Riptide

by Lawton, John

‘Understatement, Bernard, understatement.’

  Stilton let ten minutes pass, looked at his wristwatch and said, ‘Bring the car right up to the porch and leave the nearside back door open.’

  He strode off, macintosh flapping, trilby pulled down firmly. Once inside he tapped gently at Wally’s door, the friendly-shy knock of a neighbour wanting to borrow a cupful of sugar.

  Fish Wally came to the door, yawning and smoking simultaneously, a fag glued with spittle to his lower lip. Stilton knocked the cigarette away, seized him by the arm and bundled him inside. The kettle sang on the hob, his baccy pouch lay open on the oil cloth, the cat occupied pride of place in the armchair – and Wally wore his slippers.

  ‘Stilton! What you –?’

  Stilton grabbed the other arm and, in a gesture born of years of practice, slapped the cuffs on his wrists and clicked them closed.

  ‘For God’s sake, Walter – what do you want?’

  Stilton found Fish Wally’s shoes under the table and threw them at him without a word. Wally took the hint, wrapped his crab hands around them and slipped them on. Stilton turned off the gas, opened the wire-mesh cold-larder above the sink, found a few scraps of fatty meat wrapped in greaseproof paper and dumped them in the cat’s bowl.

  ‘You going to tell me what this is about? Or do I have to guess?’

  Stilton took his coat off the back of the door and threw that at him too. The door slammed behind them, Stilton dragging Fish Wally by the scruff of his neck, down to the car and bundled into the back seat. Only when Dobbs had slipped the car into gear and set off down Drury Lane did Stilton speak.

  ‘You are not obliged to say anything, but if you do . . .’

  ‘For Christ’s sake, Walter – do we not know each other better than this?’

  Dobbs crunched the car through the gears at the junction with the Aldwych, the metallic scraping filling the silence. Then Stilton said, ‘I thought I knew you, Wally. Now I’m wondering just who the hell you are.’

  § 57

  Fish Wally sat by himself in a cell at Scotland Yard, still in the handcuffs. Stilton checked his watch, Dobbs flopped down on a wooden bench in the corridor.

  ‘Let’s give him an hour on his jack jones. Tell the uniforms to leave well alone. No cups of tea and no chit-chat.’

  ‘Wh . . . wh . . . whatever you say boss.’

  Stilton leant down and looked at Dobbs all but eye to eye. He’d gone deathly pale. And he could hardly put a sentence together.

  ‘Bernard – if I didn’t know better I’d swear you were one over the eight.’

  ‘I sh . . . sh . . . should be so lucky.’

  ‘I’m sending you home, laddie.’

  ‘I’ll get a cab.’

  ‘Bollocks – I’ll whistle up a squad car. Go home and go to bed. If you’re no better by the morning just give me a bell. I think you’re coming down with summat.’

  Stilton put an arm around Dobbs and lugged him up to the ground floor. He seemed to go completely limp, as though someone had just cut his strings.

  Back in his own office, he took out his little black notebook and the desk file he was supposed to type up regularly. He’d typed in nothing since the last time he was in Burnham-on-Crouch with Squadron Leader Thesiger. He couldn’t be arsed at the time and he could not be arsed now. Wally would be sitting down there, that seemingly unshakeable philosophical stance getting more wobbly by the minute. There was one thing Stilton could do that Wally couldn’t, and it would give him a nice edge in an hour or so – he could catch forty winks and get down there feeling a damn sight fresher than ‘me laddo’. Stilton slept. Forty winks became eighty winks. One hour became two.

  ‘Walter, are you going to stop playing games now and tell me what this is about?’

  Stilton leant across the table and unlocked the handcuffs. Fish Wally rubbed at his wrists.

  ‘That Czech bloke you sent me after . . .’

  ‘I heard – you lost him. Is that my fault?’

  ‘That Czech bloke you sent me after,’ Stilton said slowly and emphatically, ‘was a German.’

  Fish Wally was galvanised. Head up, eyes wide. Perhaps Cormack was right. Or Fish Wally was a better actor than he’d ever thought?

  ‘What?’

  ‘A German – an Abwehr spy.’

  ‘I don’t believe you.’

  ‘Suit yourself.’

  Stilton got up and left. As he locked the door a young constable appeared with a cup of tea.

  ‘Nowt for him. I’ll have that.’

  ‘But guvner, regulations –’

  ‘Bugger regulations. He gets nowt till I say so.’

  An hour later he came back. Wally was on his feet at once, shouting in his face.

  ‘I didn’t know! How the hell you expect me to know? You think I deal with Germans knowingly? You think I don’t have every reason in the world to hate Germans? What kind of a man do you think I am?’

  ‘Like I said. I don’t know any more.’

  ‘Pah!’ A wave of the arm, a puff of Polish contempt, but Fish Wally sat down again and faced Stilton.

  ‘We’re making progress, I see.’

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘An hour ago you didn’t believe he was German.’

  Fish Wally glared. He seemed to think it wiser to say nothing. Stilton took out four little paper books and laid them on the table between them as though he were playing patience. Four Ministry of Food ration books.

  ‘I got these off Faker Forsyte this afternoon.’

  Fish Wally tried a ‘So?’ but it lacked total conviction.

  Stilton put a fifth, slightly tattier book next to the others.

  ‘I took this one off the German last night. The bloke you told me was Czech. The bloke you fixed up at your cousin Casimir’s doss house.’

  Fish Wally shrugged. A silent ‘So?’

  ‘Did you sell it to him?’

  ‘Why don’t you ask him?’

  ‘Not to mince words, I took it off the body . . . the corpse of that German.’

  Fish Wally flinched at this.

  ‘I’ll ask you again. Did you sell it to him?’

  ‘What if I did?’

  ‘Wally, I might expect remarks as stupid as that from the average London tea-leaf . . . but if that’s what you want. Firstly, it’s illegal to trade in counterfeit documents. Second . . . you’re a British resident now. We took you in. It’s ingratitude, it’s treason if you want it plain.’

  ‘Treason? Ingratitude? Good God, Stilton, what do you want from me? I am no traitor. I am a poor man. Worse –’ He held up his hands again ‘– a broken man. I have a living to make where I can. But why should I betray England?’

  ‘So you did sell it to him?’

  ‘Yes. But treason was no part of it. I believed him to be Czech. Another victim. Like me.’

  ‘How much did you touch this victim for, Wally? Ten bob? A quid? Two quid?’

  Fish Wally said nothing. Met Stilton’s gaze without blinking.

  ‘Faker Forsyte says he sold you two ration books. What did you do with the other?’

  ‘He told you that? He’s a liar.’

  ‘Have it your own way.’

  Stilton left again. He could keep this up all night if he had to.

  Around midnight he flipped the peephole on the cell door. Fish Wally was pacing the floor, restless and caged. Seconds out, thought Stilton, round three.

  He set out the photographs once more. Smulders and Stahl.

  ‘I know,’ said Wally. ‘These you showed me at the crypt. I told you the truth then. I saw them both. I told you everything I knew. Do not fling these in my face and call me a liar.’

  ‘You didn’t mention the third bloke.’

  ‘What third bloke?’

  Stilton pointed at the sketch of Stahl.

  ‘A third bloke who looked pretty much like this bloke.’

  ‘I told you. I saw no third bloke that night. This bloke is this bloke. Him I sold the book to. Him I took to
Cash Wally.’

  ‘Not necessarily the same night.’

  Stilton could almost hear Fish Wally thinking, wondering how much he could admit to without digging himself a deeper hole.

  ‘Wally – why do you think any of these blokes come to you?’

  ‘I’m known,’ he said. ‘Cash Wally is a misanthropist, a recluse. Hates humanity with a vengeance. Trusts only money and food. He needs me to help out. I’m known as Cash Wally’s cousin. In immigrant circles word spreads.’

  ‘I’m not talking about immigrant circles. I’m talking about these blokes. Germans.’

  ‘No – the older one, he is Dutch.’

  ‘No, Wally, he was Dutch.’

  ‘You killed them both!?!’

  ‘Let’s just say they’re both dead. And Dutch or not, he was a German agent. We’d been watching him since he landed.’

  ‘I don’t believe you. Go on, get up and walk out again. Every time I call the bluff you walk out.’

  Stilton leaned on his elbows, that bit the closer to Wally, his voice dropped to pianissimo.

  ‘They come to you, Wally, because you’re known. Known to the Abwehr as well as the immigrants. You’re part of their network, whether you know it or not, whether you like it or not. They’ve been using you to place their agents among immigrant groups in London.’

  He knew he’d hit home. He knew Fish Wally would not call him a liar again. He was pale, his skin sagged like a punctured balloon. It was as though he had only to prick up his ears to hear the air hiss out of him. He knew Stilton was telling the truth. Stilton knew that he knew.

  He croaked out, ‘Stilton, what do you want?’

  ‘The third bloke. Probably came to you a day or two before these two. You sold him a ration book and you found him a room, right?’

  Fish Wally said nothing.

  ‘I asked you about him. This is him.’

  Stilton tapped the sketch of Stahl with his index finger.

  ‘I asked you about him. You sent me to the German. I had no picture of the German. I was asking you about this bloke.’

  Fish Wally picked up the sketch. Looked at it for more than a minute.

  ‘I had always thought there was something wrong. The scar. The German had no scar. Do you have a pencil?’

  Stilton took one from his breast pocket and gave it to him.

  ‘This one you call the third man. He had a scar. Not as pronounced as your sketch would have it. But he looked nothing like this.’

  Fish Wally’s crab hands clutched the pencil awkwardly, but the tip flew across the paper with the facility of a skilled draughtsman. A thin, dark moustache, darker hair.

  ‘And here and here.’ Fish Wally tapped each temple. ‘Bald. The rest of the hair was black, turning to grey. I would say he was forty or more. Not the twenty-something you have here.’

  ‘And you sold him a ration book?’

  Wally nodded.

  ‘And you got him a room?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Cash Wally was full that day. I sent him to the Welsh Widow in the Holloway Road.’

  Stilton ordered tea for Fish Wally. When he got back about twenty minutes later, Fish Wally was swilling the dregs and asking for more. He looked at the sheet of foolscap Stilton held in his hand and said, ‘So, now we hit the bottom, eh, Walter? Now you charge me.’

  Stilton took a fiver and a fountain pen from his pocket and pushed them across the table to him.

  ‘What’s this?’

  ‘Your wages. Just sign here. You’re one of us now.’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘From now on you tell us everything. Every foreigner, whether you think he’s suspicious or not, that comes to you, you tell us. Sign, before I change my mind. Sign now. It’s this or spend the rest of the war in chokey.’

  Fish Wally picked up the pen and read.

  ‘What am I signing?’

  ‘A receipt for five quid.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘And the Official Secrets Act.’

  Troy

  § 58

  Walter Stilton ate with relish the inner organs of beasts and fowls. He was more than partial to thick giblet soup, the toughness of gizzard held no fear for him and stuffed, roast heart no symbol. When he could get it – when his wife had queued half a morning to get it – he loved liver slices fried in breadcrumbs – but most of all he adored to start the day with grilled mutton kidneys, faintly piss-tanged to the palate – a breakfast, if not fit for a king, then sweetly fit for a Chief Inspector of the London Metropolitan Police Force.

  He moved softly about the kitchen. It had been light since before five and first light woke him better than any alarm clock. Tangible light in the basement room, the promise of the heat of the day beyond its windows. Summer mornings such as this made him peckish. He’d eat his plate of grilled kidneys, washed down with strong, sweet, milky tea, silently reading last night’s evening paper. And when he had done he would pad about the kitchen in his socks, shirtless, the braces hanging down his back like the reins of some giant and unruly toddler, making tea and toast for his wife. He was always first up – had been since the first morning of their marriage. It was a habit of his father’s. Handed down. A Derbyshire miner, at work before the world was awake, he would always light the fire, feed himself and take breakfast to his wife. It was the only domestic chore he would undertake – so it was with Stilton. He’d never washed so much as a cup and saucer in his married life, but he’d stoked the Aga and made breakfast every day of it.

  A saucer of milk for the pusscat, then softly up the stairs to the first floor. Edna was awake, windows open, a curtain flapping gently in the summer breeze. Stilton set down the tray upon her knees and said nothing. He’d run out of things to say to her. And there was nothing she asked of him.

  ‘Will you be late home?’ she asked.

  ‘Hard to say, love.’

  And in that the routine of conversation in the wake of the death of their children varied not one whit from the routine of thirty years and more. They neither had the vocabulary to prolong the manifestation of grief.

  Stilton dressed. A clean shirt aired on the Aga’s front rail. The collar stud eased in with a practised thumb. His Metropolitan Police Bowls Team tie. His shiny black boots, the pusscat weaving between his legs and lashing out at the laces as he did them up.

  Looking at himself in the mirror of the hallstand – a silent voice in the head telling him to look like a copper, shoulders back, a tug of the hatbrim, trying for the glint of steel in the eyes – he heard the creak of bedsprings in the room above and the plump thump of his plump wife’s feet on the floor. Daybegun. He pulled the door wide, the morning light reflecting brightly off the broken facade of the house opposite, and stepped out into the last day of his life.

  § 59

  As Walter Stilton stepped into the street Sergeant Troy was awoken by a telephone call from his father, a man who would never accept that his son did not ‘do’ mornings unless duty required. As a boy he had known his father to bumble into his bedroom in the pitch-darkness of pre-dawn with some philosophical conundrum on his lips. Today was a day just like those old days. Troy had long since learnt to move from sleep to waking without transition – one second sound asleep the next wide awake and firing on all cylinders.

  ‘What was it Berdyaev used to say about Russia?’ Alex said without greeting, without so much as a syllable from Troy.

  Lately – the last ten years or so – his father had tended to treat Troy as an extension of his memory. A substitute for his own failing powers. He had made Troy read so much as a child – all those prolonged, sickly weeks off school – that his education was warped by the old man – he knew things no one of his generation or education might ordinarily be expected to know. Alex would ask Troy things he could not ask Rod. It depressed Troy to think that his father was still grinding away at his Russian piece. If he hadn’t finished it by now? And what had become of his collaboration with Wells?


  ‘What exactly about Russia? He banged on about so many things.’

  ‘It’s in The Soul of Russia – or at least I thought it was. I cannot find it. Books without indexes should be banned.’

  ‘That’s probably what first narked Hitler.’

  Alex ignored this. ‘He was, as you put it, banging on about the Russian Mission.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Troy, ‘that. The Light from the East. It’s not Berdyaev – well, not just him, it’s most of the old ones. It’s in Dostoevsky. Perhaps even in Tolstoy, and you might recall your dad had more than a bit of a bee in his bonnet about the Holy Russian Mission.’

  ‘Holy?’ said Alex as though the word meant nothing to him, one atheist talking to another.

  ‘The Great Civilising Mission westward, how Russia as the keeper of the flame of Orthodoxy, the original true faith of Christ, would ultimately be the salvation of the decadent West, by which they meant anything west of Lvov. Of course they were right, in a way.’

  ‘What way?’ said his dad.

  ‘There was indeed a Russian mission west – it just wasn’t anything to do with Christ or Orthodoxy or Holy Mother Russia. It was born in 1917 and it died at the end of Frank Jacson’s icepick about nine months ago.’

  ‘Permanent Revolution,’ said Alex. ‘The earth-shattering theory of the late Comrade Trotsky. How very cynical of you, my boy.’

  He rang off. Troy wondered if he’d pushed the old man too far. He was fed up with things Russian, but Trotsky’s murder had run a shudder through the Troy household. If, his mother had protested, the arm of Josef Vissarionovich Stalin reached all the way to Mexico, then who in Europe was safe? Troy’s father had remained unruffled. He was, he pointed out, no threat to Stalin, no renegade Red and, better still, no exiled White. Stalin would not bother with him. Rod had strongly urged him to seek official protection, to talk to Churchill, and the old man had firmly and impolitely refused.

  Troy looked at the clock and felt lazy. He could go back to sleep for another hour, perhaps two. He was on the late shift and would not see his bed again before midnight. Besides, Kitty had not been round for a day or two – it would be just like her to turn up tonight; so he decided to sleep while he could.