A Little White Death (43 page)

‘I’m sorry?’

‘He didn’t make it.’

The almost military style of the euphemism startled him.

‘When?’

‘This morning. About six thirty. He was not responding to treatment. His heart and kidneys were weak . . .’

‘Is he still here?’

‘Yes. We don’t have a morgue. He’s laid out in one of the single wards.’

‘Can I see him?’

She thought for a second. Another of her little battles with her sense of authority.

‘I don’t know. Some people are shocked by the fact of death. Have you ever seen a dead person?’

‘I’ve seen more corpses than I can count. I’m a policeman.’

The mask slipped just a fraction. ‘You kept pretty quiet about that. OK. Follow me.’

His sparse hair was neatly brushed and combed, his moustaches trimmed, his hands crossed on his belly, his skin waxen, all but translucent. His eyelids looked older than parchment, beaten thin
by time. Only the rims and lobes of his elephantine ears showed colour where the blood had pooled blue at extremity. It was corny but it was the only thing that occurred. The old man looked as
though he were sleeping.

Troy had thought this and moved on to nothing more profound than the residue of his own affection for the old man. Nurse peeked over.

‘It’s the passing of an era, isn’t it?’ she said. ‘When one of them goes.’

It was as blithely trite, as barren of thought as anything he’d ever heard her utter, but it was accurate. As unerringly accurate as she’d be when she said the same thing at the
passing of General Eisenhower or Field Marshal Montgomery or Churchill. In their passing, passed the era. And God alone knew what kept Churchill alive.

He thought Jack was saying something very like ‘I told you so.’

‘Yes,’ said Troy. ‘I have got somewhere, as you put it. But I was trying to say that I think it’s a digression. And that’s not the same thing as a waste of time.
Blood intimidated witnesses. He seems to have been hell-bent on convicting Fitz at any price.’

‘But that’s hardly murder, is it? It’s hardly rare either.’

‘No, Jack, I’d like to think it’s rare, I’d like to think . . .’

‘I know what you’d like to think, but I’m thinking of a time in 1944 when you dragged a corpse out of the mortuary cold cupboard and shoved it in front of your
witness!’

Troy was thinking of it too. Sergeant Miller’s body, his face shot to pieces, the back of his head smashed like a conker. He’d done exactly what Jack was saying he’d done.
He’d intimidated a witness with a brutality that had shocked even Onions. But there was one vital difference.

‘Not a witness, Jack, the killer. Diana Brack had killed that man.’

‘I know, but we neither of us knew that at the time. And to get back to the point, Blood bullied witnesses. I have little difficulty believing that. But he’d have to be mad to want
to shoot one!’

Clark was waving at them from the other side of the room. ‘Eddie?’ said Troy. ‘I’ve been trying to show you this. I came across it yesterday.’ He shoved a single
sheet of paper in front of Troy. ‘Came across’ – a Swift Eddie euphemism for whatever method he had really used to obtain it. It was a medical report from the Chief Police
Surgeon, Scotland Yard. It was signed in a scrawl that Troy took to be the man’s signature, and it was addressed to Quint with the initials FYEO – For Your Eyes Only – and dated
19/9/63.

Troy passed it to Jack.

‘Oh bugger. Oh bugger.’

‘You were saying . . . he’d have to be mad.’

‘I wasn’t aware I was being literal.’

‘Beggin’ your joint pardon, sirs,’ Clark said. ‘But if the two of you sat in the staff canteen a bit more often you’d know that most of Percy’s colleagues
think he’s a bit mad.’

Troy said, ‘I know. Blood’s mad, I’m wild and Jack’s a flash bastard. Eddie, this is beyond gossip.’

‘So,’ Jack concluded, ‘it could be out of our hands altogether.’

‘How so?’

‘Procedure, Freddie. It’s A10’s job investigating coppers’ misdeeds, not ours.’

A10 was Scotland Yard’s internal investigations arm.

‘A10?’ said Troy. ‘I’m not letting A10 within a mile of Blood! Blood is in this so steeped—’

Jack leant forward in his chair. Fixed Troy with his gaze. ‘Freddie. Tell me truthfully. Do you in your wildest dreams think DCI Blood murdered Paddy Fitz?’

Troy pulled back a little. Jack was that bit too close.

‘No,’ he said. ‘Of course not. But don’t tell me I’m clutching at straws. I’m not. Right now, Blood’s all I’ve got.’

Jack lowered, softened his voice, ‘Right now, Freddie, you’ve got irises as big as saucers. Whatever you’re on, don’t overdo it.’

When he had gone Clark remained.

‘Spit it out, Eddie.’

Clark handed him another sheet of paper.

It was a transfer order, signed by Quint, moving Blood from Special Branch to Vice, dated at the end of May.

‘You did ask,’ said Clark.

For the moment Troy could not remember that he had asked.

‘The date, sir,’ said Clark.

‘I was in the wilderness in May. You’ll have to remind me.’

‘It was the morning after Timothy Woodbridge made his denial in the House of Commons, sir.’

‘Surely you mean the morning after his admission?’

‘No. I mean what I said. Percy was transferred between Woodbridge’s statement of denial and his letter admitting the lot five days later. There was no Commons admission. This is
Westminster. You stand firm in public, you capitulate quietly.’

Jack’s words came precisely to mind. ‘Oh bugger, oh bugger.’

‘I rather think I’ll want a word or two with Chief Inspector Blood before the day’s out.’

‘Exactly what I was thinking, sir. A word with our Percy. I’ve already checked. He’s taking it easy at home. And he lives south of the water. In Camberwell. I’ve jotted
the address down for you.’

Clark handed Troy a third piece of paper. It was his day for pieces of paper. He handed them out as though rationed. Released them judiciously for full effect. Troy glanced at it and pocketed
it. He held up the second, Quint’s memo.

‘Eddie?’

‘Yes sir.’

‘Firstly, you’re a smug bastard, and secondly, we never saw this.’

Clark smiled a smile as smug as he could muster and went to answer the phone.

‘For you, sir. A woman. Won’t give her name.’

‘I want to see Blood. Put her off.’

‘Asked for you as “Troy”, sir. No rank.’

Troy took the telephone from him.

‘Troy? It’s Tara. Don’t talk. I’m in a phone box feeding in coppers at a rate of knots. Just jot this down. 44 St Simon Square, W11. Flat 1. And if you upset her or hurt
her I’ll never, never, never forgive you. Capiche? And if we end up in court again, I’ll tell young Alex you spent the night here and rogered me rigid.’

‘Truth or dare?’ said Troy, but the pennies shot through the gate and the dialling tone was all he heard by way of answer.

Troy caught a cab to Notting Hill. He thought better of parking a Bentley anywhere in the vicinity of St Simon Square. It was the heart of what had lately become known as
Rachman country, after the infamous slum landlord who had died the previous year. St Simon Square looked typical of the poorly maintained London houses that had formed the backbone of his property
empire. Tall, once-elegant, terraced houses, surrounding a square, once green with grass and shrubs, now grey with cinders and cordoned off by chainlink fencing. Paint peeled from high windows,
rubbish piled up in porticoed doorways. Ironically, two or three houses on either side of the square were boarded up – ironically, as those houses that were not would undoubtedly be bursting
at the seams with human life. Rachman had had a simple policy, and he had not been its only practitioner. Buy cheap – and the Church of England in the fifties had been only too willing to
sell – mortgage to the hilt, boot out the existing tenants and then fill up with West Indian immigrants – Jamaicans, Barbadians and Trinidadians – and charge them the earth whilst
pointing out that the rest of London did not ‘take coloured’. And, of course, this was true. Troy could recall seeing signs in the windows of London lodging houses, when he was a beat
bobby before the war, that read, ‘No Coloured, No Irish, No Dogs.’ It was a policy of playing upon the prejudices of the English in order to make it pay. By the late fifties there had
been race riots on the streets of West London.

Some time this winter, the door of No. 44 had had a fresh coat of paint. Deep, glossy green. Troy knocked. Heard feet bounding upstairs.

The door swung sharply back. A black face peered out at Troy.

‘Man, when you told us you were the heat you weren’t joking, were you?’

It was Philly the sax player from the Cool in the Shade Club.

‘No,’ he said. ‘I told you the truth.’ Troy had never felt the need to apologise for his profession.

‘An’ now I s’pose you tellin’ me you lookin’ for Caro?’

‘Is she at home?’

Philly said nothing and kept his hand firmly gripped on the edge of the door.

‘I’m not investigating Caro. I’m investigating the death of Paddy Fitz.’

‘She still upset about that.’

Aren’t we all? thought Troy. Philly pulled the door wide and admitted Troy.

‘Right to the back, and down the stairs. She’s in the kitchen.’

Troy descended a rickety, uncarpeted staircase to the basement.

Caro was standing by the gas stove, hair up in a headscarf, no make-up, blue jeans and a dark, billowing, chequered blue shirt many sizes too big. She was stirring a pan with one hand, holding
and gently rocking a coffee-coloured infant with the other.

‘Troy,’ she said with the merest hint of surprise. ‘Phil. Take Vivienne will you. I’m sure Troy just wants a quiet word.’

Philly reached over and hefted the two-year-old into his arms.

‘No,’ said the child.

‘Yes,’ said Philly, and he disappeared back up the stairs.

Caro turned off the gas, swept an errant lock of blonde hair back under the headscarf and sat down at the kitchen table. ‘He’s very good with children,’ she said. ‘Loves
them.’

It occurred to Troy that nature was somewhat awry if fathers did not, but it seemed as though she had read his mind.

‘Vivienne isn’t Philly’s. She’s Cliff ’s. Cliff ’s all right in his way. But he’s never got any money.’

She seemed disinclined to push the line she had opened. Troy pulled out a chair and sat opposite her.

‘Tara told you I’d be coming?’

‘Yes. I don’t mind. Really I don’t. But I suppose I did think Fitz might have shot himself until . . .’

‘Until I told Tara otherwise?’

She nodded.

‘I need to know what happened between you and Chief Inspector Blood.’

‘I know.’

‘I’ve heard what happened with Tara. I need to know what happened when you were alone with him.’

‘We weren’t alone at first. He split us up as a way of getting at me. He was never easy on me, never pleasant, but after Tara was gone he became horrible. She has a way of deflecting
other people’s anger away from me and onto herself. She’s done it since we were children. I was lost without her. Blood sensed this. He’d asked us about men we slept with and
Fitz. He wanted us to say we were tarts and we paid Fitz as our pimp. We wouldn’t.

‘That changed when he got me alone. He stopped asking me the same questions over and over again. Of course he’d always come back to them. But there was something else eating away at
him. He had a real bee in his bonnet. He got angrier and angrier. I couldn’t understand it. It was as though I’d done something to him personally, offended him personally. It was like
nothing quite so much as talking to my own father. I came home one day, I’d been shopping, I’d bought one of those flared ya-ya underskirts that made your skirt stick out like you were
Sandra Dee. He went apoplectic. Before I could even try it on he’d torn it out of my hands and stuffed it on the fire. He stood there, ramming the poker into it, boiling with rage. Like it
was a personal insult. Blood was like that. “Do you know what you’ve done?” he kept saying. “Do you know what you’ve done?” I said nothing. What could I say? At
first I didn’t even know what he was talking about. Then it got clearer. He was talking about Vivienne. Or to be precise, he was talking about sex with black men. Nig-nogs as he called them.
“You’ve tainted some very important people,” he said. I still didn’t know what he meant. Tainted? A white woman sharing her body with black men and white men. Decent people,
tainted by me. Through me. “What do you think that disgusting little twat of yours is?” he said. “A melting pot? I’ll tell you what it is, a cesspit chock-full of nig-nog
come. You taint decent men. You spread your filth across decent men. Important men.” Well, I knew now, didn’t I? I was a cesspit.’

‘Who do you think he meant by important men?’

‘Woodbridge, I suppose. I don’t suppose for one moment he meant Tony. And I don’t suppose he even knew about old Tommy. I was very fond of Tommy. He was the one man we never
shared. Tara thought he was fun, but nothing more. I used to give Tommy one from time to time. Kept him happy. Now – I do sound like a whore don’t I?’