And so, he made the call he had put off for weeks, and in the larger context had put off for twenty years.
‘Charlie, I need to talk. It’s business.’
‘Yours or mine?’ said Charlie.
‘Both,’ said Troy.
Charlie paused so long Troy had begun to think they had been cut off.
‘Fine,’ Charlie said at last, with no music in his voice. ‘I’m up to my neck today, and come to that tomorrow morning too. But we could meet tomorrow afternoon. How about
tea at the Café Royal? Fourish?’
They had crossed a line, one he had never wanted to cross. One he was sure Charlie had never wanted to cross either.
Troy sat in Goodwin’s Court in the encroaching dusk of Friday evening. He had left messages everywhere for Clark to call him—at the Police House and in every pub
within walking distance of the Yard. He sat by the telephone in the darkness and silence, willing it to ring. And when it did his spell went awry—he had summoned Madge from her circle in
hell.
‘The boss is back in Acton. He says he’ll be in in an hour.’
‘I’ll be there,’ Troy said.
He put the phone down, and it rang again at once. He almost ignored it. They did it of their own accord half the time.
‘Freddie?’ said Johnny Fermanagh’s voice. ‘We have to talk. I must see you.’
‘You’ve picked a lousy time,’ said Troy.
‘Please. S’important.’
Troy heard the sound of laughter in the background, the umistakable roar of pub jollity.
‘Johnny, where are you?’
‘Colony Room. Dean Street.’
‘What happened to “on the wagon” and “the love of a good woman”?’
‘Nothing happened. I stuck to it. I’m sober as a judge.’
‘Then what are you doing in a place whose sole function is to allow Soho layabouts to get pissed at any time of the day or night, with no restriction from the licensing laws?’
‘Freddie, I’m sober! It’s just that after twenty years a drunk you’ve nowhere else to go. All you know are the old places. You try killing a wet Friday afternoon in
Soho!’
‘I don’t believe you.’
‘I’m on Britvic, and bloody awful it is too! Here, Muriel, you tell him. I’m sober aren’t I?’
Troy heard a remote voice saying, ‘More’s the pity.’
‘We have to talk. You put your finger on it. Woman. The love of a good woman.’
Troy looked at his watch. He knew he’d only wear holes in the lino waiting for Onions. Why not give Fermanagh a crack? It had the attraction of true banality compared to his present
problem.
‘All right. Back room of the Salisbury in fifteen minutes.’
He would head him off at the door. That way they could talk in the street, neither in the pub nor in his house. It would make it so much easier to stop when he’d heard enough.
It had come on to rain. A steady drizzle, putting a haze around the street lamps, and a come-hither glow onto the pub windows. Troy turned up the collar of his overcoat and stood in the doorway
of the Salisbury. A couple of minutes later, he saw Johnny coming down St Martin’s Court from the Charing Cross Road, in the uniform of their class—the black cashmere overcoat, the
brown trilby and the red scarf, wrapped up against the drizzle, but smiling. He seemed genuinely happy to see Troy.
‘Are we not going in?’ he asked simply.
‘No,’ said Troy. ‘Not if you’re telling me the truth. It will be no hardship to stand on the pavement for ten minutes. It will test your willpower and your
liver.’
‘I’ve not had a drop since June, Freddie. Not since the last time we met.’
Troy was not wholly sure he believed him, but looking at him closely, peeking under the brim of the
hat, his skin was tighter and healthier and for the first time in years his eyes were not bloodshot. They were his sister’s eyes, a deep, beautiful bottle green.
‘Then say your piece.’
This flummoxed him. He scraped a foot across the paving and could not look Troy in the eye.
‘Johnny, just spit it out.’
‘You know I said there was a problem with my … er … my good woman’s marriage.’
‘I thought that was the problem, that she was married?’
‘Quite. I’m not putting things too well, am I? Well, it’s simple really. She’s willing to leave him for me.’
‘So, she’s told him?’
‘No. But she’s going to. This weekend.’
Troy wondered if Johnny was really as gullible as he sounded.
‘How often have you heard that in a film or read it in a novel, Johnny?’
‘No—Freddie, I know what you mean, but it’s real this time. This time it’s for real.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Because … because … because she has courage.’
Troy groaned aloud at the innocence of it all.
‘Johnny, Johnny, Johnny. For God’s sake.’
‘Because … she’s your sister!’
‘Which sister?’ Troy said involuntarily, and as soon as the words were out he knew how stupid a question it was. Which sister? It could only be Sasha. She had been having an affair
with somebody for months. He’d seen Masha set up her alibi for adultery time after time. He’d seen the friction between Sasha and Hugh all but strike sparks at the family dinner when
he had introduced them all to Tosca. Of course it was Sasha.
He knew then that there was no dismissing Johnny. He would have to give the poor sod all the attention he could muster.
‘You picked a lousy time,’ he said.
‘I know. You told me.’
Troy fished into his coat pocket for his keys.
‘I have to go to the Yard. Take my keys and let yourself in. I’ll be back in an hour and a half or so. We can talk then.’
They rounded the corner into St Martin’s Lane. Out of the shelter of the alley, the rain whipped up.
‘You’ll get soaked,’ said Johnny. ‘Take these.’
He took off his hat and placed it on Troy’s head. He undid his scarf and wrapped it loosely around Troy’s neck. A curious gesture, almost touching, almost fraternal.
Troy looked back at Johnny. The eyes apart, they were the same physical type. Small dark men with masses of black hair, flopping down onto the forehead. He had never really noticed before.
He cooled his heels for an hour or more. Madge went home. Jack yawned his goodnight and went in search of the next single woman. There was no sign of Onions. There was no sign
of Clark.
He set off back home in the drizzle and the unaccustomed hat. Irritated by the wasted time, trying as best he could to find the right mental gear in which to handle Johnny and the impending
divorce and scandal that Sasha was about to unleash upon the family.
There was no light in the court. The street lamps of St Martin’s Lane did not penetrate beyond the first three yards, and for some reason the lamp at the other end was out. He fumbled down
the alley blind as he had done a thousand times, and on his own doorstep tripped over something solid. It pitched him forward, onto his hands with his knees across the obstacle. His palms braced
his weight, face down on the paving stones, and came up wet. But rain did not smell like this, rain did not smell of anything, and nothing on earth had the unmistakable scent of blood. A mad phrase
of Kolankiewicz’s flashed through his mind: ‘sweet shit, sweet shit,’ that was how the beast had precisely caught the smell of spilt, congealing blood. And Troy was covered in
it.
A light went on two floors up in the building at the back of him, reflected off the windows of his house and bathed the alley in a dim glow. The body at his feet was a man. A man wrapped like
him in a blood-sodden black overcoat. Troy lifted the head.
‘F … F … F …’ burbled from the lips.
He laid Johnny’s head in his lap. Tore at the buttons of his overcoat and laid it over the man like blanket.
‘Fr … Fr … Fr …’ Johnny said.
Troy wiped the blood from his face. Cleaned his lips and eyelids with a fingertip. And the lips opened once more.
Troy leant nearer, strained to hear, shifted his grip and found one hand sinking into the back of the crushed skull, a smattering of grey matter seeping between his fingers.
‘Freddie,’ Johnny said clearly.
His eyes opened once. As wide as they could go. Then closed. Troy heard the deep exhalation, felt the chest fall, and the life ooze out of him.
Troy sat an age. Time he could not measure. The light above him went out, and sometime later came on again. Into its pool a figure came. Troy looked and could not focus. Looked and could not
speak. He heard someone call his name, then the same voice said, ‘Oh my God,’ then he heard the shrill blast of a police whistle.
‘Freddie, Freddie,’ said the voice close to him. ‘Let go now. You can let go now. He’s dead.’
A second figure joined them, running down the courtyard. They resolved into focus, leaning over him, prying his fingers from the body. One was Diana Brack, the other was Ruby the Whore. Ruby,
Ruby, he’d not seen Ruby in years. She married a punter and went to live in Leamington.
‘Ruby?’ he said weakly.
‘Oh bugger,’ said the first voice. ‘He’s out of his fucking head. Get an ambulance. Call the Yard. Give them my name. Wildeve, Inspector Wildeve. Tell them I want
Kolankiewicz a.s.a.p.’
And Troy saw Ruby run, skirts flying out behind, her, boots clattering.
By the time the short, fat, ugly one appeared they had prised his keys from the corpse’s fingers and laid Troy out
on the chaise longue in the sitting room. He was shivering uncontrollably, so they had stripped the eiderdown from his bed and draped it over him.
‘Oh no,’ the short, fat, ugly one was saying. ‘Not again. How many times I tell you, smartyarse?’
‘Just take a look,’ said the young one. ‘There’s blood everywhere. I’ve no idea how much of it is his.’
Ugly probed his skull with short, hard fingers. Then unbuttoned his shirt and wiped away the blood with a towel.
‘There’s not a mark on him. It’s all off the other bugger!’
‘Then he’s in shock.’
‘Of course he’s in shock. Wouldn’t you be in fuckin’ shock? No, you’d have tossed your lunch all over the evidence. Out of the way. Get out of the way!’
Ugly produced a hypodermic syringe, the fluid spurting from the needle. Troy’s hand shot out and grabbed him by the wrist.
‘No,’ he said.
‘No? Fine, Troy. Who am I?’
Troy thought about it. A short, fat, ugly man. He knew a short, fat, ugly man. He’d got his own short, fat, ugly man. Had one for years.
‘Kolankiewicz. You’re Kolankiewicz.’
The pair looked at each other like a double act of music hall comedians.
‘And who am I?’ said the young one.
Troy dragged up a word from the pit of consciousness.
‘Jack?’ he said.
‘Maybe he’s OK after all?’
‘Bollocks,’ said the ugly one. ‘Troy, listen to me. What year is it?’
‘1944.’
‘That does it.’
The ugly one pulled his wrist free and aimed for a vein in Troy’s arm.
‘No,’ said the young one. ‘Half the dose. I’ll need to talk to him in the morning.’
Troy never heard the ugly one answer. Pink washed him into scarlet and scarlet into burgundy and burgundy into black, black night.
Johnny’s blood turned the bathwater brown. Troy pulled the plug and watched it vanish into its spiral, hit the pipe at the end of the bath with his foot and waited while
the geyser delivered its meagre four inches of clean.
Jack appeared with a large mug of black coffee, and sat on the bog seat while Troy drank it. It was the old scene—the court of the ablutions, only Jack was him and he was a bubbleless,
death-scented, flat-chested substitute for Tosca.
‘You know,’ Jack said, ‘I knew Johnny Fermanagh for the best part of thirty years. Since school, in fact. As older boys went, a decent chap even at the age of twelve. As an
adult he was the most useless pillock alive, but he was also the most harmless. No one could have any reason to kill him. I conclude therefore that he was not the intended victim. You were. It was
you they meant to kill.’
‘Out in the lane,’ Troy began, hardly louder than a whisper. ‘Insisted on giving me his hat and scarf. Watched him walk off down the alley. Turned up his collar against the
rain. Anyone watching who’d been a bit slow would have thought I was him and he was me. Even I thought he was me.’
‘I’ve asked myself. Who would want to kill you? And the answer I come up with is … the same people who wanted to kill you last time. So, tell me what lead enabled you to pick up
the case?’
‘The sister. The one you found in Derbyshire. She found the key to a safety deposit box. Madeleine Kerr left a will, of sorts, blowing the whistle on what she and Cockerell were up
to.’
Every time Troy looked over at Jack he nodded as if to say ‘go on’. And in ten minutes he had the whole story in half-sentences and breathless mumbles.
‘How much does Clark know?’ he said at last.
‘Everything. Well, almost everything. Don’t get on the high horse. He’s simply played the role you used to. What’s a conspiracy without a conspirator?’
‘Have you told Stan?’
‘I’ve tried. I tried all week. He’s not there to tell. But perhaps it’s all for the best. You know what he’s like where the spooks are concerned. He’ll get
formal, he’ll get flustered and he’ll get angry. Then God help us all. He won’t handle it well. I’m going in through the back door.’
‘Aha,’ Jack nodded. ‘That friend of yours, Charlie?’
‘Yes.’
‘When?’
‘Today. Late afternoon. About four. Unless I can get to him earlier.’
‘I’ll be home all evening. Call me. Whatever the outcome, call me. I think it’s time we stopped fighting each other and fought the enemy.’
‘Whoever he is,’ said Troy.
‘Quite,’ said jack. ‘And I’ve no more idea than you have.’
Troy lay back, the nape of his neck on the roll of the bath’s rim, and closed his eyes. The water was almost stone cold, he was scarcely covered by a watery scum of blood and soap and the
ghostly trace of Tosca’s bath salts, but he didn’t much care if he never moved again.
‘The tearaway toffs,’ he said softly.
‘Eh?’
‘That’s what the Yard used to call us, before we garnered enough rank for them to pretend to more respect—the tearaway toffs.’