Riptide

by John Lawton

  Troy stopped. Looked up at the flapping curtain in the open window. Felt the onrush of copper’s magic. Pricked back his ears. There was a key phrase in the rise of Alice’s rage.

  ‘I’ll swing for you, you bastard!’

  At which point she would begin destroying the family crockery piece by piece, beating Ardle about the head with it until there wasn’t a plate left to smash, and her drunken husband collapsed to the kitchen floor.

  Troy dashed up the stairs. The voice in his head that might have told him he’d already played the boy scout today, and shot the bolt of his white magic, silent in his head.

  Alice had McArdle cornered in the kitchen-a couple of dinner plates shattered at his feet. She had her back to Troy. He grabbed her by the shoulder as she lunged at her husband once more.

  ‘Alice!’

  She spun round-the weapon in her hand sliced through Troy’s shirt, and tore a gash in his chest two inches below the nipple.

  Troy clutched his ribs with his right hand. Watched the blood seep between his fingers, saw Alice’s mouth open silently in shock. He looked at her hand still poised in the air. She’d stabbed him. Stabbed him with a potato peeler.

  McArdle staggered to his feet just as Troy staggered backwards, bumped into a kitchen chair and sat down with a thump.

  ‘Jesus woman, you’ve killed a copper!’

  Alice had her eyes fixed on Troy’s bloody shirtfront. Then she held up the potato peeler like a crucifix presented to Christ, dropped it and screamed. The gust of whiskied breath told Troy what he should have known all along. She was as pissed as her husband.

  McArdle rinsed a dishcloth under the tap and came back to Troy with the dripping, smelly, grey mess, intending to apply it to the wound.

  ‘Do you want me to get septicaemia?’ Troy asked. ‘Why don’t you try and shut Alice up? I’ll be fine.’

  Alice had resorted to a mantra of ‘Jesus, O Jesus, O Mary Mother of God.’

  ‘Alice woman. Will you shut yer gob! Mr Troy says he’ll be all right.’

  Troy would only be all right if he got himself out of there and home. He got up, shaky on his feet, light-headed and made his way to the door. The next time, he’d let them murder each other.

  Out in the street he took a breather against a lamp-post, not at all sure whether he was going to throw up or not. McArdle leaned out of the window.

  ‘Are you sure you’ll be all right Mr Troy?’

  ‘Fine,’ Troy lied. He’d only be all right if he got home and got to a doctor.

  Fumbling with the key at his front door, he could feel the blood reach his legs-the wound must be deeper than he thought. He fell into an armchair next to the phone and dialled Scotland Yard. Whitehall 1212.

  ‘Is Mr Kolankiewicz still in the building?’

  The constable on the desk said he’d ring round and call him back. Troy wriggled out of his jacket, pressed a cushion to his chest and lay still. A couple of minutes later the phone rang and he heard Kolankiewicz’s voice say, ‘What’s up? I was just leaving the Yard in search of a plate of tripe and onions and a bowl of hot plum duff with custard.’

  ‘I need… I need your professional services.’

  ‘Oh fuck, Troy-not again. I stitched you up only last year. You already look like Boris Karloff playing Frankenstein’s monster. Call your physician.’

  ‘And get signed off sick? Not on your nelly. Pick up a bag of tricks and get in a cab!’

  § 69

  ‘You mean I can go?’ Cal knew he sounded incredulous.

  ‘Yep,’ Dixon said. ‘On yer bike. If that means anything to you.’

  Cal had been two days in his bloody clothes. He felt he must smell like a slaughterhouse. As Dixon handed him his possessions one by one, he said ‘I can’t walk though the streets like this.’

  ‘No. You can’t.’

  Dixon took his macintosh off the peg on the back of the office door. The ubiquitous bobby’s mac-just like the one Walter Stilton had worn.

  ‘I’ll want it back, mind.’

  ‘I’ll send it back in a cab.’

  ‘Sign here.’

  Cal slipped his arms through the coat and glanced down at the form Dixon had put in front of him.

  ‘It says “all personal effects”.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘My gun?’

  ‘You want your gun back? I’ve been told nothing about that.’

  ‘Have you been told not to give it to me?’

  Dixon thought about this.

  ‘Not as such.’

  ‘Then surely it’s part of “all”. Come on Sergeant, you know I’m a serving soldier. You’ve seen my dog-tags, you’ve talked to the embassy. All officers have sidearms.’

  ‘It’s evidence.’

  ‘Of what? You just said you’re letting me go. If you had the slightest suspicion that I’d killed Walter you wouldn’t be letting me go, now would you?’

  Dixon opened his desk drawer. Took out the gun, its clip and its holster. Scooped up the bullets in one hand and dropped them down on the desktop like a pocketful of marbles.

  ‘Four left,’ he said. ‘I gather Mr Troy used a couple in his test.’

  ‘Troy. Troy tested my gun?’

  ‘Troy got you out of chokey Mr Cormack. And you say I told you that and you’ll get me shot,’ Dixon said.

  ‘Not funny, Sergeant.’

  ‘Not meant to be, Captain.’

  § 70

  Cal thought about handing Dixon’s coat straight over to the cabbie who dropped him at Claridge’s, but the idea of crossing the lobby in the rotting remains of his Lippschitz Bros, suit was intolerable. He needed, and there was no better word for it, camouflage.

  As he picked up his key the desk clerk said, ‘You left this the other night, sir.’

  ‘What?’

  The man already had his back to Cal, his hand flashing across the rows of pigeonholed guest mail. When he turned he was clutching the torn envelope containing Walter’s note.

  ‘We weren’t at all sure you had finished with it, sir.’

  Cal was almost dumbstruck. All, well most, of the evidence he’d needed to shove in front of Nailer and it had been here all the time-he’d simply dashed out and left it on the counter.

  ‘I’m afraid I lost your map,’ he said softly.

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ the clerk replied.

  In the elevator going up to the sixth floor Cal quietly, almost reverently, took out Stilton’s note and unfolded it.

  ‘Wot larx!’ He was always saying that. He’d never say it again, and Cal still hadn’t got the foggiest idea what he meant by it.

  He rang room service, ordered a large Scotch, and ran a bath.

  Then he rang room service back.

  ‘Could you make that a fifth of Scotch?’

  ‘Do you mean a half bottle, sir?’

  ‘Sure. Whatever. Just tell the maid to let herself in and leave it. I’ll be in the bath. Oh-and ice. I need ice.’

  The English never thought of ice, or if they did, as with so many things, they thought small.

  A quarter of an hour later he was lying back in the suds and heard the door click. Only innate, unshakeable modesty stopped him yelling ‘Bring it in here’ to the maid-he felt far too tired to move even for a glass of Scotch. He closed his eyes, listening for the second click of the door as the girl left. It didn’t. She was taking a long time about it. He opened his eyes and found himself gazing at Kitty, Kitty clutching a tray, a bottle and a glass of ice.

  ‘Bumped into the maid in the corridor. Relieved her of this. Only one glass though.’

  She set the tray down in front of the mirror, shook his toothbrush out of the bathroom tumbler and poured for them both.

  As she handed him the glass she said, ‘Calvin, where the bleedin’ ‘ell you been?’

  ‘You mean you don’t know?’

  ‘Yeah, I know-I just enjoy wastin’ me breath. ‘Course I don’t bloody know! Now-tell me. For God’s sake tell me, where
have you been? Just when I need you and you vanish off the face of the earth!’

  Need-bet she didn’t mean that. Bet she doesn’t know the meaning of the word.

  ‘You really don’t know? The Yard didn’t tell you? OK. I’ve spent the last…’ He couldn’t remember-it felt like days but it could only be two or three at the most… ‘I’ve spent the last few days in jail. Courtesy of Scotland Yard.’

  ‘Wot?’

  ‘They… they thought I did it. They thought I killed your father.’

  Kitty sat down on the lavatory.

  ‘The bastards. The complete bloody bastards. They knew all along and they didn’t tell us. They told Mum they had a suspect, and they wouldn’t tell her who. I got on to that old sod Nailer, tried the old pals act on him. Still wouldn’t tell me. Just kept saying “a man found at the scene is helping us with our enquiries”-just like he was talking to Joe Public. Like I wasn’t a copper too. Fobbed me off with copperspeak. The bastard. The total bloody bastard.’

  She sipped at her Scotch. Gulped and gasped. Cal wondered if the tears now forming in the corners of her eyes were grief or misery or the instant effect of neat whisky. He knocked his back in one, felt the delicious cool-burn down his throat, and stuck out the glass for more.

  ‘Why did they let you go? I mean they ain’t caught the bloke, have they?’

  ‘No… no, they haven’t. But somebody vouched for me. Another policeman, someone who’d seen me working with Walter. I got lucky, my own people didn’t want to know me.’

  Kitty sniffed loudly as though burying a fountain full of tears and took off her jacket-the same formal, plain black two-piece outfit she’d worn when her brothers had died-maybe the only formal clothes she had. Cal sipped at his second glassful and watched in disbelief as the shoes, skirt, stockings and underclothes followed.

  ‘Kitty, what are you doing?’

  ‘Wossit look like, stupid? You don’t expect me to get in the bath with me togs on, do you?’

  In seconds, it seemed, she was naked. It was, he realised, his abiding image of Kitty-either naked or getting naked, red hair bobbing, eyes flashing.

  ‘Shift up. I don’t want a tap stuck up me jacksey, now do I?’

  He’d no idea what she meant. That was another reason he’d miss Walter-who else would translate the English for him?

  Shift up or not, the bath was huge-she glided the length of it to settle on his chest, her hair just below his chin, an ear pressed to his heart, fingers lingering on the bruises at his midriff.

  ‘They knock you about, did they?’

  ‘Not much,’ he said. ‘Nothing I couldn’t handle.’

  The memory of nausea brought back the taste. He washed it away in whisky. Her hand drifted automatically to play with his cock. At least he assumed it was automatic-he could not see it as a gesture driven by either lust or affection, just the sheer familiarity of it. And he could not respond to it. She played with a limp dick.

  ‘How’s your mother taking it?’

  The hand didn’t stop. There was no magic to be invoked by words.

  ‘Bad,’ she said, twirling it like some toy she’d found. ‘I don’t know that she’ll get through it. She rallied after Kev and Trev. All front, mind, but a good one. After this? I dunno. She ain’t spoken for more’n a day. I really don’t know. Vera’s like a tank. Bristling with armour, angry as hell. The girls just cry all the time. And Tel’s clueless, hasn’t the faintest idea what to do or say. Tries jokes, but nobody laughs. He’s shut up about the Navy though. He knows he’ll never get away. He’s there for ever now. I know how he feels.’

  ‘And how do you feel?’

  ‘How do I feel?’

  ‘I’ve never lost a father-in fact I’ve never lost a relative that close. Both my parents are still alive. I have two younger sisters. My grandfather ticks over fairly well at damn near a hundred…’

  ‘Grandma?’

  ‘Ah… she died before I was born.’

  She’d diverted him neatly. He wasn’t about to give up.

  ‘So. How do you feel?’

  She prised herself up, out of the water, eye to eye, nipple to nipple-the touch of them on his chest brought him up in goosebumps-drew breath and spoke softly.

  ‘There’s a hole in my life I’ll never be able to fill. All I ask is fill the hole in me.’

  He knew it could not possibly be as crude a notion as her phrasing made it seem. All the same, he would never understand it. Sex-that which had been her ravenous hunger had become her consolation, and he could not tell the two apart, could not grasp the shifts of mind that drove her from pillar to post and called both sex.

  ‘Just fuck me.’

  He had never heard her use this word before-but then she had never used it, not since first acquiring its meaning on the edge of adolescence twenty years before.

  ‘Just fuck me and I’ll kid myself everything’s OK.’

  § 71

  As ever in the moment of hysteresis he reached for his eyeglasses. Cock down, glasses up, all passion spent, blind as a bat.

  He’d not made a good job of it. He’d come too easily, blown his stack like a liquored-up high-school kid. Kitty did not seem to mind. She was smiling at him as she came into focus.

  ‘We’ll get through this, won’t we, Cal?’

  One hand pulled lazily at a strand of his hair. It was more affectionate than any gesture he’d ever seen her make.

  ‘We will?’

  ‘Well-we got to. Ain’t we? I mean we’ll get through. We’ll catch the bastard, won’t we?’

  It was an odd moment to pick, but perhaps now, for the first time, he could talk seriously to her.

  ‘Now you mention it, there are things I can do-things I have to do.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘I have to talk to my people. I can’t do a damn thing without I talk to them first.’

  ‘I thought you said they didn’t want to know.’

  ‘They didn’t. But they’re still the bosses. So I tell them what happened and then, if they say so, I can probably tell Nailer.’

  ‘Wot? Tell Nailer wot?’

  The smile vanished, the other hand locked into his hair, held him like a wrestler. It hurt, but he didn’t move.

  ‘Kitty, I don’t know who killed your father. But there’ve been other people-the enemy-looking for the man he and I were chasing. It all revolves around him. I can’t name him without the say-so from my people, but if they do say so then my telling Nailer is the only chance he’s got of catching the killer. Without our man he doesn’t stand a chance. Without me he doesn’t stand a chance.’

  She thrust him aside, leapt from the bed, naked and trembling with the force of her own anger.

  ‘Are you out of your bleedin’ mind? Tell Nailer! Nailer doesn’t want a result. All he cares about is the honour of the Met. And that’s not the same thing by a long chalk. You tell Nailer anything, you might just as well piss into the wind. You don’t want Nailer, you want a real copper, not one of those plodding berks.’

  ‘You’re the only real copper I know.’

  ‘Not me, you fool. I’m just plod, I am. A plonk in a uniform. You want… you want someone like… like an old boyfriend of mine.’

  ‘An old boyfriend?’

  ‘Chap I used to know on the Murder Squad. Flash as they come, but a first-rate copper.’

  ‘Aha.’

  ‘Yeah. Bloke I used to… go out with.’

  Her mood had changed utterly. She wasn’t angry, it seemed, more cautious, almost coy.

  ‘A bloke?’ he echoed.

  ‘Troy,’ she said at last. ‘You want Frederick Troy.’

  ‘Kitty, come here.’

  She sat down on the edge of the bed. He took her hands in his. She was calmer, but red in the face, still reeling from her own outburst.

  ‘Kitty. It was Troy got me out of the slammer. He was the cop the Yard sent when I phoned in the news of your father’s murder. He was the first to get there, the first to se
e Walter. Then Nailer came along and took over. At some point, he must have found out they had me and spoke up. If he hadn’t I’d still be in the cells.’

  The look on her face told him not that she did not believe him, but that she would rather not believe him.

  ‘Little feller, black hair, black eyes, talks like a total joe ronce?’

  Cal got up, searched through the pockets of his stinking, bloody jacket and fished out the bloodier handkerchief with its fancy, embroidered letter F.

  ‘This feller.’

  He held out the handkerchief. She rubbed the scarlet letter between finger and thumb, felt the crispness of dried blood.

  ‘His blood? Your blood?’

  ‘Walter’s,’ he said simply.

  ‘So Troy knew my Dad was dead before I did?’

  ‘Before anyone but me.’

  She crumpled the handkerchief, flakes of brown blood wafting onto the sheets, and put it to her cheek. She wept and cried, ‘The bastard. I’ll kill ‘im!’

  § 72

  Troy was flat on his back on the chaise longue. Kolankiewicz leaned over him, reeking of beer and black-pudding and tut-tutting him in three languages. Into Polish, into English and the odd word of Yiddish thrown in just for emphasis. He had cut away his shirt-a Jermyn Street tailor-made now fit only for dusters-cleaned the wound, though it bled still, and was swabbing it in the hope he could get it dry and closed enough for stitching.