Black Out (Frederick Troy 1)

by Lawton, John

  ‘Lads, lads. It’s my old friend Constable Troy!’

  Edelmann gestured expansively with his hand, flinging the door open, knuckles of the hand only inches from the ground. Troy walked in. Wildeve followed, wide-eyed in a foreign land. They entered through an inner door into a colossal metal box spanning out its square within the circle of the brick railway arch. Half a dozen men sat around a central fire, some playing cards on the top of a packing case, others reading until disturbed by this palaver. The walls were lined with bunks. Eyes like foxes stared out at them from the depth of their burrows. It was clean, carpeted, wellordered and, but for the present intrusion, friendly and homely. Sound vanished easily into the vastness of space giving it the soft whisper of worship, a steel cathedral.

  ‘It’s Sergeant Troy now, Sydney,’ said Troy.

  ‘My my, but you’ve come up in the world, my boy. I always said you’d do well.’

  Could we knock off the Dickens impersonations? You’re not a patch on Bransby Williams, and I’ve come on business.’

  ‘O’ course. O’ course. ‘Orace, you get Mr Troy and his friend a cuppa char. I shall be with the Sergeant in my office.’

  He shuffled ahead of Troy, leading the way into a cubicle made by the arrangement of a small group of packing cases.

  ‘Business you said.’

  Troy laid out the photograph of von Ranke on a packing case. ‘Looks very dead, poor sod,’ was all Edelmann said.

  ‘You didn’t know him?’

  ‘No.’

  Troy put down the photograph of the young Brand blown up from Nikolai’s group shot.

  ‘’Im neither.’

  ‘You’re certain?’

  ‘If I knew I’d tell yer. There’d be no ‘arm in that. On account of whatever your next question was I like as not would tell you to get stuffed.’

  Troy laid down the third photograph. One he had had enlarged from the dozens Tosca had given him. Edelmann said nothing. He looked down, he looked up and he looked back at Troy.

  ‘And what would your next question be, Mr Troy? Afore I tells yer to get stuffed that is.’

  ‘My next question would be did you know you’d been infiltrated by the opposition?’

  Edelmann drew in his breath with a faint whistle. He uncocked his head, the squint vanished from the half-closed eye, and he leaned back as though appraising Troy.

  ‘Just supposin’. Just supposin’ I should go along with this. What proof can you offer?’

  Troy jabbed at the photo of von Ranke with his forefinger.

  ‘He did that. Shot him in the face.’

  ‘Nasty.’

  ‘He did for him too.’ Troy pointed to Brand. ‘Chopped him into little pieces.’

  Edelmann shook his head slowly from side to side. Troy had no idea whether it meant disbelief or despair.

  ‘And I think he also killed this man.’

  Troy slapped down a blow-up of the young Peter Wolinski, like a card-sharp playing a trump. Edelmann got up and walked out. Troy sat still and waited, heard his voice boom across the partition.

  ‘’Orace, where’s that bloody tea?’

  Troy heard Edelmann shuffling around the room. As near as possible for a man so misshapen he seemed to be pacing the floor. After several minutes he returned carrying two half-pint mugs of tea. He sat down opposite Troy.

  ‘I’m listening,’ he said. ‘You have my attention.’

  ‘I think Wayne – you do know him as Wayne, don’t you?’

  Edelmann nodded.

  ‘I think he’s a hit man, a military assassin for the American army. I know he killed these two. They’re old colleagues of Wolinski’s from before the war. I think he killed the first man a year ago when he tried to reach Wolinski. I think he killed the second man as he got to Wolinski. And that’s when he killed Wolinski.’

  ‘Nobody’s seen ’im,’ said Edelmann simply. ‘Not for weeks. He was always a risk. I kinda guessed. Knew, if you like. What I never knew was why.’

  ‘Nor do I. When did you last see them?’

  ‘February. The twenty-fourth.’

  ‘How can you be sure?’

  ‘Study group meeting. Same time every month. I saw Peter in the afternoon. He said he’d be there. Wayne was there. He’d been coming on and off for about nine months.’

  ‘Why did you let him in?’

  ‘Bona fides. ’E ’ad ’em, didn’t ’e. Letters from my sister’s brother-in-law in Pennsylvania. Saying as ’ow ’e’d been a member of the United Workers of the World back in the thirties. Truth to tell I was quite pleased. It was another arm for the movement. Not one you expect. Russians and Poles we got by the dozen. It was heartening to be getting news from America. Made us feel we were getting somewhere. He’d give us all the news, all the gen on the unions over there. What a con the new Deal was. All that kinda stuff.’

  Edelmann seemed for a moment to have wound down to silence. ‘And Diana Brack?’ Troy prompted.

  ‘She come along with ‘im. That helped. Added to his bonas. I knew ’er. She’d been at conferences and meetings I’d been at. You expect the odd toff or two. Some are slummin’, some are serious. Believe it or not it was H. G. Wells introduced me to ’er. I think it was ‘is way of testin’ out both of us. A quick ’allo and a handshake. Wells calls me the Stepney Quasimodo. She smiles. So I ’ave to. Bastard.’

  ‘Didn’t you check out Wayne through your contacts?’

  ‘What do you think I got? The Kremlin’s home number? I ain’t even got Harry Pollit’s home number. It don’t work that way. It don’t.’

  ‘Was Wayne close to anyone?’ Troy asked.

  ‘Close? It ain’t a social club.’

  Troy knew better, but refrained from saying so.

  ‘Did he have particular friends? Did Diana?’

  ‘No to the first. He chipped in whenever we got round to something he knew about. But he tended to stick with ’er. I knew ’im better than most, but that ain’t sayin’ much. Diana’s different. She’ll pick out someone and home in on him. Did that to me second time I met ’er. Sees me across a room and just cuts through the crowd like she’d just one thing on her mind. Oblivious to anyone else. People buttonhole her she just smiles ’er toff’s smile, polite as Miss Manners, and they sod off like they just ’ad a tooth filled. She likes to have a special friend. So ’appens in this lot it was Wolinski. I reckon she worked out after one meeting that ’e was the only one she ’ad anything to learn from.’

  ‘Were they lovers?’

  ‘I wouldn’t know. We in’t the mind police, whatever the papers say. Certainly in’t the fuck police.’

  ‘This special relationship – it didn’t extend to Wayne?’

  ‘No – I hardly saw ’im and Peter exchange a word. Wayne’s no egghead. He’d’ve bored Peter stiff as socks on a frosty morning.’

  Edelmann paused.

  ‘The twenty-fourth,’ Troy prompted.

  ‘The twenty-fourth. Wayne was there. We have a pint in the Merchant in Matlock Street and move upstairs for the talk. We’d been going about ten minutes or so when Alf – that’s the landlord of the Merchant – comes up and tells me Peter’s phoned to say he can’t make it. He was like that. Peter. Always considerate. Now, Lady Di – I was expectin’ ’er too. She used to be pretty regular. Bought a lot of the books for my boys. And if the buggers couldn’t be arsed to read ’em she’d like as not be able to tell you all about ’em anyway. But she don’t show, and I ’ear not a word from ’er. Nor ’ave I since. A couple of minutes after I gets Peter’s message Wayne gets up and makes his excuses to leave. Can’t remember what ’e said. But it was the last time I saw ‘im. The last time I saw either of ’em. I’d not put two and two together. Not in my conscious mind that is. Till you walked in. I suppose at the back of my mind I was expecting you or someone like you. I’d have shown you the door and the back of my hand otherwise, wouldn’t I? And now you’re tellin’ me Wayne walked out and killed Peter, aintcha?’

  ‘I t
hink I am,’ said Troy.

  ‘Dear oh dear oh dear,’ said Edelmann, and slurped deeply on his tea. ‘And now I have to rely on you for justice. Dear oh dear oh dear.’

  ‘It’s the business I’m in,’ said Troy.

  Edelmann said nothing. Just pushed the mug of tea across the packing case at Troy. A train rumbled overhead, trundling in from Tilbury. They sat in silence.

  ‘I ’ate coppers,’ Edelmann said eventually, quietly. ‘More than that I ’ate bein’ dependent on coppers.’

  Another train crossed above them, from the opposite direction. Troy counted the clicks on the plates, the mathematical music of trains rattling their metronome beat into the vast peace of night, and listened to Edelmann sipping loudly at his tea and silently hating Troy. Troy felt it was time to leave. He rose and said, ‘I’ll be in touch.’

  ‘Bloody right you will.’

  In the main room of the shelter Troy looked around for Wildeve, not immediately recognising that the back nearest to him in the group sat talking around the fire was his. It struck him as odd. He would not have expected Wildeve to strike up any easy conversation with these people. He was hunched over in a half-whispered, earnest discussion – letting the sepulchral tone of the shelter induce a churchy respect into his voice. Only when the eyes of the men shifted up to Troy did he turn and see him waiting. Two of the eyes now looking at Troy belonged to Michael McGee, the innocent who had first showed Troy Wolinski’s flat. Outside, Troy buttoned up his overcoat and waited for Wildeve. McGee came out first.

  ‘What you going to do?’ he asked quietly. An air of resignation to he knew not what.

  ‘I’m going to make an arrest,’ Troy said simply.

  Wildeve emerged in time to hear Troy’s reply. There was a silence of awkwardness. McGee waited for more. They waited for McGee to accept that Troy would say no more and return to the shelter. Troy set off down Cable Street. Wildeve caught up with him.

  ‘Freddie – just who are we going to arrest?’

  52

  Two hours later, the clock was crawling towards ten and Troy sat on the edge of his desk looking out at the river. Onions had gone home by the time they had got back from Stepney. Troy was pleased. A day’s or even just a night’s grace for what he was about to do would be priceless. He heard the door open, and turned a little to see Wildeve enter.

  ‘They’re back,’ said Wildeve.

  Troy had thought better of going himself. Better of sending Wildeve. The job had fallen to Thomson and Gutteridge.

  ‘I’ve put her in the interview room.’

  Troy slipped off the desk and began to button up his overcoat.

  ‘No. Put her in the cells.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘She’s not here to help with enquiries. She’s under arrest.’

  ‘What about the warrant?’

  Troy fished around in his pockets for his gloves. The knowledge that Troy was about to leave seemed to baffle and exasperate Wildeve.

  ‘Isn’t one,’ said Troy. ‘I told Thomson to pull her in under the Emergency Powers Act. I don’t need a warrant. Just see that you caution her before you lock her up for the night. If she asks for her lawyer you’ve gone deaf. If she asks for food, make it bread and marge. If she asks for a cup of tea, make sure it’s lukewarm. I’ll be in at seven. We’ll see how she responds to an early start.’

  Troy set off down the corridor. Wildeve hared after him.

  ‘Have you gone completely bloody mad? Emergency Powers. Fermanagh will have our balls for chestnuts!’

  ‘Fermanagh’s in Ireland. Retreated to his country seat after Dunkirk. It’ll take days for him to stick in his two penn’orth. Emergency Powers is perfectly legal. We have two dead enemy aliens. A missing Pole and a fugitive American. Her connection with the matter is now evident. Emergency Powers will do nicely.’

  Wildeve managed to slip ahead of Troy on the staircase and brought him to a halt with the flat of his hand placed squarely in his chest.

  ‘What, what on earth do you hope to gain by putting Diana Brack in the cells for a night?’

  ‘Think back. Back to how you would have reacted to it in the days before you knew it all as a policeman. You and I would both have found it very tough to get banged up in a cell with scratchy blankets and awful food. Look at it from her point of view. It’s hardly a matter of routine. Think of it as the princess and the pea. She won’t sleep a wink. Perhaps in the morning she’ll feel like answering a few questions. She was the last person to see Wayne. It’s time she talked.’

  ‘And if she doesn’t?’

  ‘I reckon we’ll have about three days before we have to let her go or make something out of the Act. If I can’t get the truth or some portion of it out of her in that time you can take my warrant card and never call me copper again.’

  Wildeve sighed and reluctantly accepted Troy’s logic. They walked out of the Whitehall entrance of Scotland Yard side by side.

  ‘What now?’ asked Wildeve.

  ‘I have other engagements.’

  ‘At this time of night?’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘Oh . . . just . . . well, Kolankiewicz seemed to think you needed rest.’

  ‘Goodnight, Jack.’

  Troy walked off along Whitehall in the direction of Trafalgar Square. In the direction of Orange Street.

  He let himself in with the key Tosca had given him. The gesture gave him cause to halt. He weighed the key lightly in the palm of his hand. It seemed that he had accepted an awful lot in accepting the key. He went on up the stairs. Her door was open. No light came from it. She was at the back, standing in the south-facing window, looking out over Pall Mall and the Square. She was dressed in her army blouse, but was shoeless and skirtless, standing in the glare of moonlight in just her stockings. It was, he realised, her habitual way of ending the day. She cast off her uniform and with it the job. Like the habitual first drink of the day, which she grasped in her right hand, as her left came around the back of his neck to draw his face nearer to hers. A stockinged foot coiled around his leg and locked itself behind the knee. She tilted her head back, grinned and began to sing in a breathy imitation of Dietrich.

  ‘Once upon a time, before I took up smiling, I hated the moonlight. Shadows of the night that something something seemed flat as the something. Once I awoke at seven, hating the morning light. Now I awake in heaven and all the world’s alright.’

  She stopped. Eyes alight, head nodding, encouraging him to pick up the refrain. He could not for the life of him think what the bloody song was.

  ‘My God, does nobody know the verse to anything any more? “Blue Moon”, dummy. Y’know, Rodgers and Hart?’

  ‘Sorry. I only know the bits you can whistle.’

  ‘It’s true. I hate the moonlight. Leaves you no place to hide.’

  ‘You have to hide?’

  ‘I was being poetic. I guess I was wasting my time.’

  ‘It makes a silver ribbon out of the river.’

  ‘Sheeyit. Is that the best you can do? That’s your idea of poetry?’

  ‘Shit has only one syllable.’

  ‘Shuttup.’

  She kissed him lightly on the lips and began to sing again. Soft, breathy, and, her usual speaking rasp considered, surprisingly in tune. ‘And then suddenly there appeared before me, the only one my arms will ever hold, I heard somebody whisper “please adore me” . . . ’ She put her lips to his ear for the last line. He felt her breath hot upon him. ‘That’s like a hint, y’know.’

  He remained steadfast in his silence.

  ‘Sing dammit!’

  ‘Sing what?’

  ‘Please adore me.’

  ‘I’m not ready for that.’

  ‘God, you’re no fun, copper.’

  She uncoiled and went off for her customary struggle with the fridge door.

  ‘Pull the blackout and let’s have some light in here.’

  In the blast of electric light she set down a la
rge bourbon for him. Next to it on the table was a large green cardboard file. She tapped it with her finger.

  ‘Make the most of it. It goes back in the morning or my ass is dogmeat.’

  Troy flipped it open and sipped at the bourbon. She put the wireless on low. A faint murmur of Ambrose’s Orchestra wafted across the airwaves.

  ‘Where d’you get it?’

  ‘Same place I got this one.’

  A second file – buff-coloured and foolscap landed on the table from behind him. He looked at the familiar name upon it, and turned to look at her.

  ‘Who is he?’

  ‘My father.’

  ‘Well . . . looks like you gonna be a rich man one day. Even if you inherit only a piece of your old man’s action.’

  ‘I already have. He died in November.’

  ‘Sorry. The file ain’t up to date. It was in Zelly’s safe. There was one with your name on it too. But there was nothing inside it.’

  ‘Nothing?’

  ‘Nothing. Just a brand new empty file.’

  So, Edge had been bluffing. He opened the green file without picking it up.

  ‘What’s OHQ 5 stand for?’

  ‘Cockfosters. We have a base out there. Some old country mansion the Brits commandeered on our behalf.’

  ‘OK,’ he said. ‘I’ll read it in the morning.’ He flipped the file shut and picked up the glass of bourbon.

  ‘Am I hearing things? You don’t want it all now? You can wait? You have, God forbid, other priorities?’

  Troy said nothing. She put down her glass of whiskey and approached on tiptoes, still well short of being eye to eye. She took his glass from him, locked her hands behind his neck and looked up.

  ‘Well – you’re beginning to learn the house rules.’

  ‘It might help if you printed them and stuck them on the wall. Like a seaside boarding house. You know. No spitting. No women after ten p.m.’

  ‘No women after ten p.m! What an uptight asshole country this is.’

  She kissed him lightly on an ear-lobe.

  ‘Birds do it, bees do it, even something something . . . ’