Tiger Ragtime (40 page)

He walked into the hotel foyer. The receptionist dropped his pen and closed the ledger he had been working in. ‘Mr Evans?’

‘Yes,’ Harry answered, surprised at being recognised.

‘Mr James is expecting you, sir.’ The receptionist signalled to the bellboy. ‘Take Mr Evans up to Mr James’s suite.’

Given Aled’s varied business interests, Harry expected him to be entertaining visitors, but he opened the door himself. And when Harry entered the sitting room he saw that it was empty. Aled tipped the bellboy sixpence before Harry had a chance to put his hand in his pocket, closed the door on the boy and motioned Harry to the sofa. A catalogue of gaming machines and a tray of coffee were set on the table in front of it.

‘I have no idea why you wanted to see me, but never let it be said I’m a poor host. Coffee?’ He indicated the tray.

‘No thank you, I have just had lunch with my sister, Micah Holsten, and David.’ Harry offered Aled his hand but Aled chose to ignore it.

‘Aiden came here straight from the court. He said he’d seen you and the pastor there. You paid David’s fine.’

‘I did.’

‘Aiden would have paid it.’

‘I’m not here to look for reimbursement,’ Harry said quietly.

‘I’m not offering.’ Aled sat on the sofa and pointed to an easy chair. ‘Sit down.’

‘Thank you.’ Harry set his briefcase next to the tray of coffee. He unlocked it and removed a file.

‘If you’ve come to ask me to fire David, I won’t.’

‘I know.’

‘Then you approve of him working for me?’

‘No, I don’t,’ Harry said flatly. ‘But there’s no point in discussing it. David’s too stubborn to listen to anything I have to say and while you believe that you’re annoying me by employing him you won’t let him go.’ Harry pushed the file across the table towards Aled. ‘That is a copy of the original paperwork in a Gwilym James file on our father. I had it made up for you.’

Aled opened the file. It contained a sheaf of papers. He picked up the letter that lay on top. ‘This is dated over twenty-three years ago.’

‘It’s a copy of a letter from my mother to yours suggesting that she contact Mr Richards. He was our father’s solicitor.’

Aled read the letter once, then more slowly a second time. ‘As this is a copy how do I know that your mother ever sent such a letter to mine?’

‘It’s in the files, so your mother must have taken it to a meeting she had with Mr Richards. Look at the copy of the note beneath it and the bank statements in your mother’s name.’

Aled went through the rest of the papers in the file. He moved the catalogue and tray of coffee aside so he could spread them out on the table.’

‘After my mother removed me from your mother’s house, she wrote to your mother and told her to contact Mr Richards and ask him for an annuity, so you could both live, if not in comfort, at least not in want. There is no record of your mother writing back.’

‘My mother couldn’t read or write.’

‘Then someone must have read my mother’s letter to her. As well as my mother’s original letter there is a note from Mr Richards detailing a visit your mother made to him shortly after she received it. He made arrangements for your mother to be paid an annuity of £104 a year. It wasn’t a fortune but it would have been enough for her to rent a better house away from the colliery wasteland that surrounded Bush Houses.’

‘But it couldn’t have been paid –’

‘As you see from the copies of Gwilym James’s bank statements of their “special fund”, which was set up before either of us were born to pay compensation to the victims of our father’s indiscretions, the annuity was paid in full into a Capital and Counties bank account that bore your mother’s name until your sixteenth birthday.’

Aled looked at the papers. ‘I am certain that my mother never received a penny of this. If she had, we would never have lived the way we did. She wouldn’t have died in squalor and I would certainly never have had to go to sea when I was twelve years old.’

‘I spoke to Mr Richards on the telephone after I went through this account. He remembered your mother. He also said he took great pains to explain everything to her. He told her that she could go to the bank in Tonypandy every week and withdraw the two pounds, which she did for about three months. Then she went into the bank and told them she was moving from Clydach Vale to Cardiff. The bank arranged for the payments to be made from their Butetown branch. They were collected every week for almost ten years, Mr Richards assumed by your mother. He was very concerned when I told him that she had died when you were twelve. It is typical of the man’s honesty and integrity that he blamed himself for not visiting your mother after she moved here from Clydach Vale to ensure that she was still receiving the money.’

‘She never mentioned an annuity to me.’ Aled frowned with the effort of remembering childhood events and conversations that he had tried so hard to forget. ‘She said the only things my father ever gave her were some clothes and a few pounds, which didn’t even keep her until I was born. She said he never even tried to see me.’

‘Do you remember the time just before you moved from Clydach Valley to the Bay?’

‘I remember her buying me cakes and new boots and clothes and I recall her telling me that we’d be all right when we moved to Cardiff. But after we’d been living in Tiger Bay for a few weeks, she was working the streets.’ Aled left the sofa and walked to the window.

Harry looked past Aled to the view of the docks and the hulls of ocean-going steamers that could be seen between the buildings. He had a few painful memories of his own childhood, all stemming from the time before his mother had married his stepfather, but he doubted that any were as traumatic as the ones Aled was carrying. However he remained silent, wary of showing any sympathy lest Aled take it as patronising.

‘Not being able to read or write is a handicap,’ Aled said quietly. ‘It’s a wonder I learned because I only went to school for a few months in Clydach Vale before we came down here and then I only went to the church school for six months. It was more important that I earn money than get an education. But I managed to get one anyway, in the best possible college: the slums of New York.’ He turned and smiled grimly at Harry.

‘I don’t know what happened to the annuity.’ Harry closed his briefcase and lifted it to the floor. ‘I believe you when you say that your mother didn’t receive it, but as you can see from the statements it was paid into a bank account bearing her name. Not that I can take any credit for it because all the arrangements were made by Mr Richards. He is a fair man who did all he could to ensure that no woman or child suffered as a result of being abandoned by our father. Either the money is still in the bank account or someone took it from there. You have the number and the name of the bank. As your mother’s son and heir you can make enquiries. They wouldn’t discuss the account with me or Mr Richards when we telephoned.’

‘Can I keep the papers?’

‘I made the copies for you.’ Harry opened his wallet and extracted a business card. ‘This is the address of the solicitor’s firm that made the arrangements. Mr Richards, the man who saw your mother, is semi-retired but the other people in the firm should be able to help you if you have any queries.’ Harry rose to his feet and picked up his briefcase.

‘If the money was in the account and my mother knew about it, she would have used it. If it was taken out, it wasn’t taken out by her and that means that someone stole it.’

‘It looks that way. I’m sorry. It would have made a difference to your life, and your mother’s.’

‘And maybe even the way I feel about you,’ Aled said thoughtfully. ‘But if this solicitor opened the bank account in my mother’s name, how could someone have taken it?’

‘Your mother might have signed over the account to a third party.’

‘Not knowingly. She wasn’t very bright but she wasn’t stupid.’

‘I’ve told you all I can. You’re welcome to study the originals of those documents. They’re in Pontypridd but I can have them sent to the Cardiff store if it’s more convenient for you. And you can call and see me any time. My door will be always open to you.’

‘Even after what I did to David?’

‘If it hadn’t been you, it would have been someone else, given the way he’s behaving. And it must have cost you a bit to keep him out of gaol.’

‘You knew I paid a bribe?’

‘I don’t like the way the world works, but I am a businessman. I try to live in it honestly and fairly but I don’t always succeed.’

‘If attitude and integrity are anything to go by you have succeeded more than I have. I only wish I’d had your start in life so I could have done the same.’

‘So do I, Aled.’ Harry held out his hand and this time Aled shook it.

‘What the hell are you doing here?’ Charlie Moore demanded of Gertie when she burst into his office.

‘I’m sorry, Mr Moore.’ The clerk who dealt with Charlie’s personal correspondence raced in after Gertie. ‘I tried to stop her, but she hit me.’

‘I have to see you, it’s urgent.’ Gertie faced Charlie.

Panting and dishevelled, she glared at the clerk. ‘It’s personal.’

‘You can go, I’ll deal with this,’ Charlie snapped at the clerk. ‘Close the door behind you.’

‘Aled James came to see me last night, and he set one of his bruisers on me,’ Gertie blurted as soon as they were alone. ‘They know I put the finger on David Ellis and the others.’

‘What’s that got to do with me?’

‘You put me up to it, and I told Aiden Collins just that.’

‘You what!’ Charlie’s face darkened in anger.

‘I said you made me do it. I wasn’t telling him anything he didn’t know,’ she added defiantly. ‘Everyone on the Bay knows that you were running the turf before Aled James showed up and Aiden Collins took over.’

‘I might have been running the turf, but no one could prove that it was me who suggested you shop David Ellis and the others. And, you didn’t need much persuading,’ he said acidly. ‘You wanted to kill him two days ago.’

She shrugged her shoulders. ‘I’ve calmed down since then. And I have to leave Tiger Bay. Aiden Collins told me to move on and I intend to do just that. But I need money to set myself up somewhere else.’

‘You’ve made a bloody fortune from me over the last year,’ Charlie said curtly. ‘And you told Anna that I stopped paying you, so she’d give you extra.’

‘How do you know?’ she challenged.

‘Because Anna told me the free service only applied to me, not to the Smith brothers.’

‘You treated me worse than any of my other customers and I have the bruises to prove it.’ She pulled up the sleeve of her dress to show him the blackened finger marks on her upper arms. ‘Those are the reasons I charged you top whack.’

‘I won’t give you another penny, Gertie.’

‘If you don’t, I’ll go to the coppers again and tell them that you put me up to shopping David because you run your own books. And I’ll give them a list of your operators just as I gave them a list of Aled’s. John and Tom Smith’s names will be right at the top.’

‘As if the police don’t know who they are,’ he sneered. ‘I’ve paid them well to look the other way when John and Tom work the pubs.’

‘Aled James paid the police well too, but the officers can’t ignore people who go into the station and volunteer statements. If they could, they would have ignored me. But once it’s down in black and white it’s a different story.’

‘Cunning little bitch, aren’t you?’

‘Just looking after number one,’ she countered, ‘because if I don’t, no one else will.’

‘And if I give you money you’ll go and never bother me again.’

‘That depends on how much you give me,’ she said archly.

‘How much do you want?’ He opened a drawer in his desk.

‘Fifty quid.’

‘Not a hope in hell.’ He slammed the drawer shut.

‘Come on, Charlie,’ she coaxed. ‘If I don’t get out of here I’m going to be found floating face down in the dock. You don’t want my murder on your conscience.’

‘The way you’re behaving, I’m tempted to kill you myself. Fifty quid!’ he sneered. ‘No girl is worth that kind of money, Gertie.’

‘I am, because if I don’t get it I’ll not only go to the police, I’ll go to your father. And I know you don’t just run the bookies. You’ve all sorts of scams going. The brandy you smuggle in through customs for the pubs and clubs on the docks, the goods that fall out of ships’ containers and find their way into your warehouses, the ten per cent of seamen’s wages you demand every time you give a man a berth on a ship –’

‘You can’t prove any of that,’ he broke in.

‘But I can create a stink by talking about it. Especially to your father – upright councillor and citizen like him. He likes people to think he’s honest. His career as a city father wouldn’t last long once people found out otherwise.’

‘Here.’ He opened his drawer again. ‘There’s a tenner.’ He handed her two five-pound notes. ‘That’s all I’ve got. Get out of here.’

‘Drop the other forty into Anna’s tonight or I’ll –’

‘You’ll what?’

‘Waylay your father when he comes to see Colleen. I wouldn’t dream of taking him from her. But I’m sure he’d be interested in having a chat with me once he hears how much I know about his darling blue-eyed son.’

‘You say one word to my father –’

‘Oh, I’ll say a lot more than one word, Charlie,’ she warned. ‘Forty pounds delivered to my room in Anna’s this evening or I’ll talk to your father. By the way, you don’t have to bring it personally.’

Aled spent a long time looking through the papers after Harry left his room. He returned all of them to the file except a couple of Gwilym James’s ‘special funds’ bank statements, locked them into the desk in his sitting room, walked up Bute Street to the club and sat in on the orchestra’s rehearsal with Judy. The moment the orchestra leader saw him he started perspiring and several musicians hit wrong notes out of sheer nervousness. Aled left after ten minutes without making a comment. He walked back down Bute Street to his bank and asked to see the manager on an urgent matter.

‘He’ll see you right away, Mr James,’ the clerk bowed and scraped as he showed Aled into the manager’s office. ‘But he asked me to tell you that he can only spare you twenty minutes as he has another appointment.’