Riptide

by Lawton, John

  ‘O’ course this time last year there was rooms going begging. Nobody wanted ’em. Everybody’d packed their kiddies off to the country. But we lost so many houses since the Blitz started that a good room’s become hard to find again. Mr Bell – he lodged at number thirty-eight with Mrs Wisby. Got bombed out. We took him in when old Mr Trewin went to live with his daughter in Weston-super-Mare . . .’

  Cal stopped listening. Stilton had lit up his pipe and appeared to be in a huddle with his daughter Kitty. Cal guessed from the intent look on their faces that they were discussing work. He could hear nothing in the smothering cloud of music and laughter of what they were saying, but when Stilton looked right at him he saw his chance and took it.

  ‘I think I should go now, Walter. It’s been a long day.’

  Stilton got up, tapped out his pipe on the side of the fireplace.

  ‘Then I’ll run you back.’

  ‘No. It’s OK. I’ll get a cab.’

  ‘Not in this neck o’ the woods you won’t. Like I said, I’ll run you up West.’

  Kitty was looking at Cal – still perched on the edge of her father’s armchair, one arm stretched out along the back, one leg swinging gently.

  ‘Don’t worry, Dad. I can give Mr Cormack a lift. No bother,’ she said.

  Stilton protested, ‘He doesn’t want to ride –’

  She cut him short. ‘Dad, I’m going home to Covent Garden. It’s hardly out of my way, is it?’

  Then she turned to Cal.

  ‘Up West? What hotel you in? Claridge’s? All the Yanks is in Claridge’s.’

  Only when she reached down a black motorcycle helmet from the hallstand did Cal realise the exactitude of the word ‘ride’. But he was trapped now, in the web of his own sense of ‘manners’. He said his goodbyes – thanked the Stiltons for their hospitality and followed Kitty into the night. A large Ariel motorcycle – 500cc at least – was leaning on its stand at the kerb. Kitty hitched up her skirt.

  ‘Let me kick ’er up, then you hop on behind. You ever ridden pillion?’

  His ‘no’ was drowned out as she leapt bodily off the ground to land on the kickstart, and the bike fired up.

  ‘You put yer arms ’round me waist! You got that?’

  Cal did as he was told, stretched a leg over the pillion seat and slid on behind her, wondering, as she yelled ‘tighter’, if this was as dangerous a venture as she seemed to think it was.

  Kitty had none of her father’s sense of caution. It was now pitch dark, but she throttled up the motorbike and roared through the City of London at sixty miles an hour. Past the Bank of England, over Holborn Viaduct, to streak along Oxford Street before zig-zagging across Hanover Square to Claridge’s.

  When she finally stopped Cal’s legs were shaking, his fingers were numb, and he felt his hair must be standing on end like Elsa Lanchester’s in The Bride of Frankenstein.

  He hadn’t a clue what to say to this woman. Southern manners took over, he offered her a frozen hand and said, ‘It’s been a pleasure.’

  ‘I do like a feller wot can talk posh,’ she said, and had to grin before he realised she was taking the mickey.

  ‘You and my dad’ll be working together then?’

  ‘I guess we will.’

  ‘Then we could be havin’ a lot more “pleasure”.’

  She kicked the bike back to life. Cal headed for the door, the elevator and bed.

  He flicked on the bathroom light and pulled the door three-quarters shut so that a sliver of light cut across the bedroom carpet. Just enough light to see what he was doing. If the Germans could spot that maybe they’d earn the shot. He drew back the curtains onto a moonless, cloudy night. Threw off his jacket, loosened his tie and wished half-heartedly for a bottle of bourbon. It had been another day in which he had got nowhere. Some part of him wished for the spectacular distraction of an air raid, and the part of him that furnished guilt for all occasions stepped on this as though upon a cigarette butt tossed into the gutter.

  There came a gentle tapping on his door, and when he opened it there stood Kitty Stilton, helmet in one hand, a large white envelope in the other.

  ‘Dispatch for Captain Cormack,’ she said and grinned.

  ‘Is that what you told them downstairs?’

  ‘Yeah. Actually it’s yesterday’s Evening News stuffed inside an old envelope. But Claridge’s ain’t the sort of hotel where they let a man stroll in with a strange woman.’

  ‘Even one in uniform?’

  ‘I might not always be in uniform. Now – you goin’ to ask me in, or do I have to stand here all night?’

  Cal swung back the door. Closed it behind her. She dropped the envelope and helmet on an armchair, stood in the window for a second, looking out as he had done.

  ‘It’s a bad habit,’ he tried to explain.

  She turned, her face entirely in the shadows – visible only from the buttons on her tunic, downwards.

  ‘Wot is?’

  ‘Looking out for the planes. Expecting to see them. Wanting to see them.’

  ‘Oh. We all do that. If you see ’em you’re torn between the thrill and the knowledge that some poor sod’s copping it, and if you don’t you think Hitler’s saving it all up for the big one.’

  ‘So I’ve heard.’

  Kitty picked at the buttons of her uniform. Sloughed off the tunic, scraped off her lace-up shoes, heel to toe.

  ‘I was wonderin’,’ she said, ‘if you fancied a bit?’

  ‘A bit?’ he said, not understanding.

  ‘Well. To be honest, I was wonderin’ if you fancied the lot.’

  A zipper slid at one hip and the blue skirt pooled at her feet. She stepped lightly across the floor in stockinged feet and a slip. Locked her hands behind his neck. Even barefoot, she was only a couple of inches shorter than he – and just a couple of inches away.

  ‘The lot?’ he said, understanding perfectly.

  ‘The works,’ she said, and smooched him.

  § 25

  In the morning Cal woke early. He lay in bed, Kitty asleep, one arm stretched across his chest, red head buried in the sheets, and wondered again about the famous English reserve. After the third bout, when he had begun to think her inexhaustible, he had put the question to her.

  ‘What happened to the famous English reserve?’

  And Kitty had answered, ‘Don’t you know there’s a war on?’

  But then, he had learnt in less than a week that that was pretty much their answer to everything.

  The telephone next to the bed rang. Cal slid from under Kitty’s arm and picked it up.

  ‘Captain Cormack? Chief Inspector Stilton in the foyer for you, sir.’

  Cal looked at Kitty. Looked at his watch. Good God, it was only seven thirty. Did the man never sleep?

  ‘I’ll be down in ten minutes,’ he said.

  ‘Kitty, Kitty.’

  He shook her.

  ‘Kitty, wake up. For Christ’s sake, wake up.’

  She opened her eyes, the lids fluttering blearily.

  ‘Wossatime?’

  ‘It’s seven thirty.’

  ‘Zatall? I’m not on till noon.’

  She pulled a pillow over her head. Cal snatched it away.

  ‘Your father’s on now!’

  ‘Wot?’

  ‘He’s in the lobby right now.’

  She sat upright, hands flat on the mattress, breasts swaying.

  ‘He’s never coming up?’

  ‘No – but I’ve got to go down.’

  ‘Fine – bung out the “do not disturb” and I’ll get some kip.’

  She took back her pillow, pulled up the sheets and ignored him.

  Cal took the lift down to the lobby, showered, shaved and dressed in less than seven minutes, rubbing at his chin and knowing he looked about as shaved as a singed pig. He wondered about the Stilton sense of ‘manners’ – a word so potent both Stilton and his wife had used it as a one-word reprimand last night – the cockney equivalent of �
��good form’? What was good form when greeting a man whose daughter you’d just spent a long night fucking? What if sex inscribed itself on your forehead like the mark of Cain? From the open lift doors he could see Stilton at one of the tables, a large map spread out in front of him. On either side of the Atlantic, the moment had only one clearly good form – deceit. Lie and hope nothing showed.

  Stilton was eating – toast and jam – a cup of tea stuck on top of the map. A young woman sitting opposite him – glasses, hair up, a pleasing smile and intense eyes.

  ‘Hope you don’t mind,’ Stilton said. ‘We ordered breakfast on your room number.’

  ‘That’s fine. I hardly ever eat breakfast.’

  ‘Nor me,’ said the woman.

  ‘I was forgetting meself. Captain Cormack, Miss Payne. Our sketch artist.’

  ‘Sketch artist?’

  ‘We don’t have a photo of our man. We can’t go around London expecting to find him on a description, now can we?’

  Cal sat down in the third chair. A waitress asked him if he wanted anything and he asked for black coffee. He brushed away the mark of Cain and waited for Stilton to explain.

  ‘It’s dead easy,’ he began. ‘You tell Miss Payne what Stahl looks like and she’ll draw him.’

  Instinctively, Cal looked around. He’d never get used to this – this public airing of things and names he’d learnt to see as secrets. Perhaps it wasn’t just Stilton, perhaps it was the British? The habitual cry of ‘Don’t you know there’s a war on?’ was a necessity – most of them seemed to forget so readily. Perhaps it was all of them? Miss Payne hadn’t batted an eyelid, just sipped at her tea.

  ‘How long will this take?’

  Miss Payne answered, ‘About two hours.’

  Stilton set down his cup, wiped his lips on the back of his hand, stuffed the crumpled map into his macintosh pocket and got up.

  ‘I’ll drop by about eleven.’

  That was more like three hours.

  ‘You mean you’re going without me?’

  ‘Got my Czech bloke to find, haven’t I?’

  ‘Walter?’

  Cal followed him to the door. Caught up with him in a few strides and buttonholed him.

  ‘Walter. I didn’t come all this way to sit by while you chase –’

  He couldn’t say it. It went against all his training to utter Stahl’s name out loud.

  ‘Walter, we have to do this together.’

  ‘Aye, lad. And we will. We’ll get stuck in. We will. Straight after lunch. We’ll get right on it. But we do need that sketch.’

  He clapped Cal on one shoulder with the flat of his hand – an avuncular brush-off.

  ‘Wot larx, eh?’

  Wot larx? What was the man talking about?

  He went back to the table. A silver pot of coffee had been set out for him. Miss Payne had her sketch pad propped against the table. A row of sharp pencils. A vicious looking penknife. A huge, putty-coloured india rubber eraser. She smiled at him. A silent ‘ready-when-you-are’. Cal sighed a silent sigh. Poured himself a coffee. Miss Payne was following the movements of his hands, like a cat at a tennis match.

  ‘Is anything wrong?’ Cal asked.

  ‘I don’t suppose your coffee would run to two, would it? I’m not really a tea sort of person.’

  ‘Of course,’ he said, and she slopped her tea into a handy aspidistra and stuck out her cup.

  ‘Walter’s a tea man. Could drink it all day, I’ve no doubt. But I do so miss a good cup of coffee. And that really does look like a good cup of coffee.’

  She sipped and sighed. A look of real pleasure on her face.

  ‘Why didn’t you just order coffee?’

  ‘Reserved,’ she said, looking at him across the top of her cup.

  ‘Reserved for whom?’

  ‘For Americans.’

  ‘For Americans?’

  ‘Coffee isn’t actually on the ration. After all, most English people don’t care for it, anyway. And generally one can have as much as one wants. But just lately it sort of comes and goes. A bit of a bean famine. Especially since Jerry flattened the coffee stores in Old Compton Street on Sunday morning. One hears rumours – there’s coffee to be had in Barnsley or Bakewell or Banff, the sort of places one wouldn’t go to more than once in a lifetime if at all. Quite why is baffling – I mean, why Barnsley? Why not Highgate or Chelsea? When it last got short, about three weeks ago, your embassy took to supplying coffee beans to those hotels that billet embassy staff. A bit goes to the Savoy, but most of it comes here. Officers only, of course. Those of us that can’t swallow the taste of dandelion and roast barley – what the Ministry of Food laughingly calls ersatz coffee

  – are terribly envious of life here. I have a girlfriend who’s hung around here since the end of April trying out every accent from Mae West to Vivien Leigh in Gone With the Wind. Never works. I almost got arrested. I tried to do Marlene Dietrich in Destry Rides Again – forgot she was German, you see. When I called her “dollink” the waitress called the police.’

  ‘But you are the police.’

  ‘Strictly for the duration, dollink. No Season after all, and one must do one’s bit.’

  Cal sipped guiltily at his own cup, then set it down and pushed the pot across the table to her.

  ‘Help yourself,’ he said.

  ‘Thanks awfully. You’re a brick. Now shall we make a start?’

  ‘How, exactly?’

  ‘Just describe the chap to me, that’s all.’

  Cal tried to think of words that would convey Wolfgang Stahl to the ears and hands of a woman who’d never seen him and never, until now, had to imagine him. What Stahl looked like had never mattered to him. What Stahl was had been the axis of his work for two years.

  ‘Stuck?’ Miss Payne asked.

  ‘A little,’ Cal said.

  ‘Why not . . . why not think of your chap as a type? Tell me what type you’d sort of put him into.’

  ‘Sort of?’

  ‘You know . . . roughly.’

  ‘He’s an Aryan.’

  ‘Ah, one of those, eh? Odd when you think about it. I mean. How did they arrive at blue-eyed blonds as a racial type? Hitler’s short and dark and looks like Charlie Chaplin. Goebbels is short and ugly and looks like a rat. And as for Goering – well is that what Billy Bunter grew up to be?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Never mind. I’m rambling. Aryan it is. Look, why don’t you sit where Stinker sat, so you can see what I draw. We’ll get on a lot better that way.’

  Cal moved around the table. Pulled the chair closer to look over her right shoulder as she worked, caught the waft of her perfume, watched her hands fly across the paper as he talked.

  Two hours later Miss Payne had worked her way through twenty or more pages, and a version of Stahl had appeared on the pad. She’d had to draw the scar above the left eybrow half a dozen times before Cal saw Stahl come to life. She’d taken a coloured pencil and added a dash of blue to the eyes, and then, when Cal had said ‘Too bright’, rubbed a little charcoal in with the tip of her pinky finger. It was Stahl. Not a hard face, but a face that had rendered itself hard. Not a face so much as mask, he thought.

  Miss Payne was holding the sketch at arm’s length and squinting at it framed against the bank of elevators when Cal saw the doors open and Kitty emerge, looking clean and fresh and vital – the opposite of the blanket bed-beast he’d left a few hours ago. She waved – a cheery smile – a hammy wink of the eye. Good God, what was she thinking of? Then he caught sight of Miss Payne, waving back and smiling.

  ‘Old Stinker’s daughter,’ she said. ‘Quite a character. Rules weren’t made for our Kitty. Now, is this the bloke or isn’t it? I may not be Picasso – but then, if I was, I suppose no one would ever recognise him with his nose under his armpit. Any chance of another pot of coffee?’

  § 26

  Came a lull in the day. A message on his desk told him to collect a bloodstained dress and a shoe from Forensic
s. They could just as easily send them, but Troy saw an opportunity to indulge a copper’s nosiness. He drove out to Hendon, to the Metropolitan Police Laboratory, in search of Ladislaw Konradovitch Kolankiewicz, the Polish beast, one of the lab’s senior pathologists – a protégéof Sir Bernard Spilsbury, an exile of indeterminate age, extraordinary ugliness and foul, fractured English that Troy had long ago come to regard as a form of colloquial poetry.

  He was scrubbing up. Hairy arms sluiced under the tap. A corpse under a sheet on the slab. A young woman in white perched on a high stool. Flipping through a shorthand notebook and reading bits back to Kolankiewicz.

  ‘Displacement of first three vertebrae, resulting in severance of spinal column from . . . brain stem . . . would appear to be result of . . . I’m sorry, I can’t read my own writing.’

  Kolankiewicz elbowed the taps, turned round to argue and noticed Troy.

  ‘Ah, smartyarse. What brings the Plattfusswunderkind to my lair?’

  ‘Nothing much,’ said Troy. ‘Just a hunch.’

  ‘Ah! Copper’s hunch. That and three ha’pence would just about buy me cup of tea. Now, pretty boy, since you were last here we have a new addition to death’s family. Mrs Pakenham, my lab assistant. She joined us in the New Year and is now learning shorthand – the hard way – as the War Office saw fit to call up my stenographer.’

  The young woman stopped reading her notes and scratching her head with the pencil.

  ‘Sergeant Troy,’ said Kolankiewicz. ‘Brighter than your average flatfoot, but still total pain in arse.’

  This was mild. Kolankiewicz was minding his manners. The woman must be good. It could not last. He relished the English language with all the fervour of a convert. It held no traps and no taboos as far as Kolankiewicz was concerned. ‘Fuck’ was never far from his lips at the worst of times, and those were all the times he and Troy had had between them.

  The young woman looked up. The merest flicker of a smile. A cut-glass English voice.

  ‘Anna,’ she said. ‘Anna Pakenham.’