by Lawton, John
He listened without looking, learning in the language of childhood that he had grown up to be a member of the most tightassed race on earth. But he knew that. Tosca told him that with every other remark. Tosca. Her name tumbled through his nearvacant, narcoleptic mind all the way home, to no purpose and no conclusion. While the euphoria lasted he felt strangely free of desire. Cloudy and sexless. He could visualise the ties that bound him to her, floating out in front of him like streamers, but he could not see her, could not conjure up a face to the magic of the word.
Back home, Troy found a note from Ruby on the mantelpiece.
‘I can take a hint. Gone home to get some kip. If you need me you know where to find me – at the end of the street from half an hour before closing time onwards. Just don’t approach me if it looks as though I’ve got a fare. I can’t afford to lose business just ’cos you have a way of always looking like a copper. Love R. PS. Klankiwitch was mad as hell when I told him you’d gone out.’
It was dark now. He sat in his overcoat in front of the unlit fire, staring at the door. And when he had stared as long as he could he unlocked the door, took off his coat and shoes and crept upstairs to lie on his bed in the darkness. He heard the latch click on the door. He heard a soft shoeless tread upon the stairs. He saw Brack framed in the doorway, slipping her black cloak from her shoulders, flicking back the ever errant forelock from her eyes. Lust batted him in the groin, sharp and hard. The numbness lifted as the desire took him, and with it the pains of all his breaks and bruises returned to rack him.
She walked over to the window framed in the last of the twilight, slowly picking at the buttons on her blouse. Troy got up and stood behind her. She hoisted her skirt to her hips, leant against the window-sill and presented herself to him. He fucked her till he dropped and felt each muscle in his body tear itself free from the next.
He could not be certain, but it seemed that she had picked him up in her arms and lain him back on the bed. She was leaning over him, kissing him on the lips, drowning him in the oh-so-familiar scent.
‘What is it?’ he asked.
‘What’s what?’
‘Your scent.’
She sat on the edge of the bed pulling off the last of her clothes.
‘Je Reviens,’ she said in a near-whisper. ‘Very costly. Very Parisian. And since the fall of France bloody nigh impossible to get hold of. It’s a bit old-fashioned now I suppose. I’ve worn it since I was a girl.’
Troy knew that. It went with the bicycle and the cut knee and that first embarrassing kiss.
She leaned over him, a hand behind his neck lifting him, the other peeling off his shirt to leave him naked as she was. She stretched herself full length, kissing him below the left ear. He felt her nipples brush his chest and the same old flame go roaring south to his cock. He had no idea where desire would ever find the energy.
62
When he awoke it was light and he was alone. He slipped on his trousers and went downstairs. The front door was locked. A note stood perched on the mantelpiece. It said simply ‘Soon’ and was signed ‘D’.
63
Shortly after lunch Wildeve telephoned.
‘Some American woman’s been calling for you. Won’t leave a name. It’s nothing I can handle?’
‘No. No it’s not. Is there anything else?’
‘Bugger all. I’m getting nowhere. For once I think I can honestly say your presence would not make a deal of difference. The Savoy was empty – at least empty of Waynes and Bracks. The doorman recognised him from that mugshot you got hold of. Said he stayed there a lot but he’s seen nothing of him since last Tuesday – which was the day we hauled in Diana.’
‘Onions?’
‘Around and about. He hasn’t asked about you yet, so I haven’t had to lie.’
Troy did not doubt that Onions would ask. Or that Jack would lie.
That evening he waited quietly for Brack, listening to a concert on the wireless – sunk into a pit of twilight, feeling the ache in his muscles slowly pass, and pushing occasionally at the red cloud that floated into vision. She did not come that night.
Nor did she the next.
The following morning he felt fitter and began to chafe at the bit. By mid-afternoon he had sat all he could and finding he had no further tolerance of the wireless and no concentration for reading, he put on his coat and wandered off past Seven Dials in the direction of Bloomsbury, with no particular destination in mind. He crossed High Holborn, opposite Staple Inn, where Chancery Lane with a poor sense of geometry fails to meet Gray’s Inn Road, and ambled on to the junction of Theobald’s Road and Clerkenwell Road. A street galleon hove into view, and he caught the number 65 tram, eastbound, rattling and sparking out towards Limehouse. Only when it passed Aldgate East Underground station and clattered out along the Commercial Road did the sense of where he was heading come to him. Alighting at the bottom of Jamaica Street he walked to Union Place, climbed the stairs and knocked on Bonham’s door. He could scrounge a cup of tea and catch a tram back the way he had come. There was an evens chance of Bonham being in. He wasn’t. Troy leant back against the door, suddenly tired. It had come on to rain the sudden drenching storms of spring. He shoved his hands into his pockets and prepared to wait it out. It might easily die down as suddenly as it had arisen. He felt his key-ring, nestling in the grit and dust, the debris of the bomb blast, that lurked unshakeable in the seam of his pocket – his house key was on it, so was Wolinski’s.
The flat smelt dry and dusty. The stale air of emptiness. Troy stood in the outer room, dark and heavy with the weight of books. He almost tiptoed past the rows of collected editions into the inner room. He sat on a chair in the middle, just where he had left it the last time when he had come to search Wolinski’s desk. His legs ached. He began to wonder if Kolankiewicz might be right in his fussy concern, and he pushed the red cloud over the horizon once again. The rain coursed down the window-pane, the afternoon greyed into premature evening, the light dropped away. He sat a long time staring through the dimness at the photographs covering the wall, that welter of Mittel-Europeana, so reminiscent of family albums his mother kept – the Troys’ Viennese phase, the girls as babes in arms, Rod as a toddler, a phase that preceded him and any thought of him. Troy was, as his mother teased throughout childhood, her little Englander. He stared at those decent, well-meaning faces with their decent, well-meaning expressions, lost now in the chaos which their pitifully decent, well-meaning society struggled to keep at bay. P√¢tisserie democracy. A chocolate cream finger in the dyke of Europe. There was just one space in the wall of faces, where the shot of Nikolai with Brand and von Ranke had hung. Troy’s eyes travelled down the wall from the blank patch to the floor. Something bright and white lay on the carpet, close by the skirting-board. He picked it up and sat down at once, his head spinning from bending so far. It was a single pearl ear-ring on a silver screw fastening, the sort worn by women without pierced ears. He laid it on the flat of his hand and stared at it. It had not been there the last time. Surely not? He was searching as thoroughly as he knew, he would not have missed it, small as it was. He closed his hand around it and looked up at the running streams of dirty water as they made their way across the window – and red came again, and red turned to purple, and purple turned to black and all he could see were those endless, repetitive ranks of Mittel-European faces etched on to his retina.
He sat an age in silence with no knowledge of how time passed. The front door opened and he heard feet in the other room. The feet came towards him and he heard a voice speak his name.
‘Who is it?’ he called back.
‘Don’t you know me? It’s me – Sydney Edelmann.’
‘What time is it?’
‘’Bout eight o’clock I should think. How long you been sitting there in the dark?’
Troy knew now it had been an age. Time had passed in monotonous stillness. A curious calm in a terrifying darkness.
‘About five hours. I daren’t mov
e.’
‘Daren’t move!’
He felt Edelmann’s hand upon his shoulder.
‘Daren’t move? Why, man, what’s the matter with you?’
Edelmann led Troy down the stairs to Bonham’s flat. He clung to the banister rail, finding it all but impossible to guess the spaces between steps, the number of steps and where the corner turned. He heard Edelmann bang on the door. Heard Bonham bellow ‘’
Old yer ‘orses’, and felt himself ushered into Bonham’s parlour with a flurry of hands and questions.
‘He can’t see,’ Edelmann said. ‘I found ’im upstairs, just sittin’ there. Blind as a bat!’
64
Edelmann thrust a cup of universal panacea into Troy’s hands – the near-rancid reek of hot milky tea almost made Troy retch.
‘You’re a bloody fool, aren’t you?’ Bonham was saying pointlessly. ‘You just won’t be told.’
Only a knock at the door stopped him from delivering a monologue in loco parentis. Bonham had dashed to the telephone box with a handful of pennies to call a doctor. He had arrived with surprising speed.
Troy heard the man bustle in, firing questions at Edelmann and Bonham as though Troy were deaf as well as blind. Troy sipped at the mess of tea, until he felt the man’s hands cup his cheekbones to tilt his face upwards, smelt a whiff of pipe tobacco off his clothes. The pencil beam of a surgical torch made a pinprick in his darkness.
‘Can you see any light?’
‘Yes. There’s a dot.’
‘You’ve been in the wars, Sergeant Troy. Bomb blast, I hear?’
‘Yes. I took quite a knock on the head.’
‘Any concussion?’
‘I was unconscious for a couple of days.’
‘What? And they let you out?’
Bonham had to have his say, ‘Discharged himself, didn’t he. Clever dick.’
The beam of light switched to his other eye, a microscopic train at the end of a long tunnel. Then the hands probed his skull, feeling the bumps and scars, the stitches Kolankiewicz had put in.
‘These are fresh. Only a matter of days. You’ve not had these in since the bomb.’
‘No. I was attacked last Friday. I got a bit of a kicking,’ Troy said almost apologetically.
Troy heard the man draw breath. More than a mite incredulous.
‘Have you ever considered selling insurance as a vocation, Sergeant? Your present line will kill you, particularly if you carry on as you are. You should be in hospital but I don’t suppose you’ll go. You’re lucky it’s only blindness. Luckier still that it’s only temporary. Lots of rest and you will probably make a full recovery. I shall bandage your eyes. For the next few days you will see nothing and your eyes will be forced to rest. Ignore my advice and you may never see again. Do you understand me? First those stitches must come out.’
He felt a twinge of pain as the doctor pulled the stiches, then efficient, gentle hands wrapped his head. Vinegar and brown paper, thought Troy.
‘Now,’ the doctor said, ‘the name of your chief, if you would be so kind.’
‘Eh?’ said Troy.
‘Your commander, your superintendent.’
Troy suspected the worst. Best-laid plans about to go awry.
‘Who are you?’ he asked.
‘Who am I? I’m the Divisional Police Surgeon, Mr Troy.’
Bonham rode with Troy in the taxi-cab back to St Martin’s Lane.
‘I didn’t think. He was just there. I didn’t think it mattered.’
‘It’s OK, George. You weren’t to know.’
‘I mean it got you looked at quick. He was only across the way. In Leman Street. It seemed natural to send for one of ours.’ Bonham paused for thought. ‘Maybe,’ he began, ‘maybe he won’t put in a report to the Yard.’
‘George, please!’ Troy said.
It took some effort convincing Bonham not to stay. Troy pressed home his assertion that he would be fine just left at home. What harm could he possibly come to in his own house? He knew it like the back of his hand. So Bonham left, and Troy fell over every object between the sitting room and the kitchen, and all but scalded himself making tea.
At his fifth attempt he got the gas fire lit and groped his way to the sofa. Later he must make an effort to find the wireless. Now he was almost exhausted and, wondering how he would ever endure it, he settled back into his darkness.
65
Into his darkness came.
The policeman.
‘Freddie. It’s me. Jack. Are you all right? It took for ever for you to answer the phone.’
‘I’ve been groping around for it in the dark. I banged my shins on the piano and damn near fell flat on my face.’
‘Of course. Sorry I wasn’t thinking. Freddie -’
He paused. Troy heard him drawing a deep breath. Preparatory to a gabble.
‘Onions was in your office when I got in this morning. You know the sort of thing. Perched next to the fire, puffing on a Woodbine. He asked for a full rundown. Everything from the day after Miller was shot. I’m afraid I didn’t have a lot of choice. Once that doctor had sent his report in . . . ’
‘You did the right thing, Jack. Don’t worry.’
‘He wasn’t angry or anything. It might have been preferable. I find his silences between questions a bit of a strain. I rather get the impression he’ll be over to see you as soon as he gets a moment. Oh, and your sister phoned. One or the other of them – they hardly ever say – I told her you were in Norfolk. Norfolk’s getting to be your Bunbury, isn’t it?’
Troy had need of a Bunbury. If there was one thing his life lacked it was a good, irrefutable Bunbury.
Troy waited. Heard the iron tread of Onions’s boots on the yard. The prolonged squeak of the door on its hinges.
‘Not very clever leaving the door unlocked.’
Troy sat facing in the direction of Onions’s voice. ‘It does save a lot of arsing about. It’s surprising how poorly one can know one’s own home.’
‘What did you expect?’
Troy heard the swish of Onions taking off his coat.
‘I could do with a cuppa. Stay where you are. I’ll do it.’
Onions banged around in the kitchen. Troy heard the soft pop of a gas ring going on and the plod of Onions returning to the sitting room, the creak as the sofa took his weight, the rasp of a match as he lit up another Woodbine, the first sweeping exhalation and the waft of smoke touched his nostrils.
‘I had a chat with that boy of yours. He’s a bright spark. Bright enough to know when the lying has to stop.’
‘If I’d told you you’d have suspended me. I’d have been off the case.’
‘Aye. For four or five days perhaps. Now you’re off it indefinitely.’
‘Until my eyes heal,’ Troy put in quickly.
‘And that’s indefinitely, isn’t it?’
Troy made no answer.
‘That surgeon from Stepney wouldn’t put a date to it when I asked him how long I had to do without you. The pity of it is, I could do with you right now.’
Troy was tempted to say sorry, but instinct told him that Onions was already off in a new direction. He had not come to offer sympathy or to accept an apology.
‘You’re valuable to me,’ Onions went on. ‘In fact you’re the best intuitive detective I’ve ever met.’
‘My intuition didn’t serve me too well this time.’
‘Oh, you’ve played the silly bugger – but that’s not the point. You took a case with only a scrap of evidence and you pushed it and pushed it and pushed it. You had bugger all to go on, but you identified the victim, you identified the murderer. Don’t belittle the achievement.’
‘We’re close.’
There was a long pause. Onions drew deeply on his gasper.
‘No. No. You’re not. That’s not what I meant. Tell me the truth, Freddie. Are you any further on than you were that day we went over to MI 5? Have you anything other than circumstantial evidence? Has anyone s
een hide nor hair of Wayne since he killed Miller?’
Troy said nothing.
‘You’re the best intuitive detective I’ve ever met,’ Onions said again. ‘I need you now. But I haven’t got you. I’ve got Gutteridge and Thomson.’
He paused again. Troy felt the soft contempt with which he spoke of Gutteridge and Thomson.
‘I’ve got two murders on my hands. One yesterday, one this morning,’ Onions said. ‘I could do with you right now.’
Troy resisted the ‘Sorry’ again.
‘Instead I’ve got Gutteridge and Thomson.’
‘You’ve taken them off my case?’
‘I’ve no choice. Even then they’re worse than bloody useless. The only reason they’re still on the Force is I can’t get anyone else. The only reason they’re not in the army is they’re too old. That’s my hard luck – two dozy buggers even the army didn’t want. Too old and too slow. Can’t say I didn’t see it coming. That’s why I kept you out of the forces.’