ said Fox. ‘That was the night he was supposed to have been in his favourite boozer.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Gilroy. ‘Funny that. But the butler swears that Steel turned up at Buckhurst Hill, saw Harris, and left a while later carrying a rifle which he put in the boot of his car.’

  ‘What the butler saw,’ murmured Fox. ‘Did he describe the weapon?’

  ‘Only to say that it appeared to have a telescopic sight, sir. He did volunteer the information that Steel told him that he’d borrowed it to go rabbit shooting with.’

  ‘Hope he knows more about Chablis than he does shooters,’ said Fox. ‘Shouldn’t think there’s much rabbit shooting in Wanstead,’ he added. ‘At least, not with telescopic night-sights.’

  ‘Perhaps he was after the hare at Catford Stadium, guv,’ said Gilroy, ‘missed it and hit Crombie instead. Incidentally, there was one other thing of interest.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘An entry in Trevor’s diary for the day of Gina West’s murder.’

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘He had it off, sir.’

  ‘Would you care to rephrase that, Jack,’ said Fox and then shook his head slowly. ‘No, that’s too much. You’re surely not trying to tell me the butler did it.’

  ‘Never know your luck, guv,’ said Gilroy with a slight grin.

  ‘True,’ said Fox thoughtfully. ‘Get a photograph of the inimitable Trevor and ask Mr Brace to show it to the hotel staff. And to that solicitor fellow at Richmond … the one who drew up the lease for the flat down there that the mysterious Mr Phillips rented.’

  ‘Right, sir,’ said Gilroy. ‘What about Melody? Any good?’

  ‘Nothing of any value, Jack.’ Fox tossed Melody’s statement across the desk towards Gilroy and yawned. ‘All she does is to list comings and goings, none of which
comes as any surprise to us. Even the days when she says he was away on business — and we know what that means — are no great help because she says she doesn’t know where he went. Obviously he wasn’t a man to bring his work home.’ Fox grinned. ‘Oh, well, there’s only one thing for it. I shall have to go and fetch the bastard myself.’

  *

  Detective Sergeant Jagger knocked on Fox’s door and peered in hesitantly. ‘Excuse me, sir.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘DS Jagger from West End Central, sir.’

  ‘Well don’t hover, dear boy. Come in.’

  ‘Mr Brace asked me to come and see you, sir. Re the Gina West murder.’

  ‘What news?’ Fox looked expectant.

  ‘I did a bit off my own bat, sir, and went back to the chief security officer at the credit-card company. A Mr Sharp, sir.’

  ‘Ron Sharp? Used to be a detective superintendent?’

  ‘That’s him, sir.’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘It was an outside chance, sir, but I got hold of the form that our mysterious Mr Phillips completed when he applied for the credit card.’

  ‘Hold on, skip.’ Fox held up a hand. ‘I am sitting at the top of a very complex enquiry here. Just remind me. And you’d better sit down.’

  ‘Thank you, sir.’ Jagger perched himself on the edge of one of Fox’s chairs. ‘When the body of Gina West was found, sir, we also found a credit-card slip in her briefcase. It went out to a bloke called John Phillips, but enquiries seemed to trace it back to Tango Harris … ’

  ‘Yes?’ Fox’s eyes narrowed.

  ‘But we thought he’d been set up by Billie Crombie.’

  ‘Don’t we still?’

  ‘I don’t think we do, sir. Not anymore. I got Fingerprint Branch to run a test on the application form.’ Jagger laid the brief report on Fox’s desk. ‘They found a mark which gave them about seven points, sir. The only trouble is that seven points aren’t enough.’

  Fox rubbed his hands together. ‘Might not be enough for you, skip,’ he said, ‘but it’s more than enough for me.’

  ‘But there’s more, sir.’ Jagger handed another report over. ‘Jason Morley, the present occupant of the flat that John Phillip’s credit card was sent to, received a letter some days after he moved in. It was addressed to Billie Crombie.’

  ‘Aha!’ said Fox.

  ‘Morley didn’t open it,’ continued Jagger, ‘but we did. It contained several blank sheets of paper on which were found fingerprints which have not only been identified, but which will stand up in court.’ Jagger leaned forward and pointed to a name in the report. ‘Reckon that’s your man, sir,’ he said.

  Fox glanced briefly at the name. Then he looked up. ‘Ever fancied a transfer to the Flying Squad, young man?’ he asked.

  *

  ‘The butler didn’t do it, guv,’ said Gilroy.

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘No, sir. He spent the night dancing at a gay club in Chelsea, apparently.’

  ‘What you might call a cast-iron alibi, Jack.’

  *

  ‘So you want to authorize a trip to New York for you and Jack Gilroy, Tommy, is that it?’ Dick Campbell, the Deputy Assistant Commissioner Specialist Operations, sat back in his chair with an amused expression on his face.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said Fox.

  ‘But what d’you hope to achieve? We can start extradition proceedings from here and the Americans will do the rest for us.’

  ‘Look, guv’nor,’ said Fox, trying to hide his impatience, ‘I want to put Harris down for every bloody crime I can conjure out of the evidence we’ve got. But if some smart-arse American attorney starts interfering, he’ll spend years whittling it down and down and down, so that we’ll have nothing left. And you know as well as I do that we can only proceed on the counts for which he’s been extradited. If we’re not careful, Tango Harris will walk out of the Old Bailey with a pound out of the poor box.’

  ‘Yes, I know all that, Tommy,’ said Campbell, ‘but what d’you propose to do when you get there?’

  ‘Have a fatherly chat with him and see if I can’t persuade him to come home with me. I’ll tell him we’re all worried about him.’

  ‘Well, if anyone can do it, you can, Tommy. But don’t spend too much of the Commissioner’s money, will you. We have things called budgets these days.’ Campbell paused. ‘What the hell made him go to New York, of all places? It would have been easier for him to go down to Dover and across on the ferry.’

  ‘He probably can’t speak anything but what passes for English over there,’ said Fox, a sour expression on his face. ‘But apart from that, guv’nor, it seems he might have a friend in New York.’

  Campbell shrugged. ‘Just one thing, Tommy.’

  ‘What, sir?’

  ‘Don’t cause a diplomatic incident, eh?’

  ‘Would I do such a thing, guv?’

  ‘And I suppose you’ll be going to Disneyland while you’re there.’

  Fox paused with his hand on the doorknob. ‘Be pretty flat after this place, sir,’ he said, and waved a hand as if to encompass the whole of New Scotland Yard.

  Chapter Twenty

  But Fox didn’t go to New York. Just as he was examining the airline tickets which the Squad office had obtained for his flight to the States, he received a telephone call from Joe Daly at the American Embassy.

  ‘Tommy, the guy you want is a Lieutenant Joe Kobreski. He’s in charge of detectives at the precinct that covers Madison Avenue. Sol Whiteman, the agent in charge of the New York office, was talking with him. He’s going to see what he can find out and call back. Seems that Harris has already attracted the attention of the NYPD.’

  ‘Doesn’t surprise me.’ Fox was beginning to see his few days in the States slip away. ‘What’s he been up to?’

  ‘According to Whiteman’s information, Harris has been trying to get involved with the local mob.’

  ‘The Mafia?’

  Daly scoffed. ‘They’d like to think they are, but they aren’t. Seems he’s been making overtures to some of the local gangs. Trying to get a piece of the action.’

  ‘What sort of action, Joe?’

  ‘Prostitution, numbers, drugs. The usual.’

  ‘He’s certainly well qualified,’ said Fox. ‘So what are the NYPD doing about it?’

  ‘Apart from playing it close to the chest, you mean?’ Daly’s deep-throated chuckle rattled down the phone. ‘Well?’

  ‘They’re about to hit the whole set-up. With any luck your Mr Harris will get collared with the rest. If all goes well, he’ll finish up in the pen for a long time.’

  ‘What?’ Fox was outraged.

  ‘Doesn’t that suit you, Tommy?’ Daly chuckled again. ‘I thought that’s what you wanted.’

  ‘He’s mine,’ said Fox, ‘and I want him locked up in Parkhurst, not in some sterile American prison where he can make phone calls and give interviews to the Press.’

  ‘Sorry, Tommy, but it’s out of my hands. Unless … ’

  ‘Unless what?’ Fox sounded desperate and hopeful at the same time.

  ‘From what Sol Whiteman tells me Kobreski is a pretty resourceful cop. He might just be persuaded to talk Harris into coming home. He’s only small fry, after all.’

  ‘He might be small fry to you, Joe,’ said Fox, ‘but he’s a bloody great shark to me. By the time you lot let him out, I’ll have retired. And that’s too long for me to wait.’

  *

  The NYPD station house responsible for the area where Tango Harris had taken refuge was close to the ugly flat slab of the United Nations headquarters which jutted out of the skyline of the East River like a tooth that’s been filed down. In the same area of Manhattan was the Ford Foundation building, the Chrysler building, Grand Central station, and the Pan-Am building. If it wasn’t for the Rockefeller Center, visitors could well be excused for thinking that New York was a city dedicated to transport … until they tried to get a yellow cab in the pouring rain.

 
Inside this station house, harassed detectives, who seemed to have time only for their own problems, sat sweating in shirt-sleeves, hammering away at typewriters, documenting reluctant prisoners and fingerprinting them. The officers’ guns were carefully locked away to guard against some crazed prisoner seizing one and blowing away the precinct’s entire detective force. There had been too many incidents of that sort in the history of the New York Police, and it made American police officers ultrasensitive and extremely careful.

  Lieutenant Joe Kobreski was short and swarthy with very black slicked-down hair and shoulders that could only have been developed by intensive weight training.

  His coat hung on a hook behind the door, his tie was loosened off, and his shirt was sweat-stained. On his desk was a half-eaten sandwich on a paper bag. Next to it was a file of paper that had been faxed from Scotland Yard, and which he was now riffling through.

  The previous day, he had received a telephone call from Fox, who had decided to short-circuit both the American Embassy in London and the FBI in New York. Fox knew about the rivalry between the Bureau and the NYPD and Fox was an impatient man. He and Kobreski had discussed, as only policemen can, the hurdles confronting any law-enforcement officer wishing to extradite a prisoner from one country to another, and touched briefly on the shortcomings of the FBI and the legal systems of their respective countries. At the end of the conversation they had reached a useful understanding. The phone call had been followed by faxed details of Harris’s criminal record. It made interesting reading even to a New York cop.

  ‘A detective called Fox of Scotland Yard is interested in this guy Thomas Walter Harris who’s gotten in with Charles Pearson.’ Kobreski pushed the file across the desk towards Detective First Grade Luce. ‘Sol Whiteman from the Bureau was asking questions about him a few days back. And Scotland Yard want to talk with Harris about a few homicides and one hell of a lot of racketeering.’

  ‘What’s this?’ Luce picked up the file.

  ‘Guess that’s their version of a yellow-sheet.’

  Luce skimmed through the docket. ‘Not bad for a Limey,’ he said. ‘Robbery, extortion, drugs, prostitution.’