Black Out (Frederick Troy 1)

by Lawton, John

  ‘I didn’t even know you knew him.’

  ‘He used to come to the old man’s natter and nosh – as you used to put it – don’t you remember?’

  ‘No – I don’t. I could hardly forget him though, could I? Wonder where I was?’

  He rang off. Troy wondered. He had not seen hide nor hair of Driberg since that day in ’44 when he had been out to the coast to see Inspector Malnick. To judge from his journalism Driberg spent a lot of his time abroad. He knew from listening to Rod how well this went down with the Whips’ Office.

  At home in Goodwins Court – Troy sat at the piano. He had just discovered Thelonious Monk and was pootling through music that struck him as curiously attractive whilst totally alien. What, he asked, had Debussy bitten off when he first used ragtime in Children’s Corner? Then the phone rang. It was Driberg.

  ‘I need a word. Could you come over to my flat?’

  ‘You can’t come here?’

  ‘Not really. It’s private. It wouldn’t do to be seen visiting the home of a policeman.’

  ‘But it will do for a policeman to be seen visiting your home?’

  Driberg declined the bait and gave Troy an address in Knightsbridge. Troy said he’d be there in an hour. He hoped Driberg hadn’t had a run in with the police again. If he had, there was bugger all he could do about it.

  It was a cold December. Days and nights of unrelenting, bitter frost – made worse by a paucity of rations. Even bread, that grey mush, was rationed now. He drove to Knightsbridge wishing he had a car with a heater, wrapped in two overcoats and a balaclava helmet. A welcoming blast of heat greeted him as Driberg prised open the door and ushered him in. He had lost more hair at the temple, but what there was still rose up in ridges like corrugated cardboard, still gave him the look of a startled dog.

  ‘Very good of you, Troy,’ he said. ‘Very good indeed.’

  Driberg peeled back the layers of coats and Troy felt two stones lighter.

  ‘If this is private, I can take it it’s got nothing to do with my being a policeman?’ Troy ventured.

  Driberg opened the door from the lobby to the sitting room.

  ‘Did I say private? I meant delicate.’

  Troy knew that.

  A man sat with his back to him in a high armchair. All Troy could see was the top of his head. At the sound of their entry he did not get up, but hunched lower and leant forward. Driberg led off, striking out for the drinks and offering Troy a large Scotch. Troy walked slowly round to the fireplace to face the other guest. Curious how one can tell so much from the top of a thinning pate.

  ‘Neville?’ he said cautiously, a little incredulously.

  Pym glanced up from his glass, still clutching it two-handed. He was pale and looked as though he hadn’t slept in days. Time had not been kind to him since their last meeting at MI5 more than four years ago.

  ‘Hullo, Troy. Good of you to come so soon.’

  Driberg appeared next to him, warming his backside at the roaring fire, shoving a large Scotch into Troy’s hand.

  ‘You couldn’t call me yourself?’ Troy asked.

  ‘I wasn’t sure you’d take the call,’ said Pym. ‘We didn’t exactly meet under auspicious circumstances the last time, did we?’

  ‘I have the distinct impression this meeting will be no different.’

  ‘It’s a delicate matter,’ Driberg chipped in.

  ‘Isn’t it always?’

  ‘Won’t you sit down, Troy? I think it best for Pym to tell you in his own words.’

  Troy perched on the leather-topped club fender and sipped at the whisky, and decided to let Pym get on with it. Whatever it was it would not be private and he was almost certainly there in his professional capacity.

  Pym sat back. It took him a while to gather himself. Driberg stared off into infinity. Troy sampled a first-rate single malt.

  ‘I spent last night in jail,’ Pym blurted out suddenly.

  Troy nodded sagely and looked into his glass, trying to break eye contact.

  ‘I was arrested in the Holloway Road and taken to the police station . . . also in the Holloway Road and I . . . er . . . I . . . ’

  ‘Neville,’ Troy cut in sharply. ‘Please, just spit it out.’

  ‘Oh God,’ Pym groaned. He gulped at his whisky and began again, and the pained formality gave way at once to something more desperate.

  ‘I was in a lavatory in the Holloway Road. I suppose it was about half an hour after closing time. That’s usually the best time. The drunks have had their piss and rolled off home – you know damn well that anyone still hanging around a gents’ lavatory is after the same thing you are. There’s some very tasty rough trade in that particular bog – a fair bit of young stuff too – I go there quite often. Catch the Piccadilly up from the West End – cab back if I meet anyone I feel I could trust to take home. Last night was a good night – there were half a dozen of us – no one I really knew – we wanked each other off – a group job – you had your work cut out knowing what belonged to whom. Then it happened. This uniformed copper, big as a house, bursts in – “Right you are, you filthy bastards” – and they all ran for it.’

  Pym stopped. He was trembling and his voice was going fast.

  ‘Why didn’t you run?’ Troy asked.

  ‘I couldn’t. Nor could the boy I was with.’

  He stopped again, drained off the last of his Scotch. Driberg took the glass from him at once and returned with it almost full.

  ‘I was . . . I was on my knees giving the boy a gobble.’

  ‘Boy?’

  ‘I say boy – he looked sixteen. At least.’

  ‘So you got nicked?’

  ‘Yes,’ Pym croaked.

  ‘A constable?’

  ‘Sergeant – does it matter?’

  ‘A constable would make life easier. How old was he?’

  ‘About forty I suppose.’

  Troy didn’t fancy his chances of trying to talk sense to a career copper who was still in uniform at forty, had enough rank to know what was what, and would, beyond a shadow of a doubt, not take kindly to the intercession of a Detective Inspector ten years younger than he was.

  ‘He took us both to the local nick. I’ve no idea what became of the boy. They pulled me out at six o’clock this morning and charged me with gross indecency. I lied about my name – so they turned out my pockets and found my driving licence and a couple of letters. I told them I was a journalist. They didn’t question that.’

  ‘What do you do these days, Neville?’ Troy asked.

  ‘Good God, Troy, haven’t you grasped the point of all this? I’m still with MI5!’

  There was a sudden silence in which Troy could hear the clock tick and the hoarse rasp of Pym’s breathing.

  ‘You begin to see why I sent for you?’ said Driberg. ‘Neville came to me. I called you. I felt you might be . . . simpatico.’

  ‘Oh I see only too clearly – but what the hell do you think I can do about it?’

  ‘I’d be grateful for anything,’ Driberg said in a friendly tone.

  ‘I can’t have this come out,’ said Pym. ‘I’m finished if it gets out. I’d lose my clearance – they’d say I was wide open to blackmail – even if I beat the charge and walk out of court with an apology from the police I’d lose clearance and they’d have me out in a jiffy.’

  ‘Five could get this dropped just like that, far more easily than I could,’ said Troy. ‘Is there no one you can trust?’

  ‘That’s not the point, Troy. Who I might trust is irrelevant – there’s no one would trust a queer!’

  ‘What I was thinking,’ Driberg said gently, ‘is that if you could take the matter up – get Pym off with a caution perhaps – it might never emerge that he wasn’t a journalist – it need never reach the papers.’

  Troy looked from one to the other. For the life of him he couldn’t think why they had picked him – apart from the fact that they both knew him – why they should think he would be in any way
, as Driberg put it, simpatico. It remained, nevertheless, that he was.

  He took out his little black notebook and turned to a blank page.

  ‘What was this Sergeant’s name?’

  82

  ‘I’m telling you,’ he said with grotesque emphasis, ‘he had the lad’s cock in his mouth and he was sucking it!’

  ‘I don’t doubt it,’ said Troy.

  ‘I saw him with my own eyes! I pulled the bugger off with my own hands!’

  ‘Is the boy known to you?’

  ‘No – we’ve nothing on him.’

  ‘Did you keep him overnight?’

  ‘No, I took him out the back, and I thrashed the shit out of him.’

  Troy wondered what deal they had been able to reach with the boy. Let off in return for a statement against Pym?

  ‘How old was he?’

  ‘Sixteen. If he’d been any younger I’d’ve taken your mate out and thrashed the shit out of him too.’

  Pym had been lucky – lucky not to get a beating – although if he had it would have given Troy a better position from which to negotiate – lucky to have picked on a boy the right age, though he doubted that had mattered to Pym at the time.

  ‘He’s not my mate.’

  ‘Isn’t he? You’re a poof’s runner for queer bastards you don’t even know?’

  If Troy had had any illusions that rank would matter to this man, they vanished. He could not be reasoned with, cajoled, and Troy doubted very much whether he could be bullied.

  ‘I know why you’re ’ere,’ he went on. ‘I can hear it in your voice. You’ve got the same accent. He’s one of your own, isn’t he? What is he, an old mate from schooldays? Eton was it?’

  ‘Harrow,’ said Troy pointlessly.

  ‘And that puts you above the law, does it? A poncey education and you think there’s one law for the rich and one law for the rest of us? Is that it? Well sod it, Mr Troy, that’s not the way it’s going to be. I know you, Mr Troy – I shouldn’t think there’s a copper in the Met that doesn’t know you – you’re known as one of the best – time was everyone was talking about you – towards the end of the war you were the stuff of legend – there were more stories in circulation about you and the Tart in the Tub case than there were about Dr Crippen and the Edinburgh body-snatchers put together. You’re known, Mr Troy – you’re a character – but this is beneath you, and I’ll tell you to your face, you should have better things to do with your time than running errands for queers. He’s going down, Mr Troy, and that’s all there is to it.’

  83

  ‘Neville, it’s Troy. Not good news I’m afraid. The man won’t budge. If he were a constable I could consider going over his head, but no local Inspector is going to risk overruling one of his sergeants – the rift it would create in the nick would be ruinous.’

  ‘I see,’ Pym said in a breathy, exhausted way. ‘So it’s I who shall be ruined?’

  ‘We could try for the best brief.’

  ‘The best briefs are not likely to want to touch a case of this nature, are they? I thank you, Troy,’ an arch huffiness crept into his voice, ‘but I don’t think there’s much else we can do.’

  Pym rang off and Troy was left holding a dead line. The ‘we’ had been emphatic, cutting even. Troy did not think that he had deserved it.

  Days passed. Troy thought about the matter, but found it made him angry – and he pushed it to the back of his mind. Less than a week before Christmas Pym called him on his home number.

  ‘I don’t suppose you could come over to Albany?’ he said.

  ‘No, Neville, I don’t think I could.’

  ‘Please, Troy. It’s important.’ He paused. ‘Shall we say nine o’clock? It’s the last thing I shall ever ask of you.’

  Troy should have heard the warning.

  The door was off the latch. Pym was in the fireplace with his brains all over the wall. He had put the barrel of his service revolver to the roof of his mouth and pulled the trigger. A blood-spattered envelope with Troy’s name on it stood propped against the clock on the mantelpiece. Troy flicked a piece of grey matter off one of the circus-red chairs with the edge of the envelope and sat down to read the letter. It was dated 19 December 1948 and Pym had inserted the time, for good measure, as 8.35 p.m.

  Dear Troy,

  I take the easy way out – I trust you will not think it the coward’s way. I have posted letters to Driberg and to my father. If you could see that news of my death does not reach them before my letters do, I would be grateful.

  There is a little I can do for you in return – Wayne’s real name is John Baumgarner. He’s a Colonel in the Central Intelligence Agency – which is what they call the OSS now. They were jolly pissed off with him for letting that mad bitch walk around with a licence to kill, but really he was too important for them to let you have him. He’s under strict orders never to set foot in Britain again. At the moment he’s running the airlift in Berlin.

  Yours,

  Pym.

  84

  ‘I need you to get me on a flight to Berlin.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Rod – I have to go to Berlin.’

  ‘Are you mad? Stalin’s got the city sewn up like a camel’s arse!’

  ‘Why do you think I’m phoning you?’

  ‘Freddie – we’re airlifting every damn thing except tap water or they’d starve. Dammit, man, we’re even flying in coal!’

  ‘That’s why you have to do this for me. I can’t get a civil flight. You have to get me on an RAF flight.’

  ‘Official, is it?’ Rod asked.

  ‘Would I be asking if it weren’t?’ said Troy.

  ‘OK. OK. Leave it with me. I make no promises but I’ll see what I can do.’

  Troy put the telephone back in its cradle. Wildeve was staring at him. Tapping his teeth with a pencil and staring.

  ‘I’ve been thinking.’

  ‘I can see that.’

  ‘What jurisdiction do you think we have in Germany?’

  ‘I’ve a warrant. Signed by a British JP. Part of Germany’s British. Part of Berlin’s still British.’

  ‘Yes – but that’s subject to military law. Not civil. Besides, what are your chances of catching Wayne in the British sector?’

  ‘Bugger all I should think,’ snapped Troy.

  ‘Quite,’ said Wildeve. ‘In fact, while you’ve been busy with the coroner and chasing flights I had the whole thing legalled. Freddie, you can’t lay a finger on Wayne— ’

  ‘Baumgarner!’

  ‘Baumgarner,’ Wildeve went on. ‘At least not while he’s in Germany.’

  ‘I have to try, Jack. Can’t you see that?’

  ‘Indeed I can. I think you’ve been very lucky in ever picking up the scent again. Luckier still that Onions has decided to spend Christmas in Warrington, sampling the delights of black pudding and hot-pot.’

  ‘If I fail, he need never know. If I pull it off, then nothing succeeds like success.’

  ‘Quite,’ Wildeve said again. ‘I just think we need a little help as well as a lot of luck.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘I’ve a chum who’s just been assigned to liaise with Interpol. Let me see if I can come up with a name. What we need is someone on the Berlin Force. Someone with just that spark of imagination on which you and I have come to pride ourselves but which we know all too well is sadly lacking in your average man about the beat.’

  Wildeve grinned hugely. ‘Leave it with me.’

  85

  Rod came through for Troy. Found him a place on an RAF Douglas Dakota out of Brize Norton, bound for Gatow Airfield in Berlin, via Hannover, late in the afternoon of 22 December.

  Rod walked Troy out to the aeroplane, across the black tarmac. Lit only by the lights buried in the runways and swept by a bitterly cold wind, night on an airfield gave Troy the sense of Christmas as though the hundreds of lights were candles that miraculously refused to flicker with the wind. He felt fat and heavy wrapped i
n an RAF sheepskin flying jacket, on top of his own overcoat and jacket – a bizarre black Santa Claus waddling out to the waiting sleigh. The Dakota’s twin propeller engines were already turning over as Rod helped him into the vast cargo bay and sat him on one of the hard wooden benches that lined the fuselage. It was barely possible to hear him speak, but he seemed hell bent on trying.

  ‘It’ll be bloody cold once you get airborne.’

  ‘It is bloody cold! And we’re still on the ground!’

  ‘Don’t be an ass, Freddie, I mean cold like you’ve never imagined. I found the important thing was to keep the hands and the ears well covered. The pilot will ask you to put the helmet on just before take-off. It lets him talk to you, and it adds another layer.’

  ‘Why would he want to talk to me?’

  ‘It’s not a passenger flight, Freddie. He talks to his crew. Technically that includes you. All I’m saying is do as you’re told. By the way,’ Rod shouted, ‘this came for you. Phoned through to the CO’s office about ten minutes ago!’ He stuffed a small brown envelope into Troy’s hand. Troy tore it open. It read, ‘Dieter Franck. Inspector at the Uhlandstrasse Police Station. Brit. Sector. Speaks good English. Honest as the day is wotnot. Expecting you this p.m. Best. Jack.’

  A flight sergeant stuck his head in the door and saluted.

  ‘There’ll be a slight delay, sir. Another six or seven minutes.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Rod said. ‘You know, Freddie, it’s still second nature to expect to be saluted. I don’t suppose the habits of wartime will let go easily.’

  ‘I know. You told me. You had a good war. History was good to you,’ said Troy flatly.

  ‘And you didn’t.’

  ‘Doesn’t much matter one way or the other in my business, does it?’

  Rod weighed this up. The engines lowered their revs. Troy could hear himself think for the first time.

  ‘I used to think,’ Rod resumed, ’that you’d had a lousy one.’

  Troy said nothing. To shrug was pointless, it would be a gesture lost beneath the multiple layers that swathed him. He tried very hard to assume an expression of utter unresponsive blankness.