Riptide

by Lawton, John

  ‘A couple of rotten apples, Walter, that’s all. Not the whole damn hogshead.’

  ‘Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ.’

  ‘May not even be English. Look at that woman caught last year passing information to the Germans at the Russian Tea Rooms.’

  ‘What woman?’

  It occurred to Cal that he’d boobed, that the British people, and that included Chief Inspectors of Police, had been told nothing about the arrest and trial of Tyler Kent of the US Embassy, and Anna Wolkoff of the Russian Tea Rooms in Kensington. It was common talk in the world in which he moved but, as this conversation was revealing to him, the outrage to which Walter could be provoked showed how different their worlds were.

  ‘About a year ago,’ Cal went on, ‘a Russian exile was found to be a German agent. That’s all. It’s no big deal.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And now she’s serving time in Holloway.’

  ‘You mean there was a trial?’

  He seemed both surprised and hurt not to be in the know.

  ‘Walter, you know . . . secrets.’

  ‘Secrets,’ Stilton repeated as though the word meant nothing to him.

  ‘You know, maybe somebody just called for the “binmen”?’

  ‘Touché,’ said Stilton softly.

  Cal picked up the ration book again.

  ‘A local forgery, you say?’

  ‘I’m almost certain of it.’

  ‘Do you know the local fakers?’

  ‘No, but I know a man who does. There’s a bloke at the Yard deals in little else. If you could give me a couple of hours, I could ’appen have a word with him.’

  ‘’Appen?’ Cal mimicked.

  Stilton looked guilty.

  ‘Aye. I’m not dumping you, honest – but there’s things best said copper to copper.’

  ‘That’s OK, Walter. I understand. There’s something I could be getting on with anyway. Why don’t you pick me up around lunchtime?’

  Cal went back to the sixth floor and found his something wrapped in his dressing gown, drying her hair.

  ‘You see him off then?’

  ‘Kitty,’ he said. ‘We can’t go on like this.’

  ‘Like wot?’ she said.

  § 53

  Inspector Drew held the ration book up to the light. Then he took a large magnifying glass from the top drawer of his desk, and scrutinised it. It was a full minute before he spoke.

  ‘It’s as though he’d signed it. The silly sod.’

  Stilton said nothing. He liked Drew. He was his opposite as a copper – young, technically-trained, a desk and paper man, a meticulous man with a field of expertise at his fingertips, not the shoe-leather, brown mac and make-it-up-as-you-go-along copper he knew himself to be. More than he liked him, he admired Drew. It was hard not to. In his way he was the English, the civilised version of that lunatic Pole Kolankiewicz out at the Hendon lab. You admired Kolankiewicz, you respected his talent, but you’d never say you liked him.

  ‘It’s perfection. What the Ministry of Food aspires to and will never attain. So silly. It would be a piece of cake for him to make a messy one, but no – he has to turn in a work of art.’

  ‘He?’ Stilton said. ‘Who’s he?’

  ‘Forsyte. Lawrence Forsyte. It’s his work. I’ve no doubt about it. Best in the business. Least he was till I nicked him in ’37.Fiveto seven years for forging five-pound notes.’

  Stilton found this confusing.

  ‘We didn’t have ration books in 1937. And this is bang up to date.’

  Drew put the paraphernalia of his trade down and chewed a moment on the end of his pencil.

  ‘Walter – what I have to tell you must go no further. You do understand that, don’t you?’

  ‘O’ course.’

  ‘Forsyte served less than three years. He was paroled in January last year.’

  ‘Then it’s time we yanked on his leash. He could go down for another stretch for this, as well as the one he hasn’t finished.’

  ‘No, Walter. That’s just it. He can’t and he won’t. Forsyte works for us now. Or to be more accurate, for your lot.’

  ‘The Branch?’

  ‘Not quite – but you do have the same masters. Penny dropped now, has it? Good. Larry forges all the German stuff we need to send our chaps into occupied territory. Travel permits, identity cards. They’ve even got him at work on Reichsmark notes. Whatever he’s done, he’s pretty well untouchable.’

  ‘What he’s done is forge ration books. If that’s for the war effort I’m a monkey’s uncle!’

  ‘Well – I’m sure he’d say the temptation was too great. I keep an eye on him, of course. Helps to let him know he’s not entirely ignored by the Forgery Squad. But most of the time they use your colleagues in the Branch as nothing more than go-betweens, and the truth is they let him do what he wants – orders, naturally – and with that kind of freedom he’ll dabble in this sort of thing just to see if he can do it. I shouldn’t think it bothers the spooks – if they have to turn a blind eye to it, then of course they will.’

  ‘I took this off a dead German agent two nights back. How do you explain that? Is that dabbling?’

  ‘I don’t explain it. And I’m inclined to take it as seriously as you do.’

  ‘Then you’ll tell me where I can find him?’

  ‘If I do – two things. First, you never got his address from me, and second, you can threaten him all you like, but you can’t pull him. Shout at him, let him taste the back of your hand, tickle his ribs with a truncheon, if you like, but if you go after Forsyte all you’ve got is one big bluff.’

  ‘Story of my career,’ said Stilton.

  Even now Drew was still thinking about it, teeth clamped onto his pencil, little flakes of yellow paint sticking to his lip.

  ‘OK. He has a printing shop in Silver Place. Nothing more than an alley at the end of Beak Street. You’ll find him in the cellar.’

  ‘I’ll find him? You mean you’re not coming?’

  ‘Sorry, Walter. You’re on your own. Whatever you do when you get there, I don’t want to know. And if he picks up the phone to Military Intelligence, I shall want to know even less.’

  § 54

  They arranged to meet mid-afternoon. It seemed simple enough to let Cormack find his own way there. What could go wrong? It was, as Stilton pointed out, ‘ironically close to Marshall Street’ and Cormack had said, ‘That’s not irony, Walter, that’s just coincidence.’ All the same the American had got there ahead of him. Stilton rounded the corner from Lexington Street to find him sprawled on the pavement, feet in the gutter, head down on the slabs. He stirred his boots and, as much as a portly policeman could, he ran, reached the body, seized a shoulder and turned it over.

  ‘Walter, this guy is unbelievable. He’s down there forging twenty dollar bills!’

  Then Stilton spotted the fanlight at pavement height, opening into the cellar. He hoped he wasn’t red in the face – he knew he was breathless – hoped Cormack couldn’t see what a fool he’d just made of himself. He tugged at the knees of his trousers, stuck his backside in the air and bent to peer through a century of grime into the cellar. At some point the fanlight had been painted over from the inside, but it was flaking now, and there were half a dozen peepholes into the world below the street.

  ‘Look along the wire in the middle of the room. Those green strips of paper are twenty dollar bills – and those big white ones . . . aren’t they –’

  ‘Fivers,’ Stilton said. ‘Five-pound notes. The bugger’s gone back to printing fivers! This bloke’s a one-man crime wave. I’d love to nick ’im. It’s going to be a temptation not to. How you get a wrong’un to talk without the threat of arrest, God knows. I’ve all the power of a friendly fireside chat.’

  ‘I think the FBI might have a few things to say to him themselves.’

  ‘Let’s get in there. I feel like a penniless kid at the sweetshop window.’

  Stilton hammered on the door. The b
olts shot back and an overrefined voice said from the dark interior, ‘You’re early. I wasn’t expecting you till tomorrow. But as you’re here . . .’

  The door swung wide, they found themselves following a man’s back down the cellar steps, still not having seen his face, a smell of oil and ink and the clatter of printing presses.

  Forsyte stood behind his desk, still not looking at them, filling a small attaché case. A five-pound note brushed Stilton’s hat as he passed under it. The blasé-ness of the man made his blood boil. Five-pound notes – the ink not even dry – pinned up with clothes pegs like the Monday wash – and he didn’t seem to give a damn who saw.

  ‘There’s six Ausweisses in the names you asked for. Half a million in Reichsmarks and there’ll be another two hundred thousand tomorrow. I don’t know what’s so urgent, but perhaps next time a telephone call?’

  He looked up at them, clearly feeling none of the confusion they felt themselves. He was thirtyish, a thin moustache, prematurely grey above the ears – and Stilton was right about the voice. It was, he thought, posh with a long ‘o’, the fake culture of an upper-crust accent by lower-class pretensions. Hence the fondness for a loud waistcoat and a bow tie. They went with the over-articulation and the prolonged vowels. Was nothing real about this man? Was he as phony as his currency? Perhaps he wore false teeth and a cardboard collar?

  ‘You were expecting me?’ Stilton said.

  ‘I was expecting a policeman. You’re a policeman. You look like every Special Branch copper they’ve ever sent as a bagman. If not, you’ve missed your vocation and I’m about to send for a real one.’

  He reached for the telephone. Stilton and Cormack stepped forward with the synchronicity of Busby Berkeley dancers, but it was Cormack who spoke first.

  ‘That won’t be necessary. Calvin M. Cormack, FBI.’

  He flashed his Virginia driving licence before Forsyte’s eyes for a split second, and snatched a twenty-dollar bill off the line above his head.

  ‘Double sawbucks, huh? Uncle Sam’s going to be mighty pissed with you. Whatever arrangement you have with the British won’t cover this. Run off all the fivers you want: mess with the United States Treasury and you’re in big trouble.’

  Forsyte stood frozen, the telephone still in his hand. Stilton took it from him and laid it gently back in its cradle.

  ‘Agent Cormack’s working with us on this one,’ he said softly.

  ‘The President is personally concerned about this. Do you understand me, Larry? Mr Roosevelt is personally concerned. Now, how many have you printed?’

  Forsyte had gone pale. The accent slipped at the speed of a landslide.

  ‘Only what you see. Two dozen. It’s not what you think . . .’

  ‘Tell that to J. Edgar Hoover.’

  Cormack turned to Stilton and winked hammily at him. ‘Chief Inspector, cuff him.’

  ‘No, no . . . it’s . . . just an experiment.’

  ‘An experiment?’ Cormack said.

  ‘Just to see if I can do it. Like a lab test. Purely academic.’

  ‘Academic? Do we arrest academics, Walter?’

  ‘Depends,’ said Stilton. ‘Depends what’s on offer.’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘You scratch my back, lad, and I’ll scratch yours.’

  Forsyte sank into his chair, the weariness of the cornered written on his face. He pinched his nose, sniffed loudly and said, ‘OK. You can cut the Flanagan and Allen routine. Just tell me what you want.’

  Stilton stuck the ration book on the desk.

  ‘Yours, I believe.’

  Forsyte didn’t pick it up. Looked at it where it lay and said, ‘So?’

  ‘Another little lab test, perhaps?’

  ‘If you like.’

  ‘But this one leaked into the street. This one’s been bought and sold a few times, hasn’t it? What I want is the name of the bloke you sold it to. You did sell it, didn’t you? I mean, you’re not giving them away out of the goodness of your heart, are you?’

  Forsyte stared silently at them. Cormack plucked another bill off the line, pulled his glasses to the end of his nose and said, ‘Work this good could get you ten to twenty in Sing-Sing. Federal Offence. Worse than not licking the seal on an airmail letter or forgetting the date of President Taft’s birthday. Think about it, Larry.’

  ‘I printed six. I have four still. I sold two. A chap came along and made me an offer.’

  ‘And?’ Stilton prompted.

  ‘A Pole.’

  ‘And does this Pole have a name?’

  ‘I don’t know his real name, but they call him Fish Wally.’

  § 55

  ‘I think I’m going to kill him,’ said Stilton. ‘The sly, two-faced git. D’ye remember what he said? He said he lived off “whatever I can pick up”. Even held up his hands to make it seem like it was almost literal. And what’s he doing? Flogging ration books to German spies. I’ll murder the little sod!’

  ‘Walter,’ Cal said. ‘Do you really think this changes anything?’

  They were sitting in a café in Endell Street, just around the corner from Drury Lane and the home of the much-abused Fish Wally. Stilton slurped at his tea. Cal tried – he found tea solved less than you’d think.

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘You said all along that the guy was kosher. Your Squadron Leader passed him. He’s lived here the best part of eighteen months without attracting suspicion. Maybe he works his little fiddles without knowing who’s working him.’

  ‘Oh – I get it. This network you were on about this morning.’

  ‘Wally doesn’t have to know he’s part of it to be part of it. The other side just need to know that he operates under the counter.’

  ‘Calvin, he’s not stupid. He’s a clever man, an educated man.’

  ‘He’s also half crazy. I think he’s just got known as a man who can fix you up with a room without too many questions. The ration book was a bonus. Wally had just acquired them, saw a potential customer in our Mr Robinson, and did the deal.’

  ‘Thing is, who else did he deal with? Has he still got the other book or did he flog that too?’

  ‘Only one way to find out.’

  Stilton abandoned his tea and pushed it away from him. In Cal’s experience Stilton never abandoned anything, cold coffee, the crusts on toast, the scrapings in the bottom of the pan – any pan – he hoovered up the lot. From the look on his face Cal deduced he didn’t much relish what he had to say next.

  ‘I’ll have to pull him, feel his collar, you know that.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Tek ’im down the Yard and give ’im the works.’

  ‘The works? I think this is where I came in.’

  ‘Aye – more’s the pity, it’s where you go out.’

  ‘What do you mean? You’re dumping me again? I thought we worked Forsyte pretty well back there. I felt we were a team for the first time.’

  ‘So did I. You’ve the makings of a good copper. But I’ve got to pull Wally by the book. Down the Yard, in an interrogation room. I can’t take you with me.’

  ‘Why? I mean, why not?’

  ‘Copper’s stuff. And you’re not a copper. Wally may be half crazy, you’re probably right. But I know Wally, he’ll not decide to talk because we pinch his sausages or bluff him with your driving licence. I’ll need to stick ’im in a cell and sweat him. He really hates being locked up. You’re not on the force, lad . . . it wouldn’t be . . . it wouldn’t be right. This is something I have to do with Dobbs, and believe me Calvin, if I could choose you instead of that dozy pillock I would.’

  Cormack gave up on his tea, shoved his cup and saucer to clink against Stilton’s. A cheerless toast in brown scum that had tasted of shoe-leather.

  ‘How long?’

  ‘Overnight. Doubt it’d be longer. And I’ll tell you the minute we get a lead.’

  ‘Cross your heart and hope to die?’

  § 56

  They parked the car out o
f sight and hung around the street corner. They could not see the door, and no one using the door was likely to see them – but Stilton and Dobbs could see the window of Fish Wally’s living room on the ground floor of a sturdy, purpose-built block of turn-of-the-century flats, the like of which had been built the length and breadth of London fifty-odd years before for the benefit of working men and their families. Rabbit hutches, Stilton called them. Two poky rooms and take your baths in the kitchen. His old mate George Bonham lived in one back in Stepney. He and his wife had raised three kids in one. Stilton wondered how they did it. On the other hand, they were bijou accommodation for the single villain.

  Wally was not home. Stilton was waiting for the blackout to be drawn. Then they’d nick him. It was Stilton’s turn to watch. Dobbs leaned against the wing of the Riley, looking pale and sleepy. Stilton was angry enough without this provocation.

  ‘Bernard – you nod off now and I’ll roast you on me truncheon like one o’ them Ayrab shish kebabs.’

  Dobbs did not seem to have heard him. Stilton stepped back a few paces and shook him.

  ‘Eh?’ said Dobbs.

  ‘Have you been at the beer again, laddie?’

  ‘What? What chance have I had, boss? We been stuck here since before opening time. I was just feeling a bit dicky, that’s all – I’ll be fine now.’

  Stilton stepped back to the corner just in time to see the blackout being drawn over Wally’s window.

  ‘We’re on,’ he said softly.

  Dobbs yanked the ignition keys from his trouser pocket and eased his backside off the car.

  ‘Not so fast,’ Stilton said. ‘I want him to get his coat off, I want him to get his slippers on – kettle on, knees under the table, rolling ciggy. I want him to feel safe in his little nest before I drag him out of it and throw him in a cell.’

  ‘He’s really got your goat, hasn’t he, boss?’