Old Flames (Frederick Troy 2)

by Lawton, John

  ‘It’s just about this time of day, when you’ve had the damn thing strapped on for nine or ten hours, that you get the most Godalmighty itch.’

  He oohed and aahed at the relief, and then his eyes noticed the bulging briefcase Troy had placed on the chair between them.

  ‘That’s it, eh? The substance of your “bit of a chat”? Well, just looking at the outside I can tell you it’s more than a bit and it’ll cost you. However . . .’

  He paused for a last deeply raking scratch at his stump, and let out a sigh of profound satisfaction.

  ‘Ah me . . . However . . . before we get stuck in, there is one thing I’ve been meaning to ask you. Have you been fucking my wife?’

  ‘No,’ Troy lied.

  ‘Good. I’m glad you have the decency to lie. ’Cos if you’d tried to brazen it out and tell me it meant nothing, I’d’ve taken off me tin leg and beaten the living shite out of you with it. In fact, for future reference, let me state it plainly. If I catch you sniffing around the old girl again, that’s exactly what I’ll do—in the street, and I don’t care if it bends me leg and frightens the horses. Capiche?’

  Troy nodded.

  ‘Good. That’s that out of the way. Now get the drinks in and tell me what you’re after.’

  ‘I thought you weren’t drinking.’

  ‘Look, Troy. Do you want me to thrash you silly or do you want to mind your own damn business and tell me exactly what’s on your mind? A large malt. No water. No ice. Filthy American habit.’

  Troy hoped it was not Angus’s intention to get pissed. He needed him sober—God knows, he was the most difficult man alive sober, but he was unbearable drunk—and he wanted Anna’s optimism to bear fruit. He knew that it was only Angus’s month-long benders—when his business went to pot and he was about as priapic as a caterpillar—that had brought the two of them together, to cross the shaky line that had joined and separated them as lovers-not-lovers since they were in their twenties. Besides, right now he couldn’t handle Anna back again. He cheated. Set a small malt in front of Angus and half an inch of ginger ale in the bottom of a glass for himself in the hope Angus would think he was on scotch too.

  Angus held his glass up to the light. Before Troy could stop him he was yelling across the room to the landlord.

  ‘Herbert! You mingy old bugger! You call this a double? You want your eyes testing!’

  Herbert strolled over, a short fat bloke with hair like autumn corn stubble and the puffy face of an ex-boxer.

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘I said,’ Angus hauled himself to his feet, towering over the landlord at more than six foot two. ‘I said, you’re a mingy bugger. And you need to get your optics fixed. On the wall or in your face.’

  A stubby finger struck him on the sternum and Troy watched as the little bloke firmly pushed him back into his seat.

  ‘Mingy? Now you listen to me, ’ero. Mr bleedin’ medals, Mr I-flew-a-bleedin’-’Urricane, Mr Battle of bloody Britain. We take a lot of shit from you. Every landlord between ’ere and the river takes a lot of shit from you. And we put up with it. You did your bit, you earned yer gongs, we all admire yer, Gawd knows some of the dafter ones even like yer. You’re our bit of ’istory. Colditz on legs, and one of ’em tin. You’re the only customer we got with a genuine ’ollow leg. But mingy? Short measure? Don’t push yer luck, Angus. I was Hoxton and Shoreditch Under 21 Middleweight Champion. I went five rounds with Mickey McGuire when I was a lad. I’ll wallop yer into rice pudding!’

  Angus had not flinched. His expression had not changed.

  ‘Nicely spoken, Herbert. Would you care to join the Chief Inspector and myself in a libation?’

  ‘Very kind of you, Angus, but I never ’as shared a tipple with the Old Bill and I doesn’t mean to start now.’

  He nodded gently in Troy’s direction.

  ‘No offence meant.’

  ‘None taken,’ said Troy, knowing it was what pub manners—that arcane men’s code—demanded of him.

  It seemed wise to open the briefcase and let paper be a professional temptation. Troy would never understand it, but accountants could feel as strongly about their work as he did about his.

  Angus sipped at his scotch and said, ‘What’s the beef, old boy?’

  Troy gave him the potted version of the case of Commander Cockerell, moving as quickly as he could to the prospect of financial irregularities and the hypothesis of the wife.

  ‘Well,’ Angus said after a while. ‘Who doesn’t live beyond their means? The story of our times, eh? I know you’re rolling in the stuff, but I’m stony most of the time.’

  ‘But they weren’t, at least not on paper they weren’t.’

  ‘Business doing well?’

  ‘Too well.’

  ‘Figures don’t add up?’

  ‘They do but . . . I’m suspicious. Look at it this way. If you were working a fiddle, who would you need on your side?’

  ‘Book-keeper.’

  ‘Cockerell looked after the books personally.’

  ‘Accountant.’

  ‘That too.’

  ‘He’d still have to be damn clever with figures to get it past the auditor. Mind you, plenty of buggers are or we’d have no need of a Fraud Squad.’

  ‘Which brings me to the case of George Jessel.’

  ‘Who he?’

  ‘Cockerell’s auditor—crony—and a recent occupant of the mortuary. He died at a very convenient moment.’

  ‘Murder?’

  ‘I can’t prove it, but I think so.’

  ‘You think this bloke collaborated with the first bloke to do what? Cover up losses, fiddles, hide debts? What?’

  ‘I don’t know, that’s why I need you. There’s something not quite kosher about all of this. I just don’t know what.’

  Angus riffled the fat sheaf of papers. ‘As I was saying, this will cost you.’

  ‘Fine. Bill me.’

  ‘And I’ll need a letter of authorisation from you.’

  ‘I have one ready.’

  Troy reached into his inside pocket and handed Angus an envelope and the keys to Cockerell’s shop.

  ‘It’s all there. A copy of the notes I took at the time. Bank statements, tax returns, the lot. And if you have to go up there, the wife’s address, the auditor’s address. Shop keys. Call the wife, she’s bright and she’s determined to nail her husband for something. And if you can, keep out of the way of the plod, and if you can’t there’s a young sergeant name of Godbehere who seems trustworthy. The local Inspector isn’t, but then he was a crony of Cockerell’s too.’

  There was, Troy knew, quite a mind behind the bluster. Often in that rapid, expanding and seemingly interminable time between D-Day and the German surrender, Anna had described the RAF charmer who had swept her off her feet and into a do-it-now-we-may-be-dead-tomorrow marriage. He had been a looker, which he wasn’t now, but above all she seemed to have been snared by his way with words and ideas. What she had called his ‘egghead blarney’. It was increasingly rare to see the combative mask slip from Angus’s booze reddened, pissed-out features, but something he had just said had engaged with the inner man, the mind, long enough for him to forget the outer man, the anger.

  ‘Crops up a lot doesn’t it, “cronies”? Has it occurred to you that it almost constitutes a principle of social action? A doctrine—“cronyism”? A frilly functioning set of bon mots. By their cronies shall ye know them, cronies in high places, one for all and all for crony, a crony in need is crony in deed. Bears a bit of thinking, y’know.’

  He held up his glass and nodded at the bar.

  ‘Be the death of this country, you know. Cronyism, clubbable Britain, the nods, the winks, the special handshakes, the blackballing. I used to think the war changed something. In fact I used to think it changed everything. I even thought six years of Socialism had changed something. But they didn’t. We’re still the same old place we were before the war.’

  Herbert set another glass of
whisky in front of Angus, without a word. A full double this time. Angus drank half of it and picked up his theme.

  ‘And we’ll rot on it. What was it Feste or some other clown says in Shakespeare—“Thou art like the medlar, rotten before ’tis ripe.” That’s Britain—we’ll rot on the bone, long before we’re dead or democratic. Cronyism has a lot to answer for. I decided in the end the war changed just one thing.’

  ‘What was that?’

  ‘It chopped off me fuckin’ leg.’

  Troy said nothing. If not at the root of the matter, they were certainly at the stump.

  ‘And now there’s only one thing to do. Get pissed and wait for the end of the fuckin’ world. Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Bikini Atoll, and bloody Windscale. Pass the single malt, and don’t let the kiddies drink the milk. The green, green grass of England is no longer green, it glistens in its thousand hues like a Strontium rainbow. We gather in the purple rain, lambs to the atomic slaughter. The centre never held. Things that fell apart have been badly stuck back together by a jealous child armed with a tube of polystyrene glue. What rough beast slouches two-headed and triple-bollocked, broad of bicep and limp of dick, towards the smouldering remains of Bethlehem to be illegally aborted?’

  He surfaced a fraction, poking a feeler out for a reaction.

  ‘I don’t suppose you fancy a piss-up do you, Freddie? A pub crawl. Give a few landlords a bit more shit. I’ve a slate with every pub from here to the Embankment, as old Herbert so rightly says. Once more round the Great British Raree Show? There’s a bloke in the Tit and Biscuit who takes out his glass eye and drops it in his pint—or yours if you’re not careful. And this chap in the Pig and Bedpost has a steel plate in his head. Got shot up in a Spit—knew ’im in 1940 as a matter of fact—and the quacks stuck this steel plate in his bonce. So he’s fitted a magnet to one of those snowstorm jobbies—y’ know one of those glass balls that you shake up and snowflakes fall on a wooden hut in Switzerland or some such place. Won’t take it off—even wears it under his hat. Every time the bugger so much as nods his head you get a blizzard up the Alps. And there’s a bloke in the Lucifer’s Arms who can fart the National Anthem—’

  ‘And there’s a bloke in this pub who’s been known to whip off his tin leg and wield it like the jawbone of an ass. Angus, I haven’t got the time!’

  More than that, Troy had no wish to be drawn into Angus’s world. It seemed to him hellish beyond measure to be made to share that awful malvision. A night out with Angus would be like treading lightly across a swamp in the vain illusion that you would not be sucked in. Lately he had come to think that survival in middle age demanded not simply the growing up that all men put off in prolonged adolescence, but also the avoidance of ways of seeing, ways of being, of miscalculated actions even, that—and he had no better phrase for it—sucked you in. Angus on the rocks was to be politely avoided, Johnny Fermanagh on the rocks needed the armour-plated heart.

  ‘And nor have you,’ he added.

  Angus flicked a corner of the paper pile with his thumbnail, rippling it like a dealer shuffling a deck of cards.

  ‘Tomorrow,’ he said. ‘I’ll get stuck in tomorrow.’

  He paused. Stared into the distance.

  ‘Or the day after.’

  Then he hoisted his glass aloft, yelled, ‘Herbert, old boy.’ And Troy left him to it.

  §53

  Special Branch was a hotbed of mangled Secret Service gossip. If the Secret State were an organism, MI5 and 6 were the two cerebella, the Branch was its arms and legs. Armwork—twisting and breaking—and legwork—kicking and breaking—were its function within Britain. Troy could ask the Branch for nothing. The time of day would be too much. They had nothing but contempt for him. He doubted whether his short spell under Inspector Cobb’s wing had done anything to improve his standing with them. He asked Jack to put his ear to the ground.

  ‘They’ll talk to you,’ he said. ‘Just find out what you can about Daniel Keeffe. Something in Six. Don’t know what.’

  There were two D. Keeffes in the directory. Keeffe, D. J. P., in Drayton Gardens SW10, and Keeffe, D. S., in Notting Hill W2. Troy took them in alphabetical order. Keeffe, D. J. P. rang and rang without picking up. He dialled Keeffe, D. S. It picked up on the fifth ring and a woman’s voice said ‘Yes’, bluntly and quietly as though he had woken her from sleep.

  ‘Mrs Keeffe?’

  ‘Who wants to know?’

  ‘My name’s Troy. I’m a detective chief inspector with Scotland Yard—’

  She hung up. He had almost certainly found the right Keeffe. Ten minutes later Jack came into his office, helped himself to a cup from Clark’s machine and pulled up a chair and confirmed the suspicion.

  ‘There is gossip,’ he said, ‘about this chap Keeffe. I sat with a few of the heavies in the canteen at lunchtime. It would appear that a particularly nasty piece of Special work called Gorman, ugly bugger, ex-Military Police, a sergeant, was boasting a few weeks ago that he’d roasted Keeffe in his own flat. Given him the third degree and turned the place over. My source quoted Gorman as saying, “We turned over this nasty little kike.”

  ‘Jesus Christ,’ said Troy. ‘Looking for what?’

  ‘Not looking for anything. Just, as the saying goes, roasting.’

  ‘Punishment?’

  ‘I can’t think what else to call it. When Five and Six send the Branch in to sort out their own it can only be threat or punishment. I doubt they learn anything directly. They have their own chaps for that, after all. I think they sent Gorman just to make a mess, and God knows they can make a mess, can’t they? Gorman took two constables and really turned him over. According the chap who was telling me, Keeffe had a collection of porcelain, Meissen, Limoges, that sort of thing. They smashed the lot. And as there was no mention of an arrest or even the prospect of one, I conclude that that this was the Branch operating in their purest form—bullying for the sake of it.’

  ‘I think I just talked to his wife. She hung up once I’d given her my rank.’

  ‘I don’t blame her. Now, are you going to tell me who he is?’

  ‘I think he’s the man who sent Commander Cockerell out to spy on the Ordzhonikidze. He’s certainly the man the FO sent to explain it all to Cockerell’s wife once the Government decided to come clean.’

  Jack looked blankly at him for a moment or two.

  ‘Clean? Not the word I would have chosen.’

  ‘Quite.’

  Jack resumed the blank stare. Troy began to wonder if he had left half his lunch smeared across his chin.

  ‘You’re not going after Five and Six again are you?’

  ‘Again?’

  ‘You know bloody well what I mean.’

  ‘No. I’m not. I just want to know.’

  ‘Know what?’

  ‘What happened to Cockerell.’

  ‘You mean, who killed him?’

  ‘I just want to be sure it doesn’t fall within our brief.’

  ‘And if it doesn’t, we’ll leave well alone?’

  Troy said nothing.

  ‘Freddie?’

  ‘Of course,’ said Troy.

  ‘You know, somehow I don’t believe you.’

  Troy worked his way through the paperwork on his desk and cleared the afternoon. By three he was walking from Notting Hill Gate Underground station towards Kensington Gardens. He turned left into Linden Gardens, a looping cul-de-sac, a mixture of mansion flats and double-fronted family homes. He stood on the pavement opposite number 202, wondering what opening tactic would stop him getting an earful of the resentment that the Branch deserved. The door of the house opened, and a short woman emerged, wrapped in a belted mackintosh, headscarf and dark glasses. It was a warmish late-summer day. The inappropriate clothes looked to Troy like a crude form of disguise. Audrey Hepburn or Diana Dors trying to shop unrecognised in Regent Street, but making quite sure everyone would say, ‘There’s a film star in disguise.’ She walked off in the direction of the Bayswater Road and s
topped by a parked Morris Minor.

  ‘Mrs Keeffe!’ Troy called out to her, and she stopped fiddling with her keys, turned and pulled her glasses down to the tip of her nose, peering, at him over the top.

  ‘It was you who called me?’

  ‘Yes. Mrs Keeffe—I’m not Special Branch.’

  ‘And I’m not Mrs Keeffe.’

  ‘I’m sorry, I don’t understand.’

  ‘I’m Deborah Keeffe. Daniel was my brother.’

  ‘Was?’

  She took the glasses off entirely, folded them and put them in her coat pocket. Her eyes were red and the lids were swollen. She looked as though she had not slept for two or three days.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘You can’t be Branch or you’d know. My brother took an overdose five days ago. He’s dead, Mr—I’m sorry I’ve forgotten your name.’

  ‘Troy.’

  ‘I thought I’d seen you before. Or I’d’ve walked on when you called my name. I’ve seen you at the House. You’re Rod Troy’s brother, aren’t you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’m the Assistant House Librarian, Science and Engineering. I don’t suppose you’d’ve noticed me. The members don’t, so why should the visitors? I suppose you went through the telephone directory looking for Keeffes, didn’t you? I don’t know what your interest is in Daniel, but he lived in Drayton Gardens. As I said, if you were Branch you’d know that.’

  ‘I’m with the Murder Squad, Miss Keeffe.’

  ‘Who’s been murdered?’

  Increasingly Troy had no answer to this simple question. He gave the answer he was accustomed to give, even though it ran against the grain of what he now believed.

  ‘Commander Cockerell.’

  ‘Well, well, well, the chickens come home to roost at last.’

  She pulled her dark glasses out again and slipped them on.

  ‘The last few days I’ve been over to Drayton Gardens. Clearing up, clearing out, you know. I was on my way there just now, but I suppose that’s the last place we can talk. Why don’t we forget the car and take the underground? I’ve always found it a rather private place outside the rush hour. I doubt anyone will hear what we have to say.’