Tiger at Bay

Book 0: The Sixties Crime Series

by Bernard Knight

Genres: Traditional Mysteries; Crime Fiction

Synopsis

A classic murder mystery by acclaimed crime writer Bernard Knight. Featuring dastardly deeds by cunning villains, this taut tale is set in the world-famous (and infamous) docks area of Cardiff, known far and wide as Tiger Bay, during the 1960s. When local good-for-nothing Iago Price sets himself up as a private detective, he gets more than he bargains for ? he's not used to encountering blackmail, drug dealing, and murder! A bank worker, desperate to extricate himself from a spot of bother, turns to Iago for help, but things don't quite go as planned...

Release date: February 18, 2016

Publisher: Accent Press

Print pages: 153

Sample

Chapter One

The Glendower Arms was set a few feet lower than the pavement and three steps led down to the uninviting entrance of the saloon bar. The steps were worn smooth by three generations of thirsty workmen. The night was heavy with mist and the lamp above the door had gone out. Looking back on it, Iago Price reckoned that he had a good excuse for falling down the steps. With a muffled yell, he skidded over the slippery treads and cannoned into the varnished door. The latch gave way and he fell ignominiously onto his hands and knees just inside.

‘You’re useless,’ said his secretary caustically. ‘Now shut the door, I don’t want all that fog down my throat.’

She twisted haughtily on her stool and carried on talking in her strong Cardiff accent to the landlord, who had been gazing at Iago’s dramatic entry in silent admiration.

Price hauled himself to his feet and slammed the door. He brushed down his pseudo-officer’s greatcoat with one hand, then pressed a dent from his bowler before advancing on the bar.

Lewis Evans, the licensee, sighed. ‘Can’t you never do nothing right, Iago? Anything within half a mile and you’ll fall over it.’

Price’s mousy moustache bristled. ‘That’s enough, both of you. I’m not going to take the needle from a publican – nor an employee!’

He wasn’t being funny, but the girl giggled and the man behind the bar smiled pityingly.

‘Cut it out, Iago, don’t come the big city businessman with me. Have you paid this month’s rent on your office yet?’ he asked cynically.

Iago’s sallow face reddened slightly. ‘Just shut up, Lewis, and give me a whisky.’

Lewis Evans feigned surprise.

‘Spirits, eh! Had a Premium Bond up?’ He turned to get the drink and Iago shrugged off his overcoat. Without it, he looked half the size, a thin, weedy young man with a slight stoop. His head was too big for his neck and was topped by thin fair hair that matched his feeble moustache. With his perpetually mournful expression, he looked just what he was – one of nature’s born losers.

It was shortly after opening time on a filthy December night and the only other patron was a deaf old man in the corner, oblivious to everything except his pint and his copy of Sporting Life. The girl ignored Iago as he sat down next to her and looked around the bar. He switched on a leering smile and touched his knee against hers. She instantly moved it away, without looking up from manicuring her nails.

‘What’ll you have, Dilys?’ he fawned.

Her eyes swivelled round and the arched eyebrows rose in sarcastic enquiry. ‘Well I never! You robbed a bank or something?’

The few score hairs of his moustache tried to bristle.

‘Look, don’t be so damn clever – do you want a drink or not?’

She softened a little, the message that Iago was being pushed a bit far getting through even her thick skin.

‘Oh, ta, then. Lewis, what’s the most expensive drink you got?’

‘Treble vodka and brandy, love.’

‘No, I’ll just have a gin and lime, I think.’

‘Right, one Maiden’s Ruin coming up. That’s seven and thruppence, Mr Price. And I hope you got it!’

Iago sullenly laid a pound note on the bar. ‘That’s better!’ he muttered.

‘What is?’ asked the landlord, a dark, thickset Celt whose black eyebrows met in the middle.

‘Calling me Mister Price.’

Dilys Thomas kicked him hard on the ankle. ‘What’s the matter with you tonight? All this lord of the manor stuff. And you haven’t tried to make a proper pass at me since elevenses You sickening for something?’

Iago looked at her, then dipped a hand into his breast pocket. He passed over a folded piece of paper. Dilys smoothed it out on the bar with her scarlet-tipped fingers. Her eyebrows made another excursion up her forehead, this time in genuine surprise.

‘A cheque for forty-two quid!’

Iago pointed with pride to the printed account-holder’s name. ‘David Powell Ltd! The big department store opposite the castle.’ Her big brown eyes gave him a reluctant look of admiration.

‘This is the biggest cheque we’ve ever had. What you done, sold ’em your car? Forty-two pound is just about what it’s worth.’

Pulling his leg in a semi-serious way had become such a habit that Dilys was unable to stop, even when she felt such reflected pride in the arrival of some long-overdue success.

Iago carefully folded the paper and put it away.

‘This could be a regular contract, if I handle it right,’ he said proudly. ‘Investigating hire purchase applicants. They’ve had such a lot of dead ducks lately that they’re getting worried about who they flog their washing machines to.’

Dilys sniffed disdainfully.

‘The money’s welcome, God knows. But it’s a bit dull, eh? I thought Powell’s were going to ask you to catch a blackmailer or an embezzler.’

Iago sipped his whisky before answering. He didn’t really care for the stuff – it burned his mouth and the smell reminded him of being sick after parties at college, but it seemed more the stuff for up-and-coming ‘private eyes’ than mere beer.

Things were looking up, much to his surprise. He had had a good run of divorce cases lately, enough to pay his one and only employee and almost cover the rent. The work was grim and mainly consisted of following furtive co-respondents around on Cardiff Corporation buses, or walking endlessly up and down in the freezing cold outside suburban houses, waiting for the guilty party to emerge from their love-nests. It paid quite well and with this windfall of hire purchase status enquiries, the ebbing tide of financial solvency seemed on the turn.

‘I think we’re on the way, Dilys!’ He said this so long after she had last spoken that she had no idea what he was talking about.

‘Whaddya say?’ she snapped.

Iago sighed. Dilys was a marvellous girl, if hardly a lady. When she opened her mouth, she put her foot in it.

‘I said, we’re going to make the grade as a detective agency. The tide has turned, Dilys love.’

‘Don’t “love” me,’ she said automatically. ‘You want to do something about your name, then.’

‘Yes, bloody daft, that is,’ cut in Lewis Evans, who had just come back from the cellar.

Iago Price scowled. He was sick of being ribbed about the nameplate fixed outside his seedy office up the road. This read, ‘I. PRICE – CONFIDENTIAL ENQUIRIES.’ He had not spotted the horrible pun on his name until too late, in spite of being saddled with it for the past thirty years.

‘I’m going to form a limited company soon,’ he muttered. ‘Change it to “DETECTION WALES LTD.” or something snappy like that.’ For the next few moments, he and his secretary sipped their drinks in silence.

Dilys was thinking of the clumsy strength of the hairy Arts student she had grappled with after a dance the previous night. Iago was dividing his attention between daydreams about his nice new cheque and daydreams about the wide expanse of smooth thigh that Dilys was showing as her miniskirt was rucked up on the high bar stool. Lost in these higher thoughts, they both failed to notice a new arrival in the bar. A man came in and began making furtive signs to the landlord. Lewis went over to him.

‘Is that Mr Price – Mr Iago Price?’ hissed the newcomer.

Lewis nodded, his black hair flopping over his face.

‘That’s him!’ He turned and bellowed down the bar, ‘Customer here for you, Iago. Blackmail or divorce, by the looks of him.’

The man turned as white as a sheet so Lewis Evans picked up Iago’s drink and slammed it down next to the stranger. ‘Sit there, Mr Price … have a consultation on the house!’

The self-appointed detective glared at the barman, then moved down the bar and murmured some apology to the newcomer, a well-built man of about fifty. He was quite well-dressed but had a vaguely neglected look about him, like a strong plant starting to go to seed. His worried look was characteristic of most of Iago’s clients.

‘Were you looking for me, sir?’ asked Iago, in his most cultured voice, the only asset he had acquired from eight years in an obscure English public school.

The other man bobbed his head, the fleshy pouches under his eyes wobbling. ‘I went to your office and they said next door that you would be here.’

His voice tailed off and he looked anxiously around the saloon bar.

The landlord caught the glance and chipped in cheerfully. ‘Carry on, mate … Gorgeous Gussie here is Mr Price’s confidential secretary. And don’t worry about Ted over there, he’s as deaf as a post.’ He waved airily to the corner, where the cloth-capped figure was now fast asleep, his Sporting Life dropped on the senile spaniel who lay drooling at his feet.

Iago leaned nearer.

‘Did you want to see me professionally?’ He said this last word with the reverence of an archbishop uttering the most awesome part of his liturgy.

The man nodded again. ‘I must see you! I’ve made my mind up and I’ve got to get it over with.’

The words just reached Dilys and she sighed. She was a sentimental girl under her tough crust and the thought that another husband had just discovered that his wife was tumbling with the insurance man depressed her. Still, it might pay the electricity bill.

‘Can you tell me what it’s about?’ Iago Price had come to the same conclusion as his secretary and was now using his consultant psychiatrist’s voice.

The stranger’s prominent blue eyes roved around in anguish. ‘Not here. Can we go to your office?’

Iago sighed internally, but smiled his assent and stood up. He knocked his stool over and dropped his overcoat, but eventually got as far as the door with the prospective client.

As he held the door for the other to go out into the fog, Iago waved to Dilys. ‘I won’t be long, then I’ll come back and take you for a meal or something.’

She poked her pointed tongue at him. Iago scowled and let the door swing shut onto his ankle, but otherwise they reached his office without any further disaster.

‘Up these stairs, please,’ he said politely. They had reached a dirty door just around the corner from the Hayes Bridge Road. The side street was poorly lit and in the heavy mist, only the loom of the warehouses could be seen.

‘I. PRICE – CONFIDENTIAL ENQUIRIES’ was housed in a single room above a greengrocer’s shop. Though the entrance was in the side street, the windows of the office were on the first floor facing the main road which joined Cardiff’s shopping centre with the dock area. It was something of a no-man’s land, where the modern brightness of the city centre clashed with the seedy legacy of the world’s greatest coal port. At present, the down-at-heel element was winning, though its victory was going to be short-lived. The area was going to be vaporized by the City Council and rebuilt into hygienic anonymity.

None of this passed through Iago’s mind as he trudged up the splintered, uncarpeted staircase. He was wondering how much he could screw out of this punter for all the legwork necessary to prove infidelity.

At the top, he fumbled for his keys, dropped them and scrabbled in the dark to find them on the dirty floor.

‘Isn’t there a light?’ asked the client, rather sourly.

‘The kids keep pinching the bulb. We’ve given up putting them in,’ grunted Iago, feeling for the keyhole like a drunk after a night’s binge. He got in at last and turned the light on. The office was revealed in all the brilliance of a 40-watt bulb.

The one large room was divided by a crude plasterboard partition, leaving one third for Dilys’s desk and the second-hand typewriter. A few hard chairs were ranged optimistically around for waiting customers.

Iago led the way through to the inner office, where the spartan furnishing consisted of another desk, two chairs and a filing cabinet.

The lower half of the sash window had been whitewashed in lieu of curtains and the naked bulb threw an unkind glare on the flaking plaster of the walls and ceiling.

The enquiry agent waved his client to a chair and sat himself behind the desk.

‘If I could have your name, then we can start a file.’ He leaned sympathetically across the blotter.

‘Summers – Michael Summers. I live in Rhiwbina.’ He gave Iago an address on the north side of the city and the younger man dutifully noted it down on the back of a postcard.

Iago looked up encouragingly at Summers, but he seemed to have dried up.

‘Er, some domestic worry, perhaps?’ the detective prompted.

Summers nodded dolefully, but still said nothing.

‘Er … a worry over a lady, eh?’ suggested Price delicately.

The client suddenly became more communicative. He leant forward confidentially.

‘Look, I haven’t come about a divorce, if that’s what you’re after. More like trying to avoid one, in fact!’

He ran a hand through his grey hair in a gesture of despair. ‘I’m in a hell of a spot, Mr Price. I should go to the police, but I daren’t.’

Iago saw the imagined cheque disappearing into the distance. The mention of police depressed him, not because he had any reason to dislike them, but a year’s experience in the ‘private eye trade’ had taught him that when the police came in, profit usually went out.

He began rolling his ballpoint between his fingers and tried to give a Perry Mason look from under lowered eyebrows.

‘I’m not sure that I can help you, Mr Summers, if this is a police matter.’

The pouchy-faced man shook his head wearily.

‘It isn’t – yet. I came to you with the hope of stopping it becoming one.’

Iago stole a crafty look at his watch. If this was going to be a wash-out, he would rather be back at the pub. Twelve months of continuous brush-off from Dilys had still not convinced him that he would never make the grade with her. If he could get back there before her latest lover turned up, she might have some miraculous change of heart.

Before he could think up some excuse, Summers put both hands on the desk and looked appealingly at Iago. ‘I’m desperate, Mr Price, I tell you. I’m in the same trade as you, in a manner of speaking, but this has me beat. I’ve even thought of doing myself in …

He ended on a strangled sob and Iago, always a sucker for the hard-luck sell, muttered at him to carry on.

‘It’s like this – I’m a security officer for the Celtic Bank,’ began Summers. ‘It’s not one of the Big Five, but it’s got a lot of branches in the city.’ He dropped his voice so that even Iago’s wing-like ears had. . .