Old Flames (44 page)

Troy wondered about the look Jack shot at him. Reproach?

‘Her house had been turned over.’

‘Ransacked?’

‘No. A pro. Not a thing out of place. But it had been done just the same. You know the feeling when that’s been done. You’ve seen it yourself. And I still don’t know what
he was looking for.’

Nor did Troy. Jack sat on the cold radiator. Troy twisted his head to be able to see his face, felt the lump beneath the bandage as his head touched the frame of the bed. What must he look
like?

‘What were you doing?’

‘Eh?’

‘Why were you taking her to London? She had a return ticket in her coat pocket. That and a powder compact. Why were the two of you on that train?’

‘I don’t really know.’

Jack pushed himself off the radiator, took a few steps into the room and Troy heard the deep breath that presaged rage. He was being so awfully dim. Jack, lackadaisical Jack, darting around a
room like a cat on a hot tin roof, unable to stay still for more than a minute. It was his way of keeping control. He was seethingly angry with Troy and Troy had been too slow to realise it. He
prised himself higher in the sheets and pillows, as near as he could an attempt to face Jack and diffuse him.

‘I meant,’ he began lamely, ‘that she didn’t tell me why. Simply that there were things she would only tell me once we’d got to London.’

‘Such as?’

‘Cockerell—what he was up to.’

‘You mean you had a night alone with her and you couldn’t get it out of her?’

‘Yes.’

‘Freddie. Did you sleep with that woman?’

It seemed like a challenge to his nature, one the severest moments of mistrust in all the years they had known one another.

‘No, Jack, I didn’t.’

‘A whole night to ask her questions and you end up with her leading you around by the—’

‘Jack! I didn’t fuck her!’

Jack grabbed the chair, pulled it closer to Troy, and leant in.

‘Do you have even the faintest idea what you’ve done? This is no time to be telling me lies!’

‘I’m not lying. And what I did was investigate a murder.’

‘Freddie, until you went to Brighton, there was no murder.’

‘Yes there was. Cockerell was murdered. Jessel was murdered.’

‘I’ve seen the medical report on your desk. Jessel died of heart failure.’

‘Heart failure aggravated by having a gun waved in his face!’

Jack sat back, almost reeled at the shock.

‘What?’

‘I found gun oil on his desk. A drop no bigger than a pin head, but unmistakably gun oil. Some bugger thought it a good idea to put the fear of God up Jessel by waving a gun in his
face.’

‘Why is none of this in writing?’

‘Jack—for Christ’s sake …’

‘I repeat. Do you know what you’ve done?’

Troy did not answer.

‘You’ve left me bugger all to go on. You’ve ripped the lid off a can of worms.’

‘Bonser. We talk to Bonser. Somebody told him to go round to the King Henry that day. We talk to Bonser.’

‘We?’

Troy said nothing. He knew what was coming.

‘We. Freddie, there is no “we”. You’re off the case.’

‘You told Onions?’

‘Did you think I was bluffing?’

‘What’s the deal?’

‘You’re on sick leave. You stay away from the Yard. When the medics pass you as fit, your return is discretionary. If I think you’re going to stick your nose into this, I can
and will prolong your sick leave.’

‘Jack,’ he said softly. ‘That’s the most colossal fiddle.’

‘Quite. But it might just keep you alive. It might just keep you away from the spooks. Onions wants you nowhere near the bastards.’

This was bad news. What idea did Jack have about the next move?

‘Jack, you surely don’t mean that you’re going to tackle the spooks? That’s the last thing we can do.’

Jack picked up his hat from the bed. If the gesture was meant to end the meeting it was wasted. Troy sat bolt upright.

‘Jack! You’re not listening to me!’

Indeed, Jack was heading for the door.

‘You can’t approach them. Don’t you see?’

Jack had the door open, one half of his body already hidden by it.

‘They’ll kill it stone dead!’

Troy realised he was shouting with all the power left in his lungs. The force made his chest ache and his head momentarily was reeling. Jack closed the door and leant against it, his palms flat
against the boards.

‘They’ll take it out of our hands. Then they’ll do nothing.’

‘Let’s hear it,’ Jack said.

‘Has it occurred to you that we don’t know which …’ Troy fumbled for the word and failed … ‘which … side killed Cockerell?’

‘I don’t follow.’

‘I mean that I don’t know who Cockerell was working for. He wasn’t official. We can’t investigate this and expect any help from Five and Six. Now the PM has owned up
they’ll want it all buried as soon as possible. If that means leaving the murder of an innocent woman uninvestigated, then that’s what they’ll do.’

Jack knew he was right. Troy could see it in his eyes. He was yet again buggering Jack about with irrefutable and utterly unpalatable logic.

‘So I’m stuck with a case that has no leads?’

‘Work around it. Follow the scent, pretend for the time being that spooks aren’t involved. Just as though it were an ordinary murder. See how close you can get. We can only go to
Five and Six when we’ve the making of a case. If at all.’

‘Ordinary murder? Do you know that no one on that train can positively identify the man who broke Madeleine Kerr’s neck? I’ve enough details to describe a small army, but so
contradictory that you could never resolve it into an individual. Tall, short fat, thin. The only clear description I have is of you. Half a dozen people are perfectly willing to go into court and
identify you as the man who broke Madeleine Kerr’s neck, but nobody can pick out the real killer. Nobody saw him pass through the station. Nobody at Brighton can single out anyone in
particular as boarding that train. And you want me to work “around it”?’

‘Yes. And keep her name and mine out of the papers.’

‘Well,’ Jack said, ‘it’s nice to know I can do one thing right.’

He heard the echo of the door slamming for what seemed like an age afterwards, the trail of Jack’s anger lingering in the air, glancing off the walls. But Jack was not the worst. The worst
was yet to come.

The next day, the day of his discharge. He had stuffed his pyjamas into his briefcase and was struggling with the sleeves of his jacket. Dizziness caught him, he fell back
against the side of the bed, one arm in, one arm out, the jacket stranded halfway down his back. A hand reached out to help him. He looked up. Anna Pakenham, dour, unsmiling, standing over him, her
hands guiding his arms through the momentary maze of his sleeves.

‘What are you doing here?’

‘Trust me. I’m a mistress.’

She was insistent. She would drive him home. He protested weakly that it was less than a quarter of a mile, but feeling his head spin knew he would probably end up face down in the gutter in the
Strand if left to his own devices.

In his sitting room she unwound the bandages and checked the wound.

‘Neat,’ she said. ‘There’ll be a scar, but the flap of skin’s retaking. You won’t have a bald stripe. It looks for all the world as though the bullet bounced
off your thick head. I don’t suppose you need me to tell you how lucky you’ve been.’

‘Story of my life.’

‘Luck can run out, Troy. Have you ever met a boxer who’s gone punchy? Mickey McGuire’s a patient of mine. British and Empire Light Heavyweight Champion before the war, at least
for two bouts until he lost it. He’s been bashed to buggery in his time—and now he’d be hard pressed to tell you what time it is or what day it is.’

‘I get the message.’

‘No you don’t. You can hear me but it doesn’t mean a damn thing to you. Now, to more important matters than whether you live or die. I want to know—have you dragged Angus
into anything that will hurt him?’

‘No,’ he said, ‘Angus is out of it.’

Anna clicked her doctor’s bag closed, kissed him on the cheek, called him a bastard and opened the front door. He was halfway to the kitchen, intending to put the kettle on, when he heard
her voice, and then his brother’s voice in answer. They were standing on the doorstep mulling him over. He put the kettle on anyway. He doubted he could get through one of Rod’s
lectures without something to do with his hands.

When he returned, Rod had thrown his jacket on the sofa, and was standing red-faced, tugging his tie to half-mast and groping for the collar stud. Troy stuck the tray in front of him.

‘Not to beat about the bush, Freddie—’

He grunted at the constriction of his throat, sighed as the stud popped free.

‘Not to beat about the thingumajig—what are you up to?’

He breathed deeply, looking Troy in the eye.

‘Well?’

‘I’m doing my job, Rod. That’s all there is to it.’

‘You’re lying!’

Troy swung at him, his clenched fist floating uselessly off Rod’s arm as he sidestepped the blow, his own weight plummeting him towards the floor, sending the tea tray flying. Rod grabbed
him round the torso and dropped him onto the sofa in an easy movement. He was a head taller than Troy and a couple of stones heavier, he took his weight effortlessly and then let him go.

‘Don’t be bloody stupid! You think I don’t know when you’re lying? You’ve been a world class liar since we were boys!’

Troy had winded himself. Rod leant low over him. For a fraction of a second Troy thought he meant to hit him, and as Rod bent over him, legs wide, head low, he got ready to kick him in the balls
and have done. But Rod reached behind him to his jacket, half-buried under Troy. He pulled something from the pocket and stood up.

‘Just doing your job, eh?’ he said, and flung a small shiny object into Troy’s lap. It was Madeleine Kerr’s gun.

‘Just doing your job? Freddie, you’re bloody lucky Jack didn’t find this. Bloody lucky the local plods going through your pockets found your warrant card first and stopped
searching. I found this when the quacks summoned me to that Sussex hospital. Why are you carrying a gun? Why are you lying to me?’

‘I refer the honourable member to my previous answer.’

Even as he said it, it sounded cheap and adolescent. Cocking a snook at big brother.

Rod straightened up, began to pick up the fragments of the tea set. He could not sustain anger long, even when it might well be in his own defence. The edge went out of his voice, a saddened,
concerned, irritatingly humane baritone took over.

‘I’ll tell you what I think. I think you’re chasing this one out of guilt. That load of twaddle about the old man. You’re chasing spooks because somewhere inside you, you
actually believe the old man was a spook, and this is your way of expiating the guilt.’

‘Guilt?’ Troy said, compounding anger with a sneer. ‘I don’t know guilt.’

‘How can you expect me to believe that you investigating Arnold Cockerell is just a coincidence?’

‘Jack told you?’

‘Of course.’

‘Did he also tell you I was the last person to see Cockerell alive?’

Rod stood with the teapot in one hand and its spout in the other.

‘No. Were you?’

‘Yes. Bad luck really. I just happened to be in the right hotel on the wrong night.’

‘The last I heard, Cockerell’s wife had been unable to identify the body.’

‘She won’t have to. I’ve done it.’

‘It’s him?’

‘Yes.’

Rod threw the pieces back onto the tray, and flopped into an armchair.

‘So. That’s it.’

‘It? You mean final? Of course it isn’t final. What do you think, that you’ve finally nailed Eden’s balls to the floor? You knew it was Cockerell long before the
Government owned up! But this isn’t the last nail. Rod, you knew, but Eden didn’t. None of the buggers knew. Cockerell was a loner. Eden probably found out after you did. Your theory of
the great conspiracy, as is so often the case, comes down to the great cock-up.’

‘I don’t deny that I knew Cockerell’s name right from the start …’

‘Even on that day we got pissed at the Commons?’

‘Yes. Even then. But I still don’t see how you can say Eden didn’t know.’

‘The war cry of discredited leaders throughout the ages. “Nobody told me.” I don’t know what happened, but I know that SIS were surprised by this. And I think Eden was
horrified.’

Rod sat back. Stared at a space somewhere over Troy’s head, then lowered his eyes to meet Troy’s gaze.

‘Doesn’t excuse them, though. Does it?’

‘No. Their job to know after all. But it does put the ball squarely in my court.’

‘How so?’

‘It’s murder. Three murders to be precise. I don’t know who killed Cockerell, but it’s conceivable it was the same person who killed George Jessel and Madeleine Kerr.
It’s not final because it’s still happening, because it’s murder—and murder is my business.’

‘Shit,’ Rod said softly. ‘Shit, shit, shit.’

‘Cockerell was a crook. Of what kind, I don’t know. But he was working a fiddle worth thousands through his business. He wasn’t your sophisticated spy, he was a common or
garden crook.’

‘But he was also spying? Why else was he down there? I don’t follow.’

And Troy did not much mean to lead. There were things he would tell Rod and things he would do his best to
avoid telling him. It was all a matter of phrasing. It was time to change tack or be caught out.

‘Tell me. What is a spy?’ he said.

‘Bit bloody philosophical, isn’t it?’

‘Indulge me. What is a spy in his … nature?’

Rod thought about this. Locking his fingers together, stretching out his arms and listening to every joint in his hands crack.

‘I know it’s a cliché, but they’re whores aren’t they? At heart your spy is a whore.’

‘And what is the nature of a whore? The prerogative, if you like.’

‘Oh, I get it. You mean that old saw about the chap at the Tory Party conference, Baldwin or somebody very like Baldwin, who described the press as exercising power without responsibility,
which “has been the prerogative of the whore throughout history, arf arf”. Then Devonshire turns to Macmillan and says, “Damn, there goes the tarts’ vote!”
’