Chapter 5

It was the classic take-down. I walked past the end of a lane, and Woodsy was there pointing a gun at me. A car pulled up and he said, “Get in the back, bitch, and connect the seatbelt.”

I did this and the driver pointed a gun at me while Woodsy closed the door and went to the other side and got in. The driver then sped away.

“Why are you doing this?” I cried, trying to look frightened.

Woodsy laughed and said that I had pissed off Morrie and Gloria and they had decided that they needed a word with me.

“I could have got in without the guns if you asked me nicely,” I sobbed.

They stayed quiet as we drove south. I had the odd thought that I was, at least, only wearing a tracksuit and not a nice dress that could get destroyed. Before we got to Leicester they turned right, and we headed into the country.

“I don’t think we are going to see Gloria, are we?” I whispered.

The road got smaller and then we were in the wooded area which, I knew, was around the Breedon Wood Quarry. We stopped on a track which ran along the rim of the quarry and the driver pointed his gun at me again while Woodsy got out and opened my door. He told me to undo the seatbelt and get out.

“Now we are going to have a little fun with you and your friend,” he snarled, “It will teach you not to mess with us.”

As I got out, my left hand went to the zipper on my top and I pulled it down.

“Please don’t hurt me, I do anything you want, anything at all.”

Of course, his eyes went to my open zip which now was showing the edges of my lacy bra. The gun drooped a bit and I launched myself at him with my right arm rigid, catching him under his nose with the heel of my hand. His nasal bone was pushed into his brain, and he died on the spot.

The driver had gone around to the boot and had just opened it. He yelled, “Bitch,” and came at me.

I executed the perfect throw, and he went over me and then over the edge of the cliff. When I went and looked there were ripples spreading out and I could see the outcrop of rock he must have hit on the way down.

I heard a grunt, and looked in the boot to find Jane, bound and gagged. The look of relief in her eyes when she saw it was me was something to behold. I found a knife on the body and used it to cut her free as I certainly didn’t have the strength to haul her out. She was stiff and sore but hugged me like she had won me in a raffle.

We sat in the car for a while with the doors open as we got our heartrates back to near normal. She told me that they had hit her with a cosh while she was on duty in the early hours and that she had come to in the boot. I said that I thought she may have been picked up to stop her asking where I had disappeared to, and also because she knew that I had gone to work at ‘The Queens’.

When we were ready, we worked together to roll Woodsy over the edge and into the water after I had emptied his wallet of all his considerable cash. We then went through the car, pulling out all the little extras, like the portable police radios, a couple of guns and various knives, sticks, batons, and coshes. These all went into the water. When the car was clean, we drove into Leicester and left it in the car park of a supermarket with the keys in it. Jane told me that this area was well known for cars going missing.

We took a bus back to the units, and she pulled the two envelopes out of an ice cream container in her freezer and gave them to me. She showered and dressed in normal wear, and then we went to my old place, and I changed into a day dress and packed the rest of the clothes I had left there. We then went to the railway station and took the next train to Nottingham.

On the way we were sitting in seats away from others and she asked me what we were going to do now. I said that I hoped that what happened today would push Jake over the edge, and we may, finally, start things moving.

At Nottingham we took the bus and then walked to the casino. There was a guy on the door as it was getting towards opening time, and he waved us through. Jane was goggle-eyed at the place when we went into the gaming area.

I found Jake in his office, and he jumped up and hugged me.

“Where on earth have you been, you didn’t come back from your walk?”

He then noticed Jane and asked, “And who is this young lady?”

I got him to sit down at his desk and we both sat on the other side. I introduced Jane, “a serving policewoman working with the vice squad in Leicester and a very good friend.” I then told him about the events of the day, so far, not leaving anything out. By the time I had finished he was almost incandescent with rage and would have pulled Morries’ head off had he been here.

I got up and poured him a stiff drink.

“Jake, darling, what you have just heard is between us. We need to keep our cool or else I may find myself being put away for a very long time. As far as anyone outside this room is concerned, Woodsy and his mate are walking the streets at this very moment and may just get it into their heads to disappear if we take down the rest of the crooks. Now, didn’t I see the Chief Constable give you his card while you were chatting at the dinner?”

He found it in his files and rang the number. When the general chat ended, he said, “Look, I have someone here who wants to talk to you. We have come across some very sensitive information that you need to hear.”

He listened for a few moments and then said, “No, we can’t take it to anyone down the ranks as the information involves several of your officers who are taking bribes and may well be implicated in a number of murders.”

He listened for a few seconds more and then handed me the phone.

I heard the Chief Constable say, “Well, get on with it I haven’t got all day”.

“Sir, I am Detective Constable Boon from Loughborough. A couple of months ago Inspector Andover sent me under cover to find out as much as I could about the murder of Charley Kraft, one time owner of this casino, among others. We also suspected that there was a mole in our station as we could find nothing but squeaky cleanliness where-ever we looked. I believe that I now know the who, the where and why of the murder but have also amassed a list of at least a dozen police on the take, half of them at inspector level or above.”

“So, what do you want me to do?” he said.

I asked that he come to the casino this afternoon at about three and to bring whoever answers to him calling ‘bad weed’ on the phone, as that person would be IA Branch who authorised the operation. I also asked that he get Inspector Andover to join us as well, and I will lay out all that I have discovered. I finished asking him not to say why we were meeting to anyone but just to let on that he was meeting some people about another charity event, the last one being so successful.

We went down to the dining room and Jake got them to give us a light lunch, all the while staying close to me and muttering oaths about his business colleagues. At three we assembled in a room upstairs that looked like it may have once been a lounge for the whores when they worked there. Inspector Andover was amazed when I revealed my true identity and told them that Jane was one who made my transformation possible. She had her warrant card on her so was able to prove who she was.

We started by going through the murder case, Inspector Andover being able to verify everything I said. There had been little or no action on that since I had left. I outlined what I thought. That Charley and a group of others used to make snuff movies for sale and that he had been killed by Gloria and Morrie so that they could be together full time. Of course, there may well be something else that caused his death, and we may find that as we gathered more information.

The guy from IA was quiet up to now and then asked, “So what about the mole?”

That’s when I told them that the heavy mob at ‘The Queens’ were all police. I then opened my first report which I explained had been written the day after I had seen these people getting pay-offs and it had spent the last week in a freezer in Jane’s flat. I let the IA guy read it first and his face went white. He passed it to the CC who also looked like he had swallowed a fish. Inspector Andover looked around for something to hit when he saw Harris and the traffic guys on the list. I then opened the second envelope and they read the list of civic dignitaries and department heads.

Inspector Andover wanted to know more about the murder, especially the where part of it.

I turned to Jake. “Jake, ‘Tens’ is in the upper floors of the Temperance Society, isn’t it?”

He said it was and I said that if we could put a SOCO group in there I was sure we would find a lot of answers. What we needed to do was to organise co-ordinated raids on ‘The Aces’ and ‘The Jacks’ without any word getting out. At the same time, we should take Gloria into custody without her being able to talk to anyone and then search her house with SOCO so that it is done properly.

Jane then mentioned that she had been grilled by the Inspector of her Vice Squad and the IA guy looked like he wanted to throw up. The hard thing would be getting into ‘Tens’ and ‘Queens’. Especially down in the basement casino.

There were two or three real problems with raiding ‘The Queens’ as they were so security conscious. Jake and I laid out the problems with getting into the tunnel at the Temperance end as well as into the stairs at the dance club end. Jake said that Charley used to run ‘Kings’ before he concentrated on ‘Queens,’ and he thought that the move was due to the illicit gambling and the film studio.

The three policemen left to try and put together teams that they knew they could trust but they would not tell them the locations of the raids until they were in the bus and on the way.

Inspector Andover said he would send Harris down to the police college for some immediate training and would take him into custody while he was there.

The CC said he would send the Traffic guys for some intensive high speed driving instruction, and they would be held a long way away until everything else was finalised.

We came up with a plan that we thought may work. It meant that Jake and I would need to front up at the Temperance Society and, once inside, I should disable the doorman while Jake opened up the front door so that the rest of the team are let in.

He knew that the door to the upper floor was only opened with a keypad, but he laughed and said that Charley had always used 101010 there.

Once we had that end secure, we both were to go down the passage to the other end where I would disarm the doorman there and Jake turned off the screens, a signal to the others to follow us. There was a metal detector at the entry so we could not carry a radio.

Inside we then had to approach the guard at the other entrance and get the mirror open. There would be a group of ‘partygoers’ waiting in the anteroom for us to do that. In the meantime, a raid would occur on the ‘Queens’ but the team would go straight upstairs to the ‘control room’ and take down the goons in there so that we could then take control of the gaming area without any interference.

Once we had control of the entrances, we could then let the proper raiding parties in, carrying the usual equipment. It all seemed easy, nothing to go wrong. Jane volunteered to lead the party from the dance floor end and left to round up her team. We didn’t have to tell her not to say anything to the vice inspector.

That evening, I stayed upstairs with the ‘controllers’ watching the screens and listening in to the various conversations. It was a very sophisticated system, and you could follow a person from place to place. Morrie came in about eight and went up to Jake to calmly pass the day.

Jake lamented that he had not seen me since this morning and Morrie asked him if he had checked the till, then said that he always thought that I was a gold-digger. Jake went and had a look at the safe, which checked out, and then at the roulette table till, which was ten thousand short. This was a bit weird as I had not been in the gaming room today and it had all checked out last night.

The controller wound the tape back that showed the roulette table, and we watched as one of the croupiers took the money out and tucked it in her panties while everybody looked towards the kitchen as a waiter dropped a tray.

After Morrie had left, thinking that he had sowed doubt, we directed the security to take both the croupier and the waiter off the gaming floor and into Jakes office. He told them that they were in a world of trouble and that their bodies may never be found.

The waiter broke down and told him that he only dropped the tray as Morrie had his wife somewhere and had threatened that she would be raped if he didn’t do the drop. The croupier said she had been told to take as much money as she could and had been given a specific time that the diversion would occur. She had been told she could keep the money as her payment.

Jake was getting more upset that Morrie would do something like this, and he told the waiter to let him know when his wife was returned. He told the croupier to hand the money over and then go back to work and act as if she had completed her task if asked. I was starting to think that Morrie did only run a card club as he should have known about the security cameras that a genuine casino employed.

A couple of days later the Chief Constable rang and asked if we could have another meeting about the ‘charity event.’ This time he brought a few other officers, all in civvies, to discuss the main event, the invasion of ‘Queens’. He had put together a number of small teams and one of the officers to be there that day was the head of the SOCO team who wanted to know more about ‘Tens’.

Jake gave them the last key code that he knew and was able to describe some of the layout, which included the big assembly room. I suggested that they would find a few cameras and there could be a dungeon set-up as I was sure that all of the girls had suffered terrible deaths. I also suggested that they take special care if they came upon a frame for spreading a bound body as it may well have traces of Charley’s blood on, or under, it.

The following Monday was a pay-off one if my memory was correct, so we timed the raids for then. As a curtesy, Jake allowed the SOCO full rein of the casino the next morning, before any of the staff arrived, to get a feel of what they would be looking at. We carried on as usual and Saturday evening Morrie and Gloria came in.

I was keeping well out of sight and Jake was acting suitably upset at my disappearance and also the loss of the money. The two lovebirds were smiling as they left, sure that the plans had gone well. The next morning the waiter rang to report that his wife had been returned but would take a while to get over her experience as they had indeed raped her. Jake gave him a number for a specialist and told the guy that the casino would pay for everything.

On Monday things started to happen. There was an early morning raid on ‘Jacks’ and Corey was taken into secure custody, along with all the girls and staff on the premises. This time, when the SOCO team went in, they found lots of drugs that had been absent the previous raids. A ‘Closed for renovations’ sign was put on the front door and ‘Aces’ was raided at midday. Morrie was spirited away to somewhere in solitary and what staff were there were rounded up. It also suddenly closed for renovations.

Gloria was stopped at the gate of her property and removed from the scene. When her house was properly searched, they found a lot of incriminating evidence of her lawlessness, mainly drugs and the records of the people she had on the take. This, of course, started a deep investigation into the recipients which led to the conviction of a number of policemen and civic employees. Funnily enough, Woodsy and his friend seemed to have been warned as they could not be found. The one item that sealed Glorias’ fate was a jar in her pantry that contained a pair of pickled testicles.

Meanwhile, Jake and I and the SOCO team arrived at the Temperance Society front door late in the afternoon and was let in by the doorman. He left his post to say hello and was promptly rendered unconscious and taken out to a waiting police van. Jake turned off all the cameras except the ones covering the tunnel, telling the assault team to wait until these were turned off from the other end, as that would be the signal that we controlled the entrance. The SOCO team went into the rest of the building to start their search.

Jake and I then walked along the tunnel and into the next reception area where I overpowered the doorman and turned off the cameras there. When the screens at the front door went blank, the officer in charge ordered the team waiting outside the dance club to make their move. Jake and I waited for the rest of our team to join us as this would also give the others time to overpower the controllers.

Jake and I then went into the gaming area, which was almost empty, and I waved at the ones I knew as we walked to the other entrance. It did not take long before the doorman there was overpowered, and the mirror was opened. We now had full control of ‘Queens.’

The rest, to me, seemed almost anti-climactic. It was all very orderly and measured, everything incriminating logged. We sent Jane back up into the dance club and closed the mirror for the last time. She helped Janice, who had been totally kept in the dark, to open up that night and ‘Queens’ carried on as usual.

The wrapping up of the case followed the usual pattern now that Harris and the Traffic guys had been taken out of the mix. In the ‘Tens’ film studio there was so much evidence found that it took a number of years before all the convictions went through the courts. Not only did they find copies of all the snuff movies that had been made, but there was also one that showed Charley, tied to a frame, bleeding to death from the groin. None of these showed any other person, except the occasional glimpse of someone in a leather body suit and hood.

What did lead to a number of murder trials was that Charley, no doubt with an eye to later blackmail, had set up a hidden camera over each set with a lead to a number of computers that were set to record whenever there was movement. Morrie and Gloria were in full view as Charley died and they even had sex standing in front of him as he suffered.

Several important people also got caught this way, and a warrant is still outstanding for Woodsy on three murder charges. There was no mention of Jake in any of the court cases. A few, select, policemen received promotion.

As all this transpired, I stayed with Jake, and we refurbished all the spare bedrooms as hotel rooms and offered a number of holiday / gambling packages that became quite popular. My time as a Detective Constable was quietly ended and I was paid out and given a medal under my old name. I married Jake so now have a newer name to add to my collection. He was very supportive when I went through my surgery, and the first time we made love was so magic I cried a lot after, which worried him until I told him it was tears of happiness.

The Flush Company was wound up and a new one, ‘Fresh Hand Limited’ was set up with Jake and Janice, Jane, and me as directors. Jane left the police and now runs the old ‘Queens’ dance club with Janice. It is now the ‘Rainbow Ravers Club’ and does very well. The basement now has a proper set of stairs and is a café and lounge away from the loudness of the floor above.

We sold the ‘Aces and ‘Jacks’ properties and turned the Temperance Society building into a refuge for homeless girls after the tunnel had been sealed at both ends. ‘Kings Hotel and Casino’ is also doing well, and Jake and I have a manager in as we seem to be out a lot at parties and civic events.

It was a strange way to develop my life, but I never think back to my time as ‘Weedy’ Albert, as I am so much happier being Mrs. Monahan.

Marianne Gregory © 2025