by John Lawton
Suddenly everything Onions was saying became real and the strength seemed to seep out of him and puddle at his feet.
He pushed the door open.
‘I’ll be in tomorrow.’
Onions said, ‘You’re on sick leave. Don’t bother coming in tomorrow.’
‘Stan, I have to follow . . .’
‘I’ll do the following. Right now I’ve got Kolankiewicz telling me to put you on sick leave. And for once I agree with the bugger.’
‘I have leads to follow. I cannot take leave now.’
Onions said, ‘Go to bed. I’ll be round tomorrow. It ought to be open and shut. As you said, the bugger’s missing. I think that says it all.’
‘Is this your way of telling me I was right all along?’
‘It’s my way of saying if you still want a job in Murder, do what you’re bloody well told.’
§ 186
Troy called the London Hospital. Miss Borg had suffered concussion, but was recovering well and would be discharged in a day or two.
He sloughed off his clothes, found the gas was working, ran a meagre bath off the Ascot heater and fell asleep in it.
In the evening Kolankiewicz called on him in the middle of the air-raid.
‘I need to give you the once-over.’
‘Be my guest.’
Kolankiewicz examined his head, listened to his heart, said, ‘OK, smartyarse, so you’re immortal. Now... you got anything you want to tell me?’
Troy said nothing.
Kolankiewicz said, ‘Troy, be a mensh. I hate to see you grow up . . .’
‘Grow up what?’
‘Hard . . . cynical.’
‘Secretive, destructive?’
‘That too.’
Troy said nothing.
§ 187
In the morning Onions appeared on his doorstep.
‘Tell me,’ Troy said.
‘Stick the kettle on,’ Onions said.
Precious time wasted.
Onions sat with his cup of char. Stringing out his moment. Troy could have strangled him.
‘They’ve found Carsington’s body.’
Long swill of hot tea. Eye to eye pause.
‘They dug down?’
Onions was shaking his head.
‘No. They found Carsington’s body. In the Bridal Suite of the Empire Hotel in Brighton.’
‘What?’
‘Bridal Suite. In front of the French windows. Bollock naked. Covered in blood and shit. Cut his own throat.’
For a while neither of them said anything.
Then Onions said, ‘It was his fifty-fifth birthday, by the bye. If you think numbers mean anything, that is. If you ask me . . . barking. Completely bloody barking. I nipped down to Brighton. Saw the manager of the Empire. Seems Carsington had booked the room half a dozen times over the last couple of years. Every time it was the same. They’d find a room you’d have to clean with a hose . . . blood and shit all over the place. He’d bung ’em twenty-five quid to clean up the mess and keep their gobs shut.’
And Troy said, ‘Then it’s got to be one of the others.’
Onions was shaking his head.
‘Lockett’s been in the Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford since Sunday night. Bit of a do at his old college. A bit too much vintage port. Silly sod got himself run over in the blackout. Happens all the time. We’ve lost more people to road accidents than to bombs.’
‘Trench?’
Onions was shaking his head.
‘Enlisted Wednesday morning. Been at Camberley barracks ever since.’
‘Enlisted?!?’
‘Happen it was summat you said to him? Whatever. Conscience finally got to him, and he decided to put his patriotism on the line.’
‘I don’t bloody believe this.’
‘You’d better. It’s kosher. Oxford coppers checked out Lockett, I drove to Camberley and interviewed Trench meself.’
‘Then . . . then . . .’
Troy stopped himself saying ‘who’s in the pit?’ The last thing he wanted was to encourage Onions to have it dug out.
Onions finished his tea. Got up to leave.
‘Don’t feel foolish.’
Troy didn’t.
‘You were right. I was wrong. You got the bastard. He’s dead. That’s all that matters. Digging down’s a waste of time. Sooner or later we’ll have a list of missing persons to work from and one name’ll stick out like a sore thumb.’
On the doorstep Onions glanced at the sky – Indian summer, hints of autumn – turned back with one last thought tripping off his tongue.
‘Speaking of missing persons. Ernie Steerforth’s missis phoned in and reported him missing.’
Troy hoped he looked blank, blank or startled.
‘Missing? When?’
‘Wednesday night. Silly bugger. Out in an air-raid.’
If Onions suspected a thing it wasn’t showing in his face.
‘Back to Murder, eh?’
It was as though he’d uttered his motto, à propos of nothing much.
‘Quite,’ said Troy. ‘You said yourself only a few weeks ago, murder doesn’t stop just because there’s a war on. In fact, it gets worse.’
‘Aye . . . and so does the illegitimate birth rate, so I figure we’re about even on life and death.’
Had Onions just made a joke? Onions hardly ever made jokes.
‘Come to think of it, I reckon we’ve gone sex mad as a nation. The Commissioner’s getting reports from beat bobbies of people shagging in Hyde Park in broad daylight. Would you believe it?’
‘It wouldn’t be broad daylight if it weren’t for Double Summertime.’
‘So it’s OK to shag in the park as long as it’s dark, is that it?’
Troy said nothing.
If Onions suspected a thing it wasn’t showing in his face.
He gave Troy one of his rare smiles, blue eyes lit up, told him he was pleased with him, ‘by and large’, and set off down the alley to St Martin’s Lane. He passed Troy’s mother coming the other way – but as Superintendent Onions and Lady Troy had never met, neither recognised the other.
§ 188
‘At a time like this, Frederick, you should come home, you should be at home.’
It was like being met at the nursery gates, aged four.
‘How did you find out?’
‘That nice Mr Onions telephoned me. One day you must introduce me.’
Troy gave in. He hadn’t the energy to argue with his mother.
In the cab, crossing Euston Road, she said, ‘You rest. Then lunch. Then you rest some more.’
His father was out. Troy stretched out on the chaise longue in the old man’s study, feeling decidedly unsleepy. The next thing he knew someone was shaking him by the leg.
‘Freddie?’
Troy opened his eyes.
It was a big bloke in RAF blue.
‘Lunch.’
It was his brother, Rod. He’d never seen him in uniform. Never imagined him in uniform.
‘Lunch. I have a forty-eight-hour leave, and some people I’d like you to meet.’
Rod held out a hand and hoisted Troy to his feet.
‘Lunch?’
‘Yes. With friends. A reunion. Sort of.’
Troy followed him into the dining room. Three other men of varying shapes, sizes and ages were gathered there.
‘Let me introduce you. My little brother Freddie . . . this is . . .’
A stout bloke with a sour expression and a rogue’s twinkle in his eyes.
‘We met,’ said Billy Jacks. ‘Me and Constable Troy go back a ways, don’t we, young Fred?’
A skinny bloke with lugholes like the handles on the Football Association cup.
‘Josef Hummel,’ said Hummel. ‘Tailor of Stepney Green.’
A dapper bloke in late middle-age, riven with dignity.
‘Viktor Rosen. I play ze joanna.’
Everyone except Troy laughed at this.
‘Where d’you lea
rn that?’ asked Jacks.
‘From you, Billy. I ascribe all my bad habits to several weeks sharing a room with you.’
‘I get it,’ Troy said. ‘You were all in the same camp.’
‘All in the same room,’ sighed Rosen.
‘So it’s the Heaven’s Gate Internment Camp Reunion?’
‘Nah, mate. We none of us got within a mile of heaven,’ Jacks said. ‘This is . . . the Stinkin’ Jews Reunion.’
Lady Troy seemed almost to have stripped her country home to provide this off-the-ration feast. Chickens had been slaughtered, potatoes unearthed, brassicas ripped bare.
Rod poured wine for them all, a Puligny-Montrachet ’34. Herr Rosen rolled it around his palate, Billy Jacks pulled a face and asked if there was any pale ale and Troy and Hummel knocked it back pleasurably . . . and over lunch and a good bottle Troy learnt in snatches of the life they had led these last few months.
The dessert wine was more to Billy’s taste, Troy thought – Chateau d’Yquem 1898. He glugged it like Vimto.
‘Ninety-eight. Year I was born,’ he said approvingly.
And for a moment, in the mind’s eye, Troy could see the list of names, with Billy’s name and birthdate upon it, that he and Stilton had used to round up these men. And it seemed a lifetime ago, and he was pleased to see that it seemed that way to Jacks too.
At the end of the meal Lady Troy came in and said, ‘Herr Rosen . . . before you leave, we have a Steinway in the red room. I wonder if you would be so kind . . .?’
It was just the touch Rosen needed, the continental charm that was the antidote to a long summer spent with a rough diamond like Billy Jacks. He pressed her hand to his lips and said, ‘My dear lady, lead me to it. To tickle ze ivories would give me such pleasure.’
They all followed to the red room.
Troy heard Jacks mutter, ‘He’s takin’ the piss, ain’t he?’
Rosen played Debussy’s ‘Estampes’, ‘Pagodes’, ‘La Soirée dans Grenade’, ‘Jardins sous la Pluie’. Played them far, far better than Troy had ever played them. It was a quarter hour of heaven. Troy closed his eyes, and let the music splash down onto him. A round of gentle applause made him open his eyes, to find his father sitting next to him.
Afterwards, on the doorstep Hummel asked, ‘Are we to do this every year?’
‘Don’t see why not,’ Rod said beaming and slightly pissed.
‘Yeah. Why not?’ said Jacks, belligerent with bonhomie.
Rod and Troy watched them walk to the end of Church Row. Jacks turned, cupped his hands to his lips and yelled.
‘Chippin’ bloody Campden, eh, ’Ampstead?’
Rod yelled ‘Chipping Campden’ back.
Troy looked at him as though he thought him mad.
‘Every year?’ he said softly.
‘Oh yes. Friends for life. It’s the sort of thing creates ties, bonds . . . that sort of thing.’
‘To be free you must first belong.’
‘Eh?’
‘That’s what you wrote to me in a letter about two months ago.’
‘I did? Well . . . I was right.’
‘And of course, to betray you must first belong.’
Rod thought about this.
‘Y’know, brer,’ he said at last, ‘you’ve grown awfully cynical since we last met. I am almost tempted to ask what has happened to you, but I won’t. Instead I shall nip back inside and have a bit of a chat with that cheery old soul we call “Dad”.’
§ 189
Days later Troy could still hear Rosen’s performance in the mind’s ear. He lifted the lid on his Bösendorfer upright, unused since the day the shifters had lugged it into his parlour, and played the first chords of ‘Pagodes’. He was embarrassingly bad.
Only when he’d finished, limped to the end, was he aware of someone standing in the doorway.
Kitty tossed his front door key down onto the carpet.
‘You’re a sod, Fred. A right sod.’
‘You going to tell me why?’
‘My dad says you and that Borg woman was wrapped around each other like lovers.’
‘We were sheltering from the raid, Kitty.’
‘No! Like lovers was wot dad said, and I saw you with me own eyes when the two of you came out. You was like lovers! What was she doin’ there in the first place?’
‘I can’t tell you that.’
‘Can’t or won’t? You’ve been givin ’er one, ’aven’t you?’
Troy said nothing. It would have been more accurate he thought to say that Zette had been giving him one, but neither answer could possibly please.
Kitty came right up to him, bent down to him still perched upon the piano stool.
‘You gonna ’ave to choose. Who’s it to be? Her or me? Do I pick up that key or do I just bugger off? Who do you want, Troy?’
‘I want you both.’
The sigh was enormous, as loud it seemed as any bomb he’d heard lately and a thousand times softer.
‘Oh, Troy. You sod. You complete and utter sod.’
In the doorway, all but thrown over her shoulder, ‘Me mum was right. She told me that day you come to dinner. “Stick to your own kind, Kitty.” That’s what she told me.’
§ 190
On the following Monday passing Stilton in the corridors of Scotland Yard, Troy said ‘Hello Walter.’
Stilton said, ‘Call me Inspector Stilton, lad.’
§ 191
He lifted the lid on the Bösendorfer again and tormented himself with Debussy.
History repeated itself. Another woman standing in his doorway – wearing what he thought of as her travel suit, the neat Chanel two-piece in black that she had worn on the overnight sleeper from Paris to Monte Carlo.
‘I’ve come to say goodbye.’
‘Goodbye?’
‘I have a new job.’
‘You do? Where?’
‘Initially at Columbia University in New York. After that wherever it takes me.’
‘That sounds . . . marvellous.’
‘Einstein read my last paper . . . asked that I be . . . I think “recruited” is the word. I’m splitting atoms again. This time for real, not just in theory.’
‘Sounds like a blast.’
‘If it works, Troy, it’ll be the biggest blast in history.’
‘More numbers?’
‘It’s always numbers.’
He was being dumped, and he knew it. ‘Don’t make plans’, she had told him, and instead he had built castles in the air, plan upon plan. He wanted to tell her this, but every iota of intelligence told him not to bother.
‘What numbers did I recite to conjure you up as my own personal golem?’
Zette said, ‘9, 8, 6.’
‘Meaning?’
‘Body heat, Troy.’
She kissed him on the lips.
She walked out of the door and down the alley.
He never saw her again.
§ 192
It had taken him too long to do this. Partly because he had forgotten, partly because he was fighting shy of it. But it was time Troy got in touch with Nader again. Time he returned his jacket. He’d take it round to him, let him pick his own tailor for the repairs and the cleaning – the East End was full of tailors after all – and offer to pick up the bill.
‘Have you called before?’ Nader said on the doorstep. ‘I have been away. My father is well enough to be moved and we have found a family in Essex to take him in. I have only been back an hour or so.’
‘No. I have been . . . a bit busy. But I have your jacket here.’
He held it up.
‘I think it’s ready to be relegated to gardening and decorating.’
Nader beckoned him inside. Stuck the kettle on.
‘You know what happened, I take it?’
‘Oh yes. My would-be-assassin is buried under what remains of Heaven’s Gate. By the bye, which of your suspects was it?’
Now Troy was face to face with the moment he had trie
d so hard to put off.
‘None of them. I’ve no idea who’s down there. Some Jew-hater. Some nutcase obsessed with “the Controversy of Zion”.’
‘The what?’
‘It was left at the scene, at Friedland’s murder. A bible open at Isaiah . . . a list of plagues and disasters and the Controversy of Zion. Can’t remember the chapter.’
‘Nor I, and that’s a professional failing, isn’t it?’
‘We may never know who it was.’
‘Perhaps when we dig out?’
Troy shook his head.
‘I saw a cartload of incendiaries fall into the pit. Magnesium burning will melt through steel. I’d be amazed if there’s anything more than charred bone.’
Nader shrugged. Began to go through the pockets of his jacket.
‘So long as he’s dead, eh? Ah . . . I have them. My spare specs. The jacket I could afford to lose, not the specs. And . . .’
He had one hand in the right inside pocket.
‘. . . You must be left-handed, Mr Troy, and this must be yours.’
Onto the oilclothed table Nader placed a cut-throat razor, a tortoiseshell sheath folded over a stained steel blade. Troy had no idea it was in the jacket. He had no idea he’d taken it off Zette. But he must have done. The copper’s instinct to seize the murder weapon. And the stains – the stains were Chief Inspector Steerforth’s blood.
After tea, and promises that they would keep in touch, even though they both knew they would break them, Troy took a walk down by the Thames at Wapping Pier Head, in the shadow of Tower Bridge, and flung the razor as far out into the river as he could. It was still well short of dusk and already the bombers were swarming up the Thames.
§ 193
What Became of Them
Alex Troy died in the autumn of 1943.
Winston Churchill was voted out of office in 1945. He declined a dukedom, and while he was Prime Minister once more from 1951 to 1955 he was never so influential in public life again.
Wolfgang Stahl vanished during a Berlin air raid in April 1941.
