Black Out (14 page)

‘If you’ve been blackmailed you should report it.’

‘In my position?’

Troy shrugged.

‘I think you’d better tell me why you’ve come.’

‘I have a murder on my hands. I believe the victim to be German. I’m ninety-nine per cent certain he’s not a refugee. In fact I’m pretty damn certain he arrived on these shores rather recently’.

‘So?’

‘If he was a spy, if you have lost a spy, I will need to know.’

‘A body you say. Dumped on your doorstep or what?’

‘Shot, dismembered, burnt.’

‘Troy, we don’t shoot spies, we turn them. And if we can’t turn them or we have no use for them we put them on trial and then we hang them. I can tell you now the answer is no. And before you ask, the chances of the Germans having spies in London, at least spies even the Yard can spot as German, without us knowing about it are virtually nil.’

That was the answer Troy had anticipated. He watched Pym inhale the aroma hovering in the brim of his balloon glass and thought of the wording of his next question. The issue he had so far declined to discuss with Onions or Wildeve.

‘There is another possibility,’ he began. ‘I need to know if your
people have brought anyone out of Germany or the occupied countries who has subsequently gone missing.’

Pym sipped at his brandy and thought for a moment.

‘That’s a very tall order.’

‘No taller than the last.’

‘Spies come over. They get caught. Everyone knows that. The Germans have been known to send poor Dutch bastards across in rowing boats armed with nothing more than a dictionary full of pinpricks for their codes. And the poor sods do it because their families are hostage. Those men are dead the minute they set off. The Germans would be better off putting a bullet through their heads. What you’re asking is very different. You’re asking what our people are up to over there. I’ve no authorisation to answer that. Even for Scotland Yard.’

‘But,’ said Troy, ‘you’ll ask.’

Pym got up, a huffy dignity, a piqued sense of self-importance showing in his expression, and went into the other room. The phone jangled as phones do when someone is dialling on a badly wired extension. Troy tried the sherry. He had always thought the stuff tasted awful. This specimen did nothing to change his mind. He looked around for a plant pot in which to dispose of it. In most homes in England he would have found a handy aspidistra perched on its high table, but Pym had no plants. Every table and niche was occupied with some sort of statuary, an arresting array of nude males. Over by the door where Pym had just gone was a largish plaster copy of the Michelangelo David. It was rumoured that when Queen Mary had visited the British Museum the staff had had a fig leaf made to cover the offending cock on their own cast of the statue. Pym did not care for such modesty. The cock bloomed for all to see. Any ‘old friend’ who did turn up to touch Pym for a fiver would know at a glance he was on to a good thing. Did the man invite blackmail? After all, there were plenty of other places he and Troy could have met if the prospect of turning up at MI
₅
was more than Pym could contemplate. It crossed Troy’s mind that Pym might just enjoy the risk.

Pym returned in less than five minutes, and took up his old pose by the fireplace.

‘I’ve had a word in the appropriate quarter,’ he said. ‘The
answer’s no. We’ve brought out no one we can’t account for. And that constitutes no admission on our part that we have brought anyone out, you will understand.’

‘Quite,’ said Troy. After all, even in the height of his momentary panic, Pym had had enough sense not to admit he was still queer. It had been understood unspoken. ‘I’m almost sorry to have troubled you.’

He rose to go and began to button his overcoat. Pym took a huge stone table lighter off the mantelpiece and lit another of his awful cigarettes. The ‘almost’ in ‘almost sorry’ had bounced off Pym, now safely esconced in his own conceit once more.

‘There is one last thing,’ said Troy just before he reached the door, aiming for the suggestion that what was high in his list of priorities was perhaps a mere afterthought – a cheap ploy of detective stories that he had learnt from the daddy of all cheap detectives, Porfiry Porfirovich in
Crime and Punishment.
Pym blew smoke down his nostrils. Troy had often thought that however impressive the trick it must feel deeply unpleasant.

‘We’re not the only army in these islands, are we?’

‘What do you mean?’ Pym looked surprised.

‘I mean, it’s just as likely that the Americans would have brought out a useful foreign national.’

Pym said nothing, waiting for Troy to ask and offering no invitation.

‘I’ll also need an answer to the same question from them.’

‘I’ll see what I can do.’

‘I’ll need to know pretty quickly.’

‘As I said. I’ll see what I can do. I can’t speak for the Americans. All I can do is ask. I’ll call you tomorrow’.

Better than his word, Pym called Troy at half past nine the following morning. The rain ran down the window in sheets; Troy was sitting with his back to the torrent, listening to a bleary, yawning Wildeve
give his account of Diana Brack’s movements the night before, when the telephone rang.

‘Troy, listen,’ said Pym imperiously. ‘The Americans will see you. God knows why, but they will.’

‘You have a way of making it sound as though they’re above the law,’ said Troy.

‘What you don’t grasp, Troy, is that they run things now. And it’s not a point I’m about to argue with you. Do you want this meeting or not?’

‘Of course. When?’

‘I’m afraid it’s eleven o’clock this morning or not at all. They have an office in St James’s Square, at Norfolk House. You see a chap called Zelig – Colonel Zelig.’

‘Who is he? Your opposite number?’

‘I’ve no idea. Quite simply he’s the man who’ll answer your questions. Isn’t that enough?’

‘Of course. I appreciate your help, Neville.’

The use of his Christian name seemed to be an affront that stung Pym.

‘You’ve used up any favours I owed you, Troy. Remember that.’

He rang off before Troy could say a word. The precise point of the outburst was lost on Troy. He looked up at Wildeve, trying to dry his hair on a pullover, while his coat steamed on a radiator and his shoes made puddles in the waste-paper bin.

‘I’m seeing some American this morning.’

‘Where does that connect with my end of things?’ asked Wildeve.

‘I’ve no idea.’

‘Ah … where was I?’

‘You and Lady Diana had just sat through
Major Barbara.’

‘Right.’ Wildeve sat down opposite Troy and pushed a lock of damp brown hair from his eyes. ‘She walked home. Could’ve strangled her. All that money and she doesn’t take a cab, she decides to walk all the way from Shaftesbury Avenue to Chelsea. Do you know how long it takes to walk from—’

‘Skip it, Jack. Doesn’t it strike you as odd that a woman of her class does all this alone?’

‘Eh?’

‘She has a drink at the Cri, she goes to the theatre, she meets no
one. You’ve no sense that someone she expected stood her up?’

‘Freddie, you’ve seen Lady Di. You’d have to be blind to stand up Diana Brack!’

‘Yet she tackles the social round of her class without an escort.’

‘A lack of eligibles perhaps. They’re all in the Toff’s Rifles or the Mummersetshire Yeomanry. I tell you, in her time most of the eligible chinless in the country have paid court to Diana – my brothers to name but two – and a fair smattering of lounge lizards and silver screeners. There was a lot of talk about her and Jack Buchanan for a while. Al Bowlly was reportedly mad with frustration because he couldn’t get within a mile of her.’

‘Get to the point,’ said Troy, checking his watch against the clock high on the wall above Wildeve’s head.

‘Sorry – what I mean is she isn’t that sort. She’s … well … she’s a bluestocking I suppose. Furiously intellectual – and I do mean both of those words. I saw some fine set-tos between her and Old Fermanagh when I was a boy. She despises the rituals and mores of her class. Johnny Lissadel once told me she’d rather spend an evening with Sidney Webb than a day with the Aga Khan.’

Troy smiled at the contrast. At the familiarity – her class was their class, his and Wildeve’s, and if they too did not in some measure despise the mores and rituals of their class they would scarcely have become policemen. Troy wondered if Wildeve recognised this.

‘I can’t say I’m surprised at anything so far,’ Wildeve continued. ‘A bit boring, a bit spartan. Just what you’d expect really.’

‘So you followed her home?’

‘I did indeed. She spoke to no one until we got into the square just north of Tite Street. It’s all down to allotments now. She had a few words with an old feller who’s raising a pig there.’

‘Anything in it?’

‘Good manners. That’s about all. A kind word to the lower element.’

‘Should we be looking at him?’

‘I doubt it. He was in a Civil Defence outfit. LCC Heavy Rescue. Must be sixty I suppose. Big fellow. Completely bald. Whatever she may think now, it’s still second nature to her to take a little deference from the deferential classes. I had a quick word
with him. Lady Di keeps the allotment next his – last vestige of a short spell in the Land Army. As I recall they called her up and slung her out in less than six months.’

‘And so to bed?’

‘Quite. But I was there till one just to be sure she didn’t go out again.’

Troy got up to look out of the window, skirting the beam that kept Scotland Yard from falling on his head. Outside it was what Troy called Noah’s Ark weather. The street was empty of pedestrians, the buses rolled by full to the brim, and the Thames itself was high against the containing wall of the Bazalgette’s embankment. Wildeve had his head on one side and was attempting to dry one ear on a large monogrammed handkerchief. He resembled a morris dancer
manqué
rather than a policeman.

‘Jack,’ said Troy ‘You can have the night off. I’ll watch her tonight.’

‘Thanks. I do appreciate it. I’d hate to drown while we clutched at straws.’

Beneath the
ingénu,
beneath the upper-class frothiness, Wildeve had a mind that from time to time could startle Troy by its blunt appraisal.

‘We have a definite connection,’ he said. ‘Brack was at Wolinski’s. She did steal a photograph of our man.’

‘Precisely put, Freddie, she probably stole a photograph of someone we think might be our man. But you surely don’t think Diana Brack’s got herself mixed up with a murderer?’

The windscreen wipers on the Bullnose Morris scarcely kept pace with the rain. Troy inched the car carefully round St James’s Square, with the side window down, looking for the familiar marks of an American base. Two caped, white-helmeted MPs stood in front of Norfolk House on the eastern side. As Troy eased his car in behind a large Packard in camouflage browns one of them came over and
banged on the roof at him. Troy stepped out into a solid wall of rain to see the man pointing at the Packard and shouting over the noise of water drumming on steel.

‘You can’t park here!’

‘Business,’ said Troy, moving towards the shelter of the doorway.

‘Oh yeah. With whom?’

Once under cover, Troy held up his warrant card. The second soldier had raised a hand to his hip under his cape as though holding the butt of a gun.

‘It’s OK, Lou,’ said the first soldier. ‘He’s a cop!’ He handed the card back to Troy and asked, ‘Who you seeing?’

‘Zelig. Colonel Zelig.’

He beckoned to Troy to follow and stepped into the house. He pulled a clipboard from the wall, took off a glove and ran a finger down a list of names.

‘Eleven o’clock, right?’

Troy nodded.

‘Basement. Two floors down.’ He pointed towards the staircase curling around a brass lattice-work lift-shaft. ‘Show your ID to the guy in the corridor when you get down.’

Two flights and one ritual later Troy found himself in a windowless, warm room forty feet under the streets of London. The room was empty. All that security just to guard a desk and a typewriter, thought Troy. The door swung open and a WAC backed into the room, keeping the door ajar with her hip and swivelling round to face Troy. She carried a cup of coffee in one hand and a greasy, steaming brown paper bag in the other. As she turned Troy found himself face to face with a small, good-looking blonde, with hair so short and and masculine it was almost a crewcut.

‘You want Zelly?’ she asked in a voice rich with deep, throaty vowel sounds.

Troy nodded, still taking in the startling appearance. Her uniform fitted her like a glove, tucked and pleated, outlandishly emphasising the hour-glass figure, with its tightly rounded bosom and pinch-bottle waist.

‘Gimme your name and I’ll tell him you’re here. You caught him at elevenses.’

‘Very English,’ said Troy.

‘Also very Zelly,’ she said. ‘Any excuse to eat.’

She went through the same motions again, flicking down the handle of the inner door with her elbow and shoving it aside with her hip. Troy caught the door and propped it open. She smiled momentarily at him as she ducked under his arm.

‘Your name!’ she whispered hoarsely.

‘Troy,’ he whispered back.

Looking past her Troy saw the Colonel get up from his desk. He yanked a blind down over a map of Italy.

‘Dammit! Can’t you knock?’ he croaked.

He pulled down another blind over a map of France in a showy pantomime of secrecy. The WAC set Zelig’s elevenses on his desk.

‘It’s OK. I think he’s one of ours. Mr Troy. He’s your eleven o’clock.’

Zelig ignored Troy and snatched at the paper bag. The door banged shut as the WAC left. Zelig had done and said nothing to indicate his acknowledgement of Troy’s presence. He bit into the hamburger and yelled through a mouthful of bread and meat.

‘Tosca!!!’

The WAC stuck her head round the door.

‘Whaddya want?’ It hardly seemed the way for a sergeant to address a colonel.

‘Is this mayo? I asked for mayo. I always have mayo on my burger for Chrissake.’

‘It’s English,’ she replied simply.