John Creasey - Kill The Toff

“You worried them—I’ll believe that!”

Thanks. I think they discovered that I’d discovered that Mellor was this long-lost son. So they made a hasty move and also their first major mistake. I think I can now prove that they were prepared to murder Mellor and that alone would cast some doubt and bring new evidence. But they also showed something else. This is not what it looked like in the first place—simply a nasty domestic business with an avaricious next-but-one-of-kin getting rid of the but-one. I won’t say this is gangster stuff hut some pretty hardened bad men are involved. If the police take Mellor these gentlemen will know exactly where they stand. If Mellor disappears again they’ll be at sixes and sevens and they’ll do more desperate things to find him.”

“Hmm,” grunted the doctor. “And you’ll stick your neck right out.”

“That’s it.”

“Well, if the police don’t ask me whether I’ve seen Mellor, I won’t tell them,” said the doctor. “If they ask whether I’ve seen you, I shall tell them all about it.”

“I hope they don’t ask until I’ve got Mellor away from here. When can he be moved?”

“To-morrow, at the earliest. You’ll have to arrange for an ambulance or a shooting-brake—I don’t want him jolted about too much, even to-morrow. And of course he may not pull through,” added the doctor. “In that case—”

“The show’s over,” said Rollison. “But he’ll pull through. Thank you, Doc.”

“No one can help being born a fool,” said the doctor. “I’ll give him another quarter of an hour and if he isn’t showing signs of improvement by then I’ll have to do a blood test. There’s no need for you to wait. I’ll telephone you when I can be sure which way he’ll turn. Get my wife to dress that bite in your hand before you go and give my love to the other buccaneer.”

Rollison looked puzzled. “The other one?”

The doctor chuckled, and said: “Bill Ebbutt.

Who else? Tell him I said so, won’t you?”

* * *

To the stranger passing through there is only a drab greyness in the East of London, relieved here and there by garish brightness in the shops, at the cinemas and the more prosperous public-houses. Rollison, who knew the district well, saw beyond the surface to the heart of the East End, knew its colour and gaiety, its careless generosity, its pulsating life.

The district had grown upon him over the years until it was to him the real heart of London and the West End was a city apart. When he had first come he had been full of the impetuosity of youth, a born adventurer seeking adventure and seeking criminals at the same time. Then he had believed the East End to be a haunt of vice, had seen almost every man as a potential criminal. He had discovered that the East Enders presented a solid front against the police, an iron curtain behind which lawlessness prevailed. But even that was false. The curtain was there, thick, almost impenetrable. There remained parts of the East End where policemen always went in pairs because it was dangerous for them to patrol the streets alone. But the great majority of the people had no more to do with crime than the great masses in the dormitory suburbs; less than many in the West End.

Their distrust of the police was born of what they considered injustice; from the days when the police had harassed and pestered them about petty, insignificant misdemeanours; from the days, in fact, when a man could be hanged for stealing a lamb and when sheep had grazed within easy distance of the East End, easy for the taking by hungry folk.

Over the years a kind of wary armistice had sprung up between the East Enders and the police. The curtain remained but was less thick, less formidable.

Rollison had penetrated beyond the curtain when it had been discovered that he bore no malice against small-part crooks but had a burning hatred for murderers, blackmailers, white-slavers, dope-runners—the motley collection of rogues who gathered for their own protection behind the curtain, emerging only to raid the West End or the provinces, then sneaking back. There was no love lost between the average Cockney and these parasites; nor was there betrayal for they had a common enemy: the law.

After a while Rollison had made friends with many East Enders and among the first was Bill Ebbutt. It was said that Ebbutt had first nicknamed him “The Toff.” Whoever it had been, the soubriquet had stuck. Many people would look blank if they heard the name Rollison but would relax and nod genially when “The Toff” was mentioned. For he did much for them quietly, often anonymously, and did not hesitate to take up their cause even if it were unpopular. So he was accepted by most and hated by some—the real criminals, the gang-leaders, the vice kings.

Sometimes fear of what the Toff might do led to a widespread campaign to discredit him in the East End; once or twice it had come near to success. It might happen again but, as he drove from the clinic to Bill Ebbutt’s place, Rollison did not think it would happen for a long time.

He did know that already the whisper of his latest visit was spreading, in rooms, houses, pubs, billiards-saloons, doss-houses, warehouses, shops and factories, throughout the docks and along the Thames and the Thames-side. A simple, good-humoured whisper, creating the same kind of feeling that came when you went to bed with the knowledge that you would awaken to a fine, bright day. He would have been less than human had it not pleased him.

* * *

Bill Ebbutt was a massive man, getting on in years and showing it physically but with a mind as keen and alert as it had ever been. He was a connoisseur of beers and ales; of boxing; and of invective. Of these three, he loved boxing most. That was why he, some years earlier, from the high state of landlord of the Blue Dog, had become the sole owner of Bill Ebbutt’s Gymnasium. This was behind the pub—a large, square wooden building with a corrugated-iron roof and it looked rather like the clinic. The entrance faced a side street. There were always several old men standing about, smoking their pipes or chewing their Old Nod , waiting for opening time when they could wet their whistles on beer which had to be good to be sold in the Blue Dog.

Inside the wooden building a huge room was fitted up as a gymnasium which would not have disgraced a public school or a leading professional football club. Parallel bars, ropes, vaulting-horses, punch-balls, chest-expanders, locked rowing machines—all the impedimenta of a gymnasium were there. In addition there were two rings, one at each end—the second ring was a recent installation, Bill’s latest pride. In the farthest corner from the door a little room was partitioned off and outside was a single word: Office , printed badly and fading. Bill was the most approachable man in the world when outside but, ensconced in the tiny, over-crowded and over-heated office, the walls of which were covered with photographs of his young hopes or his champions wearing prize belts, he was as difficult of access as a dictator.

At nearly half-past six that day he was alone in the office, poring over a copy of Sporting

Life. He was wearing glasses and was still ashamed of it—that was one of the reasons why he hated anyone to come in. They were large and horn-rimmed and gave his ugly, battered face with its one cauliflower ear and its flattened nose the look of a professorial chimpanzee. His lips were pursed. Occasionally he parted them to emit a slow, deliberate term of abuse. Sometimes he would start and peer closer at the tiny print, as if he could not believe what was written there. Occasionally, too, he clenched his massive fist and thumped the table which served as his desk.

“ The blistering son of a festering father, ” he breathed and thumped. “The pig-eyed baboon. I’ll turn ‘is ‘ead rahnd so ‘e don’t know wevver ‘c’s comin’ or goin’. The flickin ’ fraud, I’ll burn ‘im.”

There was a tap at the door.

“Go a -way! ” he roared without lifting his head. “ The perishi n’ , lyi n’ , ‘a lf-baked son’ve a nape. No boy o’ mine ever won a fairer fight. To say ‘e won on a foul—”

There was another tap.

“I told yer to ‘op it! “Op it, or I’ll slit yer gizzard, yer mangy ape. Look wot ‘e says abaht the ref Strike a light! I’ll tear ‘im to pieces. I—”

The man outside was persistent but the third lap had a lighter sound, as if timidity had intervened.

“ Go a n’ fry yerself! ” Bill slid off his chair. “Why, if I ‘ave ter tell yer again—”

“Bill, look aht,” came a plaintive whisper. “She’s just comin’ in. Don’t say I didn’t warn yer.”

“I’ll break ‘im up inter small pieces an roast ‘im. The ruddy, lyin’, effin’—”

The door swung open and a diminutive woman dressed in tight, old-fashioned clothes with a flowering skirt which almost reached her ankles and a wide-brimmed straw hat in which two feathers, scarlet and yellow, bobbed fiercely, entered the office. Bill started and snatched off his glasses.

“So you’re still at it,” said the woman, her mouth closing like a trap as she finished the sentence. “You know where you’ll end up, don’t yer? You’ll end up in ‘ell.”

“I don’t want none of your fire-an’-brimstone talk, Lil,” growled Ebbutt. “If you’d seen the way they’ve torn the Kid apart, you’d want ter tear a strip orf ‘em yerself.” His tone was conciliatory and his manner almost as timid as the third warning tap. “Wotjer want?”

“I thought you would like to know, Mr Ebbutt, that a certain gentleman is going to pay us a visit,” said Bill’s wife, in a tone of practised refinement.

“I don’t want ter see no one, unless it’s that perishin’ boxing correspondent. Then I’d—”

“I will tell Mr Rollison,” said Lil, and turned on her high heels.

Ebbutt blinked. “ ‘Oo? ‘Ere! Come orf it, Lil; ‘ave a n’eart, duck. Is Mr Ar arahnd?”

“I thought you was only interested in boxers,” said Lil with a sniff.

Ebbutt slipped his arm round her waist. Standing together, his mountainous figure dwarfed her lath-like slimness. They were in the open doorway. A few youngsters were training, one smiting a punch-ball as if it were a mortal enemy and another doing a series of somersaults. Round the walls lounged men in shabby clothes and no one appeared to take any notice of the Ebbutts.

“Take it easy, Lil. Do me a power of good, Mr Ar would. No one I’d rather ‘ave a chat wiv.”

“And I suppose I ought to feel honoured,” snapped Lil.

“Come orf it.” Ebbutt squeezed her waist and she looked up at him with a quick, teasing smile.

“That ‘Igginbottom rang up,” she told him. “You was engaged at the office, so he got through to the pub apartment. Mr Rollison’s coming to see you and he wants a room ready for a stranger.”

“Gor blimey! Wot’s ‘e up to?”

“I expect he’ll tell you, when it suits him,” said Lil. “Wants a nurse, too. It looks as if someone’s in trouble. I told Mr ‘Igginbottom I would arrange all that was necessary, I was sure you wouldn’t have no time. Annie will take him in.”

Ebbutt scratched his chin.

“Annie’s okay. Not a bad idea, Lil, ta. Where are you goin’, all toffed up?”

Lil drew herself from his grasp, gave her coat a pat and bobbed her feathers.