Tiger Ragtime (42 page)

AVOID TROUBLE – PAY YOUR INSURANCE

‘Boss.’ Aiden walked in and Aled returned the sheet and envelope to his drawer. ‘We’ve counted and bagged the money. We’re taking ninety pounds to the night safe.’

‘You’ve made the entry in the ledgers?’

‘Yes.’

‘You’re prepared for trouble if it comes?’ Aiden palmed a knife. ‘Always, boss.’

‘When you’re done, you and David can come back here and help close up for the night. Freddie can drive Miss King home. While he’s gone you can count and bag whatever’s left above the float. When Freddie comes back, and not before, the three of you can make another trip to the night safe.’

‘Yes, boss.’

‘Aiden.’ Aled waited until Aiden turned around. ‘I didn’t pay Charlie Moore’s insurance.’

‘I didn’t expect you to, boss.’

David watched Aiden stash the cash bags they had filled with the night’s takings into a briefcase and lock it. Aiden then wound a chain around both his wrist and the handle of the case and secured it with a padlock and steel chain. He handed the keys to the padlock and the briefcase to Freddie, who slipped them into the top pocket of his evening suit.

‘The boss is panicking over nothing,’ Freddie said in his Irish lilt. ‘Tiger Bay is a kiddie’s playground compared to New York.’

‘I’ve never known the boss to get worried over nothing.’ Aiden picked up the case and handed the key to the night safe to David. ‘Let’s go.’

Freddie went ahead of them and opened the car. David and Aiden climbed into the back. As they drove the short distance to the bank, David looked out of the window. Bute Street was quieter than the side streets. As usual, the open-air casinos on the street corners were crowded with both players and onlookers, but the cool autumn weather had kept the women and children indoors and there were no musicians in sight. Winter was coming to the Bay and he suspected that it was going to be quieter than the summer had been.

Freddie stopped the car outside the bank. He felt in his pocket for the keys Aiden had given him.

‘I’ll open the night safe.’ David left the car and looked up and down the street. A street lamp burned brightly directly in front of the bank, but the corner that marked the junction with West Bute Street was shrouded in shadow. The only sounds he could hear were the ships’ hooters and the cries of excitement from the gamblers some distance away.

He bent over the night safe, which was set low in the wall of the bank. A shadow moved. He turned. A skinny middle-aged woman was standing in front of him, dressed like most of the street walkers in too few clothes and too much make-up. She held out a cigarette.

‘Got a light, lover boy?’

‘Don’t smoke,’ David answered.

‘Want something else?’ She pulled down the neck of her low-cut dress and pushed out her flat chest.

‘Clear off.’

‘No need to be rude.’

Aiden climbed out of the back of the car. ‘You’re not wanted, miss. Buzz off.’

David turned back to the night safe but a heavy blow between his shoulder blades felled him to his knees. It was followed by a second blow to the back of his head. The world blurred into grey and black swirls. He was vaguely aware of someone screaming as he collapsed headlong on to the filthy pavement. It was only when he closed his mouth he realised the screams had been his own.

He lay in excruciating pain, unable to move a muscle.

Shapes and shadows moved above and around him. He heard the dull thuds of fists hammering into flesh, interspersed with sharp gasps of breath. He tried to cry out again but failed to make a sound.

Something heavy fell on top of him. He struggled to move it aside and Aiden’s face loomed barely an inch away from his. Aiden’s eyes were open, staring, and something dark and sticky was oozing from his mouth. It took David a few minutes to realise it was blood.

‘Turn him on to his back – I need pressure. Here!’

David lay curled in anguish on the pavement as Aiden was hauled off and laid alongside him. He watched Micah work frantically. He wanted to help, tried to help, but it was torture simply to draw breath.

Micah took off his jacket and crumpled it into a ball.

He grabbed a constable’s hand and pushed the jacket into it before pressing it down hard on to Aiden’s chest. ‘Come on,’ he urged the rookie constable, setting his own hands over the officer’s. ‘A strong boy like you can press harder than that.’

Aiden turned his head and looked directly at David. ‘Aiden?’ David whispered.

Aiden’s eyes glistened darkly like wet coal pebbles into his.

‘Aiden?’

Aiden blinked.

‘Keep talking to him, David,’ Micah shouted. ‘Keep talking. Aiden, look at David, Aiden, fight the pain …’

David kept whispering Aiden’s name, although even as he watched, a cloud filmed Aiden’s eyes. Aiden could still see him, David was certain of it, but it was as though someone was drawing a veil between them.

‘Press harder,’ Micah urged the officer as he continued to try to stem the flow of blood from Aiden’s chest. ‘Where the hell is that ambulance?’

‘They’ll be here as soon as they can, Micah.’

David looked up and saw that they were surrounded by a sea of uniformed police officers.

‘Carry on pressing,’ Micah urged, but even through his pain David sensed that Micah was speaking automatically, without thought as to what he was saying.

David heard Freddie’s distinctive Irish drawl. ‘One of you go to the Tiger Ragtime, get the boss down here. They cut the chain on Aiden’s wrist and got our money. Over ninety quid …’

‘Freddie, are you all right?’ Micah asked.

‘Flesh wound on my arm. Bastard shredded my new suit jacket,’ he cursed.

‘Trust a bloody Irishman,’ one of the coppers said. ‘His arm’s been carved into dog meat and all he can think about is his suit.’

‘Keep pressing down on that jacket.’ Micah turned from Aiden to Freddie. He pulled the tie from around his neck and tied it tightly on the Irishman’s upper arm before looking at David. ‘Where does it hurt?’

‘My back, my head …’

When Micah tried to move him, black shadows crawled upwards from the ground, smothering him, making it impossible for him to breathe. ‘Don’t you faint on me, David! David!’ Micah’s voice, high pitched, urgent, penetrated the fog that had closed in on David.

‘The ambulances are coming.’ One of the rookies blew his whistle as hard as he could and waved his arms in the air.

‘There are enough of us standing around here, boy. I don’t think you need to do that,’ Constable Murphy, one of the older, more experienced officers said calmly.

An ambulance parked alongside them and a man climbed out.

‘This one goes first. Knife wound to the chest has punctured the heart.’ Micah pointed to Aiden. ‘You,’ he looked at the young officer who was still holding the blood-soaked jacket over Aiden’s chest, ‘get in the ambulance with him, and don’t let that pressure up for an instant.’

‘Me…?’

‘You, son.’ Constable Murphy helped the ambulanceman get a stretcher out of the back of the van.

‘Another ambulance is behind us, doctor,’ the ambulance man said, as he and his colleague prepared to move Aiden on to the stretcher.

‘I’m not a doctor,’ Micah said.

‘You behave like one.’

Bells ringing, a second ambulance pulled up behind the first.

‘We need a firm board on the stretcher here,’ Micah called out as soon as the driver and his mate emerged. ‘Spinal injuries and concussion. Freddie,’ Micah finally looked at the Irishman, ‘keep that tourniquet I’ve tied on your arm and get in with David, will you? I’m going with Aiden.’

Judy and Edyth jumped out of the Black Maria and ran headlong into the Royal Infirmary. It was only when they reached the deserted foyer and saw the empty corridors stretching around them that they realised they didn’t have a clue which direction to go in.

A porter rounded a corner. He took one look at Judy in her crimson silk evening gown and Edyth in the work overall and coat she had thrown over her nightdress and stopped dead in his tracks.

‘A relative was brought in tonight …’

‘A knifing victim. Fight in Bute Street? Three men were injured.’ Constable Murphy walked in behind them.

‘Two are in theatre, one’s in the treatment room. There are people in the waiting room.’ The porter pointed down a corridor directly ahead of them. ‘Want me to go with you?’

‘No, we’ll find them.’ Murphy took hold of Edyth’s arm and led the way.

Micah was standing in his blood-soaked shirt-sleeves outside a door at the end of the corridor, talking to a doctor wearing a surgeon’s apron and hat. A mask was pulled down around the doctor’s neck and there were blood splashes on his sleeves and the front of his apron. ‘He didn’t stand a chance,’ the surgeon declared. ‘The knife penetrated upwards from below the ribcage, straight into the heart, damaging the main artery. It’s a wonder he lived until he reached here. You did all that could be done, but he was a dead man the moment that knife hit the blood vessel.’

Edyth caught the tail end of their conversation and ran towards them. ‘Micah … David …?’

Micah slipped his arm around Edyth’s shoulders. ‘I’m fine and David is being operated on now.’

Edyth turned deathly pale. ‘The blood on your shirt …’

‘Most of it is Aiden Collins’s.’

‘Who’s dead?’

‘Aiden,’ Micah answered. ‘David Ellis is the boy who was brought in with spinal injuries and concussion,’ he explained to the doctor.

‘I’m sorry, Miss …’

‘Mrs Slater, I’m a relative.’ Edyth clung to Micah. ‘As Micah said, one of my colleagues is operating on him now. It may be some time before he finishes.’

‘Can we see David,’ Edyth begged.

‘Not while he’s in theatre.’ The doctor indicated the waiting room. ‘You’ll be more comfortable in there.’

Judy was already in the waiting room. She’d taken the chair next to Aled James, who was sitting, slumped forward, on a hard upright chair. He glanced up as they walked in.

‘You got here quickly, Aled,’ Micah commented suspiciously.

‘The police came to the club. They took me to the bank, you’d just left in the ambulances but my car was parked outside so I drove it up here.’ He rose to his feet and offered Micah his hand. ‘Thank you. Freddie and the doctors told me that you did everything you could to save Aiden’s life.’

Micah shook his hand before helping Edyth on to a chair. ‘Whatever I did, it wasn’t enough. How is Freddie?’

‘Preparing to have his arm stitched and be questioned by the police when I saw him a few minutes ago. They took him into a treatment room but they told me I could see him again later.’

‘Did he see who killed Aiden?’

‘Do you need to ask?’ Aled answered.

‘Charlie Moore’s thugs?’ Micah guessed.

‘They made a mistake leaving Freddie alive. After seeing the way Aiden died, he won’t be afraid to testify in court.’

‘Freddie – and you, Mr James – will need police protection,’ Constable Murphy said from the doorway.

‘I’ll buy Freddie all the protection he needs.’ Aled lifted his head and looked at Murphy. ‘That’s the only sure way that Freddie Leary will live to see the inside of a courtroom.’ He turned and stared at Judy as if he were seeing her for the first time. ‘When the police told me what had happened I ordered the boys who man the doors to walk you home.’

‘When I came off stage and heard that David, Aiden, and Freddie had been hurt, I had to come here with Edyth. I didn’t know Aiden was dead. I’m so sorry.’ Judy was sincere. She had been terrified of Aiden the first time she had met him, but she had known him long enough to discover that he was blindly loyal to Aled. And because she also worked for Aled, he had regarded her as one of the people he should protect.

‘I have to tell Harry about David … he’ll never forgive me if I don’t.’ Edyth felt frantically in her coat pocket for pennies for a public telephone. ‘Has anyone any change?’

‘There’s an office down the corridor that has a telephone they allow relatives to make calls from. I’ll take you there, Mrs Slater,’ Constable Murphy offered.

A nurse brought in a tray holding a teapot, sugar bowl, milk jug and half a dozen thick white institution mugs. ‘The doctor ordered it,’ she explained. ‘If you are all waiting for David Ellis to come out of surgery, you’ll probably be here until morning.’

*   *   *

At five o’clock, Judy felt that she had been condemned to sit in the waiting room for eternity. Every bit of her ached, especially the sides of her breasts confined by the boned strapless bodice of her gown. She felt ridiculously over-dressed for a hospital as well as freezing cold and over-exposed, given the Spartan surroundings of the icy waiting room. She had also left the club in such a hurry she had forgotten her stole.

When Aled saw her shivering, he emptied his evening jacket of his wallet, cigar case, and lighter and draped it over her shoulders. She continued to sit next to him, her fingers locked in his, occasionally stealing sideway glances up at his face, stern and intractable. She sensed that he held himself responsible for Aiden’s death and wished she could take some of the pain he was obviously feeling.

As dawn faded the light at the window from dark to pale grey, a porter wheeled Freddie past the open door of the waiting room. His round face was white beneath his shock of red hair. His arm was swathed in bandages and supported by a sling. A red flannel hospital dressing gown hung loosely over his shoulders. The police sergeant who was walking behind Freddie’s chair signalled to Murphy and Aled. They rose and followed him. The wheels on the chair squeaked, growing fainter with distance until they ceased altogether. After ten minutes of silence Harry rushed in.

Micah took him outside. They held an urgent whispered conversation before rejoining Edyth and Judy. The surgeon didn’t appear until half past six. He walked into the waiting room and removed his mask. To Micah’s relief he was smiling.

‘We’ve set David Ellis’s collar bone, and wired two broken vertebrae. His spinal column appears to be unaffected. He has a hairline fracture of the skull –’

‘What does that mean?’ Edyth asked, too upset to interpret the technical language.