‘I’d like to fill her in, the bitch.’ Garvald lit a cigarette and leaned back. ‘What’s all this then, Chuck? You playing at being an aide to the C.I.D. or something?’

‘For God’s sake, Ben. I was trying to help you.’

‘Sounds pretty thin to me.’ Garvald turned to Nick. ‘Why the witch hunt? I’m clean as a whistle. Only got into town a few hours ago.’

‘When I started looking for you earlier tonight, Garvald, it was only to warn you to stay away from Bella.’

‘So she’s behind it?’ Garvald chuckled. ‘She’s safe enough, copper. I wouldn’t touch her with a ten-foot pole.’

‘Then you came back for the money,’ Nick said calmly. ‘Your share of the take from that Steel Amalgamated job. The best part of eight thousand quid. Nothing else fits.’

Garvald, searching desperately for a way out, played a hunch. ‘How’s Brady?’

‘For Christ’s sake, Ben, what do you know about Brady?’ Chuck Lazer cried.

Nick cut in, his voice cold and hard. ‘What about Brady, Garvald?’

‘One of your blokes, isn’t he?’ Garvald said. ‘Turned up at the Flamingo earlier looking for me. There was some kind of a row and Donner knocked him down the stairs of Manton’s private entrance.’

‘He was found lying in a street near the river,’ Nick said. ‘Looked like a hit and run.’

‘Now I call that neat.’ Garvald smiled softly. ‘That would be Manton’s idea. Takes a fine, twisted mind like his to think up a touch like that.’

‘You’re sure about this?’

‘I saw it happen, I was hiding in a linen cupboard in the same corridor.’ Garvald laughed harshly. ‘Why in the hell do you think Manton and his boys picked me up at the Regent? They killed a copper and I was the only witness. I can imagine what they intended to do with me.’

‘The irony is that Brady isn’t dead,’ Nick said. ‘He’s still unconscious, but they think he stands a fair chance of pulling through.’

‘And Manton doesn’t know that?’

‘He does now.’ Lazer turned to Nick. ‘I was making conversation with him in the kitchen, trying to be natural. I mentioned about Brady being in hospital and so on in passing. Come to think of it, he and Donner both looked pretty sick about it.’

‘They’ll have to run,’ Garvald said calmly. ‘No other choice.’

He sat back, well content, and lit a cigarette. The peelers looked after their own. From this moment on, anything else would have to take second place to the Brady affair and they wouldn’t rest till they had Manton and his friends with the cuffs on, which caused him no pain at all. Manton was a rat. He’d had something like this coming to him for years.