Riptide

by Lawton, John

  ‘Well, if it isn’t Mr Potts,’ said Stilton.

  The blind man spoke to his minder, a surprisingly cultured voice, ‘I know that step better than I know that voice. The heavy tread of Old Bill. I take it the constabulary are in tonight, Leckie?’

  ‘It’s me, Walter Stilton. I just wanted a quick word.’

  ‘Always at your service sir,’ Potts answered. ‘Anything for the Met, Chief Inspector.’

  Walter set the two pictures on the table, ‘I’m looking for two men. One or both of ’em might have been in on Monday.’

  Cal whispered. ‘Walter, this guy is blind!’

  ‘Trust me,’ Stilton whispered back.

  The man sitting next to Potts was his logical oppostite. A tiny man, his shoulders only slightly higher than the table, his eyes wide and bright, a mass of red hair spiralling off in all directions. Now, he whispered to Potts.

  ‘No, Mr Stilton. Leckie says we have not seen them.’

  ‘Monday. It’s Monday I was asking about.’

  Leckie whispered again.

  ‘We were here Monday but we don’t remember. But Leckie says we know a man who might.’

  Another whisper.

  ‘Hudge,’ said Potts. ‘Hudge was in Monday. We are certain of that. Leckie has reminded us. We distinctly heard his lopsided shuffle. And then we heard his cough. No two men cough alike. Did you know that, Mr Stilton?’

  ‘A useful tip, I’m sure. About what time?’

  ‘Nine. It was nine, wasn’t it Leckie? And it was busy.’

  ‘Did Leckie see who Hudge was with?’ Another whisper.

  ‘We think he was alone and . . .’

  One more whisper.

  ‘. . . and we think it’s your round. A pint for Leckie and a large malt for yours truly, Chief Inspector.’

  Stilton grumbled, bought them each a drink, scribbled in his little black notebook and left, looking to Cal quite pleased with himself.

  ‘Hudge?’ Cal said, when they hit the street.

  ‘My Czech nark. I do like it when two bits meet in the middle.’

  ‘What’s a nark?’

  ‘A grass – a stool-pigeon. Needless to say, nobody else is sure of anything. Some thought they recognised ’em, nobody was certain. And nobody would say they saw ’em together. That lot might be dozy, they might even be lying to us, but Hudge, he’s in it for a living. If there was something going on in there on Monday he’ll have seen it. He’s a pro – one of me regulars, you might say.’

  ‘Then surely you know where he lives?’

  ‘I did. I went round there today before you were up. Nowt but rubble. Must have caught a packet last Saturday. Only one thing I know for sure, he was still alive on Monday.’

  ‘And there’s been no raid since?’

  Stilton nodded.

  ‘So where do we go from here?’

  ‘The shelters. We do the shelters tonight.’

  He looked at his watch. ‘It’s half past six. Meet me at the Yard at ten, and we’ll do the rounds.’

  ‘The rounds?’

  ‘Aye. Back East. We’ll do the Stepney shelters. Bound to be in one of ’em.’

  § 31

  Cal flopped onto the bed, eased the top button of his pants. He wished he could sleep. Stilton had given him the best part of two and a half hours. Maybe he could sleep. He closed his eyes. It wasn’t going to work. He thought about calling room service. A shot of spirits. That could do the trick. Then the phone rang.

  ‘Calvin? It’s me. Kitty.’

  ‘Hello Kitty.’

  ‘Wossup? You sound flat as my Aunt Flo’s Yorkshire pudding.’

  ‘I’m lying down. Your old man kind of ran me ragged today.’

  This was a lie. It was not the day or the man that had worn him out, but the night and the daughter.

  ‘I could soon fix that. I get off at nine. I could be over there in a flash.’

  ‘Kitty, I don’t know how to say this, so maybe I should just say it as it comes. I know there’s a war on, and I figure the war does strange things to the way people behave. Men and women. But before we leap into bed again, don’t you think we should talk?’

  ‘Woss to talk about?’

  ‘I don’t know. That’s just the point. I don’t know you and you don’t know me. We met yesterday and we went straight to bed!’

  ‘No we didn’t. We had dinner with me mum and dad first!’

  ‘That’s hardly getting to know one another. Kitty, I just think we should try to get to know one another. I think we should talk.’

  ‘Don’t you like it with me, then?’

  ‘It’s not a matter of like or not like. It’s a matter of what I’m used to. You’re rewriting the rules. That takes some grasping. Let’s meet and let’s talk, as soon as we both have the time.’

  ‘Like I said, I get off at nine.’

  ‘And I have to meet with your father at ten.’

  ‘Great. That’s bags o’ time. I’ll see you in the Salisbury at quarter past nine. We can have a drink and a natter.’

  This wasn’t what he meant. He wished he could tell her so.

  ‘The Salisbury?’

  ‘A pub.’

  ‘Another one? I thought your father had already dragged me through every pub in London. Good God, how many are there?’

  ‘Thousands, but this particular one’s in St Martin’s Lane, on the right as you go down. See you there. Quarter past nine. OK?’

  ‘Kitty, I’m kind of pubbed out.’

  ‘Yeah – but just for me, eh?’

  He felt he couldn’t win this one. His idea was to talk, to discuss, for want of a better word, the protocol of their relationship. Her idea was to prop up a bar and chat to him for half an hour.

  ‘I’ll be there.’

  He listened to the dial tone as she rang off. Lay back on the pillow. He wanted to sleep. He wanted Kitty. He wanted Kitty and everything she had on offer. Why the guilt? What bendable but unbreakable moral imperative had his childhood seared into his character?

  § 32

  Just over two hours later, Troy pushed open the door to the Saloon bar of the Salisbury. It was the nearest public house to his house, a minute’s walk away from the tiny Georgian terrace he had in Goodwin’s Court, on the opposite side of St Martin’s Lane. He was looking for Charlie – his oldest friend, they’d met on their first day at an English public school they had both loathed – and they’d stuck together ever since. About the time Troy had joined the Metropolitan Police Force, Charlie had come down from Cambridge with a third in Arabic and had joined the Irish Guards. For the first few years Charlie had shown up in uniform more often than not. Now he was a secret agent, of what precise variety he had never said and Troy had never asked, he wore civvies. Being a spook suited him. He looked like a ladykiller in or out of uniform – well over six foot, a mop of blond curls, dazzling blue eyes – and whilst it was a truism of war that a uniform attracted women like moths to a candle, Troy had never once seen Charlie disadvantaged by the lack of it. He could pull a woman as she handed him the white feather.

  Charlie was sitting in a booth on the Cecil Court side, flicking through the News Chronicle, a whisky and soda at his side. He looked up as Troy sat down, eyes bright, a broad smile across his lips. He lit up, a hundred tiny physical responses – all the visible muscles expressing. Charlie was the most affectionate person – man or woman – Troy had ever known. He was clearly, genuinely delighted to see Troy. Troy might well have reciprocated – few people meant as much to him as Charlie – but he did not have the vocabulary of such affection, physical or verbal. He had not the facility with honesty. As his brother Rod put it, he was ‘a colossal fibber’ – it was second nature to him to guard the truth, the truth of his own emotions not excepted – and, if nothing else, it made for a dedicated copper.

  ‘Freddie? What’ll you have?’

  Troy hardly drank and asked for a ginger beer.

  ‘Bollocks. You want ginger beer you can buy your own. Have
a drink, for God’s sake. Even if it’s only a half.’

  Troy asked for Guinness. Charlie buttonholed the bloke clearing the empties and ordered half a pint of the black stuff. Troy would leave it sitting on the table, the white head slowly deflating into the black, and with any luck Charlie would never notice.

  ‘How’s tricks?’

  ‘Not much fun,’ said Troy. ‘The only good body to show up in a while got nicked from me by old Walter Stilton.’

  ‘Father of the luscious Kitty, eh? She’s standing at the bar right now.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Next to the tall bloke in the awful suit. See, looks like it was cobbled together by Flanagan and Allen in a Crazy Gang sketch at the Palladium. They were there when I came in. The chap sounded American to me.’

  He’d know Kitty anywhere, from any angle. She slipped her arm through the man’s. Gave him a kiss on the ear. Troy wondered if she knew he was there. If Charlie had told her who he was meeting. But the Salisbury was twenty yards from Troy’s front door. Who else would Charlie be meeting? Kitty inched closer. The light between their bodies vanished as she melded her affection into him, fitting the curve of her waist around the man’s hip. Troy stared, willing the American to turn around. He did. It was the same man he’d seen Kitty’s father with last night. Time to change the subject.

  ‘You’ve been out of London. You must have. Or you’d have been nagging me to come out for a drink before this.’

  ‘Indeed I have, o’man. But I can’t say where or why for reasons of national security.’

  This was nonsense, or the prelude to a gag. Charlie was the most indiscreet man alive. He couldn’t keep a secret to save his life.

  ‘Come off it,’ Troy said simply.

  ‘Let’s just say a quick trip to the land of bagpipes and haggis, a quicker trip back to a large unnamed fortress not a million miles from here in which Richard III murdered his nephews, all because of a chap who’s name begins with Hand ends with ESS, but who is known to us in the trade as Mr Briggs.’

  Troy tried not to laugh. If he did Charlie would get the giggles and collapse in a heap of helpless laughter. This was typical of the man. The unutterable blurted out in a flippant sentence. Matters of national security. Of course he should not have told Troy that Hess was in the Tower of London, but Troy could not think of the force on earth that could stop him. Short of a firing squad.

  ‘Chatty, was he?’

  ‘Doesn’t breathe between paragraphs. Talk? The bugger never shuts up. Alas, he doesn’t say anything that matters. I’ve just witnessed four days of the party line. I think he came here genuinely believing that Hamilton would introduce him to the King and a bunch of senior Tories, and then they’d all get together, dump Churchill and do a deal with Hitler. He even asked for a copy of Three Men In A Boat – if that’s his vision of England, then Mr B. is a chronic fantasist who seems to believe in some sort of ancient Tory heartland that’s only waiting for the moment to make peace.’

  ‘Well,’ said Troy. ‘He’s right about that. That’s why we locked them up.’

  ‘Quite – but I rather think his invitation to join forces against the Soviet horde might have found itself outweighed by the opening of the flat or the start of the hunting season. “Mad” does not begin to convey Rudolf Hess. Barking, barking, barking. No matter what question the blokes from the FO put to him, he found some trite bit of Nazi spiel that covered the issue neatly. I tell you, Freddie, it reminded me of nothing quite so much as getting stuck on the doorstep with a very persistent Jehovah’s Witness.’

  ‘You should introduce him to my father. They’d be well matched.’

  ‘We’d probably get a damn sight further with your old man putting the questions than we have with these types from the Foreign Office. However, I think hell will freeze over before the boss lets your father within a mile of Mr Briggs.’

  ‘Who is the boss?’

  ‘Reggie Ruthven-Greene. Do you know him?’

  Troy shook his head. Charlie flagged down the clearer again and ordered another whisky and soda, pointed at Troy’s untouched Guinness. Troy shook his head, lifted the glass to his lips and put it back without taking a sip.

  Charlie said, ‘This had better be my last. I have to meet Reggie about five minutes ago. Look, I won’t be far out of London once old Briggs is fixed up, and I can be back any time there’s a break. You’re single again, aren’t you . . . ?’

  ‘Single?’ said Troy, as though the word meant nothing to him.

  ‘You know what I mean . . . spare . . . without a woman! Why don’t we get together one night next week? Do the town. Check out operations on the totty front.’

  He belted back his whisky in a single gulp and was on his feet before Troy could answer. But Troy never would answer. He’d just say ‘Of course’, and when Charlie phoned up divert him from the plan or plead the ‘job’. Charlie always wanted to check out the totty front, but he always ended up ‘doing the town’ without Troy.

  The American and Charlie collided in the doorway. An ‘Excuse me’ deferred to an ‘After you, old chap’, they hesitated for ten seconds and then the American slipped out and Charlie waved his cheerio and followed. The coincidence of them leaving at the same time left Troy staring at Kitty Stilton’s back. She turned, stuck her hands in her coat pockets and sauntered across the floor towards him.

  ‘Fred,’ she said by way of greeting.

  ‘Sergeant Stilton,’ said Troy with all the neutral inflection he could muster.

  ‘Your mate coming back, is ’e?’

  ‘No. Yours?’

  Kitty pulled back the chair Charlie had sat in.

  ‘Ain’t you gonna buy a girl a drink, then?’

  Troy buttonholed the clearer. Asked for a gin and lime.

  ‘I’m not a bleedin’ waiter, y’know.’

  Kitty opened her coat, let him see the uniform beneath and thrust out her chest.

  ‘For the boys in blue?’ said Troy, and the man muttered a grudging ‘Awright’.

  Thirty seconds later he slammed a glass down in front of Kitty, spilling half its contents and stuck out his hand for the cash.

  Kitty sipped at her drink.

  ‘S’made with cordial,’ she said. ‘Don’t taste the same.’

  ‘I expect they can’t get fresh limes any more.’

  Troy tipped his Guinness into the aspidistra pot.

  ‘Could you do me a favour?’

  ‘Course.’

  ‘I bumped into your father last night. He’s still treating me like a pariah . . .’

  ‘A wot?’

  ‘An outcast. He talks to me with thinly disguised hatred. I wonder if you might put him straight. Tell him the truth.’

  ‘What truth would that be?’

  ‘That you dumped me, not I you. He seems to have got it into his head that I trifled with your affections.’

  Kitty sniggered through her gin and lime, and succumbed to a fit of giggling and choking.

  ‘And while we’re on the subject of loose ends, you still have a key to my house.’

  ‘Ain’t got it on me though, ’ave I? Besides, you still got all my records.’

  ‘Come and get them. I’ve no wish to deprive you of them.’

  ‘Right now?’

  Troy paused – this had the makings of a Kitty trap.

  ‘Isn’t your friend coming back?’

  ‘Nah – he’s got to meet my dad. They got work to do. He’ll be gone all night.’

  No – she could not mean what he thought she meant. They were past that. She had dumped him. She’d made that perfectly clear.

  § 33

  Troy opened the cupboard under the gramophone and removed a stack of records – all the things Kitty liked and he didn’t. Dance bands with inanely exotic names – Orpheans, Melodians, Waldorfians – or inanely stupid – Syncopating Syd and his Tyrolean Accordianist Ensemble, Ali McDonald’s Ocarina Wizards. He’d tried and failed to get her to listen to Duke Ellington or to Art Tat
um. Ellington had ‘got something’, but she’d never put him on the turntable of her own choosing, and Tatum was ‘just a racket’ and ‘ruined a good tune’.

  A record slipped from the top as he reached the table. Kitty caught it or it would surely have shattered on the floor.

  She held it in both hands and looked at the label, fingers brushing across the grooves, tracing out the words on the label.

  ‘It’s Riptide,’ she said. ‘Al Bowlly and Lew Stone.’

  She hesitated, staring down at the record in the dim light.

  ‘Lovely Al Bowlly,’ she said. ‘Poor, lovely Al.’

  Al Bowlly had been killed in an air raid in the wee small hours one Thursday morning the previous month. A land mine had floated down, taken out a large slice of Jermyn Street and Mr Bowlly with it. The women of London still mourned him. England’s greatest crooner. A womanizer extraordinaire. Troy wondered if Kitty knew this. If she did it probably didn’t matter to her. A romantic ideal, that unfleshly object – while the real man, the flesh beneath the ideal, had had half the women he’d ever met. Kitty was weeping, softly, silently for Al Bowlly. Troy said nothing.

  ‘Could we play it?’ she asked.

  Troy wound the gramophone. It was easier by far than finding anything to say to her. He was glad she’d caught it, though the rest he could willingly have seen smashed: Riptide had that certain something. He was particularly fond of that long, slow introduction before Bowlly came in. It had an inescapable intensity. After it Bowlly’s voice could only be a let-down. He had always sounded to Troy more like a man in his seventies than his forties. He had never understood the appellation ‘the English Crosby’ – he sounded nothing like Bing Crosby. Troy much preferred the women singers – Elsie Carlisle or Greta Keller. Yet – the song was pleasing. Its structure delighted him. It was all verse. No chorus. The song did not repeat itself. Just when any other song would rehash all it had said so far, the band came in again and Bowlly sang no more. It was startling to realise the song was over. It had made its statement – made a song of its precisely captured emotion, but not a ‘song-anddance’ of it.