Reap the Whirlwind

3

3

In The Jailhouse Now – Jimmie Rodgers

Two days to be precise.

Two days wondering what the hell this DI Spencer had really wanted from me, and why. It was like a nail in my shoe, or a nagging toothache all weekend. On the third morning, Monday, I had some business to do with a local lawyer about an old case I’d worked on. Nothing dramatic. No dead bodies littered about. I’d put on a suit and presented myself at his office, then back to mine.

Another boiling morning, jacket on a hanger, shoes off, tie pulled down. Another Silk Cut smouldering in the ashtray, the same CD in the same stereo, the same electric fan slowly moving the hot air from one side of the room to the other, and the current account a little fatter, when my buddy Li who ran the tiny Vietnamese restaurant just up the road popped in for a natter. Now, just understand with Li there was no lookee, lookee, Charlie Chan bullshit. Li was shirt for Lionel, and he spoke English better than me. Not that that was anything to go by. So did lots of people. Li was second generation immigrant. His grandparents had done a runner in the fifties to get away from the regime and somehow got here and settled in Herne Hill. Li’s father was one of a tribe of kids. He’d married a local girl and Li was the fruit of his loins. The son had gone to catering college, then opened his restaurant in a shop next to the station, barely large enough to swing a proverbial. Li made the wickedest hot and sour soup I’d ever tasted. Hot and sour enough to bring tears to the eyes. But the taste!

‘Morning Nick,’ he said, as he stood in the doorway, leaning against the jamb. ‘Hot enough for you?’

‘Too b****y hot,’ I replied. ‘But not sour.’

That would soon change.

‘Me too,’ he said.

‘You’re kidding. With your ancestry out in the paddy fields, I would’ve expected this sort of weather suited you down to the ground.’

‘I’ll ignore that possible racist slur on my ancestors and remind you of my mother’s delicate constitution regarding heat. She’s a child of England’s b****y cold.’

‘So why do you stand in that tiny kitchen all day sweating your bollocks off cooking red hot chilli curry?’ I asked.

‘Because I have to earn a crust just like you. But looking around there’s not much sign of discreet enquiries, or for that matter, enquiries of any kind.’ He was referring to the motto on my business cards. I shrugged. ‘Quiet time of the year,’ I said. ‘But up here.’ I tapped my temple, ‘it’s all action.’

He looked over his shoulder and said, ‘Well, I reckon it’s going to get noisier in a minute. And action-packed if I’m not mistaken. There’s two blokes clocking your place from across the road, and I smell pork. And not of the sweet and sour variety. See ya.’ And with that he legged it back the way he’d come. He didn’t like cops any more than I did, and certainly had a nose for the boys in blue, even in plain clothes. And he was never wrong. I knew as soon as I saw the pair of them fill the doorway he had just vacated. ‘Nick Sharman,’ said the one on the right.

‘That’s me,’ I replied, the picture of innocence.

‘Good,’ said the other one, and they both moved into the room, closing the door behind them. That’s when they showed ID, and introduced themselves. The one on the right was DS Burke, the one on the left DI Dixon. I didn’t make any jokes about Dock Green.

Burke was wearing a suit well above his pay grade, and a watch with more dials than strictly necessary. You could probably tell the time in Nicaragua, and the metal strap could tug a charabanc. He was polished as a Rolls-Royce, and twice as slippery. Dixon, on the other hand, looked like an old fashioned door kicker in trousers worn shiny in the backside. Put them together and they spelled big trouble. Dixon took the client’s seat, Burke turned off the stereo and leant against the wall. Dixon said, ‘Yesterday morning, you paid three hundred and sixty pounds in new, sequential twenty pound notes into the Tulse Hill branch of HSBC.’ As soon as he said that I knew what was coming. I should have tucked that dough under the mattress.

‘Correct,’ I said.

‘Well, those notes were part of the money stolen from the Knightsbridge branch of the National Bank on the 30th May this year.’

‘You don’t say,’ I said. So Spencer had stitched me right up.

‘Oh, I do,’ said Dixon. ‘Can you explain how you came by them?’

Well I tried. I told them the story from A-Z, and the more I told it, the worse it sounded.

‘Very good,’ said Dixon. ‘And you expect us to believe that rubbish?’

‘It’s what happened.’

So then we started to go round the Mulberry Bush. There was no Spencer involved in the case. They hadn’t heard of Stowe-Hartley, or some deceased old woman dying under suspicious circumstances in a care home. They wanted an alibi for the bank holiday weekend. I remembered it well. Just me, my DVD player, and a bunch of old films.

‘No one to back it up?’ asked Burke, speaking for the first time. I shook my head. ‘Nicky no mates,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘Shame.’

I could only agree. ‘But I did have takeaways on that Sunday and Monday night,’ I said. ‘Vietnamese on the Sunday, Pizza Express Monday. They’re bound to have records.’

‘Vietnamese from the establishment of that young gentleman who just ran up the road?’ asked Dixon.

‘Correct,’ I said.

‘Then maybe you do have mates after all,’ said Burke. ‘But not for the daytimes, they’re what matter.’

‘It won’t wash,’ said Dixon. ‘Whatever your story, we’ve got you for receiving. There are officers outside with a search warrant for here, your car, and your flat. Keys please.’

I handed them over, then they told me to stand, nicked me for suspicion of robbery of the bank, and receiving stolen goods, read me my rights, handcuffed me, and took me out to their car. At least they let me put my shoes on.

As we drove away, I saw Li standing in the road watching the sorry saga.

Before we go any further, let me remind you of the robbery in question. It was big news that bank holiday week. No wars, no terrorist attacks, no rock stars OD’d. No female film star got out of a cab showing her lack of underwear. So the robbery at the main branch of the National Bank in Knightsbridge got all the headlines.

What happened was, the bank was cuddled up close to a low rise office block that had an advertising agency as its one tenant. The office was shut for the long weekend. No security apart from an occasional drive-by. After all, who wanted to steal an advertising campaign for feminine hygiene products?

Come the Friday evening about eight, two shiny vans bearing the livery of an upmarket executive decorators that didn’t exist pulled up. Witnesses saw maybe half a dozen, maybe more, maybe less, workmen in clean overalls unload ladders, buckets, paint pots, tools of all shapes and sizes. One of them bumped the front door in less time than it would take to unlock it, fixed the burglar alarm, and took the kit inside. Once in situ, they all left, only to return on the Saturday at six am, and the subsequent Sunday and bank holiday Monday at the same hours. There was hardly any noise all weekend, certainly not enough to upset the few residential neighbours.

Inside, they rigged up a huge drill, tough enough to break through concrete, and drilled through from the office basement to the main vault of the bank. Inside were nicely wrapped brand new five, ten, twenty, and fifty pound notes waiting to be distributed to the bank’s smaller branches. Three million sterling if you were counting. Every last Lady Godiva was loaded into the decorators vans and spirited off God knows where. Not a trace of the dosh, or the robbers, had been seen since. That is, not until those twenties turned up in my bank, screwed, blued and tattooed. That was me.