The Toff and The Trip-Trip-Triplets by John Creasey

Author:John Creasey
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2017-04-13T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twelve

“Make It Jolly”

Rollison drove away from the barge, very thoughtful indeed. The noises of the docks made constant background, great cranes were floodlit at the wharfs, whole ships, glimpsed between warehouses and high brick walls, were shown up brightly, men working on them like ants when seen from here. A few tall factories, one of the distant ones new and filled with countless square yellow eyes. McGee’s Soups certainly had a factory in this area, and he felt an even greater urge to seek it out. He drove round several streets and saw a big, floodlit sign which was half-hidden by another building. Six or seven lorries thundered past him, and then a stream of cars; of course, it was rush hour.

The cobbles, smeared with the droppings of oil, looked as if they had a shiny streak in the middle. The street lamps on the walls were old-fashioned, and lit by gas; those on the pavement side were huge concrete posts lit by sodium, making a strange and eerie glow. Rollison moved a few yards, then put his head out of the window and peered up at the sign above the factory.

There it was: McGee’s Soups.

“Well, I’ve put the girls close to home,” Rollison said to himself wryly. “I wonder how big the factory is. And I wonder if Pat’s ex-girl-friend is on this shift.”

He turned left, found doors and gates opened and quite suddenly was confronted by a flood of men and women, all bearing down on him. They came not only from the main factory but from smaller buildings on one side, and it seemed that they were not in hundreds but in thousands.

Would he be able to recognise Pat’s girl-friend?

The spearhead of the crowd drew close.

“Won’t do yourself any good there, mate,” a small, pale-faced man said.

“Git aht while you bloody well can,” said a big man with a strident voice.

But there was no getting out, even if he wished to. The flood became so great that it seemed almost as if some would walk straight over the car, but as each group reached it, they divided, flooding past on either side. Most ignored him. A few of the younger girls peered in at him.

“My, who let him out?”

“Proper pansy, that one.”

“Hi, Charlie Boy!”

He entered into the spirit of this badinage, and soon won answering smiles. A girl in her teens in the briefest of hot pants, came along on the other side of the road, looking across at the car; and he had no doubt at all that this was the girl of the photograph. Rollison beamed across at her, and she hesitated, and called: “Waiting for me, mate?”

“Come on, Edie, he’d eat you!” another girl said.

She had a pert and pretty face and her eyes were very bright, partly because she had on so much shading and the eyelashes were so thickly plastered that they looked like solid black. She had a rosebud of a mouth and a snub nose, she showed nice but

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