Tiger Ragtime (27 page)

‘In the direction of the Norwegian mission?’ he guessed.

‘No. In the direction of a boat Micah has berthed on the docks. He practises his saxophone there most nights.’

‘The bakery is doing all right, isn’t it, Edie?’ Harry asked seriously as they walked down the stairs.

‘Business is booming. I’ve even managed to pay a chunk off my overdraft, but I know it can’t last. The men converting the Sea Breeze eat as much as we can produce these days, but trade will fall off as soon as the work’s finished.’

‘And then?’

‘Like everyone else on the Bay, I’ll have to tighten my belt.’

‘Sis …’

‘Offer me money, Harry, and I’ll never talk to you again.’

‘Stubborn little thing, aren’t you?’

‘Just like the rest of my family.’ She closed the door behind her and followed him through the yard.

Chapter Fourteen

Aled left the theatre feeling pleased with the world in general and himself in particular for the deals he had struck with Mandy and Lennie. The sun was a deep orange ball in a cloudless blue sky that promised a fine dawn in the morning. And, if the dry weather continued for just one more week, George Powell had told him that all the supports and alterations to the roof of the new dub would be finished.

A few more days to put the interior finishing touches and the Tiger Ragtime would be ready for the first customers to walk through the doors, provided Aiden had enough trained croupiers ready to run the tables. Hopefully the orchestra leader would be up to scratch and would take on a sufficient number of competent musicians – he thought of the chorus girls and Judy. They at least were ready to perform.

Deciding to walk back to the Windsor Hotel he continued down Bute Street, tipping his hat and exchanging pleasantries with acquaintances. He couldn’t help but contrast his present with his past. People will look with unseeing eyes when a ragged, barefoot boy crosses their path, but waiters, barmen, unemployed men and women hoping to find work will always be respectful to a man who might be in a position to offer them a job.

Halfway down Bute Street he saw Edyth walking towards the docks and quickened his pace to catch up with her. As he had told Harry, she was a good-looking woman, but certainly not in the conventional sense. Her mouth was too wide and her features too strong to be thought of as pretty. But he was attracted to her – and she was separated from her husband.

In his considerable experience separated, widowed, and divorced women were ridiculously easy to seduce. They missed the intimacy of sex. A few compliments and small presents were usually enough to gain admittance to their beds. And his seduction of Edyth Slater would serve another purpose: it would infuriate Harry Evans.

‘Mrs Slater.’ He lifted his panama from his head when he caught up with her.

‘Mr James.’

‘It’s a lovely evening.’

‘It is,’ she answered shortly.

‘Are you going for a walk?’

‘Just down to the sea.’

‘May I escort you?’

‘I’d hate to take you out of your way.’

It was obvious from the look she gave him that she didn’t want him to accompany her but they were in the middle of a street crowded with early-evening idlers and he knew that like most well-brought-up middle-class girls, she’d be loath to make a scene. ‘You wouldn’t be. I’m going to the Windsor.’ He offered her his arm. ‘I took Judy shopping this afternoon.’

‘She told me that you wanted to buy her fur coats and day clothes.’ She capitulated and took the arm he offered her.

‘As I told Judy, I will get more use out of them than her. Everywhere she goes she will be representing my club. And I intend to use her as a hostess at the formal and informal lunches I am planning for various organisations and charities as well as the council. I don’t just intend to open a nightclub here in Cardiff, I intend to become a part of the community.’

‘And do good works?’ Aled James’s use of ‘Judy’ as opposed to ‘Miss King’ wasn’t lost on Edyth.

‘Isn’t that what all businessmen – good businessmen – do? Take your brother, for instance.’

‘He called on me today. He mentioned that you two had met.’

‘Did he?’

She looked him coolly in the eye as they passed the Exchange and drew alongside the turn to Stuart Street. ‘You go that way, I believe, Mr James.’ She pointed in the direction of the Windsor.

‘I’ll walk you to the sea.’

‘There is no need, but thank you for the offer,’ she refused firmly.

‘Would you take pity on a lonely bachelor and have dinner with me one evening?’

‘No, Mr James, but thank you for asking.’ She broke into a broad smile and he smiled back, unaware that Micah Holsten was standing behind him.

‘I hope I haven’t kept you waiting, Micah.’ Edyth relinquished Aled’s arm and took Micah’s.

‘Not at all, Edyth, I was just chatting to Old Bill. His charabanc business is thriving.’ Micah raised his hat. ‘Mr James, if you’ll excuse us.’

Micah and Edyth walked away, leaving Aled standing on the pavement looking after them. It was then Aled realised that he’d never stood a chance with Edyth Slater, for the simple reason that she was already spoken for.

David’s back and thigh muscles were aching from crouching low over the floor of the Sea Breeze for most of his twelve-hour shift in the old hotel. And his hands were raw and bleeding from the skinning he had inadvertently given them while sawing and sanding lengths of skirting boards, in between taking more bets than he had anticipated from his fellow workers. He wondered if Aiden Collins would be pleased with the money he had bagged. It seemed a vast amount to him but he had no idea what a bookie’s runner was expected to take in a day.

He had done exactly as Aiden had asked him to. Left the site at the end of the day and returned to Helga’s to wash and change into his suit. After barely eating half a dozen mouthfuls of the sausage and mash Helga had prepared for her lodgers’ tea, he had headed for James Street and the upstairs room of the White Hart.

He found Aiden sitting with his feet propped on a corner of a desk reading the evening edition of the
South Wales Echo
.

‘It’s just as you said, Mr Collins.’ David pulled the canvas cash bag from inside one of his best linen shirts. ‘I only had to tell one person I was taking bets and the men flocked round me like chickens at feeding time. Especially at break.’ He set the bag on the table in front of Aiden. ‘The books?’ Aiden held out his hand, David took them from his pocket and placed them on the desk. Aiden flicked through them before taking a small notebook from his own pocket. ‘Have you checked the cash against the entries you made?’

‘I didn’t have time in work. And I was in my lodgings only as long as it took me to eat and change.’

‘Pull up a chair. Count the money. I’ll tally the books.’ Aiden took a pencil from his pocket and began to add up the columns of figures David had entered.

David tipped the bag out on the opposite side of the table to the one Aiden was working on. He started piling pennies, halfpennies, threepences, and sixpences into shillings, and the shillings, half crowns, and florins into neat stacks of pounds. For ten minutes the only sounds that could be heard in the room were the clink of coins, the scratching of Aiden’s pencil and their breathing.

‘How much was in the bag?’ Aiden laid down his pencil and looked expectantly at David.

‘Seven pounds, thirteen shillings, and sixpence.’ David looked at Aiden in concern, worried that he had somehow lost money despite the care he had taken to look after it.

‘Which is exactly what I make it.’

David weakened in relief. ‘That’s good to hear.’

‘You’re not used to handling money?’ Aiden asked.

‘Only what we get when we sell the farm produce to the local shops in the Swansea Valley and then it was always simple and straightforward. More or less the same amount every week.’

‘Have you tallied the winnings?’

‘No.’ David shook his head.

‘I have. We’ll be paying out two pounds nine shillings, which leaves a clear profit of five pounds, four shillings, and sixpence, of which,’ he pushed a stack of shillings in David’s direction, ‘one pound, one shilling is your share, which is slightly more than the percentage due to the runner, but the boss believes in rounding up not down.’

‘This is mine?’ David stared at Aiden in astonishment.

‘Didn’t the boss tell you that the runner takes twenty per cent of the profit?’

‘He said I’d be well paid.’

‘I’d say that isn’t bad for a day’s work.’

‘No – no, isn’t, in fact it’s bloody great,’ David concurred.

‘So you’re pleased with how your first day went?’

‘Yes, but what happens if everyone backs a winner and I make a loss, not a profit?’

Aiden gave him the same pitying look Aled James had when he’d asked the self-same question. ‘Take it from me. Unless the runner is on the take, there is always a profit.’ He nodded to David’s cut. ‘Put it away before the punters come in to pick up their winnings. Do you owe anyone change?’

‘No. There was plenty around the site today.’

‘That will alter when the work dries up.’ He handed David a book. ‘The odds for tomorrow’s races.’

David pocketed it along with his winnings.

‘The boss will be pleased with this. He’ll probably want to see you about a regular job when the work on the club is finished. In the meantime, it might be as well if you concentrate on the book instead of the building.’ Aiden lifted a briefcase from the floor and, after separating the ‘winnings’ that had to be paid out, scooped the rest of the money into it. He closed the case, returned it to the floor and handed the empty canvas bag to David.

‘You think the boss will give me regular work, running a racing book?’ David asked.

‘The boss may have something else in mind for you, but you’ll have to talk to him.’

David’s hand closed over the guinea in his pocket. He had earned almost as much in a day as he had expected to earn on the site in a week.

Aiden heard the clink of coins in David’s pocket. ‘If you want to earn more you could go round the pubs in the evenings, and spread the word. Just as you did on the building site. But be careful. Not all the law wear uniforms and those that don’t hang round pubs to see what they can pick up. Don’t approach any strangers, especially those who are well-built and over six feet tall.’ He looked up as Tony King walked in. ‘Is this our first customer?’ he asked David.

‘Green Spirit. Five to two in the second race today at Aintree. Tony laid down his ticket.

‘Pay the man, David.’

David counted out seven shillings and handed them to Tony.

‘Pleasure doing business with you, David.’ Tony grinned.

‘It’s a pleasure to do business with you, Mr King. If you’re looking to put some of that on a dead cert tomorrow, rumour has it Dark Oak running in the two thirty is a good bet,’ Aiden said.

‘I’ll bear that in mind, Mr Collins. Bye, David.’ Tony left.

David picked up the next betting slip. ‘I didn’t know that you knew the Kings, Mr Collins.’

‘I made it my business to get acquainted with most of the people on the Bay.’ Aiden looked up as two more men came up the stairs. ‘Let’s see you do another pay-out, boy. The sooner I get you working on your own, the more time I’ll have to concentrate on gearing the casino up for business.’

Edyth was leaving her shop by the back door when Micah walked into the yard.

‘Am I that late?’ she adjusted the silk scarf she’d draped round her neck and fastened it with a pin.

‘No.’ He frowned absently. ‘I’m looking for David. Is he here?’

‘I haven’t seen him since I visited him in Helga’s the night he came back from Norway.’ Micah’s sombre expression concerned her. ‘Is he in trouble?’

‘Not yet, but the fool soon will be. Tony King called into the mission as pleased as punch because he won five bob on the horses.’

‘That’s nice for Tony.’ Tony was the wildest of Judy’s three uncles and Edyth knew that his wife, May, would be furious if she suspected that her husband had risked his wages gambling after being unemployed for months. ‘And guess what? The bookie’s runner who took his bet was David. He’s working for Aiden Collins, one of Aled James’s henchmen.’

‘Oh, Vladivostok!’ Edyth’s blood ran cold when she recalled the conversation she’d had with Harry the day before.

‘You knew about this?’

‘Not about David being a bookie’s runner. But Harry came to see me yesterday. Aled James is his half-brother.’

‘His half-brother …’

‘Not my father’s son.’ Edyth had denied the obvious and now that she’d said that much, she felt she had to explain further. ‘Harry’s father was murdered before he could marry my mother.’

‘So he’s illegitimate?’

Recalling what Micah had said about wanting his children to bear his name, she snapped, ‘You have a problem with that?’

‘I thought you knew me better, Edyth. It’s what people are, not how they’re born, that’s important.’

Mollified, she continued. ‘When my father married my mother he adopted Harry and when my sisters and I, and my younger brother, came along he treated all of us the same. We really are one family. No one ever considered Harry to be any different from the rest of us. My parents told us about Harry’s real father when we were old enough to understand, because they didn’t want any secrets in the family. And also because they wanted us to know why Harry was going to inherit a fortune and we weren’t. Harry doesn’t just work for Gwilym James. When he reaches thirty in four years’ time his trust will be dissolved and he’ll inherit the company along with some property and other businesses.’

Micah whistled. ‘A wealthy man indeed.’

‘You want to know the worst thing about having a wealthy brother?’ she asked seriously.

‘Tell me?’

‘He tries to help everyone. Me – David – he won’t let any of us stand on our own two feet.’

‘Isn’t that only natural? He obviously cares for all of you and doesn’t want to see you struggle. What’s so awful about that?’

‘A lot, when you want to make your own way in life,’ she said in exasperation. ‘Anyway, to get back to the point, from what Harry told me yesterday, his real father was something of a ladies’ man. Harry has quite a few half-brothers and probably sisters. Aled James is one of them and he blames Harry and our family for his mother’s early death. Apparently he and his mother didn’t get any of his father’s money. Harry said that Aled is bitter and he threatened to hurt Harry by getting at me and David. Employing David as a bookie’s runner would be one way to do it. If David gets caught taking bets by the police he could go to gaol, couldn’t he?’ she asked.

‘He could,’ Micah concurred.

‘The stupid fool!’ she exclaimed angrily. ‘Mary told me that David’s always been headstrong. But something like this could destroy him – he’s used to wide open spaces, not prison cells, and the shame would devastate Mary.’

‘Someone needs to talk sense into David before word gets out that he’s a runner, because once it does, the police will mark him for arrest. Have you any idea where he could be?’ Micah asked Edyth urgently.