by Lawton, John
‘How the hell do you know that?’
Troy was startled. He had no idea how he knew. A distant, fogged memory of conversations overheard between his sisters and the young Diana Brack? Conversations that until now he could not have said he remembered in the slightest detail.
‘That’s not the point. The point is we’ve still got her until he makes us give her up. And he hasn’t done that yet.’
‘What more do you expect to get out of her?’
Troy knew the truth would be pointless. That he had no idea what she might say next and that therein lay the point. Onions would not deal in such intangible stuff as Troy’s certainty that Brack knew Wayne was guilty and if she could be made to admit this ‘who knows what might follow?’ He offered a mundane matter of fact. ‘Her movements and Wayne’s the night Brand died.’
‘She knows where Wayne was?’
‘I’m damn certain she does.’
Onions pushed the door open. Brack had not moved. She lay curled in her dying-swan position, puddled in black. Soft sobs came from her. She had wept a full hour or more.
‘Well. There’s more than one way to beat them senseless and I don’t think you’ll get another bloody thing,’ he said softly and firmly. ‘That’s my opinion, and I’m acting upon it. She walks.’
Onions recalled the WPC. She helped Brack to her feet. Onions and Troy stood looking on. Next to the WPC, even hunched in her despair, Brack seemed lithe and powerful. The WPC did her best to steady the larger woman, to steer her into the corridor, back to the front desk where she could collect her belongings.
She passed Troy with her head down, stepped two paces past him, turned and caught him on the cheek just below the left ear with a well-aimed right hook that wrenched her free from the WPC’s guiding hand and sent Troy crashing to the floor. She stood at last at her full height, breathing deeply, staring down at the floored Troy through her tears. The blow had been aimed with all the skill of a man but not with the force. Troy lay amazed but unhurt and watched her disappear into the corridor. Onions said nothing, but left without extending a hand to help him up. It seemed to Troy that the gesture had overtones of ‘I told you so’. He lay on the floor and stretched out in tiredness, cursing Onions for his unpredictability and his decency and that the two should ever so meet.
56
Later than he liked Troy set off for home. At the entrance to Goodwins Court, Ruby the Whore stood sentry duty. Back from one commando raid and awaiting fresh orders. She propped a ladderless nylon-stockinged leg against the wall and blocked the narrow alley.
‘You won’t be needing me tonight then, Fred?’
Troy never did. There was a silent pause as Troy waited for her to drop the leg and let him pass. Nothing on earth would have induced him to grab hold and simply lift it out of the way. The joke milked, Ruby straightened up and brought her heels together with a click, and her lips together with a mocking pout. She blew a kiss. Six feet on he stopped. Something in the music-hall routine of her regular mickey-take was out of joint. The question. The fact that she was telling not asking.
‘What do you mean?’ he asked, turning back to look at her.
‘She’s a looker, my boy, an’ no mistake.’
‘Who is?’
‘Dunno. But she’s been hanging round your door a good hour and a half.’
There was no light to see by. He walked as quietly as leather soles would allow up to his front door. No sound or movement rippled the air. The alley was pitch black, breathless and deserted. He stuck his key in the door and a hand closed over his.
‘I have to talk to you,’ she said only inches from his ear.
‘You’ve had three days of talking to me. Isn’t that enough?’
Her hand tightened on his, forcing him to turn the key in the lock or physically shake her off. The door swung open.
‘I have to talk to you,’ she said again.
Troy said nothing. Stood on the doorstep, turning towards her to see her shape and features resolve out of the blackness. A voice became an outline, an outline a shadow, and when the shadow spoke, he saw the merest flash of white teeth. He could not see the eyes, but knew they were locked on his.
‘He has gone.’
‘Of course he’s bloody gone. I’ve had half the coppers in London looking for him for days.’
‘No. I mean gone gone, really gone. He was in our apartment at the Savoy. But now he’s not. This time he’s really vanished.’
Troy muttered ‘Jesus Christ’ and stepped inside. He crouched over the gas fire in the living room and put a match to it. He heard her follow softly behind him, and reached for the light switch. It was dead.
‘The power’s off all over the West End,’ she said.
She materialised out of blackness by the pink roar of the gas fire. She knelt and held out her hands to it.
‘I’m frozen to the marrow. I was an age out there.’
‘I couldn’t give a damn. Why didn’t you tell me about the Savoy this afternoon.’
‘Do you think I have no loyalty?’
‘To a killer?’
‘I don’t accept that.’
‘Then why are you telling me now?’
‘I have nowhere to go.’
She slipped her cloak from her shoulders and curled her feet under her. Troy stood with his hands in his pockets. Coat on. To sit or to take off the coat would be tacit acknowledgement that she was there on his say so rather than against his will.
‘You’ve a bloody expensive house in Tite Street, a lodge on the old man’s Irish estate and a cottage in Suffolk.’
‘I mean no one to go to.’
There was a long silence as Troy avoided her meaning and gave rapid thought to picking her up and throwing her into the street. She sighed deeply several times. If she was on the brink of tears Troy was no more likely to be moved at home than he was at the Yard.
‘My father,’ she began, ‘my father took the Savoy apartment in 1938. He was terribly afraid of the Blitz. We all were. He foresaw London in ruins. And of course the Savoy has one of the strongest shelters in town. When he went back to Ireland in 1940 he passed on the lease to me. Not out of generosity – he’d simply been unable to sell it. Truth to tell I never used the shelters. Once a raid started I was rooted to the spot. I used to turn off the lights and stand in the window and watch the bombers across the river. Then I stopped using it at all. Until I met Jimmy and we needed somewhere to be together. Somewhere away from people, from time to time. When you came along with your silly allegations it seemed the perfect place. No one else knew I had the apartment. Not even the servants.’
‘Not the Americans.’
‘Certainly not the Americans. He stayed there while you looked for him. I could only visit when your men slipped up. Which they did often enough.’
She paused and breathed deeply.
‘Naturally I went straight there from Scotland Yard. I walked along the river. No one followed me and I was there in minutes. And he was gone.’
Troy was angry and exasperated. He flung himself down in the chair by the fire. She was almost sitting at his feet.
‘I suppose you think I’m a bitch. It’s the only lie I told you. If I had told you where he was . . .’
Troy leaned forward as though about to throttle her, hands outstretched, his voice strained almost to shouting. ‘If you’d told me where he was I would have arrested the murdering bastard!!! Can’t you see the danger you’re in?’
She seized both hands in hers. He had transgressed, crossed the narrow line that separated them. He should never have allowed the creature so close. She leaned her forehead against the backs of his hands. He heard the swift intake of breath that presaged tears and as she roved across his knuckles and fingers with her face he felt the hot wet tears fall upon his hands. He told his arms to withdraw and they did not move. He told his fingers to disentangle from the web and and they were paralysed. He told his legs to stand and they cheated, pitching him forward on to the f
loor. Almost nose to nose with his adversary, like two enquiring dogs. She let go of one hand and pushed her fingers into his hair at the temple. He had transgressed.
‘When I was a girl I was fascinated by the darkness of this boy. Your hair so black and thick, so low on the brow. It still is. And the blacker black of your eyes. The darkness, the nothingness, the strength of silence. Was this child real, did he exist? Eyes let you see into the person. Yours just reflect back at the beholder and give nothing. I look into your eyes and I see myself as in a lookingglass. In a child that was disturbing. It seemed as though I must find a way to force a response out of you, out of silent eyes.’
That smothering kiss. Troy thought of the clear, fleckless brown of Tosca’s eyes which smiled at him regardless of her expression. Of Wildeve’s innocent, wide-eyed washed-out blue – the blue of jackdaws’ eggs. And Brack’s own bottle-green. He never, he realised, looked into a mirror except when he shaved. The nothingness she spoke of scarcely surprised him but he passed most of his life unconscious of its effect.
‘That smothering kiss,’ he said out loud, and in the utterance offered an invitation that could not escape her. She pressed her lips upon his. A momentary glance as their eyes met before she closed hers and time past overflowed into time present and the smell of her scent threatened death by drowning and with it the awful, inescapable stench of carbide gas and the brief glimpse of the swirling dust of carnage before his overloaded senses forced it from his mind and the touch of Brack drenched him.
He put out a hand to her breast. Cupped it. Enveloped it, small as it was. Her tongue ran hard across his lips, searching out his mouth. He reached down to her calves, bunching up the fabric of her dress, riding it up across her thighs, under the loose silk of her knickers to rest his hand warm and wet upon her cunt. He gripped her pants and began to drag them down towards her ankles. Her mouth withdrew. Her eyes opened once more, staring into his. She raised her knees and curled her legs and pulled at her pants and with her free hand tossed them behind him.
‘I cannot see you,’ was all she said.
In a position that threatened imminent cramp Troy squatted awkwardly and peeled back his overcoat, tore at his trouser buttons, freed his cock and collapsed into her as she locked her hands into the hair at the back of his neck and pulled him down upon her.
‘I shall come,’ she cried softly. It sounded to Troy like a promise she was making to herself. But it was he who came. Instantly. Almost without movement. Emptying into her in wave after wave.
He relaxed on to an elbow, his face towards the dull glow of the fire. Brack lay on her back, uncurled one leg. In profile she was silhouetted against the gaslight. Was she smiling? He had not seen her smile since the night she had trounced him at the Adelphi with her tale of the boy and his bicycle. She had not had cause to smile. She slept. Her breathing came so regularly it must be sleep. It seemed an age. Her eyes opened. Closed. Opened again. She turned fractionally towards him. Ran a finger up his cheekbone and wrapped the hand into his hair.
‘There is a bed, I take it?’
‘Of course. Upstairs.’
‘Help me up.’
Troy stood. The most foolish position ever devised for a man he thought. Trousers around ankles. And held out a hand to pull her to her feet. She walked past him and up the staircase. He heard her feet in the room above, the clump on clump as she kicked off her shoes. He prised his off, toe to heel, and stepped out of his trousers. It came to him that he had no idea how to undress, how much to undress, how to get up the stairs dressed, half-dressed or naked. But knew he could not walk upstairs bare-arse naked. He slipped off his jacket, socks and tie and stood a while in his shirt and pants. He could delay no longer, bought himself a fraction of time by dutifully turning off the gas fire and followed her up.
She had lit a candle by the bedside and was undressing with her back to him. The flame danced in the draughts of an ancient house. She stepped out of her skirt and pulled her blouse over her head in that cross-armed action that only women ever seemed to master. She reached her arms behind her to unclip her brassière and suddenly was naked. Her shape outlined against the candlelight, the long, curving waistline, the broad shoulders, the willowy legs and boyish hips, was at once irresistible to Troy. She stood stockstill. He did not know if she was waiting. Her shoulders heaved gently with the weight of breathing, and her sigh, scarcely audible though it was, seemed to fill the room. He approached and kissed the back of her neck at the hairline. She squirmed her head, turned her whole body to him, kissed him on the mouth, and wrapped her arms around his neck. Without shoes she was still a good three inches taller than he, a shadow looming above him, cutting off the dancing light, and she tilted her head on one side to nip gently at his bottom lip. His hands were level with her upper thighs, he slid them between her legs and felt the crisp, puckered skin where his semen had dried upon her. He drew his fingers to her seam and felt the nip as her teeth tightened on his lip. He stroked slowly at her. She shifted softly on her feet, parting her legs. She let go of his lip. It stabbed with pain. She lay back on the bed legs spread looking back at him. Foolish. Man alone in shirt and underpants. The child too bashful to share communal showers until forced. Who needed a candle at the bedside every night but made his mother turn her back as he undressed. He unbuttoned his shirt. Dropped it to the floor. Foolish and foolisher. Man in underpants. He felt her eyes settle on the final item of clothing. Watching the erection that thrust up his pants like a tentpole. She would not be the one to speak, she would not be the one to release his foolishness with a provocative, jokey ‘get ’em off’. He let them go and climbed on to the foot of the bed. Foolish no more. She crooked an arm and scratched lazily at the pectoral of her left breast. He heard the rasp of nails on skin. He advanced an inch or two over her on hands and knees. She rose up and sank her teeth into the muscle above one of his nipples and worked his cock with both hands. He grew and burned and his chest needled and stung. He pushed her back against the pillows, tangled his fists in the dense black hair and took her. Rising and falling, thrusting hard as she arched her back against him, twisting vainly to bite at his hands. The wind shook the windows, caught the candle. The flame blew cleanly out and in the dark she screamed.
57
He awoke to the sound of clapping. The irony of applause did not escape him. It was almost dawn. He was alone. The bedroom window was open and the blackout clapped in the rising breeze of morning. He went quietly downstairs. The front door was open, shifting gently back and forth in the same breeze. He found his trousers and pulled them on. Barefoot and shirtless he stepped into the street half-expecting to see her simply standing waiting. From what he knew it seemed in character. No light had yet penetrated the court. He peered to the left, out towards the obvious exit into St Martin’s Lane. It felt like a clenched fist. High and fast, catching him on the side of the head right between the eyebrow and the ear and pole-axeing him with a single blow. His vision was green and sightless but for a moment or two he remained conscious. Almost enough to know that someone was giving him a damn good kicking. The head, the kidneys, the ribs. Then green turned to red. Blood mist, blood moon. It was familiar. Almost welcoming. He had transgressed.
58
Again he woke. Stretched out on the sofa in the living room. A blanket across him. Ruby the Whore sat in the armchair, drinking tea. Troy found he could speak. The blow to the head had missed his jaw.
‘How long . . .?’
‘About ten minutes. I heard the rumpus from the other end of the alley. But he’d gone by the time I got to you.’
Troy groaned. Tasted blood. As he drew in breath his ribcage expanded into cutting pain. He leaned over the side of the sofa and vomited.
‘Go on, Freddie, you puke it all up. Make you feel a lot better that will. I seen some kickings in my time. You been worked over by a pro.’
Troy wrenched himself back on to the sofa, feeling his whole body come back to life in one searing jolt of pain.
/> ‘Wasstime?’
‘About six thirty.’
‘Call Bayswater 6242. Ask for Jack.’
Troy leaned over the sofa and puked again. Just before he passed out he heard Ruby dialling Wildeve’s number. When he woke again Wildeve was standing over him. He raised himself up on one elbow. Wildeve furrowed his brow.
‘How do you feel?’
‘Bloody.’
‘You need a doctor.’
‘No. Just get me on my feet.’
‘Freddie, for God’s sake. Someone’s kicked the shit out of you!’
‘Someone? Someone? I know damn well who it was!’
‘You must see a doctor.’
‘No.’
‘Why not?’
‘Onions will put me on sick leave if he gets so much as a whisper of this. We’re close, we’re that close . . .’
‘Close? Close to what?’
‘He’s here. She thinks he’s flown the coop, but he’s here.’
