Black Out (39 page)

‘The only mission Wayne was on was to kill you – a private vendetta. He laid a trap for you – him and that woman of his – and you walked right into it. Wildeve saw it for what it was. Were you blind to it?’

Troy looked at Wildeve. His entire expression, even the posture of his body said ‘Sorry’ – but Jack had nothing to be sorry about. Troy knew he had saved his life. Among the shapes and murmurs as the bricks had come to life he had recognised a shape and a sound that were Jack. Wildeve shook his head. He had not told Onions about Brack and Troy. Troy looked back at Onions – if Onions knew about his affair with ‘that woman’ it would surely have been top of his endless list?

‘Not only that – Wayne was not your man. You spent twelve weeks on the case – you told me he had a killer’s nature, enjoyed killing, and now it turns out some other bugger did it. He was too proud to get his hands dirty. Wayne didn’t kill Brand, didn’t kill von Ranke, didn’t kill Wolinski. He had some hatchet man do it for him. Some bugger you’d never even suspected existed.’

Troy had shot said bugger dead. The most prominent thought in a welter of conflicting thoughts and feelings was who was this man, had they identified him yet?

‘Who was he?’ he asked, scarcely audibly.

‘Tell ‘im!’ Onions barked at Wildeve.

‘Er … we don’t know – we don’t have the body. Wayne got away with it. He had a car parked by the Green, ready for his getaway. He bundled the corpse in and got clean away. All I got was the gun.’

‘Satisfied?’ Onions turned on Troy in fury. ‘Pleased with your result? ’Cos that’s all there is!’

‘No,’ Troy whispered.

‘No?’ Onions roared.

‘We have Wayne as accessory after the fact to attempted murder – mine.’

‘You’re out of date, Freddie. It’s murder, the whole thing, all the bloody way. Edelmann’s dead.’

Troy was stunned. What had Edelmann to do with this? He had left him in the Bricklayers Arms.

‘Edelmann?’

‘Dead. Shot with the same gun that cost you half a kidney.’

Troy paused. He was not at all sure how Onions would react.

‘Then we’ve got him,’ he whispered.

‘Got ’im! Got ’im! You’re out of date, laddie. Do you know what day it is?’

‘Thursday,’ said Troy. ‘It’s Thursday the …’

‘Thursday the second day after D-Day to be precise. D-Day was Tuesday. Normandy’s so full of scrap-iron looks like a totter’s yard. They sent Wayne over to France on the first day. We can’t touch him!’

‘What?’

‘The only chance we had was to get him within our jurisdiction. In France we have to convince the military – and they’ve got alibis like a bookful of meat coupons! He’s gone, Freddie, gone for good!’

Troy lay back and closed his eyes.

Onions lowered his voice – a little of the pain went out of it. ‘I’d suspend you – as a rule. But the quacks tell me you’ll be out of commission for three months – mebbe more – so we’ll let things be, let sleeping dogs lie, and sleep is what I suggest you get.’

He picked up his hated Homburg.

‘I’ll be in to see you at the weekend,’ he said in something approaching a neutral tone, and then he too was gone.

Wildeve came over and sat on the side of the bed. Minutes passed with only the buzz of traffic in the street outside to break the silence.

‘It’s all right,’ he said. ‘They say you’re going to be OK.’

‘OK?’ Troy said.

‘You’ve lost part of a kidney, but really you can lose a whole kidney and still have all your gubbins work OK.’

‘Gubbins,’ said Troy without meaning.

Wildeve geared up for the inevitable.

‘I don’t quite know how to tell you this. I rather guessed Wayne would head for Stepney. It all seemed like unfinished business to me. Truth to tell I’ve been preparing for it for weeks. I kept in touch with Edelmann, ever since you first took me to that railway arch. I think he liked you really – it just didn’t do for an old Bolshevik to let it be known.’

This was bewildering – the speed of it all. What was he talking about? How had Jack known to go to Stepney? Troy had not known himself until …

‘How did you figure it out? Copper’s intuition?’

‘If you like.’

It was like hearing himself speak – his phrasing, his tonality, Wildeve’s utterance.

‘Although it would be nearer the mark to say that Wayne had asked too many questions of all those misguided heroes – I felt there was something else. I was wrong. Killing you could hardly be that something else – so something else still is – if you see what I mean.’

That, to Troy, sounded even more like Troy.

‘On Saturday I didn’t do what you told me to. I went into the Savoy and phoned Edelmann. Then I caught a cab straight to Stepney. If the traffic had been lighter I might even have got there before you. Edelmann had his rent-a-mob waiting. We’d agreed on that. He tried to keep Wayne as long as he could, but he couldn’t hold him at all. As it was Wayne knocked me flying as he came out of the pub. I was out for a minute or so – Edelmann picked me up – that was a mistake, really we couldn’t afford to lose
that time. It cost us dearly. When you took off after him, we followed, but we were too far behind. I heard the other bloke take a pot-shot at you, but he came out of nowhere – took me completely by surprise. I saw you shoot him and I was running towards you when the bomb hit and … ’

‘Bomb? I got hit by a bomb?’

‘No. Not hit. It landed a hundred yards off, but you were standing on the roof of that damn cellar – the shock wave shattered it. It looked for all the world as though the earth had opened up and swallowed you.’

The earth had swallowed him. He remembered the feeling – and the dream, that explained the dream. He had been in that damn cellar – it wasn’t just a dream.

‘Wayne picked up the gun and threw the dead bloke over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes. I couldn’t believe it. I know Wayne’s a big bugger but it was as though the other chap weighed nothing at all. Then he saw us and he started shooting.’

Wildeve plucked at the sleeve of his jacket – shoved a finger through the bullet-hole.

‘You were lucky,’ Troy said softly.

‘Edelmann wasn’t. The bullet that missed me killed him – poor sod. I caught Wayne with a half-brick and made him drop the gun, but he ran – even with the body on his shoulder he ran. I still can’t believe it. Why didn’t he just drop the body and have done?’

Troy thought about this. He thought he knew the answer.

‘But you got the gun, you said?’

‘Oh yes – and prints aplenty. If we could ever match them up to Wayne he’d hang.’ He paused. ‘Tell me, Freddie, did you really not know it was you he’d come to kill?’

‘No. Did you?’

‘No – I hadn’t a clue. Instead … ’ He shrugged.

‘Instead he killed Edelmann,’ said Troy.

Wildeve nodded, tears in the corners of his eyes.

‘Where are my clothes, Jack?’

‘What?’

Troy swung himself off the bed, felt a surge of pain to his gut, and flung open the bedside cupboard.

‘Freddie, what are you playing at?’

His clothes lay in a neat pile in the cupboard – he reached for his trousers.

‘We have work to do.’

‘Freddie!’

‘You heard him – I’m not suspended. I hold the King’s Warrant. Do you have a car?’

‘Yes – your old Morris is out front – but we can’t … ’

‘Oh yes we can. Help me with the shirt.’

Wildeve stood dumbfounded.

‘Jack! For God’s sake!’

They roared along the Embankment. Down to Chelsea. All the way to Tite Street.

‘I tell you I’ve searched Tite Street. She’s not there. The girl’s not seen hide nor hair of Diana since Friday night. Accept it, Freddie, she’s done a bunk. Poor bloody Gutteridge has been out there day and night!’

Troy was having difficulty breathing. He had moved too quickly, and the shock of finding a six-inch cut in his side and a row of more than a dozen stitches had dented his first rush of energy. He had somehow imagined himself intact – at the very least showing a minute hole where the bullet had entered.

‘Not the house,’ he whispered. ‘The square.’

‘Come again?’

‘The square. Where the old boy had his pig.’

They shot past Constable Gutteridge, who had perfected the art of sleeping upright with his eyes open, and pulled up by the patchwork fences of the square. Getting out of the car winded Troy – Wildeve had to pull him from the seat. Troy led the way between the potatoes and the cauliflowers to the Nissen hut where Brack kept her tools. The pig was in her sty, poking her nose over the corrugated iron pen and snuffling pleasurably in the morning sunshine.

The door to the hut was padlocked. Wildeve kicked it in, flicked on his torch and stepped inside.

‘Oh God,’ he said. ‘Oh God!’

Troy caught the torch as he dropped it. Wildeve began to buckle at the knees and staggered back into the daylight, retching violently into a neat, emerald-green row of new potatoes, bobbing gently in the breeze in defiance of pathetic fallacy.

Troy shone the torch again. He knew what he had seen, but unlike Wildeve he must look for ever and so must look again.

She was naked and weighted down in the tin bath by a broken piece of fireplace marble dumped across her midriff. Her eyes were open and a tiny black spot, just like the one he had imagined in his own side, marked the centre of her forehead. The tub was full, but still shallow enough for her nose and fingertips to break the surface and float like tendrils of weed on a stream. So curiously is the human mind constructed that Troy thought of Millais’s Ophelia, floating with her bunch of posies, more beautiful in death than life.

Even with the water to suppress it the smell of death had come to fill the air. He had noticed it as soon as they entered the hut. He stepped outside and leaned against the steel wall of the hut. Wildeve had stopped puking, and seemed to be hunched over in silent tears.

‘Why would he do such a thing?’ he asked. ‘Why … I mean … did he shoot her or did he drown her or did he what?’

‘He didn’t drown her. That’s just an attempt to keep down the smell. And he didn’t shoot her. I did.’

Wildeve looked up, wiped a strand of saliva from his lips on to his jacket sleeve. The big man was hurrying towards them down the path, the light glinting on his bald head, and the pig was grunting in anticipation.

‘ ’Ere! Just the chap I want. Would you adam’n’eve it some blighter’s pinched me tin bath – y’know, the one I uses ter scrub the pig.’

‘I’ve found it,’ said Troy simply.

‘Thank Gawd for that. In the ’ut, is it?’

Troy slumped forward, felt the blood drain from his head. The big man caught him, sweeping him up in his arms as a father would a small child.

‘ ’Ere, old cock, are you all right? You don’t ’arf look pale.’

The big man carried him back to the old Bullnose Morris and laid him gently in the passenger seat.

‘Guard the hut,’ said Troy. ‘And if I were you I wouldn’t go inside.’

‘Right you are, old cock. Just like old times. You will be back, won’t you?’

‘Yes,’ Troy said feebly, ‘I’ll be back.’

Wildeve leaned his forehead on the steering-wheel – still breathing thick and fast.

‘I don’t understand it, Freddie. I just don’t understand it.’

‘Take me to Orange Street,’ Troy said softly.

‘I ought to take you back to hospital.’

‘Orange Street,’ said Troy.

Wildeve pressed the self-starter and slipped the car into first.

‘Where is all this going to end?’ he asked.

‘Orange Street,’ said Troy. ‘It ends with Orange Street.’

Troy made Wildeve wait in the car. At the first landing he thought his body would tear itself apart. He had never known such pain. He pressed on, knowing that if he took too long Jack would come looking for him, his palm firmly planted on his stitches, feeling the familiar sensation of warm tea spreading out across his shirt. On the top floor Tosca’s door was locked. He fumbled in his jacket pocket for his key-ring and found the key she had given him. He opened the door slowly, letting it swing back on its hinges. He took one step inside and let the wall take his weight, leaning back breathless to look at the mess. The coffee-pot stood half full upon the table as though she had made for two, her unconscious not acknowledging that he had not returned. A half-eaten pizza graced the dining-table.
Huck Finn
lay face down upon the ironing board. Her stockings dried on a line above the sink, oddments of discarded clothing clung to chairbacks and scattered themselves higgledy
piggledy in her sluttish way – and there was blood everywhere. Blood on the sheets, blood on the walls, blood on the floor. Crisp and dry and brown. A slaughterhouse in the attic. Blood, so much blood he could taste it – it was on his tongue and on his lips – but it was his blood he could taste, his blood not hers, his blood and the blood which trickled between his fingers, coursed down his leg and puddled at his feet merely added to the gore.

Troy slept. An age rolled over.

Into his sleep, into his waking came … a stream of visitors.

His mother – arthritic, between two walking sticks and two daughters, making her first visit to town since the death of her husband. She would speak no English to him – but Russian has a thousand different words for fool.

Brother Rod – chest beribboned – the returning hero – head of the family – came to tell him everything was OK, and that the room was paid for and he need want for nothing. Troy should care? Of course he cared. There was nothing in the world he wanted more than to be alone.

Bonham – clutching his helmet between his knees as he peeled an orange of immense rarity into it. The vapour filled the air. They both inhaled in silence, a blast of the past. Bonham stuck his head in his helmet, nose to the peel, refusing to eat one single segment of what he had brought for Troy, and breathed deeply and pronounced it ‘Christmas’.

One day he awoke from a midday nap to find Kolankiewicz, and Anna and a child. Anna stood with her back to him, looking out of the window, watching the play of June’s searing light upon the buildings opposite. Kolankiewicz was playing cards. Troy realised the boy was Shrimp Robertson. He was teach ing Kolankiewicz three-card monty. Kolankiewicz professed never to have heard of it. Troy watched as Kolankiewicz was allowed to win twice, and enjoyed the child’s surprise as Kolankiewicz said it was
his turn now and watched him fleece the boy for more than half a crown. Anna turned, saw that he was awake.