Friends and Traitors

by John Lawton

  No one had any inclination to talk. Troy put on the BBC Third Programme. A late afternoon concert recorded at the Proms last August: Schubert’s “Unfinished.”

  Past Burton-on-Trent Sasha’s snores risked drowning out Sir Malcolm Sargent and the BBC Symphony Orchestra, and, seemingly certain she was asleep, Venetia turned the volume down a little.

  “At last we can talk.”

  “We can?”

  “Oh yes. Sasha can sleep for England. Russia as well, I’d imagine. Booze can do that.”

  “The point,” Troy ventured, “of you two being in the priory was not to drink, to dry out in fact. Or have I interpreted this wrongly?”

  “Oh, she’s dry for now. Until the next time. And I wasn’t in for the treatment. She wouldn’t do it alone. Masha feels she has done her bit with drink and drugs where her sister is concerned, so I volunteered. I’ve been clean since the end of the war. I buried the woman you used to know shortly after VE night.”

  “I see.”

  “No, you don’t. My first husband and I wanted children. More important to me by far than the pleasures I’d indulged in for the best part of fifteen years. But … too late … my system was … well, I don’t know what to call it … unwilling to conceive.”

  “So … no children?”

  “No, and before you point out the possibilities for adoption, Bruce wrapped his car … a car very like this one actually, the Mark VI with the soft top, lovely shade of red … around a tree in 1947 and that was the end of that. I married Gerontius two years later … and he didn’t want children. In fact, he was hardly home long enough to make a child.”

  “Gerontius? You’re kidding?”

  “No. His mother had a passion for Elgar, so Gerontius he was. Gerontius Stainesborough. Could be worse. He might have been christened Nimrod. And Nimrod does not abbreviate well. He was always known as Gerry.”

  The penny dropped. Gerry Stainesborough.

  “Ah … the polar explorer.”

  “The mountaineer, the Amazon and Orinoco explorer, the trekker of the Northern Territories. You name it he’d been there. If there’d been mountains in Acton or Ealing he’d have climbed them too. A jungle in Highgate, he’d have hacked his way in. As I said, not home long enough to impregnate even if he’d wished to. Then on the ‘53 Everest expedition he took a fall. Broke his pelvis and was told he’d never climb again. I think he would have preferred to vanish like Mallory. As it was, he vanished into his single malts and was dead by ‘56. Hence, as I said earlier, I play the merry widow. Which sort of brings me to the point. Why did you ask if there was a Mr. Stainesborough? You used to be such a shy little boy. I can’t believe you were just chatting me up.”

  “I wasn’t. But if there had been a Mr. Stainesborough I was curious to know why he wasn’t collecting you today instead of me. I’ve given up expecting anything of Hugh, after all. That marriage is over, it’s just a matter of who kills who, of who reaches for the gun first.”

  “Ah … well. I’m disappointed. Just a little. Still, it won’t last.”

  She said nothing. And more nothing. Troy turned the volume back up. Schubert had finished. The orchestra had gained a soloist and moved on to Rachmaninoff’s Second Piano Concerto. Troy was not sure he would ever have put these two pieces on the same bill. The Schubert evoked no memories, no pictures. It simply was. The Rachmaninoff was now forever associated in his mind with steam trains and the buffet at Milford Junction, with Celia Johnson and Trevor Howard … “I’m a doctor, let me help” … a line which lost all romantic power once you substituted the word “policeman” for “doctor.”

  He dropped Sasha in Highgate and drove Venetia on to Eaton Place in Belgravia.

  Her bag was small. He set it down on the steps while she rummaged for her key. It occurred to him she might ask him in. He hoped she wouldn’t. All other matters aside, it was nearly nine o’clock, dark and cold, and he was tired.

  “Do coppers carry cards, or do you have no room in your pockets once you’ve got your truncheon?”

  Troy handed her one of his private cards. No rank, and the Goodwin’s Court address.

  “Thank you, Freddie. You’ve been so kind, I must find a way to thank you properly.”

  He might bump into her again, if she remained loyal to Sasha, a woman whose command on friends’ loyalty slipped lower with each passing day, but he’d never hear from her again. He was quite certain of that.

  §109

  It was Sunday evening before Foxx called him.

  He heard the remote mechanical crash of falling pennies and button A.

  “Why are you in a phone box?”

  “What? You think we had a telephone at home? And I’ve been paying the post office for it for the last two years without being here?”

  “Sorry. That was stupid.”

  “It’s not like you to make class-based assumptions. Phone? As if we could afford a bloody phone!”

  “And it’s not as if I’d asked if you rode to hounds. Now, how are you?”

  “Better, resolute. I took all my old clothes to the Congregational church for their next jumble sale. I gave Johnnie Ray to the kid next door. I gave Elgar to the vicar’s wife, and I decided to keep Vince. And …”

  “And?”

  “I decided to let the house. It’s paid for. No mortgage. We might as well have the income.”

  He warmed to the word “we.” The income did not matter, the pronoun did.

  “Have I ever mentioned Rosie and Malcolm to you?”

  “No. You never talk about any of your friends in the north.”

  “They’re my oldest friends. They have another baby due in April. They could do with the extra rooms. They want most of the furniture, and what they don’t want should probably be taken out into the back garden and burnt.”

  “Do you have a Meccano kit?”

  “No. Why do you ask? They were boys’ toys.”

  “You could build a bridge and burn it.”

  “Ha bloody ha.”

  “I’m right, though.”

  “I know. You’re a smart arse. Of course I’m burning bridges. What matters is what I bring away, what and to whom I come, and how securely I store the troublesome remnants of childhood.”

  “I’m impressed by the use of ‘whom.’ And you have the map of childhood.”

  “I do. I have the piggy holes of the head to store it all. But it’s the what-whom that worries me.”

  “Eh?”

  “You, Troy. I’ve never been really sure I … had you. Oh, bollocks. There’s some old trout banging on the door with her brolly. Oh fuck, it’s Mrs. Jessup … hang on … Yes, I know it’s a public phone … I’m using it … Well, you’ll just have to … oh fuck off!”

  “Are you sure that was wise?”

  “Absolutely not. She’s gone to get her Ernie now. I’ll have to go.”

  “When will you be back?”

  “Dunno.”

  And then he heard the dialling tone.

  Almost at once the phone rang again.

  Onions.

  “Tried calling you yesterday.”

  Instant reproach in only four words.

  “I was rescuing my sister from one of those clinics.”

  “Again?”

  “No comment.”

  “No matter. Not why I was calling. Westcott’s put his report in. So you can get back to work.”

  “You’ve read it?”

  “No. I agreed to you being put on leave while Jim questioned you. If Jim’s submitted his report, then he has no more questions and we play it by the book, to the letter. You’re back on duty. If the report raises issues Five can’t settle, then they’ll have to ask me all over again, won’t they?”

  There were times when stubbornness and bloody-mindedness were Stan’s most appealing characteristics.

  §110

  In his office at Scotland Yard Troy met with Swift Eddie and Jack Wildeve, feeling for the first time in a while that they were not working under
a cloud. He explained what had happened briefly to Jack, leaving out that Eddie had been present when he had tracked down Joe Holderness. It seemed like a complication too far. Eddie had known Joe since the end of the war, Jack knew that Eddie knew Joe, Eddie knew that Jack knew and it could be left at that.

  “Normal service has been resumed, eh?”

  “Something like that, Jack.”

  Deliberately vague. Troy would not count anything as normal until Onions signed off on it. He wasn’t going to call on Onions and invite questions on how he knew he’d been cleared, he would wait for Six to tell Five and for Five to tell the Yard, and then at the bottom of the heap, Onions could tell him, a mere Chief Superintendent of the Murder Squad, and Troy would not even attempt to feign surprise.

  “What do we have? Jack?”

  “The Roehampton Lane hit-and-run. Turns out the victim was a minor member of the Lambeth gang—a small fry known as Spider Webb. I’m less inclined to regard it as an accident now I know that. Then there’s the Wimbledon wife-strangler in the cells. As soon as the rush of adrenalin brought on by meeting his brief and being made to feel important passes he’ll confess everything. And lastly, unknown gent in his mid-thirties fished out of the Thames by the River Police at Limehouse Reach with two bullets in his back. Kolankiewicz has the bullets. I’m waiting on him now … until then I will admit to being clueless.”

  None of these cases meant a thing to Troy. They’d all happened while he was in Italy or Austria or sucked into the dark and dirty mindscape that was Burgess-land. He found it hard to care.

  “Eddie?”

  “I’ve some very nice medium-roast Kenya coffee on the go, and I nipped into Soho on me way to work and I have a rather succulent panettone.”

  “Not a lot for me to do, then?”

  “Nope.”

  “Then I’ll take my coffee black. One slice of cake. Bring me the bill.”

  §111

  With coffee and cake Eddie brought a pile of manila envelopes almost a foot high. Before Troy could say anything Eddie had nipped out and returned with a second pile even higher.

  “You’re kidding. You called the pile an ‘alp,’ as I recall. This is a bloody mountain range.”

  “That was more than a fortnight ago. Do you really think the work stops piling up just because you’re not here?”

  “If it’s just sign-and-initial stuff, then just forge my signature.”

  “It isn’t,” said Eddie as he closed the door behind him.

  Troy stood in the window with his cup of coffee. All he had wanted the last God-knows-how-long was to be back in his job—not quite the same thing as being back at his desk, and he felt no more inclination to dig into Eddie’s pile of paperwork than he had to dig into Jack’s list of murders. Jack would not welcome such intervention. If he needed Troy he’d ask.

  Troy did not need Eddie’s piles of files. He needed a murder of his own.

  Winter sunlight danced its diamonds upon the river, sun slicing in over Southwark. He’d watched this a hundred—no, a thousand—times over the best part of twenty years, ever since Onions had plucked him out of the East End and installed him in this office. Up through the ranks … Detective Sergeant Troy, Inspector Troy, Superintendent Troy, and last year, Chief Superintendent Troy. Two and a half years as head of the Murder Squad. He’d never felt this way before. He needed a murder of his own.

  Troy needed somebody to die soon.

  “Boss?”

  Eddie had come in silently.

  “Anything wrong?”

  “Yes,” said Troy. “Nothing I should ever articulate even to myself. The idiotic tangents of thought.”

  §112

  On Wednesday a postcard arrived from Derbyshire, a black-and-white picture of what declared itself to be Chatsworth but was so faded it might be Waterloo Station or the Eddystone Light:

  Getting stuck in. Don’t worry about me. May take a bit longer than I thought. Will have to find another phone box, so no more calls for a while. Old man Jessup called me a whore and every time I leave the house the curtains twitch. He’s itching to catch me on the phone and dot me one with his walking stick. I will be so glad to finally put this place in … its place.

  SFXX

  And on Thursday, just as Troy was lying to Eddie about his progress with the paperwork, Onions appeared in his office.

  One nod of the head towards his left shoulder, and one syllable to Eddie, “Out.”

  Most things in life washed over Eddie. He reacted minimally at the best and worst of times. He had a very English “I’ll put the kettle on” response to anything resembling a crisis. Troy did not scare Eddie, he exasperated him, and if his stories of life before he joined the force were to be believed, not half as much as Joe Wilderness did. The one thing that seemed to scare Eddie was Onions.

  The door clicked to. Troy could almost hear Eddie’s ear flattening against the panel from the other side.

  “You’re in the clear.”

  “That must annoy one or two people in this building. Still, do we really care what Special Branch think?”

  “Knock it off, Freddie. They bloody near had you this time. Jim Westcott gave a mixed report on you. I’ve no idea what you told him, but it wasn’t enough.”

  “But it was all he was ever going to get. Now, Stan, could I get you a coffee? Eddie’s been shopping again, we have some rather nice roasts on offer, and an Italian delicacy that knocks an Eccles cake into a cocked hat.”

  “I haven’t bloody finished yet! Sit!”

  Times there were when Stan would address him much as though he were a badly behaved dog.

  Troy took a chair next to the sputtering gas fire. Onions sat opposite him, stuck a cigarette through the grill and lit up.

  “I’ve had to fight for you. Time after bloody time.”

  “And time after time I have expressed my gratitude.”

  “This time they nearly had you.”

  “So you say, and I don’t agree. This time they thought they had me. Not the same thing at all.”

  “The Branch wanted your balls. Five wanted your balls. What saved you was some bloke in Six that Dick White set on to you.”

  “Let me know who, and I’ll send him a postcard.”

  “You’re not taking this seriously, are you? I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again, for the last time, do not mess with the spooks. You’ve got a bloody long lifeline, money, class, family … but one day, Freddie, it’ll just bloody snap.”

  Troy leaned a little closer, breathed in the acrid scent of cheap fags, and lowered his voice.

  “It was you who told me to stay in Vienna after Burgess approached me. I wanted nothing to do with him. You wanted none of this coming back to us. But that’s exactly what staying on led to. A man ended up murdered, then you pulled me out. I could argue that spookery was none of my business, but murder was. But I won’t. It wasn’t my murder.”

  “At last, summat we agree on.”

  “There’s more. I want no more to do with spooks than you would have me do. But—there is one distinct advantage to the bastards setting Jim Westcott on to me.”

  “Which is?”

  “The slate has been wiped clean. They’ll not dare come back at us with a chronicle of my sins again. I am washed clean. I have bathed in Jordan waters.”

  Onions didn’t know Jordan Younghusband, and would not see a joke. He exhaled a cloud of noxious smoke.

  “There’s more,” he said at last.

  “Bad news is never-ending.”

  “Dunno whether this is good or bad. Sir Clive Potter is announcing his retirement tomorrow.”

  Potter was the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police Force, the top copper in London, the top copper in the land—a man who answered only to the Home Secretary. He’d been commissioner since 1951 and the re-election of Winston Churchill—he had been Churchill’s own choice. Few men served as long, few men would want to serve as long, and over the last year he had been muttering about hi
s time being up. Troy thought the racial tensions bursting in London, particularly in Notting Hill over the summer, might be the last straw. The Met, Troy thought, was stuffed when it came to race. Whatever they did would be wrong.

  “I see,” he said. “And you are come to tell me they want me as the next commissioner?”

  He got a grin out of Onions with this.

  “You cheeky bugger. You know as well as I do … you’re looking at the next commissioner right now.”

  “Congratulations, Stan. It’s deserved and it’s overdue.”

  “A couple of things bother me.”

  They would, inevitably, not be the same things that bothered Troy. A knighthood went with the job. He could not help but see Stan as being uncomfortable as Sir Stanley. Few, if any, Met commissioners had been working class, none had ever had a northern accent as strong as Stan’s, most had a capacity for flattery and dissembling that seemed beyond Stan, few had his well-honed skill at being the right bull in the right china shop, and Troy doubted that any of them were as straight and decent as he. That was not to say that he was not devious, but that his deviousness was usually in the service of his decency. He was quite capable of telling Troy to break the rules if breaking the rules got the job done. And none of them, to Troy’s knowledge, had ever favoured brown boots as footwear. Perhaps he’d have to take Stan to Lobb’s in Jermyn Street and treat him to a couple of pairs of hand-made beetle-crushers?

  “Such as?” Troy said.

  “I’ll have to wear a fuckin’ uniform. Not all the time but, you know … I hate being in uniform.”

  “And?”

  “I’ll have less time to keep an eye on you. You’ll be running the Murder Squad without yer Uncle Stan at yer shoulder.”

  “Really? Then bring on the bodies. I could use a good body right now.”

  VII

  Venetia

  §113

  On the Friday, early in the evening, coat barely shuffled off to the peg, the telephone rang. He was half-expecting it to be Foxx, then a voice he could not place said, “Coming out to play?”