Authors: R. D. Wingfield
The monotonous shrill of an alarm bell cut through the air. A small crowd of sightseers was being pushed away from the entrance to a shuttered shop by a uniformed police constable. Above the shop door a stout iron bracket supported the universal pawnbrokers’ trademark, three brass balls. A fading painted wooden sign announced S. GLICKMAN, JEWELLER AND PAWNBROKER. The premises had a shabby, down-at-heel appearance and didn’t look nearly prosperous enough to warrant the attention of an armed robber.
They darted from the car to the shop, the uniformed man giving a nod of recognition to the inspector. Inside, their feet scrunched over shards of broken glass that powdered the carpet.
It was a tiny, dingy shop. A couple of paces and they were at a glass-fronted counter, its shelves stripped bare of the jewellery it once held. On the wall, to the left of the counter, a shattered glass showcase containing a mess of broken glass, cheap watches, and cigarette lighters. The wall showcase to the right of the counter contained nine-carat gold chains and pendants and appeared to be untouched.
The fat man in the shiny blue-serge suit dabbing blood from his face was Sammy Glickman, the owner. Balding, middle-aged, tiny shifty eyes behind thick-lensed glasses, and a few more chins than the usual allowance, Glickman was slumped on a chair in front of his counter. A police officer, PC Keith Sutton, was questioning him, jotting down his replies.
The sound of the alarm bell was magnified in the enclosed space of the shop. “Can’t someone turn that bloody thing off?” pleaded Frost.
Holding his now crimson and soggy handkerchief tightly against his forehead, the pawnbroker fished a bunch of keys from his pocket, sorted one out, and offered it to Webster. “There’s a switch under the counter . . . left-hand side.”
Webster killed the alarm. It died immediately but the ghost echo of its high-pitched ringing still scratched at their ears.
The shop was too small to hold four men comfortably, so Frost instructed Webster to go with the other officer and start knocking at doors to find out if anyone saw anything. “Have a look in the road for a licence plate,” he called. “You never know your luck.”
There was now room to move and Frost was able to get close enough to the pawnbroker to examine his injuries. The forehead wound was little more than a deep cut. “The radio reported you were shot, Sammy,” said Frost, sounding disappointed. “I was expecting to find you with your head blown off.”
“Another couple of inches and it could have been, Mr. Frost,” Glickman replied.
“I’ve sent for an ambulance, Inspector,” said Sutton, “but it’s not very serious.”
The eyes behind the thick lenses focused indignantly on the constable. “Not very serious? I’m bleeding like a stuck pig. It’s a miracle I’m still alive. He fired straight at me.”
“He missed you, though, didn’t he?” observed Frost, moving behind the counter to poke at the damaged showcase. “And you’re hardly a small target.” Amongst the fragments of shattered glass and the cigarette lighters he spotted some flattened lead pellets. He picked one up with his finger and thumb and displayed it to the constable.
“Yes, sir, I did notice,” said Sutton, sniffing. These damn plainclothes men seemed to think the uniformed branch was blind. “Shotgun pellets. The man fired a warning shot as he was leaving. A splinter of flying glass caused the damage to Mr. Glickman’s forehead.”
“It could have gone in my eye,” moaned Glickman. “Blinded me for life.”
“It could have gone up your arse,” snapped Frost, “but it didn’t, so let’s stick to what actually happened.” He dug out his cigarettes and offered the packet around, then had a nose around the shop, pulling at drawers, prodding at showcases. He opened a door behind the counter, and his nose wrinkled at the musty smell of old clothes. Clicking on the light, he faced dusty shelves piled with brown-paper parcels, old suitcases, and hangers full of outdated garments. He returned to the shop, where he examined the security bars and locks fitted to the inside of the main door and shop window. “He got nothing from the window display, then?” he asked.
“Only from the counter,” said Sutton. “Mr. Glickman said he was in and out in a flash.”
Frost nodded, then sat on the corner of the counter, swinging his leg. “Right, Mr. Glickman. Tell me what happened.”
“What’s there to tell?” asked Glickman. “I’m in my shop, the bell on the door rings, telling me a customer has come in. I raise my head to greet him and I’m looking straight down the barrel of a shotgun. Behind it is this great hulking brute of a man wearing a stocking mask.”
As Glickman was talking, Frost studied the pattern of the shotgun pellet pockmarks on the wall. The spread seemed fairly concentrated and not widespread as would be the case if the gun barrel had been sawn off.
“This gun, Sammy. Was the barrel full-size or had it been sawn off?”
Glickman shrugged. “When a man pokes something like that at you, Mr. Frost, you don’t get down and measure it.”
“That’s what the girl who was raped said,” murmured Frost.
PC Sutton’s shoulders shook as he tried not to laugh. “It’s pretty certain the barrel wasn’t sawn off, Inspector—the damage is too localized. Someone from Forensic should be here soon. They’ll be able to tell us.”
“Yes, they’re such clever bastards,” commented Frost, who had little time for the geniuses of the forensic section. He nodded for Sammy to continue.
“He don’t say a dicky bird, just prods me in the gut with the shooter and indicates I should come around the front and lay facedown on the floor. I don’t need to be told twice. Down I go and I hear him sliding back the counter doors and scooping the cream of my stock into a plastic bag.”
“What sort of stuff, Sammy?”
“Rings, bracelets, brooches, all exquisite items—twenty thousand quid’s worth.”
Frost snorted out a lungful of smoke. “Twenty thousand! Do me a favour, Sammy. We’re the police, not the insurance company.”
“All right,” said Sammy reluctantly, “perhaps it might have been nearer six thousand. Anyway, he then rams the gun in the back of my neck and says I’m not to move a muscle for ten minutes, otherwise he’ll blow my head off. So I lie there all still, but as soon as I hear the door close, I’m up in a flash and I’m out the street yelling, ‘Stop, thief’.” He dabbed his forehead again and was disappointed to see that the flow of blood had stopped. “Picture the scene, Mr Frost. I’m out in that street yelling, ‘Stop thief’, and who’s there to hear me? Not a bloody soul! The only person in the street is the robber, climbing into his motor and yanking the stocking mask off his head.”
Frost slid down from the counter. “You saw him with the mask off? Did you see his face?”
“It was the only bloody face in the street. Of course I saw it.”
“Would you recognize him again?”
Glickman folded the handkerchief carefully and put it in his pocket. “Listen, Mr. Frost, when a man robs me of thirty thousand pounds’ worth of prime stock, I promise you his face becomes memorable.”
“I suppose you didn’t get the registration number of the car?” asked Frost, not too hopefully.
“Of course I got the bloody registration number. It was a red Vauxhall Cavalier, registration number CBZ2303. They’re nice little motors—my brother-in-law has one.”
Frost couldn’t believe his luck. Licence plates falling off Jags, and now an armed robber seen without his mask, his car details noted. He instructed Sutton to buzz Control and get the car’s particulars circulated.
“Already done, sir,” said Sutton flatly. He didn’t need to be told to do something as basic as that.
“And you’ve warned Control that the man is armed and dangerous?”
“Of course, sir.” Or as basic as that, either.
Glickman, piqued that he was no longer the centre of attraction, said peevishly, “Do you want to know what else happened, or am I of no further interest now I’ve done half your work for you?”
Frost hitched himself back up on the counter and waved for Sammy to go on.
“Like I said, I’m screaming to an empty street. He must have got fed up with me yelling at him because he swings his shooter round and fires—point-blank range. But he misses me and hits that showcase.”
Frost looked at the showcase and lined up the angles. “Either he was a rotten shot, Sammy, or he only meant to frighten you.”
“He certainly frightened me, Inspector. I’ll be putting the biological washing powder to the test tonight, I promise you. Anyway, I fling myself facedown on the pavement until I hear the car roaring off. Then everyone comes running out to see what’s up. When I’m screaming, ‘Stop thief’, and being fired at, the street is empty. The minute he’s gone they’re standing eight deep on the pavement.”
The shop door opened and Webster, with the other uniformed man, returned to report that they hadn’t come up with a single witness who had seen anything other than a red, or a blue, or a black car roaring off in the distance. Plenty of people said they had heard the gunshot but thought it was a car backfiring.
“If it was an atom bomb going off, they’d say it was a car backfiring,” muttered Glickman.
Frost’s cigarettes were passed around again, and soon the little shop was thickly hazed with smoke. “One thing for sure,” said Frost, “whoever did this was either a small-time crook or a first-timer.”
“How do you make that out?” asked Webster.
“Well,” said Frost, adding a salvo of smoke rings to the already murky atmosphere, “if you go in for armed robbery it’s a minimum of seven years, for starters. So why risk seven years robbing a little shithouse like this when, for the same risk, you could rob a bank or a decent jeweller?”
“Thank you very much, Mr. Frost,” said Glickman, sounding offended.
“My pleasure,” replied Frost. “Secondly, he didn’t saw off the barrel as any self-respecting gunman would do. This means he couldn’t keep the gun concealed in a deep pocket. He’d either have to tuck it inside his coat as he crossed from the car to the shop or blatantly wave it about. Finally, what does he do when he gets in here? He dashes in, sweeps odds and ends of Mickey Mouse jewellery into a dustbin sack and is out again in seconds. He could have taken his time and nicked all sorts of things of value, but he was in too much of a hurry. Why?” Like a schoolmaster, he looked around for an answer.
“Because he was bloody scared?” suggested Sutton.
Frost nodded his agreement. “Exactly what I think, young Sutton. It was all so amateurish.”
“It wasn’t amateurish the way he fired that gun at me,” objected Glickman. “He missed me by inches.”
“Thirty-six bloody inches,” said Frost. He pushed himself off the counter and wandered behind it to the till. “I suppose he didn’t touch the takings?” He pressed the No Sale key and the drawer shot open.
“Only the jewellery,” said Glickman, craning his neck to keep an eye on Frost. Some policemen had very sticky fingers.
The till drawer held about seventy pounds. Not rich pickings, but it would have increased the gunman’s haul by about ten percent. Frost was pushing the drawer shut when he saw the small envelope tucked behind the bank notes. He had seen envelopes like that before. Exactly like that. Taken from a drug addict, newly purchased from a pusher and full of heroin.
Sammy Glickman had been mixed up with a lot of shady dealings in the past, but never with drugs. Frost pulled the envelope out. It was far too heavy for heroin. The flap was sealed. He stuck a finger beneath it and ripped it open, then tipped the contents into his palm. Gold. Gold coins. Five golden sovereigns each bearing the head of Queen Victoria.
“I’m waiting to hear the ding of the till drawer being closed,” called the pawnbroker anxiously, finding it difficult to see what Frost was up to through the thickening smoke screen. Frost obliged him and firmly closed the drawer with a satisfying ding. But he didn’t put the sovereigns back. He walked back around the counter and held out his hand.
“What are these, Sammy?”
The eyes behind the thick lenses blinked furiously as they focused on the coins. “I buy all sorts of precious metal . . . coins, lockets, gold teeth. You can see the sign outside . . . Best Prices Paid . . . there’s no crime in it.”
“I didn’t say there was, Sammy.”
Webster craned his neck so he could see what the inspector had found. At first he didn’t realize what the coins were. They looked small and insignificant, not much bigger than a new penny. Then he saw the George-and-Dragon pattern on the reverse. Of course! The stolen Queen Victoria sovereigns. “Where did you get these?” he demanded.
The pawnbroker wriggled in his chair. “I’ve been robbed, I’m wounded, I’m in a state of shock. I demand to go to hospital.”
“Where did you get them?” repeated Webster.
“I bought them this morning. It’s all legitimate.”
If it’s legitimate, then why are you looking so bloody guilty? thought Frost to himself happily. “Who did you buy them from, Sammy?”
“A young bloke about twenty-five, dark hair cut short, black leather jacket. I’ve never seen him before. What’s this all about, Mr. Frost? I’m the innocent victim of a brutal crime. I’m entitled to sympathy, not harassment.”
The summonsed ambulance pulled up outside the shop. Sammy gave a sigh of relief. It would take him to the peace and quiet of the hospital and away from these searching questions.
“Send the ambulance away,” Frost instructed the two policemen, “then get back on patrol. Webster and I can handle it from here.”
Glickman’s face fell. “I need hospitalisation, Mr. Frost. I’m feeling bad. It’s delayed reaction from the shock.”
“I’ll get the police surgeon to have a look at you when we lock you up,” said Frost. He said it so matter-of-factly that at first Glickman couldn’t believe what he had heard. Then he did a double take as the import struck home.
“Lock me up? What are you talking about?”
“Terribly sorry, Sammy,” said Frost, “but the sovereigns are stolen property. We’ll have to book you for receiving.”
Glickman’s eyes, magnified behind the lenses, opened wide with feigned amazement. “Stolen property in my shop? I can’t believe it. He said they were family heirlooms.”
“So they were,” said Frost. “Heirlooms of the family he nicked them from.”