Riptide

by Lawton, John

  § 60

  Cal passed the morning lying on his bed blowing smoke rings. It was the sum total of what he had learnt in two years at military academy. He rarely smoked, but when he did it was a sign of tension or boredom or both. A letter had come from his father, from New York – what was he doing in New York? – via Zurich. Postmarked April 23rd. The mail was speeding up. He had read it over breakfast. It filled him with despair.

  Plaza Hotel Grand Army Plaza New York

  Dear Son,

  America took a giant step today. The people spoke. Thirty thousand attended the New York America First Rally to hear Lindbergh speak. If FDR ignores this he’s a fool. This is the voice of America. This is the voice of the people.

  There were few things he hated more than having his father address him as though he were a voter rather than his own flesh and blood. Then the tone changed – a cloying confidentiality that had him yearning for the old man to get back on the stump.

  Of course I stayed off the platform. Let Lindy do the talking – as much as I could. The man is not the brightest bear in the woods, and God knows what he’d’ve said if I hadn’t written most of the speech for him. He was all set to sock it to the Jews. I told him ‘There’s no votes in criticizing Jews, in New York City of all places.’ Hymietown, for Christ’s sake. As long as we can keep him clear of anti-Semitism he’ll do fine. Just the figurehead we need. Perhaps we can let him rip when we get out West – nobody there gives a damn one way or the other about the Jews.

  What we have to get across is the conspiracy – there’s no other word for it – between the British and the White House, between FDR and Winston Churchill to bring America into this war, against the wishes of the people, by any reasonable pretext they can drum up. That’s what America First has to expose . . .

  Cal stopped reading. Conspiracy? The old man was getting crazy. Poking around under the bed with a shotgun.

  He passed the afternoon drifting. Hating Walter for his absence. Drifting. From the leafy squares of Mayfair into the West End. Peering in the gentleman’s outfitters of Jermyn Street – wishing Frank Reininger had given him enough coupons to go in and ask them to measure him for a shirt. Thinking of Reininger he made his way back to the embassy – passed an hour waiting to see if Frank showed up. He didn’t. Berg did, greeted him as though his presence was an affront – ‘So you finally decided to show up.’ Cal said ‘Fuck you, Henry,’ and left.

  He found his way to a café in Brewer Street. It was dismally quiet. Two old men shoving halfpennies up and down a marked board, just as he’d seen men doing that night in the crypt of St Alkmund’s, the radio on merely as a background burble. Then, the volume soared as the proprietor turned it up for the news, and a bloodless BBC voice announced the sinking of the Bismarck. What little chatter there had been stopped. Cal could count the beating seconds by the sound of his own heart. Half a minute passed this way. He was surprised. He’d half expected cheering or someone to get up and sing ‘Land of Hope and Glory’. At last one of the old men picked up a halfpenny and said, ‘That’s that, then.’ And the other just said, ‘Yus.’

  He ate alone at the Bon Viveur. A table for two – a dinner for one. He figured to time his return to Claridge’s for the end of Kitty’s shift. With any luck they’d meet in the elevator. He’d persuade her to come out. Postpone the inevitability of sex until they’d been out somewhere. A club, a bar, somewhere.

  When he collected his key at the front desk the clerk handed him another letter. It looked like Kitty’s writing – that childish, half-formed hand he’d seen on her odd notes to him. The scrawl was hereditary. The letter was from her father.

  Been trying to get you on the phone for a couple of hours. Thought you’d be around. Meet me in Coburn Place N1 at 10.30 tonight. It’s an alley between two pubs, the Green Man and the Hand & Racquet. Don’t be late.

  Hoping this reaches you, one way or another.

  Yrs.

  Walter Stilton

  PS Wot larx!

  The address meant nothing to Cal. He asked at the desk – they silently handed him a street map of London. He found Coburn Place. Only with difficulty. It was tiny – it lurked under the L of ISLINGTON, sprawled across the grid in letters half an inch high. The two pubs weren’t marked on the map, but a music hall close by was – Collins’ Music Hall. He’d look for that.

  ‘How long would it take to get to Islington?’

  ‘By taxi, sir?’

  ‘Sure.’

  The clerk spun the map to face him. Cal lifted his finger.

  ‘Less than half an hour. Perhaps fifteen or twenty minutes.’

  It was 10.05 now. Cal ran to the front door and told the doorman to hail him a cab. He’d be lucky to make it. Don’t be late, Walter had written. But better late than never.

  Late it was. In front of King’s Cross railway station the damage of May 11th was still being patched up. A water main exposed – a deep trench in the road, a dozen workmen up to their ankles in brimming water, a lone policeman waving at the traffic and directing them all south, into Finsbury, a loop past Farringdon station, through Clerkenwell and into Islington from the other side. Cal sat with the street map open, trying to follow their route by the frequent flick of his cigarette lighter, glancing all too often at his watch.

  Late it was, and later. At 10.40 he paid off the cabby by Collins’ Music Hall and found Coburn Place, bent between the two public houses, zig-zagging right and left. He almost fell down the open cellar hatch of the Hand and Racquet. He struck his lighter with the ball of his thumb, held the cap open against the spring and moved slowly on with his left hand on the bricks as though to trace out his trail would somehow lead him back like Ariadne’s thread.

  Flickering, miasmic light – enough to see five paces ahead; enough, too, to see the leather soles of a pair of shoes that lay on the cobblestones not twenty feet beyond the cellar. He dropped the lighter – got down on his hands and knees and groped about on the stones. Found it, struck the flint and struck it again, and in the yellow light found himself looking into the dead eyes of Walter Stilton.

  ‘Jesus Christ.’

  He let his thumb off the lighter – sank into darkness, wondering if he’d seen what he knew he’d seen, wondering if he had the courage to look again.

  He flicked the flint. Walter was lying on his front down the length of the alley – the right side of his face lay in a pool of blood, the left looked up at Cal. One arm outstretched, the other lost beneath the body. His hat lay a few feet ahead, angled against the wall, as though it had spun off him like a loose hubcap. And there was no doubt about it. The man was dead. His third encounter with violent death, and already Cal knew the sight and fact of death with unquestioning certainty.

  The pool of blood was still spreading. Cal’s knees were wet with it. He got to his feet. Heard his heart roar in his ears, a pulse as loud as a jackhammer throbbing in his head. Above it all he heard the sound of a lavatory flush, saw a brief flash of light as a door opened up ahead of him, and a man emerge from the gents buttoning up his flies. Whoever he was he had not seen Cal – he pulled on the back door of the Green Man and vanished.

  Cal followed. In the light of the pub he looked down at himself, Blood on his trousers and on the hem of his jacket. All over his hands. He wiped them on his trousers. Surely everyone was looking at him? Surely everyone could see him, dressed like a scarecrow, drenched in blood? In the fug of tobacco smoke and the roar of people chattering, heads turned at the sight of a stranger, but none of them seemed to think him worth a second glance. One woman looked him up and down as though appraising him, and still didn’t see the blood.

  He made his way to the bar. The barman was busy. Cal tried to seize his attention, and found his voice had gone. He managed to say ‘Excuse me’ in a shrill, unnatural voice, and was told to ‘Hold yer ’orses. Can’t you see I’m on me own?’

  It seemed like an age. The barman served two other men and leaned on one elbow in front of Cal.
/>   ‘Right, young man. What’s yer ’urry?’

  ‘Phone,’ Cal squeaked. ‘I need a phone.’

  The barman reached under the pumps and stuck a bakelite telephone on the bar.

  ‘A drink while you’re ’ere?’

  Cal asked for a brandy and dialled 999.

  ‘Police, Fire or Ambulance?’ said a young woman.

  ‘Police,’ Cal croaked.

  The barman was looking at him now; at the optics, his back to Cal, he turned at the word ‘police’.

  The police operator came on. Cal realised he had no idea what to say. He knew exactly what he meant but he could not think of the form of words.

  ‘Stilton,’ he said almost involuntarily.

  ‘Beg pardon, sir?’

  ‘Chief Inspector Stilton’s been . . .’

  The barman seemed to have frozen, his hand still holding Cal’s glass of brandy under the optic. The next word would surely galvanize him.

  ‘Murdered. He’s been murdered. Coburn Place. Islington. Behind the Green Man.’

  The barman dropped the glass. The roar of the night-time drinking crowd stopped as though it had been one voice. By the time the glass hit the floor, it tinkled into a cavernous silence.

  ‘And you are?’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘Your name, caller, your name.’

  But they were all staring at him now. A woman not six feet away was looking from his bloody trousers to his face and back again, mouth open, silent. She was not silent for long. She screamed. The roar of the crowd returned – the volume doubled. Cal slowly put the phone back on the cradle and headed for the door. The crowd parted in front of him. All except one big man, stood between him and the door, inspired by some civic sense or the pure, unsullied bravado of the drunk.

  ‘Gertcha.’

  ‘Excuse me,’ Cal said softly. ‘My friend just died.’

  ‘Gertcha,’ said the drunk, and Cal dropped him with a righthander to the belly and pushed him aside.

  He knelt by the body. A dozen heads crowded the doorway, a shaft of light cutting into the blackness of the alley. Walter had to be covered. As ever, he was wearing his brown mac regardless of the weather, but to prise it off him seemed so disrespectful. Cal took out the street map, unfolded it to its fullest and spread London, all the way from Brentford to Limehouse, from Highgate to Streatham, over Walter’s head and back. It seemed fitting. A shroud for a London bobby.

  He ignored the gathering crowd at the back door of the pub, oblivious to its mounting murmurs and wept silently for the life of Walter Stilton. Late was never. He’d let the man down. He’d let somebody kill him. He sat motionless, his back against the wall, his forearms across his knees, eyes fixed on Stilton’s body, somewhere around Chelsea Bridge. Walter was dead. And dead was all. Dead was everything. Total. Cal had died with him. His death was all-embracing.

  An age passed. He found his tears dried. A torch flickered up the alley from the street end, feet neatly sidestepping the open cellar, and then the beam tilted down into his face. Then the man knelt down next to him.

  ‘Are you OK?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You’re not hurt?’

  Cal knew the voice, and as he leaned in knew the face. It was the same young copper he and Stilton had encountered in Hoxton Lane. Sergeant Troy.

  ‘No. No. It’s Walter. He’s dead.’

  Troy peeled back the map to look at the face and head.

  ‘Gunshot. Side of the head,’ he said too matter-of-factly, then added, ‘He’d’ve felt nothing, you know.’

  ‘Sure,’ Cal whispered pointlessly.

  Troy stood up. Held his warrant card in front of the torch.

  ‘Where’s the landlord?’ he cried to the crowd and the barman shuffled foward, pale of face, a glass cloth still in his hands.

  ‘That’ll be me,’ he said, as though he doubted it himself. ‘Atterbury. George Atterbury. Green Man.’

  Troy addressed him with a calm no-one else seemed to feel.

  ‘Call an ambulance,’ he said. ‘And then call Scotland Yard. Whitehall 1212. Ask for Special Branch and report the death of Chief Inspector Stilton. Gottit?’

  But the man was staring at the body, at what little was visible of the big man, the legs and feet protruding from beneath the map – the fingertips of one hand pointing down the alley like a contrived clue.

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘Stilton. S-T-I-L-T-O-N!’ The barman jerked into life.

  ‘O’ course,’ he said. ‘O’ course. The Yard, the Branch, Stilton.’ And ran back into the pub.

  Troy waved the crowd back indoors, searched with his torch for a few cobblestones free of Stilton’s blood and sat down next to Cal.

  ‘How long?’ he asked simply.

  Cal pulled at his sleeve, looked at his wristwatch. It was 10.55. It was fifteen minutes since he had groped his way up Coburn Place. It felt like hours.

  ‘I found him at . . . 10.40. I guess it was 10.40. I looked at my watch as I . . . as I got out of the cab. I was late. I was supposed to meet him here at 10.30.’

  Troy looked at his own watch.

  ‘You’re running slow. It’s eleven now. I’d say poor old Walter’s been dead less than half an hour.’

  Cal thought Troy meant something by this. He’d no idea what.

  ‘I . . . er . . .’

  ‘You just missed the killer, it seems.’

  ‘Jesus,’ said Cal softly.

  ‘You saw no-one?’

  ‘No. Of course not.’

  Cal wondered why he had said ‘Of course not’. It just rattled around in his ears. It made no sense. But then, so little did. Why had Walter wanted to meet him here, in this black hole? Who had he met first?

  ‘Look. You’re absolutely covered in blood,’ said Troy. He took out his handkerchief and wiped away the blood from Cal’s chin, from his cheeks, where his tears had mixed with Walter’s blood. It was oddly maternal. The human touch. Cal began to feel that he was alive, that the shock of death was somehow less than total. His mind locked onto the idea of Troy – clung to him as to a floating leaf.

  Troy asked him no more questions. Flashed his torch around occasionally, as though looking for something he couldn’t find. It seemed that he too was simply waiting. And a couple of minutes later the screech of brakes in the street confirmed the thought. Three big coppers, two in uniform, strode down the alley, torches swaying up and down the narrow space like searchlights.

  ‘Troy?’ said the plain-clothes copper.

  Troy got to his feet. ‘Chief Inspector Nailer. Special Branch. I’ll take over now.’

  Cal grabbed at Troy’s coat.

  ‘I thought . . .’ he began, and Troy seemed to read his mind.

  ‘I can’t investigate. This is Branch business. I’m Murder.’

  ‘Somebody murdered Walter.’

  ‘Walter was Special Branch. They look after their own.’

  ‘When you’ve quite finished, thank you, Mr Troy!’ Nailer roared.

  Troy told Cal he was sorry and risked more wrath by saying goodbye and patting him on the shoulder. Nailer waited a few seconds, as Troy’s footsteps echoed down the alley, and then in a voice like brimstone said ‘Now who the fuck are you?’

  § 61

  It was past four in the morning at Scotland Yard before it dawned on Cal that he had been arrested.

  He had let himself be driven to the Yard, sitting silently between the two uniformed bobbies. He’d let himself be led compliantly into a brown and cream interview room of intimidating plainness. He’d answered all their questions. At least, all those to which he had answers. And, of course, he would not name Stahl as the axis on which the whole mess pivoted. Maybe there were too many ‘I don’t knows’? And he had turned out his pockets – a few pounds in sterling, a few scraps of paper – nothing that could identify him clearly – Troy’s blood-stained linen handkerchief – and his gun, wedged between his back and the waistband of his pants. Cal looked apologetic
as he hefted it out and laid it quietly on the table.

  The first guy had been friendly. A young man. About his own age. A Detective Sergeant. Called him sir.

  ‘Do you have a licence for this, sir?’

  ‘I’m a serving army officer. It’s standard issue to have a sidearm.’

  The sergeant took out his handkerchief and flipped out the magazine. The bobby in uniform sitting by the door stared as though he’d never seen a Smith and Wesson before – maybe he never had. Then he sniffed the barrel.

  Everything Cal had was taken away, and then they said there’d be await.

  They took him to what he assumed was going to be another interview room, and only when he found himself face to face with a cot, palliasse and seatless lavatory did the reality hit home. He turned, the faintest words of protest on his lips, but the door had already closed and all he heard was the key turning in the lock. He gave up instantly and almost gratefully. Fell face down on the straw mattress and slept.

  They woke him at 8.30. A cup of gagging-sweet milky tea. Cal would have drunk pig’s piss if they stuck it in a tin cup and called it tea.

  He had begun to smell. Worse, so had the dried blood on his clothes. A crisp brown stain covering most of his pants, the hem of his jacket, and the pockets where he’d wiped his hands.

  ‘I need to wash,’ he told the constable. The man came back five minutes later with a jug of cold water which he tipped into the enamelled iron basin bolted into one corner of the room.

  ‘Any chance of getting my suit cleaned?’

  ‘Where do you think you are, Hopalong? The bleedin’ Ritz?’

  Cal drank the foul national drink and thought over the insult. Was that how they saw him? A national cliché?

  Twenty minutes later they escorted him back to the interview room, washed, but unshaven and feeling he must look like a tramp. Nailer took over. Nailer was not friendly. Nailer was downright hostile. Nailer had not slept, grey bags under his eyes, a fuzz of grey bristle to his chin. Cal had slept the sleep of the dead.