The Dragon's Tale: A Jack Lauder Thriller (7 page)

     “So it’s just like this game here?” He pointed at his chess figures, a puzzled frown on his face.

     “Oh it’s more complex than that but, yes, chess is one way in which art can influence life.”

     “Will you play white? If so, your move.”

     Jack gave the pretence then of looking at the board, although he had already taken it in. White was in an interesting but dangerous position, with an obvious pawn capture of a knight, dxc6, but the temptation was to press harder for a greater advantage by moving the rook from a1 to c1, which should lead to Nxb4 but there was a dangerous black move for the queen which would open up the check. “Oh!” Peter exclaimed. “I thought you’d double-think that. Nonetheless he took the rampaging pawn on c6 with his queen but he knew a draw was now inevitable. “Did you see that?” he asked.

     “What, leaving the knight alone and risking the queen to a7? You‘d been working that one out!”

     “Ah, Jack! You are a true player. And a gentleman!”

      “Gentlemen and players! I’ve been called worse.”

     At the resumption he was sorry to see Mick Harvey come shuffling up from the dock moments before his client. He duly apologised to the court and, having purged his contempt, was allowed to return to the witness box. It was the worst of both worlds for Jack. The judge had rescued Harvey from a mauling and had provided a basis for the police to see him during the course of his evidence and influence where it was going next. “I noticed,” he opened up, “that Chief Superintendent Lowther came down to the cell block to see you?”

     “So what like?” He was still bristling with aggression, which was good.

     “Would you care to share your conversation with us?”

     “Wey, not likely.”

     “Mr. Harvey,” the judge intervened, “what did you talk about?” He waved the prosecutor down. “It is relevant,” he added. “Mr. Harvey was in the middle of his evidence.”

     “Wey, he just tellt
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me to behave mesel
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like.”

     “Well, that’s all right then,” the judge said and his glance at Jack suggested more eloquently than words that he didn’t want to hear the Superintendent impugned.

     Notwithstanding the potential for a judicial backlash, Jack persisted, “Did you talk about the case?” The judge frowned but let it go.

     “Nah, not really like.”

     “What does ‘not really’ mean?”

     “He just tellt us to tell the truth.” The judge looked at Lowther then. Even that was going beyond the pale. Lowther squirmed uncomfortably.

     “Were you not telling the truth before?”

      It was Harvey’s turn to squirm.  “Aye, I was like.”

      “Well do it now. Are you a fully paid up member of the National Front?”

     “Wey, what if I am?”

     “Shall I take that as a yes?” the judge asked and the big man nodded defiantly. The judge added, “For the sake of the record let it be shown that the witness nodded in the affirmative.”

     "Face it, Mr. Harvey, you don't like foreigners, do you?" Jack pressed.

      The pugnacious lip doubled in size. "Frigging wogs and spics, if you wanna nah
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!"

     "What about the Chinese?"

     "Only good for running takeaways, fookin’ slanty-eyed bastards!"

     "And Russians?"

      "Red twats, Nuke the fookin’ lot!"

     "Ah, so can we take it that you don’t believe in the fellowship of man?"

     "I'll fellership yous if I catch yous ootside
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. I'll rive yor fuckin’ ’eed
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off."

     "Is that what you said before you killed George Armstrong?”

     "You want to wash yor mooth oot
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, marra
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!" Harvey pointed his finger at Jack.  The judge was captivated now.

     "Bit too close to the bone, is it?" Jack asked. "Well, try this one for size. No way were you at the Lights that night!"  Just on cue, Russ Ronson, who'd reacted to Jack’s signal through the glass panel at the back of the courtroom, ushered in the witnesses he'd subpoenaed, the ones who knew Harvey’s alibi was false. Reluctant to say anything on the record, they couldn't refuse to attend Court on a subpoena. Harvey didn't know they'd kept silent. He thought they were there to drop him in. He was slack-jawed as Jack hit him with the kitchen sink. “That’s right, isn’t it? All these people will be able to tell the court where you were?” Now a bit of bluff became necessary. The bad news imparted by his private detective was that the video cameras on Tyne Street had been taken out in the melee. There was no footage. "You're lying too when you say you weren't at the Jungle. You and your team thought you were clever when you knocked out the video surveillance camera at the end of Tyne Street. You thought the Police couldn't identify who was in the fight, but you forgot about the one further down the street. It showed you on your way to kill Geordie Armstrong!"

     Harvey didn't know there was no footage. "It warn't
[28]
me, I swear on me bairn’s
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life," he retorted in anguish. "Divn't
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put that on my toes!"

     "Divn't put what on your toes?" Jack mimicked.

    “That thingummybob!" Harvey had lost his way with words and looked as if he was about to have an epileptic fit.

      "That thingummybob?" Jack replied. "You're not talking about the murder of Geordie Armstrong, are you?"

     "Aye, that's the one like, that mordor
[31]
!" Harvey started hyperventilating.

      "But," Jack said, just twisting the knife, "I thought we’d established it was you who killed Mr. Armstrong?"

     "Nah, nah, that's the point. That’s where yous’ve got it arl wrang
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, hinny
[33]
, it warn't
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me, it wor
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Bud Nicholson.”

     “Sorry!” Jack acted as if this news came as a terrible surprise. “What on earth would Mr. Nicholson have against Geordie Armstrong?”

     “He didn’t hev nowt
[36]
against him like. It wor
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just the cash!”

     “The cash?”

     “Aye, he mordered him because Albert had a grudge against him. He wor canny well weighed off like. Yous ask him!” All bravado gone now and, forgetting the robber’s charter that you never grass on a mate, he was pointing one fat, stubby finger up into the public gallery where Bud was sliding along the bench towards the exit. Police officers on guard on the doors appeared at the exit at that moment and the red-faced, would be fugitive sat down heavily.

     “Are we talking about Mr. Albert Abel when we speak of the man with a grudge?” Jack questioned. When the forlorn witness nodded his head, he continued, “What was this grudge?”

     “Geordie cheated Albert over some swag. Albert gets a share of everything doon
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the quay like.”

     “Contraband?” Harvey nodded in response to the clarification, “Are you saying that Mr. Abel paid Mr. Nicholson for ridding him of a fisherman who had cheated him out of his smuggler’s gains?" Jack asked.

     All eyes in the court room were fixed on the quaking mass of protoplasm in the witness box. Harvey breathed out audibly. "Aye," he said, "aye, that's what ‘appened, like, I swear it, on the bairn’s life."

     How many lives did the bairn have? Jack didn’t put much by the child’s survival prospects if these depended on this man telling the truth but what he had now was enough for present purposes. The case had been broken. "Well done, it feels good to tell the truth, doesn’t it?” The big man nodded in agreement. “But enlighten me on this. Why did you implicate this innocent man?" Jack turned and pointed to Peter, who sat in the dock, struck dumb by the sudden turn of events.

     "Well, he's a Ruski, ain’t he?”

     “You mean he’s a Russian?”

     “Aye. A Ruski, like ah said. Are yous deef
[39]
, like?”

     “So you implicated him because he’s a foreigner?”

      “Aye! Nearly as bad as a Mackem
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." His use of the vernacular for a native of Sunderland brought thin smiles from the well of the court.

     "Joking aside, is that it?" Jack said, "You framed this man simply because he is not British?"

    "Nah," he said, "and he shook his head, "it wor Albert's idea. He'd had a bit bother with the Ruski.”

     “What sort of bother?”

     “Nowt porsonal
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like. He were just undercutting his agents on the Fish Quay."

     Pandemonium erupted when the Vladivostok sea captain came out of the courthouse. A few of his countrymen had turned up waving placards, showing that his country’s authorities might have dumped him but his own people, mainly long-term refugees themselves, had not. Moreover, Peter was in demand from every television station in the country. The fact that he spoke good English made him a celebrity. He was holding Jack’s arm up in the air as if he’d won an Olympic championship. "I and my family will always have a debt of honour to this man," he said. "If he ever travels to my country then he is sure of a hero's welcome."

     “Oh yeah, sure,” Jack responded, “I’ve got a lot of clients in Vladivostok.”

     On the way home that night he called at the Chinese and bought a takeout. After the euphoria of a famous victory and an excess of vodka, something was getting to him. He felt really sad but couldn’t put his finger on it. Maybe it was the way his life was slipping away. He was well set up, okay, but what did he do at night? He ate alone, prepared the case for the next day. Sometimes he went out for a drink with a few pals, all of them visibly ageing and getting more depressing by the minute. They were all married but that didn‘t seem to make them any happier. He wouldn’t know because he’d never found the right person. He was a loner. Anyway, whatever it was, there was something missing. He thought about it, knew he shouldn’t but he ended up buying a bottle of Chablis from the Off Licence and walked the pavements home.

     The house was silent. He liked it enough but somehow tonight he felt lonelier than ever. He tried the answer-phone to see if there were any messages, thinking Lowther might have been on about the dead man, but it was still early doors and now he had his hands tied with the fallout from Peter’s case. There was one message but it was from Johnny Kwok. He wanted Jack to ring him at 23.00 prompt. Prompt? He had an in-built aversion to commands: even if his conscious mind didn’t always decide to ignore them, sometimes his subconscious one over-rode it.

     Around 11.15 he looked at his watch. Cursing his forgetfulness, he walked into the sitting room and reached for the phone, which, for some reason, he hadn’t replaced on the table but had left on the floor. He knelt down. Telepathy or what, the phone must have been about to ring because, before he had finished dialling, someone was on the other end.

     "
Wei,
hello," the voice said. Jack recognised it instantly as Chinese.

     "Who's there?" he replied.

     "Ah, Mr. Jack," came the familiar tones of a slightly bewildered Johnny Kwok, as if Jack’s picking up the phone so quickly had taken him by surprise, "I was wanting to talk to you about our mutual friend, Mr. Ma. Sorry to bother you at home. I hope you don't mind."

     Jack had no time to reply. A blinding flash at the window made him duck as the glass caved in. A dark figure outside was caught momentarily in the light of the moon, then something whizzed through the air, missed Jack’s head by a shave's width and struck the wall. He jumped up and made for the window, shouting at the top of his voice. He could see car headlights in the lane behind the house. Jack gave chase as the intruder legged it over the hedge, jumping it Fosbury style. He ran through the gate to see a car making off down the lane, it's passenger door swinging drunkenly as the driver tried frantically to pull another person in while keeping the vehicle on course. "Blast!" he said, and returned to the house. He picked up the receiver. It was dead. Quickly he grabbed his mobile and dialled 999. Returning to the broken window, he drew the curtain and put the light on. He began searching the wall close to the telephone for the missile. Even as the doorbell rang he discovered it.