Bluebolt One by Philip McCutchan

the first turning, dragging at a cigarette. He held the car door open and jerked his head towards it. Shaw climbed in. Jiddle settled himself behind the wheel and said, “Couldn’t talk in the boozer after all. That Teddy mob, they know me, see. Didn’t think they’d be there to-night.” He slipped in his gears, pulled the Humber round to the left at the end of the street, and roared away across the Portobello Road, making in the general direction of Paddington, as it seemed to Shaw, through a maze of back streets; but a little later he went off to the right, hit the Bayswater Road, and headed up for Marble Arch. He didn’t speak, kept his eyes skinned ahead.
    As they went round into Park Lane and took it a little slower, Shaw asked, “Where are we going?”
    “Anywhere we can talk private, see. Stay in the car and just drive.” Jiddle stared ahead, his lean features hard in the passing lights. “I’m not fussy. You?”
    “Not a bit!”
    “I want this meeting to look as unarranged as possible, see. You never know who’s watching in this life.” He added, “I’ve got reasons. Don’t question ’em. That way, it suits us both best. Check?”
    “Check,” said Shaw, smiling faintly. Jiddle knew his business best. Jiddle didn’t say anything further just yet, and Shaw let him take his time. Meanwhile, his mind went back a few years. This car was an expensive model, a lush job . . . so Jiddle had made out all right, despite his record—or more probably because of it. Trust Jiddle! It had started, so far as Shaw was concerned, during the war-time days afloat. Shaw, who had broken his ankle, had been put aboard the depot ship in Scapa when his destroyer had sailed on convoy-escort duty. At about the same time Jiddle, a ‘hostilities only’ rating, had been landed from a cruiser in which he’d been serving as a supply assistant, to be accommodated in cells, also aboard the depot ship, and to await court-martial on a cast-iron charge of flogging Government stores on a scale which had staggered the whole naval command. (Even in those days Jiddle hadn’t done things by halves.) Soon after his cruiser had entered Scapa she had received urgent orders to proceed to sea. That had had to take precedence even over evidence at courts-martial; written depositions were left behind, and so, of course, was Jiddle.
    There had been a desperate shortage of available officers in the command at that time, and the semi-mobile Shaw, though a very junior officer indeed, had been stuck with the job of Accused’s Friend. In this capacity he’d had several long talks with Jiddle so as to prepare the defence, had at once realized that the man was a bom racketeer, but had done his best in an obviously hopeless case. Jiddle had seemed pretty grateful, considering how little Shaw had been able to help him, and he’d gone to three years imprisonment with a smile on his face and an impudent offer of a job in Civvy Street for Shaw once the War was over. Shaw had never set eyes on him since, had never even given him a thought, and he’d certainly never expected to meet him like this.
    He reflected, as they slowed into Piccadilly and Hyde Park Corner, that Latymer had an odd sense of humour at times. . . .
    Jiddle asked suddenly, “Come after that job, have you?”
    So Jiddle remembered too! Shaw said, “Not exactly.”
    “Whatever it is, let’s have it.” Jiddle engaged his gears, moving forward into the stream of traffic and turning down towards Knightsbridge.
    Shaw asked lightly, “I suppose you’re still mixed up in all the rackets you can find?”
    “Definitely. Only way to live, these days.”
    “Well, I’ll have to take your word for that!”
    “You can and welcome. Look now. I don’t know where the tip-off about you wanting to see me come from originally, and I’m not curious. Can’t be, not in my line. But I thought to meself: well, now, here’s a bloke who once did me a good turn and now he’s in a spot of trouble