A Little White Death

by John Lawton

  Blood had stopped. There did not seem to be any reason, he had just stopped.

  ‘And?’ said Troy.

  ‘My wife told you, sir. Or had you forgotten? I’ll go over it again if you can’t recall. We had our tea, I went back to me ship. We listened to a dance band on the wireless and we went up about half past ten.’

  ‘You didn’t go to Dreyfus Mews?’

  ‘No, I didn’t.’

  ‘When were you last in Dreyfus Mews?’

  ‘The day after I arrested Fitzpatrick. I obtained a search warrant and I looked for evidence in the case against him.’

  ‘Evidence of what?’

  ‘I had a case to make for pimping, if you recall, sir. I was looking for ready cash; I was looking for bank statements.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘I found neither. That’s in my notes too. But that proved nothing. In the end Fitzpatrick’s solicitor agreed to give us the bank statements. It was neither here nor there in the end. Didn’t need to prove he dealt a lot in cash to prove he was pimping.’

  ‘What else did you find?’

  ‘It’s all in my notes.’

  ‘You’ve just told me your notes are selective. What else might you have found?’

  It was a small miracle he hadn’t found Fitz’s letters from Wilson. Or maybe he had and thought nothing of them?

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘Such as a gun?’

  ‘No, sir. I didn’t find a gun.’

  Mary McDiarmuid shoved the door open with her backside and set down a tray of tea for three. She took the third chair, said nothing, poured and passed a mug to each of them. Stuck a bowl of sugar in front of Blood.

  ‘Do you think Fitzpatrick went out and bought the gun when he decided to end it all?’

  ‘I don’t know, sir. I haven’t given the matter a lot of thought.’

  Blood was giving nothing away. The strength of his hostility to Troy buried any other response. Blood spooned in sugar and sipped at his tea. Troy followed suit and decided to backtrack.

  ‘You listened to the radio. What programme?’

  ‘A dance band. Like my wife told you the other day. A dance band.’

  ‘Whose?’

  ‘Whose?’

  ‘Whose band?’

  ‘Joe Loss. Joe Loss at the Hammersmith Palais.’

  ‘What did he play?’

  ‘“In the Mood”.’

  This wasn’t good enough. Joe Loss played an awful, staccato, chunka-chunka version of ‘In the Mood’ the way Bob Hope sang ‘Thanks for the Memory’ – it was his theme tune.

  ‘And what else?’

  ‘I don’t know, Mr Troy. I’m not musical. I never had the training. I didn’t have the benefits of your education, sir. One tune’s pretty much the same as another to me. It’s the wife as likes music. I’ve got tin ears. I just got on with me ship.’

  ‘And you were home all night?’

  ‘I was.’

  ‘Do you know what time Fitzpatrick died?’

  ‘’Round midnight, according to the papers .’

  ‘And around midnight you were tucked up in bed?’

  ‘Fast asleep.’

  ‘Did you know the beat bobby moved the press on at about eleven fifteen?’

  ‘No. Should I?’

  ‘No. But I thought you might have known that they did that every night. It wouldn’t have been difficult to find out. Anyone who wanted to nipin and shoot Fitzpatrick would only have needed to hang around one of the alleys to learn the routine. Did you know about it? Did you know Paddington Green moved the press on every night?’

  ‘Knew about it? Of course I knew about it. And I didn’t have to stand in dark alleyways at midnight to find out. Chief inspectors of the Branch don’t—’

  ‘Vice, Percy. You’re in Vice now.’

  It occurred to Troy that Blood resented being in Vice as much as Wiggins resented having him.

  ‘I didn’t need to do that! DDI Harropat Paddington Green called me when the trial started. Said what did I want done about security at Dreyfus Mews. I said there was no security problem, but that we shouldn’t let the press think they own the streets of London. He suggested showing the torch and truncheon, see the beat bobby looked in once a night. I agreed with him. Wasn’t my decision. It was just good manners on his part to consult the arresting officer. Wasn’t for me to tell him how to do his job.’

  It was a brilliant answer. Far, far better than a denial. He had paraded his knowledge and given chapter and verse on it as good, professional police work. And implicit in the answer was that he thought Troy unprofessional.

  Blood swigged at his tea, inwardly smirking, pleased with himself, giving nothing away.

  ‘You didn’t find a gun at Dreyfus Mews?’

  ‘I’ve already said. No. I didn’t.’

  ‘You don’t think that perhaps an old World War Two Webley might have been sitting in a desk drawer since 1945?’

  ‘No sir. I don’t. You might recall we had a firearms amnesty a couple of years back. Most decent folks handed their weapons in then.’

  Troy hoped he wasn’t smiling. This was the first thing Blood had given him. He knew now how Blood had obtained the gun. Thousands of old buffers had turned in their Webleys – Troy had vivid memories of one bloke staggering into Scotland Yard with a fully loaded Bren gun. Blood had simply helped himself from the pile when no one was looking. So had Troy.

  Once more up the garden path with Percy.

  ‘So you didn’t find a gun at Dreyfus Mews?’

  ‘I’ve said – no.’

  ‘Would it surprise you to learn that I have a print off the gun that killed Fitzpatrick that does not match his fingerprints?’

  ‘Nothing about this case would surprise me, and nothing wouldn’t surprise me. My involvement in it ended when I stepped down from the witness box. I’ve not been privy to the details of your investigation, sir.’

  ‘I have reason to believe that this fingerprint is the fingerprint of the man who murdered Fitzpatrick.’

  ‘I’m sure you have.’

  And Troy was equally sure that Blood’s slow-but-sly brain was now reviewing his last denial, telling himself once more that he had wiped down the gun first, that he had worn gloves, and wondering whether he should not have invented the finding of a gun. A gun he had somehow neglected to confiscate and forgotten to mention in his notes. A plausible explanation of how his fingerprints came to be on the gun. God knows, Troy had given him ample opportunity to dig that grave if he was not happy with this one – no lie the man could come up with would explain why his prints might be on the bullets inside the gun.

  ‘I’d like to request that you allow us to take your fingerprints.’

  Mary stuck a voluminous handbag on the table and took out an ink pad and fingerprint form.

  ‘Here?’ said Blood. ‘Now?’

  ‘Why not?’ said Troy.

  ‘I don’t have to.’

  Troy was not certain whether this was question or statement. Blood showed none of the nervousness of obvious guilt, but he was close to outrage, his copper’s pride severely insulted.

  ‘No, you don’t, but it would helpus enormously if you would.’

  ‘You mean like eliminate me from further enquiry?’

  ‘No. That’s not what I meant.’

  ‘Well,’ Percy said through gritted teeth. ‘I decline to give ’em. I’m not a villain you’ve dragged in from Watney Street, I’m a serving copper. I deserve to be treated a bit better than that. You want my prints – you want me, Mr Troy! – then you’ll have to charge me. But I don’t think you’re ready for that, are you, sir? So I’ll say this to you. Charge me or I walk.’

  It seemed to Troy that he should at least pretend to give this some thought.

  ‘You may leave whenever you choose.’

  ‘Then I choose now,’ said Blood in a rasping, angry whisper. He pushed his chair across the tiles with a scrape fit to crack tooth enamel, yanked open the door and left. Th
ey heard his boots ringing on the stone steps all the way to the next floor.

  Mary McDiarmuid opened her handbag once more, took out a dust puffer and, holding Blood’s tea mug by the rim, blew powder over it.

  ‘Oh dear Percy, where were you when God gave out the brains? He must be part sealion to swallow so many red herrings. I’m amazed you didn’t ask him his collar size.’

  ‘At least there was poetry in his answers. Potted meat and haslet,’ said Troy, shaking his head gently. ‘I ask you . . . potted meat and haslet.’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘Never mind.’

  She puffed again. A cloud of white powder settled on the body of the mug. She pursed her lips, blew off the surplus and looked closely. ‘Two clear thumbs and a partial,’ she said. ‘Nae problem.’

  § 95

  Late in the afternoon Kolankiewicz came in dressed ready for the street. He was clutching a large brown envelope. He took out two 10 × 8s, pinned them to the back of the door and slapped the flat of his hand across them.

  ‘They’re identical,’ he said. ‘I have all sixteen points. Enough to hang this Blood.’

  ‘I’m not out to hang him,’ Troy said.

  ‘What you have set out to do is of no matter. This case is now cast in iron. Blood would be a fool to plead anything but guilty. You may not want to hang him. Equally he may well hang. The choice is not yours.’

  Troy looked at him, in his homburg and macintosh, already pulling his gloves out of his pocket, anxious to leave.

  ‘Why so ratty? What’s the hurry?’

  ‘Cribbage night at the Brickie’s Arms. Or had you forgotten?’

  Troy had forgotten. Twice a week a group of old men sat in the Bricklayer’s Arms on Stepney Green and played cribbage. Among them Kolankiewicz and Troy’s old station sergeant from his first posting at Leman Street nick – George Bonham. Like Onions, George was now nearing seventy. A giant of a man unbent by age, thirty years ago he had taught Troy all he knew about the law and police work, ‘coppering’, as he called it. Troy had long ago outstripped his teacher. He had not seen George in how long?

  ‘I haven’t seen George in ages,’ he said aloud. ‘Not since . . .’

  ‘Not since you caught the plague,’ said Kolankiewicz bluntly. ‘Be a mensh and dropin some time. He always asks after you.’

  ‘Be a mensh’ was getting to be Kolankiewicz’s catchphrase. But he was right. When all this was over he would ‘dropin’.

  Kolankiewicz left. Troy found himself staring at the prints. It was unmistakable. A small scar in the shape of a crescent moon slicing across the ridges on each one.

  He could feel Mary McDiarmuid sneaking up next to him. ‘What now?’ she said, arms folded across her bosom, that steely look in her eye.

  ‘I’m going to arrest Chief Inspector Blood.’

  She kicked the door to with the toe of her shoe. The rest of her body did not seem to move. Her arms remained symbolically folded, some Berlin Wall Troy had to cross to get what he wanted.

  ‘Bad idea,’ she said.

  ‘Bad idea?’

  ‘He’s still one of us. Bad idea. Bad form.’

  ‘He’s not one of us any longer.’

  ‘He’s a copper, Troy. I can’t say I think we owe him. In fact I can’t bring myself to say I think we owe Percy Blood a damn thing – but we owe something to the force. Troy, don’t go tearing down to Camberwell in a squad car to bring Blood back in cuffs. In his mad way Percy was right when he said he deserved better than that, if only because we all deserve better than that.’

  ‘What do you suggest?’

  ‘Go and see him. Off the record. Absolutely off the record. Tell him what you know and give him twenty-four hours to turn himself in. If he does that we can always say we didn’t get Kolankiewicz’s report till tomorrow. We can sit on it for the good of the force. When Blood turns himself in we charge him and let the record state that he came in voluntarily.’

  Troy looked at his watch. It was almost five thirty.

  ‘Eighteen hours,’ he said. ‘If he doesn’t turn himself in by noon tomorrow I’ll go down there with the cavalry.’

  ‘You’re doing the right thing. Believe me, you’re doing the right thing.’

  § 96

  Peggy Blood came to the door. It opened only a matter of inches and she said soft as a whisper, ‘He doesn’t want to see you.’

  It had been a long time since he’d put his foot in a door. It was something he thought best left to uniformed coppers in black boots. A big bugger could break the toes of a man in ordinary shoes.

  Mrs Blood retreated at the intrusive foot and Troy pushed past her. The first blow caught him just behind the ear, the second on the back of the neck – so hard he found himself ducking and wrapping his arms around his head. Then they fell on him like hailstones.

  ‘Haven’t you done enough? Haven’t you done enough? Haven’t you done enough?’

  She caught him a stinger on the right cheek. A tiny fist with the whole weight of her back and shoulder behind it.

  ‘Go away. Just go away and let us alone!’

  Then a voice like thunder said, ‘Leave go, woman!’

  She stopped. Troy took down his hands and saw Blood standing in the doorway of the sitting room. Frayed cardigan and carpet slippers. Peggy and Blood stood stock still, staring at one another for a moment as though Troy were invisible. Then she fled, running between them in the direction of the kitchen. Blood turned around without another word and disappeared through the doorway.

  Troy could hear a pulse beating loudly in his head. His own breath in audible rasps. He straightened up, gulped air and followed Blood.

  He was at the green-baize table once more. Lit by the galleon lamp. The muted mumble of the six o’clock news on the wireless. The fish circling frantically. A single-bar electric fire glowing dully on the sunburst hearthrug. Another model in his great crab hands. A ship to be fitted into a bottle, its hull slender as an eel, its tiny, fragile masts folded down to be threaded through the neck of the bottle.

  Troy sat opposite Blood, hoping he did not sound as pathetic as he felt. Blood tinkered, took up a wire hook and made invisible readjustments to the lie of the masts.

  ‘Percy.’

  Blood did not look up. Not the faintest acknowledgement that Troy was in the room.

  ‘Percy. Things have moved on.’

  Blood did not look up.

  ‘I’ve no more questions. I’ve all the evidence I need. Your prints match.’

  Blood slotted the stern of the sailing shipinto the neck of the bottle.

  ‘This visit is off the record.’

  The ship slid to the belly of the bottle and keeled over.

  ‘If I arrest you now you’ll do the full stretch for murder.’

  Troy thought it unlikely in the extreme that Blood would hang. He might not be as mad as jokes and gossip would have him, but somewhere, somewhere in the legal process of blind drunk justice, something would mitigate.

  Blood took a longer wire hook and righted the vessel.

  ‘If you come to the Yard and give yourself up, I will add to my report the fact that you co-operated and I’ll see the judge knows this.’

  The masts flicked upright, filling the bottle – as delicate and beautiful as the spread of a butterfly’s wings. As instant as the blossom of frame-stopfilming.

  ‘You have until noon tomorrow. You have eighteen hours to come to your senses. After that I’ll issue a warrant for your arrest. Do you understand me, Percy?’

  Blood set the bottle on its blocks. In profile Troy saw the ship for what it was – the Cutty Sark. He left without Blood having looked at him. Once he had called off his wife it was as though Troy had not existed for him.

  § 97

  He was exhausted. It was still early in the evening, but he was spent. He sat at his desk, still in his overcoat, hands sunk in his pockets. He tried to count the days since he had come back to work. Four? Five? Or was it six? Perhaps his body was cav
ing in only because it could? Blood would turn himself in tomorrow and the case would be wrapped as soon as he had made his statement. The huge ‘but’ lurking at the end of this sliced into his tiredness. He felt his eyes must be shining like beacons in the paleness of his wasted body. He felt his mind wrenching itself free of the weight of flesh. Blood had killed Fitz – but he had not killed Clover. He might have been party to it, but he had not committed the act. And what was the act? How did anyone compel a woman to write suicide notes, how did he force-feed her sleeping pills without leaving a mark?

  ‘Come on.’

  Mary McDiarmuid was standing in the doorway.

  ‘You look dead beat. I’ll drive you home. And then Eddie here will cook us a meal. When did you last have a decent meal, Troy?’

  He could not recall and he could not argue. He quite fancied potted meat. Blood had stirred a childhood memory of it as nursery food – like toast and dripping, and jam roly-poly. He’d not had that in years either. Fat chance. Clark was into the gourmet stuff. He’d probably get ratatouille or moules marinières, followed by Calvados pomme tarte.

  It seemed to please Mary enormously to be at the wheel of a seventeen-foot 1952 Bentley Continental. Troy got in the back and closed his eyes. Clark took the passenger seat and directed Mary to Bedfordbury and the back entrance to Goodwin’s Court. It took a matter of minutes. All the same, Troy nodded off, and Clark shook him to wake him. He saw Mary turn her head and smile with pleasure. If she enjoyed it this much he must let her drive more often. The two of them pushed their doors open; Clark bent down to gather up his shopping.

  Troy never saw the man who shot him. He stood in the black shadow of the alley and fired his revolver at point-blank range. He was a lousy shot. Five bullets, and only the last hit Troy, grazing the back of his left hand with a crimson tear.

  The first four killed Mary McDiarmuid.

  Troy found himself on the ground, one leg bent under him, his shoulder against the car door, the bleeding hand shielding his eyes in a stupidly instinctive reaction. What you cannot see cannot hurt you. He lowered the hand. Heard the sound of the hammer falling on empty chambers, heard the slow, seemingly methodical, unhurried steps as his would-be-assassin walked back down the alley, into the courtyard, out into St Martin’s Lane.