Now the characters are all introduced - and we enter the final part of the story. Thanks to anyone who has maintained enough interest to get to this stage. New readers might care to back-track to the beginning...
Chapter fifteen: Rotkoff - fighting back, part one.
Dr. and Mrs. W. Butler - Rugby
Michael Hanson and Adrian Calke - Birmingham
Patrick Kavanagh - Wolverhampton
Edgar Abrams - Birmingham
Charles and Diane Rollinson - Walsall
Ivy was in charge of the Bishop Street reference library the following morning, and, working together, she and Philip spent a useful couple of hours. By midday Philip knew something about all five of the names on Rotkoff's paper.
All featured in stories in the West Midlands local papers over the past three or four years. None of the people had clearly been murdered, but all died in circumstances giving rise to suspicion. Philip was forced to believe that Rotkoff was in deadly earnest and that his life, and those of his loved ones were under threat unless he gave in.
He urgently needed to tell those most deeply involved what sort of threat they were under. Philip was not sure he could trust the office telephone, so whilst Joan manned the office, he called on Denise at her home. She stuck a small malt whisky into his hand, and gestured to a chair.
"Philip dear, how lovely to see you. If you had let me know I should have come in and met you at the office. There are always things to do in the centre of town. I take it you haven't come to play?"
"No my love, this is not a social call. A really bad situation has arisen, and it affects all of us. How can you and Andy, Donald, Laura and myself get together without attracting any attention?"
"A restaurant might be the best. You take Laura out for an evening, and Andy and Don and I will accidentally meet you there. Don's the man. I'll get him to suggest somewhere where we can be guaranteed privacy. I'll tell Laura the place on some pretext. Don't worry, we'll sort it all out."
That Friday evening, Laura and Philip drove out to their rendezvous at the Mardi Gras Roadhouse on the Six Hills Road. They arrived at a non-descript large, low building. It had evidently started life as a motor car showroom whose builders thought that, with cheap enough occupancy costs they could flout the laws of location.
Empty for over a decade after 1935, it was now metamorphosed into a nightclub of a kind familiar in the roads south and west of London, but a rarity in the midlands and north.
Short-skirted waitresses and evening gowned hostesses, all of them with beautiful, bright smiles and at least a veneer of sophistication decorated the place. The Mardi grass was established as a private club, so membership took 24 hours; but a generous policy on signed-in guests complied with the law and satisfied the customers.
The club served expensive, but genuine drinks. Unlike the clipjoints of Soho; what you read on the bottle was what you got in your glass. The champagne was champagne, the Teachers whisky was Teachers.
The food, too, was expensive but good and well served. The music was superb. A piano trio played fro dancing on weeknights and, at weekends, one of the owners, Bruno Canelli, led a five piece jazz-oriented dance band that drew people from four counties.
At around nine pm. Laura and Philip stood at the door and surveyed the large, low-ceilinged room with its obligatory haze of cigar and cigarette smoke. They saw clusters of white-clothed tables surrounding the small central dance floor.
Down the room, the eye was drawn to the small stage with a runway where scantily-clad dancers , who got even more scantily clad after midnight, danced and sang routines clearly derived from MGM musicals. At one corner of the room, a small triangular dais housed the band, with a piano (unused this evening) and a full drum kit.
From the bandstand, Bruno gave them a nod of recognition. Ginny and Jenny, looking very much at home, smiled at them from their privileged positions on the band wives table.
They followed the long, black-stockinged legs of the lovely waitress who showed them to their reserved table and ordered drinks. Ten minutes later they saw Ivy, in another beautiful cocktail dress, walk in with Donald.
They seated themselves in the vacant places. Philip greeted them effusively and ordered drinks for them. As they were reading the menus and making small-talk, Andy and Denise arrived.
Philip, taking on the role of host, insisted that the new arrivals joined them, and made the waitresses bustle about setting two more places and bringing up chairs.
To an uncritical eye, the scene, with its three dinner jacketed men, and three evening-dressed women crowded on a table for four, looked just like a happy accidental meeting of old friends.
As the smoked salmon pate starters arrived, Donald broke into the small-talk.
"Bruno has a share in this place. He has known these people since his Army days. He says they are utterly reliable, and trustworthy. He has helped them out once or twice when the Nottingham gangs tried to muscle in on the action, and they are only too happy to help in any way at all. Danny the manager has made sure that nobody iffy can overhear us."
There was a tension at the table, as the summons was clearly urgent and important, and there was a sort of hesitance, or reluctance in the way that everyone took their time choosing meals and drinks.
Now that everyone was assembled in response to his urgency, Philip was at a loss how to start. Andy saw his hesitation and began.
"This is about Rotkoff, isn't it Phil?"
"Yes, that's right. You were dead right about him - the man's a monster."
Laura looked at him in bewilderment. It did not take a genius to see that the meeting a couple of days previously had gone badly. but once Philip had come back to the office alone, she had jumped up, kissed his cheek and hurried back to the university library to get in a couple of hours' work on an overdue essay.
Since then, with Joan back in the office, she and Philip had had scarcely time to exchange a greeting.
Philip looked a little embarrassed. He knew that Laura would be hurt at having been kept in ignorance of the threat posed by Rotkoff, but it could not be hidden any longer.
"I'm sorry that I kept this from you, darling, but I hoped that nothing would come of it, and I didn't want to worry you. Rotkoff has been spying on the business. His men had got in and copied all our files and he knew all about the business. Yesterday he came along to demand that I buy out Denise and Don's shareholdings and make him our sole client."
"But that's outrageous," Laura burst out. Donald and Denise, shock in their faces, were exclaiming in angry whispers. Andy grasped Denise's hand, and held up his own, in a well-practised gesture, to command silence.
"Rotkoff is a dangerous criminal, and a crafty one too. We planted hidden microphones in the office to try to get something on him yesterday, but he was too clever for us."
"Yes", Philip continued, "he stuck to small talk in the office, and then suggested a walk. It wasn't until we had got well away from the office that he gave me an ultimatum, and this list."
Just at that moment the band ended its first set with Bruno singing Louis Jordan's great song Let the Good Times Roll, giving the alto sax player free rein for four, rousing, consecutive blues choruses that the small audience greeted with prolonged applause.
Conversation stopped for a well-deserved final round of applause. Bruno slipped off the bandstand, in so far as so huge a man could be said to slip, and he came over, greeted everyone warmly and pulled up a chair. The prettiest waitress watched his every move and immediately brought him a pint.
For some time he listened in silence.
As Philip spoke he passed around copies of the list of names. They all read them carefully, but the names meant nothing to any of them except Ivy.
His voice sharp with tension, Philip told what he had discovered.
"All these people have died in suspicious circumstances in the past couple of years. Rotkoff strongly implied that they turned down his offers of so-called 'partnership', and that he was responsible for their deaths.
First of all, the Butlers. Dr. Butler was a very respected dentist; he inherited a thriving wine-merchant's business in Rugby. Rotkoff wanted it, maybe as a cover for drug smuggling, or whatever.
Butler refused, and a couple of week later his house burned down in the night and all five of them were killed. Three little ones they had; the oldest was eight."
Everyone around the table exclaimed in shock and horror. Philip paused, a stricken look on his face. He was sharply aware of how vulnerable his mother would be to a house fire.
Andy Summerston took up the story.
"Rotkoff was suspected, but the police couldn't put a case together. It could very easily have been a case of arson, but if so it was rigged to look like an electrical fire that started in the kitchen.
George Torrens, my old oppo in Brum, is certain sure that Rotkoff was responsible, and that's what came from his snouts in Brum. After that, people really began taking Rotkoff seriously."
Philip continued,
"That was four years ago. Next came Michael Hanson and Adrian Calke. They jointly owned one of the top estate agencies in the West Midlands. Hanson worked out of the office at the Bullring, Calke had an office in Solihull. Calke was the finance man and Hanson was the salesman. Their fathers, who stared the business, had been great friends, but the sons did not really get on outside business.
That's why everyone was amazed when they were found dead together in a hotel room. Hanson's throat was cut and Calke was stabbed through the heart with a big kitchen knife. They were both naked, and it looked like a homosexual suicide pact.
The newspapers had a field day about it. Michael Hanson and Adrian Calke, the owners of Hanson, Calke and Partners, in a sensational double suicide, and they died in bed together in a somewhat disreputable hotel in Solihull.
