Blue Rondo (aka Flesh Wounds)

by Lawton, John

  ‘Kate Cormack?’

  ‘Yowza. And the other?’

  ‘Joey Rork?’

  ‘Strike two, Mr Troy. Now, are we going to stand on your doorstep all night or do you feel like offering me a glass of whatever it is you’re drinking and giving me a few minutes of your time?’

  ‘Do come in,’ said Troy. ‘I was wondering why no one had turned up to claim the body.’

  Goldblatt followed Troy into the house, accepted a glass of claret. Troy watched the hostility begin to melt in him.

  ‘Y’ know, there are plenty of guys would’ve cold-cocked you for that wisecrack about brushes.’

  Who said it was a joke?

  Goldblatt’s face split into an amiable grin. He swigged at his wine, smacked his lips, pronounced it ‘great’, and settled himself on the sofa.

  ‘Let’s get serious,’ he said, still smiling.

  Troy pulled out a chair from the dining-table and sat down to face him. Goldblatt flipped open his case and pulled out a folded copy of the Sunday Post.

  ‘A friend at our embassy read this over the phone to me. I was on a plane three hours later. It mentions two murders. And a possible third. I get to thinking Joey was one of those. Am I right?’

  Troy nodded.

  ‘And these Ryan brothers. They’re related to the Danny Ryan Joey reckoned Mrs Cormack is boffing?’

  Troy nodded.

  ‘And the two are connected. These hoodlums taking over is somehow . . .’ Goldblatt’s hand circled in the air conveying his disbelief better than his words ‘. . . connected to Joey’s investigation and to Mrs Cormack’s, ah . . .’ the hands waved again, this time in imprecision ‘. . . affair?’

  ‘No,’ said Troy. ‘I think that’s a very unfortunate coincidence. Joey got it into his head that if the brothers were bent so was Danny. And that compromised Kate. I couldn’t get him to see that there was no connection.’

  ‘And this article. I assume you’ve read it. This article asserts that you have these Ryans in the frame, they’re suspects, but suspects you cannot touch. You guys used to be the premier detective agency in the world. When I was a boy you guys were the stuff of legend. I grew up reading Sherlock Holmes. Now you can’t catch a couple of hoodlums? So the question is, what the hell is going on at Scotland Yard?’

  ‘First, your memory deceives you. In Sherlock Holmes we were the bumbling idiots to his smartarse private detective. Second, we are investigating Joey’s murder. I know they did it. I will catch them. You need have no worries about Scotland Yard.’

  Goldblatt slapped the paper down on the coffee table. The editorial face-up.

  Before he could speak Troy said, ‘Look at the signature, Mr Goldblatt.’

  Goldblatt turned the paper, fumbled in his inside pocket and pulled out reading glasses. ‘Alexei Troy. A relative?’

  ‘My father. He died fifteen years ago.’

  ‘I don’t get it.’

  ‘I wrote that article, Mr Goldblatt.’

  ‘I still don’t get it.’

  ‘Then I can’t make it clearer.’

  ‘Try me.’

  ‘No. You’ve had your say. It’s my turn. Who sent you? The Deeks?’

  ‘I’m chairman of the Deeks. I have responsibilities.’

  ‘To get Calvin elected.’

  ‘I was thinking more of the responsibilities I have to Joey’s family.’

  This was not a turn Troy had anticipated. Rork just didn’t look married. He’d given no thought to the prospect that he might be. ‘Joey was married?’

  ‘Twice. And divorced twice. A kid from each marriage. Joe junior just graduated from Columbia. Billy’s still in high school. Wants to be a cop like his old man.’

  ‘So you’re taking the body?’

  ‘I guess I am. I have a lot of explaining to do back home.’

  ‘And you’ll see to the needs of his family?’

  ‘That’s under discussion.’

  ‘Mr Goldblatt, I will look after the dead. I’ll give Joey justice. He was a better detective than I thought. I misjudged him. But if he’d not been good at his job he’d never have got so close and he might still be alive. I’ll look after the dead. However much money you have raised to buy the next election for Senator Cormack, I suggest you set some aside for Joey Rork’s children. Do we have a deal?’

  Goldblatt gave the matter a moment’s thought. ‘We do. But there’s one thing more you could do for me.’

  Troy was suspicious of this and said nothing.

  ‘Mr Troy, you could send Kate Cormack home.’

  Still Troy said nothing.

  ‘I read all Joey’s reports. I know about you and Mrs Cormack. I have no problem with it. The Deeks have no problem with it. America will have no problem with it. It seems to me that you have enough discretion to see that America will have no problem with it. But you’ve known her a long time. Could be she’ll listen to you. Mr Troy, please send her home before you wrap this case, before it becomes so deep she’s mired in it. I’m not thinking of the presidency, I’m not thinking of the election, I’m not even thinking of Calvin. I’m thinking of her kids. I’m thinking of her. You’re worried about Joey Rork’s kids. That’s good. We both should be. But we should both be worried about the Cormack kids too. Please send her home.’

  It was a moving little speech. Enough to earn Goldblatt the respect of a man who, until now, had been quite willing to despise him simply because of his occupation. Troy wished he could respond in spirit, but the truth got in the way.

  ‘Mr Goldblatt, Kate Cormack doesn’t listen to anybody.’

  78

  Three days later Onions appeared in Troy’s office first thing in the morning. Fine, thought Troy. If he feels he has to check up on me. Fine.

  ‘Things have cooled off a bit,’ he said, lighting up a Woodbine and perching next to the gas fire as though it were mid-December and not the hottest summer for umpteen years.

  ‘Cooled off’ meant he wasn’t getting the outraged phonecalls. Troy decided to tell him the truth. Hot or cool.

  ‘The Ryans are suing the Sunday Post.’

  ‘Jesus Christ.’ Onions inhaled and stared after the ash he had flicked into the hearth. ‘What is the world coming to?’

  One day, maybe, Troy would tell him.

  Half an hour later, Troy and Mary McDiarmuid gathered to hear Eddie Clark report on two days’ foot-slogging around Stepney.

  ‘First off, sir, he doesn’t know you’re on to him. He may hate the fact that the Yard brought Mr Godbehere in over his head, but he seems to think it’s the shit end of an ordinary stick. He’s showed no suspicion and no caution. I rather think I could have dressed up as a chicken and followed him. He just doesn’t pay attention. Not that he doesn’t show basic caution. He does. And that brings me to the first point. He leaves the office, and he leaves his flat in Stratford, to use public phone-boxes. He doesn’t want to be overheard and he doesn’t want to be traced. But it’s a routine. He does it on the assumption that no one would ever follow. It’s habit and he’s lazy about it. He favours two boxes. One in the Whitechapel Road, by the Underground station, and a second in Stratford Broadway. I don’t know who he calls. But he’s used both on each of the last two days. It would be easy to tap them.’

  Troy said, ‘Let’s take who he’s calling as read. We won’t get the tap, so I’m not going to bother asking for it.’

  ‘On Wednesday he visited the Stratford branch of the Westminster Bank. I had Internal Records check up on how his pay cheques are cashed. They always clear through the Westminster. So far, so good. But yesterday, he nipped out just before closing time to call in at the Islington branch of the District. He was just cashing a cheque. He came straight out still counting his money and got back into his car. Assuming he was going back to the nick, I opted to go into the bank rather than follow him. They were iffy but I flashed me warrant card and the manager gave in. The account is in his real name. No disguises. Except that he never told them he was a coppe
r. They had him down as something in the rag trade – a furrier. He opened it three years ago. March of ‘56. I checked that against his personnel file. It was eight weeks after he was transferred from Leytonstone. He has £112 in a current account and £3,285 and a few shillings in a deposit. What you’d call a nice little earner. And in case the airy heights of top brass have given you any illusions, he’s a sergeant, I’m a sergeant. It’s more than three times what I earn in a year. In contrast the current account at the Westminster has fifty-eight quid in it. ‘Bout what I’ve got in mine, I should think.’

  Mary McDiarmuid said, ‘We’ve got him.’

  ‘Not so fast,’ said Troy. ‘We don’t know whether he has a dear old granny who’s making over a fortune to him in small chunks. We don’t know whether he plays the horses.’

  ‘He does play the horses, as it happens. I found a betting slip in his coat pocket. Lovely Lady in the 2.30 at Redcar yesterday. Came in last. I had two bob each way on Ramona. Came in second. It pays to study a bit of form. I wouldn’t have backed Lovely Lady if all the other horses had had only three legs. So, I think we can safely say he’s not making a killing at the bookie’s. Which,’ said Eddie, ‘brings me to his assets. He’s single. No girlfriend that I’ve spotted, but there’s the weekend to come. The flat is rented. One bedroom, one living, kitchen and bath. Perfectly affordable on a sergeant’s pay. I slipped the lock while he was out. Nothing you wouldn’t expect in the home of a bloke with no kids. Radiogram and a fridge. And while plenty of people have neither I’d say both were affordable on what he earns. The car’s a Ford Zodiac. Personally I’ve always thought it a wide-boy’s car. A monster with bench seats. You know what that means, don’t you sir? It’s a bit flash, but then that’s what young Robertson called him, as I recall. A bit flash. Mazzer’s car has a sticker in the rear window with the supplier’s address on it. I went round there. He traded in his old one, and bought the new one on the hire purchase. Nothing odd about that. Affordable. Again. So I started to think, what’s the point in being on the take and having three grand in the bank if you can’t spend it? So when he hung up his jacket for a caff lunch yesterday, I hung up mine too, and I got a close look at his. That’s when I found the betting slip. The suit was a nice bit of clobber with a Carnaby Street label inside. I went round to the tailor. He has an account. Not exactly Savile Row, but none of your fifty-bob tailors. They’re discrete suits but they’re classy. They don’t look like Burton’s and I bet they don’t feel like them. And on a sergeant’s pay I couldn’t afford one. The tailor says he’s made four a year for him since 1956.’

  Troy did not know how many suits he owned. But he rather thought the average Englishman owned one and one only. And since he never wanted to dry-clean a suit in the first place, owning only the one suit was not a problem for the average Englishman. Twelve suits was preposterous.

  ‘All in all I begin to think that “flash” was more precise than we thought. It wasn’t just a run-of-the-mill insult. It conveys what the coppers he works with have noticed about him, but haven’t quite registered. If you see what I mean. I think he’s too smart to spend conspicuously. In fact, I think he’s saving it all up for the day when he’s no longer a copper. In the meantime, he’s got the one weakness. And if no one has looked at the cut of his suit and the quality of his cloth, and the frequency with which it changes, then it could be he handles it rather well.’

  Troy said, ‘The second bank account is stupid. If it didn’t attract our attention, there’s still the Inland Revenue. It would have been smarter to stuff it under the mattress.’

  ‘There was nothing under the mattress. I looked. Nor in the top of cistern in the lawy. I didn’t have time to prise the gas fire off and look up the chimney. But I could go back with a spanner.’

  Mary McDiarmuid ignored this and said, ‘What Edwin’s come up with is enough for AIO to open an internal investigation, surely?’

  ‘It is. But I don’t want AIO anywhere near it. I just want to be sure.’

  ‘I thought you were sure?’

  ‘I am sure. I just want to be sure sure. Certain.’

  ‘But he’s the Ryans’ man?’

  ‘I’ve acted on that notion all along.’

  Mary McDiarmuid said, ‘Do you not think, boss, that the Ryans moved pretty damn quick to get someone on the inside so soon?’

  ‘Not a bad point, sir,’ Eddie chipped in. ‘Mazzer’s had that second bank account for years. For all we know he’s working for somebody else not the Ryans.’

  Troy felt stupid. He’d walked up to the obvious, circled it and missed it.

  ‘Mary, get the car brought round. We have a call to make.’

  79

  Once more Mary McDiarmuid drove Troy out to Hampstead Garden Suburb. A tatty grey Trojan van was parked outside Alice Marx’s house; the side gate was propped open. A large black man was pushing a wheelbarrow full of rich black topsoil towards the house and a second pushed a barrowload of horse dung. Troy looked down the side of the house to the back garden. Alice had clearly discovered something the East End could not offer. A hundred-foot back garden and the joys of gardening. He followed the second man. At the back of the house Alice stood chatting to the first, an unlit cigarette in her right hand, gesturing towards the flower-beds. As the second man approached she noticed Troy and Troy got a clear look at her. She was neither dressed nor made-up for gardening, the clothes too neat and too new, the face too bold – not that Troy could think of a shade of lipstick that went with hollyhocks, hostas and horse-muck.

  ‘Forgotten how to use the phone?’ Alice snapped at him.

  ‘This won’t take more than a couple of minutes.’

  ‘You’ve called at a really naff time.’

  ‘OK. One minute.’

  Ally held out the cigarette to the first man. Around his waist he wore a workman’s leather belt, all pouches and pockets, secateurs, knives, a trowel, a short-handled fork, all the handy tools of a handyman.

  ‘Match me, Sidney,’ she said, and Sidney pulled a cigarette lighter from one of the pouches and held the flame to the tobacco. He somehow contrived to make every muscle, every bi- and tricep, ripple along his arm to bulge through the short sleeve of his T-shirt. Ally looked at Troy across the end of her fag, a wicked glint in her flinty eyes. ‘Out front. We’ll talk out front.’

  She brushed past Troy, propped herself against the side of the van in a laconic, contrived pose, blew smoke and said, ‘Well?’

  ‘I have a favour to ask.’

  She spluttered over her fag. Troy thought she was choking and soon realised that this was what passed for laughter.

  ‘What makes you think I’ll do you any favours?’

  ‘Nothing. Nothing at all. But I have to ask.’

  ‘Then I’ll surprise you. I owe you one. Ask away.’

  ‘You owe me?’

  ‘I got meself a brief. Not one of Alf’s, one on me own. You were right about mental cruelty. I can divorce the bastard. I am divorcing the bastard. So whatever it is, Troy, spit it out and take yer chances with yer auntie Ally.’

  Troy paused to let this sink in, to be certain in his own mind that there was more to this than mockery.

  ‘I need to know if Alf and Bernie had a bent copper on their payroll.’

  Ally inhaled deeply and exhaled at length. ‘Y’ know, that’s an awful lot to ask. If I say yes, then really, when it comes down to it, I’m grassing someone up, aren’t I?’

  ‘Ally, I don’t even think in those terms. A bent copper is a bent copper.’

  ‘And to Alf it’s a useful voice on the inside.’

  ‘You’re through with Alf.’

  One last pause, one last billowing cloud of Player’s Full Strength, and she said, ‘Yes. Alf had – or should I say has? – a copper working for him.’

  ‘Do you know his name?’

  ‘No. But he shouldn’t be hard to find. Can you imagine Alf or Bernie trusting anyone who wasn’t Jewish? And how many Jewish coppers do you
think there are in London? How many Jewish coppers do you think there are in East London? Now – is that it or was there something else? Cos if we’re done I have a nice six-foot shvartzer to do.’

  ‘Do?’

  ‘Oh, I mean to have Sidney. Or maybe Jayjay. Or maybe both. Like you said, I’m through with Alf. Do you know I was a virgin when I married him? And I’ve been faithful to the sod all my married life. It’ll be like losing my virginity all over again.’

  ‘Ally, you’re the most unlikely-looking virgin I’ve ever seen.’

  ‘And if it weren’t for the fact that neither you nor I are into pervy peekaboos I’d say, “Just watch me, Troy, just fuckin’ watch me.”’

  She dropped the cigarette, ground it into the paving with the toe of her golden slingback shoe – the perfect footwear for gardening and seduction – and stepped past Troy with a final ‘And next time, phone first!’

  When Mary McDiarmuid rounded the corner, he slipped in beside her.

  ‘Do you know now?’ she said.

  ‘Yes. Mazzer worked for Alf Marx. The Ryans took him over. Money, threats, it doesn’t matter which. They turned him and then he fingered Alf’s lieutenant Bernie Champion for them. We should have spotted this ages ago. Bernie would never have let himself be taken. Someone had to set him up. It was Mazzer. I’d put money on it.’

  ‘Do we pull him?’

  ‘Not yet. I need Mr Mazzer where he is.’

  ‘Where to, then? The Yard or home?’

  ‘Neither. Take me to Hampstead. I think it’s time I had a bit of a chat with my brother.’

  80

  Rod opened the door with ‘Decided to knock this time, have you?’

  And Troy replied, ‘I’m here on the same subject. If you want this conversation on the doorstep, that’s fine by me.’

  Rod swung the door wide and stomped off, as much as a man in carpet slippers can stomp – all the way to the back of the house, into their father’s old study, where he had the desk covered with a scattering of parliamentary papers. It was the summer recess. This was Rod being diligent but wearing mufti – the baggy trousers were corduroy, the shirt was an old one destined for his wife’s duster bag, frayed at the cuffs and collar, and, as ever, the socks did not match. One black, one red.