The Toff And The Stolen Tresses - John Creasey

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Wig-Maker

Donny walked past the door of the room where Rollison had sat yesterday, and led the way through a doorway at the end of the passage, and then up a short flight of steps. The paintwork was a more ordinary cream colour here, but the place was spotless; Donny did not just put up a front. As Rollison followed him along a narrow landing, seeing the bowed shoulders beneath the snow-white barber’s coat, he found himself trying to reconcile two conflicting things.

Donny was rich. He owned dozens, perhaps hundreds of shops. He owned a great deal of valuable property. Yet he worked in one of his own shops, cutting hair for customers, actively managing the whole concern. He might have been expected to work from an office, and to leave all the donkey work to others.

What was the explanation?

Was he so rich as Grice had made out?

Or was he a miser?

He opened a door into a long, narrow room, with a north light, a room which might have served excellently for an artist’s studio; but instead of canvases round the wall and paintings dotted all about, and instead of easel and palette and brushes, there were wigs and tresses of hair.

One long bench beneath the north light had at least twenty model heads on it, some bald and shiny, looking strangely like Lila without her turban, some with complete wigs on them, some with partly finished wigs, some with hair hanging down, some with hair brushed upwards, Edwardian fashion. Hanging from racks along the wall were tresses of hair of a great variety of sizes and shades and colours—from the fairest to the darkest, like the hair which had been fastened round the bricks last night. There were some small pots of liquid which looked like a kind of glue, and in a corner were several ovens; Rollison could not even guess their purpose.

Donny saw the question in his eyes.

“They are for dyed hair,” he explained. “We subject all dyed hair to the severest tests, to try to make sure that it doesn’t change under the most intemperate climatic conditions. It isn’t always possible to be absolutely sure, of course.” He showed some screens, not unlike the one on which Ada Jepson had her tapestry but threaded with hair, as if this was going to be the silkiest tapestry of all. “That is our matching screen,” Donny explained. “We take samples of hair from the customer’s head, and match it up—that is, for people who want a little extra help, or are balding, or wear a toupee.”

“The question is, where do you get the hair from?”

“I buy it.”

“Can you satisfy the police that you don’t buy it from the men who’re cutting hair off girls who want to enter for your beautiful hair competition?”

“I cannot prove where it comes from in the first place,” Donny said. “Much hair, often the best for my purpose, comes from India and the Balkans, but supplies are difficult. I buy from agents in London.”

“Who?”

“A small agency, run by a Mr. Samuel King,” Donny said. “The police asked me all this earlier, and they know his address. I can give it to you, if you insist, but if King thinks I am accusing him, then he may cut off my supplies. Need you go and see him, too?”

It was hard to suspect Donny.

It was easy to be fooled.

“I’ll check with Grice,” Rollison said. “Do you handle this part of the business yourself?”

“No, my eldest son is the expert. He’s a very clever chemist, and helps to prepare many of our lotions, some dyes and some rinses.”

Rollison looked at the unblemished skin and the lines which might have been carved out of I wax, and the saintliness which might hide something far more secular, and asked:

“If the hair of a dozen girls was cut off each week, what would it be worth?”

Donny answered quietly:

“Possibly a hundred to a hundred and twenty pounds.”

“Do you think that’s why so much is being cut off?”

Donny said:

“I simply don’t know, Mr. Rollison.”

“Lila thinks you know why hers and Leah’s was cut off.”

“Lila is very young and highly strung, and she is absurdly fond of her old father,” Donny I              said gently.

“Or does she know that you’re being high pressured?”

“She cannot know what isn’t true.”

Rollison said in the same tone and without any change of expression:

“Why did you hire Wallis to beat-up the barber who wouldn’t sell out?”

Donny spread his hands.

“I did not intend Wallis to use force.”

“Just threats of force?”

Donny didn’t answer.

“I think you were compelled by someone else to put Wallis and Clay on to that barber,” Rollison said. “Who’s putting the pressure on you?”

“There is nothing I can tell you, Mr. Rollison.”

“Someone put sharp pressure on you to prevent you from talking freely to me,” insisted Rollison. “It won’t work. Black is black, and white is white, and you’ve always been on the side of the angels. You’re old enough to know that the end doesn’t justify the means. You’re old enough in the ways of the East End to know that if you let yourself be frightened into silence now, the pressure will get worse and worse. Who’s after you, Donny?”

“I don’t think we’ll serve any useful purpose by continuing with this conversation,” said the barber quietly, “and I have a lot of work to do. Will you excuse me?”

Rollison took one of the lists from his pocket, and said:

“Look at this.”

Donny studied it, reading without glasses. His lips tightened a little, and he shot a swift glance at Rollison, then looked back at the list. He nodded at last.

“What is it?” Rollison asked.

“The list of Wallis victims.”

“Or yours?”

“Only one could be blamed onto me,” said Donny, and seemed to wince.

“Do you know any of the others?”

“One of them is a wholesaler who has done a little business with me from time to time. I buy some of my supplies from him.”

“Hairdressing supplies?”

“Yes, the goods I sell.”

“Does he sell Jepsons’ goods?”

“Most wholesalers sell some Jepson goods,” Donny said. “Mr. Rollison, I’m sorry, but—”

The telephone bell rang. Donny seemed relieved and hurried to lift the receiver.

“This is Sampson,” he said in his precise way. “Yes, I will come at once.” He put the receiver down and said almost sadly: “Superintendent Harrison of the Division wants to see me again,” he told Rollison. “I must go.”

Harrison was one of the younger men, recently moved from the Yard to take over the Division. Rollison knew him more by reputation than by acquaintance. Today, he obviously did not intend to waste time with the Toff, and was almost brusque. Rollison went out, and saw a police car and two plainclothes men standing at the kerb, but no crowd was about today. The girl Lila was still at the cash desk, and there was still no friendliness in her manner. Rollison was actually outside when he turned round and went back to her.

Donny and Harrison and a sergeant had gone along the passage.

“First you, then the police,” she said. “You’re just bad news itself.”

“Lila, try to forget that you don’t like me for a minute, and put me into the picture, will you? You’ve six brothers and sisters in all, haven’t you?”

Any law against that?”

“What kind of a family is it, Lila?”

She drew in a deep breath.

“It’s the finest family in London, and I don’t care what kind of families your duke and aristocratic friends have! My father is the finest man in the world, bar none. He and mother have lived the happiest life anyone possibly could. There isn’t one of us kids who wouldn’t die for them if it would help them, and that goes for the in-laws, too. Why don’t you go away and leave us in peace?”

Rollison looked at her intently, and spoke with great deliberation.

“I’ll go, Lila, and I won’t come here again if you’ll look at me as you are doing now, and swear that the trouble your family’s in began yesterday—when I first came to see him. That’s all you have to do. Swear that it’s true, and I’ll go.”

She looked at him with her eyes brimming over with tears, and her lips quivering, but she did not speak again.

“Lila,” Rollison urged, “get the family together, talk among yourselves, try to work this out the best way. I want to help Donny as much as you do, if for different reasons. But if he keeps telling me half-truths, and if all of you close up when the police and I ask questions, he’ll probably get badly hurt. Don’t forget that.”

She still didn’t speak.

Rollison nodded and turned away, doubting whether he would ever be able to break her down.

He had moved only a step when he heard her cry out in a strangled voice, and he turned round. He saw a sight which he should have expected, and which Lila must have feared. Donny was being led out by burly Harrison.

“What’s on?” Rollison asked sharply.

Harrison held a toupee up for him to see.

“This is made out of hair cut from a girl’s head only two weeks ago. Hair experts are going through every wig he’s got.”

“Mr. Rollison,” Donny said in a strained voice. “I knew nothing at all about it, but I’ve been charged with being in possession of stolen—stolen goods.”

“You can tell that to the court,” Harrison said. “Move aside, Mr. Rollison.”

Rollison stood very still, and asked:

“Who’s doing this to you, Donny? Who is it?” Donny said: “There’s nothing I can say.”

*     *     *

“If I knew anything I’d tell you,” Lila said brokenly, tut I just don’t know a thing.”

*     *     *

Rollison went to his car and drove to Mission Street, about half a mile away. There was a corner café, patronised by dockers and labourers, and even now he could hear the throbbing heartbeat of the docks as he drew near. The owner, a man named Rickett, had been the first to suffer from Wallis’s brutality. He wasn’t in a big way of business, and for the most part was handy for emergency stores, such as canned and packaged foods for ships sailing earlier than expected. Night workers and the crews of ships which docked during the

night found him useful, too.

Rollison pulled up outside the shop.

Even before he stepped from the car, he saw the corner of the window, dressed much more attractively than the rest, with Jepsons’ goods of many kinds—their toothpaste, hair creams, cigarettes, pens and pencils, Jepsons’ writing paper, postcards, envelopes, Jepsons’ brushes and their polishes for shoes and furniture.

A woman was watching Rollison from inside the shop, and he saw her dart through a doorway leading to a room at the back the moment he opened the front door. Its bell clanged noisily. The shop was small and the shelves crowded. There was much more of Jepsons’ stocks here—pots and pans and gadgets, soaps and soap powders, canned foods, everything for the kitchen or the galley.

Out of sight a woman said urgently: “It’s lunacy, Tom, that’s what it is, sheer lunacy. Haven’t you had enough?”

A man answered in a quiet voice, and spoke very slowly.

“Becky, if you’re right, and this is the Toff, I’m going to see what he wants. It’s true that I

“I tell you it’s crazy! Look what happened when he went to see Donny! Everyone knows about it, and who can say where it will stop? They can have my hair for nothing, but they might kill you next time. Isn’t it bad enough to be crippled for life?”

“I can get along,” the man said, in the same deliberate voice. “You only see one side of it, Becky, you don’t see the important one. What’s going to happen if this doesn’t stop? No one will be safe anywhere. If the Toff can do anything to stop it now, then we ought to help him.”

“What kind of a chance has he got if the police couldn’t do a thing?” the woman almost sobbed. “And what about me? You may not care whether you have another beating up, but what happens if they go for me?”

There was a moment of silence.

              “If you’re so nervy, Becky, you’d better go and stay with your mother for a week or two. I can manage here all right. Please don’t make it more difficult than it is already.”

The woman said hoarsely: “I think you’re a crazy fool!”

Then the man appeared in the doorway, and at first sight Rollison thought that he was old. His hair was grey, and his eyes were tired. He was quite short, his nose was broken, and there was an ugly scar over his right eye. But the most noticeable thing was the way he walked: carrying a stick and bent a little from the waist; but he walked firmly.

He looked into Rollison’s face, and smiled in a strangely contented way.

“You were right, Becky,” he called to the woman behind him, “it’s Mr. Rollison. Have you come about the way Wallis and his men attacked me, sir?”

Rollison found himself warming to this man as he had warmed to very few.

“Yes, Rickett,” he said, and looked over the man’s shoulder into the woman’s eyes. She was no more than thirty-five or forty, and attractive in a gipsy way; she had thick, dark hair of which she was undoubtedly proud. “Don’t worry, Mrs. Rickett, I’ll spread it around that neither of you would say a word, and I’ll see that you get some protection, too—protection that won’t be noticeable.” Here at last was a job for Ebbutt’s men. “Just one thing. Have you thought of any reason at all for the beating up, Rickett?”

“Of course he hasn’t!” Mrs. Rickett cried. “He told the police he didn’t know why.”

“The police needn’t know what he’s going to tell me,” Rollison said.

“We’re honest people and there’s nothing,” Mrs. Rickett shrilled. “Yes, Mr. Rollison,” Rickett said, “I think I know why I was attacked.” He moved round I awkwardly, and put his arm round his wife’s shoulders; and she was near to tears. “I didn’t tell the police because I was frightened of what might happen if I did. I wasn’t absolutely sure, either. But the situation’s got much worse since I was questioned. I’m not really positive now of I my facts, but I’ve given it a lot of thought since I came out of hospital. I think I know why it was.”

For a moment he seemed to have real difficulty in making himself go on, for his wife was crying openly, so great was her fear.

“I think that I’d been buying stolen goods from a wholesaler,” Rickett said deliberately, and his grey eyes met Rollison’s frankly and unafraid. “I’d been getting a little extra discount for some time, but that didn’t surprise me, because Jepsons’ stuff is usually sold pretty fine, and I thought they were behind it. Then I discovered, quite by chance, that one of the other dealers in the district wasn’t getting the same discount from his wholesaler, and it wasn’t a Jepsons’ special price offer. It was the wholesaler’s. I knew from experience that this particular wholesaler didn’t often sell at cut price, so I asked their representative how it was that they could offer the discount when others couldn’t.

“That night Wallis and the other man came,” Rickett went on, steadily. “I couldn’t swear who they were. They had scarves over their faces, and cloth caps pulled low down. It wasn’t for over a month after I came out of hospital that I tied the two things up, Mr. Rollison. My memory wasn’t too good when I first came out, but now I’m seeing things straight, and I’ve heard about the other people who’ve suffered in the same way. If anything I say to you will help to put an end to it, then you’re welcome. I hope you won’t have to go to the police, but—”