Blue Rondo

by John Lawton

  ‘You goin’ to let me in or do I have to stand here all night?’

  ‘Sorry, I was miles away.’

  ‘You were staring like you’d never seen me before.’

  No, thought Troy, like I’ve seen you almost every day for twenty years.

  Onions held up the bottle. A treat for the two of them. ‘Get a couple of glasses and a jug, lad. I’m gasping.’

  This was a lie. If Stan had been ‘gasping’ he’d have put on a brown mac and a cloth cap and sunk a couple of pints in a West End pub, safe in the knowledge that the sharpest reporter in Fleet Street was unlikely to recognise him. Just another displaced Lancashire lad. If he turned up with whisky, he was up to something.

  Troy came back from the kitchen. A drowned Scotch for Stan, on a rock for himself.

  ‘Don’t know how you can drink it like that. Ice with everything. American nonsense. Cheers.’

  As far as Troy was concerned, one ice cube thinned out whisky all it needed to be thinned. He didn’t mention that while Stan was swilling a mixture of London tap and corner-shop blended he had helped himself to a shot of Angus’s single-malt seven-year-old Skye Talisker. ‘Cheers,’ he said.

  The sofa screamed as Onions flopped his bulk down on to it.

  ‘How are you keepin’?’

  Well, thought Troy, begin with the obvious. ‘My vision’s blurred. Sometimes, particularly if I’ve slept well, it’s close to normal in the mornings. But I don’t sleep well. I end up exhausted and catnapping during the day. My appetite’s erratic. One day I’m Jack Spratt, and next I’m his wife. And my balance is still a bit off, but I don’t really need a stick to walk any more. It’s just belt and braces. My memory’s fine now, my blood pressure is normal and I have a resting pulse at a healthy fifty-five. My libido’s through the roof . . .’

  ‘Lib-what?’

  ‘Forget it. Oh, and I’ve got these for reading.’ He plucked a pair of glasses off the mantelpiece. Stuck them on the end of his nose. Onions looked overwhelmed by the torrent of words. ‘Corrects my eyes enough to read. The optician says I won’t need them once my brain recovers from the knock and gets its wires uncrossed.’

  ‘I’d hang on to them if I were you. Forty-three? You’ll need reading glasses by the time you’re fifty. I did.’

  ‘How cheery. I feel so much better for you sharing that snippet with me.’

  Onions let this go. ‘So . . .’ he said. ‘The upshot of that Nobel Prize acceptance speech is that you’re not too bad?’

  ‘Fair to middlin’, as you might put it yourself.’

  ‘Be a damn sight quicker if you’d just said that.’

  ‘I’d rather not be imprecise while you’re looking for excuses to retire me.’

  Onions held out his glass for a refill. ‘Which kind of brings me to the point,’ he said.

  ‘The answer’s still no.’

  ‘Oh, that’s not what I’ve come about. That’s over and done with. I can’t force you so that’s that.’

  ‘Fine. So, what’s what?’

  ‘It’s that girlfriend o’yours.’

  ‘Foxx?’

  ‘No. The posh one. Used to work for the Pole.’

  ‘Anna.’

  ‘Right. Your doctor. She’s on at me to find you summat to do. Says you’ll recover quicker with some sort of . . . whatdeyecallit? Stimulus.’

  Troy had had no idea that Anna had talked to Onions since he left hospital. He rather admired her persistence. Still more he admired her loyalty, strain it though he would. ‘You could,’ he said, ‘simply let me back on the job.’

  Onions swilled Scotch. ‘No,’ he said. ‘That I can’t do, not without the Yard’s surgeon passes you a1, but . . .’

  ‘Stan. In 1944 you kept me off work for nearly six months regardless of what the Yard’s surgeon said, just because you—’

  ‘No, I bloody well didn’t. I know you think it was plain vindictive on my part, but you’re wrong. You were sicker than you knew and, if the truth be told, I let you back too early and you needed surgery.’

  Troy could hardly deny this.

  ‘And by your own admission you’re not right. Your ’ead’s not right.’

  ‘I could hardly lie about that. Stan, if I walk you to St Martin’s Lane to flag down a cab there’s a one in eight chance you’ll see me wobble.’

  ‘You know, this could be the first conversation I’ve ever had with you without thinkin’, the bastard’s either lyin’ to me or he’s not lettin’ on about summat.’

  Clearly Jack had made no mention of after-midnight visits to corpses dotted around the roadworks of the Home Counties or stuck up back alleys in the West End.

  ‘So, what are you offering?’

  ‘Just this. I’m swamped. In partickler I’m swamped without you. So this I’ll say . . . the next big murder comes along . . .’

  If corpses jointed like pork or dumped in concrete didn’t constitute the ‘next big murder’ Troy wondered what monstrous scale of crime Onions had in mind.

  ‘. . . you can help the Yard solicitor prepare the prosecution. No roarin’ around in your Bentley, no nickin’ villains. Just the procedural stuff. The paperwork. And not at your desk. Here, in the comfort of your own home.’

  Silently Troy cursed him for this. He sounded like an advert for bottled beer. The comfort of his own home? Paperwork? Scotland Yard solicitors? Police procedural? What could be more clichéd? What could be deadlier to the soul than police procedural? What could be less interesting? What could be more boring?

  Then Onions opened his briefcase and slapped in front of Troy a buff-coloured file labelled simply ‘Felucci’.

  ‘Say nowt! Say nowt or I’ll put it back in me bag, tek me bottle of Glen Wellie and bugger off home. Say nowt. Just listen. Jack’s got the Ryan twins in custody. Been three days now and he’s got bugger all out of ’em. Tomorrow at noon we’ll be served a writ of habeas corpus. He’ll be told to charge ’em or let ’em go. Now, I know they did it, Jack knows they did it, I should think by now you know they did it. But he hasn’t charged ’em yet. I’ve not let him. Mind, he’s fit to charge ’em because he couldn’t charge ’em with the murder of that American he found floating in the canal. But that’s not good enough. That’s frustration driving the lad. If we charge ’em now it has to stick. What I have done is this – I had Swift Eddie transcribe and type up everything before I left this evening, every report, every last damn jotted detail. I want you to read it. Just as well you can’t sleep cos I want it read overnight. I want you in the Yard at nine sharp tomorrow morning, and I want you and me and young Wildeve to meet with the duty solicitor and come to a decision.’

  ‘Can I speak now?’

  ‘Be my guest.’

  ‘Who is the duty solicitor?’

  ‘Sir Owen Rhys.’

  ‘Does Owen know you’ve asked me for a second opinion, because that’s exactly what you’re doing?’

  ‘Know? He asked for it himself. Between you and me and the shithouse door, Owen’s found Jack a pain in the arse over this. He thinks it’ll be better coming from you.’

  ‘What would be better coming from me?’

  ‘Whatever it is that has to come. We charge ’em, we don’t charge ’em. Either way I want a decision by noon.’

  ‘What is Owen saying?’

  ‘No, Freddie, no. You read the file. You make your own mind up and get into that meeting with Owen. You’ll have about three-quarters of an hour before Jack and I join you, and if the bugger jumps the gun I’ll bust him back to sergeant.’

  § 64

  Troy sat up half the night with the file Eddie had typed up. It was a trip to Cloud Cuckoo Land, a falling down the well. It was the most absurd thing ever to come his way with the name of ‘evidence’ attached to it. Tomorrow was going to be hell.

  § 65

  Troy and Rhys met in Troy’s office just before nine. Troy had known Sir Owen Rhys since before the war. Before the war he had looked almost typical of his profession; now
he was heading rapidly towards the day when he would be the last man in London to wear a wing collar. Onions left them to it and did not show up until gone half past nine, looking as he always did, spick and span but wearing his suit like armour. By then Troy and Rhys were in total agreement. Today was going to be hell.

  Ten minutes later Jack Wildeve and Ray Godbehere came in together, Godbehere looking somewhat fresher than Jack. Jack looked deathly pale, save for the redness around the eyes, clutching a cup of Swift Eddie’s espresso – the synthetic buzz of nights propped up on caffeine and speed visible in the unsteadiness of his hands. His fingertips must surely tingle with the sensation of electricity. Troy had never quite been able to share Jack’s fondness for amphetamines. They all used them from time to time. It was the nation’s favourite pep pill. He’d even known Rod to come home from all-night sittings at the Commons with the saucer-wide look of speed in his eyes. There’d even been talk a while back that Anthony Eden had chewed them like jelly babies during the Suez crisis.

  Mary McDiarmuid brought up the rear, clutching a shorthand notepad. Troy was almost certain no one had asked her to take shorthand notes, any more than they’d asked her to park her desk in Eddie’s office. He was almost as certain that everyone else in the room would assume that someone or other had. She flourished her pencil, smiled at Troy, wicked green eyes glinting. He wondered if, having bluffed her way to a seat uninvited, she’d bother to take notes.

  Mary was not the problem. Jack was the problem. Troy could feel the repressed rage in him. He thought they would all be lucky to get through this without an explosion of some sort. And if Jack blew, could Onions be far behind?

  ‘This is hard,’ Rhys began. ‘Hard. But I cannot see that a prosecution brought against these men would succeed.’

  For a moment everyone in the room was looking at Jack. He was pushing the cup around the saucer, one finger on the handle in a gesture of unconvincing idleness – but, the ball so bowled, he slammed for six. ‘They did it,’ he said bluntly. ‘I know they did it. You know they did it.’

  ‘Quite,’ Rhys replied calmly. ‘But you know as well as I, Chief Inspector, that my job is to advise on the preparation of a Crown Prosecution. And I cannot advise on proceeding with a case that is most likely – and I say again, most likely – to be thrown out.’

  ‘Sir Owen, with all due respect . . .’

  ‘With all due respect’, particularly when uttered by a man like Jack, was a phrase to set Troy’s alarm bells ringing. Jack had little or no respect for anything. It was something the two of them had in common.

  ‘. . . do you have any idea who the victims were in this?’

  It didn’t require an answer. Rhys was not the sort of man who would have answered.

  ‘Bruno Felucci is probably the biggest fence south of the Trent. He has no record, he has no convictions for anything more significant than speeding in a built-up area. All the same he is known. To me, to Freddie, to the commissioner, and doubtless by now to Mr Godbehere. It doesn’t take a John Osborne to piece together the drama of that night out in Essex. The Ryan brothers had something they’d stolen. They’d placed it in Felucci’s hands to be fenced. They’d waited for their money. And when they got fed up waiting they went out to Bruno’s and did what most men wouldn’t have dared do to him. They tied up him and his wife and said, “Give us our money or we’ll shoot your wife.” If they’d known Bruno better they might not have dared. If Bruno had known them better he might not have called their bluff. That, plainly and simply, is what happened. Felucci can declare till he’s blue in the face that he is a legitimate businessman on whom two thugs simply burst in for no apparent reason, and the press can steer clear of libel and print such nonsense, but that is what happened. I have no doubt about it and neither has anyone else in this room. I have witnesses who saw them leaving the house – their alibi is tissue-thin – and if I get long enough I’m damn sure I can find the weapon because I think they’re too enamoured of it to throw it away. If we do not charge them now they’ll walk.’

  Jack knocked back his Eddie special in a single gulp. Looked from Rhys to Troy and back to Rhys.

  Rhys passed the bat to Troy. ‘Chief Superintendent Troy has examined the dossier overnight, I believe. I wonder, what could you tell us, Mr Troy?’

  It was better this way, Troy knew. Better by far that he be the one to light the blue touch-paper than Rhys.

  ‘As I understand it, Jack, Felucci hasn’t identified either of the Ryans.’

  Troy leafed through the dossier. ‘The first officers on the scene say Felucci was muttering the word “Ryan” but also add that he seemed delirious. Your own notes from your interviews with Felucci at the hospital, in which you observe that he seemed by then to be rational, state that Felucci denied recognising his attackers and said that he could remember nothing of what he might have said after his wife was killed. The day after this you put him through two separate identification parades, and he failed to pick out either of them.’

  ‘Freddie, I was with him. He was lying. You could almost feel the man cringe as he passed them.’

  ‘I don’t doubt it . . . but bear with me. You have also a postman on his way to the sorting office at around five a.m., in the company of a London Transport District Line driver on his way to the depot at Upminster. They see a man – not two men, but one – outside Felucci’s house getting into what they both agree was a Ford Prefect, cream coloured and tatty. They even have a partial on the plate, PGF – a Surrey designation, I think. So far, so good. Yet when put through an identification parade—’

  ‘Freddie, they identified them!’

  ‘To be precise, Jack, they each identified only one Ryan . . .’

  Troy paused for a second, glanced at the file hoping Jack would fill the gap with some recognition of the approaching absurdity. He didn’t.

  ‘. . . but not the same Ryan.’

  ‘Freddie, they’re twins, for Christ’s sake. Identical twins!’

  To Troy, who had grown up with twins, twins were only identical to the unobservant. This was not the moment to say so. ‘Then it’s all the more remarkable that they didn’t identify them both.’ Remarkable? It was bonkers.

  ‘It’s enough to go into court with.’

  ‘And it’s little enough for the defending counsel to seriously query who they thought they were identifying. It is less than positive ID, and any halfway decent barrister will demolish it in a matter of minutes. It’s an absurdity the like of which I cannot recall. If they wanted to play clever-dicks each Ryan could turn round and say it was the other.’

  ‘That isn’t what they’re saying.’

  ‘I know – what they’re saying is that they were elsewhere.’

  The fuse was burning steadily now. Jack was juggling incredulity and anger. ‘Say it, Freddie. Just say it. I want to hear you make their alibi sound credible. It can’t be done, but all the same I’d like to hear you try.’

  Troy went on undeterred, read out the preposterous statement in a matter-of-fact voice. ‘Patrick and Lorcan Ryan say they were in bed at home with Alice Marx, wife of Alf Marx, currently serving fifteen years for armed robbery.’

  Jack opened both hands to the room. ‘QED!’ His hands returned to the table, the index finger of his right hand thumping down with every phrase. Onions and Rhys were not looking at him. Mary McDiarmuid had given up the pretence that she was there to take notes and stared at Jack. Troy watched Jack; Godbehere watched Troy.

  ‘Alice Marx walked into the Yard yesterday morning with a cock and-bull story they have clearly got her to make up. When I asked them where they were they refused, repeatedly, to answer. One of them eventually said, “With a lady I cannot name,” as though it were a matter of good manners. As though I were interviewing some adulterer caught in a cheap hotel in Brighton rather than a couple of killers. Alice Marx came in at a prearranged time. They planned it that way. A last-minute alibi just as their brief goes for his writ. The pretence strung out for the
best part of three days that they were protecting the honour of a lady. The notion of the wife of London’s Mr Big, its Jewish Mr Big, sleeping with a couple of Irish yobbos twenty years her junior . . . Have you ever heard anything so implausible?’

  Jack’s gaze roamed around the room, seeking an assent he wasn’t going to get.

  ‘All the same,’ Troy said, ‘you couldn’t budge her. And I cannot see that counsel will either.’

  ‘Freddie. It’s lies, it’s all lies.’

  ‘I know. They did it. I’ve no doubt that they did it. I know. But I’ve also known Alice Marx since I was a beat bobby – take it from me, you put her in the witness box and she’ll stand there like the Rock of Gibraltar. I don’t know how they’ve got her to lie for them, but they have. And now she’s made her statement she’ll stick to it.’

  Jack surrendered what little remained of his patience. One hand counted off points on the finger of the other. ‘I have two witnesses. I have an alibi that is as shot full of holes as a pair of old socks—’

  ‘You have no forensic corroboration. No blood, no car, no weapon.’

  The fingers counted off again: ‘They burnt everything they were wearing. They run a garage, so the car is in a thousand pieces by now, spread over every scrapyard in London. They have the gun stashed. To come up with corroboration I need time.’

  Onions spoke for the first time since greeting them all, slicing methodically through Jack’s rage.

  ‘Time,’ he said softly, ‘is what you don’t have. We’ve been served a writ of habeas corpus. We’ve less than two hours.’

  ‘You mean you’re going to let them walk?’

  Onions looked at his wristwatch. ‘Not a minute before I have to but, yes, at noon they walk.’