Blue Rondo (aka Flesh Wounds)

by Lawton, John

  Spoon turned to Rod. ‘Did you know about this?’

  ‘No, Ted. And I still don’t know.’

  Mary had already sat down. Troy said, ‘Shall we sit?’ and extended a hand to the chair opposite, on the other side of the desk. Only Rod remained standing, leaning against the wall by the door, with his arms folded.

  Troy said. ‘You know I run the Murder Squad, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I have no brief in Vice, so please accept my assurance that you are not a suspect in any case I am investigating.’

  ‘Why would I be of any interest to the Vice Squad, Mr Troy?’

  ‘Stop bluffing. I know you’re queer. I know you have a taste for rough—’

  Spoon was out of his chair and heading for the door before Troy could finish.

  ‘Lord Steele, the house is surrounded by policemen. A coincidence, but a timely one. If you try to leave now we’ll just have this conversation in public – I’ll wash your dirty linen in front of people who know you and respect you.’

  Spoon went back to his chair, blazing with unspoken anger, and stared at Troy.

  ‘As I was saying. I don’t care what you get up to in your private life. All I ask is that you look at some photographs and tell me if you recognise anyone.’

  ‘I don’t seem to have any choice. Do I?’

  It was a nice show of bravado, and to anyone but Mary McDiarmuid and Troy it might have been convincing. When Mary set the first photograph in front of him Spoon showed no shock, only outrage and incomprehension.

  ‘It’s a foot. A severed foot. How, in God’s name, do you expect me to recognise anyone from a foot?’

  And one by one, piece by piece, Mary laid out the entire jigsaw of the corpse that had been recovered near Harpenden. Troy watched the blood and anger drain from Spoon’s face, but it was the shock of gore and guts, it wasn’t the shock of recognition, and he took it surprisingly well. Many a man would have puked.

  ‘What’s your point, Mr Troy?’

  Troy looked at Mary McDiarmuid. She set down the full-face shot of Niall Devanney. Spoon reached out. For a moment Troy thought he was going to pick up the photograph, but he was gripping the edge of the desk just enough to steady himself. He was fighting for control of his expression, and he was winning. Whatever else he might be at this moment, Ted Steele wasn’t going to be a pushover.

  ‘I say again, Mr Troy, what is your point?’

  ‘Earlier this year, I do not know precisely when, you had sexual relations with this man, Niall Devanney, aged twenty. The illegality of that act does not concern me. All I want to know is who introduced him to you.’

  ‘I can’t help you, Mr Troy.’

  Mary McDiarmuid laid out the shots of the second corpse, one by one, but faster until they spread like a royal flush, with only the face of John Mackie missing.

  Spoon was paler than Troy thought possible for a red-blooded mammal, but his voice barely quavered. Troy had seen men reduced to croaking whispers looking at shots such as these. He’d known policemen vomit at the sight. He’d seen women collapse like rag dolls. He did not look at Mary McDiarmuid.

  ‘I can’t help you,’ Spoon said again.

  ‘I don’t know what name he gave you, but he was called John Mackie. He was nineteen. And you did know him, didn’t you?’

  Spoon said nothing.

  ‘And you had sexual relations with him too?’

  Spoon said nothing.

  ‘Lord Steele, were these young men procured for you by Patrick and Lorcan Ryan as a result of your visits to the Empress club?’

  Spoon sat rigid, but Troy saw tears form in the corners of his eyes and begin to roll down his cheeks. It was incongruous and almost shocking. He stared at Troy with not a flicker of expression on his face, as though the tears that wet his cheeks were no more than splashes of rain from a summer shower.

  ‘I say again, I can’t help you.’

  It was less than an admission, more than a denial. What it was was precise.

  ‘The Ryan twins introduced you to these young men for sexual purposes and when they became an inconvenience to them they butchered them like pigs and dumped the bodies in pieces. We found one on a building site in Hertfordshire, the other outside a West End pub. They’d both had anal intercourse, and we have semen samples. Lord Steele, what is your blood group?’

  Steele put both hands on the desk and leaned as close to Troy as he could. ‘I can’t help you. I say I can’t help you.’

  And then, so softly Troy doubted even Mary McDiarmuid heard, ‘They’ll kill me. And then they’ll kill you,’ his voice rose to a normal pitch and he said, ‘Now if you’ll excuse me I’d like to go to the lavatory.’

  Troy showed Spoon to his bedroom, gave him a towel and pointed him in the direction of his bathroom. He heard the gurgle of running water, and then Spoon said, ‘Troy, are you listening?’

  Troy was.

  99

  Rod was still in the study when Troy returned five minutes later and he was looking at his watch. ‘Freddie, I really have to get back.’ There was an entirely different tone in his voice. Acceptance. More than acceptance.

  ‘If you’d care to join us . . . you know where your DJ is . . . and I’m sure Cid will have something that would fit Miss McDiarmuid

  ‘Rod, you’re waffling. Go and join your guests. I can’t think of a single thing I’d want to say to Ike, and the thought of having to listen to Monty is enough to put me to sleep. I got what I came for. And I’m sorry I had to do it this way. If Spoon doesn’t slit his throat in my bathroom he’ll be joining you. Enjoy it – the friendships are perhaps the only thing I ever envied about your war.’

  Rod smiled faintly, touched his shoulder, and left.

  Mary McDiarmuid said, ‘Why did you not give me the nod to show him Mackie’s face?’

  ‘We got one right. What were the odds on us getting both right? Diminishing, I’d say. If we’d got it wrong, he’d have known we were bluffing.’

  ‘So, you’re not arresting Spoon?’

  ‘For what? He’s done nothing I can or would ever want to prove.’

  ‘Boss, he’s also admitted nothing about the Ryans. Or did he do that upstairs?’

  Troy shrugged. ‘No matter. I know the truth now. He’s tougher than I’d ever have thought, but do you really think we couldn’t crack him in the witness box? Can you see him holding up to questions from a skilled QC?’

  There was sleight-of-word in this. Question without statement.

  ‘Tougher than we thought?’ Mary McDiarmuid echoed. ‘That I can’t deny. All the same, boss, you still need a witness who’ll talk now.’

  The telephone on Troy’s desk rang. He and Rod had had separate lines for over a year now. It had to be for him. He picked it up.

  ‘Mr Troy? Ray Godbehere. Thank God, I’ve been trying everywhere. You’d better get back to Stepney. The Ryans just shot Mott Kettle in front of a dozen witnesses.’

  100

  Godbehere got the day shift out of bed.

  ‘That includes Mazzer,’ said Troy.

  But Mazzer was not answering his phone.

  ‘Then send someone round there. We’re calling in Mr Mazzer’s loan.’

  ‘What loan?’

  ‘All the borrowed time he’s been living on lately. Now, tell me what happened.’

  ‘I’ve an eyewitness in the interview room, if you want it first hand.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Wilf Robertson. Barber in the Mile End Road.’

  ‘Shrimp’s father?’

  ‘The same.’

  In the interview room, a small, dapper man – no sprinkling of his customer’s clippings, and the look of someone who shaved twice a day, and wielded the Brylcreem without mercy – got up and held out a hand for Troy to shake. He knew Troy. Troy did not know him.

  ‘You was famous back in the old days, Mr Troy. You know. Towards the end of the war, an’ that.’

  ‘You must be very proud of your
son,’ Troy said, exercising a standard repertoire and not really caring whether he was or not.

  Robertson blushed a little. Lowered his head. ‘A good lad,’ he said softly. ‘Done me proud he has.’

  Troy pulled back a chair to let them all know the pleasantries were over.

  Robertson sat down; Godbehere leaned against the wall and folded his arms. ‘I wonder, Mr Robertson, if you’d be so kind as to tell us one more time what you saw.’

  ‘Course. It was like this. I got me shop down the Mile End Road. Next door to the Paviour’s Arms it is. I been there since 1926, and my dad was there before me since 1895. The Paviour’s our local. Once or twice a week I go in there after work. I don’t stop cuttin’ till late – no point in closin’ at five, after all. I get the trade mostly from blokes comin’ off shift after a day’s work. Best hour of the day is six till seven, so often as not I work till gone eight. It was slack tonight, though. I shut at seven on the dot. Went round to the Paviour’s just after openin’ time. Watched the regulars come in. You know the sort. The usual half-dozen. Blokes who only go home to sleep. About quarter of an hour after me Mott comes in. I’ve known Mott Kettle all me life. Cut his hair since I was a lad. Always the same. Whip round after with the taper, and a packet of three for the weekend. Anyway, Mott comes in. Orders his pint. Finishes it quick, and he’s just got his lips to the second when the doors open and the Ryans walk in. By now the pub’s beginnin’ to fill up a bit. Like there’s a dozen or more of us. I’ve had me two penn’orth out o’ Mott, and I’m chattin’ down the far end of the bar to Barney Hamlin from the fishmonger’s. The Ryans have, like, got this way of shuttin’ up a room whenever they walk in. I seen ‘em do it since they was no more than teenagers. They stood dead centre, and people sort of waved away from ‘em in ripples. Like water on a pond. And Mott gets a feel of this and he turns round and greets ‘em like they were his long-lost sons. Slaps his money on the counter and orders drinks for ‘em. Smilin’ all the time, like, and it takes a while for the penny to drop that they aren’t smilin’ back at him. Then one of the Ryans says, “We hear you spent a night in the nick, Mott.” Mott pulls on his pint, wipes the froth from his lips, still smilin’, like, and says, bold as brass, “Yeah, but they got nothin’ outa me. It’ll take more than a pillock like Troy to get the better of old Mott.”

  ‘Then one Ryan says, “Mott, you are such a fuckin’ idiot,” pulls out a gun the size of a howitzer and shoots Mott in the leg. I hit the floor. Everybody ducks. Mott goes down screamin’. Whichever Ryan it is -and truth to tell I’ve never been able to tell ‘em apart since they was snot-nosed little brats ‘angin’ around my shop – whichever, he passes the gun to the other, says, “Mott, you always were a total twat,” then he turns to the other and says, “Finish him,” and the other one puts the gun to Mott’s head and it blows apart like an overripe melon dropped on the greengrocer’s floor. And then the Ryans walk out like they’d just nipped in for a packet of fags. And I go over to Mott to see if there’s somethin’ I can do, and there’s nothin’ I can do, cos poor old Mott ‘e’s got half his head missin’, an’t ‘e? And the landlord calls the police, and most everybody else does a runner cos they don’t want to mess with it. And me I’m lookin’ at Mott, and I’m thinkin’, Mott, you always was a scabrous little git, but what did you do to deserve this? And I think there’s nothin’ ‘e could have done. Cos ole Mott was ‘armless. A wrong ‘un, right enough. But ‘armless. Ole Mott wouldn’t have ‘urt a fly.’

  Robertson ground to a halt, almost tearful as he spoke of Mott. Troy could not but help think that Wilf Robertson would be the only one to shed a tear for the passing of Moses Kettleman.

  ‘You say you’ve never been able to tell the Ryans apart?’

  ‘That’s right. Not since they was nippers.’

  ‘So you can’t say for certain who fired the shot that killed Mott?’

  ‘No, I can’t. But they both shot him. They each took the gun and they each pulled the trigger. They each wanted to take a piece out of Mott. Does it matter which one of them?’

  ‘No,’ said Troy. ‘For once I don’t think it does.’

  Back in his office, Godbehere said, ‘All the other regulars have come forward since. It seems as though nobody thought Mott deserved to die like that. I’ve thirteen witnesses backing up what Mr Robertson said.

  ‘Nobody’s seen the Ryans since. Except, of course, that the phone hasn’t stopped ringing with people who think they’ve seen them. They’ve been seen in Notting Hill and Clapton – within five minutes of each other. I’m trying to get everything checked out, but right now it’s a matter of sifting the real calls from the panickers. But one thing’s certain. London thinks they’ve overstepped. Nobody’s hiding. Every man in that pub came back and talked to us. Every last one of them made a statement. Some less reliable than others, some with so much form you’d never want to put them anywhere near the witness box -but some, like Wilf Robertson, whom you’d count as respectable locals, honest as the day is long.’

  ‘Quite,’ said Troy. ‘Robertson is enough to hang them.’

  He asked for the list of properties owned by the Ryans.

  ‘Call West End Central. I want the Empress closed and searched. What’s being done about a general search?’

  ‘I haven’t bothered with the recent acquisitions – they’re still inhabited after all – but we’ve been round to every likely place on that list, the house, the garage, the warehouses. Nothing. So far, nothing. Seventy years ago we’d have put a man at Victoria station and watched the boat-trains leaving for the Continent. But this is 1959. We’ve got motorways . . . there are a thousand ways out of London.’

  ‘And we’re not looking for Oscar Wilde,’ said Troy.

  There was a tap at the door. The desk sergeant entered. ‘‘Scuse me, sir. DC Shelden’s just called in from Stratford. No one’s answering at Mr Mazzer’s flat. Shelden thinks it’s empty.’

  ‘Tell him,’ Godbehere said, ‘Tell him to wait. Tell him to sit on the doorstep until Mazzer shows up. When Mazzer shows up I want him here pronto.’

  The desk sergeant looked quizzically back at Godbehere. ‘You mean like arrest him, sir? Arrest Mr Mazzer?’

  Godbehere passed the quizzical gaze to Troy.

  ‘No,’ said Troy. ‘Escort him. Don’t arrest him. I don’t want him unduly alarmed. Just tell him he’s needed. Tell him Mott Kettle is dead and we need a report.’

  101

  Troy called Swift Eddie at the Yard.

  ‘Forge my signature on six chits. Pick up six handguns from the armourer.’

  An hour later Troy was staring down at the case of guns Eddie had delivered. He’d never ordered weapons issue on such a scale before. He was clutching the chit carbons, bearing Eddie’s uncannily accurate forgery of his own name. He looked from the guns to Eddie. They were at the edge of Wonderland and they both knew it. One step more and they would be through the looking-glass. ‘We can’t go after them empty-handed,’ he said.

  ‘Of course not,’ said Eddie.

  There were times Troy thought Eddie read minds. Perhaps this was not one of them.

  ‘There was one other thing, sir. I bumped into—’

  ‘Yes?’

  Before Eddie could answer the door opened and Jack walked in. ‘I rather think it’s all hands to the pumps, don’t you?’ he said. ‘Is one of these for me?’ Jack picked up a Webley, flicked open the chamber, fed a handful of bullets into it and spun it like a character in a cowboy film. One step into Wonderland. ‘We can hardly go after the buggers empty-handed, now, can we?’

  And there were times Troy thought Jack read minds.

  102

  Mary McDiarmuid drove Jack and Troy to the house in Watney Street.

  ‘I thought Ray had already been here? And it’s the last place they’ll come back to,’ Jack said.

  ‘I need to see it.’

  ‘See what?’

  ‘See . . . them.’

  ‘See them?’<
br />
  ‘See them … as they are . . .’

  ‘I don’t quite follow you here, Freddie.’

  ‘What we’ve seen so far is … on the level of a myth. We’re chasing mythical beasts. They exist in the words of those they’ve encountered, they exist as their victims narrate them . . . We haven’t really met them.’

  ‘You know, they told me when I joined that you could wank for England when the thesis took you. We do not need to “meet” them, as you put it, we do not need to know them – we merely have to nick them before they kill anyone else. And I met them for three sodding days at the Yard. Take it from me. They’re real enough.’

  They stood in a living room less than ten feet square. A cliché of working-class life before the Second World War. A worn but sturdy three-piece suite in black and green leatherette – so big it made any movement across the room into an obstacle course. A beige-tile fireplace with a scorched white gas-fire in its hearth and two glazed spaniel dogs on its mantel. A brush, a poker and a shovel disguised by the figure of a brass knight-in-armour. Three plaster ducks flying up the wall. And not a speck of dust to be seen. It was a house to turn out of and turn into. A house rendered spotless by the daily cleaning woman. It was almost clinical.

  ‘No dirt,’ Troy said. ‘No vice. Where there’s dirt there’s vice. Everyone has some vice.’

  ‘I don’t believe it,’ Jack said. ‘I don’t believe they live here.’

  But they did. In the first bedroom there was a built-in wardrobe full of bespoke suits and hand-made shoes. The second was different only in that a paperback copy of Peyton Place lay splayed upon the bedside table atop a copy of Parade, a risqué magazine that printed photographs of women without blouses or bras.

  ‘There’s your vice, Freddie. Ordinary as it comes. The most ordinary sin in the universe.’