A charge of conspiracy to rob the mails had been dropped for lack of evidence in 1949, and in 1950 he had been recalled from the reserve to fight in Korea. A bullet in the leg had brought him home in the early part of 1951 with a permanent limp and a 33⅓ per cent disability pension.

Between then and his final conviction in June 1956, he had been questioned by the police on no less than twenty-seven occasions in connection with indictable offences.

The door to Grant’s office opened and he came out, a cigarette dangling between his lips. ‘Got a light?’ Nick struck a match and the Superintendent sat on the edge of the desk. ‘How are you getting on?’

‘Quite a character,’ Nick said. ‘From the looks of this, they’ve tried to hang about every charge in the book on him at one time or another.’

‘Except for living on immoral earnings and that sort of thing, you’re probably right,’ Grant said. ‘A funny bloke, Ben Garvald. Every villain in town was frightened to death of him and yet where women were concerned, he was like someone out of one of those books they like reading. He treated Bella like a princess.’

‘Which would explain why he was so cut up when she decided to divorce him. I’ve just got to the entry on his last job, the one he got sent down for.’

‘I can save you some time there,’ Grant said. ‘I handled it myself at this end. Garvald and three associates lifted over fifteen thousand quid from the Steel Amalgamated works in Birmingham. Wages for the following day. The daft beggars never learn and I don’t mean Garvald and his pals. Anyway, they didn’t hit the nightwatchman hard enough, he raised the alarm and Birmingham police sewed the city up tight.’

‘Too late?’

‘Not quite. There were two cars. One of them crashed and went up like a torch taking a well-known peterman called Jack Charlton and his driver up with it.’

‘And Garvald?’

‘He and the other bloke crashed a road block and got clean away. We lifted Garvald next day and the night-watchman picked him out at an identity parade with no trouble at all.’

‘And the money?’

‘Garvald said it was in the other car.’

‘A likely story.’

‘Strangely enough I was inclined to believe him. We certainly found traces of some of it in the ashes. That’s as far as we got anyway and we didn’t get the other man.’

‘So Garvald kept his mouth shut?’

‘True to the code. Went down the steps like a man.’

‘The bloke who was with him in the car that night, did you have any fancy ideas at the time?’

‘Plenty and they all came down to Fred Manton.’

‘Manton?’ Nick frowned. ‘Doesn’t he run that place in Gascoigne Square – The Flamingo Club?’