Black Out (23 page)

‘Rather messy I’m afraid, but I think our friend would have noticed if I’d tried to walk the dog clutching a cardboard file.’

It was too late to read. Troy merely felt the weight of the paper and slipped it into his inside pocket.

‘Of course Sergeant Miller only records facts. Facts and observations. He doesn’t – didn’t – speculate, but then I don’t suppose he was trained to theorise. You people aren’t, are you?’

Troy wondered if an insult phrased in the semblance of a question really required an answer. ‘How much did you tell Miller?’ he asked.

‘Enough for him to know what to look for I hope.’

‘Not enough to prevent him getting killed?’

The soft mockery vanished as she turned her hard, rich blue eyes on him. The lines around her mouth drew in sharply. She looked to Troy like a vicious bird of prey.

‘You knew Wayne was a killer, didn’t you?’ Troy persisted.

‘I suspected it. But then I suspect a lot of things. The whole point in having Sergeant Miller was to find out what was true and what was not.’

‘He killed a man as long ago as April last year.’

‘At which point I did not know of his existence. No, Mr Troy, I didn’t know he was a murderer. I asked for a Special Branch officer only in November last year. You’ll see. Sergeant Miller’s notes go back no further than the last week of November. I’d received too many reports of this mysterious American involving himself with the London Communists. They may well be stupid enough to take him at face value – I’m not. I could see him as a plant at once. It was simply a matter of finding out exactly what he was up to and tracing him back to … ’ she fumbled for the right word, ’… to … source.’

‘Source?’

‘To his masters. To the men who authorised American penetration.’

Troy could feel her anger rising. She could hardly shout at him without attracting the attention they both wanted to avoid, but her shoulders shook gently with the suppression of rage, and he felt
her looks would turn him to stone if they only could.

‘Mr Troy, I’m a section head. Do you know what that means?’ It too required no answer.

‘I’ve worked all my adult life for my country. I love my country. I’d die rather than see it go Bolshevik. But that does not mean I will surrender any part of it to an alien power simply because that power assures me that we’re fighting the same battle. I don’t expect you to understand, you’re only a policeman – but Wayne is OSS. That pernicious organisation has a foothold here. One granted to it by sheer necessity of the common cause – the special relationship.’

Roosevelt’s words seemed spat out with a contempt he could surely never have meant them to convey.

‘This war’s nearly over. We’re already fighting the next. So are the Americans. We all know who the next common enemy will be. But fight that war in England by usurpation of our sovereignty, of authority granted to me … they shall not. It would merely be to invite in one plague in the hope of exterminating another. Yet … if the OSS succeed in arrogating the pursuit of Communism to themselves now … what is to stop them continuing to do so in two or in twenty years’ time? Do you see what I mean?’

The tirade had stopped. She seemed calmer now, less rhetorical, for once genuinely concerned that Troy should have an answer for her.

‘What -’ Troy paused. ‘What do you want from me, Mrs Edge?’

‘Want? I want you to catch him of course!’

‘You’ve just told me that that’s your prerogative.’

‘Not my prerogative, Mr Troy, my duty.’

‘Then do your duty, Mrs Edge.’

Edge sighed. Her spine relaxed from its schoolmarm rigidity and she leaned back on the bench as though worn down by the effort of her own anger.

‘No. I need you for that.’

‘Go through channels. You could talk to Hollis, Hollis could talk to Petrie, Petrie could talk to the Home Secretary…’

‘No I couldn’t. This matter isn’t going anywhere near the Home Secretary. Isn’t that obvious?’

‘Yes – but I can’t help wondering why. Petrie is a former police officer. He’s hardly likely to want a murderer loose on the streets
of London – particularly a murderer of policemen.’

‘And your commissioner is a former soldier – stop this line of argument. It’s leading nowhere. Take it from me. There are channels, and those channels are blocked by common consent at levels higher than either of us. Believe me, Troy, if I could I’d pick up a phone and call your superintendent myself, but I’d be cutting my own throat. There’s procedure and there’s protocol – if you can’t see that you’ll be a sergeant all your life.’

‘If I’m being used I like to know what for. You know, Mrs Edge, I can’t help the feeling that this is being kept clear of the Home Secretary because no one knows which way Mr Morrison will jump.’

Edge stood up, dusting flecks of earth and bark from her skirt. The dog took its head off its paws and stirred in the expectation that the ordeal of waiting was over.

‘Do your duty, Mr Troy.’

The dog looked hopefully from Edge to Troy and back again.

‘Without fear or favour?’ Troy asked.

‘Meaning?’

‘My policeman’s oath, Mrs Edge.’

Troy stood ready to leave. The dog hopped around in delight. ‘Was it necessary,’ Troy said, ‘for you to invoke fear for my favour?’

‘Ah. I see. You don’t like to be reminded of your origins. Well, shall we say it was first necessary to gain your attention?’

‘Was it necessary to draw the suspicion of everyone else?’

‘I should think Pym and Onions know all about you by now. Your uncle’s obvious, transparent. If I thought he was anything more than an academic hooligan I’d have a file on him a foot thick.’

‘And Zelig?’

‘Zelig’s a fool. A rubber stamp for the Americans. He lets Wayne operate with a free hand and lets that secretary of his make most of the decisions. If he’s suspicious of you, of your motives, of what you might turn up, it would be a minor miracle. It might just add a touch of healthy animosity. Keep you on your toes. If you follow Miller’s notes, believe me you will find the evidence you need. Goodnight, Mr Troy. We shall not meet again.’

Back in Goodwins Court, Troy spread out Miller’s fifteen badly typed pages. Edge had a point. It did not seem to have been in the man’s nature to speculate. He recorded times, dates and places with meticulous care but added up nothing in the approach to meaning. Troy could almost touch the reliable solidity of the man in the witness-box – proceeding in a westerly direction at precisely 11.37 a.m. The plod of boot on flagstone. Honesty without imagination. A man who did not know when his time was wasted. A man who did not know when his life was in danger.

November yielded nothing. Simply the fact that Wayne had other girlfriends besides Diana Brack and from time to time would pick up whores in Soho, doubtless equipped with a gross or two of Uncle Sam’s government-issue condoms – not risking a dose of the clap in the service of his country.

Troy reckoned that Wayne had been on to Miller from roughly late December. For two weeks Miller had tailed him to meetings in the public houses of East London – including two in the Bricklayers Arms in Hannibal Road, only yards away from Wolinski’s flat, and a short walk from the scene of Brand’s murder. Wayne had disappeared into private meetings in Jubilee Street and Jamaica Road, and Miller had scrupulously turned to the electoral roll and recorded the names of the householders – Edelmann, Sidney Lewis and McGee, Michael Eamonn. Shortly after Christmas 1943 Miller had begun losing track of Wayne at Tube interchanges all over the City of London. Time after time it was recorded ‘lost sight of suspect at Moorgate … Holborn … Liverpool Street … Monument’ – and once or twice Wayne had clearly given Miller the runaround … ‘lost sight of suspect at Earls Court … Hammersmith … Paddington …’ And from then on Miller had wasted two months reporting nothing but the social high-life of an overpaid American officer. On the supposed night of Brand’s death, 24 February – supposed because forensic insisted on a wide margin of error, what with the sub-zero temperatures and the fact that Kolankiewicz had but a single arm to work from – Miller had at least come close. He had kept up with Wayne through his
attempt to lose him at Baker Street, but had been shaken off at Liverpool Street. It was, Troy thought, about as late as Wayne could leave it. He could walk to Stepney from there. So could Miller. With a single spark of intuition, the only such he had shown throughout, Miller had gone straight to Jubilee Street and waited outside Edelmann’s house. Wayne, not surprisingly, had not appeared. Troy was certain that he had met Brand and Wolinski at Wolinski’s or in a public house, and had killed one or both of them after luring them to the bombsite on the Green. Luring? Troy’s own logic struck him as novelettish, but he remembered the sight of Miller’s body. The back of his skull now in a dozen pieces at the bottom of a Cellophane bag – the black holes in his face and forehead, matching the holes in von Ranke’s face, the holes in Brand’s skull. Was this too how Wolinski had died? Miller’s notes grew worse, sketchy.

In March, Wayne had been markedly inactive. For days on end Miller had nothing to report. Wayne had been more adept than usual. Miller had reported neither his visit to Zelig nor Troy’s presence outside Brack’s house. The last two weeks of March were unaccounted for. He had written up nothing from his notebook. Miller had grown casual and sloppy, typing up his notes only once a week before reporting to Edge. A sloppiness that had got him killed. Did the man not have enough sense to connect Wayne’s presence in the East End on 24 February with the arm that had been found only three days later? Did he not know that he was dealing with a man who killed and took pleasure in killing? It was possible that he had not seen Wayne again. Until he slipped clumsily between him and Wildeve’s tail, and Wayne saw him.

Troy asked himself why Wayne had killed Miller when he did. Why not sooner? Perhaps he had labelled Miller as incompetent and was not worried until… what? Until Troy’s own appearance? But Wayne would not have risked killing Miller knowing that he or Wildeve was following. Only a madman would take such a risk. Wayne could not have known how close Troy was or that Wildeve was right behind him. It was likely, probable even, that he had not seen Troy that night at Holborn. No – Miller had died for the contents of his notebook. Wayne had decided to find out for
certain how much Miller knew, and had provided himself with an impeccable alibi – and now, for reasons Troy couldn’t even guess at, the powers-that-be had chosen to back him. In taking out Miller, Wayne had effectively got Special Branch off his back for good.

‘All the evidence you need,’ Muriel Edge had said. But, really, Miller offered only two things, the confirmation that Wayne had been somewhere in the vicinity of the murder on the day in question, and Messrs Edelmann and McGee.

‘Zelig is a fool,’ she had said. ‘Lets that secretary of his make the decisions.’

Troy remembered he had silently promised to meet that secretary four nights ago, on the day that Miller had died. Miller’s death had thoroughly eclipsed that urgency – now there were other reasons to keep the appointment.

Tosca slammed the door on his foot.

‘You’re a week late, you bastard!’

Some of the weakest lines in a man’s vocabulary sprang to mind.

‘I can explain, honestly.’

Troy shoved against the door. She backed off. He could just make her out in the shadows, wrapped in a blanket from bosom to ankles, wearing her army shirt and an unforgiving expression. She turned and ran for the stairs. There was a flash of leg as she passed the window on the first floor and the thump of running feet. He closed the door quietly and groped for the banister.

Her door was an inch ajar, a shaft of light cutting into the spidery gloom of the landing. He pushed at it and stepped cautiously into the room. Tosca, he thought, had the mark of a thrower. Sure enough her arm came up and a pillow hurtled towards him, badly enough aimed to plump soundlessly against the wall four or five feet away from him. She was sitting up in bed, the remains of a consolatory feast scattered around her. Half-eaten doughnuts, the
silver wrappers off Hershey bars and months old copies of American magazines –
Life
, the
Saturday Evening Post
. The radio was on, tuned low to the Light programme and a late evening concert of Big Band music. Elsie Carlisle crooned her seductive croon – ‘You got me cryin’ again’.

‘You think you can just breeze in here when it suits you? Is that it?’

‘I … er…’

‘You couldn’t phone?’

‘No I couldn’t. Things have happened since we last met.’

‘Short of the second front opening – and I kind of think I’d hear about that before you did – it ain’t good enough, whatever it is.’

‘Major Wayne—’ Troy got no further with the sentence. She screamed.

‘Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagh!!!!! Don’t mention that name to me, you bastard!!!!! If you think you can fuck on the company time—’

Troy kicked the door to and rushed to the bed, clapping a hand across her mouth before she could make enough noise to bring out the neighbours, the ARP and the fire brigade all at once. She bit into the side of his hand, and he snatched it back.

‘If,’ she hissed, as though she’d taken the hint, ‘you think you can kill two birds with one stone as you aphoristically minded English would put it, take me for what I know, give me a quickie and then fuck the hell off, then think again, copper. Get your clothes off now or get out!’

Troy was astounded. He knew she could be direct, but it still surprised him.

‘You don’t mean that?’ he said.

‘Wanna bet? Show your grit, do your bit or pack your kit.’

‘Good Lord,’ he said almost involuntarily.

‘Good Lord,’ she mimicked, squirming out of the bed into a kneeling position in her shirt and stockings, beginning to pull at the knot in his tie. ‘You guys kill me.’

She locked her lips on to his, gently forcing them apart with the tip of her darting tongue. She pulled back, grinning hugely, smiling in the depths of her brown eyes. She tossed the tie aside and tugged at the buttons of his overcoat.