“Of course it’s a different bloody signal. I work it out myself and don’t tell them until the very last minute. If the bloke inside gets the right signal, he opens the door; if it’s wrong, he presses that switch, which raises the alarm. This was tonight’s signal.” He rapped out a short pattern of taps on the desk top.
“I can name that tune in one,” muttered Frost, seemingly much more interested in the pinups than in the robbery. “It sounds foolproof to me, Harry. Don’t change it.”
Baskin raised his eyes to the ceiling and sighed theatrically. “You’ll have me in stitches, Mr. Frost, with your droll humour. Well, it wasn’t so bloody foolproof tonight, was it? Croll locks himself in with more than five thousand quid. His mate, Harris, waddles off to fetch the motor when, guess what? There’s an urgent phone call for Mr. Harris in the foyer. From the casualty ward of Denton Hospital… matter of life and death. The wooden tops in the foyer call him over the Tannoy. He legs it across the foyer, picks up the phone and this tart says, “Hold on a minute, please, and we’ll get the heart specialist.” As it happens, his old lady has a wonky ticker, so he swallows it and holds on.”
Frost said, “Who spoke on the phone? A man or a woman?”
“A woman supposed to be a nurse, wasn’t she, the bloody slag. Anyway, this burke, this cretin, this lump of horse manure, just holds on for bloody ever listening to sod all. After about six minutes of deafening silence, it suddenly occurs to him that perhaps he’s being taken for a mug. He hangs up and dials his old lady’s house… and she answers the phone, bright and cheerful, fit as a bleeding fiddle. So then it’s his turn to have a heart attack. He nip’s back here, wallops out the signal. No reply. He tries again. Nothing. Finally he plucks up the courage to come and tell me about it. Me and the boys come running. Takes us nearly ten minutes with a sledge hammer and an axe to smash our way in and… surprise, surprise! The money isn’t there any more, but Croll’s out cold on the floor, blood trickling from his head, a surprised look on his stupid face, and a pain in the leg where I booted him.”
Frost poked a cigarette in his mouth and scratched a match on the desk top. “So what happened? How come the foolproof scheme didn’t work?”
Baskin stared at the desk top and tried to erase the mark of Frost’s match with a spit-moistened finger. “You tell me. The ambulance took him away before I could get any proper answers.” He took out his silk handkerchief and worried away at the mark on the desk. “That won’t bloody come off, you know.”
Frost puffed a smoke screen over the blemish. “What did you say his name was?”
“Croll… Tom Croll.” Baskin didn’t miss the quiver of recognition from the inspector. “Don’t tell me the little bastard’s got form? Don’t tell me I’ve employed an ex-con to guard my bloody money? I’ll break both his bleeding legs.”
“Live and let live, Harry,” soothed Frost. “If he doesn’t mind working for a crook, why should you mind employing one? Tommy Croll’s done the odd bit of time, but only for petty stuff. He hasn’t got the bottle to pull off a stunt like this. Where’s the other guard, Harris, the one who got the dodgy phone call?”
Baskin seemed preoccupied in watching his cuff links glitter in the light. “He… er… had a bit of an accident walked into a door hurt his nose and blacked both his eyes. I sent him home to recover.”
“You’re a nasty piece of work, Harry,” Frost told him. “I hope he sues you.”
“What was the exact sum of money taken?” asked Webster, realizing that Frost had asked a lot of questions but hadn’t touched on the basics.
“Five thousand, one hundred thirty-two pounds,” answered Baskin. “One of our slack nights the end of the week it could be nearer twenty grand.”
Webster jotted this down. “And what time did the robbery take place?”
“Round about five past eleven,” said Baskin casually.
Frost, whose eyes had again been drawn to the magnetic north of the breasts and bottoms of the pinups, spun around. “Five past eleven?” he said incredulously. “That’s more than four hours ago!”
Baskin spread his hands. “So what? I had no intention of calling you in, but my expensive lawyer told me that as a crime’s been committed I’ve got no choice. Your being here is just a formality to satisfy our insurers. What’s a lousy five thousand quid to me? It’s chicken feed! I can stand the loss, but what I can’t stand is the humiliation. He who pinches my purse steals trash, but he who filches my good name gets both his bloody legs broken. So I’ll find the bastard myself. Just take the details, go to the bar and have a free drink on the house, and then push off and forget all about it. Leave the hard work to me.”
Frost shook his head. “Sorry Harry, but we like to beat our own prisoners up. It’s one of the few pleasures we’ve got left. What was the money packed in?”
There was a black fibreglass attache case in the corner. Baskin picked it up and showed it to the two men. “It was in two cases like this.” He held it out for Frost to examine, but the inspector wasn’t there.
“Where’s the old git got to?”
“The old git’s down here,” called a voice from behind the desk where Frost, on his knees, was almost rubbing his nose on one of the photographs. “Just admiring your art collection, Harry.”
Making no attempt to hide his contempt, Baskin said, “If dirty pictures turn you on, I’ll find some. But in the meantime, could we just concentrate on the matter in hand?”
Still preoccupied with the nude, Frost asked if anyone had seen anything unusual at the time of the robbery.
With a snort, Baskin said, “No-one saw a bleeding thing. Some slag legs it off with five thousand quid of my money and no-one sees anything!”
Frost seemed to lose interest in his questions. He ripped a photograph from the wall and held it nearer the light.
The old fool’s going senile, thought Webster, deciding he had better take over. He opened the door and walked the short distance to the rear entrance. Down a couple of steps, and he was out in the car park where the night wind hurled a few handfuls of rain in his face. Despite the lateness of the hour, there were still quite a few cars dotted about. At 11.05, when the money was snatched, the area would have been crawling with motors and surges of arriving and departing customers. A man strolling to his car with a couple of small fibreglass suitcases, perhaps concealed under a mac, would attract no attention at all.
He stepped back into the building to escape the rain squall and bumped into Harry Baskin, a huge cigar wedged in his mouth.
“I left your inspector dribbling over that tart’s photo. I suppose the poor old git hasn’t had a woman since his wife died and it’s making him go funny.” He pushed Webster aside to stare at a car turning off from the road and splashing over puddles as it crossed the car park. “Who the hell is this?”
The new arrival was a Ford Escort, one of the pool cars from the station. Two men got out, heads down, and made their way to the front entrance. As they passed under an overhead light, Webster identified them. Detective Inspector Allen and his charming sidekick, Detective Sergeant Ingram. He nipped back to the office to warn Frost.
The inspector was now sitting on the corner of the desk, looking quite pleased with himself. He only grunted when told about Allen, but as soon as Baskin returned, he snatched up the photograph of the stripper and asked the club owner if it had been retouched.
Baskin frowned. “What do you mean?”
“This lady seems to be devoid of hair in an area where I would expect to find some.”
Baskin took the photograph, holding it at arm’s length. “Don’t you know nothing? Strippers have to make themselves look more artistic before they perform in front of an audience. The raw human body is quite repulsive if left to its own devices, you know.”
Frost dropped his cigarette on the floor and gave it the full weight of his foot. “You said earlier that one of your strippers didn’t turn up for work?”