Riptide (aka Bluffing Mr. Churchill) (29 page)

Late it was, and later. At 10.40 he paid off the cabby by Collins’ Music Hall and found Coburn Place, bent between the two public houses, zig-zagging right and left. He almost fell down
the open cellar hatch of the Hand and Racquet. He struck his lighter with the ball of his thumb, held the cap open against the spring and moved slowly on with his left hand on the bricks as though
to trace out his trail would somehow lead him back like Ariadne’s thread.

Flickering, miasmic light – enough to see five paces ahead; enough, too, to see the leather soles of a pair of shoes that lay on the cobblestones not twenty feet beyond the cellar. He
dropped the lighter – got down on his hands and knees and groped about on the stones. Found it, struck the flint and struck it again, and in the yellow light found himself looking into the
dead eyes of Walter Stilton.

‘Jesus Christ.’

He let his thumb off the lighter – sank into darkness, wondering if he’d seen what he knew he’d seen, wondering if he had the courage to look again.

He flicked the flint. Walter was lying on his front down the length of the alley – the right side of his face lay in a pool of blood, the left looked up at Cal. One arm outstretched, the
other lost beneath the body. His hat lay a few feet ahead, angled against the wall, as though it had spun off him like a loose hubcap. And there was no doubt about it. The man was dead. His third
encounter with violent death, and already Cal knew the sight and fact of death with unquestioning certainty.

The pool of blood was still spreading. Cal’s knees were wet with it. He got to his feet. Heard his heart roar in his ears, a pulse as loud as a jackhammer throbbing in his head. Above it
all he heard the sound of a lavatory flush, saw a brief flash of light as a door opened up ahead of him, and a man emerge from the gents buttoning up his flies. Whoever he was he had not seen Cal
– he pulled on the back door of the Green Man and vanished.

Cal followed. In the light of the pub he looked down at himself, Blood on his trousers and on the hem of his jacket. All over his hands. He wiped them on his trousers. Surely everyone was
looking at him? Surely everyone could see him, dressed like a scarecrow, drenched in blood? In the fug of tobacco smoke and the roar of people chattering, heads turned at the sight of a stranger,
but none of them seemed to think him worth a second glance. One woman looked him up and down as though appraising him, and still didn’t see the blood.

He made his way to the bar. The barman was busy. Cal tried to seize his attention, and found his voice had gone. He managed to say ‘Excuse me’ in a shrill, unnatural voice, and was
told to ‘Hold yer ’orses. Can’t you see I’m on me own?’

It seemed like an age. The barman served two other men and leaned on one elbow in front of Cal.

‘Right, young man. What’s yer ’urry?’

‘Phone,’ Cal squeaked. ‘I need a phone.’

The barman reached under the pumps and stuck a bakelite telephone on the bar.

‘A drink while you’re ’ere?’

Cal asked for a brandy and dialled 999.

‘Police, Fire or Ambulance?’ said a young woman.

‘Police,’ Cal croaked.

The barman was looking at him now; at the optics, his back to Cal, he turned at the word ‘police’.

The police operator came on. Cal realised he had no idea what to say. He knew exactly what he meant but he could not think of the form of words.

‘Stilton,’ he said almost involuntarily.

‘Beg pardon, sir?’

‘Chief Inspector Stilton’s been . . .’

The barman seemed to have frozen, his hand still holding Cal’s glass of brandy under the optic. The next word would surely galvanize him.

‘Murdered. He’s been murdered. Coburn Place. Islington. Behind the Green Man.’

The barman dropped the glass. The roar of the night-time drinking crowd stopped as though it had been one voice. By the time the glass hit the floor, it tinkled into a cavernous silence.

‘And you are?’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘Your name, caller, your name.’

But they were all staring at him now. A woman not six feet away was looking from his bloody trousers to his face and back again, mouth open, silent. She was not silent for long. She screamed.
The roar of the crowd returned – the volume doubled. Cal slowly put the phone back on the cradle and headed for the door. The crowd parted in front of him. All except one big man, stood
between him and the door, inspired by some civic sense or the pure, unsullied bravado of the drunk.

‘Gertcha.’

‘Excuse me,’ Cal said softly. ‘My friend just died.’

‘Gertcha,’ said the drunk, and Cal dropped him with a righthander to the belly and pushed him aside.

He knelt by the body. A dozen heads crowded the doorway, a shaft of light cutting into the blackness of the alley. Walter had to be covered. As ever, he was wearing his brown mac regardless of
the weather, but to prise it off him seemed so disrespectful. Cal took out the street map, unfolded it to its fullest and spread London, all the way from Brentford to Limehouse, from Highgate to
Streatham, over Walter’s head and back. It seemed fitting. A shroud for a London bobby.

He ignored the gathering crowd at the back door of the pub, oblivious to its mounting murmurs and wept silently for the life of Walter Stilton. Late was never. He’d let the man down.
He’d let somebody kill him. He sat motionless, his back against the wall, his forearms across his knees, eyes fixed on Stilton’s body, somewhere around Chelsea Bridge. Walter was dead.
And dead was all. Dead was everything. Total. Cal had died with him. His death was all-embracing.

An age passed. He found his tears dried. A torch flickered up the alley from the street end, feet neatly sidestepping the open cellar, and then the beam tilted down into his face. Then the man
knelt down next to him.

‘Are you OK?’

‘What?’

‘You’re not hurt?’

Cal knew the voice, and as he leaned in knew the face. It was the same young copper he and Stilton had encountered in Hoxton Lane. Sergeant Troy.

‘No. No. It’s Walter. He’s dead.’

Troy peeled back the map to look at the face and head.

‘Gunshot. Side of the head,’ he said too matter-of-factly, then added, ‘He’d’ve felt nothing, you know.’

‘Sure,’ Cal whispered pointlessly.

Troy stood up. Held his warrant card in front of the torch.

‘Where’s the landlord?’ he cried to the crowd and the barman shuffled foward, pale of face, a glass cloth still in his hands.

‘That’ll be me,’ he said, as though he doubted it himself. ‘Atterbury. George Atterbury. Green Man.’

Troy addressed him with a calm no-one else seemed to feel.

‘Call an ambulance,’ he said. ‘And then call Scotland Yard. Whitehall 1212. Ask for Special Branch and report the death of Chief Inspector Stilton. Gottit?’

But the man was staring at the body, at what little was visible of the big man, the legs and feet protruding from beneath the map – the fingertips of one hand pointing down the alley like
a contrived clue.

‘Eh?’

‘Stilton. S-T-I-L-T-O-N!’ The barman jerked into life.

‘O’ course,’ he said. ‘O’ course. The Yard, the Branch, Stilton.’ And ran back into the pub.

Troy waved the crowd back indoors, searched with his torch for a few cobblestones free of Stilton’s blood and sat down next to Cal.

‘How long?’ he asked simply.

Cal pulled at his sleeve, looked at his wristwatch. It was 10.55. It was fifteen minutes since he had groped his way up Coburn Place. It felt like hours.

‘I found him at . . . 10.40. I guess it was 10.40. I looked at my watch as I . . . as I got out of the cab. I was late. I was supposed to meet him here at 10.30.’

Troy looked at his own watch.

‘You’re running slow. It’s eleven now. I’d say poor old Walter’s been dead less than half an hour.’

Cal thought Troy meant something by this. He’d no idea what.

‘I . . . er . . .’

‘You just missed the killer, it seems.’

‘Jesus,’ said Cal softly.

‘You saw no-one?’

‘No. Of course not.’

Cal wondered why he had said ‘Of course not’. It just rattled around in his ears. It made no sense. But then, so little did. Why had Walter wanted to meet him here, in this black
hole? Who had he met first?

‘Look. You’re absolutely covered in blood,’ said Troy. He took out his handkerchief and wiped away the blood from Cal’s chin, from his cheeks, where his tears had mixed
with Walter’s blood. It was oddly maternal. The human touch. Cal began to feel that he was alive, that the shock of death was somehow less than total. His mind locked onto the idea of Troy
– clung to him as to a floating leaf.

Troy asked him no more questions. Flashed his torch around occasionally, as though looking for something he couldn’t find. It seemed that he too was simply waiting. And a couple of minutes
later the screech of brakes in the street confirmed the thought. Three big coppers, two in uniform, strode down the alley, torches swaying up and down the narrow space like searchlights.

‘Troy?’ said the plain-clothes copper.

Troy got to his feet. ‘Chief Inspector Nailer. Special Branch. I’ll take over now.’

Cal grabbed at Troy’s coat.

‘I thought . . .’ he began, and Troy seemed to read his mind.

‘I can’t investigate. This is Branch business. I’m Murder.’

‘Somebody murdered Walter.’

‘Walter was Special Branch. They look after their own.’

‘When you’ve quite finished, thank you, Mr Troy!’ Nailer roared.

Troy told Cal he was sorry and risked more wrath by saying goodbye and patting him on the shoulder. Nailer waited a few seconds, as Troy’s footsteps echoed down the alley, and then in a
voice like brimstone said ‘Now who the fuck are you?’

It was past four in the morning at Scotland Yard before it dawned on Cal that he had been arrested.

He had let himself be driven to the Yard, sitting silently between the two uniformed bobbies. He’d let himself be led compliantly into a brown and cream interview room of intimidating
plainness. He’d answered all their questions. At least, all those to which he had answers. And, of course, he would not name Stahl as the axis on which the whole mess pivoted. Maybe there
were too many ‘I don’t knows’? And he had turned out his pockets – a few pounds in sterling, a few scraps of paper – nothing that could identify him clearly –
Troy’s blood-stained linen handkerchief – and his gun, wedged between his back and the waistband of his pants. Cal looked apologetic as he hefted it out and laid it quietly on the
table.

The first guy had been friendly. A young man. About his own age. A Detective Sergeant. Called him sir.

‘Do you have a licence for this, sir?’

‘I’m a serving army officer. It’s standard issue to have a sidearm.’

The sergeant took out his handkerchief and flipped out the magazine. The bobby in uniform sitting by
the door stared as though he’d never seen a Smith and Wesson before – maybe he never had. Then he sniffed the barrel.

Everything Cal had was taken away, and then they said there’d be await.

They took him to what he assumed was going to be another interview room, and only when he found himself face to face with a cot, palliasse and seatless lavatory did the reality hit home. He
turned, the faintest words of protest on his lips, but the door had already closed and all he heard was the key turning in the lock. He gave up instantly and almost gratefully. Fell face down on
the straw mattress and slept.

They woke him at 8.30. A cup of gagging-sweet milky tea. Cal would have drunk pig’s piss if they stuck it in a tin cup and called it tea.

He had begun to smell. Worse, so had the dried blood on his clothes. A crisp brown stain covering most of his pants, the hem of his jacket, and the pockets where he’d wiped his hands.

‘I need to wash,’ he told the constable. The man came back five minutes later with a jug of cold water which he tipped into the enamelled iron basin bolted into one corner of the
room.

‘Any chance of getting my suit cleaned?’

‘Where do you think you are, Hopalong? The bleedin’ Ritz?’

Cal drank the foul national drink and thought over the insult. Was that how they saw him? A national cliché?

Twenty minutes later they escorted him back to the interview room, washed, but unshaven and feeling he must look like a tramp. Nailer took over. Nailer was not friendly. Nailer was downright
hostile. Nailer had not slept, grey bags under his eyes, a fuzz of grey bristle to his chin. Cal had slept the sleep of the dead.

‘From the top, if you would,’ Nailer said plainly.

From the top? Cal hesitated. He knew what he meant. He just could not quite believe they wanted him to say it all again. Nailer lit up a strong, untipped cigarette and blew smoke over Cal. He
wasn’t Walter – not a man cut from the same cloth – a thin, angular man with bloodshot eyes and pinched nostrils. Not a mark of good humour or fellow-feeling upon him. A
stringbean of a man, with lank, dirty grey hair and a lifetime of nicotine scorched into his fingertips.

Cal told him everything. And there his troubles began.

‘You were working with Walter?’

‘Yes.’

‘Since when?’

‘Since . . .’ He could not quite remember. ‘It was after the big raid. Maybe the Thursday or the Friday after. The raid was the tenth wasn’t it?’

‘Why doesn’t Walter mention this in his notes?’

‘What notes?’

‘The ones he types up from his police notebook.’

‘I’ve no idea. I saw him scribble in his little black book from time to time. Surely . . . ?’

Nailer was shaking his head.

‘His notebook’s missing.’

‘Missing from where?’

‘From the person of Chief Inspector Stilton.’

This baffled Cal.

‘What?’

‘His pocket, Mr Cormack. The folding notebook should have been in his pocket. We all carry them. At all times.’

‘Maybe the killer took it?’

‘We’re looking into that. In the meantime, who else could vouch for you? Who else knew about your work with Walter?’

‘Well . . . Walter’s man Dobbs, for a start.’