Concrete crime, p.1
Concrete Crime, page 1
Concrete Crime
by Manninjg Coles
First published in 1960
This edition published by Rare Treasures
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CONCRETE CRIME
by Manning Coles
To
Debbie Walter of West Covina
Marthe Perrain
Dr. Marcel Petiot
scene: London, Paris, and Beaune
time: 1958
I. The Singing Bird
It was a wet dark night and the Stepney streets were running with water which reflected light in greasy streaks upon the ground and made every shadowed doorway and narrow entry a pit of darkness. The streets were almost deserted since it was that dead quarter of an hour before closing time when it is too late to be worth turning in and, once inside, one might as well stay in the dry for as long as possible. Perhaps, in another ten minutes, it will have left off raining. There was a public house at the corner of a side turning; its lighted windows laid shining golden squares upon the wet pavement and the racing gutter beyond; inside there came the sound of not very musical song while, outside, a leaking downpipe threw a blatter of drops against the window panes as the wind caught the thin stream or let it fall unsteadily to the muddy flagstones below.
A man came along the main street, walking fast but surprisingly quietly; he wore a mackintosh buttoned up round his neck and a felt hat pulled down over his eyes, as was natural on such a night. He had almost reached the side turning when he was overtaken by a tall man walking faster still, who took the first man by the arm and spoke confidentially in his ear in a soft and even kindly voice.
“George, it is George, yes? I thought it was, yes. I am so sorry, I am truly, I am most sad about it but you must realize you know too much—”
There was a sharp crack which might have been a motorcycle engine backfiring and George fell to the ground with a queer noise between a yelp and a grunt. The soft-spoken man, still holding his gun, bent over him to see if a second shot were necessary.
But the door of the public house had opened at the moment of the first shot and a soldier in the doorway saw what was happening.
“Here,” he bellowed, “this ain’t Cyprus. Murder!” He made a rush at the man with the gun, who promptly turned it upon him and fired again.
As though the name of Murder were a releasing spell, the street awoke to life. Windows were flung up, the public house customers rushed out by both doors, women screamed, and a police constable who had just turned a corner fifty yards away put his whistle to his lips and blew as he ran and the shrill sound overtopped all the rest.
The gunman turned and ran the way he had come, easily outstripping the Anchor’s customers who were taken by surprise and delayed by falling over the soldier who had been brought low by a bullet in the leg. But ahead of the fugitive and coming to meet him were other men who had appeared from nowhere, after the manner of onlookers when anything happens, and among them another policeman with another shrilling whistle.
Mrs. Morgan on her way upstairs to bed heard the excitement and was rash enough to open her front door to see what was happening. There were cries of “Murder! Stop him!” and people running; the next second a man flung her out of his way and ran down her passage into her kitchen at the back. There were crashes and sounds of breaking glass, followed by silence until she began to scream like a steam whistle.
Ten minutes later she was sitting in her front room drinking Guinness with Mrs. Duxworthy from next door and telling the police all about it.
“Burst in like a wild bull and throwed me back against the stairs and it’s a mercy my back ain’t broken, and away down my passage into my kitchen and wouldn’t stop to open the door like a Christian but crashes straight through the window, glass and all, and my aspidistra I’ve had ever since I married all smashed on tie floor and my lace curtains tore, and out into the yard—‘as ’e gorn? You’re sure ‘e’s gorn? ‘Ow d’you know as ’e won’t come back? Where’s my ‘usband?”
The police went through the back door like Christians and examined the yard outside. The fugitive had cut himself, if not very badly; drops of blood across the yard and upon the wall at the end showed which way he had gone until the rain came on harder than ever and washed them away.
Three days later, Chief-Superintendent Bagshott rang up Thomas Elphinstone Hambledon at the Foreign Office.
“I’ve heard a rather odd story,” said Bagshott, “and it seems as if it might be more your business than mine. Do you know Tranter? George Tranter, the safebreaker.”
“I’ve met him, yes. Why?”
“Because someone tried to kill him in Stepney three nights ago and he’s willing to talk.”
“Oh no,” said Hambledon incisively, “you must be wrong. They never ‘sing’ on these occasions; you know that as well as I do or, to stretch a point in the interests of courtesy, even better.”
“This time is different. I’m at the hospital now, can you come? We’ve got him in a private room.” Bagshott named the hospital and added, “He’s not desperately ill now. The man walked up behind Tranter, took him by the arm, and shot him at point-blank range. Tranter, however, was carrying one of the nicest kits of safebreaking tools I’ve ever seen in my life in a neat little wallet no bigger than a cigar case and the bullet was deflected off these tools and did not penetrate too deeply. It finished up in his left forearm. He’s more pained about losing his tools than his injuries. Oh, no, I’m not charging him with carrying them but I couldn’t let him keep them, could I?”
“I suppose not, poor man. I refer to Tranter. All right, I’ll come.”
Tranter was lying in an excessively tidy bed in. an austere little room with a large pink constable sitting by his side to keep him company. When Bagshott and Hambledon came in the constable tried to stand smartly to attention and fold a newspaper at the same time with the result that his pencil fell and rolled across the floor.
“All right, Wilcox,” said Bagshott.
“We’ll finish that crossword later,” said Tranter, grinning widely. “Good afternoon, gentlemen. Wilcox and me were just practising to improve our word power, as they say.”
“Splendid,” said Hambledon. “I’ve always wondered why Clapton should be Orient and Plymouth call themselves Argyle, it’s a long long way away, isn’t it? Tranter, I’m sorry to see you in hospital, I hope you’re not badly hurt.”
“Believe me, sir, I’m so busy thinking ’ow lucky I am to be ’ere instead of in the mortuary I don’t ‘ardly notice what I ’ave got. Please sit down, gentlemen, it’s so unusual to ’ave you coming to see me instead of me driving up in a car to call on you it’s quite embarrassing, it is really, I only wish I could offer you a drink but this hotel is what they call dry.”
“Have a cigarette,” said Hambledon, and gave him one. “Bagshott, you’ll have one and so will I. Now we’re all comfortable, Tranter—”
“That nurse’ll come in and open all the windows,” said Tranter. “Fresh-air fiends they are, one an1 all, though nice girls when you get to know them. There’s a red-’aired one as is quite a lass, believe me.”
“About what happened on Monday night,” prompted Bagshott.
“Monday night, yes. You know, gentlemen both, it’s such a new idea for me to start singing to the police if you’ll pardon my mentioning your profession, Mr. Bagshott, sir, that I ‘ardly know ’ow to begin.” Tranter shifter awkwardly in bed and his lips tightened with pain. “I’m that stiff I can’t ‘ardly move. Well, it’s like this. I come on something as I reckon should be stopped and you’ve always dealt very fair with me, Mr. Bagshott, when we ’ave met before on matters of business, and it come into my ’ead lying ’ere as the right thing to do was to ask for you. I’m glad you brought Mr. ‘Ambledon along, it’s more in what I understand ’is line to be, too.”
“Why not begin at the beginning?” suggested Hambledon. “What started all this?”
“Well, the first I ’eard was that two men was asking about for someone as could open a safe when the keys was not to be come by and someone ’ad mentioned my name as a tradesman in that line. So I met these two and they told me a story about some commercial designs as had been pinched from the inventor so as someone else could make a fortune out of it and the pore inventor be frozen out and not get a penny for all ’is ’ard work. I was to open a safe and get these designs out so as the real inventor could rush ’em off to the Patents Office, file ’is claim, and get ’is rights. Excuse me, could I ’ave a drink, so to dignify the liquid in that glass?”
“Barley water, by the look of it,” said Hambledon, and helped him to sit up and drink it. “Did you believe all that?”
“Well, no, being naturally the unbelieving kind, but it didn’t seem much of my business. I was offered a job and the rate of pay was quite astonishing to me. Quite out of this world as they say. ‘Owever, I put that down to them being foreigners and not knowing the rate for the job in this country. So I said all right and where was it? They’d certainly got all the dope; plan of the ’ouse, plan of the grounds, details of the ‘ouse’old, ;ow to get in, everything Type of safe an’ all. It was one of those big rich ‘ouses down at Windlesham where all the nobs live. It ’ad to be done on a certain night, l ast Monday in fact.” Tranter grinned at Bagshott. “I don’t mind telling you all this because, you see, I didn’t do it. On the very morning of the night I was to do the job I read in the paper about an American atomic guided missile or self-aiming missile—one of them things—anyway, the paper said this American gent was bringing the gen over ’ere to share it with us, see? The British, I mean. And the address where ’e was staying was this Windlesham ’ouse I was to visit.
“Well, that started me thinking. I don’t ’ave no truck with politics as a rule, ‘aving more important things to rest my mind on, but I s’pose I’m as patriotic as the next man and I’m all for making this old country a place fit for burglars to live in. Anyway, I wasn’t standing for pinching what was meant to ‘elp us and ‘anding it over to a bunch of lousy foreigners from God knows where. I never did like foreigners much. Besides, a job like that looked like making big trouble and I don’t like trouble. So, when I saw them that afternoon by appointment like, to fix up final details, I just told ’em the deal was off an’ they could buy a tin opener at Woolworth’s and do the job themselves. They began to bluster a bit but I just walked off and left them standing. I mean, it’s a free country, ain’t it? A man ‘asn’t got to do a job if Je don’t want to.”
“Certainly not,” said Bagshott. “That is, unless he is in a place where he is under lawful authority.”
“Now I do think that’s uncalled for, bringing in these un’appy reminiscences at such a pleasant meeting,”
“Bagshott,” said Hambledon reproachfully, “‘a policeman should be courteous and tactful.’ Tranter, what happened that night?”
“I’d been in a pub with some of the boys ‘aving a game of darts, look, and as it was one of these silly places as shuts at ten—why can’t they make up their minds—I was just walking ‘ome. A foul night and raining like Niagara, I was just coming up to the Anchor as doesn’t shut till ‘alf past and I was arguing with myself about whether I’d drop in there for just one more or whether I’d go straight ‘ome and get my wet things off when someone comes up behind and takes my arm, friendly-like. ‘George,’
’e says, ’it is George, yes?’ Course, I knew who it was the moment he spoke. He’s got a soft purring sort of voice like the way you ’ear people talking to cats if they’re the sort as likes cats. ‘Poor pussy, did ‘urns den,’ you know. Soppy. Always talks like that, ’e does, an’ got a foreign accent you could cut with a butter knife. Ends every sentence with ‘yes?’ or ‘no’ like ’e was telling you what he wants you to say back. Very apologetic ’e was, so terribly sorry ’e didn’t know what to take for it, but I knew too much and with that there’s a bang and something ‘its me in the ribs, blimey, like being kicked by a flipping atomic-powered army mule and knocks the wind out of me. I went down and cracks my ’ead on the wall or something and when I woke up I was ’ere. Not in ’ere actually, in a ward with ministering angels circling round. I must ‘a been delirious ’cause all I could think of was asking for Mr. Bagshott ’ere. I mean, we can’t ’ave our innocent ‘elpless American visitors getting mixed up with characters like that, can we? Then you didn’t come yourself.”
“I sent Detective-Inspector Ennis,” said Bagshott, “He’s very good, you know.”
“Yes, but I always believes in going straight to the ‘orse’s mouth, if you get me.”
“Tranter,” said Hambledon, “tell me all you know about this man, will you? Was he the only one you met?”
“There was two of ’em but the other one didn’t talk to me, only to Jones.”
“Jones?”
“I ask ’im what ’is name was and ’e says ‘Jones,’ just like that, I says, ‘But you’re not a Taffy, you don’t talk like ’em.’
‘Taffy?’
’e says, ‘what is it, this Taffy?’ an’ you could tell ’e didn’t know. ‘Scrub it,’ I says, ’it don’t matter. It’s just something you ain’t. Jones it is,’ I says.”
“Didn’t you hear them call each other anything?”
“Not to know it, they was talking French—I think.”
“You’re not sure?”
“Well, it sounded like French,” said Tranter doubtfully, “but I could be wrong, I can’t speak the language myself. It wasn’t Arabic, anyway.”
“Eighth Army?” said Hambledon.
“That’s right, sir. Cooh, them Wogs. Pinch the teeth out of your ’ead, they will,”
“Yes, I know. Now these two men, can you describe them? Take your time.”
“Jones,” said Tranter. “A tall slim bloke, well, taller than me. Five ten or eleven. Five ten, I guess he looks taller than ’e really is. Got one of those square faces, jawbones stick Out each side, know what I mean? Thin wide mouth, stretches easy. Doesn’t smile, ’e grins sudden and then it goes again altogether. Small eyes, a bit squinny. Colourless all over, hair, eyebrows, skin, everything. Eyes, oh yes, pale grey I’d say, no particular colour. One ear sticks out, the—the left, yes. No, no scars, at least, not where I could see ’em. Got lines down ’is cheeks, not from ’is nose to ’is mouth like Mr. Bagshott’s but ‘alfway across like ’ere,” said Tranter, drawing a finger down his own cheek. “Showed when ’e grinned. Nose? Oh, I don’t know. Just the kind you wouldn’t notice. I can’t think of anything else. Oh, ’e walked sort of slinky and smooth like a giggle—oh do they call ’em?”
“A jolly good description,” said Bagshott warmly. “Excellent. We shall have to have you in the Force.”
“Oh don’t make me laugh,” said Tranter weakly, “it “urts my ribs. Got that all down, ’ave you?”
“Yes, thank you. Now, the other man?”
“Oh, ’im. Much more ordinary sort of bloke. Medium height, about the same as me. Dark ‘air, dark eyes, dark skin—I don’t mean coloured, just sort of grubby. Looked as though ’e never did get a real clean shave. Stout. No, not stout, more what you’d call solid. Dark clothes, dark ’at. Sort of man you see ’im by the ‘undred anywhere. Sorry. Can’t say I took a lot of notice if you get me; it was Jones as always put ‘imself forward. Can I ’ave another drink?”
Hambledon was in the act of helping him to drink it when the door opened and a nurse put her head in.
“Now, Mr. Tranter, haven’t you talked enough for one day? Can’t have you getting overtired, you know.”
“Call me Georgie,” said Mr. Tranter gallantly, “an’ I’ll do just anything you say, ‘owever silly.”
Since it was plain that the nurse meant to have her own way, Hambledon and Bagshott took their leave.
“I’ll come again, Tranter,” said Hambledon, shaking hands with him. “You’re safe here, get well quickly.”
“Oh, I’m fine now they’ve picked all the bits out,” said Tranter cheerfully. “By the way, I like grapes.”
II. Charcoal Charlie
“It’s a pity we didn’t get that description earlier,” said Bagshott, as they walked away, “we might have picked them, up. We’ll have a look even now, of course, but I expect they’ve left the country days ago.”
“Left the same night if they’ve got any sense,” said Hambledon. “You know, that description reminds me of a man called Magid, Louis Magid. He’s mixed up with that international crowd, you know, in fact he’s pretty international himself. He’s not French by descent, he’s a Middle : European of some kind. Comes from Marseilles.”
“I don’t think I’ve come across him.”
“Oh, you wouldn’t, he usually operates down in the Marseilles area. I thought he was dead but perhaps he isn’t. I’ve seen his dossier, he’s a killer. Not many people have survived his attentions but a few have lived long enough to describe him and they all say the same thing about his soft voice and apologetic manner. He always tells them how sorry he is. They say it’s rather horrible, he’s so nice and friendly and then bang-bang. Completely cold-blooded.”
“He wants putting down,” said Bagshott.
“He does indeed, he’s got a very nasty record. By the way, if you make enquiries in the underworld I fancy you’ll find they’ll talk for once. Like Tranter. For one thing, they don’t like foreigners butting in and, for another, Tranter is very well liked. If anyone can ‘shop’ those foreigners they will.”
