Blue Rondo (aka Flesh Wounds)

by Lawton, John

  ‘Nine mill. Judging from the powder residue, not point-blank range but not more than ten or twelve feet either. Nothing fancy. The most common ammunition there is nowadays. And nothing powerful. The bullet came out of the poor bastard’s brain intact. If you get lucky and find the gun I can do a match.’

  ‘Who would be stupid enough to keep the gun?’

  ‘And . . . besides the obvious signs of torture, which I assume you flatfoots noted, there was bruising to the back of the head.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘Such as someone sapped him. And disarmed him.’

  ‘What makes you say disarmed?’

  ‘Shoulder holster. Left armpit. But no gun.’

  Damn. They’d allowed the hysteria of the moment, the grotesque fact of a brutal death and the pointless complication of his own physical weakness to distract them. Jack or Troy or someone should have searched the body last night. Worse, Gumshoe had traipsed around London for weeks with a gun up one armpit and it had not even occurred to Troy that he was doing so.

  ‘Anything else?’

  ‘I’d say the man was American from his clothes and his dentistry . . .’

  ‘He was.’

  Kolankiewicz let this pass without comment. ‘Not a snappy dresser, his shoulder holster was tailor-made but his clothes were all off the peg. Off the peg but clean. I’d say he’d had the suit dry-cleaned in the last week or so. Hence I think the oil stains on the trousers, around the calves and knees, might be evidence.’

  ‘Might? What sort of oil?’

  ‘The sort you’d put in your car.’

  ‘Can we match that?’

  ‘To what? You could bring me samples from every garage in England and it would match ninety-nine per cent of them. All it tells us is that he was in a garage, but even that could be significant.’

  ‘A tailor-made holster, you say. Tailor-made for what?’

  Kolankiewicz paused. Not his customary mode. ‘It could be one of several models. However, I have in my possession a gun that I believe fits it perfectly.’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘Smith & Wesson.’

  ‘Smith & Wesson what?’

  ‘.357 Magnum.’

  ‘Where on earth did you get one of those?’

  Kolankiewicz strung out his sentences, the pause between each one longer than the pause before, the pitch of his voice rising slightly with every fractional utterance. ‘A fact-finding visit to Washington a couple of years ago. A day or two spent with our colleagues at the FBI. A careless moment. A souvenir. Of sorts.’

  ‘You mean you nicked it?’

  ‘I think this is where I whistle something from The Wizard of Oz and try to look if not innocent then disingenuous. You, however, would be far better advised to weigh up what I said a few sentences back.’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘They disarmed him, Troy. Someone is walking around London with a gun that will shoot holes in solid concrete.’

  ‘A hand-held cannon,’ Troy whispered.

  ‘What?’

  ‘At the end of the war you and Bob Churchill came out to Mimram. Bob trained me up on handguns – he had a Smith & Wesson then. That’s what it felt like – a hand-held cannon.’

  51

  Troy was late getting to the Café Royal. Kitty/Kate was waiting, sipping at her Earl Grey, nibbling a slice of Battenberg, surrounded by the results of a day out with her sisters – ‘packages from Liberty’s, packages from Harrods, headscarf for the sister, knickers for the wife . . . Close your eyes, my darling, as the gentlemen pass by . . .’

  Her mood was good, the therapy of shopping – she smiled at Troy, stood up to give him a smackeroo on the lips and beckoned to a waiter. By the time he could sit down Troy felt smothered: Kitty’s kisses, a sea of tissue paper unwrapped around him, and a busy young man setting tea and cake before him. There was nowhere to rest an elbow, no obvious way through the smallness of small-talk.

  Kitty rattled on about her sisters, the generosity of her mood persisting without bitchiness to the point where, if he had been able to concentrate, he might have concluded that she was once again a Londoner, if only for a day, was once again the ‘sparrer’ from Jubilee Street, now the weight of being Mrs Cormack was off her, if only for a day – but he could stand it no longer.

  ‘We have to talk,’ he said, halfway through an account of Reenie trying on something meant for a woman half her age and size.

  ‘There you go again. That phrase. OK. Don’t listen to me. Just spit it out. Be brutal. See if I care.’

  She did care. As he told her, care etched itself into every line in her face. By the end she was a simmering volcano, on whose rim he perched with precarious toehold. ‘And you didn’t tell me? My husband sets a private eye on me and you don’t bloody tell me?’

  ‘Not Cal. The Deeks.’

  ‘Do you think that matters? Weeks you say, weeks with this jerk following me around, spying on me, and you don’t tell me. You shit, you complete and utter shit!’

  ‘You may be right. And if he hadn’t been found murdered last night I might not be telling you now. But he has been murdered, and I cannot not tell you, and you have to make a statement.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Rork came here to follow you and Vince Christy. When you seemed to have nothing to do with—’

  ‘Seemed! I did have nothing to do with the slimy bastard. He called me up at Claridge’s and I blew him out of the water!’

  ‘Then you have to say so. You see, Rork was following Danny Ryan, not just you.’

  ‘And the Yard think Danny did this?’

  ‘I don’t know what they think, but you have to tell them what you know. We both do. I have to make a statement to Jack Wildeve at six today.’

  ‘I don’t know anything. I never saw or heard of this Rork fellow. All I know is my husband and my lover – if I can grace you with that term – conspired to treat me like a ten-dollar hooker in a crappy gumshoe novel. Troy, if you think I’m talking to anyone except the head of that committee of fools who want Cal for president, then think again. I’m making no statements. Not now. Not ever. And as for you . . . fuck you, Troy!’

  Kitty had shattered the politesse of afternoon tea. The four o’clock susurrus had ceased. Every head in the room had turned. She stood up sharply – her cup overturned – grabbed her packages and left.

  Troy watched Kitty storm out with no expectation that she’d turn back or glance at him. She did rage like no other woman he’d ever met. His sisters specialised in scorn. Foxx would hardly ever expend more energy than it took to hint at an infinite sadness nudging towards regret. Anna? Anna he couldn’t quite pin down, but his wife did rolling sarcasm, her eyes glancing momentarily upwards to the indifferent heavens as if to say, ‘God spare me from this jerk.’ It had taken him more than a moment to realise it but the woman staring at him from across the room was his wife. If he’d wanted to follow Kitty, he neither could nor would now.

  He crossed the floor. ‘Hello,’ he said simply.

  Tosca looked in the direction Kitty had gone as though expecting to see scorchmarks on the carpet. ‘Jeezus! Do you know who that was?’

  ‘Of course. I’m not in the habit of dining with total strangers.’

  ‘Sorry, that was dumb. What I really meant was, how long have you and Senator Cormack’s wife been . . . y’ know . . . ?’

  ‘May I join you?’

  ‘Don’t fuck me around with your English manners, Troy, just sit down and answer the fucking question.’

  Troy pulled out a chair, sat down and faced his wife across a diningtable for the first time since the previous December. He’d heard not a peep from her since. ‘How do you know Kitty and I are . . . “y’ know”?’

  ‘Kitty?’

  ‘An old name. Long before she was Kate.’

  ‘So the two of you been having y’ know for a long time?’

  ‘I haven’t seen her since the war.’

  ‘But when you did see her?’

>   ‘Yes. We were y’ knowing.’

  ‘Before or after me?’

  ‘Before. Two or three years before. Now, don’t tell me you’ve just breezed into London for an uncharacteristic display of jealousy?’

  ‘Fuck off, Troy. I don’t know why I came. But I can tell you this. Kate Cormack is pretty well the last person I expected to find you having y’ know with. Did I ever tell you I knew her husband?’

  ‘No,’ said Troy. ‘I think I can safely say that’s one of the many things you never bothered to tell me.’

  ‘We were both stationed in Zurich in ‘41. Just before we got into the war.’

  ‘Odd,’ said Troy. ‘That’s when I met him. 1941. Just before you lot decided to join us. We must have just missed one another.’

  ‘Story of my life, Troy. Like I just missed you this afternoon.’

  ‘You’ve been to the house?’

  ‘Yep. Screwed my courage to the thingummy and knocked on the door.’

  ‘I was only out getting a paper. You could have waited.’

  Stupid remark. One of Tosca’s characteristics was that she didn’t wait. She was time and tide in a five-foot package.

  ‘How long are you here?’

  ‘No. I’m not answering that.’

  ‘Could we meet again?’

  ‘We’re meeting now.’

  ‘I meant . . . alone.’

  ‘Sure. I’m at Claridge’s. Come round this evening – say, seven?’

  That was cutting it fine.

  ‘OK.’

  ‘Good – ‘cos we have to talk.’

  ‘There we go,’ he said. ‘That phrase again.’

  ‘What phrase?’

  52

  Troy was early getting to the Yard. He called in at his own office. It had been weeks. Swift Eddie Clark was at his desk, his home-made coffee machine burbling away behind him as strong Blue Mountain made its way from a boiling jar to a flask, by way of a Bunsen burner and several feet of glass piping. It was, possibly, the finest cup of coffee to be had in the whole of London. When Eddie said, ‘He’s in with someone,’ Troy accepted a cup and sat down to wait.

  ‘Who’s the extra desk for?’ he asked.

  ‘The Scottish bird, sir. Seems hell-bent on making herself at home. Rang Admin and ordered the desk herself. If she looks like she’s permanent maybe she won’t get posted back to the drivers’ pool. She’s got shorthand and typing too, sir. Always useful.’

  On cue Mary McDiarmuid appeared in the doorway. ‘Mr Wildeve’ll be just a couple of minutes. Shall I run you home after?’

  ‘I don’t know how long I’ll be.’

  ‘That’s nae problem. Me an’ Edwin’ve got lots to be getting on with.’

  She smiled at Clark. Clark managed a flicker back. He hated being called Edwin.

  ‘What have we got?’ Troy asked.

  ‘The Ryans seem to have watertight alibis. Four blokes all willing to swear they were in an all-night pontoon game. Mr Wildeve collared them this morning. They sent for their brief. They were out by lunchtime.’

  ‘The drills?’

  ‘If there was one in that garage of theirs there was a hundred. Mr Kolankiewicz is testing them . . . but . . . ’

  Mary McDiarmuid did not need to finish the sentence. They both knew how futile it all was. A drill in a garage was scarcely more optimistic than the needle in the haystack.

  Troy waited. Eddie and Mary McDiarmuid rustled papers and talked to each other sotto voce. Troy felt as if he was in a dentist’s waiting room rather than his own office. Rarely had he felt more out of it.

  A few minutes later, Troy heard Jack’s office door open and footsteps coming down the corridor. Kitty stood in the doorway, Jack behind her.

  ‘It’s very good of you to come in, Mrs Cormack.’ Jack, mouthing the platitudes of the job.

  ‘It was no trouble,’ answered Senator Cormack’s wife, and as she turned to gaze stonily at Troy, Mrs Cormack was all he could see – Kitty was suddenly invisible. The woman he knew entirely absorbed by the woman he didn’t.

  Jack turned to Troy, his look almost as stony, and said, ‘Ready when you are.’

  Troy could not face typing out a statement. Kitty and Tosca between them had contrived to exhaust him. Trapped between love and death, all he wanted to do was lie down.

  ‘Mary?’

  ‘Yep?’

  ‘Would you mind taking my statement?’

  She picked up a notepad and followed the two of them into Jack’s office. Jack glanced at Mary McDiarmuid, saw the pad and pen and nodded. He sat back in his chair, looking as weary as Troy felt. Troy doubted he had had any sleep at all.

  ‘Right, Freddie, tell me the lot. Tell me everything.’

  Troy told him. And when he had finished Jack said, ‘And you thought none of this worth a mention. It didn’t raise your professional hackles?’

  It was an unusual experience being carpeted by his junior, but Troy’s inner voice was whispering, ‘You had it coming, Freddie. You brought this on yourself.’

  ‘No.’

  Jack made a cut-throat gesture to Mary McDiarmuid and she stopped writing. ‘You and I break the rules. I get you out and about to look at some of the ripest murders we’ve had in a long time and you don’t see it as a give-and-take process?’

  ‘Jack, what did I have to give?’

  ‘That an American was loose on the streets of London with a gun the size of a Sherman tank, for starters!’

  ‘I didn’t know about the gun, honestly. And for the life of me I can’t see any link between Rork and the murders you’re investigating. In fact, I thought what you thought when you phoned me up last night. . . that this was just another . . . that you’d summoned me out to look at another boy … I didn’t think Rork was in that deep. If I’d reported to you I have no idea what it was I should have been saying.’

  Troy took Jack’s pause as assent. When he finally spoke it was to move the subject on if not a mile then round a corner. ‘And Mr Robertson surprised us all.’

  ‘Quite.’

  ‘Then I think it’s time we had a word with Mr Robertson.’

  Troy found refuge in the ‘we’. However angry Jack was about the mess with which Troy had presented him, he was still talking as though they were a team.

  ‘Off the record?’ Troy asked.

  ‘Why would I do that?’

  ‘He’s a kid, Jack. He’s been in the job a matter of days. He’s fresh out of Hendon. It would be grotesquely unfair to put anything on his record at this stage that we aren’t totally sure of.’

  ‘OK. Where, then? And it has to be soon. Whatever it is that’s buzzing in young Robertson’s head I want to hear it.’

  ‘How about my house tomorrow morning?’

  ‘How about your house in an hour and a half?’

  Troy did not argue. Jack would not have understood.

  While Mary McDiarmuid fetched a car, Troy drifted along to Onions’s office. His secretary, Madge, had gone home. Both inner and outer doors were open. Onions was at his desk, slaving at paperwork under a reading lamp, rapidly scanning pages and scribbling his initials. As Troy came in he looked up once, the green shade casting a dragon-skin across his face. ‘I’ve heard,’ he said simply. ‘You’re in the shit again. Don’t even think of askin’ me to let you back early. Just bugger off.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘Bugger off!’

  53

  The cast was slow to assemble. Mary McDiarmuid insisted on driving Troy home and stayed to eat dinner with him. He could find no way to tell her to go. He desperately wanted to phone Tosca. He couldn’t do that with Mary there. He could go upstairs and phone on the bedroom extension, but he’d still be conscious of Mary. Instead he cooked for her: a vaguely Italian chicken and mushroom in white wine sauce that caused her to raise an eyebrow. ‘If you’re this good a cook, boss, I’m surprised you’re still single.’

  ‘I’m married,’ he said bluntly. ‘Don’t ask.’

  Eddie tu
rned up alone. Troy was uncertain whether his being there at all was his own idea or Jack’s, but Jack arrived ten minutes later and seemed not in the slightest surprised to find Eddie sipping tea on a straight-back chair in the corner, as ever trying to look like part of the furniture. And lastly, came Shrimp Robertson and George Bonham.

  It had turned into an evening of warm summer drizzle, moisture simply hanging rather than falling to coat everything in soft focus. The droplets glistened on the Shrimp’s uniform, clinging to the blue-black tunic, shining like diamond on his silver buttons. He took off his helmet and clutched it, not in the way coppers do, who have long since given up wondering what to do with it, but clutching it with pride. The Shrimp wore his whole uniform with pride, even down to the boots, so shiny you could see your face in them – but that was often true of former National Servicemen. If little else they knew how to shine shoes. Troy could not remember that pride. He had fought his father to be allowed to become a copper in the first place, and the old man had quickly resigned himself to it as a comic novelty. But Troy doubted he had ever felt the pride Robertson felt. He had hated being in uniform, and going ‘plain’ had come as a relief. Whatever happened now, he hoped it did not take the shine off the boy’s pride in the job.

  ‘I ‘ope you don’t mind, Mr Wildeve, sir, but Mr Bonham and me we go back a long way. In fact I’ve known Mr Bonham all me life. Mr Bonham can speak for me.’

  ‘You’re not on trial, Mr Robertson, but George is welcome all the same. This isn’t about anything you’ve done . . . It’s about . . . local knowledge. You’re the one with the local knowledge and before you it was George.’

  It was, Troy thought, a surprisingly tactful speech. All the same, George and the Shrimp sat on the edges of their chairs, looking completely unsure of the situation. Jack stood, Mary McDiarmuid sat on a stool by the fireplace, and Troy found himself with the chaise-longue to himself. All in all the room felt too full, too many people crammed in, as though the inevitability would be some sort of rupture.

  ‘The Ryans?’ Jack began simply. ‘Tell us all about the Ryans.’

  Shrimp looked at George; George looked at Jack. ‘If you want the lot, the kit an’ caboodle, you’d better let me start,’ he said.