Rag and Bone (30 page)

“Kim Philby,” he said to the receptionist as he showed his ID. “Major Cosgrove should have me listed for an appointment.”

“Yes, Mr. Philby, I have you down. You can go right up,” the receptionist said cheerily.

“I’ll go up with him,” I said, not wanting to wait for Cosgrove to finish gasbagging through some meeting.

“Not so fast, sir,” said the sergeant. “Not until they call for you.”

“Listen,” I said, “I only need to talk to the major for a minute. He knows me, he won’t mind.”

“If he wouldn’t mind, then why hasn’t he called you up? Sir?”

“I can ring the major again and ask,” the receptionist said helpfully, her hand on the telephone. “But he did say he’d be busy for quite a while.”

“Never mind all that,” Philby said. “I’ll escort the lieutenant; I know the place well enough.”

“All right, sir, if you say so,” the sergeant said, his reluctance obvious. Whoever this guy was, he obviously had clout around here.

“Kim Philby,” he said, extending his hand.

“Billy Boyle,” I said as we climbed the staircase. “Thanks for rescuing me back there. Do you work with Major Cosgrove?”

“More of a liaison. I’m with MI6, the other side of the coin. We handle the overseas stuff, but we work closely with our brethren here. Your name is familiar, Lieutenant Boyle, Charles may have mentioned you. Aren’t you looking into the murder of that Soviet fellow Egorov?”

“Yes, I am. That’s why I’m here.”

“I wish you luck, Lieutenant, for all our sakes. Murdered diplomats in the heart of London is something we could all do without. Whitehall is none too pleased, nor are the Soviets.”

“I can imagine.” I wondered if Philby would hang around when we got to Cosgrove’s office. I had some dirty laundry to air, and it would only complicate things to have him listening in.

“Here we are,” Philby said, opening a door and stepping in ahead of me. “Charles, I’ve brought you this American chap. Seemed harmless enough.” He gave me a wink as he said it.

“Boyle,” Cosgrove said. “What an unexpected surprise.” He looked at me from his seat in a leather armchair, one of two facing a large, ornate desk, the wood polished to a ferocious gleam.

“Major Cosgrove,” I said, a little confused at his friendly greeting, and what seemed like genuine surprise at seeing me. Then I saw the other person in the office, the man seated behind the desk. The one with the telephone at his elbow.

“Mr. Brown,” I said.

“No, that’s—,” Philby began to say, then caught himself. “Sorry. Security, I quite understand. I can wait in the hall, if you like.”

“No need, no need at all,” Cosgrove said. “We’re all friends here, right, Boyle?”

“Sure we are, Major. Friends and allies.” Cosgrove was more jovial than I was used to, but it was forced, as if he was working to cover up something else. Or to send me a signal that things weren’t what they seemed.

“What can I do for you then?” Cosgrove said, as if granting me a favor would be the high point of his day.

“For starters, you can tell me what MI5 was paying Sheila Carlson for, and if killing her lover and Tadeusz Tucholski was part of the contract.”

“I may have to apologize for bringing Lieutenant Boyle up,” Philby said, raising an eyebrow as he relit his pipe and settled into his chair, seeming to enjoy the tension in the room.

“Certainly you don’t think we pay people to commit murder,” Brown said. “Do you, Lieutenant Boyle?”

“I know one person on your payroll is a murderer, Mr. Brown. Edward Miller, late of the Rubens Hotel, was killed by Sheila Carlson. Nice combination of poison and bayonet.”

“Gruesome,” Philby said. “The other chap, the one with the Polish name, he’s alive?”

“Alive and back in London, ready to speak his mind.” I watched the three of them. Brown and Cosgrove exchanged glances, while Philby wrapped a smile around his pipe stem.

“It sounds like a domestic issue,” Brown said. “More suited to Scotland Yard than MI5. Have you talked to them, Lieutenant Boyle?”

“Yes. They’re on their way to pick up Miss Carlson right now. I imagine she’ll sing quite a tune in exchange for escaping the gallows.” It was a bluff, but you never know. I waited for a reaction, but got nothing. Cosgrove was quiet, and looked away
from me, more interested in the carpet than the conversation. Strange, because he and I never got along, neither of us passing up the opportunity to show disdain for the other. He should have been lambasting me for what I was accusing him of. Instead, nothing. It had to be Brown. He was probably higher up than Cosgrove. I’d figured him for a heavy, but he was more than he appeared. Maybe he and Cosgrove didn’t see eye to eye.

“I wouldn’t be so sure,” Brown said. He spoke with a certainty that couldn’t be faked. It was the finality of the grave. “About her singing a tune, that is. But you’re right about the gallows, she won’t come to that end.”

“She’s dead?”

“Unfortunate,” Brown said. “She got off the train at Slough. Last night, unfamiliar with the town, and with the blackout in effect, she walked in front of a truck.”

“And how do you know all this? Last I saw you and your pal Wilson, you had a flat to fix.”

“It’s our business to know things, Lieutenant Boyle. We had people watching the trains, of course.”

I began to see how everything fit. “You got what you were after on Penford Street when you asked Sheila if she knew where Radecki was, because you both knew he was going to visit Tadeusz. You just didn’t know where he was.”

“Really?”

“And when she told you she didn’t know, her usefulness was at an end, and she’d become a liability. There was nothing she could do except implicate you. So you had people out looking for her, in case you missed her at Eddie’s place.”

“I don’t know what you are talking about, Lieutenant,” Brown said. “And I should have you brought up on charges for shooting up my vehicle.”

“You shot at his car?” Philby said, more shocked at that than double-crossing murderers.

“One tire, that’s all.”

“Imagination and initiative,” Philby said. “We could use you
over at MI6. Perhaps an American with the Special Operations Executive would stir things up a bit.”

“You run the SOE?” I asked, wondering what their meeting here was all about.

“Part of it, you might say. Never mind about that, Boyle, just idle conjecture. Probably best for you if you leave now,” Philby said, blowing a stream of smoke as he spoke.

“Why?”

“Because I need to talk to these gentlemen about the Germans. Our actual enemies, you may recall. And I need to convince your Mr. Brown, as you know him, not to have you walk in front of a truck tonight. Best be careful, Boyle. Things are not always as they seem.”

“As the head of Section Five well knows,” said Brown, leaning back in his chair, his eyes on Cosgrove, daring him to speak. “Right, Charles?”

“Sometimes, they are worse than they seem,” Cosgrove said, bringing his gaze up from the carpet. “Worse than one can imagine.”

I left. I walked down the staircase, wondering what other strange conversations were taking place in the rooms I passed by, what death sentences were being handed out, what rationalizations were being made, and what burdens had suddenly become too much to bear. Outside, a fog had descended, the sky a solid, low gray, with swirls of yellowish brown hanging like a filthy veil from the barely visible rooftops. I crossed Piccadilly with care, the heavy traffic moving slowly but steadily, headlamps on, casting their gloomy, lost light into the fog. A real accident would be likely enough, never mind a surreptitious push into a crowded street. Had Sheila known she was being hunted, or had she still trusted her paymaster? Did she know her assailant, perhaps relaxing as he put his arm protectively around her waist as they waited at the side of the road? One good push, low in the back, is all it would take. If anyone saw it, he’d be gone in seconds, a nondescript man in a plain coat, a hat pulled down low over his face, making his way through the
gathering crowd. Our “actual enemies” is what Philby had called the Germans, but at times I had to wonder. Even the worst of them wore a uniform that told you who they were.

Then I remembered. The Scotland Yard tail. I looked around for the sedan and the two fedoras, but in the narrow street, choked with fog, all I could see was the next lamppost. The gabfest with Cosgrove and his pals and this pea-souper had disoriented me. But the fog hadn’t helped the guys following me either, since they were nowhere in sight. Maybe they’d decided it wasn’t worth it and given up. Or maybe they were on foot, invisible a few yards behind me.

I turned a corner, hoping it was Albemarle Street, since that route would take me into Berkeley Square. I stopped and leaned against the brickwork, listening for signs of anyone following. A truck rumbled by slowly, the driver sounding his horn to warn those lost in the fog. Footsteps sounded, the
slap slap
of leather soles running on pavement echoing off the buildings. A woman carrying a shopping bag walked by me, visible only for a second before disappearing into the mist. A sharp, short whistle sounded, but I couldn’t tell where it came from. I started walking toward the square, the cold and damp seeping into my bones as the sounds of running feet seemed to surround me. I heard them behind me, fading away in the opposite direction. Ahead of me, they drew nearer and slowed to a steady pace and stopped, as I tried to make out the vague outline of a figure in the fog. I stopped, and so did all the other sounds. I hoped I was only feeling jumpy, but I had the feeling there were more than two Scotland Yard plainclothesmen out there. I stepped into a doorway, trying to melt into the fog and vanish.

I heard the throaty grumble of a motorcycle as it downshifted and came my way. The fog had kept most traffic off the roads, and the sound took on the sinister quality of a hunter seeking prey. The footsteps started up again, drawing closer from both directions. The same woman with the shopping bag walked by, this time halting and giving out the same sharp whistle that I’d
heard before. She was definitely not wearing a fedora. Two men came up to me, one from each side. Stanley and Clive, Topper’s henchmen.

“Boss wants a chat,” Clive said. “Come on.”

“I’m busy,” I said, trying to make out if there were others hiding in the gloom.

“That’s nice. Now hand over your pistol to Stanley and follow me. We’re close to the Green Park Tube, we’ll take that. Better underground than feeling our way through this mush.”

“OK,” I said, not seeing an alternative. I handed my piece over and asked Stanley how he was doing.

“Can’t complain,” he said. Since I’d just given him a weapon, I refrained from pointing out how I’d been right to slam his face when we’d first met, after he’d been so nasty to me. I’d told him then that if I hadn’t, he’d have just kept being rotten. Now here he was, with me outnumbered and defenseless, and he was nice as pie. It felt good to be right about that, since I’d been so wrong about everything else.

CHAPTER
•
TWENTY-TWO

T
HEY’D BEEN ON
me since I’d left the hotel that morning, Clive explained as we rode the Tube in the direction of Shoreditch.

“You didn’t give us much of a chance, with that big bloke driving you around, stopping at Scotland Yard, then dropping in on MI5. A high-visibility mark, you are,” he said as the train rolled out of the station.

“What about the two detectives who followed me?”

“Not much trouble at all, especially with this fog. Seems like both their rear tires went flat while they had their eyes glued on that door at St. James’s Street. Lucky for us you left on foot. All we had to do was not lose you in this blasted fog. Not good for the lungs, you know, to be out running about in it.”

“Who’s the boss you mentioned? Topper or Archie?”

“There’s only one boss, and best to keep your mouth shut about it for now. It’s just a chat he wants, and no reason for trouble if you follow along like you’re told. Got it?”

One goon had preceded Stanley and Clive as we boarded the train, and another followed us, making sure we had privacy at one end of the car. The odds were against me, and in an enclosed space to boot. It made me very agreeable. “Got it.”

We rode in silence and took the escalator to the surface when we reached Liverpool Street, which meant that it was too early for Archie to have taken up residence underground. They led me through a twisting maze of streets, past dingy, low buildings that looked only marginally better off than the bombed-out ruins facing them. The thick, gray fog reeked of coal smoke
from the chimneys on every building. They spewed gritty ash from low-grade, cheap coal. The gutters ran with stinking, greasy water, the runoff of cesspools and burned-out homes. A foghorn sounded from a freighter on the river, only a few blocks away, a low, mournful drone that seemed to come from the wounded city itself.

“Here,” Clive said as he knocked on a door painted a bright red, the thick varnish shiny and garish in this neighborhood of boarded-up windows and ruin. He gave two short raps, waited a beat, then one final thump. The door opened, and a guy whose nose had been broken a few times but who wore a tuxedo well greeted us with a nod. Piano music tinkled idly from a room down the hall, as if a bored but accomplished musician was at the keys. Off the hall, in a sitting room, a fireplace glowed with coals, the warmth as welcome inside as the smoke was noxious in the street. Lush burgundy carpeting graced the hallway, and all the walls were painted a creamy white. It was a welcome contrast to the world outside, tucked away on a small side street in a seldom-traveled part of town. The perfect location for a whorehouse.

The muscle escort peeled off as Stanley and Clive led me down the hall, toward the music. The room was flanked at one end by a grand piano and at the other by a well-stocked bar. Between them sat Archie Chapman, looking comfortable in a leather armchair, as coffee was poured into his china cup by a stunningly beautiful woman in a black negligee. At the piano, a dark-haired woman in a red evening gown played with the keys while she smoked a cigarette in a long holder. Topper sat at the bar, and raised a glass in greeting.