Policeman's Progress (3 page)

‘You bastard – you've done that once too often,' she gasped. ‘Look at the damned mess you've made of me and I've got my second number in a couple of minutes!'

Jackie grinned up at her from the settee, his bad humour gone. He had obviously enjoyed the fight, getting some mildly sadistic pleasure from it. ‘That's my girl – red hair and green eyes! Go and get yourself a new dress tomorrow and charge it to me.'

‘Stuff your dress!' she flared, pulling on her shoes. ‘I'm sleeping at my place tonight and don't you damn well try to come around there.'

She stalked to the door leading to the bathroom and slammed it behind her.

Jackie leered at Thor Hansen. ‘I like a bit of spirit. I tell you, son, she's tops at everything, not only singing … if I wasn't already married, I wouldn't mind making it legal one of these days.'

As his wife had deserted him ten years ago, this wouldn't have been much of a problem to Jackie, but he had never bothered. Until recently, Laura either spent her nights at the flat in the Rising Sun or else Jackie went to the flat he had provided her with in Gosforth, just outside the city.

Thor had his own ideas about Laura and her accomplishments, but again he was wise enough to keep them well to himself. ‘What about this Geordie Armstrong business?' he asked now.

He was a businessman through and through – anything that touched the profits of the clubs might eventually touch him, if things went as he planned. He was officially Jackie's manager at the Rising Sun, but Stott leaned heavily on his know-how and advice for all his legitimate businesses. As well as this place in the Bigg Market, he had the
Mississippi
, a couple of betting shops in outlying towns and, on Hansen's initiative, was just about to open a new and bigger nightclub at Middlesbrough.

Jackie tore his mind from thoughts of Laura's body. ‘I'll get Geordie myself – this time, I don't need your help. He came from the gutter and that's where he'll damn well end up. I'd have given him the push tonight, only you know as well as I do that good croupiers are hard to come by – and Geordie is a good one, when he plays it straight.'

Hansen considered this for a moment. ‘If his pay-in is all right, why are you so dead against him? He can't be cheating us, if he's getting the normal rake-off for the house.'

Jackie's bad humour began to gather again. ‘I just got a hunch! He may not be fiddling us direct, but somehow he's skinning the mugs to his own advantage.' He prodded the air with a finger the size of a sausage. ‘If we get, say sixty per cent of the cash the mugs bring in with them, then they share the other forty between them … that's OK. But if another ten per cent is being switched into Geordie's pocket, that's bad business for us.'

‘But to do that, he'd have to have a partner hidden amongst the patrons.' Hansen was too proper to use the word ‘mugs'.

Jackie nodded. ‘S'right! … and when I catch him, I'll wrap his face around these.' He held up a handful of great knuckles. ‘And the other hand will be for Geordie. If he's got any sense, he'll drop any funny business right now.' He took another mouthful of neat whiskey. ‘But that's not all – I think the little swine is after my Laura.'

Thor's deadpan expression stayed put, while he faced Jackie, but as he turned to put down his glass, a fleeting smile crossed his face.

‘I was in her flat a week last Friday,' went on the club owner. ‘There was an ashtray half full of fag ends. You know she never smokes, says it's bad for her voice.'

Thor kept his voice level, but unconsciously stubbed out his own half-finished cigarette.

‘Nothing in that, for heaven's sake.'

Stott prowled around the room.

‘Suppose not – but it never happened before. For a couple of months past, she's been coming the iceberg with me. If we got together a couple of nights a week, I was lucky. This last fortnight, I haven't had so much as a tickle … she's always got some tale about being tired or ill or going out or summat!'

‘What's this got to do with Geordie Armstrong?'

Jackie's face blackened like a thundercloud.

‘Joe Blunt says he's heard tales around the pubs … Geordie hinting – boasting like – that he's shacked up with some fabulous bird. In the boozer last night Joe heard him tell someone that he'd be surprised if I knew who it was.'

Thor shrugged. ‘You can't believe a word Joe says – apart from being punch-drunk, he'd lie his head off to get Geordie into trouble.'

Stott shook his head angrily.

‘I still got a hunch, you know.' His accent thickened as he got excited and Hansen was hard pressed to understand him at times. ‘Laura's been my bird over two years now. She hadn't a bean when I gave her this singing job – now she's got a car, her own flat, as much cash as she wants. Perhaps I aren't Richard Burton and Gregory Peck rolled into one, but she flaming well owes me something.'

A moment later, the woman in question appeared again. She had removed the signs of battle and only a faint flush on one cheek showed where her master had hit her.

Jackie looked at her and thought that she was the sexiest dish he had ever seen. Hansen looked at her and thought she was the most desirable woman he had ever met. Four years younger than his own thirty-two, she was beautiful, though a certain hardness spoilt her face. Born plain Edna Dodds in North Shields, she had started life as a barmaid, but her face, figure and disposition had soon brought her into the nightlife of the North. Jackie had met her in a nightclub in Doncaster and soon established her in the Rising Sun as the resident singer, a job about which she had no illusions, as sharing Jackie's bed was as much a part of the contract as murmuring throatily into a microphone.

She stalked past him now, on her way to do her second number of the evening. Laura was no great singer, but her slinky appearance and sexy delivery went down well with the virtually all-male audience.

‘Ring for a taxi for me, Thor, please. About fifteen minutes.'

‘I'll take you home, hinny.'

Jackie seemed set to make it up.

‘Like hell you will – I want to sleep tonight. We're all going down to Middlesbrough tomorrow – remember?'

‘Not till the afternoon – come on, sweetheart.'

‘Fifteen minutes, Thor.'

She went out and slammed the door violently.

Jackie dropped into a chair and glowered at the Dane. ‘See what I mean – if it's that bloody Geordie Armstrong, I'll kill him!'

Chapter Three

Alec Bolam threw his hat into the ‘Out' tray and sank morosely into his chair, staring with distaste at the full ‘In' tray.
Thank God, it can stay full until the morning
, he thought. It was Sunday and theoretically he was off duty –
as much as any detective chief inspector could ever be off duty
, he told himself sourly.

He was only in the office as an excuse to get out of the house. Last night, he'd had another flaming row with Vera. She had the sulks this morning and, rather than risk another flare-up, he had taken the car and come in to Headquarters. A couple of halves at the Corner House later on and get back by half past one for lunch – perhaps his wife might be talking to him by then. And maybe Betty, the cause of the trouble as usual, might have got up from bed.

Angrily, he jumped up and walked to the window.
What the hell is the matter with me
, he wondered?

He knew well enough, but didn't want to admit it. He'd had a lifetime of authority – as a senior police officer, as a sergeant in the Military Police … he had always been the boss, the masterful one.

Now he was up against a brick wall – a feminine, solid, unbeatable wall. His wife sided with Betty and he sensed that she was using the situation to get her own back for years of having to give in to him. Home, instead of being a place to run to, had become a good place to get out of – that was why he was hanging about Headquarters now.

He turned back to the room with a sigh.
Altogether too tidy
, he thought, staring around. The few months of occupation hadn't yet given it that patina of homeliness – the doors were still unscratched and the walls still perfectly clean. This new headquarters was all very grand and not even jerry-built. But it wasn't the same as his worn cubby hole down in the old Newcastle City HQ, which now housed ‘A' Division and the Forensic Science laboratory. Since the amalgamation of the police forces into one huge organization surrounding the Tyne, everything had been turned upside-down. This in itself had done nothing to help his unsettled frame of mind.

Bolam dropped back into his chair and made an effort to feel at ease. Even his job didn't help him settle down. He had been taken off regular CID work and given odd titbits that needed special attention. Fine from the promotion point of view, he supposed, but not the same as regular work, out with the old team. At present, he was helping on a long-term fraud investigation that had dragged on for over a year and also had this nightclub racket as his special pigeon.

With the present state of affairs at home, the very mention of the word ‘nightclub' was enough to make him grind his teeth and yet here he was, stuck on a job which reminded him of them all day and often half the night.

He glanced at his watch.
Twenty minutes before the pubs open
. To pass the time, he reached out and idly picked up the top paper from the overflowing tray on his desk. It was a memo from the Tyne Division, time-stamped a few hours ago. Under the new system since the Tyneside Constabulary was formed, all reports from Divisions were collected centrally and circulated daily to the people who might have an interest in what they contained.

Under this regime, Alex got a copy of any incident report, however minor, which concerned clubs or gambling premises and this one from the Tyne seemed another example of trivialities clogging the pipelines.

And yet was it
?

He read the report again, more carefully.

Joe Blunt caught bashing Geordie Armstrong
… Something shifted sluggishly under the silted layers of his memory.

He tipped his chair back on two legs, his domestic worries forgotten in the light of his first love – the nicking of villains. Bolam knew that Geordie Armstrong had been spending money too freely in the last couple of months – one of his ‘snouts' in the city had dropped him some information that Geordie had some kind of fiddle going. In all probability, it was connected with Geordie's job as one of Jackie Stott's croupiers.

Now Geordie gets a hammering and Bolam had little doubt that it was on Stott's orders, especially when partly confirmed by what Ernie Leadbitter said he heard as he entered the office of the
Mississippi
. They'd never be able to prove it, unless Armstrong corroborated it, which was about as likely as a reduction in Income Tax.

Bolam mused over the possibility of this being a notch in which to lever a crowbar against Jackie's empire. He could hardly see how, at present, but if he could follow up these suggestions of sharp practices in the running of the clubs, perhaps he could get a lead to something more serious. Of all the clubs on Tyneside – and there were more there than anywhere outside London – the Stott enterprises were the least desirable.

Jackie had previous convictions for violence, and so had Joe Blunt. The licences were taken out in the name of the Danish manager, who had a clean slate, as far as the British police were concerned. Alec knew that Jackie ran illegal forms of gambling on the sly, but he couldn't catch him at it. The
Mississippi
, especially, was the haunt of undesirable characters. Worse still, he knew that Stott had a nice little sideline in stolen money and the cash proceeds of other robberies. Crooks from all over the North, embarrassed by large amounts of cash, would be hard put to it if called upon to explain the source of their sudden wealth. Jackie would obligingly relieve them of the money and issue a genuine cheque – at a handsome discount – assuring them that he would swear if necessary that they had got the funds from a lucky night in his gaming rooms.

In one way or the other, Jackie Stott had become Target Number One for Alec Bolam, even apart from his own private interest in the Rising Sun Club.

The detective sighed, looked at his watch again and stuffed Leadbitter's report into his breast pocket.

Come Monday, I'll be having a word or two with Jackie
.

Stott sat alone in his flat at the back of the club.

The table in front of him was littered with empty beer bottles, glasses and the stubs of small cheroots. His collar was undone and his tie pulled loose. Jackie was slightly drunk, he was jealous and he was spoiling for a fight with someone.

He had been down in Middlesbrough with Thor and Laura all the afternoon, looking at the decor of the new club. He had taken the girl down in his Mercedes, Thor Hansen using his own car. After looking the new premises over, the other two had gone off to interview a possible singer for the club; they arranged to meet him back at the Rising Sun early in the evening.

It was now well past ten o'clock and there was no sign of them. The possibility of Thor and the woman getting up to some funny business together never crossed Jackie's mind. Though generally as cunning as they come, he could be quite naive over some things. So obsessed was he with Geordie Armstrong that he refused to think of any other possibilities. Thor was above suspicion – his right hand, his prop and salvation when it came to running the clubs. Under the unobtrusive but firm guidance of the Dane, his businesses had crept from one sleazy joint three years ago to the present booming expansion. Stott had never given Thor's love life a passing thought and certainly hadn't thought of Laura being attracted by the handsome Scandinavian.

His present ill-temper was mainly due to Laura's pointed coolness over the past weeks.
Today, for instance, she hardly said a damned word all the way to Teesside
, he thought angrily. He laid the blame at Geordie's feet.
Why the hell isn't she here!
He paid her bills; he had a right to have her with him.