“Patience," said Gentle George profoundly as he casually stubbed out a Sobranie Black Russian on Harold the Hip’s upturned hand, “has a certain similarity to money.  If either of them run out, there is always hardship.”

The tone in his voice altered from patronising to downright dangerous. “And mine,” he continued, “has just about run out.”

He crossed his legs and made himself more comfortable on the polished gymnasium bench.

“Patience, that is,” he added significantly, to ensure that there was no misunderstanding.

Harold the Hip, so named because of his unusual legerdemain in divorcing an unsuspecting public from the contents of their hip pockets, had difficulty in concentrating on George’s words. Trussed to the chair as he was, he found his mind wandering between his burnt hand and his ringing head, the latter the result of the caress of George’s two henchmen standing over him.

“Now, Harold,” said George, idly poking at the bound man’s kneecap with a polished shoe, “We’ve been business colleagues for years. It would be a pity if we fell out for no good reason, wouldn’t it? So I’ll ask you again. Once more. Nicely.”

He took another Black Russian from the pack and carefully lit it with his gold Dunhill lighter.

“So tell me, Harold,” he said, snapping the lighter shut, “Why have you been holding out on me in the cash from the collections, eh?”

The ministrations of George’s prodding toe seems to have a restorative effect on Harold’s addled brain, and his bruised lips formed a reply.

“I’m already told you,” he said thickly, “I haven’t been holding out. You’ve had all that I’ve collected. There’s nothing else. If there was I’d tell you. You don’t think I like sitting here getting the crap knocked out of me, do you?”

“Tsk, tsk,” said George, in best cartoon fashion, “There’s no need to get emotional about a little harmless fun.” He looked over to his two thugs, both with enormous arms terminating in cudgels rather than fists. “My boys have a lot warmed up yet, but they will. Very shortly,” He leaned forward and put his cruel will face close to Harold’s. “Unless, my little nightingale, you sing me a sweet song.”

Now, Gentle George, as his name implies, had crawled his way into the criminal aristocracy by a subtle mixture of murder and mayhem, so Harold had no doubts that his future was, to say the least, uncertain. The problem was whether to keep denying that he had been keeping some of the collection money from the bookies for his own use, and hoping George would believe him, or to tell the truth and throw himself on George’s mercy, what little of it there might be.

It was the prospect of George’s two thugs continuing to remove his brain from its mountings, which made Harold, decide on the latter course. Which was probably his first and last mistake for he had overestimated the amount of mercy in George’s soul.

“Now that is interesting,” said George, after Harold had finished making his excuses in saying that he wouldn’t do it again, “very interesting indeed. But hardly cricket. Not what we would expect of a member of our organization. Dishonesty, yet.”

George rocked backwards and forwards on the bench, His hands encircling his knees, and a cruelly patronizing smile of amusement on his face.

“It pains me to say this, Harold,” he said apologetically, “but we can’t encourage free enterprise, now, can we? We know that you’ve learned to listen, but it is your contemporaries that we have to worry about, the ones who might get the same idea. So,” he said in those classic indulgent tones reminiscent of the head master, “I am going to have to make an example of you.”

He turned to the two anthropological nightmares standing beside him.

“Waste him,” he said, “Lose him in the river. Take some weights and make sure he doesn’t come up for air.”

He stood up from the bench and dusted some cigarette ash from his suit.

“So long, Harold,” he said carelessly, “enjoy yourself swimmingly, won’t you.”

Which, in the light of subsequent events, was something he would wish he hadn’t said.

 

Chief Inspector Sharp worried a pimple below his left ear with the spotlessly clean fingernail as he looked from his office window over the unplanned chaos that was the city. Somewhere out there was the answer to one of those little mysteries which seem to be a consistent irritant to police work, but even if he had been inclined to pursue the matter, he would’ve had no idea where to start. Not that the disappearance of known pickpocket was anything to make a fuss about, but this pickpocket had been more than that. He had also been a police informer and Sharp had assembled some rather useful information from him concerning the activities of his employer, a certain George Gudgeon, alias Gentle George. 

In Sharp’s eyes, gentle George was the worst type of criminal, vain and arrogant with no regard for the rules of society, and a known, but unproven, killer and perpetrator of misery on a scale previously unknown in the city. The police regarded George as number one on their list for attention, and Chief Inspector Sharp had made the criminals erasure from the public scene his top priority. Things had been going quite well, too, until that seedy little pickpocket had vanished. 

He continued staring out of the window, pondering his next move, until suddenly the buzz of the intercom on his desk interrupted his thoughts. 

“Yes,” he said impatiently, switching to receive mode. 

“There’s a bloke here, sir,” said the gruff voice of the desk sergeant, “Wants to see you. He won’t say why but he just says to tell you that the hip has been displaced and you’ll understand. Shall I chucked him out?” 

Sharp flicked the ‘send’ button on the intercom. “No, Sergeant, it’s all right. Send him in,” he said, ensuring that the revolver lay cocked in the top drawer of the desk. In police work it doesn’t pay to take too many chances. 

The door opened and a shabby, unshaven man slid into the room. God, thought Sharp, another one of those actors from the fringe of the underworld, where they all look the same and they all smell the same, which is about three stages past horrible.  He eyed the dilapidated creature with patent distaste. 

“What can I do for you? The Chief Inspector inquired civilly. 

“It’s what I can do for you,” said the man with as much contrived mystery as he could muster. 

Here we go again, thought Sharp. Another comedian wants me to guess what’s in his mind and prove that Chief Inspectors gets the job because they are telepathic. 

“Look, Mr., er…” he began. 

“It doesn’t matter what my name is,” said the man. “I’ve got information. Information about the Hip. A friend of yours.” 

“The Hip?” said Sharp, conscious of the need to preserve the anonymity of his informants. “Never heard of him.” 

“I know you’ve got to say that,” said the man, “but might it help if I told you he was dead?” 

“Dead?” said Sharp, “How do you know?” 

“The rest of the information is for sale,” said the man blandly. 

Sharp pondered for a moment. 

“You know the rules,” he said, “You tell me the information and I will see what I can do.” 

“It’ll cost you fifty,” said the man, as if he hadn’t heard. 

“All right,” said Sharp, “ but it had better be worth it.” 

“Fine,” said the shabby man. “The story runs like this. It was said that a certain unnamed cheap crook with light fingers was employed by a fairly important villain who offers insurance to city bookmakers. You know,” he said meaningfully, “life insurance. Anyway, it seems that some of the weekly premiums which were being collected by our cheep crook on behalf of the villain didn’t get to head office. The villan found out that he was being shortchanged and replaced the collector, but being in the sort of business where retirement isn’t easy, the crooked collector was taken for a paddle. In deep water, with heavy boots. Pity,” he said with a mock sigh, “But that’s about it, Chief Inspector, there’s no happy ending.” 

“A bit drastic, as far as a remedy goes,” said Sharp.

 The shabby man continued, “It was said that the villain was a bit worried about other collectors getting the same idea, and decided to show them that ambition was dangerous without the bosses blessing. Where do I get my fifty?” he said. 

“I’ll fix it,” said Sharp, “Is there any more?” 

“No more,” said the shabby man. 

“Tell me,” said Sharp, “why are you telling me all this?” 

The shabby man looked a little uncomfortable. 

“I’m doing it for the Hip’s mother,” he said. 

“Mother?” said Sharp quizzically. 

“ Yes, she’s mine too,” said the shabby man, as he rose from the chair.

 

Down in the muddy bed of the river, Harold the Hip was very dead and very active. The currents, made to spin and world by the inundation from the mountains, began to dislodge the weighted corpse and drag it across the polluted channel. Unknown to Gentle George or the Chief Inspector, Harold was on the move. 

Gentle George lay back on the velvet couch in the stateroom of his 60ft. long yacht reading the daily newspaper. He was studying an account of the bank robbery in the city the day before, and you could say that his interest in the matter was somewhat proprietary, as he had planned and organized the whole thing. He was pleased to note that, as usual, the police had no clues. It was all was one of George’s greatest regrets that he was unable to keep a scrapbook of the successes, but he recognized that such a thing would be too dangerous to have around. So, after each successful job, he would do the next best thing. He would go out and buy himself something exotic and expensive, something which in his poor beginnings he would never dreamed of, and each item served to remind him of a particular job and the careful planning needed to execute it. He allowed himself the luxury of having each item engraved with his initials in a pattern designed by a leading artist who did forgery as a sideline. Amongst George’s acquisitions by this method were a gold Dunhill lighter, a gold Rolex watch, a De Tomaso Pantera sports car, a Bayliner fiberglass cruiser, as well as the yacht and many other fine things. Each and every one of them for testament to George’s vanity by the expensively patterned monogram. 

It was a long way back to the slum where he was born, thought George, as he put the newspaper down and admired the opulence around him in the stateroom. It hasn’t been easy in the beginning, until he had discovered that fear made people do strange things, and cut a lot of social corners, but George had enjoyed terrorizing his fellow man and he was a firm believer in doing what he enjoyed most. 

His reverie was interrupted by the entrance of one of his men into the stateroom. 

“’Scuse me, boss” said the thug, not the most literary of men, “Peeler upstairs, wants a’ see you. Says e’s a Chief Inspector. Sharp or summat’s ‘is name.”

“I expect,” said Gentle George, “that the gentleman has some ill-conceived notion that I had some nebulous connection with yesterday’s incident at the National Bank in the city. Very trying people, the police.”

“Yes, boss,” said his employee, as brightly as anyone with an IQ of less than zero could.

“Send him down,” said George, “I will receive him here in the stateroom.”

The thug disappeared up the steps leading to the deck, and within seconds Chief Inspector Sharp descended into the stateroom.

“Ah, Chief Inspector, said George disarmingly, “I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure.” He put out his hand. Pointedly ignoring the outstretched arm, Sharp looked George up and down.

“So you,” said Sharp, “are Gentle George Gudgeon. Well, well. I must say I didn’t know what to expect, but on first impressions you don’t look much to me.”

George’s eyes narrowed viciously, but the false smile stayed firmly implanted on his lips.

“Empires have been won and lost on first impressions, Chief Inspector. I have found that in this world it does not do to underestimate anyone. I expect that you have found the same, or else you would not be Chief Inspector. Shall we forgo the preliminaries as you wish to talk bluntly, I suspect.”

“Won’t you want a lawyer?” said the policeman.

“Unless you are intending to charge me with some heinous social indiscretion, I think not,” said George sagely, “and I don’t think you are here to do anything like that, are you?”

“No,” said Sharp, “You’re quite right. It’s just that we’ve never met, and I thought it was time we did.”

“Interesting,” said George “Why should we meet?"

The Chief Inspector looked his adversary straight in the eye.

“Because, Mr. Gudgeon, when they find a cement you into the place where all you and your sort end up, I want you to know who put you there.”

Gentle George smiled wickedly.

“Threats, now, is it?” he said, “Very unwise. You should be careful. You never know whether or not you are being recorded.”

“It doesn’t matter,” said Sharp, “Anyone who listens to a complaint from you is probably as murky as you are.”

The humor of the occasion was gradually draining away from George.

“I don’t have to take this, copper,” he said, “Not on my property. It would be easy for you to fall down the steps, if you weren’t too careful. Lots of witnesses, too, upstairs."

“Don’t threaten me,” said Sharp, “I could break your neck before you open your mouth. The trouble with your sort is that you get someone else to do your dirty work. You can’t take it yourself.”

George reacted angrily. “Get out!” he shouted.

Sharp looked at him calmly.

 I’ll go after I’ve said what I came to say,” he said, “about your nasty little protection racket with the bookmakers. Oh yes, we know all about that. We know about Harold the Hip, too.”

“So what,” George raged, “Bloody well prove it!”

“I can’t,” said the Chief Inspector, “I just wanted you to know that it was no secret. Somebody will talk soon, somebody who owes you no favors, and when they do, I’ ll be listening. So keep looking over your shoulder.”

George spluttered and attempted to regain some of his composure.

“Chief Inspector,” he said, deliberately, “You’ve got the story right and the name right. The only thing you haven’t got is proof. So why don’t you clear off and look for some with your little magnifying glass.”

“That is just what I intend to do,” said Sharp as he moved towards the steps leading to the deck. He turned towards George. “I’ll see myself out,” he said nonchalantly, as he started climbing the steps.

George paced up and down the stateroom in an effort to work off his fury. Making a decision, her reached for the cabin telephone and dialed the bridge.

“Cast off,” he said, “and use the auxiliary motor down to the harbor entrance. Break out the sail on the way.” He slammed the phone down, then walked over to the lavish bar and poured himself a brandy.

Upon the deck of the yacht, Chief Inspector Sharp was making his way towards the gangplank leading to the wharf when the auxiliary motor sprang to life, it’s deep throb reverberating through the hull beneath his feet. As he which the wharf, he turned to watch the crew go into action, obviously preparing the vessel for sea. Must have scared George more than I thought, he mused to himself, although he didn’t really believe it. 

He watched two of George’s men pull up the fenders and then they made their way forward to the winch to haul in the anchor. They each took hold of a steel arm and began turning the small capstan with their huge arms bulging with muscle under their cotton shirts. 

Sharp heard them as they strained at the effort. 

“Come on,” said the first, “put your back into it, you pansy. Do you expect me to do all the work?”

“Stop moaning,” said the other, “You’re the one who is slacking.”

Just then George emerged from below with his drink in his hand. “Come on, you two,” he shouted at the straining crew wrestling with the capstan, “Get a bloody move on.”

He caught sight the policeman leaning on the railing of the wharf. “And you,” he said, waving two fingers in a derisory gesture, “can get stuffed.”

Just then the efforts of the swearing sailors were rewarded and the anchor swung clear of the water, but it wasn’t the anchor that caught the Chief Inspector’s attention. It was what was hanging from one of its points. It looked very much like a badly decomposing body bound hand and foot, but even that didn’t excite the Chief Inspector too much. What was really interesting where the exercise barbells hanging from the feet, expensive barbells with neat monogram in clear blue plastic at each end.

George, said the Chief Inspector to himself, I think you might have some explaining to do.