Blue Rondo (aka Flesh Wounds)

by Lawton, John

  ‘Will this be quick, Freddie? As you can see I’m up to my neck.’

  Troy took the aerogramme from his inside pocket, shoved it at Rod and sat down to wait. Rod put on his reading-glasses, read the first few lines standing, then, without looking, shoved a mess of papers aside, made room on his desk, sat and read the rest with his head down.

  Troy stared past him, out into the garden. In his youth there had been a quince against the back wall. It wasn’t there now; perhaps it had died. Perhaps his sister-in-law, Cid, had ripped it out. It was hers to rip, and she had none of the excessive sense of conserving the past merely because it was past that infected both Troy and Rod, that led to the old man’s fountain pen still being parked on the edge of the desk, next to the inkwell, where he’d left it one day in 1943.

  On cue, the thought summoned the woman, and his sister-in-law came in, saying, ‘I thought I heard your voice. Are you staying for lunch?’

  ‘No, he can’t stay, Cid. He’s busy,’ said Rod, without looking up.

  ‘Are you?’ she said to Troy.

  Troy said nothing.

  She turned to Rod, said, ‘You can be so childish sometimes.’

  And left.

  When he’d finished, Rod laid the letter flat, walked to the window, in a move he had surely blocked out in his mind, took off his reading-glasses, polished them on his hanky, gazed a minute at the brick wall where the quince used to be, thought the same thought Troy had thought, and said over his shoulder, ‘What is it you expect me to say? That I didn’t know? That Spoon has made a fool of all of us? That Kate Cormack is making a fool of you?’

  Troy ignored the last remark. ‘No. Nothing of the sort. If you tell me you didn’t know I won’t believe you. Of course you knew, you’re not in the least bit surprised.’

  Rod faced him now, the ham actor advancing upstage. ‘Freddie, the only surprising thing is that you know.’

  ‘Fine – but I do have a question. Knowing what you know, why do you accept it? What value can there be in having a spook you know about?’

  Rod blinked rapidly and rubbed at one eye with his fist. ‘Are we talking in confidence?’

  ‘I’m on duty, Rod.’

  ‘You have a professional interest in Spoon?’

  ‘You know damn well I have. I told you that the last time we spoke.’

  ‘And you still expect a straight answer?’

  ‘Rod, as you are ever reminding me, I’m the devious one, not you.’

  It was too easy a reassurance – it wasn’t a reassurance at all: it was a back-handed flattery, but when Rod took his seat again and stuck his glasses into his breast pocket, Troy knew he was going to tell him anyway.

  ‘OK. It wouldn’t be all that hard to figure out, after all. And if the penny drops you’ll come crowing to me as though you’d just caught Jack the Ripper. But what I have to say will be of no professional interest to you whatsoever. What is worth knowing you already know. Spoon works for the CIA. I’ve known for about eighteen months. And I’ve no intention of telling you how I found out, so don’t ask.’

  ‘Who else knows?’

  ‘There’s three of us now. You, me and Hugh Gaitskell. One too many, but there you are.’

  ‘And Hugh is tolerating a spy in his shadow cabinet. I say again, why?’

  ‘Freddie, what happened last winter?’

  ‘It snowed. Buddy Holly died. Worse still, he got knocked off the number-one spot by Russ Conway, and I was tempted to smash the wireless.’

  Rod sighed. ‘On the geopolitical front.’

  Troy had to think about this. The boot was on the other foot. This was usually the sort of thing he put to Rod. Rod was painfully spelling out to him something he hadn’t guessed. It was an oddly strange feeling. The Prime Minister had been to Russia, wearing a silly hat and plus-fours, the French had gone mad and elected General de Gaulle president . . . and an odd-looking bloke with a bushy beard had . . .

  ‘Cuba?’

  ‘Give the boy a coconut. Yes, Freddie, Cuba. Cuba, Fidel Castro and a left-wing revolution on the American doorstep.’

  ‘I think you’ll find the word is backyard, rather than doorstep. And do we know Castro is left-wing? I would have said that’s a hard one to call. It’s a bit early for the Americans to be screaming Commie. He’s nationalised a few things, he’s stopped them treating Cuba like the world’s biggest corporate brothel. I have difficulty assigning a political label to that. It’s nationalism, and it’s moral. Is it really Communist?’

  ‘I doubt that Ike draws the fine distinctions you do. But what I do know is that as much as anyone as cool as Ike – and I’ve known him nearly twenty years – as much as anyone as cool as Ike can be paranoid, he is paranoid about Cuba and Commies in his own backyard. The damage done to the Americans’ confidence in us by the likes of Klaus Fuchs, Burgess, Maclean – all those sort of chaps – is all but unimaginable. Try to see a value in Spoon. Spoon is the Americans’ man in our midst. We are a left-wing party about to take power, about to take control of the nation that up to now has been their staunchest ally. They are going to need some reassurance.’

  ‘Why? Does Ike suffer from the delusion that Fuchs or Burgess or Maclean were supporters of the Labour Party? The party of the average working bloke? That the average working bloke is a KGB spy? Rod, I knew Guy Burgess. Working bloke he was not. I doubt he ever did a day’s work in his life.’

  ‘The English class system will mean fuck all to Ike. I would not even begin to explain to him why all our spies are toffs. The fact that Guy Burgess was not born to the cloth cap and the brown boots will be too subtle for any American. Crude as it is, it remains, and please don’t argue the toss, that we are the party of the Left and hence suspect. Every Labour government there’s ever been has been suspect – the Red is always under the bed. There will always be people willing to believe we are hand in glove with the Soviet Union, always people willing to believe stuff like the Zinoviev letter. The first whiff of nationalisation and there are people in Washington who’ll be pointing the finger at us and screaming Commie. Dick Nixon, to name but one, has built a career on Commie-baiting. Spoon and Nixon, as your source makes perfectly clear, are like that.’ Rod held up the crossed fingers of his right hand.

  ‘So Spoon is what? Your feed back to Washington?’

  ‘Better than that – a direct conduit back to the Americans, and via Nixon to the heartland of their paranoia. He’ll be privy to what goes on, he can rat on us all he likes. In fact we’ll be mightily pissed off if he doesn’t, because he’ll never learn anything about us that cannot be favourably received in Washington. Spoon will know what we want him to know. No more, no less. Of course, we can’t stop him speculating . . . but we’ll see he gets all the information he needs. And if by some twisted logic the American people see fit to elect Nixon president next year . . .’

  Rod waved a hand in the air, wafting away the sentence into the obvious. Troy thought about it. It was worth a little thought. It was little short of brilliant. ‘You didn’t think this up.’

  ‘What makes you say that?’

  ‘It’s too clever by half’

  ‘I shall ignore the insult – but basically you’re right. Hugh came up with this one.’

  Troy pondered ‘this one’. Better than brilliant, it was wonderfully devious. So much so he wished he’d thought of it himself.

  ‘You’re overlooking one thing.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘Spoon is still bent. Nothing to do with being a spook. Nothing to do with all those dodgy deals you’re endorsing in the East End. The man is bent per Se’

  ‘Bent how?’

  ‘Can’t tell you that.’

  Rod folded the aerogramme and handed it back to Troy. ‘Thank you, Freddie. This has, as ever, been a one-sided exchange. But before I tell you to fuck off, did nothing else about this letter strike you?’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘The remarkable similarity between the account of Spoon’s early
life and that of our father.’

  ‘Rod, I find that an odious comparison.’

  ‘It’s there in black and white. Read it again.’

  Troy put the letter back in his pocket unread.

  ‘What are you going to do now? About Spoon, I mean.’

  ‘Nothing until I have evidence.’

  ‘And if you find evidence?’

  ‘I’ll return the favour. You’ll be the first to know. But I’ll tell you now. Don’t bank on having him as your tame songbird in the next cabinet.’

  ‘A hint, Freddie, just a hint, a bit of a quid pro quo?

  ‘No, Rod. No hints. I’ll either get the evidence or I won’t.’

  81

  Back in the Bentley, heading south down Haverstock Hill, Mary McDiarmuid said, ‘Home?’

  Troy said, ‘Stepney.’ Then, ‘The butcher’s bodies.’

  ‘Yes, boss?’

  ‘Let’s try a new approach. Let’s come at it backwards.’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘Let’s presume an identity and try to prove it.’

  ‘I’m listening.’

  ‘Young and male we know, sexually assaulted we know – let’s drop the notion of the sex as part of the subsequent violence, let’s draw a line between the two acts, buggery and murder, and presume no direct connection between the two and hence let us presume consent to the sexual act and let us sidestep the conclusion that the killer was also the bugger. Let’s presume three things, working class, northern accent . . . and homosexual.’

  ‘Well, that would whittle down the list. Could I ask why those three criteria?’

  ‘Ted Spoon’s bent. The marriage is a fig-leaf. His penchant is for rough trade – specifically for young northern lads. Let’s proceed on the assumption that whatever he is doing for the Ryans by way of business deals, they are doing something simpler, far older and far simpler, for him.’

  ‘Procuring?’

  ‘I can’t think what else to call it. Procuring – then murder.’

  ‘Do you think Spoon knows these boys end up murdered?’

  ‘I’m damn sure he doesn’t. But I want to be there when he finds out.’

  ‘But . . . why kill them?’

  ‘For the same reason they killed Brock. To show us they can. It was something Jack said when we found the second body. “They’re taking the piss,” he said. They’d tried to hide the first. They made no attempt with the second. They used it to hold two fingers up to us. It was a message and it said, “Can’t catch me.” And it said it to the Metropolitan Police force. Took me a while to work that one out. But it took them a while too. Otherwise they’d have flaunted the first corpse.’

  ‘Aha.’

  ‘Why do I find no element of surprise in your “aha”?’

  Mary McDiarmuid said nothing, a concentrated pause.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘I read the file on one of your old cases.’

  ‘Which old case.’

  ‘The Diana Brack murders.’

  It had been an age since anyone had uttered that name to Troy.

  ‘And?’

  ‘Well, there are similarities.’

  ‘Similarities?’

  ‘Do you not think they’re copying the crime?’

  ‘Copying?’

  ‘In 1944 Diana Brack and her accomplice cut up a corpse and tried to dispose of it.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘A dog found one arm.’

  ‘The left, as it happens. Do try to be precise.’

  Mary McDiarmuid ignored this. ‘You found the rest

  ‘I know that too.’

  ‘. . . with the help of a gang of kids, two of whom, according to Constable Robertson, were the Ryan twins. You heard him – you were a hero to that bunch. I say they’re cutting up corpses in imitation – of a bizarre kind.’

  She had her eyes on the road, but they flickered to look at him as he studied her words in silence for the best part of a mile.

  ‘When did you figure this out?’

  ‘I’ve been thinking about it for a while.’

  ‘And when were you going to tell me?’

  ‘I thought I just did. But there’s more. I heard you asking Edwin why you’d not been shown something on Joey Rork this morning. The airmail letter? Am I right?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It’s not the only thing Mr Wildeve didn’t tell you. The prick in the post. . .’

  ‘No, he told me about that.’

  ‘What he didn’t tell you is that it wasn’t addressed to him – it was addressed to you.’

  ‘Jesus Christ.’

  ‘They’re not just taking the piss or copying an old crime. They’re not holding up two fingers to the whole of the Metropolitan Police force. It’s you. They’re aiming the lot straight at you.’

  For a while they drove in silence, this time of Mary McDiarmuid’s making. Crossing Spitalfields, Troy could all but hear the cogs in her mind crunching over. ‘Tell me,’ he said.

  ‘We’re proceeding on the assumption that the Ryans are responsible for Mr Brocklehurst, those two young men. Joey Rork and . . . Bernie Champion?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then why haven’t we found Bernie Champion? We’ve found everybody else. Why aren’t they flaunting that?’

  ‘Because they need the illusion that he’s still alive to put the screws on his wife and Ally Marx.’

  ‘So they’ve got Bernie very well stashed. Somewhere we wouldn’t think of looking?’

  Not a bad point, thought Troy. Worth some thought. He’d think about it.

  82

  As Troy was coming into Leman Street police station a man in his early thirties was coming out. He passed Troy without a word, and stood with his back to him, fiddling with the keys to his two-tone – did they come any other way? – Ford Zodiac parked at the kerb. It was, thought Troy, a little surprising that Mr Mazzer did not know him by sight, but just as surprising that he should be able to spot Mazzer merely by Swift Eddie’s description of his suit and his manner. He reminded Troy of a small boy jingling the coins in his pocket. Not that Mazzer was doing any such thing, but something about him amounted to the same effect: a combination of caution and boastfulness. He wasn’t saying ‘Look what I’ve got,’ but he was letting you know it all the same. Eddie was right -in his own words, ‘The suit set him back a bob or two, none of your fifty-shilling tailors’ – but what he hadn’t mentioned was the grooming. Al Mazzer hadn’t got that haircut down the Mile End Road from Shrimp Robertson’s father, or any ex-army barber whose talents extended to short-back-and-sides and no further. Troy could not think from where he got the phrase, but it was appropriate. Mr Mazzer looked like the sort of bloke who would pay for a shoeshine and tip well in restaurants – and these days so few would do either.

  Mazzer wound down the window, placed a hand on the door, thinking. Troy could see the manicure now – no bitten or nicotined fingernails. Perhaps that was the secret of wealth you could never flaunt: you spent it on the small things of life, the little things that made all the difference but would be hardly noticeable. Then Mazzer turned the engine over and looked in the rear-view mirror. He must have caught sight of Troy’s Bentley parked twenty or so feet behind him. He looked at Troy now, and for the first time he seemed to recognise him. Troy turned and walked into the police station.

  ‘You just missed Mazzer,’ Godbehere said.

  ‘No,’ said Troy. ‘I don’t think I did.’

  83

  They compared notes. Godbehere had compiled a list of all known ‘Ryan associates’ – a euphemism for a gang.

  ‘George Bonham was great,’ Godbehere said. ‘Makes you wonder why we retire people at that age. And that MP you put me on to, Les Gidney. He introduced me to half a dozen local councillors, including two blokes off the planning committee. I’ve a good idea of what the Ryans own, and what they paid for it. They’ve been spending like two Irish sailors on shore leave. They have property all over the manor, but better still they’v
e been buying up most of Watney Market. The market itself and the side-streets belong mainly to two insurance companies who’ve owned them since about 1890. The Essex and Herts Assurance and the London-Liverpool Commercial. They’ve let the houses rot, basically. Done the minimum maintenance to comply with the law, and God knows that isn’t much, and collected minimum rent. Even with the housing shortage they’ve proved a poor investment, and the Ryans are buying one or two a week for a matter of a few hundred apiece. Last month they picked up the whole of Cridlan Street for twelve thousand pounds.’

  ‘What? All of it?’

  ‘All twenty-three remaining houses. The whole damn lot. Mind, Cridlan Street didn’t belong to either of those insurance companies. The owners put it up for auction.’

  ‘And they were?’

  ‘Would you believe the Church of England?’

  Troy had no difficulty believing this.

  Godbehere continued, ‘Gidney thinks they’re playing a waiting game, waiting for a compulsory purchase order. The council buys the houses at a whacking great profit – and all without the bother of having to evict tenants.’

  ‘It’s better than that. They get permission to develop the site, become part of a consortium to rebuild, and the consortium pays the Ryans a huge kickback. And the government tops it all with a fat handout under the name of urban renewal and a national housing programme.’

  ‘Hell’s bells,’ said Godbehere. ‘It’s the perfect con. They’ll be rich twice over. But that brings me to the bad news. You’ll need more resources than I’ve got to find out where they keep their money. I’ve tracked down a few bank accounts – after all, they need some to look legit. But where the money from the rackets gets laundered before it’s fed back to something legit … I don’t know.’

  ‘That’s OK. I’m concentrating more on where they get it than where it goes. Now,’ said Troy, ‘the gang.’

  Godbehere handed Troy a badly typed sheet of names. Most of them meant nothing to Troy. If this was East End villainy it was a generation and more that had grown up since Troy walked the beat. But half a dozen names looked familiar.