by John Lawton
“They are. How long had you been lovers?”
“Just that night.”
“But …”
“But what?”
“But there’s more.”
“Of course,” Troy said.
“Do you want to tell me or would you prefer to recuse yourself?”
“Neither. I’ll tell you everything when I can, but first I want to hear from him. You say it looks like an accident. What does the pathologist say?”
Kolankiewicz sighed, said, “I would prefer to get her to the lab, but I know you will not wait that long. Yes, it seems like an accident. Tripped and fell the length of the staircase from the first floor. Neck broken. No other apparent cause.”
“To which I’d add,” Jack said, “no signs of forced entry or a struggle. It seems Lady Stainesborough was alone.”
“But,” Kolankiewicz continued, “I am with Hamlet. I know not seems. This is a suspicious death, so I have my suspicions.”
“Based on what?” said Troy.
“Based on one simple but complicating fact. And that fact alone will suffice to make me suspicious. The spanner in the works, as you English are so fond of saying—she was fucking you.”
§131
Troy had never walked away from an autopsy.
Until now.
He sat at his desk.
Two in the morning.
Listened to Kolankiewicz.
“Cervical fractures, C4 and C5. I would say death was instantaneous. Two fingers on the right hand broken at the proximal phalanges, third and fourth fingers. After death, I think. There is paint in the skin and I’d assume the hand trailed along the bannisters as she fell. Bruising to the skull beneath the hairline, and visible bruising to the right cheek, where she landed after the fall. I conclude Lady Stainesborough bounced off the stairs several times before she came to rest.
“Stomach indicates she had not eaten in a while. Modest amount of alcohol. Perhaps a single gin and tonic. Not enough to make anyone unsteady. Anyone used to alcohol, that is. And … no evidence of recent intercourse.”
For a while neither man said anything.
Then Troy said, “Time of death?”
“Around five.”
“What time does Jack say the cleaner arrived?”
“Around five. I got a call from Jack before half-past.”
“So … she just missed him?”
“Him?”
“The killer. You think there’s a killer. I know there was one.”
“My boy, perhaps what you are not yet telling Jack you should tell me.”
Troy said nothing.
“Just tell me.”
“The name Bill Blaine means nothing to you?”
Kolankiewicz shrugged.
“He was an MI5 agent. Five sent him to Vienna to de-brief Guy Burgess. I assume you know Burgess approached me while I was there. Blaine was shot only yards from our embassy. I was standing next to him. It’s a secret, at least for now, and it’s assumed on high that it was a KGB hit. Blaine was Venetia Stainesborough’s brother-in-law. But … he was a double agent. Venetia knew he was a double agent, and that kind of knowledge is dangerous. It’s what got her killed.”
Kolankiewicz had sat holding an envelope. He opened it and took out half a dozen large photographs.
To Troy they were all but abstract.
He turned them one way, Kolankiewicz turned them the right way.
“Upper arms, left and right. Triceps and biceps. You might mistake the marks for skin blotches. They’re faint, almost invisible … but the spacing is the giveaway, thumbs and fingers. Large hands, a big grip, not hard enough to have created obvious bruises, indeed I flatter myself many a quack would have missed it … but someone, someone taller than she, held her from above, and in front—”
“And threw her down the stairs.”
“Did you ever doubt it?”
“Not for a second.”
Not so long ago Troy had needed someone to die.
Now he needed someone to kill.
§132
Shortly after eight. Jack appeared.
He had slept and shaved.
Troy had not.
Troy told him what Kolankiewicz had said.
Then he told him what he had told Kolankiewicz.
“And you still don’t think you should step away from this one?”
“No, I don’t. I stand the best chance of any of us of solving this case.”
At this point Troy did not know which way Jack would jump. He was watching the low wintering sun glinting on the Thames, his back to Troy.
“OK,” he said without turning around. “Then you need to know everything I do. And that amounts to bugger all. No other prints. The cleaning lady saw no one. It’s not the sort of street where neighbours peer through the curtains, so a house-to-house yielded nothing but dignity firmly stood upon. Definitely no forced entry. If, as you and Kolankiewicz seem certain, there was someone there, then Lady Stainesborough let him in herself. And what does that tell you? Right now … if this were a blank case, a tabula rasa, not loaded with spy connections, and if I didn’t know you were out at Mimram … you’d be the only suspect. I wish I could be more help, but I’ve nothing to go on. Absolutely nothing.”
He turned.
“If you want this case, Freddie, you can have it. It’s a stinker.”
“I know that.”
“You realise we can’t tell Onions? If we do, he’ll say two words to you and hand the case back to me.”
“Which two words, Jack?”
“Diana Brack.”
Of course.
“This is different. This was just a one-night stand,” he lied.
Troy knew Jack was right and wondered if his own persistence didn’t have as much to do with Diana Brack as it had with Venetia. Given his propensity to reoccupy his childhood, how long had his affair with Venetia been going on? More than a night, more than a week … had it been latent in his adolescence?
“Well …” Jack said. “There’s one vital difference, isn’t there? We both know who killed Diana Brack.”
§133
Troy went home to Goodwin’s Court.
He tried to sleep, but dead women tumbled through his dreams, identities shifting and merging. He’d embrace Diana and find he was kissing Venetia. He’d fuck Diana and hear Venetia’s voice playing the Burgess game … “fourth man … fifth man.” He’d relive shooting Diana and find he’d shot Venetia.
And a loop of sound in his mind, at first indistinct, loud but distorted and metallic, and then clarifying, close and human and Germanic: “Put the gun down, Herr Troy.” Put the gun down, Herr Troy. Put the gun down, Herr Troy. Put the gun down, Herr Troy.
Around three he got up. Sat at the kitchen table with a packet of blank postcards and played a new game, one he’d never tried before. Regard each card as a player in the game … name them as they come to you … rearrange like a croupier at casino poker.
BURGESS.
VOYTEK.
BLAINE.
VENETIA.
So far, simple and uninformative. Prompting no thought. Then he added:
ROD.
MACMILLAN
And took away … VOYTEK.
He’d just lined up
MACMILLAN—BLAINE—
And pondered the blank.
A knock at the door.
Swift Eddie.
“You never got your morning cake.”
A shiny box of panettone dangled from a loop of ribbon on his little finger.
“Make coffee too,” said Troy without greeting, almost throwing the line over his shoulder as he headed back to the table to scribble down the name of the player that had occurred to him. And filled in the blank.
JORDAN.
He needed to talk to Jordan Younghusband.
He looked at his watch. Five thirty. If today was an office day, he might just catch Jordan at Leconfield House.
The harridan on the desk knew Troy. Didn
’t like him—did she like anyone? —but knew him.
“I just saw Mr. ‘Usband heading orf downstairs. I’ll put you through to the bar.”
After much yelling, Jordan picked up the phone in the midst of the hubbub.
“Whoozat?”
“Troy.”
“Can’t hear you!”
“Jordan. It’s me, Troy.”
“Freddie. Great timing. It’s Bob Chaplin’s birthday. Come and join us.”
“No. I need you here.”
“Here? Where’s here?”
“Goodwin’s Court.”
“Not more bodies?”
“No. Just the one, but you’ll want to know.”
§134
Eddie made Troy bathe and shave. Even laid out a clean shirt for him.
“You look dreadful.”
“Thanks, Ed.”
“I’ll be off now.”
“No, you stay.”
Jordan arrived a little the worse for booze. Just when Troy would want him keen and attentive.
“Black coffee, Eddie. And pile on the cake.”
Jordan did not so much sit as slump.
“Freddie, is this really quite so urgent? I mean, I was in the middle of a … y’know, the top came off the bottle at lunchtime …”
“How urgent do you want murder to be?”
“OK. Murder is what you do. It wouldn’t be anything else, would it? So, who’s dead?”
“Venetia, Lady Stainesborough. You may have known her as Venetia Maye-Brown.”
Jordan was nodding.
“I did. Not seen her … oooh … I dunno … since the end of the war. I seem to remember dancing a conga with my hands on her backside on VE night. She was … what’s the word … very popular during the war. But … I tell a lie. I’m sure I’ve seen her a couple of times since. Parties and such. Sorry, can’t remember where or when. But, as I said, rather popular in the blackout.”
“Indeed, she was. And after the war she cleaned up her act. Married into the aristocracy.”
“Ah. And how did she die?”
“Someone picked her up and threw her downstairs yesterday afternoon. But this is almost a digression.”
“Good. ‘Cos if it isn’t, I don’t see how I can help you. Is Eddie making coffee? Good man.”
Troy gave Jordan a moment then said, “Bill Blaine.”
“Ah … still not laid to rest, eh?”
“Jordan. Who pulled you off the Burgess trip?”
“Section head. Bloody annoying, I was all set, packed … and it seemed like an adventure. At the last minute something arose and I got switched.”
“What was it?”
“Suspicious activity at Liverpool docks. Some nonsense about IRA explosives. You know, four pounds of fertilizer and an alarm clock. Turned out to be complete bollocks, but it took me away from London for two days … and of course, by the time I got back, Blaine was dead. Part of me thought ‘could have been me.’ But I suppose that’s natural without being logical. But any complaint I might have had about my time being wasted got swallowed by the ‘but for the grace of God’ thingie.”
“Section head?”
Jordan hesitated. Eddie nipped in with the cake and coffee. Jordan sipped, munched, and pondered.
“Well,” he said. “That’s secret. Or if it isn’t, it ought to be. But I don’t suppose it’s a secret that matters much. Denzil Kearney is his name. But as it is nonetheless a bit of a secret … I have to ask … why are you asking?”
“My brother got called into Number 10 just before you were pulled and Blaine flew out to Vienna. Mac told Rod unequivocally that he didn’t want Burgess back and that MI5 would not be sending anyone to de-brief him or bring him in from the cold.”
Jordan paused with a chunk of panettone at his lips and stuck it back on the plate.
“Freddie, where’s this leading? Macmillan told Rod who told you … is this more than gossip? Is anyone sure Mac wasn’t just sounding off?”
“Oh, he was definite. ‘Not at any price’ did he want Burgess back. And I believe him. I think Kearney acted off his own bat. Disobeyed an order from the PM. Pulled you as told, but then substituted Blaine. You were never at risk. No one walked over your grave. You were never the target. Blaine was. He was dead the minute he boarded that plane for Vienna.”
“Jesus H. Christ. Why? And what on earth does this have to do with the Venetia woman?”
“Blaine was a Soviet agent. Venetia was Blaine’s sister-in-law. She was the one person he’d told about his double life.”
Jordan knocked back his coffee, turned to a blank, befuddled Eddie.
“You wouldn’t happen to be hiding a drop of Scotch back there, would you, Eddie?”
§135
Eddie poured Laphroaig for the three of them.
“I can’t take all this in,” Jordan said. “Bill Blaine a double agent. I mean … I’ve known him since God-knows-when. We were contemporaries. We propped up the same bars in London …”
“The vital difference is that before that you propped up bars at the LSE and Blaine propped them up in Cambridge.”
“That’s why we made him our man on Burgess, Maclean, and that slimy bugger, Philby. I seem to recall telling you he was a better man to de-brief Burgess than I was.”
“Cambridge is also where they recruited him. Blaine seems to have done a very good job of not attracting attention either at Cambridge or after. As the Cambridge spies go, he seems to have been the sleeping partner. I knew most of Guy’s friends. I met a lot of his dubious acquaintances. Blaine wasn’t one of them. If he was a homo, he wasn’t one of Guy’s homos.”
“Oh no, Bill wasn’t queer. First marriage went belly-up before the war. Divorced. Second wife just walked out. He never bothered with a divorce that time. No intention of ever marrying again. He was happy with prostitutes. Had a regular high-class whore who used to visit him at his flat. None of the ‘hello dearie, fancy a good time’ on Soho street corners. All very discreet. He had his good times at home. She’d invoice him every month, just like a tailor, and he’d post off a cheque. But … Cambridge … Burgess … I never asked … did Bill get to see Burgess in Vienna?”
“Oh yes, they spent quite a long evening alone.”
“Ye gods … it makes you wonder what they talked about, doesn’t it?”
Troy had thought much the same.
“I mean,” Jordan went on. “They’d have been laughing like idiots at us, wouldn’t they? They had to be. Making twats of us all. And all the while the KGB had a bullet with Bill’s name on it.”
Troy thought Jordan might have worked it out. He hadn’t, but as he was still uncertain himself, he let the remark pass.
“Tell me about Kearney.”
“What’s to tell? Posh Scottish. You know the type. Shares in a distillery. Wears a kilt on New Year’s Eve. Not a trace of an accent. Fettes and Westminster. Greats at Balliol. Then straight into the navy. Joined Naval Intelligence during the war. Transferred to us in ‘55, I think it was. Ian Fleming recommended him. They’d been pen-pushers in the same back room in ‘44. There were even rumours Fleming based his Bond character on him. Well, he’s certainly tall, dark, and handsome … but a man of action he ain’t. He wouldn’t know a Beretta from a Bazooka. The sort of bloke whose handshake is a bit too limp, and if you sniff your hand afterwards it smells of Nivea. I hope I can say this without false modesty—he got the job he has because I turned it down. It’s a desk job. I’m a field agent and I want to stay that way. Kearney is a desk jockey. Happy with his pencil sharpener and all those pens with different coloured inks.”
“Can you get me the file on him?”
Jordan straightened noticeably, as though Troy’s words had magic. An open sesame to sobriety.
“No … No, I can’t. Do you have any idea of the scrutiny involved in getting hold of the file on a section head? I’d have to sign it in and sign it out. Given Kearney’s seniority, they might not even let me take it out of the room, an
d as there are two clerks on permanent supervision, somebody is bound to ask me why I want it. I’m sorry, Freddie. I understand your concerns and if you’re right, I’m as concerned as you are yourself … but we can’t go down that route. There is a bag, inside that is a cat, and the minute I ask to see Kearney’s file the cat leaps out and craps everywhere. Whatever the nature of your investigation, do you really think it will help to alert, provoke, and antagonise an MI5 section head?”
§136
Troy slept as badly as the night before. His dreams but variations on a theme, ending the same way in the same words— “Put the gun down, Herr Troy.”
He couldn’t understand why the Austrian detective’s words haunted him … he’d expect to hear Venetia’s habitual “I know everything,” as it had turned out to be her swan song. But he didn’t, just the prosaic, procedural phrasing of a Viennese flic.
He went into the Yard.
Bypassed all contact with Onions.
Brought Jack up to speed.
He was not in a mood to smile. Tolerant and disapproving.
“An MI5 section head? Good God, Freddie. One of these days you’ll get us all killed.”
Around noon Jordan called.
“Sorry about last night. Bad timing.”
“You remember what you said?”
“Yes, and I stick to it. Meet me in the park in an hour.”
Everyone met in the park. Troy doubted that there was a single innocent newspaper reader or duck feeder to be found anywhere in St. James’s Park. They were all running dead letter boxes, trading secrets, or looking for guardsmen to suck off.
He had no difficulty finding Jordan. They’d met at the same bench half a dozen times over the last ten years. Meeting here was the shabby side of a relationship that, by and large, remained social and affable. Troy had eaten dinner at Jordan’s and Jordan at Troy’s. Foxx adored him. They, as Jordan was wont to put it, propped up the same bars—usually the Criterion. If they met in the park, it was work and it was fractious. Troy never felt more distant from Jordan than when talking shop.
“I’m sorry I was pissed,” Jordan said. “Sorrier still to sound pissed off. But—I thought it over. I still can’t do what you ask. Too damn risky.”
