Black Out (13 page)

‘Up with the lark I see, Freddie.’

‘I was actually’.

Troy turned around the visitor’s chair by Wildeve’s desk so that he could sit facing Onions.

‘I’ve had ex-Inspector Malnick on the blower,’ said Onions. ‘He was, how shall I put it … ?’

‘Shirty?’ said Troy.

‘Shirty will do very nicely. He seems to think you have something of his.’

Troy reached into his briefcase and handed Onions the photograph.

‘Ah … the Tower beach case.’

‘Codename Trousers. But I know who he is.’

‘You have a positive identification?’

‘I know who he is. Gregor von Ranke.’

Onions just nodded and kept on nodding as Troy brought him up to date on his meeting with Nikolai and Bonham’s pursuit of Diana Brack. Then he asked precisely the question Troy had asked of Nikolai.

‘Team? What team?’

‘It appears from what my uncle knew of them that they were little short of being geniuses. They were developing lightweight alloys, tough, non-corrodable, thin. And then they were also on to a thing called a ram jet – I don’t know what that is – on to chemical propulsion. Well, I’ve lit a few of those myself on November the fifth – it means rockets. I asked Nikolai what use all this could be to anyone and he said the military potential was enormous. He saw it in terms of pilotless flying bombs.’

Onions raised an eyebrow. A silent ‘what is the world coming to?’

‘And rockets of enormous speed, with nuclear fission warheads. But what they talked about was their dreams, not the use they might be to the Reich. They said that if they were left alone with all the right resources they would put a man on the moon by 1960.’

Onions stared back at him silently for a moment. Troy realised how odd this must be to a man of Onions’s age. He had been born into another world. He was of an age with the novels of H. G. Wells and Jules Verne. He had been seven when two bicycle manufacturers took their dream down to Kittyhawk, South Carolina, and made it fly. Up till then the bicycle itself had seemed like science’s front line of achievement, and the car was a noisy nuisance that no one really cared for. To Troy, 1960 was a long way off. To a man in his fifties it was the day after tomorrow, and the motor car was something he’d only recently come to terms with.

‘Jesus Christ,’ he said softly. Then, ‘So you’re pretty certain that the arm, which is where we came in, belonged to this Brand chap?’

‘It does seem logical.’

‘What was he doing here? What were any of them doing here? They seem unlikely choices for spies.’

‘I don’t think they were spies. Wolinski, at least, had genuine refugee status. How’s that coming along, Jack?’

This startled Wildeve. His mind had been elsewhere.

‘Er … I … er … I don’t think I’m getting anywhere. There’s just too much of it. Too much bumf on everything. Without names to go by it was damn impossible. Checking out von Ranke and Brand should be easy now. But if I draw a blank then, well that’s it really’.

‘Even if they were legitimate refugees I’m not sure what that tells us,’ said Onions. ‘They came here, they registered, they died. We have no motive and no suspect. After all, your Brack woman’s a lead, but she’s hardly your suspect.’

‘The motive surely lies in what they knew and what their work was? But, of course they didn’t come here as refugees. Nikolai was involved in sifting out interned enemies who could serve the war effort. If they were here as refugees, barring a cock-up, they would
have been arrested in 1940. Sooner or later Nikolai would have heard.’

‘What about Wolinski?’

‘Friendly alien. He would have been allowed to go about his business. And as he buried himself in the docks and his books, no one would have noticed him.’

‘So, what next?’

‘I’d like a meeting with MI
₅
. Who’s their liaison with the Met?’

Onions took a tiny pocket diary from his inside pocket, licked his finger and turned the pages.

‘Pym. Squadron Leader Pym.’

‘Neville Pym?’

‘It says N. A. G. Pym? D’ye know him?’

‘I was at school with him.’

‘My, my, my. That old school tie’ll be the death of you.’

‘I’ll talk to Pym.’

‘Are you going to tell me why?’

‘Just a hunch. I have a feeling that this might be their turf rather than ours.’

‘Bodies on the streets of London is always our turf,’ said Onions.

From the corner of his eye Troy could see imminent flapping in Wildeve. He was on edge, trying and failing to interrupt.

‘Spit it out, Jack. Whatever it is.’

‘Well … it’s just … well, you did say the woman you had followed was called Brack. Diana Brack you said. Diana OrmondBrack?’

‘Could be.’

‘Well … I rather think I know her. Or at least I used to. She’s old Fermanagh’s daughter.’

‘Am I supposed to guess what that means?’ said Onions, turning Wildeve to beetroot. ‘Old MacDonald would mean more.’

‘Jack means the Marquess of Fermanagh,’ said Troy. ‘He’s one of the powers behind the throne. One of those Conservative Party king-makers. It’s said he helped keep Churchill in the wilderness for ten years.’

‘She was a friend of my brother’s at one time,’ said Wildeve, blushing a little more at the euphemism for lover.

‘Well, well,’ said Onions, getting up from his chair, stubbing his
last Woodbine out at the mantelpiece. ‘It’s a small world. And as this appears to be the only lead you two have got, I suppose I’d better leave you to it. I wouldn’t want to be treading too close behind you with the Pyms and the Fermanaghs in this Lobster Quadrille. You never know, I might wear me brown boots with me blue suit, and that would never do.’

As the door closed behind Onions, and Wildeve resumed an approximately normal colour, he asked quietly of Troy, ‘Do you suppose that was sarcasm?’

‘Probably,’ Troy replied.

Wildeve got up. ‘I suppose I’d better get back to B
₃
.’

‘No, Jack. Just tell your uniform what he needs to know. Let him draw the blank.’

‘You seem very confident.’

Troy shrugged. ‘Is it likely that Diana Brack will remember you?’

‘Only by name. I was fourteen or fifteen the last time we met.’

‘Get over to Tite Street as soon as you can. Watch, follow, and then come back and tell me. Who she meets, where she goes. It’s too early to steam in and ask her anything.’

Wildeve reached across his desk and gathered up a loose collection of papers and dumped the lot in Troy’s in-tray. As he looked out at the Thames Troy heard the door close softly behind him.

There was more than sarcasm, more than counter-snobbery to Onions’s remark. The conspiracy that Troy had told Onions was all but tangible required a conspirator or two of enormous power. But peers of the realm didn’t have people bumped off just to cover up the indiscretions of a wayward daughter, did they? Surely Stan wasn’t thinking in that direction?

Troy called MI
₅
in St James’s Street and asked for Squadron Leader Pym. It took a while for the switchboard to put him through. He heard the line crackle repeatedly and was beginning to think they were cranking up some sort of security apparatus when a loud click heralded the connection.

‘Squadron Leader Pym,’ a voice said loudly and brusquely.

‘Good morning. It’s Frederick Troy here.’

There was a pause.

‘Troy?’

‘Frederick Troy.’

There was a deafening silence, then Pym spoke again almost
sotto voce.
‘What do you want?’

‘I think I need to talk to you … ’

The usual waffle about wanting information, the usual flattery about only ‘you’ can help, the usual lie about it being ‘just routine police business’ was cut short. Even more softly than he had spoken before, Pym said, ‘Not here, not now.’

‘Sorry,’ Troy said. ‘Have I called at a particularly bad time for you?’

‘How innocent,’ Pym replied. ‘Of course you have. Any time would be a bad time.’ He paused again. ‘Come to my flat this evening at seven. I’m at Albany. E6.’

And the line went dead. E6 was not a postal address in the East End. It was the apartment number. Albany was, as Onions would have said, the ‘swankiest’ address a single man about town could have. A beautiful, exclusive apartment building on the north side of Piccadilly. It was an address that would have suited such as Lord Peter Wimsey or Albert Campion, although, if Troy’s teenage reading served him right, it was Raffles who had lived there – and Raffles wasn’t on the same side as Troy. As a bachelor apartment, with its uniformed porters and its famous ropewalk, Albany was without equal in the whole of London. Pym had done well for himself. From an office at MI
₅
HQ Pym could walk home in a matter of minutes. If Pym had grown into a man about town then he could be about town minutes after leaving work at the flip of a collar stud.

A day on paperwork wore away much of Troy’s patience. When the top-hatted porter at Albany stopped him, he produced his warrant card and declined to give his name, state his business or be announced. Pym had seemed so reluctant that he didn’t want to give him any opportunity to put him off any further.

When Pym answered the door on the second floor he was
wearing a deep burgundy smoking jacket, and he was smoking. He was smoking a Passing Cloud. A ridiculous cigarette that was oval rather than round, and looked as though it had been recently sat on. Troy thought it was smoked only by fools who wanted to attract attention to themselves.

‘You’re early,’ he said, and looked somewhere over Troy’s head, so pointedly that Troy himself thought there might be someone behind him and turned to look.

‘You’ve come alone?’ asked Pym.

‘Of course,’ said Troy.

As Troy stepped past him into the hallway Pym looked both ways outside the door before he closed it. He led Troy into a huge mock-Palladian drawing room, the height of the ceilings alone would have been intimidating but Pym had added to the effect with an expensive array of Regency furniture. Troy found too much red and gold oppressive, the trappings of a circus – he found the furniture uncomfortable. Pym stopped at a sideboard and poured a small glass of sherry for Troy. Troy perched himself on the edge of a glittering circus chair, Pym leaned against the marble fireplace and plucked his glass off the mantelpiece. He had gone grey above the ears since Troy had last seen him, and had acquired the soft, loose look of face that characterised a man who took little exercise and took most of his pleasures in restaurants. Pym was running rapidly to seed and looked as though he meant to enjoy every moment and ounce of it. Somewhere in his attic was a portrait that was forever young.

‘I see no reason why we can’t be civilised about this,’ he said.

He looked down at Troy, softly arrogant, the merest quaver in the rich ruby port of his voice, resuming its natural lush, suggestive tone that reminded Troy of his schooldays, rather than the false RAF bark with which he had greeted him earlier or the equally false stage whisper with which he had ended. Troy had no idea what he was talking about.

‘You’re not the first to phone up out of the blue and come crawling round here.’

Troy still had no idea what Pym meant, but thought ‘crawling’ a bit beyond the pale.

‘I’m only doing my job,’ he said.

‘And what precisely do you consider your job to be? I suppose you’re going to say pestering me is a public service?’

‘Well, I hadn’t really thought of it in that way. I can’t tell you it’s routine because it isn’t. It’s a pretty serious police matter as these things go.’

Troy watched the blood drain from Pym’s face exactly as it had done from Driberg’s at the mention of the same word.

‘You’ve told the
police?
You fool, you complete and utter bloody fool.’

Pym set down his glass again. Troy saw that he was now almost white and thought he might faint.

‘Pym, I don’t know what stupid game you’re playing with me, or what misapprehension you’re labouring under, but you are, are you not, the MI
₅
liaison officer with the Yard? If you’re not say so now and I’ll bugger off and you can stuff your damned sherry. Just tell me who I have to call.’

‘You’re a policeman?’

Troy wondered. Had he really not told that girl on Ml
₅
’s switchboard that he was calling from Scotland Yard? If he hadn’t what on earth had Pym thought he was after? And then it dawned on him. The Driberg reaction was for precisely the same reason. The homosexual’s habitual fear of the Vice Squad. At school, Pym, some four years older than Troy, had been a bully. But then that was the job of every older boy – to bully the younger. As bullies went Pym was hardly the worst. He had no taste for the brutality, the beatings that prefects had the power to inflict on small boys. His tongue was feared – he had a remarkable capacity to inflict abuse and humiliation but that was about it. Troy’s closest friend Charlie had been Pym’s boy, not his fag – for a while Troy himself had held that unenviable post – but his lover. Troy had thought nothing of it, and being Pym’s lover had afforded Charlie some measure of the protection that a thirteen-year-old boy who looked like a blond, Nordic princess needed in a system that was, at least for the duration of school life, predominantly queer. Charlie had long since grown out of it. The availability of women in the outside world had given him a choice and he’d made it. Pym too had made his choice, and as Troy looked at him puffing furiously at his Passing Cloud, struggling to regain his composure, propped against the
fireplace like a character in a play by Noël Coward, he realised that the choice had been to stay as he was.

‘Neville,’ said Troy, venturing the Christian name tentatively, ‘I’m with the Murder Squad. I hold no brief for the Vice Squad.’

Pym glugged back his sherry, poured himself a large brandy and sat back in the chair opposite Troy.

‘You wouldn’t believe how many of them still come around. People you thought you’d never see again after they opened the gates on that fucking school and turned us loose. You know I rather think our parents sent us to the wrong school. It seems to have turned out a lot of chaps who appear to be habitually down on their luck, and most of them seem eager to describe themselves to me as “old friends” – I’d no idea I’d so many friends. I’ve been touched for a loan – usually accepted with an ungracious “just to tide me over” – half a dozen times in the last couple of years.’