Riptide (aka Bluffing Mr. Churchill) (16 page)

Two hours later Miss Payne had worked her way through twenty or more pages, and a version of Stahl had appeared on the pad. She’d had to draw the scar above the left eybrow half a dozen
times before Cal saw Stahl come to life. She’d taken a coloured pencil and added a dash of blue to the eyes, and then, when Cal had said ‘Too bright’, rubbed a little charcoal in
with the tip of her pinky finger. It was Stahl. Not a hard face, but a face that had rendered itself hard. Not a face so much as mask, he thought.

Miss Payne was holding the sketch at arm’s length and squinting at it framed against the bank of elevators when Cal saw the doors open and Kitty emerge, looking clean and fresh and vital
– the opposite of the blanket bed-beast he’d left a few hours ago. She waved – a cheery smile – a hammy wink of the eye. Good God, what was she thinking of? Then he caught
sight of Miss Payne, waving back and smiling.

‘Old Stinker’s daughter,’ she said. ‘Quite a character. Rules weren’t made for our Kitty. Now, is this the bloke or isn’t it? I may not be Picasso – but
then, if I was, I suppose no one would ever recognise him with his nose under his armpit. Any chance of another pot of coffee?’

Came a lull in the day. A message on his desk told him to collect a bloodstained dress and a shoe from Forensics. They could just as easily send them, but Troy saw an
opportunity to indulge a copper’s nosiness. He drove out to Hendon, to the Metropolitan Police Laboratory, in search of Ladislaw Konradovitch Kolankiewicz, the Polish beast, one of the
lab’s senior pathologists – a protégéof Sir Bernard Spilsbury, an exile of indeterminate age, extraordinary ugliness and foul, fractured English that Troy had long ago
come to regard as a form of colloquial poetry.

He was scrubbing up. Hairy arms sluiced under the tap. A corpse under a sheet on the slab. A young woman in white perched on a high stool. Flipping through a shorthand notebook and reading bits
back to Kolankiewicz.

‘Displacement of first three vertebrae, resulting in severance of spinal column from . . . brain stem . . . would appear to be result of . . . I’m sorry, I can’t read my own
writing.’

Kolankiewicz elbowed the taps, turned round to argue and noticed Troy.

‘Ah, smartyarse. What brings the
Plattfusswunderkind
to my lair?’

‘Nothing much,’ said Troy. ‘Just a hunch.’

‘Ah! Copper’s hunch. That and three ha’pence would just about buy me cup of tea. Now, pretty boy, since you were last here we have a new addition to death’s family. Mrs
Pakenham, my lab assistant. She joined us in the New Year and is now learning shorthand – the hard way – as the War Office saw fit to call up my stenographer.’

The young woman stopped reading her notes and scratching her head with the pencil.

‘Sergeant Troy,’ said Kolankiewicz. ‘Brighter than your average flatfoot, but still total pain in arse.’

This was mild. Kolankiewicz was minding his manners. The woman must be good. It could not last. He relished the English language with all the fervour of a convert. It held no traps and no taboos
as far as Kolankiewicz was concerned. ‘Fuck’ was never far from his lips at the worst of times, and those were all the times he and Troy had had between them.

The young woman looked up. The merest flicker of a smile. A cut-glass English voice.

‘Anna,’ she said. ‘Anna Pakenham.’

It was a little like looking into a mirror. A short, slim woman, thick black hair – pulled back with a working-day severity – pale skin like his, and eyes like his – black as
coal.

‘Frederick Troy. Murder Squad.’

It sounded like the most unattractive calling card in the world – indeed, Troy kept calling cards without rank or job just to drop on the silver plate without causing alarm – but she
said, ‘I suppose we’ll be seeing a lot of you, then?’

No, he thought. Kolankiewicz had got through so many stenographers and assistants since the war started. This one would not last. They none of them did. She’d volunteer for the ATS or the
WRNS or go off to wear jodhpurs and dig spuds in the darkest shires. A pity. Married or not, she was a looker.

‘You get sick of the sight of him,’ said Kolankiewicz. ‘Now, whatever it is, spit it out.’

‘I was wondering about a body. A Dutchman found dead in Hoxton Street last night.’

Kolankiewicz whipped back the sheet.

‘This fucker?’

Troy found himself staring once more at the unearthly, drained, white-beyond-white corpse of Jeroen Smulders, fresh stitching loosely holding incisions Kolankiewicz had made. He glanced sideways
at Mrs Pakenham. She was not reacting, either to the corpse or to Kolankiewicz’s lapse into plain speaking. She had the makings of a good Kolankiewicz assistant. Blanch not at the bodies nor
the beast.

‘Yes. That’s him. Are you done? Do you know how he died?’

‘This not your case, Troy. That big bastard Stilton, the one with the silly accent, sent him over. I had him on the phone at crack of dawn this morning.’

‘I know. I checked with his office. I’d just rather know for myself than wait for him to tell me. It
was
my case. I was the one who was called out to the scene. I have a
feeling about this one.’

‘Two hunches in two minutes? I’ll have arrowroot biscuit with my tea. Anna?’

‘It says . . . violent pressure on the head and neck, clockwise twisting of the neck, evident in subcutaneous bruising. At least I think it says “clockwise”. I’m terribly
new to shorthand.’

The contrast between the formal, procedural English of an autopsy, and Kolankiewicz’s colloquial mode never ceased to startle Troy.

‘Enough?’ he was saying. ‘Enough for a nosy rozzer?’

‘I was wondering about the hands.’

‘Hands?’

‘Hands.’

‘What about his hands?’

‘If you fall down a staircase conscious you try and stop yourself. You grab onto something. You flail about. Chances are there’ll be marks on the hands. Bruised knuckles. A torn
nail.’

They both looked at Mrs Pakenham.

‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘No bruises. Nothing.’

‘And,’ Troy went on, ‘if you fall down dead, you don’t. As simple as that really.’

‘He was dead, believe me, Troy, he was dead.’

‘And?’

‘I tell you what I tell Stilton. The killer was right-handed. Taller than this bloke, but not necessarily stronger. It’s more of a knack than brute force. Snap a neck in a single
movement. Death was instantaneous. A pro job. You happy now?’

‘Happy?’ said Troy. ‘No, I’m not happy. I just have a feeling that this one will come back to me.’

‘Three hunches! I’ll have buttered scone and jam dollop too.’

That afternoon Alex Troy was in his study. He would have liked to take a walk on the heath, but it was unseasonably cold for May. He would have liked to meet the world, if only
for half an hour, but the telephone rang and the world came to him.

He picked up the phone.

‘Alex? It’s Max.’

A short syllable to introduce a short man with a long handle – Max Aitken, Lord Beaverbrook, proprietor of the
Daily Express
and Minister of State, until recently Minister of
Aircraft Production, in Churchill’s government.

‘I held a lunchtime briefing for the Fleet Street editors at Claridge’s today. I half expected you’d be there.’

So, that’s what ministers of state did. They gave briefings.

‘Half? You are such an optimist, Max. Perhaps if you were to expect me a sixteenth or a thirty-second you would be less disappointed in me.’

‘I was wondering. Would you care for a drink at my club tonight?’

Beaverbrook usually asked him round for one or both of two reasons. He knew something you didn’t and wanted to lord it. What, after all, was the point in being a lord if you could not lord
it? – as far as Alex was concerned this might as well be the Beaver’s motto in life. Or he had some crackpot theory he wanted to air, partly, as with the first reason, to remind you
that he was close to the powers that be, and partly because it was not the sort of thing he could air in his newspapers without being guilty of the kind of rumour-mongering and defeatism the
government deplored in the common people and would deplore the more in one of its own.

The last time they’d met had been May Day. Max had bored him silly with ‘The balloon’s up. We’re backs to the wall now, Alex. The war has turned ugly for us. I’d
say two or three days at the most. Invasion is imminent.’ – when it transparently wasn’t. It made Alex wonder how much the Prime Minister really told him. Bugger all, it would
seem. That he could not see for himself was shocking. The RAF had won the battle for Britain. Won it with the planes the Beaver had churned out as Minister of Aircraft Production. A job that had
enabled him to rally the nation’s housewives into giving up their pots and pans to be melted down into aeroplanes. Alex had never been certain whether this was anything more than a
morale-building stunt – ‘Women! You too can do your bit!’ – but ever after he’d thought of Beaverbrook as Lord Saucepans. There probably was a Beaver Brook, somewhere
in the wilds of Ontario, probably several, along with Moose Gulch and Wild Ass Pass – they none of them managed to sound real when appended to the word ‘Lord’.

Alex had no desire to go to the Beaver’s club – to any of his clubs, the Carlton or the Marlborough, the former political, the latter royal in basis.

‘How about
my
club?’ he said.

‘The Garrick? Fine,’ said Beaverbrook.

They fixed a time and rang off.

Alex was going by the counter-theory of that applied by single women: ‘Never invite him in. Go back to his place, then you can always leave. Far easier than throwing a man out.’ He
was taking Beaverbrook to his club – watering hole of old hams and young pretenders, where a distraction could always be arranged without the necessity of walking out, and where they were
unlikely in the extreme to meet any other ‘gentlemen’ of Fleet Street – but, then, that was precisely why he had joined, to escape the ‘gentlemen’ of Fleet Street.

Stilton’s three hours had become half a day. It was close to three in the afternoon before he returned to Claridge’s. Cal had sat in the lobby, watched Lord
Beaverbrook’s entourage breeze in and out like visiting pashas, read every newspaper he could get his hands on and drunk coffee till he felt he was floating on the stuff.

‘Jesus Christ, Walter. Do you know what time it is?’

‘Aye, aye. Couldn’t be helped. Might’ve known it would be a waste of time in daylight. But I had to look for my Czech – Hudge. The sooner we find him the
better.’

‘But you didn’t find him? Is that what you’re saying?’

‘No – a bit of a night owl really. Still. There’s always tonight.’

Cal looked at his watch.

‘You’re not telling me we have to wait for darkness – in May, in double summertime? I’ve been stuck on my butt all day.’

‘Oh – there’s things to do, don’t you worry. Now, did Poppy – that is, Miss Payne – get done?’

Cal handed over the sketch that had cost three pots of coffee, a morning of his time, a stream of London gossip and much of his tolerance of flirtatious upper-crust English women with names like
Poppy. Stilton looked at it.

‘Is it him?’

‘Oh, it’s very him.’

‘Good – let’s nip over to the Yard shall we?’

Beaverbrook always reminded Alex of a monkey. He had a monkey’s round face, wide mouth. A monkey’s stature. A monkey’s sense of mischief. Most people bore
passing resemblance to their own caricature – Beaverbrook was the spitting image of David Low’s cartoon – no caricature, no exaggeration seemed too grotesque. The big head on the
little body, the grin that seemed to split it like a watermelon struck with a shovel.

He was in the foyer of the Garrick, being helped out of his overcoat when Alex arrived.

‘You missed a good lunch,’ said the Beaver.

‘No, I missed a free lunch. And I find I can never afford your free lunches.’

Beaverbrook laughed at this and let Alex, by much the older, slower man, set the pace as they went upstairs to the bar, a panelled room lined with portraits of long-dead hams, a patina of age
and cracked glaze across most them – indeed, as Alex often thought, across most of the members too. He was not a club man. It was too English a notion. But since one had to belong somewhere,
this was better than most, oblique as it was to his own calling. When he was seated, had got his breath and ordered a drink, he said, ‘What was the occasion?’

‘Hess. What else?’

‘I suppose you told Fleet Street to dampen it down?’

‘No, quite the opposite. Winston wanted to make a statement. I talked him out of it last night. I think we should all speculate, each paper with a different angle. Make as much of this as
possible, throw out every possible reason Hess could have for what he did. Get the maximum possible propaganda value out of it.’

‘A licence to lie, Max?’

‘I wouldn’t put it that way. Shall we say a licence to gild the lily?’

‘Words, words, words. You were still asking them to lie. You’re asking me to lie now.’

‘Think about it, Alex. Why do you think he’s come? Don’t you think that’s an honest question? Don’t you think that’s an honest question to put before your
readers?’

‘No. I do not. It’s no more honest than the German papers. On Tuesday they all carried the same headline to the letter – Hess in Tragic Accident. The accident being the
long-awaited onset of madness.’

‘Do you think he’s mad?’

‘I’ve no idea. I met him just the once and that was years ago. But it does seem that until he finally tells someone what he’s up to, then both sides will find equal cause to
dismiss him as mad.’

There was a pause. Alex could almost hear the Beaver timing it like the true ham he was.

‘I asked Winston if I could see Hess, you know.’

Ah. At last the nub. Beaverbrook was rubbing his nose in it.

‘Did he say yes?’

‘He didn’t say no.’

At the back of his mind Alex felt vaguely certain he’d heard this repartee before somewhere.

‘What did he say?’