Old Flames (Frederick Troy 2)

by Lawton, John

  They walked back the way he had come from Notting Hill Gate and boarded a Circle line, on the clockwise run, the long way round to Chelsea, north through Bayswater, east via Baker Street.

  Miss Keeffe said nothing until they were seated. She pocketed the sunglasses once more, pulled off her headscarf. Black curly hair fell free, and she brushed it clear of her face. Troy put her at about thirty. Short and Jewish, broad at the cheekbones, her eyes as dark as his, her skin pale, almost white by contrast, except where sleeplessness and grief had left it red and raw. It was a familiar face. England had received many immigrants in the first forty years of the century. She was, he guessed, Latvian or Lithuanian, a descendant of refugees from countries that no longer existed. Someone not unlike him. She knew this, too.

  ‘You’re Russians aren’t you, you and your brother? Sir Alex Troy’s boys.’

  ‘From Tula,’ he said, as he always did.

  ‘My mother was from Vilnius. Her parents brought her over in 1899. Russian speakers, Jews, outsiders twice over. Trying to beat the pogrom. They got on a ship bound for Ellis Island. It put in at Tilbury. They disembarked, looked around for the Statue of Liberty, decided it was lost in the fog, registered, and lived here for the best part of a week under the illusion it was New York. My father was from Cork. He had no illusions. He had no adherence to the faith either. An odd marriage, but it worked. Half-Catholic, half-Jewish, guaranteed for neurosis, wouldn’t you say?’

  Troy saw the gap.

  ‘Was your brother neurotic?’

  ‘Yes. And that’s why he killed himself. In the end. A more stable man might have ridden out the embarrassment, a more secure man might have seen it as less than life-threatening. Only a fool would ever have dismissed it as trivial. He didn’t have to kill himself. It was always in him to do so, however.’

  ‘I take it your brother had run Cockerell during the war?’

  ‘Yes. He was in the Navy. Made commander. One notch higher than Cockerell. Ever since then there’s been the usual rubbish about the reserve list and a job in the Foreign Office, and his rank became a sort of courtesy, concealing whatever rank he really held.’

  ‘And he was blamed for what Cockerell did?’

  ‘Blamed, interrogated, punished and humiliated. They posted him to Reykjavik at the end of June. Can you imagine the humiliation? Good war record. Bright young thing of the department, leading light in Soviet watching, spoken the language since childhood, still under forty—and they post him to a non-place, to a non-job. All he’d do for the rest of his tour would be to count fishing boats and spy on the amount of cod and halibut they landed. It was worse than sacking him. I always disliked Daniel’s commitment to his job. In wartime it seemed fine. In peace it didn’t. Don’t ask me why. Maybe in war everything was bending to the common cause. The fabric of the old British prejudices stretching out of shape, holes appearing like fishnet stockings, holes through which men like Daniel passed. Outsiders became insiders. He thought it was permanent. Bloody fool. He lied to himself and he lied to me. He wanted to be accepted.

  ‘The night before he left he came round to see me, already half cut. He finished off a bottle of gin in my sitting room and blubbered on about his job. I urged him to quit. He couldn’t do that, he told me. Once they had you, you were theirs for ever. It would all blow over. He’d done nothing. Sooner or later they’d see that. Then he told me. Told me how Cockerell came to see him after more than ten years. Daniel had been in charge of him, his “case officer” or whatever the spooks call it, during the war. He’d retired him, because he was so obviously past it. Cockerell told him he wanted one last job before he finally hung up his flippers. Told Daniel he could tackle the Ordzhonikidze, described some crazy scheme he’d thought up for examining the hull of the ship. Why would we want to do that? Daniel asked him. And Cockerell rambled on about Russian secrets, and how it was a golden opportunity. Daniel said no. Told him he couldn’t possibly get authorisation for such a harebrained scheme. But he felt sorry for the old fool. He took him for a drink at his club. But even that was showing off. Boasting that he had a club to take him to.

  ‘And then the bubble burst. The rumours about Cockerell started. The papers got hold of it. Entry records were checked. They all had to produce their diaries, and there it was, just as the PM was trying to deny everything, Daniel’s diary showed an appointment with Cockerell. The log on the door showed Lieutenant Commander Cockerell admitted to see Commander Keeffe in March. Too many spooks saw Daniel with Cockerell in his club, drinking like old comrades. And nobody believed a word of Daniel’s version. That he put Cockerell on a train back to darkest Derbyshire with a couple of stiff drinks inside him and told him to forget about Khrushchev and enjoy his retirement.

  ‘He spent two days with someone he called the “Soft Man”—he looked five years older by the time he emerged. Then the Branch called. Smashed everything that mattered to him. And the final humiliation. Three weeks before Daniel shipped out for Reykjavik the PM decided to own up and Daniel was sent up to Derbyshire to debrief the widow. And I think debrief is Newspeak for “shut her up”. I don’t know what he said to her. He hardly spoke except when he was drunk. Mind you, that was every day by then. He sailed for Reykjavik drunk, he phoned me up drunk. And he died drunk, swimming in gin and barbiturates.

  ‘I was at work when they told me. I have an office just off the reading room. Chap called Woodbridge, Tim Woodbridge, called in. Parliamentary Secretary at the Foreign Office, MP for Upshire or Downshire. No one I knew. Most of my work is with the Opposition. Government doesn’t much need the briefs we can prepare, they have the civil service at their beck and call. So, Woodbridge introduced himself, told me he had some bad news for me, started his how-sorry-we-all-are waffle. I cut him short and told him if Daniel was dead he should just spit it out. Had to be Daniel. My parents are long gone, and we were neither of us married. There was just me and him. And besides, it was in his nature to do the silly thing. Anyway, Woodbridge let me have a little cry, and when it looked as though I’d put on the stiff upper lip he came to the real purpose of his visit. Anything among Daniel’s possessions relating to the job must be returned to the spooks, and I’m still bound by the Official Secrets Act. I must tell no one anything, and if I cooperate my prospects at the House are assured. Meaning if I don’t, they’ll finish me. All said in the nicest possible way, you understand and not a word of reference to what he really meant—just “recent events in which your brother may have been involved”. Didn’t mention spies or frogmen or Khrushchev. And all the time the bastard called me “my dear”. I can take all the time I want off work, all they ask is for assurances of my discretion. I felt like he was pretending all the time. Pretending I was one of them, pretending I wasn’t a woman, pretending I mattered in some way, pretending I was part of “the club”, pretending I played by the same rules, for God’s sake pretending I wasn’t Jewish!’

  ‘Then why are you telling me this?’

  ‘Because I’m not part of the club. Because faith, age and gender exclude me from it. Because I won’t play by their rules. I like my job. I’ve worked hard to get there. Scholarship to Girton when I was seventeen, a Master’s from the LSE by the time I was twenty-one. Commons Librarian at twenty-six. But they can’t bribe me with it. They can’t use it to hit me over the head. I don’t know what I’d’ve done. I’ve almost cleaned out Daniel’s flat and I haven’t found a damn thing that would point a finger at anyone. But I know what I know. And if you hadn’t come along I’d’ve found someone. Some bloody Ivanhoe would come along and rescue Rebecca. I hope to God he would. I’d’ve told somebody. God knows, I might even have told your brother, I’ve written the odd brief for him. At least he knows my name.’

  ‘Don’t.’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘Don’t tell him anything.’

  She shrugged. ‘If you like. I’m not sure what appealing within Westminster will achieve anyway.’

  She paused. Troy could almost hear the acti
on of memory.

  ‘Tell me, do you remember that piece in The Economist last year, at the time the House debated Burgess and Maclean?’

  ‘What piece?’

  ‘I think the chap’s name was Fairlie. He said something like the “Establishment closing ranks” to protect them? Does that ring a bell?’

  It didn’t. Troy had dim memories of poor old Harold Philby denying all the innuendo in the press conference at his flat, facing the likes of Alan Whicker, and doing his best to defend himself against the power of rumour.

  ‘Vaguely.’

  ‘It stirred up a debate in itself. One of those cultural rows that happen from time to time as a country and a culture redefines itself. That’s what we’re doing now. Redefining ourself. Doing it rather badly, as a matter of fact. And just because we don’t have a Fourth of July, or salute the flag, and we have no notion of un-British in the sense of un-American, and no one stands up in the cinema for the national anthem any more, it doesn’t mean we don’t have a sense of identity, a sense of ourself. Fairlie put his finger on it. The idea of an Establishment—an inner layer of Britain that always looks after its own. Not a class or a hierarchy, and much harder to define than that. Layer’s about the best I can do. It’s about belonging. I don’t belong. My brother did not belong, and he died of wanting to belong. He could not live with the accusation of betrayal. But he never grasped that without belonging there can be no betrayal. Do you see what I mean?’

  Troy saw very clearly what she meant. For a moment it was like debating with his father. It was his kind of argument. It was his kind of structure. But she had got the important point the wrong way round.

  ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘But the point of Burgess and Maclean is that belonging makes betrayal impossible. If you belong you cannot betray. Establishment, however you define it, is not country, is not patria. Betray and the country will disown you or prosecute you. This Establishment, this layer as you call it, never will. It is in that scheme of things perfectly possible to betray, to belong and not to accept that you have betrayed. It’s perfectly possible that Burgess has kept up his subscription to whatever gentleman’s club he was in on the offchance of his ever needing it again.’

  He thought of Patum Pepperium, the Gentleman’s Relish, and of the gentleman in Moscow, outrageous to the last, still thinking of himself as belonging to everything he had sold up the Swannee, still wanting betrayal with relish, holding a press conference to justify his betrayal still wearing his Old Etonian tie.

  ‘Which,’ Miss Keeffe replied, ‘ought to be a paradox. But it isn’t, is it?’

  She put her hands up, the fingertips touching, the palms apart, the ribs and buttresses of a symbolic, make-believe cathedral.

  ‘The Establishment closes ranks to protect and in so doing contains, that is includes and excludes. Even if you’re living in Moscow on a KGB pension, you’re still included. But God help the buggers caught in the gate when the ranks slam shut.’

  She brought her palms together, the soft clap of flesh on flesh.

  ‘Splat. That’s what happened to Daniel Keeffe. Splat.’

  It seemed to Troy that they understood one another perfectly. Rarely had he had a conversation with someone who so closely shared his own prejudices. But to what end?

  ‘What do you want me to do?’ he asked.

  She looked surprised. Looked back at him with a puzzled expression on her face.

  ‘Want? Why should I want anything from you? You came to me. Mr Troy. You do what you have to do. I haven’t solved your murder for you. Nor have I added to the rollcall of the dead. My brother was a victim, as I’m sure you will agree, the perfect scapegoat, but he wasn’t murdered and it will do no good for me to pretend that he died by any other than his own hand.’

  Looking back on the whole sorry mess he always stuck at this moment, came back to it time and again, that this was the one person who had been lucid through the pain and anger, that this was the one person in the entire affair who had wanted nothing of him.

  ‘Then let me put it another way. What are you going to do?’

  ‘I’m going to finish clearing out Drayton Gardens. Then I’m going to go back to work. If, as a result of what I’ve told you, Woodbridge or any one of the Gentlemen accuse me, I shall not deny it. Nor shall I resign. They’ll have to fire me. I’ve jumped through the English hoops all my life, so did my brother, we made ourselves in the required image, but they can’t make me a liar, Mr Troy.’

  But, of course, this was where they differed. He had long since, since childhood, since the coming of language, accepted the inevitability of lying. It was almost a way of life.

  Troy looked out at the station sign, the line through a circle that marked every stop on the London Underground. He’d noticed nothing since Miss Keeffe had begun to speak, they could have been anywhere for all he knew, from Notting Hill to Charing Cross, but now she had so obviously finished. They were pulling out of Moorgate. One more stop and they’d be at Liverpool Street. He said goodbye and got out at the next stop. Found himself in front of the platform bar he and Khrushchev had propped up. Now it was shuttered and barred, or he’d have bought half a pint and thought a while. Instead, he looked down the tunnel, breathed deeply, searching to see if he too could smell despair, wondering what despair should smell like and why it should have a smell at all. He could not—only bacon frying.

  §54

  Warriss delighted in the call.

  ‘Myocardial infarction. Or would you like that in words of one syllable, sir?’

  ‘No,’ said Troy. ‘Just stick a copy of the report in the post. And tell me if there are any details I should know now.’

  ‘No marks of any kind. No bruises, no cuts. Nothing. Your questions and your flyers were a waste of my time—yielded Sweet Fanny Adams. There is no evidence to suggest that Jessel died of anything other than a heart attack brought on by years of booze and figs and a history of angina. Dr Jewel is prepared to sign the certificate as “natural causes”. Unless, of course, you know different?’

  It was a taunt. The man was laughing at him. Troy hung up on him. Ten minutes later the telephone rang again.

  ‘Mr Troy? Ray Godbehere here.’

  ‘I’ve just had your Inspector kicking sand in my face.’

  ‘I know, sir. That’s why it’s safe for me to call you. He’s gone off to lunch laughing like a hyena.’

  ‘I’m still the biggest twat in Belper, am I?’

  ‘I wouldn’t say that, sir. I’ve checked the three sets of prints I got off the desktop. One is the Inspector’s. I know that ’cos we file all our own to cut down on the cock-ups. Clumsy of him to mess up a scene of crime, but then he doesn’t think it is a scene of crime, does he, sir? The second set is left hand only. A prominent scar running the width of the index finger. You don’t have a scar on your left index finger by any chance do you, sir?’

  Damn. He must have leant on the desk at some point, though he had no recollection of doing so.

  ‘Yes. I’m sorry to say that’s me. And the third?’

  ‘Also left hand only. Fingertips at various points and full palm right on the edge. As though someone had put most of his body weight on the left hand. No match anywhere. I didn’t print Brenda or the cleaning lady—it’s a man’s hand, a big man’s. I printed the late Mr Jessel. No matches. And nothing in CRO. At one point your print overlaps one of the unknown’s, so it looks as though you were right. Between the cleaner and yourself, someone was in there.’

  ‘Leaning on his left hand to wave a gun in George Jessel’s face with his right. He racked back the slide, leant over and spilt a drop of oil on Jessel’s side of the desk.’

  ‘And Jessel died on him. Is that what you’re saying, sir?’

  ‘I think so. I think someone was trying to scare him and got lucky.’

  ‘Lucky?’

  ‘I doubt they would or could have shot him and walked away. The heart attack was very convenient.’

  ‘Do you have
anyone in mind?’

  ‘Have you got a print for Cockerell?’

  ‘No, sir. And I don’t know how to get one. According to the papers he was washed up without hands.’

  ‘Try the door of his car.’

  ‘You mean go up there and ask Mrs Cockerell?’

  ‘Yes. You can do that, can’t you?’

  ‘Yes, I can. But let me put it this way, sir. I did the last few days’ legwork. I put out the flyers for the Inspector. I did the knocking on doors. No one saw anyone. That’s the truth, but I’ll tell you now the one person anyone hereabouts would remember seeing is Arnold Cockerell. He’s the one man who couldn’t walk into the town unnoticed, kill his accountant and get on the next bus to Shottle.’

  Troy presumed the closing phrase was some local metaphor for the vanishing trick. Of course he had a point. It just didn’t fit the pattern Troy was seeing. More and more he was coming round to Janet Cockerell’s point of view. The man had vanished. And the delight in vanishing was to surface from time to time.

  ‘I’m sorry. You’re probably right. Let’s leave Mrs Cockerell alone for the time being. How much does Warriss know?’

  ‘No more than he did the last time the two of you met.’

  ‘Thank you. I’m grateful.’

  ‘Mind, if he does find out—’

  ‘I know—I’ll get you shot.’

  ‘More than that, sir, you’d best find me another job.’

  Troy took the hint. God knows, Godbehere seemed brighter than half the dozy buggers he’d worked with at the Yard. Perhaps too bright. Of course, Troy didn’t think Cockerell had pointed a gun at George Jessel and scared the living daylights out of him, but it would have been so very neat if he had, and whilst he didn’t really think this, the part of his mind that tacked intuitively, sailing close to the deceptive winds of imagination, would not quite surrender the notion that he might have done so.