Icelight

by Aly Monroe

  ‘Mr Bly?’

  Dawkins tapped the knuckledusters. ‘Do you want some of these yourself? You have to be measured, you see.’

  Cotton shook his head. ‘No thanks,’ he said. ‘Can I tell Derek to stop hiding?’

  He handed the knuckledusters back.

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Dawkins.

  Back in his office, Cotton called Derek and told him he should wait twenty-four hours before he returned to Croydon.

  ‘Did you go to see Maurice?’ said Derek.

  ‘Yes, I did.

  ‘Oh, Mr Cotton. That’s class. Thank you.’

  16

  AT FOUR o’clock, Cotton went to the Garrick Club. He found Miles Crichton in reflective mood.

  ‘Are you religious, Colonel?’

  ‘No,’ said Cotton.

  ‘Then who do you ask for forgiveness?’

  ‘People I have unwittingly offended. Have I offended you?’

  ‘No, no. I was speaking in a larger, more spiritual sense. And I think you probably know that.’

  Cotton smiled. ‘I usually try to stick to practicalities.’ He told Miles what he had been doing in Croydon.

  Bit by bit and with a couple of glasses of champagne Miles Crichton began to cheer up.

  ‘Don’t disappoint me!’ he said when Cotton had finished. ‘Don’t say you don’t adore corruption. Wonderful thing. We are probably behind the Americans at present but trying so hard to catch up. Rationing is after all merely a form of prohibition. There’s nothing like rigid rules for ornate wriggle room. We’re no longer fighting a war. We have peacetime with harsh restrictions and no enemy. We British don’t have morality, we have behaviour, class and oodles of profitable humbug. Your Mr Bly has his bankrolling baronet. Some of our Dear Lords are mingling with gangsters, sometimes up against a wall. It’s inevitable that such intimate contact should lead on to business arrangements. Our Establishment was never for those people who believe the propaganda about decency and fair play. And we’re getting genuine gangsters! Not just the fighting gangs of the thirties.’

  Cotton looked at him.

  Miles Crichton frowned. ‘Oh. Am I getting overwrought again?’ he asked.

  ‘There’s a risk.’

  ‘Right. I think I’ll take myself off to the Stab in the Back and chat with other hacks. Do you want to come?’

  ‘Any particular reason?’

  Miles smiled. ‘A reporter called Tom McEwan.’

  A pub near Fleet Street called the White Hart was more frequently known as the Stab in the Back, or just the Stab. It was a favourite with Daily Mirror journalists. After Cotton had got Crichton downstairs, they took a taxi. The pub turned out to be rather plusher and more like a Victorian gentlemen’s club than Cotton had expected. At first glance, Tom McEwan looked trim and well dressed. On a second glance, he began to look almost frail. He had the index and middle fingers of his right hand stained yellow down to the knuckles, and one of his eyebrows drooped as if permanently on guard against smoke. His neat moustache was slightly discoloured.

  ‘We’re dispensing with introductions I take it,’ said McEwan. He sighed. ‘Let’s be Pip and Squeak and Wilfred, then.’

  McEwan had a thick Scottish accent that he alleviated by speaking quite slowly. He laughed very quietly, with almost no sound to the breath. The cartoon characters he mentioned were in a popular Daily Mirror strip, a dog and a penguin who acted in loco parentis to a long-eared rabbit who was only capable of two elementary sounds, one being ‘gunc’.

  ‘Of course, Tom,’ said Miles Crichton. ‘Just a little chat.’

  Cotton offered them a drink. Both journalists chose double whiskies, McEwan specifying Bell’s. Cotton went to the bar and bought them.

  ‘Miles tells me you’ve an interest in Robert Starmer-Smith,’ said McEwan, when he came back.

  Cotton nodded. McEwan lit a Kensitas cigarette. ‘Sorry about this,’ he said, ‘they’re supposed to cool the throat. You’re welcome to try one.’

  ‘No, thank you,’ said Cotton.

  McEwan frowned and tasted his drink. ‘You’re not a pious, clean-living person, are you?’

  Cotton smiled. ‘No.’

  ‘But you’re not drinking either.’

  ‘I have,’ lied Cotton, ‘a fairly heavy night ahead.’

  ‘All right,’ said McEwan. ‘I take it you haven’t had much luck getting hold of Starmer-Smith’s file and you have found people a tad reluctant to talk about him.’

  ‘Something like,’ said Cotton.

  McEwan tasted his whisky again. ‘The key point of Starmer-Smith’s life,’ he said, ‘was that he did his war service before Oxford. He lasted a fair bit but then had a complete nervous collapse in 1916 and had to spend a year in a sanatorium in Guernsey. There they stitched his mind back together again and sent him to Army Intelligence.’

  McEwan stubbed out his cigarette with some vigour.

  ‘Does that explain why he thought his greatest service to his country in 1939 would be hunting down homosexuals? Surely he had other options,’ said Cotton.

  ‘Now you’re talking,’ said McEwan. ‘What he is, is a man who has been to the brink and cannot bear the notion that it was for nothing. It’s made him unforgiving and determined.’ McEwan sipped his whisky. ‘I suppose most people would describe him as somewhere between a stuffed shirt and a hair shirt. Wrong. He’s not the kind of man who feels he has to tell you in private that he hates the sin but not the sinner. He’s more castrate the sinner and look – the sin’s gone because I’ve got his balls in my hand. Not that he’d ever say that in public. He’d stress the paramount need for societies to be homogeneous, and his loathing of adulterate culture.’

  Homogeneous? Adulterate? Cotton recognized that special use of language from Spain.

  ‘He’s a National Catholic?’

  McEwan laughed. ‘That hasn’t really caught on here. So Starmer-Smith has found he’s had no choice but to consider the Church of England as “moral mortar”,’ he said. ‘But just look at the Archbishop of Canterbury. He believes buggery to be beyond the pale as well as unmentionable – but, come on chaps, a little boyish tinkering is not really worth pursuing with the full weight of the law.’

  ‘You’re telling me a high-ranking Intelligence Officer believes his job involves a religious stance?’

  The journalists looked happy.

  Cotton sighed. ‘Is Starmer-Smith married?’ he asked.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ said Miles. ‘There’s a story that his first girl gave him up when he broke down. Later he married the daughter of his spiritual adviser, the Reverend Gilbert Caskie’s girl, Violet. They have two daughters, also named after flowers.’

  Cotton nodded. ‘All right, gentlemen. Tell me something. Mr Starmer-Smith is part of MI5. He works in what we’ll call delicate matters. You are prohibited by law from writing about him. Do you normally follow such people?’

  McEwan held up his finger. ‘In the thirties,’ he said, ‘I worked at the Glasgow Herald. Gang correspondent, you might say.’

  ‘Ah. When Sir Percy Sillitoe was Chief Constable.’

  McEwan smiled. ‘Good. What do you know about the Billy Boys?’

  Cotton shook his head. ‘Not much. They were a powerful fighting gang. And I understand they were Protestants.’

  ‘Oh, Prods, yes. Billy had them drilled, with bands for the Orange marches. Glasgow is Protestant against Catholic and vice versa. Let’s say Billy and his boys hid behind sectarianism. In exactly the same way as the Catholic gangs like the Norman Conks and the San Toi did. When Sir Percy began working his magic a number of other people began to think the Billy Boys might have their uses. As fighting men, that is. First Sir Oswald Mosley offered them black shirts and Billy was quick to take that up. And when the war broke out, the army always has jobs for semi-trained brutes. Robert Starmer-Smith took two razor boys – Frankie Sinclair and Jackie Boyle.’

  ‘Why would Starmer-Smith want men like that?’

  McEwan looked at Miles
Crichton. ‘Shock therapy?’ said Miles.

  ‘I think,’ said McEwan, ‘that he’d say it’s because the enemy has the Devil’s ways and you need men who know those ways but are now working for the common good and the moral mortar of society.’

  Cotton nodded and sat back. Did Sir Percy Sillitoe know about Sinclair and Boyle? He thought probably not. Was there the threat of a sentence hanging over them? He thought there probably was. It was likely, then, that they had if not police backing, at least police forbearance. Presumably that was what Radcliffe was for. He also made a mental note of the anti-Semitic flavour of what he had heard.

  ‘Are you going to do something?’ asked Miles.

  Cotton smiled. ‘First, I’ll think. Thank you very much, both of you.’

  ‘You’re not going already?’ said Miles Crichton.

  ‘Another round, gentlemen?’

  Cotton got them new whiskies. He held out his hand to McEwan. ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘You have been very helpful. If I—’

  ‘Contact in the same way. Good luck.’

  ‘One last thing. How mean is Briggs?’

  McEwan looked doubtful. ‘What would you say?’ he asked Miles Crichton. ‘He’d certainly hit a woman, he’s spiteful but he’s most spiteful when he is being loyal, of course.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘Omitted history,’ suggested Miles Crichton. ‘Things that didn’t happen or are not useful to recall.’

  ‘As in?’

  Crichton turned to McEwan. ‘Wentworth Woodhouse?’

  Wentworth Woodhouse was a palatial Georgian country house on a huge estate in south Yorkshire. Manny Shinwell had not just given permission for open-cast mining of coal in a Humphry Repton park right up to the back door, he had insisted on it, despite protests from the local miners.

  McEwan nodded. ‘Briggs worked for Manny. He came down here to tell anyone who would listen that the miners had been manipulated by the Earl, that the poor bastards were still tugging their forelocks.’

  On his way home on the Underground, Cotton gave in to generalities. He wondered what kind of security service could be run on reports and opinions on character. Mostly, however, he wondered at a department in MI5 that employed Glasgow criminals. Seven years was an unbelievably long time for a razor boy not to have put his mark on someone and have it recorded. He thought what his own report would be like. It would have a number of contributions, from Ayrtoun, for example, and then have been given a show of coherence by someone else. It would not mention he had stabbed a young man to death in Cadiz in 1944.

  On Wednesday morning, 15 January, Cotton met up with Dawkins at the Victoria Station bar and told him what he had learnt from Tom McEwan about Boyle and Sinclair.

  ‘Have you ever heard of these people?’ he asked.

  ‘No,’ said Dawkins.

  ‘What are the chances you can find something on them?’

  ‘What? Honestly?’ said Dawkins. He made a face. ‘Very poor. If what this journalist says is true, I doubt there’ll be any records.’

  ‘Unofficially?’

  Dawkins shook his head. ‘No. A couple of Jocks with razors is the kind of thing I’d have heard about, even if the queers weren’t pressing charges.’

  ‘Will you ask around?’

  Dawkins thought, then shook his head. ‘No. Do you want reasons?’

  ‘Yes. Why not?’ said Cotton.

  ‘Either your journalist is wrong – in which case I’m drawing attention to myself. And if he is right someone’s got a very tight lid on it – and questions will cause me more bother than any answers I can get are worth.’

  Cotton smiled. ‘You don’t trust journalists?’

  ‘It’s not that. It’s just that they can be a bit free and excitable with their conclusions.’

  ‘All right,’ said Cotton. ‘Let’s keep the names in mind in case they crop up.’

  ‘Agreed,’ said Dawkins.

  17

  ON THE night of the 15th/16th at about 1 a.m. Cotton’s telephone rang.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘You’re the cotton man,’ a voice mumbled.

  ‘This is Cotton, yes.’

  The person at the other end sighed. ‘They’ve removed my security clearance.’

  ‘I’m sorry to hear it, Mr Watson.’

  ‘You knew.’

  ‘No, I didn’t,’ said Cotton. ‘You’ve just told me. What happened?’

  There was a pause. ‘It’s not – fair.’ Watson said this very quietly, without emphasis on ‘fair’.

  ‘No,’ said Cotton. ‘Tell me what happened.’

  ‘They took away my security clearance. And they say there’s nothing they can do about it. It’s out of their hands.’ Watson groaned. ‘I have – and I am saying this in the most literal sense, you know – absolutely nobody to appeal to.’

  ‘Then choose something else.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Go back to your university, for instance.’

  Watson sighed again. ‘Oh, I don’t want to do that any more.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because I’m a researcher. I don’t want to teach.’

  ‘You can still do research.’

  ‘No,’ said Watson. ‘It’s not the same.’

  ‘Of course it isn’t. But you really need to find something different, something preferably that suits you, but you really need to do so quickly.’

  The next pause was so long Cotton wondered if Watson had passed out.

  ‘Easy to say.’

  ‘I know.’

  Something between a snuffle and a laugh came down the line.

  ‘I’m in a phone box,’ said Watson.

  Cotton heard what might have been another mumbling voice or just the cabin door opening. ‘Mr Watson?’ he said.

  ‘Oh, damn,’ said Watson.

  The line started beeping, then clicked and went on to a continuous drone. Cotton groaned. He put down the telephone and waited. He did not think Watson would call back and he did not.

  In the morning Cotton contacted Dawkins and told him of Watson’s telephone call. By ten, they knew Watson had left his digs in Oxford.

  ‘I mean he’s given them up and paid off the landlords,’ said Dawkins. ‘He gave his forwarding address as his mother’s, piled his stuff into a small Austin and left. That was on the 14th in the evening.’

  ‘Didn’t he say his mother lived in a place called Sanderstead?’

  ‘Yes, we’re getting on to that. And I am trying to get hold of the car registration number,’ said Dawkins.

  By two in the afternoon they had the car registration. But there was no sign of the car and it was clear that Watson was not at his mother’s and had not visited her in the last few days.

  On Friday, 17 January Cotton reluctantly went to Margot Fenwick’s ‘post-theatre supper’. Though Margot’s note had said black tie, he found himself to be the only man in evening wear. Margot herself was the only female in a gown. It was emerald green, pre-war but she had simply let out some of the tucks to allow for her expansion in the time since. It gave her an unfinished rather than a bohemian look, as if off stage there would be a seamstress with pins in her teeth. The six others there had come directly from the theatre. One girl still had streaks of green and white on her face and an edge of flesh and orange crust. In Margot’s lamp-cluttered drawing room her poses sometimes gave her the look of wearing a mask or of representing someone like Toulouse-Lautrec’s absinthe drinker.

  Cotton was reminded of the swoops and swirls of Mexican street processions he had experienced as a child, but without the colours. Gus, the small red-haired man who had slept on a sofa in Cotton’s flat on Hogmanay, swept in and produced a paste tiara for ‘Queen’ Margot. Margot giggled, apparently unaware that his caresses and chucks were intimate without being interested in much more than this meal and others to come.

  ‘You don’t approve,’ a girl said.

  Cotton turned. Anna Melville, previously
Sokol, was not wearing a fancy costume but a black dress that was at least one size too small for her.

  ‘Of your taking advantage of her?’

  Anna Melville laughed. ‘Come on. She enjoys herself. She gets the attention she wants – and the juicy gossip. Nothing’s free. I know that. If you’re interested, of course.’ She did not let Cotton reply. She put her hand on his arm. ‘Please don’t think of the future. I don’t know how long Margot has got but then neither do you. If in ten years she feels old and abandoned, well, she had this.’

  Cotton shook his head. ‘I don’t feel responsible for her.’

  ‘What do you feel?’

  ‘Mildly uncomfortable. But probably only for this evening.’

  The girl laughed and went to embrace Margot.

  The other guests included a female costumer who was running a sideline in clothes – ‘usually, undergarments and nightdresses, darling’ – made out of parachute silk, and a bald man called Eric Sangster who described himself as ‘the poet’ and immediately asked Cotton which side he was on in the ‘ferocious battle’ going on at the Poetry Society.

  ‘Blood everywhere,’ said the poet grandly.

  Gus popped up from behind Eric’s bald head and whispered.

  ‘I say, have you heard that Alec Clunes has given Christopher Fry four hundred and fifty pounds to write a new play?’

  Eric stiffened. He looked at Cotton. ‘Did you know Fry’s real name is Arthur Hammond Harris?’

  ‘Mr Cotton here thinks Eric is not a good name for a poet,’ said Gus.

  ‘Is that true?’ asked Eric.

  ‘Not in the slightest. I don’t see that George Orwell is a better name than Eric Blair.’

  ‘What do you think of Orwell?’ asked Eric.

  ‘He’s not a poet, is he?’ said Cotton.

  ‘Well,’ said Gus, ‘aren’t we opinionated?’

  Eric blinked. ‘I’m against the aesthetics of bare fact,’ he announced.

  ‘I see,’ said Cotton without understanding or, after a moment’s pause, any desire to enquire what Eric meant. ‘Are you a playwright as well as a poet?’

  ‘Certainly,’ said Eric. ‘I profess the muse. But I also consider theatre to be social poetry. Catharsis, not tranquillity, is my aim.’