Riptide

by John Lawton

  They arranged to meet mid-afternoon. It seemed simple enough to let Cormack find his own way there. What could go wrong? It was, as Stilton pointed out, ‘ironically close to Marshall Street’ and Cormack had said, ‘That’s not irony, Walter, that’s just coincidence.’ All the same the American had got there ahead of him. Stilton rounded the corner from Lexington Street to find him sprawled on the pavement, feet in the gutter, head down on the slabs. He stirred his boots and, as much as a portly policeman could, he ran, reached the body, seized a shoulder and turned it over.

  ‘Walter, this guy is unbelievable. He’s down there forging twenty dollar bills!’

  Then Stilton spotted the fanlight at pavement height, opening into the cellar. He hoped he wasn’t red in the face-he knew he was breathless-hoped Cormack couldn’t see what a fool he’d just made of himself. He tugged at the knees of his trousers, stuck his backside in the air and bent to peer through a century of grime into the cellar. At some point the fanlight had been painted over from the inside, but it was flaking now, and there were half a dozen peepholes into the world below the street.

  ‘Look along the wire in the middle of the room. Those green strips of paper are twenty dollar bills-and those big white ones… aren’t they-‘

  ‘Fivers,’ Stilton said. ‘Five-pound notes. The bugger’s gone back to printing fivers! This bloke’s a one-man crime wave. I’d love to nick ‘im. It’s going to be a temptation not to. How you get a wrong’un to talk without the threat of arrest, God knows. I’ve all the power of a friendly fireside chat.’

  ‘I think the FBI might have a few things to say to him themselves.’

  ‘Let’s get in there. I feel like a penniless kid at the sweetshop window.’

  Stilton hammered on the door. The bolts shot back and an over-refined voice said from the dark interior, ‘You’re early. I wasn’t expecting you till tomorrow. But as you’re here…’

  The door swung wide, they found themselves following a man’s back down the cellar steps, still not having seen his face, a smell of oil and ink and the clatter of printing presses.

  Forsyte stood behind his desk, still not looking at them, filling a small attache case. A five-pound note brushed Stilton’s hat as he passed under it. The blasé-ness of the man made his blood boil. Five-pound notes-the ink not even dry-pinned up with clothes pegs like the Monday wash-and he didn’t seem to give a damn who saw.

  ‘There’s six Ausweisses in the names you asked for. Half a million in Reichsmarks and there’ll be another two hundred thousand tomorrow. I don’t know what’s so urgent, but perhaps next time a telephone call?’

  He looked up at them, clearly feeling none of the confusion they felt themselves. He was thirtyish, a thin moustache, prematurely grey above the ears-and Stilton was right about the voice. It was, he thought, posh with a long ‘o’, the fake culture of an upper-crust accent by lower-class pretensions. Hence the fondness for a loud waistcoat and a bow tie. They went with the over-articulation and the prolonged vowels. Was nothing real about this man? Was he as phony as his currency? Perhaps he wore false teeth and a cardboard collar?

  ‘You were expecting me?’ Stilton said.

  ‘I was expecting a policeman. You’re a policeman. You look like every Special Branch copper they’ve ever sent as a bagman. If not, you’ve missed your vocation and I’m about to send for a real one.’

  He reached for the telephone. Stilton and Cormack stepped forward with the synchronicity of Busby Berkeley dancers, but it was Cormack who spoke first.

  ‘That won’t be necessary. Calvin M. Cormack, FBI.’

  He flashed his Virginia driving licence before Forsyte’s eyes for a split second, and snatched a twenty-dollar bill off the line above his head.

  ‘Double sawbucks, huh? Uncle Sam’s going to be mighty pissed with you. Whatever arrangement you have with the British won’t cover this. Run off all the fivers you want: mess with United States Treasury and you’re in big trouble.’

  Forsyte stood frozen, the telephone still in his hand. Stilton took it from him and laid it gently back in its cradle.

  ‘Agent Cormack’s working with us on this one,’ he said softly.

  ‘The President is personally concerned about this. Do you understand me, Larry? Mr Roosevelt is personally concerned. Now, how many have you printed?’

  Forsyte had gone pale. The accent slipped at the speed of a landslide.

  ‘Only what you see. Two dozen. It’s not what you think…’

  ‘Tell that to J. Edgar Hoover.’

  Cormack turned to Stilton and winked hammily at him. ‘Chief Inspector, cuff him.’

  ‘No, no… it’s… just an experiment.’

  ‘An experiment?’ Cormack said.

  ‘Just to see if I can do it. Like a lab test. Purely academic.’

  ‘Academic? Do we arrest academics, Walter?’

  ‘Depends,’ said Stilton. ‘Depends what’s on offer.’

  ‘You scratch my back, lad, and I’ll scratch yours.’

  Forsyte sank into his chair, the weariness of the cornered written on his face. He pinched his nose, sniffed loudly and said, ‘OK. You can cut the Flanagan and Allen routine. Just tell me what you want.’

  Stilton stuck the ration book on the desk.

  ‘Yours, I believe.’

  Forsyte didn’t pick it up. Looked at it where it lay and said, ‘So?’

  ‘Another little lab test, perhaps?’

  ‘If you like.’

  ‘But this one leaked into the street. This one’s been bought and sold a few times, hasn’t it? What I want is the name of the bloke you sold it to. You did sell it, didn’t you? I mean, you’re not giving them away out of the goodness of your heart, are you?’

  Forsyte stared silently at them. Cormack plucked another bill off the line, pulled his glasses to the end of his nose and said, ‘Work this good could get you ten to twenty in Sing-Sing. Federal Offence. Worse than not licking the seal on an airmail letter or forgetting the date of President Taft’s birthday. Think about it, Larry.’

  ‘I printed six. I have four still. I sold two. A chap came along and made me an offer.’

  ‘And?’ Stilton prompted.

  ‘A Pole.’

  ‘And does this Pole have a name?’

  ‘I don’t know his real name, but they call him Fish Wally.’

  § 55

  ‘I think I’m going to kill him,’ said Stilton. ‘The sly, two-faced git. D’ye remember what he said? He said he lived off “whatever I can pick up”. Even held up his hands to make it seem like it was almost literal. And what’s he doing? Flogging ration books to German spies. I’ll murder the little sod!’

  ‘Walter,’ Cal said. ‘Do you really think this changes anything?’

  They were sitting in a cafe in Endell Street, just around the corner from Drury Lane and the home of the much-abused Fish Wally.

  Stilton slurped at his tea. Cal tried-he found tea solved less than you’d think.

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘You said all along that the guy was kosher. Your Squadron Leader passed him. He’s lived here the best part of eighteen months without attracting suspicion. Maybe he works his little fiddles without knowing who’s working him.’

  ‘Oh-I get it. This network you were on about this morning.’

  ‘Wally doesn’t have to know he’s part of it to be part of it. The other side just need to know that he operates under the counter.’

  ‘Calvin, he’s not stupid. He’s a clever man, an educated man.’

  ‘He’s also half crazy. I think he’s just got known as a man who can fix you up with a room without too many questions. The ration book was a bonus. Wally had just acquired them, saw a potential customer in our Mr Robinson, and did the deal.’

  ‘Thing is, who else did he deal with? Has he still got the other book or did he flog that too?’

  ‘Only one way to find out.’

  Stilton abandoned his tea and pushed it away from him. In Cal’s expe
rience Stilton never abandoned anything, cold coffee, the crusts on toast, the scrapings in the bottom of the pan-any pan-he hoovered up the lot. From the look on his face Cal deduced he didn’t much relish what he had to say next.

  ‘I’ll have to pull him, feel his collar, you know that.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Tek ‘im down the Yard and give ‘im the works.’

  ‘The works? I think this is where I came in.’

  ‘Aye-more’s the pity, it’s where you go out.’

  ‘What do you mean? You’re dumping me again? I thought we worked Forsyte pretty well back there. I felt we were a team for the first time.’

  ‘So did I. You’ve the makings of a good copper. But I’ve got to pull Wally by the book. Down the Yard, in an interrogation room. I can’t take you with me.’

  ‘Why? I mean, why not?’

  ‘Copper’s stuff. And you’re not a copper. Wally may be half crazy, you’re probably right. But I know Wally, he’ll not decide to talk because we pinch his sausages or bluff him with your driving licence. I’ll need to stick ‘im in a cell and sweat him. He really hates being locked up. You’re not on the force, lad… it wouldn’t be… it wouldn’t be right. This is something I have to do with Dobbs, and believe me Calvin, if I could choose you instead of that dozy pillock I would.’

  Cormack gave up on his tea, shoved his cup and saucer to clink against Stilton’s. A cheerless toast in brown scum that had tasted of shoe-leather.

  ‘How long?’

  ‘Overnight. Doubt it’d be longer. And I’ll tell you the minute we get a lead.’

  ‘Cross your heart and hope to die?’

  § 56

  They parked the car out of sight and hung around the street corner. They could not see the door, and no one using the door was likely to see them-but Stilton and Dobbs could see the window of Fish Wally’s living room on the ground floor of a sturdy, purpose-built block of turn-of-the-century flats, the like of which had been built the length and breadth of London fifty-odd years before for the benefit of working men and their families. Rabbit hutches, Stilton called them. Two poky rooms and take your baths in the kitchen. His old mate George Bonharn lived in one back in Stepney. He and his wife had raised three kids in one. Stilton wondered how they did it. On the other hand, they were bijou accommodation for the single villain.

  Wally was not home. Stilton was waiting for the blackout to be drawn. Then they’d nick him. It was Stilton’s turn to watch. Dobbs leaned against the wing of the Riley, looking pale and sleepy. Stilton was angry enough without this provocation.

  ‘Bernard-you nod off now and I’ll roast you on me truncheon like one o’ them Ayrab shish kebabs.’

  Dobbs did not seem to have heard him. Stilton stepped back a few paces and shook him.

  ‘Eh?’ said Dobbs.

  ‘Have you been at the beer again, laddie?’

  ‘What? What chance have I had, boss? We been stuck here since before opening time. I was just feeling a bit dicky, that’s all-I’ll be fine now.’

  Stilton stepped back to the corner just in time to see the blackout being drawn over Wally’s window.

  ‘We’re on,’ he said softly.

  Dobbs yanked the ignition keys from his trouser pocket and eased his backside off the car.

  ‘Not so fast,’ Stilton said. ‘I want him to get his coat off, I want him to get his slippers on-kettle on, knees under the table, rolling ciggy. I want him to feel safe in his little nest before I drag him out of it and throw him in a cell.’

  ‘He’s really got your goat, hasn’t he, boss?’

  ‘Understatement, Bernard, understatement.’

  Stilton let ten minutes pass, looked at his wristwatch and said, ‘Bring the car right up to the porch and leave the nearside back door open.’

  He strode off, mackintosh flapping, trilby pulled down firmly. Once inside he tapped gently at Wally’s door, the friendly-shy knock of a neighbour wanting to borrow a cupful of sugar.

  Fish Wally came to the door, yawning and smoking simultaneously, a fag glued with spittle to his lower lip. Stilton knocked the cigarette away, seized him by the arm and bundled him inside. The kettle sang on the hob, his baccy pouch lay open on the oil cloth, the cat occupied pride of place in the armchair-and Wally wore his slippers.

  ‘Stilton! What you-?’

  Stilton grabbed the other arm and, in a gesture born of years of practice, slapped the cuffs on his wrists and clicked them closed.

  ‘For God’s sake, Walter-what do you want?’

  Stilton found Fish Wally’s shoes under the table and threw them at him without a word. Wally took the hint, wrapped his crab hands around them and slipped them on. Stilton turned off the gas, opened the wire-mesh cold-larder above the sink, found a few scraps of fatty meat wrapped in greaseproof paper and dumped them in the cat’s howl.

  ‘You going to tell me what this is about? Or do I have to guess?’

  Stilton took his coat off the back of the door and threw that at him too. The door slammed behind them, Stilton dragging Fish Wally by the scruff of his neck, down to the car and bundled into the back seat. Only when Dobbs had slipped the car into gear and set off down Drury Lane did Stilton speak.

  ‘You are not obliged to say anything, but if you do…’

  ‘For Christ’s sake, Walter-do we not know each other better than this?’

  Dobbs crunched the car through the gears at the junction with the Aldwych, the metallic scraping filling the silence. Then Stilton said, ‘I thought I knew you, Wally. Now I’m wondering just who the hell you are.’

  § 57

  Fish Wally sat by himself in a cell at Scotland Yard, still in the handcuffs. Stilton checked his watch, Dobbs flopped down on a wooden bench in the corridor.

  ‘Let’s give him an hour on his jack jones. Tell the uniforms to leave well alone. No cups of tea and no chit-chat.’

  ‘Wh… wh… whatever you say boss.’

  Stilton leant down and looked at Dobbs all but eye to eye. He’d gone deathly pale. And he could hardly put a sentence together.

  ‘Bernard-if I didn’t know better I’d swear you were one over the eight.’

  ‘I sh… sh… should be so lucky.’

  ‘I’m sending you home, laddie.’

  ‘I’ll get a cab.’

  ‘Bollocks-I’ll whistle up a squad car. Go home and go to bed. If you’re no better by the morning just give me a bell. I think you’re coming down with summat.’

  Stilton put an arm around Dobbs and lugged him up to the ground floor. He seemed to go completely limp, as though someone had just cut his strings.

  Back in his own office, he took out his little black notebook and the desk file he was supposed to type up regularly. He’d typed in nothing since the last time he was in Burnham-on-Crouch with Squadron Leader Thesiger. He couldn’t be arscd at the time and he could not be arsed now. Wally would be sitting down there, that seemingly unshakeable philosophical stance getting more wobbly by the minute. There was one thing Stilton could do that Wally couldn’t, and it would give him a nice edge in an hour or so-he could catch forty winks and get down there feeling a damn sight fresher than ‘me laddo’. Stilton slept. Forty winks became eighty winks. One hour became two.

  ‘Walter, are you going to stop playing games now and tell me what this is about?’

  Stilton leant across the table and unlocked the handcuffs. Fish Wally rubbed at his wrists.

  ‘That Czech bloke you sent me after…’

  “I heard-you lost him. Is that my fault?’

  ‘That Czech bloke you sent me after,’ Stilton said slowly and emphatically, ‘was a German.’

  Fish Wally was galvanised. Head up, eyes wide. Perhaps Cormack was right. Or Fish Wally was a better actor than he’d ever thought?

  ‘What?’

  ‘A German-an Abwehr spy.’

  ‘I don’t believe you.’

  ‘Suit yourself

  Stilton got up and left. As he locked the door a yo
ung constable appeared with a cup of tea.

  ‘Nowt for him. I’ll have that.’

  ‘But guvner, regulations-‘

  ‘Bugger regulations. He gets nowt till I say so.’

  An hour later he came back. Wally was on his feet at once, shouting in his face.

  ‘I didn’t know! How the hell you expect me to know? You think I deal with Germans knowingly? You think I don’t have every reason in the world to hate Germans? What kind of a man do you think I am?’

  ‘Like I said. I don’t know any more.’

  ‘Pah!’ A wave of the arm, a puff of Polish contempt, but Fish Wally sat down again and faced Stilton.

  ‘We’re making progress, I see.’

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘An hour ago you didn’t believe he was German.’

  Fish Wally glared. He seemed to think it wiser to say nothing. Stilton took out four little paper books and laid them on the table between them as though he were playing patience. Four Ministry of Food ration books.

  ‘I got these off Faker Forsyte this afternoon.’

  Fish Wally tried a ‘So?’ but it lacked total conviction.

  Stilton put a fifth, slightly tattier book next to the others.

  ‘I took this one off the German last night. The bloke you told me was Czech. The bloke you fixed up at your cousin Casimir’s doss house.’

  Fish Wally shrugged. A silent ‘So?’

  ‘Did you sell it to him?’

  ‘Why don’t you ask him?’

  ‘Not to mince words, I took it off the-body… the corpse of that German.’

  Fish Wally flinched at this.

  ‘I’ll ask you again. Did you sell it to him?’

  ‘What if I did?’

  ‘Wally, I might expect remarks as stupid as that from the average London tea-leaf… but if that’s what you want. Firstly, it’s illegal to trade in counterfeit documents. Second… you’re a British resident now. We took you in. It’s ingratitude, it’s treason if you want it plain.’

  ‘Treason? Ingratitude? Good God, Stilton, what do you want from me? I am no traitor. I am a poor man. Worse-‘ He held up his hands again ‘-a broken man. I have a living to make where I can. But why should I betray England?’