Policeman's Progress Read Online Free PDF Page B

was all about, sank into a terrified silence.
    Further along the riverside, the warehouses thinned out and various small factories, waste ground and allotments lined the river’s edge where Jackie’s old torpedo boat lay moored.
    The white car charged up to the end of the gangway.
    Almost before it stopped, both front doors opened and a petrified Armstrong was dragged out by Joe Blunt.
    Struggling feebly, he was frogmarched aboard and thrust into the office.
    As a preliminary, Stott gave him an open-handed slap that nearly knocked a hole in his face. This was followed up by an encore of the blasphemies that Jackie had used earlier that evening. Joe stood impassively with his back to the closed door.
    â€˜I don’t know what you’re gannin’ on aboot,’ whimpered Geordie, after the warm-up was completed. He was a dapper young man, about twenty-eight years old. Typical ladies’ man , Jackie thought viciously, looking at his weak, pretty face.
    Jackie grabbed Armstrong by the collar of his natty suit, pulled him forward until their noses were almost touching, then gave him a wicked short-arm jab in the stomach. Geordie went dead white and fainted, sagging like a bundle of rags in Jackie’s hand. Impassively, he let him fall to the floor and waited for him to come around.
    When he was conscious again, Stott began talking.
    â€˜How d’yer do it, Geordie – what’s the fiddle with Creeper Lee?’
    He kept repeating this in a dull monotone until the younger man was able to start whispering feeble denials.
    Jackie grabbed him by the collar again, and he capitulated.
    â€˜Don’t – I’ll tell you.’ Sobbing with mixed pain and fear, the story tumbled out. ‘I wasn’t rooking you, honest, only the mugs. Archie would come and play, early in the evening usually, when not many were about. If nobody else was on the table, I would pay him out, whatever he’d staked on … if there were others in it, I’d slip him some counters every time I paid out. Then later, he’d split fifty-fifty with me.’
    â€˜And how d’yer reckon that wasn’t fiddling me?’ roared Jackie.
    â€˜That wheel has got a slight bias,’ said Geordie tremulously, ‘very slight, but when you spin it as often as I do, you find out. I used to fiddle the mugs when business was brisk to make up for the bit that Archie and me raked off – so it wasn’t no skin off your nose, Jackie,’ he ended with a whine.
    â€˜Like hell it wasn’t, you little twister – that bias was still on my wheel. I should ’a been getting an even higher percentage.’
    He clouted the baby-faced croupier across the face again and Geordie screamed with fright. But Jackie hadn’t got down to real business by a long way.
    â€˜Been flashing the money about a bit reckless, haven’t you? How much you been spending on trying to roll my Laura?’
    Geordie Armstrong looked at him, speechless with surprise. He’d been resigned to a beating over the money, but this was crazy! Another crashing blow to the point of his jaw bowled him over. He felt something crack in his face, but for some reason there was no pain, or he was too dazed for it to register.
    He spat some teeth as he lay on the floor, and immediately collected another kick in the chest. Mercifully, he felt numb all over, though his mind seemed clear.
    â€˜What the hell are you talking about?’ he mumbled through his bloody lips.
    â€˜You know fine what I mean, damn you,’ raved Jackie, as he stood over the croupier. ‘My Laura, of course. You’ve been in her flat, haven’t you! Trying your luck, eh – well, you pushed it a bit too far!’
    â€˜Dunno what – you’re on – about,’ gasped Geordie.
    Stott kicked him viciously in the ribs a few times, then hauled him to his feet with one great hand and rammed him back against the edge of the desk,