Black Out (24 page)

‘If you so much as mention work – yours or mine – before first light, you’re dead.
Capiche?’

Troy nodded.

‘Now my tight-ass London baby, lie back and think of England.’

She pulled off his clothes, and had him naked before he became conscious that the light was still on. Once he had noticed it hardly seemed worth mentioning. He’d never made love with the light on before. Nor, for that matter, had he made love with the wireless on, to the sound of music – and that was so decadent it didn’t bear thinking about. But then Tosca’s motto seemed to be that there was a first time for everything.

He lay awake. She stirred in the dark and reached out for him. ‘

‘What’re you thinking about?’

‘England.’

‘You don’t have to think about England afterwards only during. It’s to take your mind off the wickedness of female flesh. What about England? What do you think of if you think of England? Churchill? The King? Hyde Park? Beefeaters?’

‘No. None of that. I think of the yellow of primroses in spring. The furry folds of beech leaves unfurling in their bottle green.’

‘Furry folds, huh?’

‘The long white ribbon of hawthorn in its May blossom, quilting the fields in Hertfordshire.’

‘Hertfordshire. That where you from?’

‘Yes. And when it comes down to it I think of custard and overboiled cabbage.’

‘What? What the fuck has that got to do with springtime?’

‘Nothing. I was thinking of England, and sooner or later England makes me think of custard…’

‘And boiled cabbage?’

‘Yep.’

‘You know what? I think you’re hungry.’

‘Not for boiled cabbage I’m not. I don’t care whether I never see a plate of boiled cabbage again.’

‘A week without it and a girl can forget how much spent seed can exhaust a man. They wiggle it about for thirty seconds and the next thing you know they’re fast asleep and they always wake up hungry.’

She leapt naked from the bed and ran to the refrigerator. The fridge fought back for a second or two, then sighed deeply and with one last, begrudging suck yielded up its treasure.

‘I got just the thing for you. Now it’s cold, and I guess it should be eaten hot, but I’ve never found it too bad straight from the icebox.’

She came back to the bed. Troy had to drag his eyes from her breasts to the plate she proffered.

‘What is it?’

‘Try some.’

It looked a mess. A rippling blood-and-custard mess, reminiscent of the company colours of the London Midland and Scottish Railway.

‘Go on, be an American. Eat with your fingers.’

Troy tore off a piece of the mess.

‘Not bad. What’s the brown stuff?’

‘Anchovy.’

‘And the blobs?’

‘Capers, I guess.’

‘And the sausage?’

‘Pepperoni.’

‘Not bad at all. What’s it called?’

‘Pizza.’

‘Pete Sir?’

‘No. Peezah! I just got it from the PX. They set up a bakery somewhere out in the boonies for making New York’s native dish. Keeps the troops happy, I guess.’

‘You’d think they had better priorities.’

‘That’s nothing. We got a Coke-bottling plant in crates waiting for D-Day. First beachhead we get we start bottling Coke for the boys!’

Troy almost choked laughing.

‘I’m serious. Anyway you’re not supposed to know that. It’s classified. You ready for more?’

Troy nodded thinking she meant the pizza.

‘Boy, I thought you’d never ask. What you have to do to get laid in this town!’

With one hand she grabbed him by the cock and with the other flicked out the light. Darkness and Tosca enfolded.

They woke to a common consequence of a raid.

‘Goddammit! No gas again.’

Tosca padded softly around the room, muttering and complaining.

‘No breakfast. No coffee. How does Hitler expect me to get through the day?’

Troy slipped from the bed. Judging by the angle of the sun slanting in across Trafalgar Square, filtered by the dirt of the back window, it was still early. He had a little time. He slipped on his shirt.

‘What do you have for breakfast as a rule?’

‘Eggs, toast, coffee. English muffins, when the PX has them. Funny thing is you can’t get them in England. I mean is French toast French? Do Mexicans eat chilli? It kinda shakes your faith in the world order.’

It sounded like nonsense. He ignored it and pulled open the fridge. There were a dozen eggs and an unopened pound slab of white American butter. A bigger piece than he’d seen in one lump since before the war.

‘OK. Sit yourself down.’

‘Where?’

‘Anywhere you’re comfortable.’

She sat cross-legged on the floor between the fridge and the bed, still startlingly naked. Troy took command of the situation,
gathered knives, plates and a fish-slice and plugged in the electric iron. Then he sat down opposite her. He upturned the iron, and handed it to her.

‘Now. I haven’t done this in a while. But at one point during the Blitz I cooked this way for a fortnight. It’s terribly important you hold the iron steady. And it would have been a little better if you’d worn something.’

She wriggled and pouted. Her breasts shook, and she blew a mock kiss in his direction.

‘Suit yourself,’ he said, and tore a strip off the butter wrapper. He greased the flat of the iron and waited for it to bubble.

‘You’re kidding!’

‘No I’m not. And please keep still.’

She gripped the iron firmly in both hands. The hot plate hovered inches above her thighs. Troy cracked an egg on the side of a plate and dropped it sizzling on to the flat.

‘My God!’ she said. ‘It’s cooking. It’s really cooking.’

‘It does take a while. Have a little patience.’

‘That’s OK. We got lots to talk about.’

Troy said nothing, waiting for her to lead.

‘Like Jimmy’s not been diddling coupons, has he?’

Troy shook his head and looked at the egg rather than at her.

‘It’s serious. You come in with that conscience-of-the-world look on your face, so it’s serious.’

‘He’s murdered four people.’

‘Whaaaaaa!!!!’

Her grip slackened, the iron tilted and the egg slid sideways. Troy caught it neatly on the fish-slice before it could land on her. The hot fat dripped stinging on to her thigh.

‘Ow, ow, ow.’

‘I think we’d better stop. It might be easier to get through breakfast on another subject.’

‘No, I’ll be OK. You can’t quit now. I’m made of tough stuff. I just wasn’t expecting it to be that serious. Who’s he killed?’

Troy slid the egg back on to the iron, and cut a slice of bread ready for it.

‘A couple of German refugees. A Pole who worked in the docks. And a policeman who was following him.’

‘Holy shit. Why would he do a thing like that?’

‘It’s his job. Dirty tricks you said.’

‘I also said not here.’

‘What precisely is his job for the army?’

‘I’m not supposed to know.’

‘But you do.’

‘Jimmy’s a boaster. He can’t resist telling. He pulls off something fancy, sooner or later, he’ll start hinting at it. Over the last year or so it’s become obvious what he does. He’s one of those guys gets parachuted into occupied France. Does a few heroic stunts, gets pulled out again. He’s got good French and German. It figures.’

‘Does he bring out people? French, Germans, Resistance fighters, people who might be useful to our war effort?’

‘Yes. We do that a lot, but don’t ask me for cases. I know the general drift of what goes on. There’s no way Zelly would ever let me see anything on an individual operation. He hates putting things on paper.’

Troy slid the egg off on to a slice of bread, took the iron from her and set it down end-up on the carpet. He handed the plate to her. She bit into the egg, yellow yolk cascading over her bottom lip, a puzzled look on her face as she stared at him over the top of her breakfast.

‘Shame there’s no coffee.’

‘Can you find out if he brought out a German round about February this year?’

‘You’re asking me to spy on Zelly?’

‘Yes.’

‘I guess so. I’m not crazy about it, but if I didn’t spy on him half the time anyway all I’d know about Allied Operations is what I learn from typing his letters to the Supply Officer complaining about the lack of peanut butter and mayonnaise in the PX.’

She finished the sandwich in silence. Something evidently on her mind.

‘Who’d he kill last?’

Troy handed her the iron again, and began to cook breakfast for himself.

‘The policeman. Last Tuesday night.’

‘The night you didn’t show.’

‘I was in Manchester Square, putting bits of human brain into Cellophane bags.’

She winced and grimaced at the words, but pressed on. ‘On Wednesday morning there was the most almighty panic going on in the office. Zelly was in before me, which is unheard of, and the scrambler on his phone was never off. I had to put my ear to the door. He talked to Jimmy and he talked to some of the top brass and he was in a stinker of a mood. He talked to a couple of guys at your MI5 too.’

‘He’d just come from a meeting with me at MI5.’

‘You were gunning for him, huh?’

‘Yes, but the matter that worries me is who’s gunning for me?’

‘I don’t follow.’

Troy talked as he ate. She put a finger to his lips, retrieved a precious smear of yolk and licked it.

‘The first time I saw you, were you expecting Wayne?’

‘No. He drops in occasionally. But he certainly wasn’t due that day. In fact you were the only appointment Zelly had, and that put his blood pressure up. He sure as hell didn’t want to see you.’

‘I’ve been wondering why he did. He told me absolutely nothing.’

‘Beats me.’

‘Unless, of course, he wasn’t seeing me. Wayne was.’

‘Huh?’

‘Wayne came just to get a look at me. He knew there was a policeman tailing him. Sergeant Miller of Special Branch. He was alarmed at the idea that the man was now in touch with Zelig. He came to see me and to be seen. If I was the man he’d spotted, if I turned out to be Miller, his fears would have been confirmed. He was too close to things and Wayne knew he’d have to kill him. I wasn’t the policeman he’d seen. I was me. I’d no connection with Miller and what Miller was on to. I didn’t recognise Wayne. If I had, if I’d shown the faintest flicker of recognition, I would be lying in the morgue with a bullet in my head too. Sergeant Miller gained a few days of life. Wayne killed him when it was most convenient. But he could just as easily have killed me. What he didn’t know was that I spotted him later the same day coming out of his mistress’s house. That I’d made a connection he couldn’t
even guess at. If he’d known I was on to him I doubt he’d have killed Miller.’

‘Well. He came in. He chatted about nothing. Then he left. But close to what? You’re investigating the murders. What else was he doing for your man to be close to?’

‘I’m guessing, but I think he’s infiltrated a Communist cell in the East End.’

‘No way! That’s not his brief. In London he just cools his heels. Gets in some R and R. He’s not supposed to do a thing in England.’

‘But he does. He kills people.’

‘Commies? He kills Commies? I thought you said he killed a couple of Germans. I don’t get it.’

‘Nor do I.’

For a minute or two Troy ate in silence. Then Tosca leapt up and began to rummage around in the top drawer of the dressing-table. She tossed a key on to the carpet, and sat clutching a piece of stiff, white paper.

‘Take it,’ she said. ‘It’s my spare. By tonight I should have something for you.’

‘There’s something I need now. His address?’

‘You don’t know his address?’

‘I haven’t a clue where he is. I’ve staked out Tite Street and… ’

‘And you’ve staked out my office. That guy in St James’s Square is a lemon. No – I doubt Jimmy will show his face. His official address is at that apartment block in Curzon Street we took over for officers. Marriot House. He has a couple of rooms, but I’ve never found him there. I figure he uses it as a letter drop and that’s about it. I had to go in once. It smelt stale. He keeps a change of clothes there, but I figure he spends a night there once in a blue moon. He lives with his women. Wherever they are. This is what you really need right now.’

She laid the paper face up on the carpet. A mass of tiny photographs, six or seven to a row, perhaps thirty in all. Miniatures of Major Wayne, each marginally different, as though frozen from a moving picture.

‘It’s called polyphoto. Camera with a motor drive. They were all the rage in Washington, summer before the war. I had one done to send to my mom. I guess it brings out the cutes in people. I
guess even Jimmy thinks he’s cute, though God knows you’d never think it yourself.’

It was signed ‘Jimmy XXX’. The full, moist upper lip, so much bigger than the lower, the liquid, smiling eyes. In a myriad of self-conscious poses.

‘I didn’t ask for it. He just gave it to me one day. I don’t even know why I kept it.’

On his way back to Goodwins Court to bathe and change, Troy wondered about Tosca’s response. She had accepted everything he had said. Shocked, but accepting. There had been no questions along the lines of ‘How do you know?’ or ‘Are you sure?’ But then Wayne’s role was to kill. That, surely, was the ultimate dirty trick and commonplace enough for a soldier in wartime. Of course, he had lied to her about the connection. He knew why Wayne had gone to the trouble of cracking an East End cell, even though he was surprised to learn that the task was above and beyond orders. But, as ever, he wanted to put evidence before utterance. He couldn’t help wondering about the modest assessment she made of her own role at Norfolk House and the contrast it made with Edge’s version. He couldn’t help wondering about the game of slapstick that she played with him. Perhaps this was simply the way she was with men. But where in the Manhattan slapstick was there room for words like ‘aphoristically’?

Kolankiewicz was perched in front of the gas fire in Troy’s office. Hidden behind his
News Chronicle
. Wildeve laboured on an immense pile of papers, yawning all the time. Troy walked past them and pinned the polyphoto to the notice-board on the office wall and tapped it.