by Lawton, John
They rounded the corner into St Martin’s Lane. Out of the shelter of the alley, the rain whipped up.
‘You’ll get soaked,’ said Johnny. ‘Take these.’
He took off his hat and placed it on Troy’s head. He undid his scarf and wrapped it loosely around Troy’s neck. A curious gesture, almost touching, almost fraternal.
Troy looked back at Johnny. The eyes apart, they were the same physical type. Small dark men with masses of black hair, flopping down onto the forehead. He had never really noticed before.
§95
He cooled his heels for an hour or more. Madge went home. Jack yawned his goodnight and went in search of the next single woman. There was no sign of Onions. There was no sign of Clark.
He set off back home in the drizzle and the unaccustomed hat. Irritated by the wasted time, trying as best he could to find the right mental gear in which to handle Johnny and the impending divorce and scandal that Sasha was about to unleash upon the family.
There was no light in the court. The street lamps of St Martin’s Lane did not penetrate beyond the first three yards, and for some reason the lamp at the other end was out. He fumbled down the alley blind as he had done a thousand times, and on his own doorstep tripped over something solid. It pitched him forward, onto his hands with his knees across the obstacle. His palms braced his weight, face down on the paving stones, and came up wet. But rain did not smell like this, rain did not smell of anything, and nothing on earth had the unmistakable scent of blood. A mad phrase of Kolankiewicz’s flashed through his mind: ‘sweet shit, sweet shit,’ that was how the beast had precisely caught the smell of spilt, congealing blood. And Troy was covered in it.
A light went on two floors up in the building at the back of him, reflected off the windows of his house and bathed the alley in a dim glow. The body at his feet was a man. A man wrapped like him in a blood-sodden black overcoat. Troy lifted the head.
‘F . . . F . . . F . . .’ burbled from the lips.
He laid Johnny’s head in his lap. Tore at the buttons of his overcoat and laid it over the man like blanket.
‘Fr . . . Fr . . . Fr . . .’ Johnny said.
Troy wiped the blood from his face. Cleaned his lips and eyelids with a fingertip. And the lips opened once more.
Troy leant nearer, strained to hear, shifted his grip and found one hand sinking into the back of the crushed skull, a smattering of grey matter seeping between his fingers.
‘Freddie,’ Johnny said clearly.
His eyes opened once. As wide as they could go. Then closed. Troy heard the deep exhalation, felt the chest fall, and the life ooze out of him.
Troy sat an age. Time he could not measure. The light above him went out, and sometime later came on again. Into its pool a figure came. Troy looked and could not focus. Looked and could not speak. He heard someone call his name, then the same voice said, ‘Oh my God,’ then he heard the shrill blast of a police whistle.
‘Freddie, Freddie,’ said the voice close to him. ‘Let go now. You can let go now. He’s dead.’
A second figure joined them, running down the courtyard. They resolved into focus, leaning over him, prying his fingers from the body. One was Diana Brack, the other was Ruby the Whore. Ruby, Ruby, he’d not seen Ruby in years. She married a punter and went to live in Leamington.
‘Ruby?’ he said weakly.
‘Oh bugger,’ said the first voice. ‘He’s out of his fucking head. Get an ambulance. Call the Yard. Give them my name. Wildeve, Inspector Wildeve. Tell them I want Kolankiewicz a.s.a.p.’
And Troy saw Ruby run, skirts flying out behind, her, boots clattering.
By the time the short, fat, ugly one appeared they had prised his keys from the corpse’s fingers and laid Troy out on the chaise longue in the sitting room. He was shivering uncontrollably, so they had stripped the eiderdown from his bed and draped it over him.
‘Oh no,’ the short, fat, ugly one was saying. ‘Not again. How many times I tell you, smartyarse?’
‘Just take a look,’ said the young one. ‘There’s blood everywhere. I’ve no idea how much of it is his.’
Ugly probed his skull with short, hard fingers. Then unbuttoned his shirt and wiped away the blood with a towel.
‘There’s not a mark on him. It’s all off the other bugger!’
‘Then he’s in shock.’
‘Of course he’s in shock. Wouldn’t you be in fuckin’ shock? No, you’d have tossed your lunch all over the evidence. Out of the way. Get out of the way!’
Ugly produced a hypodermic syringe, the fluid spurting from the needle. Troy’s hand shot out and grabbed him by the wrist.
‘No,’ he said.
‘No? Fine, Troy. Who am I?’
Troy thought about it. A short, fat, ugly man. He knew a short, fat, ugly man. He’d got his own short, fat, ugly man. Had one for years.
‘Kolankiewicz. You’re Kolankiewicz.’
The pair looked at each other like a double act of music hall comedians.
‘And who am I?’ said the young one.
Troy dragged up a word from the pit of consciousness.
‘Jack?’ he said.
‘Maybe he’s OK after all?’
‘Bollocks,’ said the ugly one. ‘Troy, listen to me. What year is it?’
‘1944.’
‘That does it.’
The ugly one pulled his wrist free and aimed for a vein in Troy’s arm.
‘No,’ said the young one. ‘Half the dose. I’ll need to talk to him in the morning.’
Troy never heard the ugly one answer. Pink washed him into scarlet and scarlet into burgundy and burgundy into black, black night.
§96
Johnny’s blood turned the bathwater brown. Troy pulled the plug and watched it vanish into its spiral, hit the pipe at the end of the bath with his foot and waited while the geyser delivered its meagre four inches of clean.
Jack appeared with a large mug of black coffee, and sat on the bog seat while Troy drank it. It was the old scene—the court of the ablutions, only Jack was him and he was a bubbleless, death-scented, flat-chested substitute for Tosca.
‘You know,’ Jack said, ‘I knew Johnny Fermanagh for the best part of thirty years. Since school, in fact. As older boys went, a decent chap even at the age of twelve. As an adult he was the most useless pillock alive, but he was also the most harmless. No one could have any reason to kill him. I conclude therefore that he was not the intended victim. You were. It was you they meant to kill.’
‘Out in the lane,’ Troy began, hardly louder than a whisper. ‘Insisted on giving me his hat and scarf. Watched him walk off down the alley. Turned up his collar against the rain. Anyone watching who’d been a bit slow would have thought I was him and he was me. Even I thought he was me.’
‘I’ve asked myself. Who would want to kill you? And the answer I come up with is . . . the same people who wanted to kill you last time. So, tell me what lead enabled you to pick up the case?’
‘The sister. The one you found in Derbyshire. She found the key to a safety deposit box. Madeleine Kerr left a will, of sorts, blowing the whistle on what she and Cockerell were up to.’
Every time Troy looked over at Jack he nodded as if to say ‘go on’. And in ten minutes he had the whole story in half-sentences and breathless mumbles.
‘How much does Clark know?’ he said at last.
‘Everything. Well, almost everything. Don’t get on the high horse. He’s simply played the role you used to. What’s a conspiracy without a conspirator?’
‘Have you told Stan?’
‘I’ve tried. I tried all week. He’s not there to tell. But perhaps it’s all for the best. You know what he’s like where the spooks are concerned. He’ll get formal, he’ll get flustered and he’ll get angry. Then God help us all. He won’t handle it well. I’m going in through the back door.’
‘Aha,’ Jack nodded. ‘That friend of yours, Charlie?’
‘Yes.’
�
��When?’
‘Today. Late afternoon. About four. Unless I can get to him earlier.’
‘I’ll be home all evening. Call me. Whatever the outcome, call me. I think it’s time we stopped fighting each other and fought the enemy.’
‘Whoever he is,’ said Troy.
‘Quite,’ said jack. ‘And I’ve no more idea than you have.’
Troy lay back, the nape of his neck on the roll of the bath’s rim, and closed his eyes. The water was almost stone cold, he was scarcely covered by a watery scum of blood and soap and the ghostly trace of Tosca’s bath salts, but he didn’t much care if he never moved again.
‘The tearaway toffs,’ he said softly.
‘Eh?’
‘That’s what the Yard used to call us, before we garnered enough rank for them to pretend to more respect—the tearaway toffs.’
‘Good Lord, so they did. I haven’t heard that phrase in years. The tearaway toffs ride again, eh?’
§97
There was no reason to feel this way. No logical reason, that is. But when Troy saw Charlie sitting in the Café Royal at the same table at which he and Anna had ceremoniously dumped each other, his fingers tingled and his thumbs pricked.
‘You look bloody awful,’ said Charlie. ‘Any particular reason?’
‘Dozens, hundreds,’ said Troy.
Charlie had clearly been there a while. He’d finished a plate of sandwiches and marked up the late runners for Sandown Park in the morning paper. He flagged a waiter and ordered the same again.
‘Unless,’ he said, ‘you feel like something stronger. We could always adjourn to one of the watering-holes.’
‘No,’ said Troy. ‘I’d only feel worse.’
‘Then perhaps you’d better tell Uncle Charlie all about it, and I’ll kiss it better.’
‘Cockerell. It’s all about Cockerell.’
There was only one thing Troy wanted to hear from Charlie. He stumbled into his preposterous tale, and within a couple of sentences Charlie said it.
‘Dammit, Freddie. What are old friends for? Why didn’t you come to me sooner?’
They both knew why.
Charlie reached into his jacket pocket, and finding he had no paper, opened the back of his chequebook and began to scribble. He filled the back of one cheque—those ludicrous, giant pages, the size of prewar banknotes that Mullins Kelleher favoured—and began on another. Troy wondered if he’d end up filling the book, tearing off the stubs in summary of this mess of mayhem. And then it would make sense. He would only have to read the stubs to see meaning. Deposit—one mystery. Withdraw—one life.
As Troy told him a cloud appeared in the telling. It hovered at every stage. It was clung to every question Charlie asked. He suddenly felt that he had dreamt last night, that it had not happened. Washed and dressed, the smell of blood smothered in talcum powder, he felt suddenly stripped of its certainty, as though he had set foot upon a dream. He could feel Johnny’s weight in his arms, he could see the mask he had made of his face as he wiped the blood from his eyes and lips, a blood-red nigger-minstrel mask. But he could not hear him, and he could not smell him, and the weight floated from him and the vision dissolved, and he began to think he had dreamt it and because he had dreamt it he could not talk about it. He could not tell Charlie.
‘Where is it now?’ Charlie said.
‘Where’s what?’
‘This document you say you found in Paris.’
‘Oh . . . my sergeant has it. He knows a bit about cryptography.’
‘And where’s he? At the Yard?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t know where he is. He seems to have vanished.’
They had reached the point at which chronology dictated that he recount the previous night. He tried to see it all again. The moment when Johnny had placed the hat upon his head and they had symbolically exchanged identities. The sound of his last uttered word—Troy’s own name. It was a dream. He had floated in pink somewhere. It never happened. And he knew he could not tell it.
And then he saw her. Picking her way between the tables and the afternoon shoppers of Regent Street, taking the tea they all held to be earned, heading for him, waving fussily, coming up behind Charlie. He rose from his chair. Charlie looked around to see who had joined them, and seeing a woman, rose too.
‘This is unexpected,’ Troy said.
‘Aw . . . I came up with your sisters. They wanted to hit town and blow some money. It was nice for a while but goddammit, all those women can talk about is shopping and fucking, fucking and shopping.’
Then she noticed Charlie. And Troy saw the tiny spark that passed between them.
‘Charlie. My wife—Larissa Troy,’ said Troy. ‘Larissa. Charles Leigh-Hunt.’
Charlie beamed his famous smile at her, took her hand.
‘At last,’ she said. ‘I heard a lot about you.’
‘Nothing good, I hope?’
Troy watched. Even Tosca basked in the attention of a man like Charlie. He was not sure what it was, but he knew he didn’t have it. This animal magic that could corrupt the common sense of women. Height helped, the elegance it gave, and the beautiful blue eyes spoke as loudly as his perfect smile, but these were only parts of the puzzle, and the sum was greater than the parts. She waved a hand, mock dismissively, almost seemed to blush at one of the corniest lines in the book.
‘Naw—just lotsa stuff about all the things you and the gang used to get up to.’
‘The gang?’
‘Oh . . . you know . . . Huey, Duey and Luey.’
Charlie looked quizzically at Troy.
‘Gus and Dickie,’ he said.
‘Baby. I gotta run. Or they’ll come looking for me. You be home soon. Nice meetin’ ya, Charlie.’
She pecked him on the cheek, waved cutely at Charlie and dashed for the door. A ten-second whirlwind.
They sat down.
‘Well,’ said Charlie.
‘You were abroad,’ said Troy.
‘Was I?’
‘I tried phoning you.’
‘I suppose congratulations are in order.’
‘If you like.’
‘You know. I never really thought that we’d either of us marry. Funny really. No rhyme or reason to it. I just never thought we would.’
‘Nor I.’
The pause that followed was one of the most awkward Troy could ever recall. Until Charlie said, ‘Now—where were we?’
§98
Troy ran. All the way home. Out of the Café Royal, into the Quadrant and hell for leather towards Piccadilly Circus. He tripped crossing Leicester Square, tore the knee out of one trouser leg, pushed away the kindly hands that helped him to his feet and ran for the Charing Cross Road, St Martin’s Court, across the Lane and breathless to his own door. He could still feel the imprint of Charlie’s bear hug, the palms clapped to his shoulder blades, like demonic stigmata.
Tosca was home. The pipes banged and creaked with the telltale noises of a bath running. Troy threw off his jacket and ran upstairs. She was half undressed, down to her blouse and suspenders, padding around her bedroom in her stockinged feet, humming softly to herself.
She draped her arms around his neck. The best of moods, smiling, jokey. The wise-cracking, wise-ass, all-American broad she could be when the mood took her. He slipped his arms about her waist out of nothing more than habit. A reflex in no way connected to what he was thinking.
‘That was quick. Just as well. We’re goin’ out. On the town. It’s time to rock’n’roll!’
She kissed him. A real smackerooney—a parody of a kiss—pulled herself back, arched her neck, put her weight on his arms and beamed at him. He felt the provocative stroking of one stockinged heel on the back of his calf. It was the peak of irony, that the best should surface in her at the worst moment.
‘Well? Cat gotcha tongue?’
‘Sit down,’ Troy said.
‘What?’
He pushed her to the edge of the bed and made her sit.
<
br /> ‘Where have you seen Charlie before?’
‘What?’
‘Where have you seen Charlie before?’
‘I never seen him before. You introduced us not half an hour ago.’
‘No,’ said Troy. ‘No. I’ve known Charlie since we were boys. He tried, and he put on a damn good show, but he could not hide it. He recognised you. He knew you.’
‘Baby, I never—’
He took her face in his hands. His fingers splayed across each cheek, and looked right into her eyes. It was better than shouting at her.
‘Think!’ he said. ‘Think! Where have you seen him before?’
Tears started in the corner of each eye.
‘He knew me?’
‘Yes.’
‘I didn’t know him. I mean I thought I’d just met your oldest friend.’
‘He is my oldest friend. But he’s a spook.’
‘You said, but high up—like diplomatic. I was a nobody. I had no reason to think he’d be anyone I’d ever dealt with.’
‘Nor I. But I can read Charlie like a book sometimes. He’s met you, and in the only guise that matters.’
‘On the job?’
‘Yes.’
‘You don’t think maybe in the war? I mean it’s a goddam miracle I never bumped into your brother in the war. I met so many Brits.’
‘If it had been in the war, don’t you think he would have said?’
She sagged with the weight of his logic. He felt that if he let go of her now she would simply fall into a heap on the bed.
‘Yeah. Of course. I’m clutching at straws. I know the type. He’s not the klutz with women that you are. He’s a fuckin’ smoothie. A lounge lizard if ever I saw one. If there’d been any intro he could have used he’d ’ve flirted with me till his balls fell off. Damn, damn, damn!’
The tears flowed under his hands, and behind him he heard the sound of the bath running over, of water splashing onto wood. He let go of her and went to the bathroom to turn off the tap. When he returned she had buried her face in the pillow. He picked her up and wrapped her in his arms. She sobbed into his shoulder. He heard her strangled voice say, ‘There’s never going to be a way out is there? There’s never going to be an end to running.’