John Creasey: The Toff And The Stolen Tresses

“Good evening, sir!”

“Hallo,” said Jim, and smiled briefly. “Good night.”

“Good night to you, sir!”

Over effusive, Jim thought idly, and walked a little more briskly on. It did not occur to him that he was being followed.

CHAPTER TWO

The Shadow

Across the street from the corner where the Italian barber had stood and behaved so effusively was a small, lean man, wearing a neat grey suit and a trilby hat pulled down over one eye. He had a cigarette in his mouth, and put his hand to take it away as the barber began to speak.

A little further along another man leaned against a shop window, and was also smoking. He was massive, with a thick neck and packed shoulders, dressed in a dark brown suit, and his trilby hat was centred on his head. This man did not hear the barber, and could only see his back, but he saw the smaller man move suddenly, and observed that he moved after Jim. The small man and the big one drew level.

“That is him,” the little man said.

“Feller with the bald patch?”

“Yeh.”

“Okay.”

“Don’t let him get away.”

“No one gets away from me,” said the bull-like man in the brown suit. He nodded, and turned after Jim Jones, who had noticed the other man, but thought nothing of it, then.

The barber had disappeared, towards the Embankment.

For the rest, there was nothing unusual about the evening. The homeward rush hour was over, the queues outside the Corner House were diminishing, the Strand itself was not really crowded. Nelson stared blindly and blandly over London.

And Jim had acquired a shadow.

He could turn left, towards Trafalgar Square, where a few people were still feeding the pigeons, where the fountains played, and sightseers ambled, but that was too aimless. He could turn right along the Strand, but there were only the shops. He could go and have a meal in one of the restaurants, but was in no mood to eat on his own. It would be much better to get home to his books and the radio; his landlady would get a meal for him very quickly, and once in his own room he could probably put the depression out of his mind. His lodgings were in Chelsea, not far from Sloane Square; he could walk or go by bus. In the mood of the evening, he could not really make up his mind what to do.

A Number 11 bus came along.

He got on.

Two girls, an elderly couple, a coloured man and a tall, massive man in brown also got on. Jim went upstairs; the man in brown went inside, and sat near the door.

The journey to Sloane Square allowed time for smoking a cigarette and a half. Jim stubbed out the half as he got up, clambered down the stairs, and stepped off; just ahead of him was the tall man in the brown suit, who had also jumped up in a hurry, as if he had only just realised that this was his stopping place.

It was ten minutes’ walk to Middleton Street, which was off the main road, and Jim stepped out more briskly. He noticed the massive man in brown some way ahead of him, then saw the man slow down to look into a shop window, and let him pass. It did not occur to him that the man was virtually his shadow. Even when the other turned down Middleton Street in his wake, Jim took no notice.

He reached Number 24 a little after a quarter past seven, and pressed the bell although he had his key in his hand; Mrs. Blake liked him to ring, so that she knew who had come in. She would be approaching from the kitchen doorway as he opened the door, with her pleasant welcome, and her invariable:

“I expect you’re starved, I’ll soon have something ready for you. Just go up and have a little wash.”

He would go up . . .

He opened the door with his key, and was surprised because there was no movement from the kitchen, and only silence in the house.

If she was going to be out, Mrs. Blake usually told him before he left in the morning; she was remarkably a creature of habit, and since she had acquired a television set, had seldom gone out in the evening.

Ah. It was later than usual, and the television was on. Jim grinned to himself, but a moment later decided that he was wrong; he would have heard voices or music, had that been the case.

He called out: “You home, Mrs. Blake?” There was no answer.

* * *

Had he gone upstairs then, as he usually did, and into his front room bed-sitter, he would probably have looked out of the window, and seen the tall man in brown meet the small man in the neat grey suit and the trilby pulled over one eye; but instead, he went along to the kitchen.

* * *

The television set, in a corner, was as blank as an empty window. The large kitchen was scrupulously clean and tidy, there was a green chenille table cloth over the large deal table, the wooden chairs were all varnished; and there was an appetising smell coming from the stove. On the dark green cloth was a note:

The telly’s out of order so I’ve popped next door to see the play, dinner’s in the oven and help yourself to anything you feel like. Mrs. B. There are some of those new rock cakes you like in the big red tin in the larder.

Jim grinned.

He raided the larder, helped himself to Mrs. Blake’s rock cakes, which were the perfection of simple baking, then went upstairs. He strolled to the window, as he nearly always did, partly because if there were any letters for him he would find them on the table in the window. There was none. He looked out. Across the road, walking briskly, was a little man whom he did not remember having seen before; the little man glanced up, almost as if he was aware of being watched, but quickly looked down again, and went straight on.

Jim took off his coat and hung it on the back of a chair, went into the bathroom, washed, and began to whistle to himself. He was feeling a little less glum, and the cake had whetted his appetite. Still whistling, he hurried down the stairs. He was surprised by his return to cheerfulness, and dryly inferred that his feeling for Evelyn could not go really deep. He took the meal out of the oven, an ample one obviously served at lunch-time. It was very hot, and he winced when his thumb caught the side of the dish. The gravy had dried to dark brown round the edge, but when he took the vegetable dish lid off, steam rose up in a cloud; yet it did not look dry.

He put it on the wooden mat which Mrs. Blake had provided, and began to eat, cautiously at first. He propped up the newspaper against a pot of jam, and glanced through the headlines which he had already seen that morning; the international news was so-so, the home news was of further crises. Cheerful world!

He was halfway through, and eating more quickly because the food had cooled, when there was a ring at the front door.

“Oh, damn,” he said mildly, and pushed his chair back and went along, dabbing at his lips with his table-napkin, which he dropped on to the hall-stand. He could see the shadow of a girl behind the two glass panels set in the upper part of the door, and wondered if Mrs. Blake had left her key, and had come to see if he was in.

He opened the door.

A girl he had never seen before said: “Good evening.”

She had a slightly Cockney voice and an ingratiating manner, and a smile he didn’t much like. She was made up more than most, which spoiled rather than improved a kind of everyday prettiness. She wore a red hat and a pink coat, a clash which even Jim didn’t fail to notice.

“Good evening,” he said.

“Is Betty Driver in, please?”

“I’m sorry,” he said, “but I’m afraid you have the wrong house, no Betty Driver lives here.”

“Oh,” she said, and her face dropped and she looked younger and woebegone. Then she backed away and looked up at the number painted on the fanlight, a clear, black 24 in letters six inches high. She looked back at him. “This is number 24, isn’t it?”