Black Out (Frederick Troy 1)

by Lawton, John

  ‘OK,’ Troy said. ‘Go home and get warm.’

  ‘Good-oh. I was beginning to think you’d never get here.’

  ‘Who is it tonight?’ asked Troy.

  ‘Another Wren. All the nice boys love a sailor.’

  Wildeve looked both ways at the top of the steps, and then left again, like a child observing a thoroughly dinned kerb drill, and headed off in the direction of the river. An hour and a half later, Troy sat in the pitch darkness, feeling frozen stiff and utterly bored. How had Wildeve stuck it for the six or more hours? He stood up to ease the cramp in his right leg, rubbed at the scar on his arm, which seemed to ache in the damp, and dusted off his trousers. A flash of light came suddenly from the first-floor window, and he caught a quick glimpse of a woman’s face, a hand at the blackout making some minor adjustment. It was unmistakably, even in the briefest glance, the same woman he had seen in Stepney. A face so striking one could hardly forget it.

  Troy crossed the street, staring up at the window, but no further light or movement came from it. An impulse seized him. He walked up to the front door and rang the bell. He heard the clump of lazy, tired feet banging up the stairs from the basement, and the door inched open. A young housemaid, cap awry, stockings crumpled as though pulled up in a hurry, stood in the doorway.

  ‘Yes?’ she said.

  ‘Sergeant Troy,’ said Troy, showing the card.

  ‘Tradesman’s entrance downstairs,’ said the girl, and swung the door to. Troy jammed his foot in the way and braced an arm against the door. Tradesman’s entrance! Good grief, could the woman not hear the toff in his voice? Had a few years on the beat rendered him indistinguishable from the butcher’s boy? He reached into his jacket pocket and handed her one of his private calling cards, the pre-war ones without rank and giving his parents’ address.

  ‘Take this and hand it to Lady Diana. Tell her Mr Troy would like a word. Now!’

  The girl snatched the card and ran, leaving Troy standing in the hall. A minute passed in silence, then the girl returned.

  ‘The mistress says as how I’m to show you up,’ she said half-whispering. ‘Coppers is always tradesman’s door. That’s what cook says,’ she added impudently.

  Diana Brack contrived a dramatic entrance. She strode the width of the room to meet Troy, her hand extended in a firm, masculine handshake.

  ‘Mr Troy. I’m so sorry. The usual cliché applies. One cannot get the staff nowadays.’

  She stood at least five foot ten and was dressed in Vesta Tilley garb. A tailored and pleated version of men’s striped trousers flapped around her long legs and pinched in tightly at her waist – a black silk shirt, complete with silver cufflinks, rippled from broad shoulders across a small bosom. A single strand of pearls at the the throat. This was hardly a gesture to femininity, for the whole appearance contrived femininity in irony. Her skin was china white. Her black hair shone with a rich lustre, curling thickly a couple of inches above the shoulder, and flopped carelessly over her right eye. As she took back her hand she flicked the strand clear of her face and Troy looked into eyes that were a rich, deep green. It was, he thought, a snook cocked at fashion with more panache than he had seen in a long time. A devastating study in black and white. He appreciated the frustration of Wildeve’s brothers and the late Al Bowlly. Here was a face to kill or die for. Diana Brack was beyond doubt one of the most beautiful women in London. Troy thought it must plague her father badly that she was still single at thirty-four. Not that her age showed. He would have put her somewhere in her mid-twenties, but that her manner showed more self-assurance.

  ‘Do sit down. Can I get you anything? Daisy tells me you’re a policeman. What a surprise!’

  They sat opposite each other. Either side of a huge oak fireplace – she on a Knole sofa, legs crossed at the knee, one foot swinging gently and showing a glimpse of black stocking at the ankle, Troy on an armchair, resisting the languor she seemed to exude. The floor between them was a sprawling mess of newspapers, and face down on the pile, spread open at halfway, was a book – Troy raised an inner eyebrow at Engels’s The Condition of the Working Class in England.

  ‘Are you sure I can’t get you something?’ she asked again, and again seemed not to wait for an answer. ‘It must be terribly cold out.’

  ‘No, there’s nothing. Just a few questions and then I’ll be on my way.’

  ‘Questions for me? Good Lord.’

  The faux-naïf air of innocence was irritating. It called for drastic action.

  ‘I’m investigating a murder,’ said Troy.

  It was the sort of remark that shook people, made them sit bolt upright. Brack’s expression did not change. She was neither smiling nor looking worried. Whatever concern she felt registered only in her voice. Troy could read nothing in the green eyes.

  ‘And you want to question me?’ she asked with the merest hint of incredulity. ‘Who exactly do you think has been murdered?’

  ‘That I can’t tell you.’

  ‘Then I think you’ll have a hard job asking me any questions.’

  ‘Why were you at Peter Wolinski’s flat on Sunday evening?’

  It was a remark that shook. Just. There was the merest perceptible change in her posture; her head drooped slightly, the lock of hair fell into her eyes once more. She brushed it aside, looked up at Troy again. She gripped her knee tightly, and the blue veins stood up in the backs of her hands as the long fingers locked together.

  ‘Good God. You’re not saying Peter’s been murdered?’

  ‘I’m not saying anything of the sort. Why were you there?’

  ‘I was just curious. I hadn’t seen Peter for a while. I hadn’t heard from him. I thought I’d drop in and see.’

  ‘You just happened to be passing?’

  ‘Of course not. One doesn’t just pass Stepney Green. One goes out of one’s way to get to Stepney Green! Anyway, how do you know I was there? I don’t deny it for one second, but how do you come to know?’

  ‘You were seen.’

  ‘Ah. I was seen. Am I being spied on now Mr Troy?’

  Was there a petulance added to the innocence? The hint of a pout? Was the woman playing with him? Her posture relaxed once more as she unlocked her hands and sat back. Troy felt that the slight lift in tone was an inadequate response to what he had inferred. Diana Brack seemed to have none of the outrage that was typical of anyone who thinks the police have invaded their privacy. This was as true of a cat burglar as it was of a lord. Her responses were too subtle for innocence. She was playing the game too well. But whether it was his game or hers he had yet to tell.

  ‘Of course not,’ he said. ‘But Mr Wolinski has been reported missing. We are curious as to his movements.’

  ‘Well, I haven’t seen him in over a fortnight. If you were watching then you’ll know he wasn’t at home when I called.’

  ‘The last time you saw Wolinski—’

  She cut him short, anticipating the question. ‘Was in the Bricklayers Arms. That’s the pub on the corner of the street where he lives. And no, he didn’t do anything that struck me as suspicious. He didn’t seem worried about anything. And he certainly didn’t mention a damn thing about doing a bunk.’

  Troy changed tack. If she thought she could shake him off by a barrage of words, she would have to think again.

  ‘How do you come to know Wolinski?’

  ‘We share certain concerns.’

  ‘Concerns?’

  ‘Political concerns.’

  ‘Wolinski is, I believe, a Communist.’

  ‘Well, that’s hardly illegal, is it? Yes – I know Peter through the Communist Party. I met him a year or so ago in Whitechapel.’

  ‘But you’re not a member are you?’

  ‘No, Mr Troy. I’m not.’

  ‘You’re a fellow-traveller.’

  She smiled widely. Beautiful, even white teeth that had never fallen foul of pre-war dentistry. ‘Mr Troy, do I detect a note of snobbery? I do not think I can be called u
pon to explain or to apologise for my politics. After all, it is often better to fellow-travel hopefully than to arrive.’

  Troy smiled. He’d asked for that. ‘And you see him occasionally?’

  ‘No. I see him frequently.’

  ‘But not lately?’

  ‘I think this is where we came in.’

  ‘And you didn’t go into Wolinski’s apartment?’

  ‘Apartment?’ She drew the word out slowly, investing it with the power of several extra syllables. ‘Peter was not at home. I knocked. No one answered. I left. I don’t know where he is, or why he hasn’t been in touch. I’m terribly sorry, but I really don’t see how I can help you.’

  It was the sort of line that if uttered in a play by J. B. Priestley would lead to the host getting up to heave on the bell-pull prior to the butler showing the detective his way out and his place in society. But Troy knew that his place in society showed through every syllable he uttered. Only the dimmest of parlourmaids could ever fail to miss it. Diana Brack did not. He also knew she was lying. The sound of that door closing rang clear and distinct in his memory. Besides, the scent, the burnt cinnamon smell that had drawn him through the first two rooms was at this very moment drifting across the short space that separated him from Diana Brack as she leaned forward rather earnestly.

  ‘Look. You come here, you tell me you’re investigating a murder. You won’t tell me who. Yet you also won’t tell me that it’s Peter. You say I was seen, as though there were any secret in the fact of my friendship with him. You have, clearly, followed me here. Now, just what do you think has happened to Peter, and what do you think it has to do with me? I rather think I’ve a right to know.’

  ‘I really don’t know what has happened to him. Like you I’m concerned. I had hoped you’d be able to shed more light on his disappearance. It’s really as simple as that. In fact,’ Troy added, pulling his notebook from his overcoat pocket, ‘if there’s anything you can think of that might help us, I do hope you’ll give me a call.’

  He scribbled down Whitehall 1212, a number every sentient being in Britain knew, and as he did so watched her out of the corner of his eye. She glanced quickly off to her right to the half-open door into the next room. A look so fleeting as to be all but imperceptible. As Troy raised his eyes from the paper she was looking directly at him once more. She smiled and took the page from him, and he knew as certain as eggs were powdered that there was someone hiding in the next room.

  30

  He gave it five minutes and then doubled back to the area steps of the house opposite. A quarter of an hour later the door of number 55 opened. Brack came out, stood on the pavement, looked up and down the street and turned back to the doorway. Troy heard a whispered ‘all clear’ and a tall, well-built man in a brown gabardine mackintosh, belted tightly at the waist, came down the steps and wrapped his arms around her. As they separated the man dipped his head forward to put on a trilby and in the light that poured from the open door Troy saw clearly who he was. It was the American Major he had seen in Zelig’s outer office. He was in civvies, but he was quite unmistakable. He smiled at Brack in the same way he had smiled at Sergeant Tosca. The way the wolf smiled at Red Riding Hood.

  Brack watched the American walk up the street. She stood too long in her affection for Troy’s comfort. By the time she had closed the door and pulled the blackout to, Troy’s quarry was out of sight. Certain he had heard the man’s feet echo the length of the street Troy ran across Royal Hospital Road and stopped at the corner of Christchurch Street. There was no sign of him. He kept going north and came to the edge of Tedworth Gardens, a London square long since stripped of its railings and hedged in with a tangle of barbed wire and boards. Getting used to the darkness Troy could see that it was down to allotments and was dotted here and there with Nissen huts and Anderson shelters. He walked down between the strips of vegetable plots. Out of the darkness a voice spoke.

  ‘Looking for the Major, old cock?’

  Suddenly a face appeared in the glow of a cigar end as its owner dragged on the stub and brought it brightly to life. Troy went over. It was a huge, bald, fat man, in a Heavy Rescue blouse, just as Wildeve had described him. Sitting on the backless stump of an old chair. And there at his feet was a large white pig.

  ‘Evenin’,’ said the man. And the pig added a grunt of its own by way of greeting. ‘Turn right towards St Leonard’s, then left into Smith Street, and you’ll find yourself in the King’s Road. Quickest way to Sloane Square Tube, old cock. If you run you should catch sight of the Major. Mind, you’d better not let him catch sight of you. You got copper written all over you.’

  Troy didn’t wait to ask how he knew. It was possible the old man was in cahoots and had been told to say just what he had said, but Troy had little time and no choice and hurried on to Smith Street. As he turned into the King’s Road he wondered again. The man would have to be a magician to cook up a bluff like this. The street was full of people on foot and most of them seemed to be men in trilbies and mackintoshes. In weather like this most men might be seen in a mackintosh and trilby, but at least the American had the added distinction of height. There weren’t many Englishmen over six feet two. He followed the old man’s hint and set off in the direction of Sloane Square, walking briskly and hoping that he didn’t run into the back of his man in the dark. By the time he crossed the second side street he felt pretty certain he had singled out the American from the small throng of men heading up the King’s Road. They crossed the square only thirty feet apart and Troy saw him go into the Underground station. He waited in the street, long enough to let the American buy a ticket and and head down to the platforms. He followed halfway down the steps to the eastbound platform – the logical route into central London – and peered on to the open platform. There were half a dozen people right at the bottom of the steps. Enough for concealment. He joined the end of the crowd, turned up his collar and tried not to look in the obvious direction. When the train pulled in he would be first to step forward, but would not get in until he saw the American do so. One carriage apart would be best. He looked across the tracks at the other platform as he heard the rattle of an approaching westbound. The crowd on the other side instinctively edged forward. There, right at the front, was the American, looking up the line towards the train. Had he looked across the track he would have been looking directly at Troy. The train pulled in between them. Troy ran for the steps, across the bridge in the ticket hall and made it down the steps to the other side just in time to slip in as the doors hissed shut. The District line rose so near the surface that the train had been blacked out to meet ARP regulations – only small diamonds cut into the blackouts let out light. The darkness outside was infinitely preferable to the dim, muggy interior of the train. It was like stepping into a circle of hell. The carriage was full to capacity. Troy looked down the carriage. In the middle by the double doors the American was standing with his back to Troy. He was no more than twenty feet away. The train screeched into South Kensington, one of the open-air stations. The man was in the first half-dozen off and headed for the lift down to the Piccadilly line. The queue for the lift was long enough to make Troy gamble on a race down the spiral stairs to platform level. To follow in the same lift was impossible and to wait for the one behind ran too great a risk of losing him. Troy arrived at the bottom just as the lift doors opened – he waited at the edge of the stairwell and saw the American emerge and go down on to the northbound line, which would take him into the heart of London via Knightsbridge and Piccadilly.

  At this level a walk along the platform meant competing with the nightly shelterers. Troy had almost forgotten the experience. He rarely used the Underground and had never taken shelter there. A hundred feet below the surface, thousands of Londoners were camping out with their bunk beds and their Primus stoves, safe from Hitler’s bombs. This aspect of London life became part of folklore in the Blitz of 1940, and had made a sudden return with the heavy raids that had begun again in February. P
eople no longer waited for the siren to announce the Luftwaffe’s imminent arrival but took to the deep-level tubes as early as they could. Children bagged places for whole families from early morning, well in advance of the official permitted time in winter of 4 p.m. By the time of the last train the platforms, the corridors and even the stopped escalators would be littered with sleeping bodies. It was better organised second time around – metal rows of bunks, three tiers high, lined the platforms and chemical lavatories were stuck at either end. The overwhelming presence of two thousand-odd people in a small space, whatever the improvements in conditions, still made the open space preferable. A choice between the smell of humanity – heavily laden with disinfectant – and the smell of cordite, between the risk of death and the safety of what was a glorified dungeon by any other name. The spread of the subterraneans left little room for people still travelling. Once on the platform Troy could hardly move more than a few feet without protest from both shelterers and passengers. He got as close as he could, but the cries of ‘who do you think you’re shoving?’ seemed too much like unwanted attention. He joined the narrow band of passengers closest to the track. He could only be at most a few feet away from the American. Behind him a young mother was trying to put a small girl to bed. Next to them a woman in her seventies was brewing tea. On a top bunk an old man already had his head down and was snoring loudly. Troy faced the adverts rather than look at a private life rendered embarrassingly public. It was probably, he often thought, why the English upper classes sent their children to public schools – and even why they were called public when they were so obviously exclusive – to teach them the value of privacy by forcing them to live out their formative years in public. Public baths, public bedtimes, public beatings. He could not resist the backward glance and looked over his shoulder at the mother and child. ‘While the mother clearly had some self-consciousness about the matter, the little girl had none and chattered aimlessly as her mother folded her clothes and zipped her into a siren suit for sleeping.