A Little White Death

by John Lawton

  It prompted Troy to think of the last mystery. The riddle he had asked Charlie to solve. He had never heard from Charlie again, and he doubted now that he ever would.

  Travis’s house was dark. Not a light to be seen.

  They said nothing for a while. Troy was thinking nothing more than that synthetic coal didn’t crackle or split or smell of anything. Then Rod spoke.

  ‘It’s like that time we sat in the cellar and toasted the old man in Veuve Clicquot.’

  ‘January,’ said Troy. ‘This year.’

  ‘Seems like longer.’

  ‘Seems like a bloody lifetime to me.’

  ‘Been a long year. Britain feels to me like someone just ripped out its giblets. And after all that’s happened I still never thought I’d see Macmillan go. But he’s gone.’

  ‘Does it matter?’

  ‘Oh, it matters all right.’

  ‘Doesn’t get you an election, though, does it?’

  ‘No. There’ll be no election this year. The Tories will run to the limit now. A week from now we’ll have Travis, or Butler, or Hailsham.’

  ‘I’ve never known you not place a bet on something like that.’

  ‘If Mac had called it quits before May this year I’d’ve backed Woodbridge. However, I’ll stick twenty-five nicker on Travis.’

  ‘Win or place?’

  Rod laughed.

  ‘No such thing as coming second in politics. It’s called losing.’

  A Humber pulled up on the other side of the street. A figure in a black overcoat got out. A few words with a flunkie on the pavement, the flunkie got back in, the car drove off, the policeman on the door saluted and Travis went inside.

  Troy put down his glass and stood up.

  ‘Don’t back Travis,’ he said. ‘You’ll lose.’

  Troy went for his coat. Rod followed with that look on his face.

  ‘What do you mean? Freddie, what are you up to?’

  Troy opened the door, stepped into the street and turned up his collar against the rain.

  ‘Freddie, for Christ’s sake—’

  But Troy no longer heard him. He heard his shoes on the wet tarmac, then that too drowned out to the narco-rhythm in his head, the roaring in his veins he had felt so often at times like this.

  The duty copper watched him cross the street, a puzzled look on his face. He let Troy get right up to him and then he saluted. Troy knew the man, an old-timer with twenty-five years of service under his belt.

  ‘Take a tea break, Reg,’ Troy said.

  ‘I’m not really supposed to . . .’

  ‘Mr Travis will be quite safe with me. Come back in an hour.’

  Reg sloped off, inasmuch as a uniformed constable can slope. If he could he would have put his hands in pockets, but he couldn’t.

  Troy let him reach the end of the street and then he yanked on the bell pull.

  Travis answered. Just like Rod, shirtsleeves and half-mast tie, but without the rotten taste in slippers. He had a bottle of wine in one hand, the corkscrew sticking out of the top, the cork waiting to be pulled. He did not in the least seem surprised.

  ‘Was it something I said?’ he said.

  ‘Of course,’ Troy replied.

  ‘Then you’d better come in. We don’t want Big Brother watching, now do we?’

  He led the way into the front room, the dining room as this version of a Church Row house was laid out, set the bottle down unopened and pulled the curtains to. Troy caught a glimpse of Rod, lit up in his own front window, staring out at them. Then he was gone and it was just Troy and Travis alone on opposite sides of a vast table, in the light and shade of a single lamp.

  ‘I’m not going to help you, Commander Troy. Whatever’s on your mind, just spit it out.’

  ‘I know you killed Clover Browne. I know how you killed Clover Browne.’

  Travis said nothing. He stuck the bottle, still with its corkscrew sticking out, on a silver tray on the sideboard, and from somewhere produced a packet of cork-tipped cigarettes and lit up. He did not offer one to Troy. The table lamp cut off Troy’s view as he took the first drag – all he could see was the tilt of his chin, the glowing tipof the cigarette beneath the haze of smoke. Then a glass ashtray appeared on the table. Travis leant in, flicked ash and Troy could just see his eyes, disappearing into darkness, unexpressive.

  ‘You’ve got ten minutes. After that I may well take you by the scruff of the neck and throw you out.’

  Travis looked at his watch. Troy looked at his.

  ‘I spent Easter at Uphill, as I’m sure you know. You were there too, keeping a pretty low profile. Woodbridge didn’t, but then he had so much less to lose. When I found out Woodbridge and Tereshkov were sharing the Ffitch girls I tried very hard to warn Fitz that he was playing with fire. Wouldn’t listen. Just kept saying, “Ace in the hole.” He was drunk but he knew what he was saying. For along time I didn’t. And I’ve spent the best part of the last week thinking he meant his M15 connections. But he didn’t. He wisely did not trust M15 and he certainly didn’t rely on them to get him out of the hole he’d dug for himself. But he did trust you. You were his ace in the hole, not M15. I could scarcely have been more wrong.

  ‘That same night, after Fitz fell into a drunken stupor, I walked across the Park with young Clover Browne. She was on her way to meet someone in the North Lodge. She was wearing nothing but an operetta mask and high-heeled shoes. “Lucky Tommy,” I said. And for a long time I made nothing of her reply – indeed I gave it no thought. What she said was “Tommy? I should cocoa.” A bit of cockney slang. Took me an age to hear the question mark in there. She wasn’t telling me who she was tripping through the darkness to fuck, but she was telling me it wasn’t Tommy. It was you. I know that now. I looked up your constituency. Winchelsea and Rye. You go to Winchelsea every weekend on constituency business. It’s five miles from Uphill. You were probably a regular guest of Tommy’s, and through him you met Fitz and you met Clover. It’s common knowledge around the House that your marriage is a bickering mess. A young mistress in discreet surroundings was probably exactly what you wanted.

  ‘But then Woodbridge and Fitz became the object of a furious press enquiry, a great national nosiness, and then a scandal and then a messy resignation. You must have been worried, but compared to Woodbridge, you’d been very discreet. So few people knew. But, things got worse. Scotland Yard decided someone had to be punished and they began a case against Fitz. I should think it was the last thing you wanted. But Coyn and Quint thought the opposite. They didn’t even wait for Woodbridge to resign – they moved against Fitz as soon as Woodbridge tried to deny it all. They thought they were serving you, the Party, the House and their duty all in one action. This is the way the establishment works after all, not on the level of a contrived conspiracy, but like a machine on automatic. Everyone doing what they think is expected of them. Mirkeyn did the same. It’s probably never crossed Mirkeyn’s mind that he’s a bad judge or a bent judge. He simply did what was expected. Didn’t even need a nod or a wink. It’s probably never crossed Wilfrid Coyn’s mind that he’s a poor excuse for a copper. In his book, the law demanded justice and justice demanded a scapegoat – a sacrificial victim. And, since the victim could not be Woodbridge, it had to be Fitz. Coyn and Quint moved Blood from Special Branch just to make sure they had someone who understood the machine a bit better than those plodding fools in Vice.

  ‘It must have crossed your mind a thousand times to stopthe prosecution, but you didn’t. The risk was too great. You would then be the centre of attention; your own motives would be held up to scrutiny. You must have prayed for the Director of Public Prosecutions to throw it out, but he didn’t – he too did what he thought the system required of him. So you did the only thing you could. You looked at the evidence, and you did a deal with Fitz. You told him the case would likely as not fall apart in court, and but for an old bugger like Mirkeyn it would have, and if it didn’t he would get off on appeal. I don’t know what else
you promised him by way of compensation, but the two of you had a deal. Somehow you bought his silence. Somehow you got him to agree not even to testify in his own defence.

  ‘Then, Blood turned out to be a bit too good at his job. He couldn’t find Clover, but he rightly deduced that a charge of procurement would be far more damaging to Fitz than one of immoral earnings. Half of England thought Fitz was some sort of pervert, a bounder at the very least, but the other half of England admired Fitz as a lucky blighter for having a couple of women like the Ffitch sisters. No one would admire him for being involved with a girl who’d been under age for most of the time he knew her. When Blood could not find Clover, the Yard took a risk. They named her in the submission anyway. I can imagine the conversation with Blood. “Just give me more time,” he’d’ve said. “I can find her. By the time it gets to court I can find her.” Because the truth is that Blood knew who Clover really was. I even think he knew about you and thought he was serving you by tracking her down, enacting some sort of bizarre vengeance on your behalf. He kept that knowledge to himself. He looked for her personally. He kept no notes of where he looked or to whom he talked. This must have been dreadful for you. If Blood found her there would be no way to keepyour name out of it. There’d be a scandal to put Fitz and Woodbridge and Tereshkov in the shade. But then Onions stepped in. Told Blood to dropit. Or else. Now, Onions can think he still has that kind of power if it flatters his vanity. He’s an old man, after all. But I doubt that Blood would have given up on Clover just because Onions said so. God knows, I wouldn’t have. Blood did exactly what I’d have done in his position. He passed the buck upwards. Told Coyn and Quint that he knew the girl’s real name and that Onions had warned him off. He must have thought they’d back him, but they didn’t – they panicked. Blood may not have had enough imagination to see that it had now become an issue of loyalty to the Yard, but they did. They knew damn well that the Yard would come very badly out of a scandal involving Sir Stanley Onions’ family, and they wanted to dropit.

  ‘By now it’s day one of the trial. I checked the court reports. David Cocket approached the bench and there was a long, unrecorded three-way discussion in chambers between the judge, the prosecution and the defence. It’s not hard to guess what Cocket said. That there was no statement accompanying the name of Clover Browne as witness, and that if they attempted to introduce her as a witness at a later date without a prior statement he would ask for her evidence to be ruled inadmissible. Mirkeyn would have loved to say no, but he couldn’t. He probably told Furbelow to produce a police statement from Clover by day two or withdraw the charge. Furbelow got on to the Yard and they all agreed to dropit. The procurement charge wouldn’t stick. For you this was little short of a miracle. The Yard had dropped the charge out of sheer self-interest and you’d come so far without having to stepin yourself and risk giving any reasons. You were where you wanted to be – out of it.

  ‘Then, Clover vanished. She was still at large, knowing enough to destroy you, and you’d lost her. I don’t think you worked out that Onions had dumped her on me. But then she phoned you from my house. I know she phoned the Ffitch girls, and I think she phoned you too. I was late back from the court one day towards the end of the trial and I found her still in the bath. But she’d bathed that morning. It occurs to me now that she was washing you off. She’d heard my key in the door, and dashed for the bathroom to rinse off an afternoon of sex. And when she emerged, smelling of soap and talc and scent instead of man, she fell into my bed like an apple from a tree. I flattered myself I’d made all the running. Indeed, I cursed myself I’d made all the running. But giving in to me had just been her way of settling my suspicions. She threw a sexual cloud over me to mask all trace of you. A man who’s getting fucked silly doesn’t much wonder who the woman was with a couple of hours before, or even if she was with another man a couple of hours before.

  ‘I don’t know when you decided to kill her, but you couldn’t let her roam around knowing what she did. You thought that sooner or later she’d tell someone. On the last morning of the trial, you talked to Fitz. After all, you still had your arrangement with Fitz; he still trusted you to get him out of the mess. And you told him you needed me out of the way for an evening. So the two of us ate at Leoni’s. And while we did you turned up at my house. Clover had already told you her ludicrous fantasy of a lovers’ suicide pact, just as she’d told it to me. And she’d probably told you I was taking sleeping pills. So you turned up armed with a jar of plain white vitamin pills. You told her it was all up for the two of you. That there was only one way out. And as she swallowed my sleeping pills, you matched her pill for pill with nothing more harmful than Vitamin C. And when she was just a bit gaga you told her to write a suicide note. She wrote two. One to her grandfather and one to me. And when she was comatose, beyond any hope of recovery, you washed your glass, packed away your pills, wiped away your fingerprints and left. Fitz and I went our separate ways. When he got home, Percy Blood blew his brains out, and when I got home I found Clover dying. You’d rounded everything up in a single evening. All the people who knew you were having an affair with a girl a third your age were dead. Your career was safe; what was left of your marriage was safe, and with Macmillan ailing fast, you were in with a shot at Number 10.

  ‘Of course it was something you said. You should never have let her write two notes. I never told anyone about the note for Onions except Onions himself. It isn’t mentioned in any report I made to the Yard. It wasn’t in the account I wrote for you. You were damned the minute you told me she’d written two notes. The only way you could have known that was if you had been there when she wrote them. Really, you should never have agreed to see me. I was the only person you had to fear. You’d almost got away with it.’

  Travis had finished his cigarette, and lit up another tip to tail.

  ‘I do so admire neatness in a policeman,’ he said. ‘It makes me almost proud of my job. An excellent analysis of method, very good on the legal procedure, but a shot in the dark at motive. It all hinges on who knew about me and Clover, and, as you so rightly say, Tommy is dead, Fitz is dead and Clover is dead. Without them you have the perfect modus operandi without a motive or a murderer.’

  ‘Not quite,’ said Troy.

  ‘Not quite?’

  ‘There has to be one person left who knew. One person from whom you could not conceal the affair.’

  Travis smiled. Inhaled deeply and shook his head. Disembodied in the part-light like the grinning head of the Cheshire cat.

  ‘No, no, no, Commander Troy, it’s not going to wash.’

  Troy wondered at the beauty of the timing. The purity of coincidence that led the doorbell to ring out now as if a demented Quasimodo had swung on the bell pull with all his might.

  Travis stared at Troy. The smile fading fast.

  ‘Well,’ Troy said. ‘It won’t be for me, will it?’

  Travis got up. He had looked at Troy unresponsively throughout, saying nothing with lips and eyes, the hand reaching out to tap on the ashtray his only movement. Now he looked with something like suspicion turning to hatred in his eyes. Could he not guess? Troy thought. Did he not know what was coming? He walked into the hallway just as Quasimodo swung on the bell again. Troy heard the door creak on its hinges. A muted exchange. No words, just the tones of incredulity in Travis’s voice. He came back, sweeping his fingers though his hair, stood a moment with his back to Troy. Troy heard the scraping of the parquet as the chair next to him was pulled back, but he did not turn. He looked sideways from the corners of his eyes. Until he saw with his own eyes, he still might not dare to believe. He had been so aware of the amount of time he had allowed him for second thoughts. But there he was, sitting next to him, fair hair dampwith rain, buttoned to the chin against the night, eyes fixed on Travis’s back. Woodbridge.

  § 121

  Troy had called on Woodbridge an hour or so before he had called on Rod. Without Woodbridge, his meeting with Travis would be a coloss
al bluff. Even afterwards, as he made his way to Rod’s, he could not be wholly sure what agreement the two of them had reached – but before he tackled Travis he had had to talk to Woodbridge.

  Woodbridge had a largish early-Victorian house he called his ‘cottage’ in Flask Walk, less than quarter of a mile from Church Row. Troy stood on the opposite side of the street. Every light in the cottage blazed. Several of the windows seemed to have been stripped of their curtains. There wasn’t a reporter in sight. It looked as though Woodbridge’s moment of fame had finally passed.

  ‘Long time no see,’ he said as he opened the door to Troy. He stood a moment on the doorstep. This was not the man Troy had seen before. It was the mufti version, not the politician, the former politician. Troy had never seen anyone of his age in American blue jeans before, the incongruous, ironed white shirt flapping loose over the waistband of the blue denim, the shiny black shoes at odds with the rolled turn-ups at the ankle. He hadn’t quite got the hang of it, Troy thought, but he’d learn. You needed the figure for them at forty-eight. Woodbridge looked good in them. Long legs helped, no beer belly helped. He’d learn.

  He motioned Troy in. Troy shut the door behind him and followed the sound of Woodbridge’s footsteps, the unmistakable echo of an empty house where noise is unmuffled by furniture or curtains or flesh and seems to bounce from wall to wall and room to room. The drawing room contained nothing but three hefty tea-chests standing on the bare floorboards amid the disturbed dust of absent furniture, lit only by a single, naked overhead bulb. Woodbridge rummaged in the middle chest, the only one not yet nailed down. He pulled out a bottle and two glasses wrapped in yesterday’s newspaper. As he peeled away the paper he turned the label towards Troy.