Old Flames (Frederick Troy 2)

by Lawton, John

  ‘Is it there now?’

  He had clearly uttered the unexpected. She stared at him for a moment unblinkingly.

  ‘You know—I haven’t looked.’

  She led the way back across the lawn, through the side gate to a double garage—about the most colossal status symbol a suburban house could display; to own one car was posh enough, two, or three as they appeared to have, was a rare display of the ostentation of wealth.

  Mrs Cockerell prised open a warped wooden door to reveal a shiny black Rover 90—the poor man’s Rolls-Royce as it was so often called. At the far end of the garage was a thick steel chest. She lifted the lid. It was empty.

  ‘Doesn’t mean anything, you know.’

  Troy said nothing.

  ‘If he’s planned it all as carefully as I think, then this is just one more red herring.’

  ‘Didn’t the police ask to look at it? Or the chap from the FO?’

  ‘I didn’t think to mention it.’

  She strode quickly out of the dimness of the garage and back into sunlight. Troy found himself facing the upturned backside of the gardener, bent over the lawnmower once more.

  She folded her arms, thumbs pressing deeply into her flesh, and composed her face against the anger she so clearly felt.

  ‘I know what you’re thinking. But believe me, Arnold was clever. He planned ahead. This is just another twist he thought up. And besides, it doesn’t square up. None of it does. Do you know what the papers said? They said he’d been testing experimental equipment for the Navy. In a pig’s eye, he had. And if he was, why would he need his own kit? And that line doesn’t match what young Keeffe told me. If it was all a “misunderstanding”, where did he get hold of this so-called experimental kit? In an Army and Navy surplus store? Mr Troy, you can surely see what a cock-up this is? They can’t even get their stories straight. Arnold just provided them with a convenient scapegoat. I shouldn’t think he gives a damn. Wherever he is, he’ll be flattered to think he was of use to the Navy one last time. Ironic, isn’t it?’

  The man with the lawnmower moved off slowly across the lawn, creating the even stripes, the green herringbone, filling the air with the smell of freshly cut grass. It seemed to Troy that the pattern in the grass was the only one Mrs Cockerell was willing to see for herself.

  ‘For a second, Mrs Cockerell, indulge me and pretend that your husband might be dead. Then ask yourself why you so much want him to be alive in the teeth of the evidence.’

  ‘I may take it this question does not allow of matters of the heart or even the mereness of sentiment, Mr Troy?’

  ‘You may.’

  ‘Then I think that perhaps we understand one another after all. I want him alive, I want him alive, and I believe him to be alive, because if he’s dead, then he’s got away with everything.’

  It was a showstopper. A number to ring down the curtain and bring the audience to its feet. He followed her back into the bungalow. She went to the back room, her room, flipped down the lid of a writing desk and picked up a set of keys.

  ‘Take these. The main shop is closed for the moment. The manager wanted his summer holiday. So I let him take it. Look at anything you like. I have no secrets; they’re all Arnold’s. Somewhere in there is the key to how he did it. A colossal fiddle, I’m sure. Who knows, if you find out how he did it we may discover a trail of money, a paperchase. And at the end of it, there he will be.’

  ‘I’m not wonderfully experienced at fraud cases, Mrs Cockerell.’

  ‘But you’ll do your best.’

  It grew slowly, a heaving, dragging curse, uttered from deep in the bowels of the planet, spreading its damnation until at the pitch of madness a sound like a tortured banshee wailed in through the open french windows and chilled him to the marrow. He moved to the edge, looked out across the garden, soaked in its incongruous southern sun, and heard the unmistakable, but almost forgotten tones of an air-raid siren.

  She had followed him, peering around him, shoulder to shoulder in the door frame.

  ‘What’s the matter?’

  He was speechless.

  ‘Oh, the siren! I wouldn’t let that bother you. They use it at the mill to announce the change of shift.’

  She turned her wrist and looked at her watch, showing him the face.

  ‘See, it’s noon. On the dot. You’ll hear it again at four. It’s mounted on top of Woolworth’s. I suppose it ensures that everybody knows when the Moloch wants them.’

  The arrogance of it. He could scarcely believe it. The modern equivalent of the knocker-up, and to achieve it they perpetuated the most frightening, the most evocative sound in England. Dragged the past into the present, and momentarily dragged him back to 1944. To dark cold nights, the frozen wastes of East London. Darkness, death, the wail of the siren. Darkness, death, the ripe smell of cordite. He could almost taste it.

  ‘Mr Troy. Are you all right? You’ve turned very pale.’

  He was not all right. He felt breathless and sick to the pit of his stomach.

  ‘I haven’t heard that sound . . . in a long time.’

  ‘We’re used to it.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I’m sure.’

  She held out the keys. He took them.

  ‘You’ll be in touch?’ she said.

  ‘Yes,’ he said.

  §43

  Commander Cockerell’s main emporium, his ‘HQ’, stood at the top of the market place. A large blue-and-white sign said simply COCKERELL in letters eighteen inches high, spanning the shop front, and that of the one next door. It said nothing else—from a distance he could be the butcher, the baker or the man who sold pea-green boats. At some point in the recent past the two shops had been knocked into one to create a barn-like room in which the angular Scandinavian sofas could be displayed in clusters of three, like broken squares, with a coffee table at each centre and sci-fi-looking, technology-defying lamps, no more than thin strips of steel or coiled springs bearing light bulbs, perched at the corners. It was termed, he had read somewhere, a ‘conversation pit’, a social device designed to bring one’s kneecaps into close contact with other, perhaps lonelier, kneecaps; a dexterity-stimulating device, designed to teach you the rapid juggling of cups of instant, powdery coffee, glasses of warm white wine and little trays full of nuts and things; a sense-numbing device, as you watched warm blobs of oil rise and fall in the tapered cylinders of illuminated liquid table lamps. All in all, it brought out the snob in Troy.

  Troy looked around for anything resembling an office. There was none on the ground floor. A steep, curving staircase led up to the first floor, and curved around again to climb to the second. In the space between the two was a wood and glass cubby hole, its walls formed by a simple partition from the main room, its ceiling by the angle of the ascending staircase. A single bulb, in a frosted glass shade, hung precariously from the ceiling on a twisted, cloth-covered cable, through which flecks of black and red baked rubber showed. Troy flicked the brass nipple on the wall switch, half expecting sparks and flames to spurt from the wires. Forty watts dimly illuminated the room. A cramped, poky little hole, whose height fell away to nothing as the stairs met the floor, but into it Cockerell had stacked everything he needed. The only remotely new item was a telephone. The filing cabinets, the desk, the rows of dusty pigeon holes, looked as though they had frozen in grime and time some fifty odd years ago. A small sliding panel, no more than six inches across, was set in the wooden wall at waist height, as though at some date long since receipts and tallies had been passed through by an army of shop assistants to the lonely clerk in his corner booth. The swivel chair burst with horsehair and the roller on the roll-top desk was jammed at three-quarters open and no force on earth would budge it. There was still a discernible pattern to the faded wallpaper that lined the sloping ceiling and one of the walls. Troy knew from childhood forays into the upper floors of Mimram that it was Victorian, the greens and the yellows were unmistakable, and it had probably adorned the walls of Cockerell�
�s office for more than seventy years. He found it hard to believe that Cockerell did any real work here. Found it hard to believe that the John the Baptist of the New Look could live or work contentedly among such obvious relics of the hated past.

  A pipe rack had been crudely nailed to the wall above the desk. Three pipes, blackened and stained but long unused, hung at odd angles. Just inside the door an umbrella stand held a collection of walking sticks, a dozen or more—one with a brass duck’s head, one with knobs on, looking vaguely Celtic, and a shooting stick with a perished leather and canvas seat. He flipped through a couple of the pigeon holes—a catalogue of spare parts for paraffin stoves, dated September 1922, a dozen back issues of Health and Efficiency all dating from the 1940s, an old AA handbook (where to stay in the remotest shires and a few spidery road maps of Britain)—a couple of copies of Fur and Feather Monthly and he would have enough for a dentist’s waiting room—and the first sign of recent occupation, Parade, February 1956—a risqué magazine, with none of the wholesome illusion of H&E, full of tits and backsides. All of which told him nothing. He turned his attention to the row of dusty books on top of the desk. Whitaker’s Almanac 1951, the Lith–Zyx volume of Webster’s Universal English Dictionary and dozens of well-read, broken-spined, paperback books. Mostly the work of the late Peter Cheyney, a master of racial and social snobbery, creator of superior, ruthless, womanising Englishmen and wise-talking, slang-obsessed, rod-packing, punchy Americans. The villains were, inevitably, spawned by the lesser races—Jews, Negroes, anyone from Eastern Europe. Troy had read one or two Cheyneys in his early teens, and found them distasteful. Cockerell’s recent reading was more interesting. The new bloke, already beginning to cause a bit of a fuss—Ian Fleming. Cockerell had Casino Royale, Moonraker and Live and Let Die, all featuring Fleming’s hero James Bond, Commander James Bond RN. Troy caught the connection. Any fantasist might read, and some would enjoy, the pre-war world of Peter Cheyney in which the Englishman was still God, pushing through crowds of gibbering foreigners, waving Her Britannic Majesty’s passport and shouting ‘Imshe’ but, perhaps, the man had a closer identification with Bond. The naval commander, the secret agent, socially superb, sexually confident, emotionally damaged—vulnerable enough to permit even a weasel like Cockerell the passing glimmer of identity. Besides, Fleming himself was supposed to be the real thing, an old Etonian, a close friend of the Prime Minister, part of our shady secret services during the war and quite possibly after, a silken charmer with women, nattily attached to one end of a long cigarette holder, but if Rod’s parliamentary gossip was to be believed, a loser too since, as Rod would have it, while Fleming smoothed and smarmed his way around the heights of society, Hugh Gaitskell coolly, and in utter secrecy, was having an affair with his wife.

  The left-hand pillar of the desk appeared to be one large cupboard. It was locked with two locks, one far newer and stouter than the other. Troy quickly went through the bundle of keys Mrs Cockerell had given him, and after a couple of tries found the pair that opened the cupboard. It was a model of neatness compared to the room which housed it. Neat stacks of thin cardboard folders: bank statements held together by bulldog clips, with each quarter dated; the stubs of his chequebooks; a paying-in book for the Hereford and Worcester Joint Commercial Bank, Great Malvern branch; a sheaf of annual statements from the Ancient Order of Derbyshire Foresters Savings Society, with whom Cockerell had a small mortgage, and a sheaf of quarterly statements from a bank in Stockholm, presumably where Cockerell acquired most of the ‘Contemporary’ furniture that filled up the floor below. Troy was, he knew, next to useless with this sort of thing. It was one of the reasons he had leapt at the chance to transfer Clark; neither he nor Jack had a scrap of patience where figures were concerned.

  Seeking anything to put off the moment when he would have to examine the books of the business, Troy rummaged among the pigeon holes, not knowing what he was looking for or could expect to find. A covering letter from a travel agent, a pocket diary full of dates and assignations, a small black book marked ‘Read This for Clues’? The best he found was a torn postcard. An English seaside resort, one of those long, pleasureless piers stretching out into the cold offshore waters of the Channel or the North Sea, Southend or Skegness or some such. The address side was intact—Mr A. Cockerell, and the shop address—but little remained of the greeting and the postmark was smudged. He puzzled a while over the remnants of the message—a woman’s hand he was sure—but could do little with ‘ing’, ‘ou’ or ‘eine’. ‘Eine’ at least was interesting. Few English words ended that way.

  At last he could put it off no longer. He drew up the splitting horsehair chair, blew five months’ dust off the desk and turned to the less than riveting papers accounting for the proper running of a small business. Why, he wondered, long enough to gaze down the length of the main street and up at the looming Pennines, why had Napoleon dubbed the English ‘a nation of shopkeepers’? He took a last look at his watch. He had wasted time, it was gone two. He must keep track of the time. If that damn siren was due to wail again at four he wanted to be ready for it. The last thing he wanted was for it to catch him unawares.

  Cockerell was right to boast. His business was doing very nicely, far more nicely than one might suppose given that he was in unfashionable Middle England, far from the fashionable Heart of England. His wife was right to be suspicious. He was turning over a very tidy sum indeed. But beyond that Troy could not tell; the requisite skills were not his. He began to wish that Cockerell might be dead, that someone had killed him; it would at least bring him back within his own domain. You know where you are with a murder. It had taken him an hour or more to reach even this basic conclusion. He glanced at his watch. It was 3.58. Any minute now. He looked down the street once more. A steady bustle of afternoon shoppers, housewives with bulging shopping bags, the to and fro of delivery vans. He began to see why Cockerell had sited his office where he had. It was great spot for an idle mind to be idle in. Hours could be whiled away. The siren took up its wail. Troy sat it out. Stared at the hills above the town and waited.

  It was a while before he perceived the sound beneath the siren. Loud and tedious now, rather than disturbing, but it masked almost completely the vigorous pounding at the shop door. By the time he had worked out that that was what it was, the man at the door had had time to pass through exasperation to anger.

  ‘And who the ’eck might you be?’ he said as Troy opened the shop door to him.

  It was another of the weaselly men. He stood below the step, in a tatty tweed jacket and grey cavalry twill trousers bearing a multitude of unseemly stains, a cigarette stub burning between the longest fmgers of his right hand. This specimen was more robust than Cockerell, taller and fleshier, but with the same scrawny look to him, the same fondness for the pencil-line moustache. But seediness had taken a different toll on this one; he was not simply scrawny, he was scrawny with a potbelly, scrawny with deeply nicotined teeth, scrawny with badly chewed fingernails. He was about five feet nine or ten. Troy estimated his age as fifty-five or so, and not wearing it well.

  There was a visible frisson as Troy showed him his warrant card and returned the greeting word for word.

  ‘I saw the light on,’ he said. ‘I thought it was Janet—Mrs Cockerell.’

  ‘I’m sure you did, but you haven’t answered my question.’

  ‘Oh, I’m George Jessel. I’ve come about the books.’

  ‘You’re Cockerell’s book-keeper?’

  ‘Oh no. Arnold kept his own books.’

  ‘His accountant?’

  ‘No—he did that too. I’m the auditor.’

  He fumbled inside his jacket and produced a dog-eared business card: ‘George G. Jessel—Chartered Accountant, 23 Railway Cuttings, Belper.’

  ‘I do the audit twice a year. It’s overdue.’

  The cigarette, burning down to his stained, coffee-coloured fingertips, was suddenly applied to the tip of a fresh one and discarded. A rapid bout of d
eep inhalation was followed by a rapid fit of coughing. He heaved and hoiked, and spat globules of phlegm onto the pavement, bent double with the effort of putting the torch to his own lungs.

  He almost smiled as he straightened up.

  ‘Long overdue as a matter of fact. Would it be all right if I picked up the last six months’ figures now?’

  Time for silence. Spin it out, thought Troy. Let him fill the vacuum. So he stared and said nothing.

  ‘I did ask Janet—I mean Mrs Cockerell—but she said she couldn’t be bothered. But it’s got to be done, hasn’t it?’

  Troy said nothing. Jessel drew deeply on his cigarette.

  ‘It’s women,’ he prattled. ‘You know what they’re like.’

  ‘No, I don’t. And the answer’s no. You can’t take anything now. If I decide you can have the books, I’ll let you know. In the meantime they’re part of my investigation. Now, can you be reached at this address?’

  He held up the dog-eared card.

  ‘Oh aye, nine till five-thirty, weekdays.’

  ‘Then I’ll be in touch.’

  He stood some moments on the doorstep after Troy had closed the door on him. As he walked off down the street, he looked back several times and before he had gone fifty yards lit another cigarette from the stub of the old and coughed his lungs up again.

  Troy watched him from the upstairs window. It was not long past four. If he zipped through the rest of the papers, Troy thought, he might just catch Mr Jessel in his office at closing time. He was not at all sure Mr Jessel would enjoy the meeting. The prospect of a live human subject to investigate rather than a set of figures galvanised Troy. Nothing quite so focuses the mind as knowing you might be able to hang some other bugger in the morning.

  In an hour or so he had read all he wanted to. The rat, if such creature it be, that Janet Cockerell could smell, was smelt by him. It didn’t add up—except, of course, that the metaphor was ill chosen, for add up was precisely what it did. The smell was beyond, beneath and all around the unlikely fact of such addition and precision.