Riptide

by Lawton, John

  In seconds, it seemed, she was naked. It was, he realised, his abiding image of Kitty – either naked or getting naked, red hair bobbing, eyes flashing.

  ‘Shift up. I don’t want a tap stuck up me jacksey, now do I?’

  He’d no idea what she meant. That was another reason he’d miss Walter – who else would translate the English for him?

  Shift up or not, the bath was huge – she glided the length of it to settle on his chest, her hair just below his chin, an ear pressed to his heart, fingers lingering on the bruises at his midriff.

  ‘They knock you about, did they?’

  ‘Not much,’ he said. ‘Nothing I couldn’t handle.’

  The memory of nausea brought back the taste. He washed it away in whisky. Her hand drifted automatically to play with his cock. At least he assumed it was automatic – he could not see it as a gesture driven by either lust or affection, just the sheer familiarity of it. And he could not respond to it. She played with a limp dick.

  ‘How’s your mother taking it?’

  The hand didn’t stop. There was no magic to be invoked by words.

  ‘Bad,’ she said, twirling it like some toy she’d found. ‘I don’t know that she’ll get through it. She rallied after Kev and Trev. All front, mind, but a good one. After this? I dunno. She ain’t spoken for more’n a day. I really don’t know. Vera’s like a tank. Bristling with armour, angry as hell. The girls just cry all the time. And Tel’s clueless, hasn’t the faintest idea what to do or say. Tries jokes, but nobody laughs. He’s shut up about the Navy though. He knows he’ll never get away. He’s there for ever now. I know how he feels.’

  ‘And how do you feel?’

  ‘How do I feel?’

  ‘I’ve never lost a father – in fact I’ve never lost a relative that close. Both my parents are still alive. I have two younger sisters. My grandfather ticks over fairly well at damn near a hundred . . .’

  ‘Grandma?’

  ‘Ah . . . she died before I was born.’

  She’d diverted him neatly. He wasn’t about to give up.

  ‘So. How do you feel?’

  She prised herself up, out of the water, eye to eye, nipple to nipple – the touch of them on his chest brought him up in goosebumps – drew breath and spoke softly.

  ‘There’s a hole in my life I’ll never be able to fill. All I ask is fill the hole in me.’

  He knew it could not possibly be as crude a notion as her phrasing made it seem. All the same, he would never understand it. Sex – that which had been her ravenous hunger had become her consolation, and he could not tell the two apart, could not grasp the shifts of mind that drove her from pillar to post and called both sex.

  ‘Just fuck me.’

  He had never heard her use this word before – but then she had never used it, not since first acquiring its meaning on the edge of adolescence twenty years before.

  ‘Just fuck me and I’ll kid myself everything’s OK.’

  § 71

  As ever in the moment of hysteresis he reached for his eyeglasses. Cock down, glasses up, all passion spent, blind as a bat.

  He’d not made a good job of it. He’d come too easily, blown his stack like a liquored-up high-school kid. Kitty did not seem to mind. She was smiling at him as she came into focus.

  ‘We’ll get through this, won’t we, Cal?’

  One hand pulled lazily at a strand of his hair. It was more affectionate than any gesture he’d ever seen her make.

  ‘We will?’

  ‘Well – we got to. Ain’t we? I mean we’ll get through. We’ll catch the bastard, won’t we?’

  It was an odd moment to pick, but perhaps now, for the first time, he could talk seriously to her.

  ‘Now you mention it, there are things I can do – things I have to do.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘I have to talk to my people. I can’t do a damn thing without I talk to them first.’

  ‘I thought you said they didn’t want to know.’

  ‘They didn’t. But they’re still the bosses. So I tell them what happened and then, if they say so, I can probably tell Nailer.’

  ‘Wot? Tell Nailer wot?’

  The smile vanished, the other hand locked into his hair, held him like a wrestler. It hurt, but he didn’t move.

  ‘Kitty, I don’t know who killed your father. But there’ve been other people – the enemy – looking for the man he and I were chasing. It all revolves around him. I can’t name him without the say-so from my people, but if they do say so then my telling Nailer is the only chance he’s got of catching the killer. Without our man he doesn’t stand a chance. Without me he doesn’t stand a chance.’

  She thrust him aside, leapt from the bed, naked and trembling with the force of her own anger.

  ‘Are you out of your bleedin’ mind? Tell Nailer! Nailer doesn’t want a result. All he cares about is the honour of the Met. And that’s not the same thing by a long chalk. You tell Nailer anything, you might just as well piss into the wind. You don’t want Nailer, you want a real copper, not one of those plodding berks.’

  ‘You’re the only real copper I know.’

  ‘Not me, you fool. I’m just plod, I am. A plonk in a uniform. You want . . . you want someone like . . . like an old boyfriend of mine.’

  ‘An old boyfriend?’

  ‘Chap I used to know on the Murder Squad. Flash as they come, but a first-rate copper.’

  ‘Aha.’

  ‘Yeah. Bloke I used to . . . go out with.’

  Her mood had changed utterly. She wasn’t angry, it seemed, more cautious, almost coy.

  ‘A bloke?’ he echoed.

  ‘Troy,’ she said at last. ‘You want Frederick Troy.’

  ‘Kitty, come here.’

  She sat down on the edge of the bed. He took her hands in his. She was calmer, but red in the face, still reeling from her own outburst.

  ‘Kitty. It was Troy got me out of the slammer. He was the cop the Yard sent when I phoned in the news of your father’s murder. He was the first to get there, the first to see Walter. Then Nailer came along and took over. At some point, he must have found out they had me and spoke up. If he hadn’t I’d still be in the cells.’

  The look on her face told him not that she did not believe him, but that she would rather not believe him.

  ‘Little feller, black hair, black eyes, talks like a total joe ronce?’

  Cal got up, searched through the pockets of his stinking, bloody jacket and fished out the bloodier handkerchief with its fancy, embroidered letter F.

  ‘This feller.’

  He held out the handkerchief. She rubbed the scarlet letter between finger and thumb, felt the crispness of dried blood.

  ‘His blood? Your blood?’

  ‘Walter’s,’ he said simply.

  ‘So Troy knew my Dad was dead before I did?’

  ‘Before anyone but me.’

  She crumpled the handkerchief, flakes of brown blood wafting onto the sheets, and put it to her cheek. She wept and cried, ‘The bastard. I’ll kill ’im!’

  § 72

  Troy was flat on his back on the chaise longue. Kolankiewicz leaned over him, reeking of beer and black-pudding and tut-tutting him in three languages. Into Polish, into English and the odd word of Yiddish thrown in just for emphasis. He had cut away his shirt – a Jermyn Street tailor-made now fit only for dusters – cleaned the wound, though it bled still, and was swabbing it in the hope he could get it dry and closed enough for stitching.

  ‘Does it hurt, smartyarse?’

  ‘Of course it hurts.’

  ‘Good. So it should – it is practically through to the rib, and a little pain will make you wary next time.’

  Over Kolankiewicz’s shoulder Troy saw the door open. Kitty Stilton entered, took her key from the latch and came up behind Kolankiewicz, hands sunk deep in her coat pockets. He did not care for the look on her face. White, tight and red about the eyes. It was too late in the day, he was in pain
, he was bleeding. He did not need whatever bee it was that buzzed in Kitty’s auburn bonnet.

  Kolankiewicz did not even turn.

  ‘If you are staying, angel from hell, then you must make yourself useful. Hold the edges of the wound while I stitch.’

  Kitty did not bat an eyelid. She slipped between the two of them and gripped the wound between thumb and forefinger. It hurt all the more.

  ‘Bastard,’ she whispered.

  ‘Aaagh,’ said Troy, as Kolankiewicz sank in the needle. ‘I thought you said you’d localise it?’

  ‘I was lying,’ said Kolankiewicz. ‘Now, pretty woman, hold tight, because the bugger will squirm.’

  Kitty gripped him as though she had pliers in her hands.

  ‘I was hoping for a word,’ she hissed.

  ‘Well, I can hardly not listen, can I?’ Troy hissed back. She pinched him harder.

  ‘In fact I was hoping to make you squirm.’

  Troy squirmed.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

  ‘Why didn’t I tell you what?’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me my dad was dead?’

  ‘I thought the American would tell you.’

  ‘He was in chokey. How the bleedin’ ’ell could ’e?’

  ‘I didn’t know that. I only found out today.’

  ‘Troy, you should have told me. You should have come round to Jubilee Street and told me and me mum yourself. Can’t you see that? I shouldn’t have found out from a routine visit by a gobshite like Nailer. You should have told me. After wot we been to each other you should have told me. No excuse. I don’t care where you were, what you were doing, you should have told me.’

  It seemed to Troy that the two of them had combined their efforts to torture him, that Kolankiewicz was punctuating Kitty’s sentences with every puncture of his flesh. When she finished, he finished, knotted the thread and snapped it off.

  ‘OK. We done. You got one more medal on your chest, copper.’

  Troy looked down at the wound. It was a mess, a ragged line made to look like a zip fastener with its row of regular, coarse black stitches. With a gesture like a conjurer about to manifest a pigeon, Kitty produced a handkerchief from her pocket – one of his, with his initial in the corner, the one she had helped herself to just the other night – and wiped his blood off her fingers.

  ‘What we’ve been to each other?’ Troy said. ‘Good God, Kitty, what do you think we’ve been to each other?’

  ‘Vodka still under the sink?’ Kolankiewicz asked. Troy ignored him. He disappeared into the kitchen.

  ‘Kitty, why are you here?’

  Kitty sat down on the armchair, stuck her hands back in her pockets and stared at him. Troy swung his legs to the floor and realised he’d be foolish in the extreme to try and stand.

  ‘Kitty, I’m very sorry your father’s dead. But taking it out on me isn’t going to bring him back.’

  ‘I’m here because.’

  This construction had always baffled him. Russian had nothing like this. The incomplete ending implying that he should know how the sentence ended – that it was a moral issue to know, and a moral dereliction to have to ask.

  ‘What is it you think I can do for you?’

  ‘You can help Calvin catch the bloke who killed my dad.’ Troy sank back. He should have guessed – it was typical of Kitty to want the moon.

  ‘Jesus Christ.’

  ‘You can do this, Troy. Calvin can’t do a thing on his own. The Yard’ll run circles round him. He’ll wander round London like a dog at a fair.’

  ‘What you mean is that I should go up against Nailer for you.’

  ‘Nailer ain’t gonna catch him, now is he?’

  ‘Probably not.’

  ‘And you don’t have to go up against Nailer. You just have to sort of go round him.’

  Troy said nothing. He hoped that if he said nothing for long enough Kitty might just give up and bugger off.

  ‘There’s no on else can do it,’ she went on, undeterred. ‘You owe me this, Troy. You do this for me. And if that don’t mean nothin’ to you, then do it for my mum.’

  Troy sighed silently, began to work it out. He could not think that he owed Kitty anything, and her mum was not a viable instrument of emotional blackmail; she was simply a pleasant old woman in Stepney who’d invited the two of them to tea a couple of times last year, eyed him up and down as a potential husband and pronounced him ‘too posh’ as in ‘too posh, stick to your own kind Kitty’, but – he could backtrack, get Kolankiewicz to sign him off sick, make his apologies to Stan, take ten days while the wound healed, talk to this American, and if – what an if – he had a lead, follow it. He and the American might run circles round Nailer. It had that hint of satisfaction to it.

  Kitty appeared over him, put a hand to his forehead.

  ‘You’re hot,’ she said.

  ‘I feel cold.’

  She went upstairs, came back with a blanket and spread it over him.

  ‘Tomorrow,’ she said. ‘I can send him round tomorrow.’

  ‘You do that,’ he said. ‘Tonight’s not a good idea. Tomorrow. Not too early. Not before noon. Not before four. I’ll listen to his story. See what I can do.’

  Kitty kissed him on the forehead, thought better of it and kissed him on the lips.

  ‘Oh, and not a word about you-know-what.’

  And she did not even ask what had happened to him.

  When she’d gone Kolankiewicz emerged from the kitchen, clutching a vodka bottle and a glass.

  ‘Good,’ said Troy. ‘I could do with a shot.’

  ‘Tough titty. Is for me. The idea that alcohol is good for the sick is a myth. It opens the blood vessels and hence lowers the body temperature, and with the blood you just lost that would not be good idea.’

  ‘But I feel hot.’

  ‘And two minutes ago you felt cold. QED. Now, you want to know what I think?’

  ‘Does it matter? You’re going to tell me anyway.’

  ‘I tell you what I tried to tell you this afternoon. If you going to stick nose into old Stinker’s death you should hear me out.’

  ‘I think I’m what you’d call a captive audience.’

  ‘You going to help the luscious Kitty, am I right?’

  ‘I don’t seem to have a choice.’

  ‘To find her father’s killer?’

  Troy tried to shrug. It hurt too much so he said nothing.

  ‘Okey dokey. You will appreciate, death is my business. I see death every day.’

  ‘I’m not unfamiliar with the grim reaper myself. So could we get past the egg-sucking stage?’

  ‘When do you think I last saw two such deaths as these?’

  ‘Such deaths as what?’

  ‘The Dutchman, and then old Stinker.’

  Troy craned his neck to get a better look at Kolankiewicz. It hurt too, but this was getting complicated. The look on Kolankiewicz’s face might just help.

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘Never in my years in the death business have I had two deaths quite so close together which you, in the force, are keen to ascribe to professional murder – let us say assassination.’

  ‘I’m really not following you. It may be blood loss, but you’ve lost me.’

  ‘Do you really think there are two such men on the loose? Two such assassins, even in wartime?’

  ‘I haven’t thought about it at all yet. But since you ask – what makes you think Walter was the victim of a professional hit?’

  ‘You heard Bob Churchill – a professional’s weapon, he said.’

  ‘A professional’s weapon but not necessarily a professional. As I recall, he made no comment on that possibility.’

  ‘I say again, Troy, do you really think there are two killers?’

  ‘I don’t know. But someone got the drop on the Dutchman. Sneaked up behind him and snapped his neck like a twig. Do you agree?’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  ‘No one got the drop on Walter.
He was shot from the side. I’d even say he was turning to look at his attacker when the gun was fired. As though he was expecting someone. Whoever it was came up the alley was not the man he was expecting, but by the time he knew that it was too late. The man was within range and fired.’

  ‘You sure? That’s an awful lot of deduction.’

  ‘I had five minutes to look at the body before Nailer stormed in. I could draw you a picture.’

  ‘I never got to see old Stinker’s body. But if you going to chase this wild dog, I think you should consider the possibilities.’

  Troy did not need to hear any more. It had been explicit in everything he’d heard while the American was under arrest, in everything Peter Dixon had told him, that the American and Stilton had been pursuing a man Cormack could not or would not name. Was he still in pursuit, had he abandoned his mysterious man – a German? – to find Walter’s killer? Or was he looking for two people now – whoever it was he was chasing and a murderer? Had it dawned on him that they might conceivably be one and the same person? Good God, what had Kitty let him in for? What had he let himself in for?

  ‘Did you see the report?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Totally different MOs, of course. A world of difference between a hands-on killing and a shooting. Neither are for the squeamish, but I’ve always thought the former required nerves of steel and emotions scraped back to the bone. I could do with a look at Spilsbury’s report. Just to be certain I’m not wrong and that the shooting wasn’t to finish off a botched attempt. Can you nick me a copy?’

  Kolankiewicz shrugged. ‘Easy peasy,’ he said. ‘Now, can I give you a hand up the stairs?’

  § 73

  ‘I’ve nothing to wear.’

  ‘You sound just like my sisters every time we get ready for a dance up West.’

  ‘No – I mean. My suit’s a write-off.’

  Cal held up the sad sack that had once been his fifty-shilling suit.

  ‘Should have called laundry the minute you got in.’

  ‘The minute I got in all I wanted was a bath. And then you got in.’

  ‘Awright. Don’t get shirty.’