by Lawton, John
‘I only got in an hour ago.’
‘For Christ’s sake will you stop lying to me! I was there until twenty minutes ago. Where are you?’
‘I can’t tell you.’
‘Are you at Tite Street?’
‘No.’
‘You’re an ass, Freddie.’
‘Quite possibly. But this ass has found Wayne.’
The line was silent for a moment. Troy could almost hear Wildeve think.
‘I don’t have to ask how, do I?’
‘No, you don’t.’
‘But if you try to tell me this justifies . . .’
‘Jack, I’m not trying to justify anything. I’ve been an ass – you’re absolutely right! But right now Major Wayne is sleeping off a heavy night at the Savoy!’
‘I’ll put Thomson and Gutteridge on to it.’
‘Front and back?’
‘Of course. When can I expect you?’
‘A couple of hours. I need a shave and a change.’
‘What if Wayne makes a move?’
‘He won’t. There’s something special coming down.’
‘Coming down? What the hell does that . . .? Oh never mind. How do you know? Has she . . . ?’
‘I don’t need anyone to tell me, Jack. It’s his modus operandi. He works by night.’
‘Are you saying he’s come back just to do another?’
‘He’s come back to . . . ’ Troy searched for the words and could find only Tosca’s. ‘He’s on a mission.’
‘Mission? Mission? What kind of bloody jargon is that? Freddie, how do you know?’
‘I can’t tell you.’
‘Will you stop saying that!’
‘Jack, just meet me in the shooting range at half past two.’
Troy hung up. A mess of dusty stockings lay at his feet. The only other clear surface was the top of the dressing-table. He yanked on the cable and put the phone down next to her jewellery box. It was open. There in the lid was a single pearl ear-ring on a silver screw mounting.
73
Ex-Regimental Sergeant Major Peacock bore a passing resemblance to the late Lord Kitchener – passing in that a walrus moustache tends to make anyone look like the late Lord Kitchener. He clutched both lapels of his brown, stained warehouse coat and rubbed his thumbs gently up and down whilst looking appraisingly at Wildeve.
‘I don’t believe I’ve met yer boy,’ he said.
‘Detective Constable Wildeve,’ said Troy. ‘My number two.’
‘Bit young aren’t yer, lad?’
‘I’m—’ Wildeve began in a tone of schoolboy resentment, but Troy nudged him sharply into silence.
‘Mr Peacock.’
‘Mr Troy.’
‘A gun if you please.’
Peacock switched his gaze to Troy. Troy had no personal feelings about Peacock one way or the other, but the silent tutting infuriated him as symptomatic of a generation. The assumed air of gravity and the fraudulent pretence of judgement in situations that required only answer or action struck him as the manner in which old men concealed their hollowness. Old men – Peacock could hardly be more than fifty, but a dozen years as an RSM had left him indelibly marked with the importance of his own banality. He was, thought Troy, of the same mould as the old head gardener or the butler in his father’s household. Any question, however trivial, put by the boy Troy would be met with concealment, the implication that there were things known to men that were best not known by boys. Adolescence, adulthood even, had not initiated Troy into the mystery. His father, questioned, had ascribed it not to age but to the temperament of the English. Whatever the outcome of this prolonged and unnecessary pause, if, now or at any time in the next ten minutes, Peacock mentioned that he was off to see a man about a dog Troy felt sure he would hit him.
Peacock tugged at one end of the great moustache.
‘’Ow long ’as it bin, Mr Troy?’
‘Bin?’
‘Since you put in any time on the range?’
‘I’m not entering a clay-pigeon shoot. I simply feel the situation requires that I be armed. We have reason to—’
‘O’ course. O’ course. Matter of self-defence. You wouldn’t be ’ere if there wasn’t a bad ‘un out there somewhere with a shooter. Goes without sayin’. What I am sayin’ is can you ’andle it?’
Shit, shit, shit, thought Troy.
‘Why don’t you and I step over to the range. Just see how you’re shapin’ up. The boy can ’ave a go too. Long as ’e realises ’e don’t get a teddy bear if ’e wins.’
Peacock thought his own joke uproarious. He clattered off in his big brown boots in the direction of the range, chortling as he went. Troy and Wildeve followed.
‘I’ll kill the bastard,’ Wildeve whispered to Troy.
‘Not if I get him in my sights first,’ Troy replied.
Peacock approached the iron and wire contraption that wound the targets back and forth between the bench and the sandbags. He slipped in two fresh bull’s-eye targets and cranked them down to the end.
‘I thought we shot at human silhouettes?’ Wildeve said.
‘You been watchin’ too much George Raft. What d’you think we are, the FBI?’ Peacock replied.
With a pleasurable flourish he hoiked a huge bunch of keys from under his coat and opened the double doors of a large mahogany cupboard. Twenty to thirty hand-guns sat in a rack of neat wooden pockets, like wine bottles, with their handles facing out. Peacock reached in and pulled out a shiny, black automatic. He filled the clip from the drawer at the base of the cupboard – swift, practised movements, like a music-hall conjuror deceiving the eye – and handed the pistol to Troy. It felt heavy. It felt wrong.
‘Doesn’t feel right,’ he said feebly.
‘Different,’ Peacock replied. ‘Bound to feel different. Lighter. Better power-to-weight ratio.’
Better power-to-weight ratio. That was the most authoritative, genuine-sounding phrase Peacock had yet used.
‘Just doesn’t feel right,’ Troy protested.
‘Bang up to date it is. American. First we’ve ’ad in. Colt company. Point four five automatic. Stop an elephant that will.’
Troy looked at the gun and realised why it had felt wrong. It was the same model as the murder weapon. He laid it down on the bench, surprised at the power of superstition, but unwilling to challenge it.
‘What’s wrong with the old Webleys?’
‘Exackly. Old Webleys. You said it I didn’t.’
‘I’d be happier with what I know.’
‘Suit yourself. If you knew the trouble I had gettin’ the Colts you’d take it a bit more—’
‘I’ll try the Colt if I may,’ Wildeve put in.
Peacock paused again. Gave Wildeve the ten-second abridged version of his knowing appraisal.
‘Right you are, son. Game of you I will say.’
He passed the gun to Wildeve, pulled down a Webley .38 from the rack, held it flat on his left hand and began feeding cartridges into the chamber with his right. A spin of the chamber from the ball of his thumb and he handed the gun to Troy, butt first.
‘Mr Wildeve to the right. Mr Troy to the left. No funny business. No showin’ off. Fire at will.’
Wildeve’s arm bucked at the first recoil and he scored an outer. His second showed more control and took him to an inner, then he placed four bull’s-eyes with dazzling speed one after the other.
He grinned at Troy. Troy felt the weight of the Webley. The old bastard was right. He’d forgotten they weighed a ton. It felt like a cobbler’s last tied to his wrist. He extended his arm, shaking like a bough in a thunderstorm and tried aiming. That failed, he squeezed off a round in roughly the right direction, felt his arm almost wrench from its socket and heard a tongue-and-teeth-smacking disapproval from Peacock.
‘Nice one, Mr Troy. Right on the sandbag. You was out by more’n a yard.’
Troy let fly with the remaining five, and missed with every one.
Peacock reloaded
for them. His expression mellowed towards Wildeve. A little skill obviously impressed him. Peacock wound Wildeve’s target in and said that there was no point in changing Troy’s as it was ‘untouched by yuman ’and’. Troy considered the prospect of shooting Peacock instead of the target.
‘Mr Wildeve to the right. Mr Troy to the left. No funny business. No showin’ off. Fire at will,’ Peacock said in his standard way.
The telephone rang by his desk and he disappeared to deal with it. Wildeve and Troy exchanged glances as Troy raised his arm and tried to level the gun. He let it drop again. Wildeve did the same.
‘Freddie,’ he began in a tone that implied an impending onslaught of questions, ‘I don’t suppose you could tell me what’s going on? Because I think I’ve been bloody brilliant about not asking. You fobbed me off neatly when you were in hospital after the bomb in Holborn. Perhaps you were right to do that, but you do know what’s going on, and I’d feel a damn sight easier about what we’re doing if you’d tell me.’
‘It isn’t exactly simple.’
‘I didn’t think it would be.’
Troy glanced over his shoulder at Peacock, still busy with his phone call. He squeezed off a round. It thudded aimlessly into the sand.
‘I think there’s a race on to get to Germany’s boffins before the Russians do. Or before the RAF blasts them all to oblivion. I think that the Americans are using their overseas network and the Resistance in France and Germany to whisk away the brightest and the best. Only something went horribly wrong.’
He nodded at Wildeve, who sent a couple of rounds straight to the bull’s-eye. Troy fired a second, as wild as the first.
‘They killed the first man – von Ranke – and were clumsy enough to let the body get found. They then covered their tracks as best they could and started all over again. Less than a year later they’ve got boffin number two – Brand – and the same thing happens. This time they take precautions with the body. But for a mongrel dog in Stepney we’d never have known a thing about it.’
Wildeve fired again.
‘In particular I think Wayne is on to the German rocket programme. I know he was in Sweden in March. Coincidence or not, that was when a German prototype went madly off course and came down in Sweden. The Norwegian Resistance crossed over and got most of it. I think Wayne was sent to get bits of it back to England. And I think that’s why Miller’s diary had so many blanks in it.’
‘How on earth do you know this?’
‘Can’t tell you. But take it as gospel. Nikolai confirmed my source. I spent most of yesterday with him. He has a chunk of this Jerry rocket in the bottom drawer of his desk.’
‘It’s like something out of Things to Come.’
‘Nikolai reckons it’s something like a flying cigar. Massive warhead, and, worse still, silent.’
‘Silent? How the hell can it be silent?’
‘It flies faster than the speed of sound. We won’t know they’re coming till they’ve hit. Nikolai even named the damn thing – the Jerries call it a Vergeltungswaffen – means vengeance.’
‘Oh God,’ said Wildeve. ‘Oh God,’ he said again. ‘I hate all this spook stuff. Give me plain old-fashioned murder.’
‘It’s still murder, Jack, for all its new-fangled elaboration.’
‘You know there’s one thing that doesn’t fit. I mean, Wayne’s terribly important, isn’t he? And we’re sticking our noses in and upsetting everybody, aren’t we?’
‘Like I said. It’s still murder.’
‘Quite. Coppers all. No argument. But it . . . well, dammit, Freddie, it doesn’t gel does it?’
‘I don’t follow.’
‘He’s so important our top brass are prepared to cover his tracks. That I can understand. What I don’t understand is why he had to leave any.’
‘They ran. They did a bunk. First von Ranke, then Brand. They were both Communists. Very grateful to be rescued, but not at all willing to be virtual prisoners of Uncle Sam and capitalism. They ran to the one man they knew – Peter Wolinski. But after von Ranke the Americans were ready for Brand, and for Wolinski, and they killed them both.’
‘I know. I’d worked that out for myself. That’s what doesn’t fit. Why kill them? It was excessive. It wasn’t necessary. And if Wayne’s as important as you say why take the risk of attracting the attention of the Met? It doesn’t fit. The risks don’t add up. There’s something missing. Something we don’t yet know about.’
‘Excessive.’ Troy played with the word somewhere between question and meditation.
‘Three men shot to death, one of them chopped into little pieces. Don’t you think it’s excessive?’
Wildeve emptied the remainder of the clip into the target, still looking at Troy. It made no difference to his aim. The echo hung a moment and died. There was a sudden silence as the drone of Peacock’s voice in the background ceased with a Bakelite clunk. Slowly Troy fired off his last four shots, trying his pathetic best. Wildeve had hit all six into the centre. So close the six shots scarcely made more than a single hole. Troy had missed with the first four, scored an outer with the fifth and an inner with the sixth. The temptation to smile with small satisfaction was nipped in the bud as the tongue-on-teeth tutting began again and the scrape of the wires on their iron pulleys cut through the air. Peacock clutched both targets, looking pointlessly from one to the other as though any comparison were necessary or other than obvious.
‘’Scuse my French, Mr Troy, but you can’t hit the fuckin’ side of a barn door now can yer?’
Troy said nothing.
‘I don’t think God intended people to be keg-handed. You’re all dreadful shots, the lot of you. I’d like it if you’d put some time in, but I do suppose that if I was to ask you’d tell me crime don’t wait, so what I will say is . . . this chummy you reckon is out there, well he’d better not be armed, or if ’e is I pray to God ’e’s a worse shot than you.’
‘Thanks,’ said Troy without inflection. ‘I’ll take the Webley if I may. Jack?’
‘I’m happy with the Colt.’
‘Rightie-ho. Just the matter of yer chitty.’
Troy pulled out the chit from his pocket, folded double. Peacock bustled back to his desk and unfolded it under the lamp.
‘Bit scrawled,’ he said after some scrutiny of the signature. ‘In a tearing ’urry was ’e?’
Troy said nothing.
‘I’ll keep the guns out ready like, but if you wouldn’t mind askin’ Mr Onions to sign again.’
He handed the chit back to Troy. Troy said nothing. Wildeve snatched the chit from his hand.
‘No problem,’ he said, ‘I’ll do it in a jiffy. It’s only three o’clock. I bet he’s still in his office.’
Wildeve took a step towards the stairs. Troy snatched the chit back.
‘No,’ he said. ‘It’s all right, I’ll do it.’
Troy and Peacock looked at each other. Peacock gave in first and looked at the top of his desk. Troy started up the staircase. Wildeve followed.
‘Honestly, Freddie,’ he was saying, ‘it’s no trouble. Why don’t you stay here and get in some more—?’
He reached for the chit. Troy screwed it up and shoved it in his coat pocket. They reached the ground floor.
‘Oh Lord,’ said Wildeve, ‘I am an ass sometimes.’
‘Indeed you are, Jack. I know it’s a forgery. Peacock knows it’s a forgery. Peacock knows I know he knows. And let that be all.’
‘Are you in the habit of forging the Superintendent’s signature?’ Wildeve asked.
‘Yes. When I think he won’t sign. It’s simply that on this occasion I made a hash of it.’
74
Four hours later Troy met an acned youth he referred to as Herbert, which concealed his customary nom de guerre of Danny the Deserter, in a café in Old Compton Street, and on the promise of twenty pounds at some future date and his silent assent to ‘you owe me one’, purchased a small Italian-made .22-calibre revolver, from which all iden
tifying numbers had been removed with a steel rasp.
Troy shoved the gun in the left-hand pocket of his overcoat, stepped into the street and turned up his collar against the slow drizzle that was beginning to fill the evening sky – the summer promise of warm rain.
It was still not quite dusk – an endless evening of June – when he and Wildeve relieved Thomson on the Embankment. The look of joy on Thomson’s face turned sour when Troy told him to join Gutteridge outside the Strand entrance. They watched him out of sight before Wildeve spoke.
‘They call us the tearaway toffs, you know.’
‘I’ll tear him to pieces if he lets Wayne slip out without telling us.’
‘You know, I’ve been thinking.’
Troy was staring up at the window of Brack’s apartment. The rose-coloured light, the flicker of someone passing between the light and the window. The surge in his blood – the rift between wanting to see her appear at the window and the need to see Wayne, to know he was there, within reach.
‘A mission you called it . . . ’
‘Not my choice of words,’ said Troy, and almost bit off his tongue – but Wildeve didn’t seem to notice the meaning.
‘Freddie, are you seriously going to let Wayne run?’
Nothing moved on the third floor back. Troy looked at Wildeve.
‘I don’t see what other choice I have.’
‘It’s one hell of a risk.’
Troy said nothing.
‘He’ll be armed. We won’t.’
Troy wrapped his hand around the butt of the little silver revolver and thought better of mentioning it to Wildeve.
75
An hour later it was almost dark. From beneath the trees of Victoria Embankment Gardens that put them in shadow, Troy looked at the sky, asking himself whether the fragment of moon would be enough to follow Wayne by. It peeped intermittently from between the mass of grey cloud that spotted them gently with rain. He drew his gaze round from the cloud to the building and down the fa√ßade, past the third-floor window to the glass porch. Wayne emerged from the entrance of the hotel, and hesitated on the threshold. He was clutching a mackintosh and a trilby hat, and he too was looking at the sky. He stuck the trilby on his head, yanked at the brim and made a great show of unfurling his mac, chatting amiably to the doorman as he did so. He flung on the mac, fashionably twisting the belt around his waist and not bothering with any of the buttons. His hands dived into his pockets, brought out a packet of cigarettes and a book of matches, cupped around his lips and lit up. In the brief flare of the flame Troy could see his face quite clearly. It was, he realised, only the third time he had had such a clear view of his quarry, yet the features had etched themselves into memory weeks ago – the softness of the overripe upper lip, the watery blue of his eyes, which even now seemed to be smiling as they had smiled at him long ago in Tosca’s office. It was a smile of satisfaction. Troy felt provoked by it. It could mean so many things. Wayne shook out the match with a vigorous wave of his hand and looked once more at the sky.