Moving Target, page 8
Kessler now looked surprised and concerned.
“Yes, Mr. Kessler. That's what your Head Office believes.” Palmer lit a cigarette. “First off, I have to say that my presence here, sent by your Head Office, is obviously a matter of secrecy and security. You'll note the letter I bring from your Vice President, Mr. Goldberg, gives you a special telex number for all communications between yourself and Mr. Goldberg about my work here. When you check the telex number, you'll find it belongs to a new subsidiary of New York Bank and Trust Company, namely New York Trust Security Incorporated, Suite 505, Number 197 Wall Street. You should write or telex any queries about my activities to Goldberg at that address, and not to Head Office. In this day and age, the enemy has so often proved to be within...” He talked on with Mr. Kessler for another half an hour. At the end of it he had quite enough information to rob the New York Bank and Trust Company. He had, in fact, enough information to rob a dozen banks in London.
They picked Palmer up in the Roof Top Bar of the Hilton Hotel-Paddy, the Curzon House Hotel waiter, and the thick-necked hard case who had chauffeured them on the previous occasion. Paddy had an altercation with the maître d' entering the Roof Top Bar, probably the last bar in England where a tie is required to drink scotch. The maître d' came into the bar to select Palmer from Paddy's description. Palmer came out. Paddy said one obscene word to the maître d'. The maître d' said nothing.
They drove straight to the Broker's house in Brent.
As soon as the bell was touched, the Broker opened the door. He ushered them into the hall. Paddy and the hard case disappeared off into a side room. The Broker conducted Palmer through the dark house to the comfortably furnished room at the back.
“I didn't introduce myself last time. My name is James Kavanagh.” He did not extend his hand, but gestured Palmer to a seat. “Also I didn't tell you why they call me the Broker.” Palmer said nothing. He was aware of movement, and low voices, towards the front of the house. The doorbell rang. More soft voices. The sound of the front door closing.
“I'm Irish, but I wasn't involved, until recently, in Irish politics. I was a "broker". That's the name over here for a person who finds, or puts up the money to finance a particular crime. I'm a professional, unlike these patriots.” He thumbed towards the front of the house. “It's worth bearing in mind, Mr. Palmer, that I am a professional.”
Palmer didn't understand if the man was trying to convey some unmentionable subtlety in the explanation. He'd think about that later.
Palmer wondered about the other people in the house, the doorbell ringing again, more voices, other doors opening and closing.
“How did it go at the bank?" Kavanagh asked.
“I'll give you some points. It would take hours to explain everything...”
"The salient points, Mr. Palmer...”
“I guessed right, no London clearing banks have preset time controls on the opening of their safes. It's expensive equipment. London banks have limited robbery insurance. I think they take the risk.”
The Broker was nodding, as if all this was news to him, which it probably wasn't.
"The set-up for American banks in London is totally different. The reason is that the safes of American banks in London are repositories of stock certificates, mainly convertible, held by US citizens and firms in this country. These stocks are worth millions. It's these stocks, and cash in sterling and dollars, we're going to steal.”
Palmer talked on as if he had given this lecture several times. “Because of the large amounts in these safes, and because English insurance companies require special precautions to protect these safes, the London American banks have imported American-manufactured safe-security equipment. I've seen the New York Bank and Trust Company's safe. My assay of the situation is it's like stealing candy from a kid.” The Broker sat back and looked thoughtful.
"The timing mechanism on the safe. I met this guy in Philadelphia who had worked on the installation of safes in London. The safes have a time-clock on them where, even if you know their combinations, they cannot be opened except between the hours of say, nine am to five pm on five weekdays, when there are people constantly in the bank.”
The Broker was slowly nodding.
“That's why they have this crazy night and weekend security patrol, by this firm based in South Audley Street.”
“But you're saying the combinations are useless unless we make it an office-hour daylight raid; we wouldn't be interested in that.”
“I'm not saying that. On the side of these safes is the Bulova electric clock that times the opening and closing. This is a complicated business to explain, but the principle is simple. We're going to get a Bulova clock to open the safe in the middle of the night. There's a fail-safe device in America where if you tamper with this clock, the safe jams up permanently until Bulova come and sort it out."
“I see,” the Broker said. He didn't.
“However, in installing this equipment in England, and in adapting it from 120 volts AC to 230 volts AC and inserting a step-up transformer, they have had to cut this fail-safe device out. D'you know how an electric clock is powered by the AC cycle?"
The Broker shrugged. “No.”
“Suffice it to say, I've been down the Tottenham Court Road, bought a soldering iron, solder, bits and pieces of electrical equipment, and I've made a box of tricks which I will cut into the Bulova clock circuit. Then it'll take a minute for the hands on that clock to spin round an hour. And that safe will be ready to be opened not at nine am but at three am or any other time we decide.”
There was a long pause while the Broker studied him. Then he stood up. “Come with me.” Formal now, alert. It was an order.
He led Palmer out of the room and down the corridor, and left, into the front room of the house. In the front room there were fifteen men sitting in chairs around the walls deep in some discussion. The Broker led Palmer to the middle of the room. All eyes were on him. Palmer had an uncomfortable feeling, a prize bull in the auction ring, these farmers, calculating his worth at stud, or slaughter.
“Our new draftsman. He calls himself a number of names -Kalman, Palmer, Christopher, Thompson...” The Broker said flatly.
Palmer wondered about how much power the Broker wielded with these people. Would the Broker end up one day like their last draftsman-would he, Palmer, end up like their last draftsman.
The Broker was introducing the fifteen people. 'Parrish, McEvoy, Dillon Moran, Murphy, Traynor, Martin,' rolled off in an anti-clockwise direction-all big men. They were the bulls. Palmer had his first inkling of the real possibility of danger developing on what he'd assumed would be a down- the-line operation. He nodded, and the names nodded to him. But at the end of the circle of introductions his eyes came back to meet the eyes of the only man that the Broker had given a Christian name to-Dillon Moran. There was something about Dillon Moran that would worry anyone, including Palmer. His height, the granite cold quality of his eyes. He was the only one who had not nodded, or acknowledged, the Broker's introduction.
It was just that. A circle of introductions, then the Broker was leading him out of the room and opening the front door. He pointed to Paddy the waiter, and the silent chauffeur in the car at the kerb. “Paddy will take you back to the hotel.”
Palmer faced the Broker. “I don't think that was a good idea security-wise. Introductions, exchanges of names. The less we know about each other the better.”
The Broker pursed his lips, calculating the simplest way to express it. “I wasn't introducing them to you. I was showing you to them. For the purposes of identification, do you see? If you ever play games with us, Mr. Palmer, there are fifteen men who know exactly what you look like, when they come to kill you.”
Noon. Castle got into the car and Billy drove to the East End. Davies had, as usual, not only done his routine research last night and this morning, but had come up with other things besides. Argyle Buildings, Jamaica Road, SE1, like many other slum blocks of flats in London, was owned by the Commissioners of the Church of England. The lease for Number 14 was in the name George Smith-so obviously a pseudonym for some villain that Davies had checked at Tower Bridge, the local nick. The CID there had never heard of a George Smith of Argyle Buildings. While he was about it, Davies asked the nick if they knew of any honest citizens in Argyle Buildings who might give the Sweeney a lift up and advice. It took Tower Bridge CID two hours to come up with one name. There was a bloke worked nights on the Corporation road-washers-He'd been helpful with some honest news on a villain some time back. He might be bent now, but he was straight nine months ago. His name was Davies, address, 31 Argyle Buildings.
Castle climbed the stairs to the top outside corridor of one of the two blocks which comprised Argyle Buildings, and pushed down through the lines of damp washing to the extreme end to check whether, from the Davies flat, the ubiquitous Mr. Smith's front door on Number 14 in the adjoining block could be seen. It could.
He rang the doorbell. There was no one in the open-curtained front room, but from the back of the flat the sound of theme music from a lunchtime TV programme. He waited half a minute and rang the bell again. Night worker, waking up, watching telly in bed-Castle decided as a possibility, as he rang the doorbell for the third time. There was the sound of shuffling slippers and a bronchial cough. “Who is it?" A woman's voice.
“Police,” Castle said.
“What d'you want?"
“Open up, please, missus.”
A door-bolt snapped back and the woman, aged around fifty, appeared in a nightgown.
“What d'you want?” she repeated.
“I wonder if you or your husband can help us in a certain inquiry.”
“What inquiry?” She yawned in Castle's face.
Castle took a half a step back as the stale breath hit him.
A man's voice bellowed out, drowning the TV at the back of the flat. “Who is it, love?”
“Police,” 'love' answered.
“Old Bill, local nick?” the male voice enquired. “Sweeney,” Castle answered loud.
“Jesus Christ, why didn't you say?” A second later a slight, stooping man appeared, naked from the waist up, zipping up his trousers. “What d'you want, Mister? What does the Sweeney want with us?”
“Help with some information. From the end of this balcony you can see Number Fourteen. I wonder if you can tell me anything about it? Whether you can describe any person you might have seen entering or leaving it?"
The man knew nothing; the woman knew too much. Or she knew a certain amount and talked too much. She knew that flat belonged to an Irishman; she didn't know his name. She hadn't seen him for a long time. She had seen other men using it. How many? Well, actually, one. She gave an accurate enough description of a man who wasn't McNab. The man had a lot of crumpet, birds. How many? Three. What did they look like? More accuracy now-a woman describing women. Expensive clothes, girls who had their own cars. Call girls probably, from the West End, slumming it with a hard case, with a hard one, down the East End. Two blondes described, then to the pièce de résistance, a full description of the third girl-tall, flash, heavy in jewellery, black girl. “Real slapper, hair frizzed up like a Woolworth mop. A proper African girl. Not your West Indian. Some of them West Indians aren't so bad when you get to know 'em. But not this one. And I arsk you, what is Africans doing in England? I mean when were our lot in Africa larst, with colonies?”
Castle shrugging off the historical enquiry, looking for something that was a positive lead, but in a way the psychology of the situation was to let her run on, while her old man went back and got his shirt on. Castle inhaled the stale breath of British Fascist working-class bigotry, and, when phrases had been repeated once too many times, he shot the question. “You don't know how I could get in touch with the girl-like you haven't told me, when did you last see her here?”
“Week ago."
“And you've no idea how I could get a hold of her?”
“Course I know how to get hold of her. She's a stripper down the Jockey Club, Jamaica Road. Her black tits are on photos all over the bloody front of it. School kids can see them. My old man says that's all right 'cos it teaches kids what black girls are for, but I think it's bleeding daft- bloody Jockey Club's right next door to the Baptist Church. ...Hey, do you want...? Hey, I haven't finished...!”
Castle was pushing his way back to the staircase through the lines of washing.
The Jockey Club, Jamaica Road-Castle tried to remember how many other names it had gone under, and how many managements had actually gone under. It was a post- war building which stood on a corner site junction of Jamaica Road with Ellesley Road, and near the High Street. So there was a lot of passing traffic about and people about. Castle told Billy to cruise the car round the block twice, because he'd noticed something.
“I remember it as the Park Lane Suite, Skylight Club, the Penthouse. Then those thieving Cypriots took it over and it became the Famagusta Club, and the Hellenicana and God knows what else,” Billy offered.
Castle working it out, not failing to notice what the lady in Argyle Buildings had pointed out-the big tits on photos in the club entrance and the spiel: 'Martha de Amour-She Sings, She Strips. Ten More Beautiful Girls, Continuous Nitely...’ Other lovelies in other photos, all black girls.
“Notice, Billy?” Castle asked at the beginning of Billy's third tour round the block.
Billy nodding. "At this time of day, the club's not open. They're not bouncers... "
"What?"
"Bodyguards, guv?"
Castle nodded slowly. There was a front entrance, and there was a side entrance to the Jockey Club. The man idling at the open doors at the front of the club was over six foot, massively built, a bullet head and a pink face, and a tiny cigar jammed into the teeth in the middle of it. To the side of the club his companion was, if anything, larger, certainly heavier, and very dark, probably African. "I wonder if there's another entrance to the club. Left. Then pull into the kerb."
Billy turned the Vauxhall Victor left and out of sight of the heavy at the side door of the club, and pulled the car into the kerb.
"How long do I give you, guv? " Billy worried, knowing that Castle was going to go past the two goons to find out who or what they were guarding. And concerned about Castle's chances vis-à-vis the height and width of the goons.
Castle didn't answer. He studied the ten-foot-high brick wall of the rear of the club. "Take the car up on to the kerb, along the wall. I'll use the car roof as a leg up. "
Billy eased the car up on to the kerb and slid it alongside the wall.
A minute later, Castle was out of the car, eyeing up and down the back lane, then up on to the car roof, and a leap and a grab and he was on top of the brick wall. He got a leg over the wall and changed position, so that he was facing the wall again as he dropped on to the hard cement of the backyard of the club. He fell the wrong way. Pain detonated up from his right ankle. He spent the next minute gasping and cursing as quietly as he could as he hobbled in circles around the dustbins full of waste food and empty bottles that littered the yard.
He put his weight down on the ankle and it seemed all right. He stepped through the rubbish and over to the yard door. His hand went out to grasp the handle. It didn't because the handle was yanked open inwards with the door, and Castle realized two things very quickly. One, that there was obviously a burglar system, probably touch-pads, in the yard. And secondly, that the man who had been standing guard at the side door of the club was the largest black man in the world.
It wasn't just his height, it was his mass, his confidence, his obvious fitness. The black man was grinning. Castle was already consigned to some amusing part of his memory where he stored details of people he threw back over ten-foot walls they'd dropped from.
“Detective Inspector Castle, Flying Squad,” Castle tried for openers. It was apparent that this was not the subtlest approach.
The black man took out a cigarette, lit it, still grinning. "The warrant to enter these premises?”
Castle thought about that. Thought about the whole spectrum and possibilities of negotiating with the big black grin, and meanwhile listened to the music, the girl's voice, and the piano, both tinkling out from somewhere in the building.
“You need a warrant to search a premises, friend, not to enter it.”
That gave the African something to think about, while he changed position edging out of the door trying to look behind Castle, still grinning, maybe thinking there were others out there whom he would be tossing back over the wall. Castle stepped past him.
A huge hand shot out and grabbed Castle by the shoulder, a vice grip, rooting him to the spot. Castle was stopped and stopped himself. He looked into the grin. "That's technical assault.”
The grin widened. “Why be technical about it-you want a real kicking?"
“I'm looking for Miss Martha de Amour.”
“Not anymore.” The big man began to gently haul in on the grip and the shoulder pad of Castle's overcoat.
Castle jabbed a right fist fast and hard on to the man's nose. He saw the pain jerk every muscle across the face. That was less than a second of observation because both of Castle's hands went up and grabbed the man's hair and jerked down in that moment of automatic reaction when the black man's hands moved too late to protect his face. Castle's knee came up as he pulled the man's head down. The hands couldn't protect the nose again. The force of the knee hit the nose a second time. Castle knew the effect, as calculable as the simplest equation-two steam-hammer blows to the nose unplugs the tear ducts, blinds the eyes with tears. Next move, always spin a big man on his axis-own weight will not aid. him unless his feet are solidly placed. Castle kicked hard at the big man's ankle as he straightened, blinded. He kicked him, angling his foot so that the part of the shoe that connected was the solid inside edge of the heel. The black man tipped over twenty degrees while still trying to straighten and grab blindly at Castle.
