Black Out (40 page)

‘Hello, stranger,’ she said.

Kolankiewicz and the boy looked up from their game.

‘Mr Robertson has something he’d like to say to you, Troy. Haven’t you, Mr Robertson?’

She looked directly at the boy as she finished her sentence. He looked awkward but did not blush. He approached the side of the bed and addressed Troy.

‘We thought you was a tosser,’ he said very matter-of-factly.

‘Yeeees,’ said Troy, not knowing where the conversation was leading.

‘Only then my dad read in the paper as ’ow you were on to some bloke as killed that feller we found in bits. Only it wasn’t some feller at all, it was some posh bird you found in an ’ut down Chelsea way. It was the posh bird wasn’t it who killed that feller?’

‘Yes,’ said Troy. ‘It was the posh bird.’

‘And probably killed the shadowman as well.’

‘Who?’

‘Shadowman. That’s what we called Wolinski. Well – it’s what my dad calls him. ’E’s the local barber see, down the Mile End Road. No matter what time o’ day ’e come in, Dad says, ’e’s got five-o’clock shadow.’

‘I see,’ said Troy.

‘And then we realised you wasn’t a tosser, you was an ’ero.’

‘When did you decide this?’

‘Well – you got shot, didn’t you?’

‘Does that make me a hero?’

‘Not ‘arf! Anyway we ’ad a whip-round for yer and we got ’arf a dollar. ’Cept I just lost it to this gent ’ere.’

How, Troy wondered, would the child feel about his heroism if he knew that he had taken the beating of a lifetime on his own doorstep – from a woman he so euphemistically called ‘the posh bird’?

‘Would it,’ Troy began, ‘appease your injured vanity to know that you’d been taken by a master? I know of no one in the Met or the forces of the entire Home Counties who would sit down for so much as a game of snap with this gent ’ere.’

The boy looked bewildered by this.

‘Allow me,’ said Kolankiewicz, and handed Troy half a crown in pennies and ha’pennies, sending them cascading across the bedspread.

The nurse came in and told them Troy must rest. Anna kissed him and ran her fingers through his hair, and told him she had always known he was a fool. And Troy could only guess at how much she knew.

By the door, with the nurse holding it open as a hint, the boy paused. Something on his mind.

‘ ’Ere. It was the posh bird shot you too, wasn’t it?’

‘Yes,’ said Troy.

Troy slept. An age rolled over.

The nurse brought in a card. Someone asking to see him. Troy picked it up. The front read ‘Frederick, Marquess of Fermanagh’ and gave his Irish address. On the back it read, ‘I must see you, please.’

‘Tell him “No”,’ said Troy.

After all that they had the same name. But he could not remember that she had ever used his.

A week or so after his return to the hospital a spluttering car, pinking badly, seemed to cruise across the skies. So vivid was the noise he could see it in his mind’s eye – a clapped-out old banger, worse, far worse than his old Morris, out in the street pouring forth a plume of black exhaust. But it wasn’t out there in the street – it was up there in the sky. Then it cut out and he heard a swishing like a falling bough tossed down in a storm, then a bang like the gates of hell slamming shut and every window in his room turned to crystal fragments, showering his bed with their sparkling shards. He was not cut, merely dusted. The nurse bustled in. Said ‘Deary, deary me’, kicked the brake free on the base of the bed and steered him out into the corridor.

He had heard it, he had heard it! The whole point, Nikolai had said, was that one would never hear it coming!

‘If you can hear it you’re dead!’

It had not been a good war. He had hated it. Once it was over, he missed it badly.

He returned to work in the October. Onions’s wrath had turned to silence. It was understood that his promotion could go to hell. Wildeve made Sergeant. It was his due. He had coped marvellously in Troy’s absence and had emerged from the mess of the ‘Tart in the Tub Affair’, as the Yard so cruelly dubbed it, with not a stain on his record. To the best of Troy’s knowledge Jack never told anyone about Troy’s relationship with Diana Brack, and when Troy had reported the murder of M/Sgt Larissa Tosca, US Army, and had described her as an ‘informant’, Jack had asked no questions and made no guesses. For a while he and Troy shared a rank as well as an office – then in the summer of 1945, two days after VJ day, three days before his thirtieth birthday Troy’s promotion came through. He had made Inspector. Onions had relented.

All the same – the thought of resignation passed through Troy’s mind every working week. Even a boom in post-war crime had not reconciled him to his profession. He hated the peace even more than he hated the war.

Brother Rod did not share this view – he had ended the war a hero, festooned with medals, and had got out of it at the earliest opportunity. He had announced his intention to stand for Parliament as soon as Churchill had dissolved the coalition. That summer he stood for South Herts and when the long, slow count had been completed found, to everyone’s surprise but his own, that he had won the seat for Labour. By 1948 he sat on the front bench as Wing Commander Sir Rodyon Troy, Bt., RAF (Reserve), MP, DSO and bar, DFC, number two at the Air Ministry. Rod
loved the peace. Peace, like war, had been very good to him. Few things, if any, upset him.

‘Why is Tom Driberg asking me for your home number?’ he asked, clearly upset.

‘I don’t know,’ said Troy. ‘If you give it to him we’ll find out.’

Troy heard a muffled few words as Rod spoke to his secretary with one hand across the mouthpiece.

‘Freddie – I don’t know what you’re up to, but one doesn’t want to get too close to Driberg – he has a certain reputation. It’s bad enough him buttonholing me at tea-time!’

‘I’m not mixed up in anything that need worry you. If Whitehall 1212 is somehow not good enough for him, then by all means give him my home number.’

‘I didn’t even know you knew him.’

‘He used to come to the old man’s natter and nosh – as you used to put it – don’t you remember?’

‘No – I don’t. I could hardly forget him though, could I? Wonder where I was?’

He rang off. Troy wondered. He had not seen hide nor hair of Driberg since that day in ‘44 when he had been out to the coast to see Inspector Malnick. To judge from his journalism Driberg spent a lot of his time abroad. He knew from listening to Rod how well this went down with the Whips’ Office.

At home in Goodwins Court – Troy sat at the piano. He had just discovered Thelonious Monk and was pootling through music that struck him as curiously attractive whilst totally alien. What, he asked, had Debussy bitten off when he first used ragtime in
Children’s Corner?
Then the phone rang. It was Driberg.

‘I need a word. Could you come over to my flat?’

‘You can’t come here?’

‘Not really. It’s private. It wouldn’t do to be seen visiting the home of a policeman.’

‘But it will do for a policeman to be seen visiting your home?’

Driberg declined the bait and gave Troy an address in Knightsbridge. Troy said he’d be there in an hour. He hoped Driberg hadn’t had a run in with the police again. If he had, there was bugger all he could do about it.

It was a cold December. Days and nights of unrelenting, bitter
frost – made worse by a paucity of rations. Even bread, that grey mush, was rationed now. He drove to Knightsbridge wishing he had a car with a heater, wrapped in two overcoats and a balaclava helmet. A welcoming blast of heat greeted him as Driberg prised open the door and ushered him in. He had lost more hair at the temple, but what there was still rose up in ridges like corrugated cardboard, still gave him the look of a startled dog.

‘Very good of you, Troy,’ he said. ‘Very good indeed.’

Driberg peeled back the layers of coats and Troy felt two stones lighter.

‘If this is private, I can take it it’s got nothing to do with my being a policeman?’ Troy ventured.

Driberg opened the door from the lobby to the sitting room.

‘Did I say private? I meant delicate.’

Troy knew that.

A man sat with his back to him in a high armchair. All Troy could see was the top of his head. At the sound of their entry he did not get up, but hunched lower and leant forward. Driberg led off, striking out for the drinks and offering Troy a large Scotch. Troy walked slowly round to the fireplace to face the other guest. Curious how one can tell so much from the top of a thinning pate.

‘Neville?’ he said cautiously, a little incredulously.

Pym glanced up from his glass, still clutching it two-handed. He was pale and looked as though he hadn’t slept in days. Time had not been kind to him since their last meeting at MI5 more than four years ago.

‘Hullo, Troy. Good of you to come so soon.’

Driberg appeared next to him, warming his backside at the roaring fire, shoving a large Scotch into Troy’s hand.

‘You couldn’t call me yourself?’ Troy asked.

‘I wasn’t sure you’d take the call,’ said Pym. ‘We didn’t exactly meet under auspicious circumstances the last time, did we?’

‘I have the distinct impression this meeting will be no different.’

‘It’s a delicate matter,’ Driberg chipped in.

‘Isn’t it always?’

‘Won’t you sit down, Troy? I think it best for Pym to tell you in his own words.’

Troy perched on the leather-topped club fender and sipped at
the whisky, and decided to let Pym get on with it. Whatever it was it would not be private and he was almost certainly there in his professional capacity.

Pym sat back. It took him a while to gather himself. Driberg stared off into infinity. Troy sampled a first-rate single malt.

‘I spent last night in jail,’ Pym blurted out suddenly.

Troy nodded sagely and looked into his glass, trying to break eye contact.

‘I was arrested in the Holloway Road and taken to the police station … also in the Holloway Road and I … er … I … ’

‘Neville,’ Troy cut in sharply. ‘Please, just spit it out.’

‘Oh God,’ Pym groaned. He gulped at his whisky and began again, and the pained formality gave way at once to something more desperate.

‘I was in a lavatory in the Holloway Road. I suppose it was about half an hour after closing time. That’s usually the best time. The drunks have had their piss and rolled off home – you know damn well that anyone still hanging around a gents’ lavatory is after the same thing you are. There’s some very tasty rough trade in that particular bog – a fair bit of young stuff too – I go there quite often. Catch the Piccadilly up from the West End – cab back if I meet anyone I feel I could trust to take home. Last night was a good night – there were half a dozen of us – no one I really knew – we wanked each other off – a group job – you had your work cut out knowing what belonged to whom. Then it happened. This uniformed copper, big as a house, bursts in – “Right you are, you filthy bastards” – and they all ran for it.’

Pym stopped. He was trembling and his voice was going fast.

‘Why didn’t you run?’ Troy asked.

‘I couldn’t. Nor could the boy I was with.’

He stopped again, drained off the last of his Scotch. Driberg took the glass from him at once and returned with it almost full.

‘I was … I was on my knees giving the boy a gobble.’

‘Boy?’

‘I say boy – he looked sixteen. At least.’

‘So you got nicked?’

‘Yes,’ Pym croaked.

‘A constable?’

‘Sergeant – does it matter?’

‘A constable would make life easier. How old was he?’

‘About forty I suppose.’

Troy didn’t fancy his chances of trying to talk sense to a career copper who was still in uniform at forty, had enough rank to know what was what, and would, beyond a shadow of a doubt, not take kindly to the intercession of a Detective Inspector ten years younger than he was.

‘He took us both to the local nick. I’ve no idea what became of the boy. They pulled me out at six o’clock this morning and charged me with gross indecency. I lied about my name – so they turned out my pockets and found my driving licence and a couple of letters. I told them I was a journalist. They didn’t question that.’

‘What do you do these days, Neville?’ Troy asked.

‘Good God, Troy, haven’t you grasped the point of all this? I’m still with MI5!’

There was a sudden silence in which Troy could hear the clock tick and the hoarse rasp of Pym’s breathing.

‘You begin to see why I sent for you?’ said Driberg. ‘Neville came to me. I called you. I felt you might be …
simpatico.’

‘Oh I see only too clearly – but what the hell do you think I can do about it?’

‘I’d be grateful for anything,’ Driberg said in a friendly tone.

‘I can’t have this come out,’ said Pym. ‘I’m finished if it gets out. I’d lose my clearance – they’d say I was wide open to blackmail – even if I beat the charge and walk out of court with an apology from the police I’d lose clearance and they’d have me out in a jiffy.’

‘Five could get this dropped just like that, far more easily than I could,’ said Troy. ‘Is there no one you can trust?’

‘That’s not the point, Troy. Who I might trust is irrelevant – there’s no one would trust a queer!’

‘What I was thinking,’ Driberg said gently, ‘is that if you could take the matter up – get Pym off with a caution perhaps – it might never emerge that he wasn’t a journalist – it need never reach the papers.’

Troy looked from one to the other. For the life of him he couldn’t think why they had picked him – apart from the fact that
they both knew him – why they should think he would be in any way, as Driberg put it,
simpatico
. It remained, nevertheless, that he was.

He took out his little black notebook and turned to a blank page.

‘What was this Sergeant’s name?’

‘I’m telling you,’ he said with grotesque emphasis, ‘he had the lad’s cock in his mouth and he was sucking it!’

‘I don’t doubt it,’ said Troy.

‘I saw him with my own eyes! I pulled the bugger off with my own hands!’