Riptide

by Lawton, John

  Troy was sure they never gathered dust. This room was kept as a shrine to Ethel Bonham. In the six months since her death, George had changed not a thing. Troy would bet money that her clothes still hung in the mahogany-veneer wardrobe in the end bedroom, and that George still slept on one side of the bed only with two pillows side by side upon the bolster.

  ‘It’s almost six. Will you stay and eat?’

  It was too early to eat – besides, Bonham was a dreadful cook. No man of his generation, and few of Troy’s, were in the slightest way capable of looking after themselves. Widowers were uncommon creatures, floundering through the latter life like beached sea monsters.

  ‘I’m afraid I can’t, George. It’s business. In fact I need your advice.’

  Troy knew how flattered George could be by a simple lie, the slightness of exaggeration.

  ‘O’ course, Freddie. But I’ll put the kettle on all the same.’

  Once the magic word ‘kettle’ had been uttered it was pointless trying to stop him. Tea was the universal salve – birth, marriage, death and all stations in between. Troy wondered how long Bonham’s tea ration lasted him. He made tea for two, black and sweet and of the consistency of molasses. You’d need a torch to see through it even before you put the milk in.

  ‘Well then, ask away. It’s not often you come to your old boss for a bit of advice.’

  ‘George, this has to be a secret. I’m investigating the death of Walter Stilton.’

  ‘Nuff said,’ said Bonham, nodding, tapping the side of his nose. Troy knew now that wild horses, let alone Scotland Yard, would not get him to talk. ‘He was a good ’un, was Walter. A prince. And poor old Edna, left alone with all them kiddies. I’ve known Edna since I was a tot, y’know. Redmans Road Board School, 1894. Anything I can do for Walter, just name it.’

  ‘I need a private place.’

  Bonham looked blankly at him.

  ‘Somewhere where we won’t be overheard or interrupted. Somewhere quiet.’

  Bonham’s expression did not change.

  ‘Somewhere I can bend the law a little without old plod lumbering in.’

  ‘I see,’ said Bonham.

  Troy wondered if he did.

  ‘You used to walk Tallow Dock down on the Isle of Dogs when you was on the beat, didn’t you? Well it got blown to buggery by the Luftwaffe just before Christmas. Hardly a house left with a roof on. Most of the warehouses are deserted now. You could set off a bomb down there and no-one would hear.’

  Bonham paused as the word ‘bomb’, and the frequency with which they did go off these days, sank in.

  ‘There’s only one intact building left. Still got its roof – it was in use till last week. Might suit.’

  ‘Could I see it?’

  ‘Now?’

  ‘Car’s outside.’

  Bonham stood. Troy tried and found a sharp pain shooting through his chest where Kolankiewicz had stitched him up.

  ‘Wossup?’

  Troy prised himself off the chair by its arms, breathless and flushed.

  ‘Been in the wars, have you?’

  ‘Something like that.’

  ‘One day, Freddie, they’ll have to bury you in bits.’

  Bonham swapped his pinafore for his police blue tunic and took his pointy hat off the sideboard where it sat like a horned tortoise. Driving down to Tallow Dock, he sat with his knees up to his chin, bent double in the little car, the hat clutched on his lap more like the world’s biggest cricket box.

  Troy found himself staring. All the way across Stepney and down into Limehouse. The devastation was not unimaginable, but it was on a scale he had not bothered to imagine. He looked out at mountains of rubble – the detritus of lives lived and homes abandoned. Bonham looked at him.

  ‘You been up West too long.’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘If this has come as a shock, then it’s ’cos you don’t get down here enough. When was you last here? Ethel’s funeral?’

  That had been over five months ago.

  ‘No – I’ve seen you since then . . . surely . . . ?’

  Bonham wasn’t helping.

  ‘I was here in February. I’m sure it was February.’ The making of an argument was curtailed as the Bullnose Morris reached the junction of Tallow Dock Lane and Westferry Road.

  They turned right towards the river and pulled up about six hundred yards further on, within sight of the Thames and outside a vast warehouse. The company name was stencilled in white down the side of the building in letters ten feet tall – ‘Bell and Harrop. Import Export. est. 1837. London, Shanghai, Hong Kong.’

  They stepped out onto shards of broken slate and glass. The only sign of life a roaming, skinny, mongrel dog. Bonham slipped on his helmet and tucked the strap into the dimple of his chin. It was a moment that never failed to strike awe into Troy. A man of five foot six, too short to be a copper except by a waiving of the rules, confronted by a man nearly seven foot tall from his boots to the little silver knob on top of his pointy hat. It was one of the reasons Troy had been so glad to become a detective in plain clothes. Bonham looked like a giant, a Greek warrior, Achilles or Agamemnon, Troy had looked like a gnome who’d lost his fishing rod.

  ‘Are we going in?’

  ‘Sorry, George. I was miles away.’

  Bonham led off. Prised a door open with his giant’s paw, swung it back on its hinges with a mighty, metallic clang. Troy looked around. Once the echo of the clang had dwindled away, and the dog bolted, nothing stirred – and the only sound he could hear was the occasional hooting of ships on the Thames. George might be right. This could be just what he needed.

  Inside, the ground floor was open to the second, a ceiling twenty feet high had mostly collapsed.

  ‘It’s the top floor I was thinking of,’ said Bonham. ‘Used to be old Georgie Bell’s office. We finally talked him into leaving a few days back. Or is that not what you want?’

  ‘No, that sounds fine. As long as there’s another way out.’ Bonham and Troy wound their way up the stone staircase to emerge right under the roof. A suite of low office rooms. A huge glass skylight, its coat of blackout paint peeling off in strips. A battered steel desk with a dip pen and inkwell, looking as though their owner had just stepped out for lunch. A forgotten Burberry on the back of the door.

  ‘I don’t want to be surprised,’ Troy said.

  Bonham looked puzzled.

  ‘Is there another way in and out?’

  Bonham yanked off one of the blackout screens, slid up a sash window and pointed down the fire escape.

  ‘Goes all the way down to the first floor. After that you’d have to jump into the alley. But I reckon nobody could get up that way. O’ course you’ll have to be careful of the light if there’s a raid on – but don’t worry about wardens, they’ve given up on Tallow Dock.’

  ‘You mean there’s electricity?’

  Bonham flicked the light switch on and off to show him. It was a bonus. Troy had been dreading having to catch a murderer by the dim glow of a bull’s-eye torch.

  ‘They haven’t got round to cutting it off yet. They will though.’

  This looked right. In fact it looked ideal. Troy would never have chosen Coburn Place for a stake-out. He would have chosen a place like this. Indoors, with a quick escape route if it all went wrong. And, above all, no witnesses.

  ‘I think this will do the trick, George,’ he said.

  ‘What exactly is the trick, then, Fred?’

  ‘It’slessofatrick and more ofatrap.’

  ‘I see,’ said Bonham, not seeing. ‘A trap, who for?’

  ‘Wish I knew,’ said Troy. ‘Wish I knew.’

  § 81

  Troy and Cormack sat facing each other in his sitting room at Goodwin’s Court. Cormack had brought a bottle of bourbon – not a drink Troy was accustomed to. Sweet, heady stuff. He knew what his dad would say, that it was a cheek to call it whisky – but Troy was rather taken with it. After three large glasses it eased the pain
in his ribs. He began to feel a bit less like a puppet held together by Kolankiewicz’s staples.

  After three large glasses Cormack managed to utter, ‘Kitty, I’ve been meaning to ask you about Kitty . . .’

  And Troy said, ‘Later. We’ve got work to do.’

  Cormack rallied, stuck his elbows on his knees and tried to look a bit less as though booze had just dumped him down in the armchair.

  ‘You cracked it?’

  ‘I think so. We’re going to set a trap.’

  ‘That’s what you told me yesterday. So what’s new?’

  ‘We re-run the same plan that Walter did. I’m going to send you a note asking you to meet me at such and such a time and such and such a place, and you’re going to let it sit in your in-tray at the embassy till somebody reads it.’

  Cormack exhaled, a breathy explosion somewhere between a guffaw and complete incredulity.

  ‘You actually think that’ll work?’

  ‘We know whoever it is reads your mail, right?’

  ‘Sure. But the same scam twice – he’ll never fall for it.’

  ‘Which is why the trap needs very tasty bait. I’m going to say that I’ve found Stahl. And that this is the only way Stahl will meet you.’

  ‘You’re assuming that Stahl is of interest to our man.’

  ‘If he isn’t then we’re lost. But equally, I can see no other reason why our man would ever have wanted Walter Stilton dead. And I’m damn sure Walter died because whoever read his letter deduced that Walter was close to finding Stahl. Much as Walter avoided stating it.’

  Cormack thought about this. Just mentioning Walter’s name seemed to bring tears to his eyes.

  ‘He had found Stahl. I just didn’t know that. He went off on his own and said he’d keep me posted and didn’t.’

  ‘We won’t make that mistake.’

  Troy had tried to make a glib phrase sound as reassuring as he could, but for half a minute he did not know whether Cormack was going to agree to the scheme or not.

  ‘Where is such and such a place and when is such and such a time?’

  ‘I thought tomorrow night. Say around eleven p.m. And I chose a place on the Isle of Dogs –’

  ‘We have to go on a boat?’

  ‘Let me finish – not that kind of island – it’s a promontory that sticks out into the Thames opposite Greenwich. It’s where most of London’s docks are. I’ve got us a warehouse, or what’s left of one, in Tallow Dock. There’s only one way in but two ways out. It couldn’t be better. You turn up at the agreed time, but meanwhile I’ve got there half an hour earlier. We’ll be ready for him.’

  ‘Just a minute. Why can’t I be the one to get there early?’

  ‘Because “our man” knows what you look like. He’d be much more likely to follow you than to follow me. In fact, I’m acting on the assumption that he’ll work out for himself that killing Walter is unlikely to have made you give up – but also that he hasn’t a clue about me. There’d just have to be somebody like me – logically – some other copper doing what Walter did. I’m playing up to his expectations.’

  ‘So – what you’re telling me is that you’ll be going in there on your own?’

  ‘Initially, yes.’

  ‘Then you’ll need this.’

  Cormack reached into his jacket pocket, pulled out a handgun and slid it across the table to him. Troy just looked at it. Did not touch it. It wasn’t the same make as Cormack’s. It was an automatic, butitwas bigger, a.38at least. Cormack clutched his own gun in his right hand.

  ‘You’ll need to know how to speed load. Your life could depend on it. Our man will be armed. Goes without saying. He could have real stopping power. Standard issue is a .45.’

  ‘No,’ said Troy. ‘He’ll have a gun like yours.’

  Cormack looked at him with incredulity.

  ‘What? How can you know that?’

  ‘Because Walter was shot with a .35.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me that?’

  ‘It didn’t seem important,’ said Troy. ‘And I didn’t want you to feel your brush with Chief Inspector Nailer had been quite as close as it was.’

  ‘Not many people use these, you know.’

  ‘I do know, and I think the fact is rather in our favour.’

  ‘Whatever. Just watch me.’

  Cormack held a spare clip in his left hand. The flick of a switch and the old clip fell out, the new was banged in and he had racked a bullet into the chamber and levelled the gun.

  ‘Less than two seconds. Try it.’

  It had seemed to Troy like the handiwork of a magician. One second he was watching Cormack’s face, the next he was staring down the barrel of a freshly loaded gun. The hand was truly quicker than the eye. Cormack was looking straight at him now, picking up on his incredulity.

  ‘Or did you think that because I wore glasses and did a desk job I somehow wasn’t a real soldier?’

  ‘Not at all,’ said Troy. ‘I was thinking more about myself. Sorry, I’m not a gunman.’

  ‘Picking up a gun doesn’t make you a gunman.’

  ‘Doesn’t it? Then what am I, a pretend gunman? I don’t live in your world of habitual pretence. I think I’d find pretence a dangerous illusion.’

  ‘Troy, this could be . . . no, goddammit, this is dangerous.’

  ‘Sorry. Can’t do it. Tell me I’ve been a London bobby too long, any cliché you like, but I can’t do it.’

  He slid the gun back across the table to Cormack.

  ‘You mean you’re going in there with just a cop’s nightstick, that truncheon thing?’

  ‘Only detectives of Walter’s generation carry truncheons. I’ll have a pair of handcuffs and you’ll have a gun. That ought to be enough.’

  § 82

  It was pissing it down. It had been a cold spring and threatened to be a capricious summer. Troy stood in the doorway at Goodwin’s Court, hoping for a lull in the downpour. It didn’t ease. It was not quite torrential, but it was still the sort of rain to slice through his overcoat in the time it took to get to the car. He looked at his watch. He was ahead of schedule. He’d give it five more minutes. It was almost possible to see it as romantic – the onset of a short night, dusk scarcely fallen, the beat of rain hammering down in the courtyard and rattling the windows. Where was WPS Stilton in the romance of rain that made the scalp tense, the skin tingle, and wrapped you in its rhythm? He looked at his watch again. It read exactly the same time. The sweep hand was not moving. The damn thing had stopped. He reached for the phone and dialled the speaking clock and the clock-woman told him what he’d guessed. His watch had stopped twenty minutes ago. He wasn’t ahead of schedule, he was late.

  He dashed to Bedfordbury, yanked open the car door. Kitty was sitting in the driver’s seat, buttoned up in her blue mac, hands in tight leather gloves gripping the wheel, her hair wet and flat and rain streaming down her face like tears. As if he had summoned her by thinking of her.

  ‘Kitty . . .’

  ‘Get in, Troy. Just get in.’

  He ran to the passenger door, slammed it behind him, suddenly almost deafened by the pounding of rain on the tin roof.

  ‘You’re up to something. I know. He won’t tell me what, but I know.’

  ‘Kitty. If Calvin won’t tell you, then neither can I. Please, get out and let me do what I have to do.’

  She turned on him, voice soaring to outshout the rain.

  ‘If you think I’m going to let him get blown away like me dad then think again. You’re up to something and I’m in. Like it or lump it, I’m coming, Troy.’

  Troy froze. Simply seeing those gorgon-green eyes fixed upon him was enough to make his wits shrivel.

  ‘Well?’ she said at last.

  Troy said nothing. He lurched across her, grabbed the keys from the ignition, tore his coat from her grasping hands and ran. Down Bedfordbury to Chandos Place, out into Trafalgar Square in search of a cab. He stood in front of St Martin’s church waving desperatel
y at every cab in the hope that some dozy cabman had simply forgotten to put his light on. No one had. It was the perfect night to wave forlornly at the cabmen of olde London while getting soaked to the skin.

  Then he watched as his own car crawled towards him, stopped at the kerb and Kitty leant over and pushed open the door.

  ‘Get in! Get in, you silly sod!’

  He sat next to her as wet as she was, hair plastered to his skull, rain puddling at his feet.

  ‘How?’ he said.

  ‘Jesus H. Christ, Troy. Call yerself a copper and you don’t know how to hotwire a car.’

  He looked at the tangle of wires she’d pulled out behind the steering column. A trick he’d never learnt. But then he’d never learnt to lock his car either. Kitty slammed into first.

  ‘Where we going?’

  ‘Limehouse,’ he conceded. ‘Tallow Dock Lane.’

  She drove a car as furiously as she drove a motorbike. Troy was all caution and cock-up. Not a natural driver. Kitty flung the little Morris around corners and pushed it to its limit on the straight – even so, its limit was less than sixty miles per hour. With every landmark passed Troy ticked off another five minutes on his mental clock. He dared not tell Kitty that they were screwing up in precisely the way Cormack and her father had screwed up, so he said nothing.

  Less than a mile from the warehouse, in Westferry Road, the car juddered and jerked and lurched and stopped. Kitty pressed the self-starter. It grunted at her and refused. She pressed again – it grunted, whined and died.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ said Troy.

  ‘How should I know? There were so many wires back there. I just joined up the ones that looked right.’

  ‘Kitty, we’re already late. For God’s sake make it go! Make it go!’

  She bent down, the bundle of wires fell into her hand like a fat wodge of macaroni.

  ‘Oh, bugger,’ she said. ‘Half a mo.’

  There were no half mo’s. Troy got out of the car and ran. He’d no idea how late he was. His ‘half hour early’ was most certainly blown. Could he possibly get there before Cormack – before the killer? He turned the corner into Tallow Dock Lane and felt his sides begin to burst. It was like those forced school runs he and Charlie had always hated, the onset of stitch, the stab in the side that made running agony. The great white Bell and Harrop sign loomed up. The steel door was wide open. He leant against it, put his head tentatively inside – all he could hear was the pounding of his heart and the roar of his own breathing. At the foot of the staircase all he could hear was the wind and the rain whistling down the shaft, amplified as though by a tunnel. He set off up the stairs as quietly as he could, flicking his bull’s-eye torch on and off as he went. A rat scurried across his path, slithered across the toecap of one shoe, and he felt his heart explode in his chest. Cormack was right. For the first time since he had gone into plain clothes, he missed his truncheon.