by John Lawton
‘I’m ten! Besides, Dad don’t fit. Nor do none of me bruwers. ‘Ere, cop hold of this.’
Cal took the bucket from her as she pushed it up. Then her head and shoulders filled the manhole. Her hands found the rim and she flipped herself up to the pavement with the skill of a practised gymnast. She was in a vest and knickers, and black from head to foot.
‘Tell me,’ Stilton went on. ‘Did ye know the bloke who lodged next door?’
“Ow much?’ said the child ‘You want me to grass someone up, it’ll cost.’
‘A tanner.’
‘Bob.’
Stilton stuck his hands in his trousers pocket and dug out a few coppers.
‘Ninepence,’ he said, counting them out one by one.
The child stuck out her hand and said, ‘Done.’
‘Now. Did ye know him?’
‘Wot? ‘Im wot lived wiv Mrs O’Rourke?’
‘If she lived at number twenty, yes.’
‘Yeah, I knew Fish Wally.’
‘The raid? A while back, was it?’
‘It were in March. Day before me birthday. Mum’d saved up flour an’ marge an’ neggs for ages to make me a cake, then ‘Itler blew it to bits. I din’t get none of it.’
‘And Fish Wally-he was still here then?’
‘Oh yeah. We was all down the shelter, when the street got blown to bollocks. Dad told Wally he should come and live with us at Mum’s sister’s till ‘e got fixed up. But ‘e wouldn’t have none of it. Dug around in the rubble for a day or two. Found his razor and his spare trousers and off ‘e went. Dad says ‘e ain’t seen ‘im since.’
Cal could see that Stilton wanted to say ‘Oh bugger’ again but, however foul the child’s vocabulary, could not bring himself to add to it.
‘You know,’ he said, ‘I think it’s time you were in bed. And I think it’s time I had a word with your dad.’
§ 35
Troy wondered what time it was. He was not like his father-a man who could awaken at any time, instinctively know what time it was, calculate how much was left to dream and go back to sleep for a precise period of time, be it ten minutes or four hours. More often than not Troy did not sleep. It was still dark, darkish-Kitty stood in outline near the foot of his bed, caught in a sliver of moonlight where Troy had peeled back the black-out. He watched her roll a stocking up one leg, back bent, one leg ramrod straight, the other bent into a curiously balletic, attractive pose, toes on point as she eased out the rucks at the knee, passed hand over hand up her thigh and hooked it onto her suspenders. He watched her. She watched him. As dispassionate as could be. Not a flicker on that disarmingly pretty face. He felt as far from her affections as… as if he were light years away-away from her warmth, away from heat and light. Aphelion. It was a too-familiar moment. The pure detachment of the woman from the man. He knew it too well. With any other woman it would be him looking on so detachedly. She dressed without a smile. Left without a word.
§ 36
At breakfast in Claridge’s next morning Cal found two men eating his breakfast: Walter Stilton and a face he thought he vaguely knew, stuffing itself with tea and toast. Stilton got up, clapped him on the shoulder as though greeting him at a private party he was hosting-when in fact it was pretty much the other way round.
‘Calvin. You’ll remember our man Constable Dobbs?’
Ah-the copper Stilton had ‘bollocked’ in front of him a few nights back.
‘Sure,’ he said.
‘Bernard,’ said Dobbs. ‘Bernard Dobbs.’
Cal pulled up a chair.
‘Tell me, Walter. Do you think the War Department budget will run to three breakfasts in a single day? I’m kind of peckish after last night.’
Dobbs froze mid-munch. His teeth locked onto the toast, his eyes flickering between Stilton and Cal. Too much brass around a single table for his own comfort. Then Stilton gave him his cue, roared with laughter and waved at a waitress as though he’d been eating at Claridge’s all his life. Dobbs munched on in relief.
‘I’ve worked out a plan,’ Stilton began. ‘Belt and braces.’
‘What? Belt and what?’
‘It’s an old saying up north. Belt and braces. What the nervous man does to keep his trousers up-wears both belt and braces-you call ‘em suspenders, least they do in Hollywood-that way if one snaps your trousers still stay up.’
‘I see,’ said Cal, not seeing, wondering at the power of gravity in the north of England.
‘Bernard, here. He’s going to stand guard outside the Lincoln. We know Fish Wally goes in there. If he spots him he calls in to the Yard. It’s routine stuff, but it might just work. Besides, our Bernard’s good at standing outside boozers, aren’t you Bernard?’
Dobbs avoided meeting Stilton’s gaze.
‘And us. We do the streets and the caffs.’
‘What streets?’ said Cal. ‘What caffs?’
‘Well-if I’d been bombed out I’d go back to my own. If you see what I mean. It’s possible Wally has gone back to the Polish bits of London. It’d make sense. He’d be more likely to get fixed up that way. They’d look after him. Get him another room. Slip him a bob or two till he’s found his feet. So you and I are going to tramp the beat in Polish London.’
‘Putney?’ said Cal.
‘Well remembered, lad. Putney it is. And if that draws a blank we’ll look across the other side of the river in Fulham.’
‘Walter, how long will this take?’
Stilton laughed. ‘How long’s a piece of string?’
§ 37
A more appropriate question might have been, ‘How long is a piece of elastic?’ Four days later, they had tramped, as Walter so accurately put it, the streets, cafeterias and public houses of Putney-meeting suspicion, hostility, curiosity and, on occasion, hospitality-to no avail. Cal could not conceal his sinking spirits. He could not tell, any more than he thought Stilton could, whether these motley refugees of Mittel-Europa were co-operating or lying. No one had seen Fish Wally. No one would admit to having seen Fish Wally.
They crossed the river with a sense rising in Cal that in fanning out, their chances had been thinned and diminished. He wondered if they were ever going to find this Fish Wally, and if they did, would they ever find Wolfgang Stahl?
They sank a pint, as Walter termed it, in the World’s End public house at the foot of the King’s Road-through Fulham and almost out the other side into Chelsea.
‘Walter. We’re on a hiding to nothing.’
‘No. We’re not. This is what it’s like. Not all police work is like a shoot-out with Clyde Barrow. This is what it’s like. Routine. Often as not, routine is what pays off.’
The routine of his days was not matched by his nights. He could not predict when Kitty would turn up. On the fourth night she was already in his bed when he got home.
‘How did you get in?’
‘The maid. She’s taken a liking to me. Used her pass key.’ Kitty lay underneath a single sheet. She wasn’t wearing a nightdress. He could see her nipples pushing up the sheet, the dark patch of red pubic hair. They still hadn’t ‘talked’-she tossed the word back at him as though describing some sort of perversion he wanted her to indulge in. He’d given up all hope of a serious conversation with her. What was the point? The woman was irresistible. He could tumble into Kitty and nothing else mattered.
§ 38
What Stilton needed was divine intervention-deus ex machina. What he got was a tip-off. A telephone call just as he was contemplating a mountain of paperwork on his desk at the Yard and preparing to give up on it and go home.
‘It’s me. Joe Downes.’
Stilton said ‘Yes’ while he racked his brains.
‘You came round my gaff last week and told me I was a lousy father for sending me daughter down a coal hole at midnight.’
‘Oh aye-I remember you now.’
A surly git who’d not had the courage to look him in the eyes when he’d taken the black imp back to him.
‘You was
asking about Fish Wally.’
‘You’ve seen him?’
‘I haven’t. It was the missis. Says she bumped into him down Covent Garden this morning. Says he’s taken to spending his nights at St Martin’s.’
‘What?’
‘I said-‘
‘I heard what you said. I meant which St Martin’s?’
‘St Martin-in-the-Fields. What other one is there?’
‘I don’t believe it,’ Stilton said, more to himself than Downes.
‘That’s what I told the missis. Still, we’re even now, you and me, aren’t we?’
‘Aye lad, we are. Just mind how you go with the nutty slack.’
§ 39
Cal knew at once that this was different. St Alkmund’s, whatever the stink, however much it looked like some hellish gothic vision, had had women and children-women cooking, women putting children to bed, children playing, children refusing to be put to bed, while men played cards or shoved coins up and down a board with the same glee with which Cal used to race frogs. St Martin’s held naught but men-and they played no games. By comparison it was quiet, not silent, constant interruptions, shouting and cussing, meaningless interjections-and off to one side, in the shadows, standing alone, an upright, crazed monologuist conversing with person or persons invisible.
And the smell-if St Alkmund’s had been chalked up to the cliché ‘humanity’, how could St Martin’s be less than human? It reeked of beer, sweat and dirt-the penetrating cheesy smell of the unwashed, great or not, that could put a dead skunk to shame.
‘Walter, do we have the right place? This is a dive-it’s a shelter for bums and drunks.’
‘I know,’ said Stilton. ‘Surprised me too-but that was the tip-off. Down with the down-and-outs in St Martin-in-the-Fields.’
A young curate approached them-the permanent smile of the righteous rictus-stapled to his lips.
‘Can I help you? It’s not often we get a visit from the Constabulary these days.’
Stilton didn’t bat an eyelid at this. Just flashed his warrant card and said, ‘D’ye know Fish Wally?’
The young priest beamed. ‘I should have known. Our Mr Wallficz. There he is, right at the back under the pavement arches.’ He pointed down the crypt. Cal and Stilton stepped over the prostrate, drunken, incontinent bodies and headed towards the glow of a kerosene lamp.
A ragged man sat bolt upright on an upturned crate. Half a dozen newspapers scattered around his feet, another clutched in hands that seemed to Cal to be more claw than flesh, the arc of the lamp shining upon on it. But he wasn’t reading it. He stared off into a lost middle distance, lost in some landscape of the mind.
Stilton waved a hand in front of his eyes. Fish Wally blinked once and said, ‘Stilton? Long time no Stilton. I had heard you were looking for me.’
Stilton pulled another beer crate closer and plonked himself down on it. Cal stood back, half in the shadows, outside of the small circle of light, watching.
‘If you knew I were looking, why didn’t you call me? For that matter you were supposed to tell us if you moved digs-but you didn’t, did you?’
Fish Wally looked lazily at Stilton, heavy-lidded eyes half closed.
‘The answer is the same to both questions. I have other things on my mind.’
‘Such as?’
‘We’re about to be invaded. That may mean nothing to you. You come from a complacent race. We Poles have seen it all before-I somewhat more recently than 1066.’
‘All the same, you should have told us. You don’t want me reporting this to the Squadron Leader, do you?’
‘Do your worst, Stilton. He knows I am kosher. And so do you. You have found me-you have the larger part of my attention, for the while at least-what else matters?’
‘Since you ask…’
Stilton laid out the photos across his knees, on top of Fish Wally’s newspaper.
‘These two were in the Marquess of Lincoln, Monday last. So were you.’
Fish Wally picked up the photographs, angled them into the light.
‘The young one-the blond one. He asked me to help him get a room. The older one merely said he might have to move in the foreseeable future. I told him to tell me later-I do not deal in maybe. I never saw him again.’
‘You’re sure it was them?’
‘The scar on the blond puzzles me. It is a likeness this sketch, no more-it has not caught the man.’
Stilton twisted his neck to look up at Cal. The first acknowledgement he’d made of his presence since they crossed the room.
‘Never mind,’ he said to Fish Wally. ‘It’s him, isn’t it?’
‘Yes-it’s him.’
‘And the older one?’
‘Definitely him.’
‘Good-now, did you get the young one a room?’
‘Of course. I took him to my cousin.’
‘Your cousin?’
‘My cousin. Why else did you think I came to London? Did you think I washed up on these shores like Gulliver in Brobdingnag? Stilton, I told you last year I had family. I have a cousin Casimir-been here since 1932. A naturalised Englishman. He lets rooms. I send him people from time to time. Mostly I send him Poles. But we would consider any refugee.’
‘I’m not addled, Wally-I remember you had a cousin. I tried to find him three or four days back. I don’t recall that he let rooms.’
‘In those days he didn’t. He had one room on Fulham High Street. Things changed after the fall of France. You know that as well as I. We have lived in a new world ever since. The blond man said he was Czech. Sounded Czech to me. So we arranged to meet outside the London Palladium just after closing time. I took him round to Cash Wally.’
‘Cash Wally?’
‘Casimir-Casimir Wallficz. Hence, since yours is a tongue that must mangle what it cannot spell, “Cash Wally”. A man aptly named. A greedy man in every respect. A mean man. I live on the handouts he gives me and the work I can pick up.’
Fish Wally held up his mangled hands.
‘You will appreciate, Walter, that is not much.’
‘And where does Cash Wally have this house of exiles?’
‘23b Marshall Street-the one in Soho. As you would say, spitting distance from the Palladium. I even know the room number. He is in four-the second-floor front.’
Stilton quickly scribbled down the address.
‘And you Wally, where are you living now?’
‘I have a new room in Drury Lane.’
‘From Drury Lane you could shelter in the tube at Holborn or Covent Garden or the Aldwych. Why on earth would you want to come down here? If your cousin pays you a wage and you’ve a room of your own, why here, why down here with the drunks and the tramps?’
Fish Wally looked off into the crypt-stared a moment at the ranting monologuist, then fixed his gaze on Stilton and sighed. It seemed to Cal that through his precise, cultured English he was talking to Stilton as though he were an exasperating child to whom he must state the obvious once too often.
‘I like it here. It reminds me of the last time I saw Poland. Before the Germans came we were workers. Teachers, engineers, policemen even. After the Germans came we were fighters. Then we lost. We became runners. Some of us ran all the way to Hungary, some of us ran all the way to the sea. I stayed with my unit. Thirty of us, retreating north, we tramped five hundred miles on foot, dodging Germans every step of the way. Those who fed and housed us the Germans shot-so we took no food or shelter. We lived off the land. And when the winter froze the soil, we starved. We sank to the bottom of Poland. And most of us died there, and some of us went mad. I saw half a dozen comrades turn mad as hatters. My last sight of my brother Stanislaus was him standing in a Polish forest ranting at the trees like that witless idiot over there. We became raggedymen, all of us raggedymen. We looked, we sounded, we smelt no different from this lot. We were the dregs of Poland, the last scum of a scorched earth. “And I alone am escaped to tell thee.” To tell thee, Stilton, to tell the Squadron L
eader. You took me in. England took me in. And I sank to the bottom of England. And so you find me here, as deep as I can go. And now it is England’s turn. Soon England will fall before the Panzers. Tell me, Stilton, how deep can you go? Try it-learn. I am here to replenish my sense of reality. I have lived too easy this last year or more. I have a pillow for my head and coins to jingle in my pocket-but I can go deep, straight to the bottom. One day soon we will all know this madness. How deep can you go, Walter?’
Outside Cal said, ‘What was that about?’
‘My fault, lad. I shouldn’t have asked. Not as if I haven’t heard it before. It’s pretty much what he said day after day when we had him out at Burnham-on-Crouch last year. It’s… it’s Wally’s vision, I suppose. He’s cast himself as the wandering Jew. At least the Catholic version of it.’
‘Or Ishmael. “And I alone am escaped to tell thee.” That’s Moby Dick. I know, I skipped to the last page when I realised I was never going to get through it all.’
‘Oh,’ said Stilton, a bit dismissively. ‘I’d just assumed he was quoting the Bible. No point in skipping to the end o’ that, is there? We all know how it ends.’
§ 40
Marshall Street was as close to the heart of things as could be. Regent Street was only few yards west, Oxford Street a few yards north. Stilton drove in silence. There was a new tenacity to the man-just when Cal thought they’d both been flagging, the prospect of getting close to the quarry had invigorated him. He wished he felt the same. He thought of the prospect of meeting Wolf again with a mixture of sadness and fear. He voiced none of it. Better by far to let silence prevail. Anxieties could only alarm Stilton-as would questions, and there was one question he was biting back. If he’d been the one to talk to Fish Wally, he’d’ve asked why total strangers came to him for help, and how they knew where to find him. Could be Fish Wally might not know the answer, but that did not invalidate the question. It nagged. It burst the logic of pursuit they had set up for themselves. Walter, after all, had been emphatic. Wally was clean. And if they really were only minutes away from catching up with Stahl, what did it matter?