by Lawton, John
On a small oak table in the alcove of the chimney breast sat two telephones, at arm’s length from her chair. A black one and a white one—the white had no dial. The standard equipment of a senior officer of MI5. Muriel Edge was a section head. The white phone would lead directly to MI5’s own switchboard. She would have only to lift it to find a duty officer waiting to address her by name. The favour Troy had to ask would be almost effortless for her.
‘Do you know Norman Cobb?’
‘Yes. I know Inspector Cobb. He did one or two jobs for me. But not lately. He is . . . ah . . . too heavy-handed. I can’t have that. There are better officers in the Branch, though God knows, subtlety is not their middle name.’
‘Some time today he will have requested use of a safe house. I need to know where it is.’
‘Is that all?’
‘Yes.’
She shrugged as though he had accepted a shilling for a quid and reached for the white phone.
‘Yes. I need to speak to Norman Cobb of Special Branch. He’s in a safe house of ours. I don’t know which one. No, don’t put me through, just call me on the other line when you know.’
She turned back to Troy.
‘He’ll be a few minutes. Why don’t you pour us both a drink. You’re as white as a sheet, you know. I think we could both use a brandy.’
Troy followed where the bent finger pointed, to the sideboard and its array of spirit bottles. He returned, set the glass next to her deck of cards, and sipped at his own. It still tasted like soap, but she was right—it was just what he needed.
‘I’ve been following your career. From time to time, that is. You do have your ups and downs, don’t you?’
It should not have puzzled Troy—though it did—but she had not yet asked why he wanted Cobb in his MI5 safe house. And, it seemed, she would not.
‘You were the talk of the town a while back.’
‘Was I?’
‘Oh yes. I felt proud to have known you. When you told Ted Wintrincham you wouldn’t spy on Bulganin, but you would spy on Khrushchev.’
She was chuckling softly now—not at him, but, it would seem, with him.
‘You heard that? I wasn’t aware it was common knowledge.’
‘It’s not. It’s what you call uncommon knowledge. Ted’s quite a wag. Told the story with all the pauses, mimicked that overblown public-school accent of yours and then laughed fit to bust. He told anyone who’d listen. Thought it was the funniest thing he’d ever heard.’
‘I’m afraid I didn’t manage to see the joke,’ said Troy.
‘Nor should you. That’s when they got you. You should never have agreed to any part of their plan. You should have got to your feet and told them to do their own dirty work. You should have walked out of the door with not so much as a glance over your shoulder for fear of the salt pillar. It was madness. It was vanity in its crudest form. You were flattered they wanted you. You were flattered by the chance to meet Khrushchev. You fell for hobnobbing, for rubbing shoulders with the great and the monstrous—but that’s when they got you. You’ve been theirs ever since. And once they get you, you’re theirs for ever. You, you of all people, ought to have known better. I find it hard to believe that you didn’t know this. Once they get you, you’re theirs for ever!’
Her voice had risen in a steady crescendo to this final reiteration. ‘Once they get you, you’re theirs for ever’—these were the last words of Daniel Keeffe.
‘I’m taking steps to be un-got,’ he said.
‘Oh? You are? Inspector Cobb, I take it?’
The black phone rang. She picked it up, said ‘yes’, and put it back almost at once.
‘Narrow Street,’ she said, ‘Cobb is at number 11a Narrow Street, in Limehouse.’
§101
Narrow Sreet was the dream of a perfervid imagination. A fragment of Dickens, a figment of Edgar Wallace or Arthur Machen. The sort of mist-shrouded Limehouse riverside alley where dead dogs would be found floating in green puddles, where the younger sons of peers, silk-hatted and black-caped, would stagger stoned from the opium dens of London’s Chinatown, where Dorian Gray would walk the night for ever young, for ever evil, where scarlet whores in scarlet dresses would flounce their skirts beneath the gaslamps and solicit with a cry of ‘’Allo ducks’, where every other man was a cutpurse who would slit your ‘froat from ear to ear’ and dump your body in the Thames to float downriver.
Troy had walked Narrow Sreet as a beat bobby. He rather liked the place.
It was almost one in the morning. He stood with Jack in the drizzling rain, looking up at number 11a from the opposite side of the street. He had got Jack out of bed, and he had picked Troy up at the Yard in his plain black police Wolseley 4/44, so much more discreet than a Bentley. He had called Leman Street police station and asked for the Divisional Detective Inspector of J Division, and caught him only minutes before he signed off for the night.
‘Paddy—it’s Troy. Do you still want a chance to even the score with Norman Cobb?’
‘Lead me to him,’ Milligan had said.
‘He’s on your patch. Narrow Street.’
‘Bingo,’ said Mulligan.
And he had called George Bonham.
‘George, can you still get into your uniform?’
‘O’ course,’ Bonham had said. ‘What’s up?’
Troy could see Bonham now, lumbering down the street from Limehouse Cut. His boots clattering on the cobblestones, splashing through the puddles, his shadow thrown before him, immense in the moonlight, his pointy hat towering above them, the best part of seven feet off the ground.
Milligan stepped out of the shadows under 11a, and crossed the street, soft shoes treading soundlessly.
‘He’s here all right. There’s a squad car under a tarpaulin down the alley next to the house. They’ve blacked it out pretty well, but there’s definitely lights on the first and second floors.’
‘You know George Bonham, don’t you, Paddy?’
‘Of course. We were at Leman Street together for a while, weren’t we, Mr Bonham?’
Troy turned his attention on Bonham. He was the one who would most need the explanation and be least capable of grasping it.
‘George, we’re all of us off duty. Do you see what I mean?’
‘I’m not,’ said Bonham. ‘I’m retired.’
‘Same difference,’ Troy said.
Bonham looked puzzled, scratched one ear beneath the pointy hat.
‘We’re all coppers, though?’
‘Yes—we’re all coppers, but this is not a police operation. We’re . . .’
Troy racked his brains for a euphemism that would explain and not alarm.
‘We’re freelance tonight.’
‘Oh, I gettcha. Sort of a posse like?’
The idea had not occurred to Troy, but that was exactly what they were, and the word suited very well.
‘Yes. A posse. We’re a posse.’
‘And who are we chasin’?’
‘Norman Cobb.’
‘What, that bastard from the Branch?’
No one, it seemed, had a good word for Inspector Cobb.
‘All you have to do is get them to open the door. That’s why we need a uniform. Cobb will have a constable with him at the very least. He’ll be the one to open up. Make an enquiry. Ask him about the car. Don’t be fobbed off with a flash of warrant card. Take out your notebook, ask him for the registration number and the log book. I’ll go in the back. And I’ll create the disturbance we need to let Jack and Paddy steam in. You just sit on that constable.’
‘Freddie—what’s in there?’
‘It’s an MI5 safe house, George.’
‘I see,’ he said, but plainly didn’t. ‘MI5—aren’t they our blokes then?’
‘Usually,’ said Troy. ‘But . . .’
‘But,’ Milligan cut in, ‘when they use a safe house on your patch and don’t have the courtesy to tell the local nick they’re doing it, they’re not playing by the ru
les, are they? So there’s no reason we should either.’
‘We rescuing someone, George. If we do it right no one will say a thing about it afterwards. It will be as though it never happened. Your pension’s safe, and who knows, the rest of us might live to collect ours.’
‘Say no more,’ Bonham said. And Troy hoped he meant it.
Troy and Jack slipped between Cobb’s car and the corrugated steel fence that ran down to the river.
‘Are you sure you’re up to this?’ Jack asked.
‘Yes.’
‘I could go, you know.’
Troy pointed to the top-floor window at the back, where the building jutted out over the river.
‘It’s tiny,’ he said. ‘I’m the smallest. It’s best if I do it. Give me ten minutes to get in, then set George to rattle the door. Keep out of sight. Give them a clear view of him. If they think he’s a passing beat bobby being dutifully nosy, so much the better. When I’ve found her, I’ll kick up a racket. If needs be enough of a disturbance to make a forced entry perfectly legal . . .’
‘I think we should stop using that word. George might need the reassurance. As far as I’m concerned it’s irrelevant. Cobb’s got it coming.’
‘Whatever . . . just come in fighting.’
Jack cupped his hands to make a foothold and eased Troy over the fence.
‘Tearaway toffs!’ he whispered in the same tone in which one told actors to ‘break a leg’.
‘Jesus Christ,’ said Troy, and dropped clumsily down the other side.
The rain made everything slippery. Troy grabbed hold of the soil stack and began to wonder if ten minutes would be enough. The stack, an eight-inch diameter iron pipe, was old, stout, and solidly bolted to the wall. At the first floor it swung through forty-five degrees and crossed from the side of the building to the back, sticking out precariously over the mudflats of the Thames. Troy felt like a human fly clinging to the pipe as it rounded the corner, but it took his weight, realigned to the vertical and seemed to lead privy by privy to the top of the building, and the open window on the top floor—the only one that was not barred or bricked up. At the third floor he lost his footing and found himself spinning into space, seventy feet above the river, the rain spitting in his face, clinging to an overflow pipe and staring at the looming cranes of Canada Wharf.
The odd thing was the trembling of the knee. He eased himself quietly through the top-floor window into a long-abandoned lavatory, and slid down onto the bog seat. Ancient distemper flaked at every touch and covered his clothes with its fine, pale ash. But the knee, the same knee he had scabbed dashing across Leicester Square, the leg that lost its grip on the pipe, jerked with a life of its own. He held it down with both hands and willed it to respond. Any minute now Bonham would thump his giant’s fist against the door and set the house to rattle to its roots.
The top floor was abandoned. Rain and moonlight poured in through missing slates in the roof. Troy took the gun from his pocket and went down to the fourth. The floor was empty. Down to the third. Gently turning the doorhandles one by one. And in the second room he found her, just as Bonham began to pound the door.
Tosca lay on a bare mattress by the far wall. She was not bound or gagged; she was out cold. Troy knelt down, placed the gun on the seat of a bentwood chair, and turned her face to him. She had taken a beating. Her face was a blue patchwork of bruises, her right eye was closed by swelling not by sleep, and one of her front teeth was chipped. But the knuckles of her right hand were skinned and bloody. She had put up one hell of a fight.
He put his mouth to her ear and spoke as loudly as he dared.
‘Tosca. Tosca.’
She stirred, groaned, mumbled and beneath the mumble he heard too late the tread of feet upon the boards behind him. He turned sharply. All he could see were legs, then an arm swung down at him—his own gun, held by the barrel, the butt aimed at his face. He rolled backwards, kicked out with both legs and connected loudly with Cobb’s shins. Cobb went down. Troy flung himself on top of him and got both his hands around the hand that held the gun. He found himself looking straight into Cobb’s face. A bloody bruise beneath one eye bore witness to the struggle he had had taking Tosca. But Troy was scarcely bigger than she. Almost smiling at the task, Cobb simply rolled Troy off him and reversed their positions. Troy still clung to his gun hand. Cobb twisted the wrist. The barrel still pointed off to nowhere, but slowly he was turning it on Troy.
Troy put his thumbs over Cobb’s trigger finger and squeezed. The shot rang out and a shower of plaster cascaded down on both of them. Cobb reared up, his left hand thumping Troy in the face, but off-balance and without the strength or skill of his right. Then Troy heard feet on the stairs and a truncheon thwacked Cobb across the shoulders, and he felt his weight roll off him, and the rush of air returning to his lungs, and saw Milligan whacking Cobb into a corner.
Jack helped him to his feet. Milligan had knocked Cobb senseless, and now scooped Tosca in his arms as though she weighed no more than a leaf and vanished through the door.
‘You OK?’ Jack said.
‘Yes. He danm near had me, but I’m OK.’
The knee that trembled suddenly refused to bear his weight. Jack caught him, and the bullet Cobb was aiming shot between them, drawing a bloody line on the outside of Troy’s right thigh. Cobb was sprawled full length on the other side of the room, blinking as though unable to focus, clutching the little golden gun at arm’s length. In two strides Jack was across the room. One foot on Cobb’s wrist, and the other delivered a cracking kick to the jaw. Cobb’s head shot sideways and his grip on the gun relaxed. This time he really was out. Troy lurched across the room, all his weight on his left leg, but Jack caught him in both arms.
‘Leave him, Freddie! He’s not worth it. Leave him!’
And he bundled him out of the door and down the stairs.
Of course Cobb was not worth it. But it was not Cobb Troy had gone after. It was the gun.
Out in the street Bonham held a young constable, no more than twenty-five or six, pinned to the pavement with a size fourteen boot across his throat and a truncheon aimed at his balls.
Troy stopped on the threshold, clinging to Jack’s arm, blood coursing down his leg and filling up his shoe.
‘You,’ he said. ‘Warrant card!’
The man fumbled in his pocket. Troy looked at the card. He was a regular Special Branch constable. Troy had no way of knowing whether he was a stooge of Cobb’s or someone who honestly thought he was doing his duty.
‘Do you know who I am?’
The man nodded.
‘Then take some advice. If you want a career as a copper, forget this ever happened. Go back to the Yard and ask to be transferred out of the Branch. And keep well away from Cobb until you get it. If you don’t, I wouldn’t give tuppence for your chances. Do you understand?’
He nodded again. Bonham showed no inclination to lift his foot. Jack tugged at his sleeve and gestured upwards with the flat of his hand. Bonham let go, and the young constable sucked in air with a painful wheeze.
Milligan had lain Tosca on the back seat of the car. She had not come round. Now, he lifted Troy into the front seat as Jack started the engine.
‘Hospital,’ Milligan said to no one in particular.
Troy put a hand on Jack’s arm to stop him, and reached down to the floor of the car, acutely conscious that the wetness he could feel beneath his fingers was as likely to be blood as rain. His fingers grasped the hard, round object he sought.
Troy handed the potato to Bonham. He took it in his huge paw and regarded it quizzically. Then it dawned on him. A disarming smile of uncertainty, swept by good manners into a display of gratitude.
‘Ta, very much. It’ll bake nicely with a couple o’ parsnips and the Sunday joint.’
‘No, George. It’s not a present. I want you to shove it up the exhaust pipe of Cobb’s car. If he’s any notion of following when he comes round, it’ll buy us a few hours till he gets his
hands on another.’
Bonham looked at the potato, once more an object of mystery where he thought he had perceived a simple household vegetable.
‘Up the exhaust? Wherever do you learn such things?’
‘At an English school, George. It was either that or learn how to blow smoke rings.’
Troy thanked Milligan, Jack put the car in gear and roared off towards the Highway and Cable Street.
‘Hospital,’ he said echoing Milligan.
‘No,’ said Troy. ‘The Ritz.’
‘The Ritz? What the bloody hell’s at the Ritz?’
‘Clark and the sister.’
Jack nodded towards the back seat and the horizontal Tosca.
‘What about sleeping beauty?’
‘Take her to Mimram. I’ll join you as soon as I can.’
‘Can you drive like that?’
The gash didn’t hurt. There was a lot of blood, but the wound was a nick in the flesh; it was too shallow to have hit an artery and most certainly had not hit a bone. Sooner or later the blood would stop.
‘Yes,’ Troy said optimistically.
‘We could be at the London Hospital in less than two minutes.’
‘A hospital—with a gunshot wound. Jack, they’d have to call the police.’
‘We are the police.’
‘I’d hate to have to defend tonight’s actions with those four words.’
§102
‘You can’t go in there looking like that.’
Jack was right. His jacket was peppered with flaky green paint, he looked like a Martian with a bad case of dandruff. The knee was out of one trouser leg, the other slashed at the thigh and crisp with the browning mat of his own blood. His shoe squelched when he walked.
‘Why don’t you take my mac?’
Jack was a six-footer. The mac covered a multitude of sins and reached almost to Troy’s ankles.
Jack’s hand swept the hair from his eyes.