Cash My Chips, Croupier Read online

  ‘What did the man who brought it look like?’

  The Yard men heard a description that could have fitted a hundred men seen in any hour.

  ‘What did he bring it in, a truck?’

  ‘No, a car. We had a job getting it out — ’

  ‘What sort of car?’ Drury sounded excited and Bill Hazard caught up with him a moment later and began to suck air noisily.

  ‘A grey Ford.’

  ‘You didn’t notice the number?’

  That was a question that brought fresh suspicion to Craig’s watery eyes. They dried out fast, but remained bright.

  ‘Of course I didn’t. Any reason why I should have done?’

  Drury passed that up. ‘Anything special you noticed about the car?’

  Craig’s lids almost closed over the brightness behind his lashes. He said, ‘As a matter of fact, there were two things I noticed. It had a plastic coat hanger on the window behind the driver’s seat and it had received a bang.’

  He went on to identify Micky Perran’s missing car, and then added, ‘It couldn’t have been the driver who slipped that marker chip in my pocket. No, it must have been the woman who asked me for a light when I got to the Sackville Gym. I took out my lighter and she snatched it from me, dropped it, lit her cigarette, and then pushed it in my pocket. It must have been she who palmed that chip.’

  ‘Which you were to cash with your life, Gene,’ Drury pointed out like a teacher bringing an overlooked detail to the attention of a backward child. ‘Describe her.’

  This time he described the woman who had accompanied Micky Perran home to be joined by the Irishman Pat. The woman who had received a call from Harvey Harris just before the journalist became unconscious.

  ‘It’s suddenly beginning to fit,’ Drury said, but the excitement was missing from his voice by this time.

  ‘I wish I could see how,’ grunted Bill Hazard.

  Gene Craig was occupied with his own divergent thoughts.

  ‘Bandelli,’ he said. ‘It all comes back to Bandelli. He’s like a bloody spider weaving a web. Once you’re in it, there’s no out — except maybe this.’

  He picked up the twenty-pound marker chip Drury had put down, tossed it up, and caught it, then let it slide from between his fingers as though its mere touch was painful.

  Chapter 10

  ‘Sea Elf,’ she said on a deprecatory note. ‘I’m not sure I like that name, or even trust it.’ Her mouth pursed. ‘It sounds vaguely ominous.’

  Micky Perran squeezed her arm.

  He had been surprised at the comfortable warmth generated between them on the run down the Brighton road. Sheila Devlin had driven in much the same way as she conversed — positively, with no sign of hesitancy and no intention of being intimidated. He liked that. More over, he had found himself liking the perfume she favoured. It didn’t revive thorn-edged memories of another woman he had taken too long to forget. They had parked her car after crossing the bridge at Shoreham and walked, arms touching, to the harbour. The unhappy man Perran had left with the two Yard detectives in Drury’s office had made finding the cabin cruiser very easy.

  ‘You must forget the effect of the Little People on your inbuilt superstitions, macushla,’ Perran told her mockingly. ‘A sea elf must be a sturdy chap, not like one of your landlubbery leprechauns, or he’d never choose Neptune’s ocean to play pranks with. Nothing even vaguely ominous about him.’

  She looked at him, smiled, her eyes like jewels in the night, as she chided gently, ‘Stop sounding like a shoe salesman who’s wandered barefoot into a Walter Mitty dream.’

  ‘I’m willing — if you wake me up.’

  In the soft light of a quarter moon and a few million stars they traded bright stares for several breathless moments before she said, ‘At least I can do that for you,’ and kissed him lightly. She was away before he could tighten an arm around her.

  ‘All right,’ he said. ‘Consider me awake and we’re doing our best for Phil Strapp and the Banner’s circulation.’

  ‘Don’t knock them,’ she warned. ‘They provide me with a pay packet. Which reminds me. I ought to phone Strapp. I’ve even got his home number.’

  ‘Be careful, his wife isn’t an understanding woman,’ Perran grinned.

  She remembered what the Banner features editor had told her about the man walking at her side and his marriage that had foundered, and was careful to make no responsive quip. Instead, she said, ‘Maybe you don’t want me to phone him.’

  His reaction surprised her. ‘That’s right, Sheila. Just hold off long enough for me to clear things with Drury.’

  ‘The Yard superintendent?’

  ‘That’s the character. He’s got a curiously possessive outlook about information he feels he’s entitled to. What’s more, he’s a bad man to cross, especially when one can consider oneself in debt to him.’

  ‘And you are?’

  ‘Up to the lobes of my ears, which is more than comfortably high.’

  ‘Meaning you can’t open your mouth too wide for too long.’

  ‘That’s what I like about you, Sheila. You don’t need a dictionary to be able to spell it out for yourself. How up are you on Psychopatia Sexualis, by the way?’

  She pricked his mock-nonchalance ruinously when she said, as though giving her words the weight of full consideration, ‘I’ve never really felt Krafft-Ebing makes a good bedside book, even to prop up a wobbly bedside table.’

  He laughed. ‘All right, bull’s-eye, little lady. Step up and choose your prize.’

  They were only a few feet from the moored Sea Elf, nose to the quay, with a narrow catwalk extending down the port side, and she hesitated.

  ‘I can’t help it,’ she said. ‘I’ve got icy bumps on my spine and they’re not getting any smaller.’

  ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘I’ll board her first and toss any Little People I find over the starboard side. But first, promise you won’t dive in after them. I’d hate to be both clever and brave all for nothing.’

  ‘I promise,’ she smiled, the words light as feathers on the night air.

  They were making a game of it, only acknowledging at the same time that it was all something much more serious than any stylised amusement could be. He pushed close against her as he squeezed past her on the catwalk, brushing her lips lightly, aware that she did not try to avoid contact, and feeling elated at the discovery. He drew level with the cruiser’s gunwale amidships and climbed on board.

  He moved silently to the cockpit, lowered himself, and felt the plastic seat cover of the steersman’s chair. It was slightly warm!

  For one crazy instant Micky Perran was tortured by doubt. What was this damned caper he was now involved in — and had dragged Sheila Devlin into? It was a double question as close-knit as two strands of a rope, and one he had no hope of answering.

  Unless he stepped inside the cabin.

  He stepped to the door, opened it, and brightness poured over his head and shoulders. He stared at the bearded man seated at a table playing draughts with another man. Only, instead of using coloured counters they were playing with casino gambling chips, and the blue ones used by Harvey Harris were twenty-pound marker chips.

  The red ones used by the bearded man were not marker chips. Each was for a hundred pounds, and each would have been cashed for its face value in any of the Marmaduke string of gaming clubs. Moreover, to show what he thought of the Australian’s skill, the bearded man had almost swept the board of the illegal marker chips.

  ‘Come in, Mr. Perran,’ said the bearded man without looking up at his visitor as he advanced a red chip and removed another blue marker chip from the board. ‘You don’t know me, but I know you.’

  He sat back, turned his head and smiled. That was when Perran recognised a man he had seen playing not only at the Red Ace, but at several of the other gaming clubs in Bandelli’s Marmaduke string. Moreover, the bearded man had been at the Marmaduke Red Ace, playing with a stack of similar red chips, when Perran h
esitated on his way out to have that last daiquiri.

  He turned to call through the open door to Sheila, to tell her to leave this to him, but his movement was apparently awaited. Harvey Harris produced a gun and levelled it, while the bearded man said quietly, ‘Don’t be foolish. Tell her to join you. After all, she must either be a great fool or a very clever woman to come down here with you. I’d like to meet her. You see, we watched you make your way here after leaving the car. We thought you were another couple. But since you are here, I’m prepared to make use of you, Perran. Do you understand?’

  ‘I’m damned if I do,’ Perran muttered. ‘But if you didn’t have that beard I’d place you — I think.’

  ‘All right, tell me,’ the bearded man invited.

  ‘Sir Kenneth Halder, the owner of Blaise Manor.’

  ‘Now you know why I have to use you, Perran. It’s either use you or kill you, and of course that goes for the young woman out there, whoever she is. Which shall it be?’

  Micky Perran groped to a chair, almost fell into it.

  ‘Go and collect her, Harvey,’ said the bearded man as though speaking to a well-trained dog.

  Halder insisted on welcoming Sheila as though she had dropped in for a friendly glass instead of being herded into the Sea Elf’s cabin by a tight-faced villain with a gun in his fist. He introduced himself, evinced amusement when informed she was on the Banner’s staff, and remarked chidingly to the unhappy Perran, ‘A curious way of winning your lost place again with that paper, Perran. But it displays initiative.’

  ‘Not on my part,’ said Perran.

  That made Halder regard her afresh, this time with a bright eye.

  ‘I’m intrigued. After reaching saturation point with such females as Sandra Beltby and the unfortunate Joanne, I’m enchanted. I truly am.’

  The Australian grunted, and received an amused frown from the man he had interrupted.

  ‘You must pardon Harvey. He is a bluff colonial, crude, even rude, but thoroughly dependable in a double-cross that is to his advantage.’

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake, Ken. Skip the clowning.’ The Australian hitched his wide shoulders and indicated the unusual draughts on the chequerboard. ‘Always striking a bloody attitude — like this damned game.’

  ‘A better way of consuming time than biting one’s nails, Harvey,’ the Australian was told. ‘And much more hygienic — I hope.’

  He produced from a locker glasses and a bottle of Bisquit V.S.O.P., and poured generous tipples.

  ‘My apologies for not having daiquiri, Perran. But I consider this in every way a more civilised drink for the late hour, if you will bear with me. Your health, if the subject isn’t too delicate in the circum stances,’ he smiled, and drank.

  Harris swallowed the brandy as though it were the remains of a glass of beer. Sheila sipped hers. Perran made no attempt to touch his. He sat glowering, dividing his attention between the uneasy Australian with the built-in glower on his face and the meaty limbs and the elegantly garbed Halder in his white cashmere turtleneck and slim-waisted double-breasted two-piece suit that could have been inspired by Carnaby Street. He had an Old English Clove carnation in his buttonhole, which he occasionally brought up to his nose in an absent-minded manner that struck Perran as utterly decadent, but which made the journalist envious for no good reason he could offer himself.

  The two men were a contrast in opposites, and Perran could see that, despite the incongruity of setting and atmosphere, Sheila was not only intrigued, but fascinated. But then, he consoled himself, villainy of any kind was a novelty to her at first hand.

  ‘I said you might help me, Perran,’ the bearded man went on after returning to his seat. ‘To do that you must understand a few things.’

  ‘Oh, I do,’ retorted Perran waspishly. ‘Like the robbery at Blaise Manor being a put-up job, and your fight for the insurance, which went for nearly three years, all over gold and silver plate and art treasures as well as antique jewellery priced at around a quarter of a million, which was supposed to pass to the nation at your death.’

  Halder flashed his excellent teeth and chose a slim panatella from a case and lit it.

  ‘Smoke if you want to,’ he waved.

  ‘No,’ said the Australian throatily. ‘Keep your damned hands where I can see them. Both of you.’

  ‘Sorry,’ smiled the seemingly happy Halder, ‘but the man is right. We must maintain the conventions required of the circumstances.’

  Sheila started to laugh, but bit off the sound under the menace of Harris’s glare. The bearded man contrived not to take notice of such byplay. He addressed his next words to the dispirited Perran.

  ‘The trouble with jumping to conclusions, Perran, is that one too often falls short, as you have done. Listen. First, there is no one to arrest for Cuzak’s murder, because the woman who ran from her flat and stabbed him after you had helpfully knocked him down is dead — not from violence. She had an omnivorous appetite for men, but a weak heart. The excitement of killing Cuzak after turning from Harvey here to a dark-skinned Italian type who was more interested in Sandra Beltby was too much for her. And for Sandra. She improvised wildly, and decided you would provide the ideal cover. I’m sure she was wrong.’

  ‘You did nothing to correct her mistakes?’

  ‘Me? I wasn’t after the cash in Cuzak’s bag. Sandra and her friend Bronley were. Very much. Me, I wanted what was stolen from Blaise. Harvey here, of course, was waiting to see which way the cat called Opportunity jumped. Mario Bandelli knew nothing of the double-crossing going on. For him the Blaise loot was safely hidden in a dried well on the Bowdens’ farm, not to be removed until the heat was off. Of course, he had made up his mind I was the prize sucker of the age. I had lost money in his clubs, rather large sums, for I am, I regret to say, a compulsive gambler. But not the first among the Halders. There was one in the seventeenth century who — ’

  He caught himself up, tapped ash from his slim cigar, and politely begged their pardon for digressing.

  Then he continued, ‘I’m afraid there must be a roguish streak in me, using the word in a severely literal sense, rather than an accepted sentimental distortion.’ He showed his teeth in another measured and mannered smile. ‘I went along with Bandelli and Cuzak, ostensibly to pay back my gambling debts. But it was Harvey who realised I would collect the insurance and began putting the bite, as it is picturesquely termed, on me. So we worked out something between us. It meant employing the ever-willing Sandra and the obnoxious Pat as everyone called the new arrival from some Cardiff gang of morons. Apparently he had been forced to leave his native Dublin when both the Irish underworld and the Garda joined forces in deciding his absence was to be preferred to his company.’

  More ash went into the ash-tray Halder was using.

  ‘Meantime I was a man without a home,’ the bearded man continued his recital. ‘Blaise had been taken over on lease by friends of Bandelli from the States. They were running it as a secret casino for big-shot Mafia gamblers from all over Europe. And why did Bandelli get involved? Because he had lost Mafia money when cargoes of raw heroin had been seized in the Cardiff docks. Just bad business. But the Mafia never cuts its losses. So the squeeze was on Bandelli, who squeezed me, and Blaise went to a white-haired American retired business man with a pink smile who was a front for the crowd who moved in after Vito Genovese died in jail. But they also took over Cuzak to make sure the profits from the Marmaduke string went to them until they had not only the money lost for the purchase of the heroin that was seized by the Customs, but also the seven or eight hundred per cent they expected on the first handling. You know, these Mafia lads could have taught the old-time robber barons quite a few tricks.’

  ‘How about cutting the history and getting to the jam Sandra and Bronley elected to put me in?’ said Perran harshly.

  Halder looked pained. Oh, dear,’ he said, ‘and I thought I was being interesting.’

  ‘Save it for the cops,’ he was advised.
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br />   The Australian stirred, but his gun remained still in his right hand. He had some advice of his own to offer.

  ‘Watch it, mate.’

  Perran’s mouth tightened. He risked a glance at Sheila. She looked bewildered and out of her depth, but intrigued both by what she was hearing and how she was putting it together with the little she knew.

  She felt his glance, turned her head quickly, and gave him a swift smile. Perran choked, and made a poor effort of grinning back, as he hoped, encouragingly. He was cursing himself for getting her in a triple distilled mess.

  ‘Very well,’ said Halder with an air of resignation. ‘This is what happened only hours ago, Perran, and you’re only involved because your timing was way off. If you’d gone when you’d lost your few chips and had your drink you’d have been out of it. As it is you’re where you are because you gave Sandra an idea she thought was bright, but which was rather dim.’

  ‘Is that why she ran out to phone, with Cuzak after her?’

  ‘She wanted to phone Harvey, to tell him I had rendered Ray Ebor unconscious and locked him in his office and had the black bag of money and had gone up to Joanne’s flat over the club. She had been installed by Harvey to keep her out of harm’s way and to keep her husband toeing the line.’

  ‘You mean her brother, surely.’

  ‘No, her husband. Gene Craig pretended she was his sister, but he wasn’t fooling anyone. We knew the score, especially Harvey, who had a photo of her and became nominally engaged to her, all to get Gene to handle this craft he had hired. With my money, incidentally. Some I had received from the insurance people. Amusing, isn’t it, how things work out?’

  ‘Hysterical,’ Perran muttered glumly.

  ‘It is, really,’ smiled Halder, ‘when you know there was really only one reason why Harvey here first listened to me, and it had nothing to do with money. I can handle a helicopter.’

  A lot that had been at best misty was suddenly clarified for Perran’s objective gaze.

  ‘And the real joke is I shan’t have to fly a chopper now, but Harvey has to go along with me because he is committed. I want you to get that quite straight, Perran, so that if you ever try writing again for the Banner, and make use of what I’m telling you, you won’t be foolish a second time and risk libel. Just an unsupported word isn’t enough, and that’s all you’re going to get, because you’re entitled to something after Sandra’s attempt to fix you for murder.’