Cash My Chips, Croupier Read online

  Chapter 3

  Ray Ebor was a very worried man. Moreover, he was not a man normally endowed with a great deal of patience. Two disastrous marriages and an employer named Mario Bandelli had collectively contrived to sour him and spoil what had once been a happy disposition.

  Waiting in the back seat of the police car, smoking and staring either at the shadowed shape of the big block of flats or the police driver’s neck, a few inches from his face, did not bring any compensatory feeling of having done the right thing in dialling 230 1212, the recently new Scotland Yard’s almost old number.

  He took the butt from his lips when he could taste the cork of the filter tip smouldering, and tossed it from the car window. It broke in a shower of sparks on the pavement and quickly died, like most of the bright things that had entered his life at different times.

  He saw the driver was watching him in the driving mirror and felt like saying an explosively rude word, but withstood the impulse. The man would only laugh, and he couldn’t take that.

  Not just now.

  Not until he knew what Bandelli had told Superintendent Drury. Probably a pack of lies. But he had to know. He would have wanted to know if someone hadn’t spitted Toni Cuzak’s head like it was a dry gourd that weeped blood. He wasn’t smothered and locked in his room for no damned good reason, and if he hadn’t had that phone with the outside line in the bottom drawer of his desk he could have been a sacrifice — for what?

  Cuzak’s killing?

  Some damned sadistic trick of Bandelli’s?

  He shook his head. He had to stop going over the same ground. He hadn’t come up with any answers at the Red Ace when Drury had asked the questions. He wasn’t likely to do any better now, with that damned cop driver eyeing him as though he had crawled inside and brought a bad smell with him.

  After all, he hadn’t wanted to come to Bandelli’s. At first he had thought Drury’s idea was to parade him in front of Bandelli. At this time of night, too, probably after Bandelli had been playing bed games with that female bodyguard.

  Cathy.

  It was no name for a woman who could kill a man with a smack from the edge of her hand. A karate expert, for God’s sake! Bandelli’s big idea, having her taught by that Jap brown belt who lived in Putney. Fancy going to bed with a woman who could ruin you or kill you when you made love to her. Bandelli must be a real kook.

  . . . Cathy Manning.

  Her name came unbidden into his mind.

  He closed his eyes and saw her as she had been at the time Bandelli had brought her to the Red Ace and introduced him as the manager. She had looked at him as though what she saw amused her, and he had felt he could hate her without requiring too much encouragement.

  ‘Ebor — wake up! Damn it, don’t catch up on your sleep in this car!’

  Superintendent Drury sounded annoyed. The Yard man had pushed a hand through the open window and was shaking the man on the back seat. Ray Ebor opened his eyes and slid to the edge of the seat.

  ‘I wasn’t asleep, Super.’

  ‘Good, then get out.’

  The Red Ace manager opened the door and stepped on to the pavement beside Frank Drury. Big Bill Hazard ranged up on the other side, making him shiver inside. Except for the formula and the cold grasp of their hands on his wrists it was like having his collar felt as the cops put it.

  ‘Bandelli says he knows nothing,’ said Drury. ‘He was in bed and has an alibi. We spoke to her.’

  Bill Hazard said softly, ‘She’s built for wrestling. Any style you name, but she might be best at all-in.’

  Ray Ebor stopped shivering inside.

  ‘Cathy Manning,’ he said.

  ‘You know her?’ Drury asked.

  ‘I’ve met her. That’s all. Bandelli brought her to the club when she was new. About seven or eight months back. My guess is she won’t make much mileage with Bandelli. He uses her kind up pretty fast. But one thing makes her special — for the time being.’

  ‘She’s a karate expert.’

  ‘So you know.’

  ‘Bandelli bragged about it. One moment he seemed to treat her like she was something he had picked up at the lost dogs’ home, the next he seemed halfway scared of her.’

  ‘Don’t ask me to explain Bandelli.’

  ‘Does he sniff or take a daily fix? Anything like that?’

  ‘Never,’ said Ray Ebor with conviction. ‘He’s hard, not soft. That’s what kept him on top of Toni Cuzak, and I don’t think I’m handing out news, Super.’

  Frank Drury regarded the shorter figure of the chunky man in a double-breasted dinner jacket with buttoned-down ends to his soft silk shirt collar, slim bow tie, and with the remains of an ill-used dark red carnation in the buttonhole of his coat’s dull lapel. The Yard man didn’t think much of what he saw, and he knew Ebor had not phoned to give him information, but because the manager of the Red Ace was in a panic. He thought an attempt had been made on his life.

  Now he was probably regretting the impulse and cursing himself for not phoning Bandelli, his boss, instead of the Yard. Only, of course, he couldn’t trust Bandelli and it could have been the latter who had arranged the attack.

  ‘Can you point out Bandelli’s flat from down here, Ebor?’

  The short thickset man seemed surprised by the question. Before answering he pushed back his head and stared up at the dark bulk of the block of expensive flats. A light showed here and there behind a drawn curtain, but for the most part the expanse of cement and glass wore shadows cast by the shapes of trees in the forecourt blocking the light from street lamps and lights along the drive-in.

  ‘You can’t see it from this side. You’ve got to go round to the mews.’

  ‘Lead the way,’ Drury ordered.

  The three men walked to the narrow lane that led to the mews at the rear of the block of flats. There was a row of garages and a couple of other passages leading from the mews, which had smaller building blocks at the sides.

  Ebor drew the other two men back, and pointed aloft.

  ‘Bandelli’s flat is the third one down and the spare bedroom gives on to that fire escape. You see. One, two, three, and along to the right where — ’

  He broke off to swear.

  A light had blazed inside the room he had pointed out to them. The curtain had not been drawn, and they could clearly make out the figure of the woman who became a dark blur against the window before an arm lifted and she opened it.

  The next moment she stepped out on to the fire escape.

  ‘It’s Bandelli’s woman,’ whispered Hazard.

  ‘She’s dressed — fully dressed,’ Ray Ebor muttered, making the words sound like the complaint of a man who has been tricked.

  Frank Drury watched the woman beyond the lighted window bend down and pick up something from one of the iron stairs of the fire escape. She still had her back to the window behind her, as she examined what she had picked up, and must have been unaware of the quiet approach of another person in the room she had stepped from.

  ‘Bandelli,’ Hazard said in the same charged whisper.

  The newcomer must have said something, for the woman started, and they saw what she had picked up flutter from her fingers and drift down like a pale leaf. None of the men below moved. To have done so would have drawn attention to their presence in the shadows of the mews. They watched Bandelli grab the woman’s arm and saw her being drawn back into the room. The window closed. There was a space of perhaps a minute and a half and then the light went out.

  Ebor said, ‘What the hell was all that about?’

  Neither of the detectives answered him. Bill Hazard was already thirty feet away, searching for what had fluttered down from the fire escape.

  When he had found it he brought it to Drury, who moved to a corner where they remained concealed and shone his pencil ray on it.

  What Hazard had picked up was the torn cover from a book of matches. The cover had apparently been ripped off hurriedly because the line of the tear was
jagged and not along the crease made by the fold-over.

  ‘Hey,’ said a genuinely surprised Ray Ebor, prepared to announce the obvious. ‘That’s the top of one of our sets of book-matches. See? Marmaduke’s Red Ace, Damsel Street.’

  It was Bill Hazard who had something to offer that interested his superior. He said, ‘I tell you, Super, I’m pretty positive this is the top of a match folder Micky Perran had tonight.’

  Drury asked sharply, ‘What makes you sure, Bill?’

  ‘That stain on the inside. Made by a wet glass, and it looks when you turn it the other way round like a kid’s toy cannon.’

  Drury turned the piece of coloured pasteboard he held round the other way. He had to make an effort to concede that the stain looked like a toy cannon any way he held the piece of book-match cover, but he understood what Hazard meant and he was willing to go along with his chief assistant.

  ‘All right, so Perran was up there, and he tore this off and dropped it. Why?’

  ‘To be found,’ said Hazard.

  ‘By whom?’

  ‘Us?’ Hazard asked.

  Drury nodded. ‘I think that might be the answer, Bill, but it presupposes something else.’

  ‘He knew we had come calling.’

  ‘And he was getting out the back way, down this escape.’

  Drury tapped the coloured square against his thumbnail, regarding it with a frown. ‘So if he didn’t want to have us see him there and got out, why should he want us to find this and know he had been there?’

  Bill Hazard thought about it without coming up with any bright suggestion.

  ‘You know Perran. Tricky, can’t keep out of trouble. Probably came here straightaway after we let him loose after questioning him inside the Red Ace. Most likely wanted to rub Bandelli’s nose in the dirty sawdust.’

  ‘Could be, but that doesn’t explain his tearing off this cover and dropping it, fast, in a hurry, almost as though he might be seen.’ Drury paused and swore. ‘That could be it. He didn’t come down that escape alone. Someone was with him. Someone who was hustling him down. He thought we’d search and would find the torn cover.’

  ‘How the hell did he think we’d get a search warrant this time of night?’ grunted Hazard. ‘He’s been a crime reporter. He knows the way we live.’

  Drury looked at his assistant. ‘You’re making it difficult, Bill,’ he said. ‘But go on.’

  ‘Well,’ said Hazard, not sure whether to feel encouraged or otherwise, ‘he could have left it for this Cathy dame.’

  ‘In that case he’d have surely left it in the room, not where she might not look to find it.’

  ‘So he couldn’t leave it in the room. Because he’d be seen,’ Bill Hazard continued, taking it one step at a time. ‘But he had to leave it so someone might find it.’

  ‘Good. He took a chance. Why?’

  ‘Not because he had found the way out down the escape. That would be obvious. O.K.?’

  ‘I think so, Bill. But don’t stop.’

  ‘Then he had to point to the Red Ace.’

  ‘Again — why?’

  ‘Because of tonight’s action.’

  ‘Not good enough, Bill. Something special — something that happened there.’

  ‘Cuzak — ’

  ‘Was killed outside. Inside, Bill,’ Drury prompted.

  ‘The girl — it has to be the girl. This Sandra something or other.’

  ‘Beltby,’ said Ray Ebor. ‘Did you say Micky Perran? He comes in at times. Looks around, doesn’t risk much at the tables. You do mean the crime reporter who published that story about Bandelli in the Banner, which was sued for libel and Bandelli won, and Perran was kicked out of his job?’

  ‘That’s the Perran. Why, Ebor?’ asked the Yard superintendent. ‘You’ve remembered something?’

  ‘I’ve remembered he was in earlier tonight, just before I was jumped. Why couldn’t it have been Micky Perran?’

  It was a thoroughly bad question. Frank Drury distrusted it and any answer he came up with in a hurry. But the question had been asked and he had to deal with it.

  ‘Why should he attack you? Was anything taken from your office?’

  The unhappy and bemused manager of the Red Ace wriggled his fleshy shoulders inside his dinner jacket. The movement caused a few crimson fragments to fall from his crumpled carnation.

  ‘Not that I know of, but I haven’t made a thorough check.’ Ray Ebor scratched his chin and then rubbed his nose. Altogether it was a rather inelegant performance by a man whose thoughts were elsewhere. ‘But he could have had something set up that didn’t work out,’ he said, without much hope of the words being accepted at face value.

  ‘No, Ebor,’ said Drury, shaking his head. ‘You’re guessing and doing badly.’ He turned back to his assistant. ‘Very well, Bill, you’ve brought us as far as this Sandra Beltby who’s done a vanishing act. What next?’

  Bill Hazard said lamely, ‘It sounds crazy, but could she be the one who induced Perran to leave by the fire escape?’ He craned his neck to peer up at the window where Cathy Manning had appeared and been dragged away by Bandelli.

  ‘When I can answer that one, Bill,’ said Drury, ‘I may even know who pushed a hole through Cuzak’s head and why. We’ll be moving on.’

  As he started to walk out of the mews the club manager bounced alongside and said breathlessly, ‘You dropping me off at the Red Ace, Super?’

  Drury didn’t look at him as he replied.

  ‘No. The club’s shut and the local C.I.D. men will keep it that way. I may have to seal it. You’re coming back to the Yard with me. After all, you rang us. Now we’ll get it all nicely sorted out and you can sign a statement.’

  The man beside Drury flinched so obviously that the Yard superintendent was aware of it without looking round.

  ‘But, Super, I got to think this out. Maybe I don’t want to make a statement.’

  ‘You want to get a lawyer first, Ebor, all right — get him on the phone, though it’s late,’ Drury reminded the other with a touch of callousness. ‘But he’ll tell you the same as I do — sign that statement.’

  ‘I don’t see why,’ the club manager said obdurately.

  ‘That’s because you waste time sleeping in police cars.’

  ‘I wasn’t asleep, damn it.’

  ‘Otherwise,’ Drury went on as though the other had not spoken, ‘you would realise that what you’ve told me can’t be checked, and it could amount to a phony alibi.’

  Ebor recoiled, stopped in his tracks, but as the Yard man didn’t slow his stride hastened to catch up and once more started to pant.

  ‘Alibi for what, in God’s name?’

  He sounded close to tears. Well, if crying helped him to see sense, Frank Drury wasn’t prepared to complain. He had known far tougher and much more unlikely characters cry when, following a lot of clever manoeuvring and manipulating, they found themselves in the hands of the police. Particularly when the hour was very late and their sudden isolation was in some way emphasised by the fact.

  ‘For the time Toni Cuzak was cooled for keeps outside your club. After all he followed this Sandra outside, didn’t he?’

  ‘So?’ Ray Ebor couldn’t trust himself to say more than the one word without risking too much.

  ‘So you’re her father. You’ve got some explaining to do that you haven’t volunteered, chummy.’

  ‘It’s a lie. I’m not her father.’

  ‘My information says differently.’

  ‘Stepfather. Ain’t that different?’

  But Frank Drury didn’t bother to reply. Bill Hazard took a hand from his pocket and covered the grin on his face. He knew his chief had wormed the admission he wanted out of the anxious and incensed club manager.

  The session at the Yard should get interesting. With a little luck and probably a good many cups of canteen coffee.

  Micky Perran sat up with a jolt as the red mini turned into the parking space of a large block of flats on Putney Hill
.

  ‘This is where I live,’ he said.

  ‘You sound like you’re making a protest,’ said the woman beside him as she placed her right foot over the brake pedal. ‘I’ve brought you home. The least you can do is invite me in. After all, you’re living a bachelor life since your wife got rid of you and married that salesman from Wolverhampton.’

  The small car turned into a white-outlined slot and she killed the engine. She got out, felt for the bag on the back seat, and offered it to Micky.

  ‘Be a gentleman and carry a lady’s bag.’ As he took it she opened her handbag and felt inside. He expected the gun to reappear in her very competent small fist, but she produced a bunch of keys. With the car locked, they started for his flat, on the third floor.

  ‘Let’s take the stairs instead of the lift,’ she said.

  ‘This bag’s heavy.’

  ‘I know. It wouldn’t be worth bringing if it wasn’t. But the stairs are safer. Someone who goes to bed late or rises early might ring for the lift. Better if we don’t invite unnecessary inspection.’

  She sounded cool and competent, but then she hadn’t been too put out when he’d dragged her from the phone box in Damsel Street, and she had been perplexingly calm and collected in that extra bedroom in Bandelli’s flat. He looked at her outline. It offered nothing he hadn’t already viewed a dozen times during the car journey.

  ‘Well, let’s get inside. I can do with a drink. And I’m ready to listen to what you’ve got to tell me.’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘Everything. You’ve got my head spinning.’

  She laughed, but somehow the note was wrong. Offbeat and off-tone. He looked at her, and found she was keeping her face averted.

  They reached the front door of Perran’s flat. He put down the black leather bag and felt for his key. When he had opened the door he stood back for her to enter, but she shook her head.

  ‘I don’t know my way around yet.’

  The words held their own mockery.

  He walked in with the bag and she followed, switched on the light and closed the front door. But she didn’t sit down. She remained standing as though waiting for something to happen.