Cash My Chips, Croupier Page 17

  ‘So that’s why you were making for a Welsh lake,’ said Drury. ‘I suspected it. But why did you have to do it?’

  Bowden looked at the remains of the woman he had killed with no flicker of emotion on his dull face.

  ‘I couldn’t trust her.’

  ‘You had to have a reason.’

  ‘She would never do what I told her to and leave it at that.’ Bowden spoke dully, as though repeating words learned by rote without understanding their meaning. ‘She never even swallowed the sleeping pills. I know. I found some the next morning. She fooled me, and I couldn’t trust her, so I couldn’t bring her along. And I couldn’t leave her behind. I tried to think of another way.’ He shook his head sorrowfully, but for whom he felt sorrow none of his audience could tell from his looks or his speech. ‘There wasn’t one. If only she had been different everything else would have been. But she would never do what I told her without an argument. Never. So it had to end.’

  Drury placed a hand on the manacled man’s shoulder.

  ‘Bowden, I’m taking you back to Sussex. There you’ll be charged with murder. In the meantime I must warn you that — ’

  Micky Perran didn’t listen to the rest. He saw Sheila walking away and went after her. A uniformed constable moved from the rear entrance to the police station, and they passed inside, walked straight through, and out into the street, watched curiously by the desk sergeant in the hall.

  In the street Micky caught her arm, turned her round, saw the tears in her eyes, and kissed her mouth gently.

  ‘I’d sooner stick to sport,’ she said as he drew back his head, ‘even if the pay is less.’

  A couple of hours later they had said goodbye to Drury and Hazard, had eaten a meal at the Green Dragon in Broad Street, where Perran had phoned Phil Strapp and been told to collect a hire car on Banner expenses, and were heading down the Wye Valley towards Ross.

  Sheila was driving. After all, as she had pointed out, she was still the Banner staff member of the party.

  Somehow she managed to take the wrong road at the Ross-Abergavenny fork. Micky didn’t point it out until they were approaching St. Weonards. Then she looked at him glumly, slowing as she did so.

  ‘What shall I do?’ she asked. ‘I seem to have run out on this assignment. Now I’m no longer sure of myself. I might run out on another. What sort of reporter would that be?’

  ‘A bad one.’

  She nodded. ‘A very bad one, I think.’

  ‘I’m not going to quarrel with that, darling.’

  She appeared not to notice the new mode of address.

  ‘Advise me. What can I do?’

  ‘You mean for the best?’

  ‘Of course for the best. I’m a natural-born optimist.’

  ‘Well, there are other jobs.’

  ‘Like what, for instance?’

  She turned lovely large liquid eyes on him and suddenly her perfume was sheer enchantment.

  ‘Like staying at home and cooking meals and looking after the home while I went out and did the writing for that cynical bastard Phil Strapp, who’s only happy when he’s served violence running to a minimum of two thousand words under a six-column head.’

  ‘It sounds terribly tempting,’ she confided in a murmur.

  As she braked to a halt under a hedgerow she allowed her eyes to close dreamily.

  ‘Of course, you’ve just had a rough sample of what marriage can become and from my own experience — ’

  That was as far as she allowed his honesty to take him before she leaned nearer and put her arms around his neck. Her sweet mouth was brushing his and her lips were parted as she said, ‘Sometimes you talk too much at the wrong moment, but that can be changed, Micky darling.’

  Then she kissed him and it was like hitting cloud nine in a psychedelic rocket, to be banged down on terra firma when she asked cooingly, ‘What did you tell Phil Strapp? I mean about us, darling.’

  ‘I said we were engaged.’

  ‘And what did he say to that?’

  Micky Perran caught a much-needed breath. ‘I — well, he said fine, fine, make sure I use it in the lead into the first instalment of the series. And he also had a word for you, Sheila.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Nice going, kiddo. An exact quotation.’

  She sighed and closed her eyes again. ‘Poor Mr. Strapp, with a wife you said doesn’t understand him, darling, he’ll never get to know how nice the going is. But we must invite him to the wedding. After all, we have to be practical. He ought to come up with a really special present.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Well, we’ve nothing in writing, so unless he sees reason you could walk into the offices of another paper. And I’d come with you, Micky. Oh, yes. Oh, dear me, yes. Just in case Mr. Strapp has relatives in Fleet Street. After all, he could have. It swarms with cynical bastards.’

  Then she kissed him again. But it wasn’t another rocket count down before re-hitting cloud nine.

  Micky remained on earth, hurriedly decided he liked the place, and started kissing her back.

  But he couldn’t help wondering — and wondering.

  THE END

  Note on the Author

  Piers Marlow is one of the pen names of Leonard Reginald Gribble (1908–1985), a prolific English crime writer born in Barnstaple, Devon. In 1953 he was a founding member of the Crime Writers Association. He wrote thrillers, crime and mystery novels as well as non-fiction on criminology.

  Discover books by Piers Marlowe published by Bloomsbury Reader at

  www.bloomsbury.com/PiersMarlowe

  Cash My Chips, Croupier

  Hire Me a Hearse

  Killer in the Shade

  For copyright reasons, any images not belonging to the original author have been removed from this book. The text has not been changed, and may still contain references to missing images.

  This electronic edition published in 2014 by Bloomsbury Reader

  Bloomsbury Reader is a division of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 50 Bedford Square, London WC1B 3DP

  First published in Great Britain in 1969 by Robert Hale Limited

  Copyright © 1969 Piers Marlowe

  All rights reserved

  You may not copy, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (including without limitation electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, printing, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

  The moral right of the author is asserted.

  eISBN: 9781448214501

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