Riptide

by Lawton, John

  ‘Must be the glasses.’

  ‘I’m glad you can see the funny side. Because if his dog hadn’t been killed on Saturday night it’d’ve ripped your throat out at the first umlaut! Now. Either stand still and say nowt or bugger off outside. Which is it to be?’

  ‘I’ll stay.’

  ‘Good.’

  There was one chair in the room. Stilton set it upright, blew the dust off it and helped Hudge onto it.

  ‘We need a little help, old son.’

  Stilton whipped out the photographs of Stahl and Smulders.

  ‘Did you see either of these blokes in the Lincoln last Monday?’ Hudge stopped glaring at Cal and looked. Another rapid sentence in alphabet soup.

  ‘In English, Hudge. For the sake of our friend here.’

  ‘Friend,’ Hudge said, as though Stilton had just introduced him to a new philosophical concept.

  ‘Oh yes. Definitely. Our friend. My wife thinks the sun shines out of his arse.’

  ‘The younk one. He was talk to Fish Wally. He write something down. Then he go. Maybe half hour later the old one come. He chat only few minute. Then he too go.’

  ‘And Fish Wally?’

  ‘He stay till chucky out. He buy me drink. He got money.’

  ‘Did he say anything about these blokes?’

  ‘No.’

  Hudge looked at the photos again.

  ‘The younk one. Something not right. I think it the scar on eye. Cannot be sure. Maybe scar. Maybe not.’

  ‘Well Calvin, whatever you have to say, say it in English and smile.’

  Cal thought he’d have to drag his voice up from his belly. He couldn’t remember when he’d last felt so self-conscious.

  ‘It’s just a sketch,’ he bleated.

  Hudge looked again.

  ‘Ja. Just so. Sketch.’

  Hudge reverted to Czech. Stilton pointed at the book and motioned to Cal to pick it up. Cal dusted it and brought it to Hudge. He took it, clutched it to his chest once more.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said to Cal. ‘Not forget?’ he said to Stilton.

  ‘Oh no,’ Stilton replied. ‘We won’t forget.’

  Clumping down the stairs Cal whispered, ‘What won’t we forget?’

  ‘The dog,’ said Stilton. ‘I told him we’d get him a new dog.’

  They crossed the rubble plains to the car, Cal trying all the time to think of the right words to apologise to Stilton.

  ‘I’m sorry, Walter. I goofed.’

  Stilton was silent for a few seconds, then said, ‘We both did. But I’ll do you a deal. You take your cue from me – whatever we’re doing – and I won’t leave you standing at the boundary. We’re a team, Calvin. Time we started to act like one.’

  Walter throttled the Riley into life. They’d driven a quarter of a mile before Cal said, ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘Fish Wally’s house. He passed through Burnham more than a year ago. Real name’s Waldemar Wallfiçz. He’s a Pole. He was a civil engineer before the war – built bridges. But he was in the reserve. He went to fight the Germans – blew up bridges. And when the Germans won he was one of a band of diehards who wouldn’t surrender. Most of ’em did die hard. Wally didn’t, he escaped. Went east. Crossed the line. Dodged the Russians as well as the Germans. He says he walked across the ice from the Baltic coast to Finland.’

  ‘Good God, do you believe him?’

  ‘Well – he’s got the worst case of frostbite I’ve ever seen. And the Squadron Leader saw fit to turn him loose. He’s lived a mile or so up the road ever since.’

  ‘Do you still – what’s the word? – observe him?’

  ‘I don’t – he’s clean. I’ve no doubt about that. He’s supposed to report to the local nick from time to time, but then they all are. Most of ’em do. Some of ’em don’t.’

  The car took the hump of a narrow bridge, swung left into a maze of tiny streets and two-storey houses, right at an old Victorian school and pulled up.

  ‘We there?’ said Cal.

  ‘Yep. Chantry Street, Islington.’

  They got out. One side of the street – the odd numbers – was intact, bar a few broken windows: the other side, the evens, wasn’t. It was in pieces. Some houses stood, some didn’t. None of them seemed inhabited. It was almost familiar. Cal was getting used to this. Could you go to any borough in the east and find most of it missing?

  Stilton was leafing through a wire-bound spiral notebook, muttering ‘Bugger, bugger, bugger.’

  ‘Odd or even, Walter?’ said Cal. ‘We have a fifty/fifty chance.’

  ‘Hereweare.Wallfiçz. 20 Chantry Street . . . oh bugger!’

  They found number 21 and stood with their backs to it. 20 was a heap. And there wasn’t much more of the house next door.

  ‘Saturday night’s got a lot to answer for,’ said Cal.

  ‘No. This is older. This looks like it happened weeks ago.’

  In front of the ruin of number twenty-two an iron manhole was set in the pavement. A head appeared from it, level with Stilton’s boots. The dusty blonde head of a child. A filthy child. A child from The Water Babies, looking as though it had just been sent up to sweep the chimney. Stilton squatted down.

  ‘What are you doing down there at this time of night, young lady?’ he asked.

  ‘Who wants to know?’

  ‘I do. Chief Inspector Stilton CID.’

  ‘Dad says not to talk to coppers.’

  ‘Would that be because you’re looting?’

  ‘Looting! I ain’t nicked nuffink! It’s our house, this is. Dad sent me to get a bucket o’ coal.’

  ‘Bit young to be sent down a manhole, aren’t you?’

  ‘I’m ten! Besides, Dad don’t fit. Nor do none of me bruvvers. ’Ere, cop hold of this.’

  Cal took the bucket from her as she pushed it up. Then her head and shoulders filled the manhole. Her hands found the rim and she flipped herself up to the pavement with the skill of a practised gymnast. She was in a vest and knickers, and black from head to foot.

  ‘Tell me,’ Stilton went on. ‘Did ye know the bloke who lodged next door?’

  ‘’Ow much?’ said the child. ‘You want me to grass someone up, it’ll cost.’

  ‘A tanner.’

  ‘Bob.’

  Stilton stuck his hands in his trousers pocket and dug out a few coppers.

  ‘Ninepence,’ he said, counting them out one by one.

  The child stuck out her hand and said, ‘Done.’

  ‘Now. Did ye know him?’

  ‘Wot? ’Im wot lived wiv Mrs O’Rourke?’

  ‘If she lived at number twenty, yes.’

  ‘Yeah, I knew Fish Wally.’

  ‘The raid? A while back, was it?’

  ‘It were in March. Day before me birthday. Mum’d saved up flour an’ marge an’ neggs for ages to make me a cake, then ’Itler blew it to bits. I din’t get none of it.’

  ‘And Fish Wally – he was still here then?’

  ‘Oh yeah. We was all down the shelter, when the street got blown to bollocks. Dad told Wally he should come and live with us at Mum’s sister’s till ’e got fixed up. But ’e wouldn’t have none of it. Dug around in the rubble for a day or two. Found his razor and his spare trousers and off ’e went. Dad says ’e ain’t seen ’im since.’

  Cal could see that Stilton wanted to say ‘Oh bugger’ again but, however foul the child’s vocabulary, could not bring himself to add to it.

  ‘You know,’ he said, ‘I think it’s time you were in bed. And I think it’s time I had a word with your dad.’

  § 35

  Troy wondered what time it was. He was not like his father – a man who could awaken at any time, instinctively know what time it was, calculate how much was left to dream and go back to sleep for a precise period of time, be it ten minutes or four hours. More often than not Troy did not sleep. It was still dark, darkish – Kitty stood in outline near the foot of his bed, caught in a sliver of moonlight where Troy had peeled back t
he blackout. He watched her roll a stocking up one leg, back bent, one leg ramrod straight, the other bent into a curiously balletic, attractive pose, toes on point as she eased out the rucks at the knee, passed hand over hand up her thigh and hooked it onto her suspenders. He watched her. She watched him. As dispassionate as could be. Not a flicker on that disarmingly pretty face. He felt as far from her affections as . . . as if he were light years away – away from her warmth, away from heat and light. Aphelion. It was a too-familiar moment. The pure detachment of the woman from the man. He knew it too well. With any other woman it would be him looking on so detachedly. She dressed without a smile. Left without a word.

  § 36

  At breakfast in Claridge’s next morning Cal found two men eating his breakfast: Walter Stilton and a face he thought he vaguely knew, stuffing itself with tea and toast. Stilton got up, clapped him on the shoulder as though greeting him at a private party he was hosting – when in fact it was pretty much the other way round.

  ‘Calvin. You’ll remember our man Constable Dobbs?’

  Ah – the copper Stilton had ‘bollocked’ in front of him a few nights back.

  ‘Sure,’ he said.

  ‘Bernard,’ said Dobbs. ‘Bernard Dobbs.’

  Cal pulled up a chair.

  ‘Tell me, Walter. Do you think the War Department budget will run to three breakfasts in a single day? I’m kind of peckish after last night.’

  Dobbs froze mid-munch. His teeth locked onto the toast, his eyes flickering between Stilton and Cal. Too much brass around a single table for his own comfort. Then Stilton gave him his cue, roared with laughter and waved at a waitress as though he’d been eating at Claridge’s all his life. Dobbs munched on in relief.

  ‘I’ve worked out a plan,’ Stilton began. ‘Belt and braces.’

  ‘What? Belt and what?’

  ‘It’s an old saying up north. Belt and braces. What the nervous man does to keep his trousers up – wears both belt and braces – you call ’em suspenders, least they do in Hollywood – that way if one snaps your trousers still stay up.’

  ‘I see,’ said Cal, not seeing, wondering at the power of gravity in the north of England.

  ‘Bernard, here. He’s going to stand guard outside the Lincoln. We know Fish Wally goes in there. If he spots him he calls in to the Yard. It’s routine stuff, but it might just work. Besides, our Bernard’s good at standing outside boozers, aren’t you Bernard?’

  Dobbs avoided meeting Stilton’s gaze.

  ‘And us. We do the streets and the caffs.’

  ‘What streets?’ said Cal. ‘What caffs?’

  ‘Well – if I’d been bombed out I’d go back to my own. If you see what I mean. It’s possible Wally has gone back to the Polish bits of London. It’d make sense. He’d be more likely to get fixed up that way. They’d look after him. Get him another room. Slip him a bob or two till he’s found his feet. So you and I are going to tramp the beat in Polish London.’

  ‘Putney?’ said Cal.

  ‘Well remembered, lad. Putney it is. And if that draws a blank we’ll look across the other side of the river in Fulham.’

  ‘Walter, how long will this take?’

  Stilton laughed. ‘How long’s a piece of string?’

  § 37

  A more appropriate question might have been, ‘How long is a piece of elastic?’ Four days later, they had tramped, as Walter so accurately put it, the streets, cafeterias and public houses of Putney – meeting suspicion, hostility, curiosity and, on occasion, hospitality – to no avail. Cal could not conceal his sinking spirits. He could not tell, any more than he thought Stilton could, whether these motley refugees of Mittel-Europa were co-operating or lying. No one had seen Fish Wally. No one would admit to having seen Fish Wally.

  They crossed the river with a sense rising in Cal that in fanning out, their chances had been thinned and diminished. He wondered if they were ever going to find this Fish Wally, and if they did, would they ever find Wolfgang Stahl?

  They sank a pint, as Walter termed it, in the World’s End public house at the foot of the King’s Road – through Fulham and almost out the other side into Chelsea.

  ‘Walter. We’re on a hiding to nothing.’

  ‘No. We’re not. This is what it’s like. Not all police work is like a shoot-out with Clyde Barrow. This is what it’s like. Routine. Often as not, routine is what pays off.’

  The routine of his days was not matched by his nights. He could not predict when Kitty would turn up. On the fourth night she was already in his bed when he got home.

  ‘How did you get in?’

  ‘The maid. She’s taken a liking to me. Used her pass key.’

  Kitty lay underneath a single sheet. She wasn’t wearing a nightdress. He could see her nipples pushing up the sheet, the dark patch of red pubic hair. They still hadn’t ‘talked’ – she tossed the word back at him as though describing some sort of perversion he wanted her to indulge in. He’d given up all hope of a serious conversation with her. What was the point? The woman was irresistible. He could tumble into Kitty and nothing else mattered.

  § 38

  What Stilton needed was divine intervention – deus ex machina. What he got was a tip-off. A telephone call just as he was contemplating a mountain of paperwork on his desk at the Yard and preparing to give up on it and go home.

  ‘It’s me. Joe Downes.’

  Stilton said ‘Yes’ while he racked his brains.

  ‘You came round my gaff last week and told me I was a lousy father for sending me daughter down a coal hole at midnight.’

  ‘Oh aye – I remember you now.’

  A surly git who’d not had the courage to look him in the eyes when he’d taken the black imp back to him.

  ‘You was asking about Fish Wally.’

  ‘You’ve seen him?’

  ‘I haven’t. It was the missis. Says she bumped into him down Covent Garden this morning. Says he’s taken to spending his nights at St Martin’s.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I said –’

  ‘I heard what you said. I meant which St Martin’s?’

  ‘St Martin-in-the-Fields. What other one is there?’

  ‘I don’t believe it,’ Stilton said, more to himself than Downes.

  ‘That’s what I told the missis. Still, we’re even now, you and me, aren’t we?’

  ‘Aye lad, we are. Just mind how you go with the nutty slack.’

  § 39

  Cal knew at once that this was different. St Alkmund’s, whatever the stink, however much it looked like some hellish gothic vision, had had women and children – women cooking, women putting children to bed, children playing, children refusing to be put to bed, while men played cards or shoved coins up and down a board with the same glee with which Cal used to race frogs. St Martin’s held naught but men – and they played no games. By comparison it was quiet, not silent, constant interruptions, shouting and cussing, meaningless interjections – and off to one side, in the shadows, standing alone, an upright, crazed monologuist conversing with person or persons invisible.

  And the smell – if St Alkmund’s had been chalked up to the cliché ‘humanity’, how could St Martin’s be less than human? It reeked of beer, sweat and dirt – the penetrating cheesy smell of the unwashed, great or not, that could put a dead skunk to shame.

  ‘Walter, do we have the right place? This is a dive – it’s a shelter for bums and drunks.’

  ‘I know,’ said Stilton. ‘Surprised me too – but that was the tipoff. Down with the down-and-outs in St Martin-in-the-Fields.’

  A young curate approached them – the permanent smile of the righteous rictus-stapled to his lips.

  ‘Can I help you? It’s not often we get a visit from the Constabulary these days.’

  Stilton didn’t bat an eyelid at this. Just flashed his warrant card and said, ‘D’ye know Fish Wally?’

  The young priest beamed. ‘I should have known. Our Mr Wallfiçz. There he is, right at the
back under the pavement arches.’ He pointed down the crypt. Cal and Stilton stepped over the prostrate, drunken, incontinent bodies and headed towards the glow of a kerosene lamp.

  A ragged man sat bolt upright on an upturned crate. Half a dozen newspapers scattered around his feet, another clutched in hands that seemed to Cal to be more claw than flesh, the arc of the lamp shining upon on it. But he wasn’t reading it. He stared off into a lost middle distance, lost in some landscape of the mind.

  Stilton waved a hand in front of his eyes. Fish Wally blinked once and said, ‘Stilton? Long time no Stilton. I had heard you were looking for me.’

  Stilton pulled another beer crate closer and plonked himself down on it. Cal stood back, half in the shadows, outside of the small circle of light, watching.

  ‘If you knew I were looking, why didn’t you call me? For that matter you were supposed to tell us if you moved digs – but you didn’t, did you?’

  Fish Wally looked lazily at Stilton, heavy-lidded eyes half closed.

  ‘The answer is the same to both questions. I have other things on my mind.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘We’re about to be invaded. That may mean nothing to you. You come from a complacent race. We Poles have seen it all before – I somewhat more recently than 1066.’

  ‘All the same, you should have told us. You don’t want me reporting this to the Squadron Leader, do you?’

  ‘Do your worst, Stilton. He knows I am kosher. And so do you. You have found me – you have the larger part of my attention, for the while at least – what else matters?’

  ‘Since you ask . . .’

  Stilton laid out the photos across his knees, on top of Fish Wally’s newspaper.

  ‘These two were in the Marquess of Lincoln, Monday last. So were you.’

  Fish Wally picked up the photographs, angled them into the light.

  ‘The young one – the blond one. He asked me to help him get a room. The older one merely said he might have to move in the foreseeable future. I told him to tell me later – I do not deal in maybe. I never saw him again.’