John Creasey - The Toff And The Stolen Tresses

“Yes?”

“I hope we are not going to be bad friends.”

“I hope not, too.”

Donny shrugged and whipped off the sheet, and brushed with a soft brush, talking all the time.

“Is there anything you would like, Mr. Rollison? Haircream, tonic, razor blades, shampoo lotion, toothpaste—anything at all?” He was smiling as he opened the door of a cupboard and showed a mass of expensive-looking goods. Rollison saw that most of them were marked in a way which he knew well: a monogrammed double J, in script writing; it was the monogram of Jepsons. “Or even,” went on Donny, “a wig?”

Rollison stood up.

“Not yet,” he said, “but I’ll know where to come if I want one, Donny.”

He broke off, for he heard a door slam. That seemed almost a sacrilege here. Then came running footsteps and voices, and a girl crying on a high-pitched note. Donny stepped swiftly to the door and opened it. A girl appeared, her eyes ablaze with rage and yet despair, a girl who would have been pretty but for her expression and for the disaster which had overtaken her hair.

She had been shorn.

Someone had hacked off her hair, as if with a pair of garden shears. One cut, close to the front of her head over the right eye, actually showed the white scalp beneath; one lock fell over her left ear.

“Look what they’ve done to my hair!” she cried. “Look what they’ve done to my hair! What am I going to do? Tell me, what am I going to do? I can’t stand it, I just can’t stand it, what am I going to do?”

CHAPTER SEVEN

Boys Will Be Boys

Rollison stood and watched the older man and the girl, and in Donny’s eyes he thought he saw the light of great compassion. No one could doubt the despair in the girl’s, and it was not all due to shock and distress; some deeper reason lay behind it.

“Don’t just stand there!” the girl cried. “What am I going to do?”

Donny put a pale hand gently on her shoulder.

“I will help you,” he said. “Leah, who did this to you?” Each word seemed to hang heavily on the air.

“I don’t know who they were. There was a gang of Teddy Boys hanging about near the shop, I didn’t know they were after me. I think it’s because I wouldn’t have anything to do with their leader, he tried to make a date—” at this Leah broke off, and hot tears flooded her eyes. “What am I going to do?” she asked brokenly, and seemed to fall towards Donny. “I can’t even enter for the competition now.”

Donny’s arms went round her shoulders as she cried. A saint? He looked at Rollison for the first time since the girl had come in, but he was not thinking of Rollison, only of this problem. Several assistants had come to see what was happening, two men with their hair only partly cut among them; but Donny took no more notice of these than he did of the Toff.

Rollison asked: “Where did it happen?” as if that mattered now.

“Please—” Donny began.

“It happened just round the corner,” said a little woman who stood with the crowd; short, thin, with sharp features and very bright, browny eyes. “The devils! If I had my way I’d horsewhip them. There must have been a dozen of them, and when I saw them set about her out there in the open, I thought the world was coming to an end. Two of them held her arms behind her and one pushed her hair over her face and made it hang down while another one used a pair of shears.” She gave that word a touch of horror. “I thought they were going to murder her!”

“Do the police know yet?” asked Rollison.

“There were two just round the corner, but it was done so quick no one had a chance to call them. You know what’ll happen, don’t you? Those devils will cover up for each other, the cops won’t be able to pin a thing on to any of them.”

Throughout all this, Leah went on sobbing. Now Donny turned and led her into the room where he had cut the Toff s hair. He closed the door. He did not tell the others to go back to the salons, but one after another they went, and the little woman talked angrily to the queen at the cash desk. Rollison joined them, and when he had a chance, asked quietly:

“Who is the girl, do you know?”

“Oh, yes. That’s Donny’s Leah.”

“I don’t quite understand you.”

“His daughter,” the little woman said tartly. “The youngest of his kids. Proper apple of his eye, Leah is.”

“What was she to enter?” Rollison asked.

“Oh, the Beautiful Hair competition,” answered the queen, and touched a leaflet close to her till, then picked one up and handed it to Rollison. “She had such lovely hair, Leah did, she really had a chance to win, and she’d set her heart on it.” The queen looked really distressed.

Then, two policemen arrived. . . .

Rollison left them to their task, and went out to his Rolls-Bentley. No one was near it, for the crowd was gathered about the doorway of the shop, hopeful of sensation and excitement. Rollison did not get into the car at once, but walked briskly to a telephone kiosk some fifty yards away. He saw no youths, and no one appeared to take any interest in him. He dialled Whitehall 1212 and asked for Superintendent Grice; soon another man came on the line.

“I’m sorry, sir, Mr. Grice is out. Who is that, please?”

“Rollison.”

“Oh, hallo, Mr. Rollison!” The voice brightened into eagerness. “I don’t think Mr. Grice will be long, and I know he’s hoping to hear from you. Where can he call you?”

“I’ll call him again,” said Rollison. “Meanwhile here’s a message for him. One of Donny Sampson’s daughters was attacked just now, and all her hair cut off. Ask Mr. Grice to ask the Division not to make too much fuss about it, will you?”

“Why not, sir?”

“I think it might have been done to impress me,” said Rollison, “but it might be a good idea to let everyone think it was a personal quarrel between Leah Sampson and some Teddy Boys.”

“I’ll pass the message on, sir, but why do you think it might have been done for your benefit?”

“That’s just one of the problems,” said Rollison, mildly. “Good-bye.” He rang off, and went out and turned towards the Rolls-Bentley. Even from here he saw that the door was open, and next moment he saw two small boys bouncing up on the seats, one at the front and one at the back. He remembered turning the key in the lock; so how had they got in?

As Rollison drew nearer, one of the boys turned and spotted him. Each was out of the car in a flash, and went racing along the road towards the nearest corner and out of sight.

“Little devils,” Rollison said, but wasn’t even slightly amused, for he was still sure he had locked the car. Had a car thief forced the lock?

He reached the Rolls-Bentley.

He stopped short, as if someone had hit him.

The upholstery had been ripped time and time again, with long, sharp knives. The leather was a criss cross of deep cuts, and in places the foam rubber seating showed through. The insides of the door panels had been broken, and lay on the floor, sticking in an oozy, snow-white lake; obviously a tin of paint had been turned upside down; it was impossible to put a foot on the floor near the steering wheel without stepping on to the tacky mess.

Rollison stared towards the street corner.

He would not be able to recognise those boys again, and doubted whether anyone else would. They had been paid for this, of course, and given the tools and the paint. This was of a piece with the raid on Jimmy Jones’s home and the destruction done at the other places: this had the mark of beasts upon it, the mark of Tiny Wallis and Mick Clay.

He closed the car doors quietly, went back to the telephone, called Jolly, and told him all about it.

“I’m very sorry indeed to hear of this vandalism, sir,” Jolly said. “I will arrange for a garage to come and tow the car away. You may lock it up again, sir, I will give the men the spare key, and I’ll send a hired car for you.”

“Thanks,” said Rollison. “An oldish one with a hotted up engine, and send one of my toy pistols with the driver.”

“Very good, sir.” Jolly was not at all surprised. “Is there anything else?”

“Please,” said Rollison. “Don’t ask the Yard or anyone official, but get in touch with one of the newspapers. Wilson of the Globe is probably the best for this. We want to know if there have been many cases of hair fetishism in the past few weeks.”

“Young woman whose hair has been cut off, sir?”

“Yes.”

“I read of such a case only yesterday, I believe that it was at Croydon,” said Jolly. “And I think—but I will check, and have a report ready as soon as possible.”

“Good. And check the value of human hair for wigs and things, will you?”

“I will indeed. What time do you think you will be back, sir?”

“With luck, for dinner.”

“Very good, sir,” said Jolly. “I shall expect you.”

When Rollison stepped out of the kiosk the crowd round the shop had thinned. He saw a Jaguar moving off, and making a U turn. Donny was at the wheel, still wearing his white smock, with his young daughter beside him. Leah Sampson, aged about eighteen, with her lovely, glossy, raven black hair shorn off.

Had that been done to coincide with his, Rollison’s, visit to Donny?

If so, why?

It would be easy to imagine a reason for sheer coincidence.

Rollison passed the Rolls-Bentley again; no one was near it. Inside and outside the hairdressers’ things seemed quite normal, and he was sure that he wasn’t being followed. He recalled the address of Tiny Wallis and Mick Clay, which was quite near here.

He waited at a corner for fifteen minutes, and then the car which Jolly had laid on drew up, and a driver from the garage jumped out. “This the job you want sir?”

The job was a five years old Austin.

“Acceleration all right?” asked Rollison. “Like a jet, sir. Care to try it out?”

“I’ll take your word for it, thanks,” said Rollison. “You’ll wait for the breakdown van for my car, won’t you?”

“Yes, sir. Oh, and here’s something Mr. Jolly asked me to give you.”

“Fine,” said Rollison gravely, and took a small cardboard box from the man: the “toy’ pistol.

He got into the car, turned the corner at once, and then tried out the car’s acceleration; it was all that he could ask if he should need to get away in a hurry. He drove at normal speed towards the Mile End Road, and eventually to the street where the Blue Dog stood at the corner. He was not surprised to see two of Ebbutt’s scouts standing at the door of the big gymnasium behind the pub, a wooden building with a corrugated iron roof.

The men waved, and one came hurrying. Rollison slowed down.

“Mr. Ebbutt would like a word wiv you, Mr. Ar.”

“Thanks,” said Rollison, and got out and lit another cigarette. It was a little after half past three; less than two and a half hours since he had first stepped into the Blue Dog. One of the astonishing things was the speed of events. The attempt to run him down; the swift decision to act upon a woman’s charge of murder; the shearing of Leah Sampson’s hair; and the despoliation of the Rolls-Bentley. All of these things helped to create in him a cold anger which he could not throw off; so his greeting for Bill Ebbutt was not so bright as it might have been.

“Want me, Bill?”

“Yes, Mr. Ar,” said Ebbutt, panting a little because he had been hurrying. He looked almost an old man. “You’ve been warned plenty “aven’t you? They nearly tore your guts out down at the corner.”