Tiger Ragtime (43 page)

The surgeon looked kindly at her. ‘It means that given time, good medical care, and nursing, David Ellis should make a full recovery without suffering any long-term ill effects.’

‘All his medical bills will be covered.’ Harry didn’t like the fact that the degree of care given to a patient depended on the ability to pay hospital bills, but he was realistic enough to know it was the case.

‘The office will be open at nine,’ the surgeon informed him briefly.

‘Thank you.’

‘We’ve strapped Mr Ellis into a spinal corset, and put him on bed rest. A couple of weeks and he should be well enough to leave here, provided he has someone to look after him.’

‘There’ll be a queue of people willing and able to do that,’ Micah volunteered.

‘Can we see him?’ Harry asked.

‘He’s in the recovery room. He’ll be taken up to the ward shortly. I’d rather you waited until visiting –’

‘Please,’ Edyth begged. ‘Just for one minute.’

‘As there’s no one else in the recovery room, you may look in through the window. But only for a few seconds,’ the doctor warned. ‘The anaesthetic hasn’t worn off, so he’s unconscious, but any disturbance could have a detrimental effect.’

‘We won’t make a sound,’ Edyth promised.

Judy hung back. ‘I’ll wait here for Aled.’

‘I’ll stay with Judy.’ Micah attempted to give Edyth an encouraging smile but she was too upset to return it.

Harry held out his hand, Edyth took it and they followed the doctor.

Judy huddled beneath Aled’s jacket. ‘I can’t believe the change a day has made. Yesterday all I had to think about was what gown to wear for my act in the club … and now … Aled will have Aiden’s funeral to organise. Freddie and David will have to be looked after …’

‘By the hospital, not by you.’ Micah went to her and opened his arms. She almost fell into them.

‘I’m sorry,’ she faltered as the first tears fell from her eyes. ‘I’m not helping.’

‘None of us are, because there’s nothing that we can do.’ Micah stroked her hair back from her face and held her the way he would have a child.

Constable Murphy returned and knocked on the open door. ‘Micah, as you were the first person on the scene with any medical knowledge we’ll need a statement from you. The hospital has given us the use of an office. Can you come with me now so we can take it down?’

Judy released him and stepped back. ‘Go; I can see Harry and Edyth coming back.’

Micah waited until they entered the waiting room. ‘How’s David?’ he asked.

‘He looks like you’d expect someone to look who’s just had an operation,’ Edyth said. ‘But you heard the doctor. He’s going to be fine, which is more than can be said for Judy if she doesn’t get some rest.’

‘You do look exhausted, Judy,’ Harry concurred. ‘I’m taking Edyth back to the bakery. I think you should come with us and go to bed.’

‘I’ll wait for Aled …’ Judy began.

‘He’ll be a while yet, Miss King,’ Murphy warned. ‘They were only halfway through the statements when I left the office just now. And Mr James still had to complete all the formalities relating to Mr Aiden Collins.’

‘I’d still rather wait.’

‘Judy, formally identifying Aiden Collins’s body and completing the forms could take all morning.’ Harry took a pencil and notebook from his pocket. ‘Write Aled a note. Constable Murphy will see that he gets it.’

‘I will, Miss King,’ the officer assured her.

‘You’ll be no use to Aled or anyone else if you don’t get some sleep,’ Harry warned.

Judy took the notebook and pencil and scribbled,
Gone home, telephone me as soon as you can.
She thought for a moment and added
Love Judy,
not caring who saw it, but she gave the note and Aled’s jacket to Micah, not Constable Murphy.

Harry took his keys from his overcoat pocket, and slipped off the coat. He folded it around Judy’s shoulders. ‘It’s cold out there.’

‘Thank you.’

‘I gave the ward sister all the information I could about David while you were talking to the surgeon, Harry, but I didn’t know the name of his doctor. I told her that you and Mary were next of kin, but I gave her my address and telephone number because I live closer to the hospital.’

‘I’ll fill in any gaps when I come back to open an account in the office. Let’s go. Both of you are sleeping on your feet.’

‘Not really,’ Edyth yawned.

‘Yes, really. Come on, my car is parked close to the front door.’

‘I feel as though I’m abandoning David,’ Edyth murmured.

‘We both are, but in the best place.’ Harry led Judy and Edyth down the corridor and out through the front door of the infirmary.

He had parked his open-topped Crossley tourer next to Aled’s Bentley. He left the girls and stepped between the cars, intending to open the back and front passenger doors of the tourer, when someone ran full tilt through the gates and lunged at him.

Caught unawares, Harry staggered back and stared at the man who was waving something in front of his eyes. Something, long and thin and as crimson as Judy’s dress. It took a few seconds for his numbed brain to recognise it as a knife.

He glanced down and saw blood seeping through his jacket and waistcoat. Edyth screamed and he saw a second man dragging her back away from him. The man wielding a knife was now bearing down on Judy. Harry threw himself between them.

The man tried to push him aside. Hampered by her long skirts and torn between a desire to help Edyth and Harry, Judy hesitated.

‘The other boys didn’t finish the job but we will. Say goodbye to your songbird, Aled James,’ the man holding the knife hissed.

Harry summoned the last vestiges of his strength, and pushed Judy back towards the door of the infirmary.

‘Run!’ He blocked the man, preventing him from reaching Judy, and watched him sink the knife to the hilt in his stomach.

Chapter Twenty-two

Micah was walking out of the hospital when he heard Edyth scream and someone call Harry ‘Aled’. He turned in time to see the man knife Harry. Micah shouted back into the foyer for help and ran to Harry.

Both assailants saw Micah charging towards them, the one holding Edyth threw her to the ground. She shouted, ‘I’m all right,’ and climbed to her feet.

Judy was pulling a nurse out through the door. Seeing the men running off, she rushed to Harry and knelt on the ground beside Micah, who was tending to Harry although his shirt and waistcoat were still soaked with Aiden’s blood.

‘What can I do?’ Judy asked.

‘Hold his head and talk to him,’ Micah said, recognising Judy’s need to help. ‘Don’t!’ Micah shouted as Harry closed his hand on the knife. ‘Stay absolutely still and don’t touch it. He looked at the wound and applied pressure. It was all he could do out in the open without instruments and it hadn’t worked for Aiden. There was no reason for him to think that the most basic of first-aid techniques would work for Harry either. He only knew that he had to try. He was aware of Edyth crouched beside him, talking to Harry, but he couldn’t concentrate on anything except Harry’s injuries.

Micah was still working on Harry when a doctor joined them, pushing Micah and Judy aside. The police followed and ran out through the gates, five minutes too late.

Edyth watched, mesmerised, as two porters and a nurse lifted the tall slim body of her brother on to a stretcher and carried him into the hospital.

At midday, Micah walked out of the office where he had been talking to a senior police officer and into the waiting room to see Edyth and Judy sitting bolt upright and blinking hard – he suspected in an effort to stay awake. Aled was sitting across the room from them, flanked by a protective guard of four police officers. Micah couldn’t help thinking that all the precautions were too late.

Edyth turned her dry-eyed, anguished face to Micah’s. ‘Any news?’

‘I’ve just seen a doctor. Harry is out of surgery and out of danger. But they won’t let us see him or wait any longer. Apparently we’re disrupting the normal routine of the hospital.’

‘You most certainly are.’ A sister bustled in carrying a brown paper and string carrier stamped with ROYAL INFIRMARY, PATIENTS’ PROPERTY. She went to Edyth. ‘You are Mr Harry Evans’s sister?’

‘I am.’ Edyth reached for the bag.

‘Visiting is every Wednesday evening, from six o’clock until seven, and Saturday afternoon, three until four. Only one telephone call a day permitted to enquire after the patient.’ She thawed a little when she saw the pain and exhaustion in Edyth’s eyes. ‘Mr Evans is doing fine. If you have to get stabbed, he chose the right place to do it; outside a hospital.’

‘And David Ellis?’ Edyth dreaded the telephone calls she would have to make to her parents and to Mary.

‘As well as can be expected and resting comfortably.’ Unable to listen to any more platitudes after the long night and morning, Micah said, ‘I’ll meet you and Judy outside, Edyth. If you have the keys to Harry’s car, I’ll drive you home.’

‘If you don’t, Edyth, you can take my car,’ Aled offered.

‘Harry had his somewhere.’ Edyth rummaged in the carrier bag and pulled them out. She gave them to Micah.

Aled looked to Micah. ‘Micah –’

‘It’s been a long night, I’ll see you later, Aled.’

Aled nodded and turned to the police. ‘I’ve heard what I wanted to. I’ll go with you to the station to finish making my statement.’

Micah walked out of the front door of the infirmary ahead of Judy and Edyth. A porter was scrubbing blood from the area around the cars. A thin watery sun shone down from a cloudy sky and all the stonework in the yard was glistening and damp from a recent downpour.

‘You might not have saved Aiden Collins’s life, Micah, but you saved Harry Evans’s.’ The doctor who had operated on Aiden was leaning against a wall, smoking a cigarette. He offered the packet to Micah, and Micah took one.

‘I did what anyone would have done,’ Micah said.

‘You did what only a doctor could have done. You clamped the left gastric artery. If you hadn’t, Harry Evans would have bled to death before he even reached theatre.’

‘It’s just as well that he was stabbed outside the infirmary.’ Micah turned up the collar on his shirt as rain spattered down.

‘It’s just as well that you were around, Micah. You’re wasted as a pastor.’

‘Have you been talking to my sister?’ Micah bent his head to the match the doctor struck.

‘No, why do you ask?’

‘No reason.’

Micah saw Edyth and Judy walking out of the door arm in arm. ‘Look after the invalids, for their sake.’

The doctor smiled. ‘I’ll do that, Micah. Bye.’

Micah opened the door of Harry’s Crossley. ‘Bed for you two and no arguments.’

‘After I’ve spoken to Mary and my mother.’ Edyth closed her hands into fists. ‘Damn Aled James and damn the day he stepped off the boat in Tiger Bay.’

‘Harry, David, and a lot of other people, including Aiden Collins from the other side, would probably damn him with you.’ Micah looked at Judy. But she climbed into the back of the car without saying a word.

A week after his operation, Harry was well enough to sit up in a chair at the side of his bed and read through the papers he had asked his solicitor to send him. Aled found him doing just that when he walked into his private room bearing an enormous basket. He dumped it on Harry’s locker. ‘I brought you some fruit.’

‘So I see. On behalf of the entire ward I thank you, because there is no way that I will be able to eat all that.’

‘You no longer have a police guard outside.’ Aled pulled up a chair and sat beside Harry.

‘The sergeant came in yesterday to tell me that they have picked up the two men who killed Aiden and attacked Freddie, David, and me. Would you believe that they are called John and Tom Smith?’

‘Interesting names, aren’t they? What’s even more interesting and galling is that the hired killers get caught, go to trial, and hopefully a hanging and Charlie Moore and Geoff Arnold who apparently have been working hand in glove and employed them walk free.’ Aled sat back in his chair. ‘But to look on the bright side, the employers will lie low for a while.’

‘You seem very sure of that,’ Harry commented.

‘I am very sure of that. Neither Arnold nor Moore would be walking around if I could prove anything, and they know it. But despite distributing largesse far and wide I haven’t found anyone willing to grass on them. But I took care to let both of them know that I’ve hired a few more men, every one of them a trained soldier. Which brings me to one of the reasons why I have come to see you.’

‘How did you get in?’ Harry looked through the door. There was no sign of the sister or the staff nurses who had no compunction about shooing out his parents, Edyth and Mary if they stayed one minute after the bell had been rung to signal the end of visiting. Or the police when they came with their endless questions about the man who had knifed him – a man who had been clearly identified by Micah, Judy and Edyth on the day of the attack.

Aled rubbed his thumb and forefinger together. ‘The usual way.’

‘You bribed the sister. I don’t believe it,’ Harry said.

‘The sister cannot be bought, but lesser minions can. The dragon is on her lunch break, and half an hour will have to suffice for what I want to say you and David.’

‘Have you seen David?’

‘Not yet. Is he in a private room like you?’

‘The general ward, where I’ll be moved later today. They keep these rooms for the critical patients.’

‘And those rich enough to pay for them,’ Aled said wryly. ‘If I’m going to see David I’d better tell you why I’m here or I’ll run out of time. First I want to thank you for taking the knife that was meant for me.’

‘What are brothers for?’ Harry joked.

‘We might have the same father, Harry, but we’ll never be brothers.’

There was a serious undercurrent to Aled’s voice that Harry didn’t dare contradict. ‘I also wanted to tell you that in return I am going to give you the present you want most of all in the world.’

‘Which is?’ Harry asked warily.

‘I’m giving David and Judy back to you.’

‘Aled …’

Aled left his chair and returned it to the corner of the room. ‘We live in different worlds, you and I, Harry. It’s better that we don’t see one another again. Just one favour in return.’ He looked towards the window so Harry couldn’t see the expression on his face. ‘Be good to Judy. She’s going to need all the kindness and support she can get for the next few months.’

‘Harry is being discharged from here on Saturday and I’ll be leaving next week.’ David handed the fruit basket that Aled had brought him to one of the trainee nurses. ‘I’ve been thinking about the club and the –’

‘I’ve been thinking too, David.’ Aled moved the chair closer to David’s bed and lowered his voice so the men in the neighbouring beds couldn’t hear what he was saying. ‘It isn’t that you don’t handle yourself well, you do – for a kid.’ He knew David would take his last comment as an insult, just as he’d intended. ‘But after what happened to Aiden I’ve decided to employ older, more experienced people. No reflection on you, just the time and the place we live in.’ He took an envelope from his inside pocket and handed it to David. ‘Keep that safe and give it to Edyth or your sister when they come in to visit you. It’s six months’ pay. Call it danger money for getting beaten up. The doctors have told me that it won’t take anywhere near that long to get you back on your feet. So you can take a holiday.’

‘Mr James, please …’

Aled left his chair. ‘It’s for the best, David. I need people I can rely on around me and frankly,’ he looked down on him, ‘you’re just too young and inexperienced.’ Aled turned on his heel and left the ward. He dared not look back. He’d ordered a special dinner to be served in his suite at the Windsor Hotel in a couple of hours but he doubted that he or his guest would eat it. He had one more goodbye to say and it was going to be the hardest of all.

Harry and Edyth’s father, Lloyd, wasn’t given to anger or rages, but when he and their mother Sali returned with Harry’s wife Mary to the rooms above Edyth’s shop after visiting Harry and David in the Royal Infirmary on Wednesday evening he was furious. He looked at the supper Edyth had laid out on the table in her upstairs sitting room, walked past it, and sat on the window seat.

‘You have to leave Tiger Bay, Edyth,’ he said sharply. ‘And so does David. The sooner the better.’ He looked around the room. ‘Times are hard and you may not get as much as you paid for this place, but if you want to buy a comparable business in Pontypridd its price will be just as low.’

‘Dad …’

‘Looking at those two boys lying in their hospital beds was no different to looking at the broken bodies of the soldiers who were stupid enough to sign up to fight the politicians’ senseless battles in the Great War. And I saw enough of those when I visited your Uncle Joey when he was convalescing in 1918. Make no mistake about it, Edyth, Harry and David are casualties of war – a stupid crass gang war – and over what? Money.’

Micah, who had been roped in by Edyth to provide moral support in Judy’s absence, dared to speak up. ‘With all due respect, Mr Evans, what happened to David and Harry could have happened anywhere in Wales or the rest of Britain.’

‘You think so?’ Lloyd’s eyes were cold and Edyth silently willed Micah not to continue the argument.

‘David could have taken a job as a bookie’s runner anywhere. They have them in Cardiff, possibly even Pontypridd, and where there’s money to be made, if you’ll pardon the very bad pun, there’ll be turf wars. As for the men who killed Aiden and attacked Harry and David, the police have them in custody. They’ll be tried, sentenced, and punished. So, far from being a lawless place where murderers are free to roam the streets, you have to admit that Tiger Bay is better policed than many other areas.’

‘Like Cheltenham and Mayfair, for instance,’ Lloyd suggested caustically.

‘Aled James didn’t attract any of the wrong kind of attention until he started making money and moving in on other people’s turf, then people saw him as an easy target. They’ve since discovered how wrong they were. And Harry was only attacked because he was mistaken for Aled.’

‘We told you, Dad, the men who attacked Harry called him Aled. They really thought he was Aled James,’ Edyth pleaded.

‘Edyth has worked hard to build a successful business here, sir.’ Micah pressed home the small advantage he felt that he and Edyth had gained for all it was worth.

‘So you’re telling me that unlike Aled James, Edyth hasn’t attracted the wrong kind of attention from the natives of Tiger Bay?’

‘Yes, sir.’

Lloyd looked at him. ‘Not even from you?’

Edyth crossed her fingers behind her back to no avail. ‘I love her with all my heart, sir, and I hope to marry her as soon as she is free. With your permission,’ Micah added tactfully.

Lloyd turned to Edyth. ‘And what do you have to say about this?’

‘That I love Micah too.’

‘I see.’ Lloyd’s grimace turned to a smile. ‘Well, he’s better than the last one you married, I’ll give him that.’

‘Lloyd, what a thing to say!’ Sali reprimanded. ‘Now come to the table and start eating. Mary will want to get back to the children to make sure that our housekeeper has bathed them and put them to bed properly. That’s if she got a look in with all the aunts wanting to take over.’

‘You will come here for lunch on Saturday before you take Harry back to Pontypridd?’ Edyth asked.

‘That depends on how Harry feels,’ Mary answered. ‘It’s a pity that David has to stay in hospital another week.’ She sat next to Edyth at the table and Edyth blanched when she saw the dark circles beneath her sister-in-law’s eyes. ‘The turf war’, as Micah had christened it, and the worry over Harry and David had taken their toll on all of them, but Mary had suffered the most.

‘You heard David tonight,’ Edyth said. ‘He point-blank refuses to leave the Bay. But don’t worry, he’s comfortable living with Micah’s sister and I’ll find him a job here in my baker’s.’