by Lawton, John
Rork munched on his whelks for a moment. Jammed another slice of bread into his mouth. ‘I guesh not. I guesh maybe I hadn’t thought that part through.’
‘Damn right you hadn’t. There’s no way I can tell her. You’d just better pray that she stays lucky and that you’re the only one who catches Kate and Danny Ryan in the same frame. No one will be watching Danny Ryan. The press are all over Vince Christy. Look at it this way. You already got lucky.’
Rork pulled a second envelope of photographs out of his pocket. ‘Maybe you’re right. Cos Vince has been a very busy boy.’
He fanned out the photos. Christy and his rented Rolls-Royce at the stage door, the screaming fans, the lucky few who got picked.
Troy had to admit that whatever magnetism the man had worked like a charm. He sifted through a bevy of English beauties. All conforming to a type – Vince clearly had a thing about slim, tall blondes. A film of moisture stuck the last photograph to the one above. Troy prised them apart. Vince and a girl entering the Dorchester. Another leggy blonde girl. But the girl was a woman. And the woman was Foxx.
35
Troy was in more than half a mind to call on George Bonham. It was a short walk to Cressy Houses and he hadn’t seen the old man since he didn’t know when. But then ‘he didn’t know when’ was so easily pinpointed. George had nurtured him as a fledgling copper and never failed to show up at whichever hospital he’d been in at whichever crisis in his life as wunderkind of the Yard. Of course, Troy had seen George only weeks ago – he just wasn’t wholly sure he remembered it. And then he remembered, instant and total recall, meeting the man at Edna Stilton’s funeral, the conversation he had had with him, down to the last word – and even more he wondered at the tidal nature of his memory.
He put Gumshoe in a taxi. Rork rolled down the window and said, ’Mañana.’ He’d accepted Troy’s word. Troy wasn’t going to tell Kate Cormack a damn thing.
‘Mr Troy, sir?’
Troy turned round. A young man in his early twenties stood facing him. A bony five foot nine, a mouthful of gleaming, smiling teeth and the uniform of a Hendon police cadet. All boots and buttons.
‘You don’t remember me, do you, sir?’
How Troy hated to hear those words. One more reminder of the number of things, of faces, of people he didn’t remember. But the youth’s implied opposite was right: there was something terribly familiar about him.
‘Robertson, sir. You knew me as Shrimp. But me real name’s Samuel.’
Troy’s memory produced, rabbit-from-hat, an image of a boy of eight or nine years, small for his age, standing between Anna and the Polish Beast at his bedside in the London Hospital. The summer of 1944 revisited. Just a couple of days after D-Day. Him post-op from the bullet Diana Brack had put into him, the boy gruesome and shameless in his curiosity – ‘The Tart in the Tub Case’, as the press had so cruelly dubbed it – and the boy’s urgency, ‘It was the posh bird shot you, wasn’t it?’ and his own monosyllabic reply. And how grateful he’d been that the boy had not asked who had shot the posh bird, who had killed Diana Brack.
‘You’ve . . . you’ve joined us?’
‘Pass out next month, sir.’
The sweet flush of pride passing over the young man’s face.
‘You’re what now, Mr Robertson?’
‘Call me Shrimp, sir, everyone still does.’
‘Twenty-five?’
‘Twenty-three, sir. I was just a nipper when I searched that bombsite for you. I was nearly nine. All the other kids was bigger’n me, even them wot was younger’n me. I applied to join the force when I was eighteen. But I was too little. I’ve wanted to be a copper ever since that day you hired all us scallywags to search for you. It was me found the cartridge case, if you remember. Cost you an extra ‘alfa dollar that did. But, like I said, at eighteen I was too little, so the call-up got me instead. National Service, two years of square-bashin’ an’ bullshit – ‘scuse my French. But I grew two and a half inches in the army. Must have stretched me a bit, too, I reckon. And I couldn’t settle well into Civvy Street again, couldn’t see meself cuttin ‘air like me old man, or drivin’ a bus like me uncle Ernie, so I gave it a couple of years and reapplied. They took me. It’s all down to you, Mr Troy, I’d never’ve thought of becoming a copper if it wasn’t for you . . . and then when I saw you comin’ out of the caff I just had to say . . . like . . . well . . . thank you.’
It was a stunning little speech. The weight of responsibility fell on Troy like cold porridge on to linoleum. ‘Actually, Shrimp, I’m on my way to see Sergeant Bonham – he’s retired now. You remember Mr Bonham, I’m sure.’
‘O’ course, sir. Old Bigfoot, we used to call him. If I had a tanner for every clip round the ear’ole I got from Mr Bonham . . .’
‘I wonder if you’d care to come along and risk another clip round the ear’ole?’
‘Don’t mind if I do, sir.’
The Shrimp fell into step with Troy as they crossed the Mile End Road and headed for Stepney Green. Troy saw him glance at the walking-stick, but he asked no questions. Why would he? thought Troy. It had made the papers: it would be the talk of Hendon College. How often do chief superintendents of the Yard get blown away on the streets of London?
Bonham answered the door in his floral pinafore – a six foot seven friendly giant armed only with a sink plunger.
‘It’s the tea leaves,’ he said. ‘They block up the sink. I’d tip ‘em down the karzey but they stain the porcelain and bleach’ll never shift it. Ethel used to moan at me for doin’ that.’
Ethel had been dead for the best part of twenty years and still Bonham spoke of her as though she’d nagged him about it only yesterday.
‘And ‘oo’s the newboots, then?’
‘Good afternoon, George,’ Troy said.
‘Arternoon, Freddie.’
Bonham swung back the door and ushered them into the cramped living room of the flat. Neither Troy nor the Shrimp had answered his question and he regarded the boy quizzically. ‘I never forget a face, you know.’
‘I’m sure you don’t, Mr Bonham.’
‘Give us a clue.’
‘When did you last get your hair cut?’
Bonham snapped the fingers of his left hand. ‘Robertson. Young Robertson. Wilf Robertson’s boy. I ‘ad me barnet done only last week. Yer dad never said.’
‘There are some things me dad wouldn’t boast about, Mr Bonham. Me bein’ a copper bein’ one of them. He thinks no one will ever tell him anything again. And what’s a barber’s life without gossip?’
Bonham thought this truism the funniest thing he’d ever heard and disappeared into the kitchen, chuckling to himself. Troy heard the soft pop of the gas ring go on. Warming up for the English tea ceremony. Robertson looked around the room. Ten by eight, if that. A cupboard by the standards of Troy’s home life. Troy followed his gaze. The glass display case that had once held Ethel Bonham’s plaster dogs and china trinkets was now stuffed full of dog-eared whodunits, the hideous wood-cased chiming clock that had been George’s retirement gift from the Met, the framed photographs of the Bonhams’ long-since-grown-up children.
‘George raised three kids here,’ Troy said softly.
‘I know, sir. I grew up in a flat just like it. Me an’ three sisters. You wouldn’t believe the freedom of bein’ in digs in Mill Hill. All the space in the wardrobe, me own room, and better still me own bed.’
It was another world to Troy, and he could see that Robertson knew it as he said it. ‘Have you thought about your first posting?’ he asked.
‘I’ve thought about it, sir,’ the Shrimp replied, with precision.
Bonham bustled in with a tray of cups and saucers, muttered, ‘sugar,’ to himself and bustled out again.
‘It’s a tricky one,’ the Shrimp added.
‘Wot is?’ said Bonham as he returned. ‘Sit down, sit down, the pair o’ye. No point in cluttering the place up.’
He sat on the edge of the arm
chair next to the unlit gas fire, noticed his pinny and yanked it over his head. ‘You might have told me.’
‘I thought it suited you,’ Troy said. ‘Mr Robertson and I were just discussing his first posting.’
‘Wot’s so tricky about that? There’ll be a job for you here. Paddy Milligan’s still the divisional detective inspector. Mr Milligan’s a pal of me an’ Mr Troy. A word from either of us and you’ll be in. In where you belong. On your own manor.’
Robertson accepted the proffered tea and sat with it perched precariously on one knee. He looked at Troy and then addressed himself to Bonham. Bonham slurped tea and failed to see the expression on the boy’s face. ‘It’s that that’s tricky, Mr Bonham.’
Bonham didn’t get it.
‘I know Stepney Green. I know it too well, Mr Bonham.’
Bonham set down his cup and saucer. ‘But where else would you go?’
‘I’m thinking about that right now.’
‘Where else would you go? You’re a Stepney lad, a Cockney sparrer. Where else would you go?’
‘It’s. . .’ The boy looked directly at Troy.
Troy took refuge behind a sip of tea. He’d had too many conversations like this with Bonham when he was younger.
‘It’s a matter of loyalties, Mr Bonham.’
‘Loyalties?’
‘Loyalties.’
‘Good,’ said Bonham. ‘A man should have loyalties. To his own borough. To the force. To his fellow officers.’
‘To his childhood mates.’
‘Them too.’
‘That’s the problem, Mr Bonham. Not all my childhood mates are on the same side.’
‘Eh?’
‘Mr Robertson is saying,’ Troy intervened, ‘that some of his childhood friends are criminals.’
Bonham looked flustered, as though on the edge of anger so rarely expressed. ‘But we don’t have loyalty to villains!’
‘Don’t we, George?’ Troy asked.
‘Freddie. I expect that in that arsy-versy toff world you come from the old school tie might stretch a long way. But round ‘ere the old school is Redman’s Road Infants. I went there, young Shrimp went there. And we don’t ‘ave no old school tie. The first loyalty is to the force. If your old pal’s a villain you owe him bugger all. Cos if he’s villain he ain’t a pal no more.’
Bonham was thumping the arm of the chair with each word, bringing up a cloud of dust with every blow. He was right. It was another world. When Troy thought of his old pal Charlie and the things old Charlie had done for which he would never be caught or tried or sentenced . . . Men like Charlie belonged in jail. And Troy had been one of those who had declined to send him there. Just a little he envied the simplicity of George’s moral scheme, the absence of ambergooities – the ease of absolutes. He could not share them. Neither, it seemed, could the Shrimp.
Troy and the Shrimp parted company at the corner of Jubilee Street and Adelina Grove.
‘You’ll be all right, Mr Troy?’
‘Of course. I’ll either hop on the Underground at Whitechapel—’
‘Hop, Mr Troy?’
‘Stumble, Mr Robertson, and if I do I shall give up the effort and flag a cab. And you?’
The Shrimp pointed off down Jubilee Street. ‘South, sir. My eldest sister’s place in Watney Street.’
‘I patrolled that as a beat copper when I was your age,’ said Troy. ‘I think I can say it was the toughest street I ever had to walk.’
‘You should see it now, sir. Tough doesn’t begin to describe it.’
‘And your sister?’
‘Got her name down for a council flat. She’ll be relieved to get out. She skivvies, Jim skives, and the little ‘uns grow up in a house and a street that should have been bulldozed years ago.’
‘And you?’
‘Me, sir?’
‘Think about George Bonham’s offer. If you do decide to come back to Stepney we’d both of us put in a word with the DDL’
Troy gave Robertson his card, the one with his home number and no rank – Frederick Troy, Goodwin’s Court, wci. Robertson thanked him, shook his hand more vigorously than Troy thought necessary, and set off down Jubilee Street with not a hint of copper’s plod in his step. As he passed the Stiltons’ house Kitty’s sister Vera appeared in the doorway shaking her dusters – her pinafore matched Bonham’s to the petal. She spoke to the Shrimp, turned and looked straight at Troy without recognising him. It was the first victory for memory Troy had scored that day. Others’ failings cheered him to the point of unrepentant schadenfreude.
36
‘You’ve no right to ask me that. No right at all.’
Troy sighed so audibly that Foxx was sure to have heard it at her end of the phone. ‘I’d no idea you were going to be quite so hostile.’
‘Troy, I am not hostile. You made your bed. Lie in it. And lying in it means not asking me questions about any man I might be seeing now.’
‘Might? You are seeing Vince Christy. That is a fact!’
‘I never thought you’d stoop to spying on me.’
‘I’m not.’
‘Then who is?’ She yelled the last line at him as a blast of searing rhetoric. It required no answer in her mind.
He had one all the same. ‘A private detective from New York.’
‘What?’
‘A former NYPD officer.’
‘What?’
‘An ex-New York cop.’
‘What the bloody hell does an ex-New York cop want with me?’
Troy could almost hear the clunk as the penny dropped. He dropped his voice to a tone he thought placatory. ‘He’s bent. I’ve been trying to tell you that for the last five minutes.’
There was a long silence.
‘Supposing this ex-cop is wrong.’
‘I don’t so suppose.’
‘Then humour me, you bastard. Try to see it my way!’
‘And . . .’
‘And it’s very handy for you, isn’t it? Gives you the perfect excuse to warn me off Vince. You and I break up and suddenly out of nowhere an ex-cop appears to give you the perfect reason to nag me about—’
‘I’m not nagging you. I’m warning you.’
‘Oh, Troy, fuck off’
‘He’s not just bent, he’s ma—’
All he heard was the dial tone rattling in his ear.
Foxx was making her own bed as surely as he had made his. He was not about to let her lie in it.
Less than a minute passed before the telephone rang. She was going to hear him out. But it was Jack.
‘Just thought you’d like to know. We found the cock from the Adam and Eve body.’
‘Where?’
‘In a plain brown envelope, addressed to me at the Yard.’
‘Bloody hell.’
‘You know you reminded me what I’d said about taking the piss?’
‘Yes – but I was wrong. It was Onions.’
‘No matter. It’s exactly what they’re doing. Taking the piss. Puts me in mind of that letter Neville Heath wrote to the Yard in ‘47.’
‘Forty-six.’
‘Whatever. He wrote to old Bill Barratt with a pack of lies. But it was saying the same thing. “You can’t catch me.” Then he went right out and butchered another woman. “You can’t catch me.”’
‘But we did. And justice was done. And he hanged.’
‘So he did.’
37
When the phone rang three days later, in the middle of the morning, it was Paddy Milligan, divisional detective inspector at Stepney. Troy and Milligan had been friends for two or three years only, and he was the kind of man Troy felt it would be easy to lose touch with. ‘A bit of a loner’ was the way Paddy was often described, and despite the fact that it might easily have applied to Troy himself, he thought it an obstacle to the job Milligan did.
‘It’s been a while.’ Troy stated the obvious.
‘Been back home. Liverpool.’
Milligan paused. Troy heard
him breathe in as though embarking on a topic his instincts told him to avoid.
‘It’s my dad. He’s got the cancer in his lungs. Truth is, Freddie, I don’t think the old man’ll last long.’
Troy and Milligan were about the same age. How old would the man’s father be?
Milligan read his mind.
‘He’s sixty-nine. No great age.’
‘Cigarettes?’ Troy asked.
‘Mustard gas,’ said Milligan, and Troy felt utterly stupid that he had not seen at once that in giving him his father’s age he had fixed the old man as a Great War veteran.
‘It’s taken up a fair bit of my time, I can tell you. I’m all he’s got. I’ve used up all me holiday time, and a fair whack of compassionate. However, that’s not why I’m calling. There’s a young chap name of Robertson just coming through Hendon College, wants to work out of my nick. George says the two of you know him.’
‘Well, George has known him all his life. I wouldn’t be amazed if he’d been there with the midwife. I think we can both endorse the boy. He has good local knowledge, and he’s not just rushed into being a copper because of some childhood notion of glamour. We turned him down a few years back. He’s done his National Service and he still wants to be a copper. I call him a boy, he must be twenty-three or four. He’s had time to find his way first. I think that’s admirable.’
‘Suits me,’ said Milligan. ‘I’ll stamp his papers and get him down here. An extra bloke would be good right now.’
‘You mean you’ll still have to go back to Liverpool?’
Another breathy pause. Milligan was not a man easy with his own emotions. ‘Were you there when your old man died, Freddie?’
‘I was, as a matter of fact. He had me and my brother read aloud to him in the last few days. I was there when he spoke his last words.’
‘Then I’ll say no more. I have to be there. If the job came first, if he died while I was down south, I’d never forgive meself.’
38