Cash My Chips, Croupier Read online

  Then he knew nothing.

  For a very thoroughgoing reason. Pat’s right fist had arrived at his chin with nearly every ounce of the Irishman’s fourteen stone behind it.

  Bill Hazard came into Drury’s office at New Scotland Yard with a dark green canteen tray holding three cups of coffee. The light in the office was good, but it didn’t do anything for the coffee. The stuff gave off hardly a wisp of steam and it looked uninviting, with clinging curds of boiled milk edging the cups.

  ‘I don’t want any,’ said Ebor, rinsing his tired face in a hand that wasn’t too steady. ‘I just want to be allowed to go home and get some sleep. I’m nearly dead.’

  ‘Cuzak’s deader,’ said Frank Drury. His tone was pleasant. It had been that way from the moment they had arrived at the Yard. ‘Now drink the cup Bill’s brought for you and be grateful you don’t have to pay for it.’

  ‘But — ’

  ‘Drink. Think I want you falling asleep before I’m finished?’

  ‘I thought you were through when he went out.’

  Ebor nodded towards Bill Hazard, who was taking the cups from the green tray and arranging them on Drury’s desk top.

  ‘Don’t think. Just answer questions. That way you’ll stay awake. But the coffee should help.’ Drury grinned with soft malevolence, like a man enjoying a practical joke.

  ‘It looks like poison,’ Ebor complained as he reached for the cup placed in front of him.

  ‘You won’t escape that easy, pal,’ grinned Bill Hazard, but when he glanced at Drury the superintendent wasn’t looking pleased.

  Hazard’s sense of humour prompted him at times into a heavy-footed display. Drury’s shake of the head warned that this wasn’t an opportune time for such an exercise.

  To get things restarted, he swallowed some of the coffee from his own cup without gagging or making a face, and said with just a hint of breathlessness, ‘Now let’s get agreed about this, Ebor, because you’re going to have to sign a formal statement. You know that. After all, you rang us. We didn’t ring you.’

  If there was any kind of joke in the words it apparently missed the Red Ace manager.

  He said, ‘All right, if you’ve got to.’

  ‘I’ve got to,’ Drury assured him, and motioned Bill Hazard to sit down. The big inspector dropped on to a hard-seated chair and started lapping at his coffee as though he enjoyed it.

  Ray Ebor was encouraged to sample the unlovely beverage in the cup he held. His face knotted.

  ‘You pay for this muck?’ he said.

  ‘With our own money,’ Hazard told him, ‘after tax. It’s an unfair world, like a gambling casino.’

  ‘Now look here — ’ Ebor began, but he had been roused and couldn’t claim he felt sleepy. He bit back the rest.

  Drury got on with what he had to do.

  ‘According to your story you were jumped and knocked unconscious, and when you came to the door was locked and you phoned us. Then you just sat around and did nothing, waiting till we arrived. Why?’

  ‘Because I felt that way I might be safe. And I was right.’ Ebor wriggled his thick shoulders under his jacket, making the material whisper, and shook a finger at Drury. ‘You’re trying to trick me. You know I never said I was knocked out. I was jumped all right, but something was pushed over my mouth and nose, it smelled sweet and sickly, and like I told you before — ’

  Drury waved a hand.

  ‘All right. A rag with some sort of anaesthetic was pushed over your face and you don’t know who did it and you’ve no idea why and you can’t suggest — ’

  ‘Wait a minute,’ Ebor pushed in, stopping the other. ‘I didn’t say that, not the way you make it sound I didn’t.’ He took a tentative sip of coffee as though experimenting, and then drained the cup as though he needed it. ‘Brrrr. Tastes like curdled horse piddle.’

  ‘I’ll take your word for it,’ Drury told him. ‘So I’ve got it wrong, have I? Well, put me right.’

  ‘I can suggest plenty for one thing.’

  ‘Be as suggestive as you like, only get on with it, man. This is taking too long.’

  ‘Don’t blame me for that. I didn’t ask to come here, and anyway you’ve heard it already.’

  ‘So I’m going to hear it again. Well, imagine I like the sound of your voice, chummy. Let’s have a suggestion. A real nice one.’

  Ray Ebor drew a long breath, for a moment felt in his pocket, then produced a packet with one slim panatella, which he lit before dropping the empty packet beside his coffee cup.

  ‘Tonight Cuzak went round collecting cash from all six clubs in the combine. The Red Ace was last. He would come in, collect, sign for what he took, dump it in a black leather bag he brought in with him, then take it back to the waiting car. After that sometimes, because we were the last club on the round, he might come back and have a few drinks, stick around and watch the action. You could say he was relaxing.’

  ‘That’s all he ever did?’

  ‘So far as I know. I didn’t hit it off with Toni. He didn’t like me, I didn’t like him. That’s how it was and that’s how we let it lay.’

  ‘What about tonight?’

  ‘Tonight I was out cold when he was due. So I don’t know. I rang up here because I thought it could be a different sort of trouble.’

  ‘Different from what?’

  ‘From some half-canned berk claiming he’d been clipped. We get them from time to time.’

  ‘What trouble did you think it would be?’

  ‘Trouble. The kind that took care of me first.’

  ‘Trouble like someone moving in on Bandelli?’

  Ebor shrugged and sucked his panatella as he narrowed his eyes. ‘I didn’t know. How could I?’

  ‘That’s right, how could you?’

  Drury waited, but got no rise from the man on the other side of the desk.

  ‘Why did you wait for us?’

  ‘I didn’t want to start anything. I couldn’t hear any ruckus. I had no wish to get someone to come opening the door and then get beaten up.’

  ‘That could happen?’

  ‘I didn’t know.’

  ‘But if you had shouted and banged on the door, and someone had come and started to beat you up, who would you expect it to be?’

  ‘Hell, I don’t know.’

  ‘Guess.’

  ‘Look, I — ’

  ‘I’m looking, Ebor. Damned hard, and I’m not convinced by what I see. Start convincing me. That way we might all get home sooner.’

  Ray Ebor spilled ash from his panatella when he changed its position nervously from one side of his mouth to the other.

  ‘Why didn’t you ring Bandelli when you came to?’ Drury pushed at him as the other stubbornly refused to talk.

  ‘Well, it could have been something set up by Mario. He’s tricky and all bastard.’

  ‘So if you’d come round too soon, and Bandelli had been dealing with you, who would you expect to come running to beat you up and put you to sleep for the second time?’

  ‘How do I know?’

  ‘Try jogging your memory.’

  ‘But I — ’

  ‘And don’t bother to lie.’ Drury’s warning was sharp-toned.

  Ray Ebor swallowed some smoke and coughed.

  ‘It could have been Harvey.’

  ‘Harvey?’

  ‘Harvey Harris.’

  ‘The Aussie who runs that Soho gym?’

  ‘He runs other things.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Well, it’s only talk, you know.’

  ‘Don’t wet yourself, Ebor. This is between us, and so far I haven’t been told anything I didn’t know, except what a long-winded perisher you are. I don’t wonder a couple of wives ran out on you. I’m surprised you ever got them to the altar.’

  ‘We weren’t married in church,’ said Ebor and managed to sound aggrieved.

  Bill Hazard laughed and tried to cover up by coughing, but he couldn’t quite wipe the amusement from h
is broad face.

  Ray Ebor dusted some ash from the front of his jacket, concentrating on the movement of his hand.

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘Harvey’s the boss of the enforcers.’

  ‘Bandelli’s muscle crew?’

  Ebor nodded. ‘He’s no one to mix it with.’

  ‘You think he could have rubbed out Cuzak?’

  ‘He could have, but it’s not his style, sticking a thin knife through an ear. I thought that was a Mafia trick.’

  ‘You heard Micky Perran blowing hard,’ Drury said. ‘He’s a journalist when he’s in work. That knife in the ear is something he’s written up before.’

  ‘When he wrote up Bandelli in the Banner?’

  ‘You read the articles? What did you think of them?’

  ‘Flannel. Served him right for Bandelli jumping that damned scandal sheet. He’s a crook and he does all right, so why make him look like a stupid amateur?’

  This time Bill Hazard managed to satisfy his feelings with a contented grin of approval.

  ‘If it wasn’t Harvey Harris, what’s your guess?’

  ‘I can’t guess.’

  ‘Force yourself,’ Drury urged. ‘Suppose someone said you might have done it, who would you come up with as a good substitute?’

  ‘Me?’ Ebor squealed. ‘Hell, I was in my room, locked up.’

  ‘Makes a nice alibi, when you come to think of it.’

  ‘I’m not thinking of it — like that.’

  ‘I am, Ebor. I’ve got to. That’s why I have to consider this putting you out and locking the door and then you phoning us could all be something dreamed up by you and Sandra, who happens to be missing, and so does the bag Cuzak brought into the club, presumably full of cash.’

  ‘You’ve got to believe me, Super. I don’t know why she’s missing as you put it.’

  ‘How would you put it? You heard Perran when we got him inside.’

  ‘I know, but I can’t make any sense of it’

  ‘Let me try, then. Cuzak was interested in her. Right?’

  Ebor put down his half-smoked cigar and eased his collar with a stubby forefinger. He suddenly looked hot.

  ‘In a way. But she didn’t go for Toni. He thought he could make time with her so I wouldn’t have trouble. But he had picked the wrong filly. Sandra takes after her mother. Or maybe her father. I never met him. Don’t even know who he was, except that he left his wife, she got a divorce and then married me, then she took off like my first wife.’

  ‘Another man?’

  ‘I don’t rightly know. It was no good from the start, a real mistake, bad all through. So when she pulled out I was damned glad to see the back of her.’

  ‘Sandra?’

  ‘She had her own place and wanted a job, so I got her fixed at the Red Ace. She had a pal who was close to Bandelli himself at that time, so that helped to make it easy.’

  ‘Cathy Manning.’

  ‘You’ve heard about her?’

  ‘She’s a legend.’

  Ebor sighed heavily. ‘I don’t know why you keep asking all these bloody questions when you know the answers.’

  ‘Some of the answers, chummy. I don’t know, for instance, why you thought it might have been Bandelli dealing with you and sending Harvey Harris. Enlarge.’

  ‘I didn’t say I thought it was Bandelli.’

  ‘You said it might have been. Tricky and all bastard were your words, Ebor.’

  The other took the remains of the slim panatella from his mouth and chewed his lips. He didn’t look happy and he didn’t appear comfortable. In fact, he looked like a man who had been brought to the very place where he had to say something he would prefer to leave unspoken.

  But Frank Drury had pushed too many men with secrets through this particular verbal hoop to leave him a chance of avoiding a spoken admission.

  The burned-down cigar went back into the mobile mouth, and Ray Ebor spoke round it.

  ‘There’s a flat over the Red Ace. I think someone’s occupying it. Normally it is only used for meetings by Bandelli. It’s convenient with a private entrance.’

  ‘It isn’t occupied normally?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What makes you think it is now?’

  ‘I’ve heard sounds. Over my office, for instance. The place isn’t soundproof.’

  ‘What sort of sounds? Footsteps?’

  ‘No, it’s close-carpeted. I wouldn’t hear anyone walking about. But this radio. I’m sure it came from the flat. Well, if Bandelli thought I’d been nosey he could have got the notion to teach me a lesson.’

  ‘Why should he think you’re nosey?’

  ‘Sandra doesn’t like me any more than she likes Cuzak. She could have talked to Cathy Manning.’

  ‘I see. You think she would.’

  ‘I don’t know. Put it this way. She could have been pumped and have said something out of turn. She once caught me on the back stairs leading to the flat and asked me where I’d been. I told her I’d got mixed up and come that way by mistake. Hell, I know it was damned thin, but I couldn’t admit to listening at the keyhole of a locked door.’

  ‘Why not?’ asked Bill Hazard, keeping his mouth in a firm straight line.

  Ray Ebor stood up. ‘Do you have to keep this comedian around, Super?’ he asked, glaring at Hazard. ‘Well, I’m bushed. That’s it. You’ve run me dry. Now let me get the hell out of here, and at this time of night I expect to be run home. I’ll never get a cab.’

  Bill Hazard turned an eye on Drury. The inspector knew who would be driving who where if Drury felt encouraged by the outcome of the past hour or so. ‘Two last questions, Ebor, then Bill will take you home.’

  The standing man said nothing. He waited with a look of overt suspicion on his face.

  ‘The first,’ said Drury. ‘When did Sandra find you on those stairs and what was she doing there herself? One question. Think about it damned carefully.’

  With this injunction to help consideration, Ebor took his time before saying, ‘It was one day last week and I don’t know what the hell she was doing there unless — ’

  As he paused Drury said quietly, ‘She’d come to bend an ear at the keyhole herself?’

  Ebor shook his head. ‘Maybe she was trying to get something on Cuzak,’ he suggested.

  It was so lame, Drury didn’t bother turning it down. The Yard man went on, ‘Two. Could someone from the flat have nipped out, remained concealed in the shadows, and jumped Cuzak after Perran had put him down?’

  This time there was no hesitation.

  ‘Someone could have — of course,’ Ebor said, and added a fine-edged note of sarcasm to the next words. ‘If Cuzak was knocked down by Micky Perran and if Perran didn’t push that knife into his head himself.’ Then he added gratuitously, ‘That damned reporter or whatever he calls himself has been hanging around the clubs, looking for something he can use to make trouble. Toni Cuzak warned him off. But you think the stupid bastard knows what’s good for him? He still came around, tossing away a quid or two and having a drink when he’d the price for it. Fancy stuff, too. Daiquiri, like some bloody millionaire from the Bahamas.’

  ‘You don’t like Perran?’

  ‘That’s a third question,’ Ebor pointed out saucily, ‘but I’ll answer it. I’m feeling encouraged, let’s say.’

  ‘Let’s say you get on with the damned answer,’ Drury grunted.

  ‘I hate his guts. Nothing personal. Just I hate them on principle. I hate the guts of all nosey bastards who come poking around to make trouble for other people. I think he’s the one who cooled Cuzak, and I think he had a damned good reason, the best in fact. Toni didn’t like him and warned him once not to cause trouble. He was scared of Cuzak because he knew there wouldn’t be a second warning, and he was too pigheaded to quit. He thought he could hang around and get something that would put him back where he was before Bandelli took the Banner to court for libel in those articles written by Perran. That’s what he thought and what he hoped, because
he’s a damned trouble-maker for everybody except himself. So he got rid of Cuzak. That’s what I think.’

  It had been something close to a speech. Drury showed what he thought of it and the opinion expressed in it by pushing his chair back, walking around the desk, and saying to Bill Hazard, ‘Take him home. I’ve had enough for one night.’

  ‘When do I sign those statements?’ Ebor asked.

  ‘Statement, not statements. Others may come later, if you’re unlucky and are caught lying, chummy.’ Drury felt for his pipe, pointed it at the other man’s waist like a gun, and added, ‘You’ll be seeing us, don’t worry. With the statement to be signed.’

  Drury drove home half an hour later. His wife was asleep when he stood at their bedroom window and watched a tinge of grey light that had nothing to do with the moon wash over the chimneys of the houses opposite, on the eastern side of the road.

  He turned and got into bed, blissfully unaware that within a few hours an early-rising farmer’s wife in Sussex would be up and making a discovery that would put Superintendent Frank Drury of Scotland Yard on a faster-moving merry-go-round that would not slow down until his own life had been risked in a dangerous gamble with a determined killer.

  Chapter 5

  The name of the farmer’s wife was Mary Bowden. She had grey eyes and an angular look that she derived from a long line of hard-headed and long-limbed yeomen. She also had a nagging tooth which she refused to take to the dentist in Petworth out of a sense of false pride. It wasn’t that she didn’t hold with dentists, in the way she didn’t hold — her own term — with shop-baked bread, but because she could decide on no reason for the tooth to ache she felt it was just being pernickety and contrary. As her husband knew very well, for Mary to feel that way about anything was for her to fight it. In her own way of course. But you couldn’t fight a tooth in your own way in a dentist’s leather-and-chrome chair with your mouth gagged. That wasn’t fighting. That was surrender.

  So she had passed a miserable night with sundry barefooted excursions downstairs to the cupboard where, like her mother, she kept a bottle of laudanum among all the other bottles of capsicums and purgatives and tonics and emulsions and embrocations that covered a wide shelf.