Second Violin (57 page)

Troy heard the all-clear sound. Saw daylight at the end of the tiny tunnels of the airbrick. Heard sounds in the street. Called out. No one responded.

A day passed.

Having no choice, they pissed where they lay.

Zette slept.

A new raid began at a new dusk.

What was left of the synagogue shook to another high explosive. Dust and rubble coming down on them, a piece of the ark’s roof glanced off Zette’s head and she passed out
mid-sentence . . .

‘If we ever –’

Troy moved her head to the airbrick, pressed her face against it, felt for the wound, wiped away a streak of blood, breathed clean air, waited for the dust to settle, saw night fall.

Zette slept.

Troy slept.

Troy awoke to the sound of banging. Streaks of light in the airbrick. A furry creature at his throat. He flinched and scrabbled. Mouse or rat? Then he realised it was the fake beard that had
slipped off.

Banging directly on the ark doors. He tapped back with his fist.

A voice said, ‘Hold on. We’re digging.’

As if he could do anything else but hold on.

He shook Zette. She woke groggily, complained of the pain in her head, the cramp in her legs, wrapped herself around him.

‘They’re digging us out,’ Troy said.

‘How long . . . how long have we been here?’

‘About thirty-two hours, I think. I’ve seen dawn twice.’

Blinding light as the doors slid back, and a voice said ‘Gotcher!’

Many hands were grappling to take his. There was George Bonham and Kolankiewicz and Elishah Nader and Walter Stilton and Billy Jacks and a big-eared bloke in a fur coat looking like the skinny
man’s Bud Flanagan.

‘Ach, so,’ said Hummel. ‘
Der andere
Troy.’

Troy staggered out onto dust and rubble, shielding his eyes from the light and trying to see. Why was it so bright? And then he saw. There was nothing left of Heaven’s
Gate. Nothing left but the brick ark from which they crawled. Nothing overhead but the bright blue, cloud-dappled sky with a nip of English autumn in the air.

Zette slipped. Troy caught her in his arms. Found he could not lift her. She passed out again.

‘Zette, Zette!’

Her eyes had closed, and the cut in her head opened up again.

Bonham said, ‘’Ere – let me take her.’

And scooped her up in one giant’s paw.

Walter Stilton took his arm.

‘Steady, lad. You’ve been banged up nigh on two days. Bound to be a bit woozy.’

‘Walter? Walter!’

‘Aye, it’s me, lad.’

‘I . . . I need your car.’

Troy lurched off across the rubble, got five paces towards Stilton’s Riley before Stilton restrained him.

‘Goin’ somewhere, were you? Don’t be daft. Come on now, you’re in no fit state . . .’

‘Chesham Place . . . got to . . .’

‘You want to go to Chesham Place?’

‘I have to go to Chesham Place.’

‘OK. I’ll drive you.’

Stilton dumped him down in the passenger seat. Troy leaned back and closed his eyes. At the sound of the engine turning over, he opened them, looked out through the windscreen. There on the edge
of the site, hands stuffed in the pockets of her police tunic, three bold stripes upon her arm, pale and sad, stood Kitty Stilton.

‘Are we there?’

‘Almost,’ Stilton said. ‘We’re parked round the corner. You put your head on the block if you like. I’d rather not be seen, for all I know Steerforth might have a
bloke watching Redburn’s house . . .’

‘He hasn’t.’

‘. . . And Carsington’s.’

‘He hasn’t, Walter. If he had, things might never have got this far.’

‘Maybe . . . all the same, just one bloke watching. You watch your step, if Steerforth . . .’

Troy wasn’t listening any more. This wasn’t the time to tell Walter that Steerforth had watched the house in person. That he had followed Carsington in person all the way to
Heaven’s Gate. This wasn’t the time to tell Walter Steerforth was dead. There’d never be a time to tell Walter Steerforth was dead.

Troy all but leapt from the car. His own energy amazed him. Dead on his feet, and feeling he could kick the door in if he had to.

A housekeeper in her seventies answered, frail and stooped but defiant.

‘The master’s not at ’ome.’

Troy held up his warrant card and pushed past her, through the inner doors and into the hall.

‘Carsington!’

He looked up the stairwell, iron railings wrapped around him in Piranesi loops all the way to the clouded skylight in the roof.

‘Carsington!’

And the stairs fed back his own voice to him in a diminishing echo . . . ‘Carsington, Carsington, Carsington.’

‘I told yer. The master’s not home. He ain’t been home all night. I ain’t seen him since Wednesday morning. We getting ready to call the p’lice!’

Troy could still hear his own voice. Waited for silence, for silence was his answer. The only answer he wanted to hear. Lord Carsington was not at ’ome. Lord Carsington never would be at
’ome. Lord Carsington was underneath a hundred tons of rubble at Heaven’s Gate.

He caught sight of himself in a full-length mirror. He had not stopped to think what he looked like. Now he could see himself as Carsington’s housekeeper surely saw him. His jacket –
Nader’s jacket – was ripped at the shoulder and his trousers at the knee. His hair was white with dust, the knuckles of both hands were bleeding. Standing next to him was a big,
grim-faced man.

‘Freddie?’

Troy looked at Onions’ reflection, then turned to look at the man himself.

‘He’s dead. It was Carsington.’

‘Freddie.’

‘I told you it was Carsington.’

‘Come with me, now. That’s an order.’

‘It was Carsington!’

‘Outside now!’

They sat in Onions’ car.

‘Kolankiewicz called me. Said you were fit to do your nut.’

‘I’ll be fine.’

‘Fine? For God’s sake, man. You’ve been buried alive for the best part of two days!’

‘I’ll be OK.’

‘OK, my arse. I’m taking you to hospital.’

‘No . . . if you have to take me somewhere, take me home.’

‘Home?’

‘I’ve broken no bones. It’s just cuts and bruises.’

Onions started the car. When they rounded the corner Stilton had gone.

‘Kolankiewicz says they took the woman to the London Hospital. Head injuries or summat.’

Troy said nothing.

Onions said, ‘You going to tell me who she is and what she was doing there?’

‘She’s Izzy Borg’s daughter. And I don’t know what she was doing there.’

‘I don’t believe you. Try telling me what happened.’

Troy told him. Told him everything except Steerforth.

By the time Onions pulled up his car in St Martin’s Lane he was saying, ‘You took a stupid risk.’

And Troy was saying as little as possible. He was wondering if they would dig for the body. It would take precious resources. The job of rescue squads was to dig for the living. Would Onions ask
for Heaven’s Gate to be dug out for the dead?

‘It’s Carsington down there. You know damn well it is.’

‘But you say you never saw his face? Just that he was a big bugger.’

‘They’re all big buggers. Trench and Carsington six foot or so, Lockett more like six four. But . . . Carsington’s missing. I think that says it all.’

‘Aye. Missing. He might be back. So . . . I’ve stuck a jack at Chesham Place . . . all the discretion of Primo Carnera at a midgets’ reunion . . . but he’s got his
orders. I told him. Anything, anything at all, and he comes to me first. Now get inside, get cleaned up and get your head down.’

Suddenly everything Onions was saying became real and the strength seemed to seep out of him and puddle at his feet.

He pushed the door open.

‘I’ll be in tomorrow.’

Onions said, ‘You’re on sick leave. Don’t bother coming in tomorrow.’

‘Stan, I have to follow . . .’

‘I’ll do the following. Right now I’ve got Kolankiewicz telling me to put you on sick leave. And for once I agree with the bugger.’

‘I have leads to follow. I cannot take leave now.’

Onions said, ‘Go to bed. I’ll be round tomorrow. It ought to be open and shut. As you said, the bugger’s missing. I think that says it all.’

‘Is this your way of telling me I was right all along?’

‘It’s my way of saying if you still want a job in Murder, do what you’re bloody well told.’

Troy called the London Hospital. Miss Borg had suffered concussion, but was recovering well and would be discharged in a day or two.

He sloughed off his clothes, found the gas was working, ran a meagre bath off the Ascot heater and fell asleep in it.

In the evening Kolankiewicz called on him in the middle of the air-raid.

‘I need to give you the once-over.’

‘Be my guest.’

Kolankiewicz examined his head, listened to his heart, said, ‘OK, smartyarse, so you’re immortal. Now... you got anything you want to tell me?’

Troy said nothing.

Kolankiewicz said, ‘Troy, be a
mensh.
I hate to see you grow up . . .’

‘Grow up what?’

‘Hard . . . cynical.’

‘Secretive, destructive?’

‘That too.’

Troy said nothing.

In the morning Onions appeared on his doorstep.

‘Tell me,’ Troy said.

‘Stick the kettle on,’ Onions said.

Precious time wasted.

Onions sat with his cup of char. Stringing out his moment. Troy could have strangled him.

‘They’ve found Carsington’s body.’

Long swill of hot tea. Eye to eye pause.

‘They dug down?’

Onions was shaking his head.

‘No. They found Carsington’s body. In the Bridal Suite of the Empire Hotel in Brighton.’

‘What?’

‘Bridal Suite. In front of the French windows. Bollock naked. Covered in blood and shit. Cut his own throat.’

For a while neither of them said anything.

Then Onions said, ‘It was his fifty-fifth birthday, by the bye. If you think numbers mean anything, that is. If you ask me . . . barking. Completely bloody barking. I nipped down to
Brighton. Saw the manager of the Empire. Seems Carsington had booked the room half a dozen times over the last couple of years. Every time it was the same. They’d find a room you’d have
to clean with a hose . . . blood and shit all over the place. He’d bung ’em twenty-five quid to clean up the mess and keep their gobs shut.’

And Troy said, ‘Then it’s got to be one of the others.’

Onions was shaking his head.

‘Lockett’s been in the Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford since Sunday night. Bit of a do at his old college. A bit too much vintage port. Silly sod got himself run over in the blackout.
Happens all the time. We’ve lost more people to road accidents than to bombs.’

‘Trench?’

Onions was shaking his head.

‘Enlisted Wednesday morning. Been at Camberley barracks ever since.’

‘Enlisted?!?’

‘Happen it was summat you said to him? Whatever. Conscience finally got to him, and he decided to put his patriotism on the line.’

‘I don’t bloody believe this.’

‘You’d better. It’s kosher. Oxford coppers checked out Lockett, I drove to Camberley and interviewed Trench meself.’

‘Then . . . then . . .’

Troy stopped himself saying ‘who’s in the pit?’ The last thing he wanted was to encourage Onions to have it dug out.

Onions finished his tea. Got up to leave.

‘Don’t feel foolish.’

Troy didn’t.

‘You were right. I was wrong. You got the bastard. He’s dead. That’s all that matters. Digging down’s a waste of time. Sooner or later we’ll have a list of missing
persons to work from and one name’ll stick out like a sore thumb.’

On the doorstep Onions glanced at the sky – Indian summer, hints of autumn – turned back with one last thought tripping off his tongue.

‘Speaking of missing persons. Ernie Steerforth’s missis phoned in and reported him missing.’

Troy hoped he looked blank, blank or startled.

‘Missing? When?’

‘Wednesday night. Silly bugger. Out in an air-raid.’

If Onions suspected a thing it wasn’t showing in his face.

‘Back to Murder, eh?’

It was as though he’d uttered his motto, à propos of nothing much.

‘Quite,’ said Troy. ‘You said yourself only a few weeks ago, murder doesn’t stop just because there’s a war on. In fact, it gets worse.’

‘Aye . . . and so does the illegitimate birth rate, so I figure we’re about even on life and death.’

Had Onions just made a joke? Onions hardly ever made jokes.

‘Come to think of it, I reckon we’ve gone sex mad as a nation. The Commissioner’s getting reports from beat bobbies of people shagging in Hyde Park in broad daylight. Would you
believe it?’

‘It wouldn’t be broad daylight if it weren’t for Double Summertime.’

‘So it’s OK to shag in the park as long as it’s dark, is that it?’

Troy said nothing.

If Onions suspected a thing it wasn’t showing in his face.

He gave Troy one of his rare smiles, blue eyes lit up, told him he was pleased with him, ‘by and large’, and set off down the alley to St Martin’s Lane. He passed Troy’s
mother coming the other way – but as Superintendent Onions and Lady Troy had never met, neither recognised the other.

‘At a time like this, Frederick, you should come home, you should be at home.’

It was like being met at the nursery gates, aged four.

‘How did you find out?’

‘That nice Mr Onions telephoned me. One day you must introduce me.’

Troy gave in. He hadn’t the energy to argue with his mother.

In the cab, crossing Euston Road, she said, ‘You rest. Then lunch. Then you rest some more.’

His father was out. Troy stretched out on the chaise longue in the old man’s study, feeling decidedly unsleepy. The next thing he knew someone was shaking him by the leg.

‘Freddie?’

Troy opened his eyes.

It was a big bloke in RAF blue.