A Little White Death (47 page)

‘I need to dust them and photograph them. The sides are badly smudged. The percussion ends all have partials, and I think they are all thumbprints.’

‘Figures,’ said Troy. ‘You palm the bullets and shove them into the chamber with your thumb.’

‘I make no promises, Troy. But I say this. If I photograph all five I may be able to reconstruct a single print with a little cut and paste.’

‘When?’ said Troy.

‘Tomorrow morning. First thing.’

Kolankiewicz had one wall of his office lined in cork. He had cleared it of pins and paper and by the time Troy and Mary McDiarmuid arrived the next morning he had it covered
in 10 × 8 blow-ups of thumbprints. They looked on this scale like contour maps of some mountainous country – central Italy or Transylvania or Idaho. The middle of thumb –
spiralling whorls vanishing into obdiplostemonous vortices – the outer edges of thumb – formidable Apennine ridges running north to south and east to west. Across half of them he had
drawn blue lines with a setsquare, and from the copies now littering the floor he had cut and pasted to assemble in the centre of the board a composite thumbprint, as neat as the face of
Frankenstein’s monster, but complete. Next to it he had pinned a thumbprint marked up in red crayon as ‘Fitzpatrick’.

Even with them blown up to the size of dinner plates, he was peering from one to the other through a magnifying glass.

‘Well?’ said Troy.

Kolankiewicz did not turn. He roved across his masterpiece, reached out blindly with one hand and adjusted the anglepoise lamp to give more light. ‘Even if I have to say so myself, this is
bloody good,’ he said. ‘The print is not Fitzpatrick’s.’

Even Troy could see that.

‘You never thought it was, did you?’ Kolankiewicz said.

He put his glass down and faced them.

‘There is, as we surmised, just the one digit, but in five different sections. They overlap considerably, and I think we got lucky. Your man did not set out a row of bullets on a desktop
and pick them up one by one. He did what you said you would do. Palmed the lot and fed them in. This is what smudged prints on the sides of the cartridge – we have only blurs – but it
also caused much twisting of the right hand, and consequently brought the thumb down at a different angle and area of surface each time. Essentially five different actions rather than the same
action repeated five times. Hence the variations in pressure, density of latent image and area of print.’

‘Hence our picture.’

‘Indeed. Behold. Am I not magnificent? Am I not the Leonardo of the Yard?’

‘Did he work in Kodak and cow-gum, then?’ said Mary McDiarmuid.

Kolankiewicz smiled. Sarcasm he could handle. What he hated was ‘the great English po-face’, as he called it. And Mary McDiarmuid had none of it.

‘Believe me, Scottish person, if Leonardo had known about Kodak and cow-gum he would have used them. Now, see for yourself.’

He handed Troy the magnifying glass. Troy agreed silently that the print was pretty well complete, but beyond that he had no idea what to make of it.

‘Can you’, he asked, ‘get enough points of similarity to take into court?’

‘Similarity with what? You given me nothing to match it with!’

‘Sorry, I was getting ahead of myself. Mary, would you call Chief Inspector Blood and ask him to come in this afternoon? Say about two o’clock?’

Mary McDiarmuid seized Troy by the arm, dragged him into the corridor and banged the door behind them.

‘Are you out of your mind? I thought you thought Blood was a link, a connection. At worst guilty of bullying the witnesses. Are you saying now that you think he killed Paddy
Fitz?’

‘Yes. In fact I’m almost certain he did.’

‘Why?’

‘He knew too much.’

Mary McDiarmuid tilted her head, screwed up one eye and squinted at him.

‘Cliché, Troy.’

‘Nonetheless it’s true.’

‘Percy Blood knew too much? You expect me to drag a serving member of the force off the street on the strength of that? Can you imagine the row? As things are I have a table to myself in
the canteen. None of the other women want to sit with me ’cos you’re giving one of our own a hard time. Now you want to accuse him of murder?’

‘Not accuse. I just want to ask him a few questions. And to ask for a set of his prints.’

‘They may well be on record.’

‘They may, but they’ll be with the Branch and the minute we ask for them someone will accidentally put a match to them. Get the bugger in, Mary.’

She was still looking awry at him. ‘You don’t think it’s time to call in A10?’

‘It’s murder, Mary, not a protection racket squeezing a few quid out of the clubs and restaurants.’

‘Your office at two?’

‘No, an interview room at two. Let’s see how Percy likes being on the receiving end.’

Troy was standing on one of the many half-landings on the south staircase, in front of one of Norman Shaw’s vast windows, watching the river flow. He saw Coyn reflected
in the glass – the dark mass of his uniform, dotted with the brightness of buttons and his insignia of rank – as he came up the staircase towards him. This was one more reason why
he’d never be Commissioner – he did not much want a title, but he certainly did not want to wear the uniform again. He could never be a chocolate-creme soldier. He could never be that
neat in blue and silver. Sir Wilfrid Coyn never had a hair out of place. He was the sort of man whose moustache could be measured with a micrometer, whose fingertips were little arcs of perfection,
buffed nicotine-clean with lemon juice and pumice stone, the sort of man whose wife regularly trimmed the hairs in his nose and ears. They stood side by side. The briefest exchange of looks and
then Coyn too stared at the river.

‘Do you not think you’re a bit close to this one, Freddie?’

The best lies are always couched in the vocabulary of the lied to.

‘It’s because I’m close to it that I can handle it. It’s not just any crime. It’s a matter of Met pride. Onions will be unrelenting if we don’t handle this
properly.’

‘Mr Quint considered it wrapped, I believe.’

‘No disrespect to Mr Quint, but I’ve spent my entire career in murder. I deemed this worth a second look.’

‘Should you be out in the field so soon? Couldn’t one of your chaps handle it?’

‘After five months away I need a practical case to work on. This was simply the top of the pile.’

He could believe this if he liked.

‘But you won’t overdo it, will you?’

Troy said nothing. What was it Jack had said? Eyes as big as saucers? Every cell in his body was overdoing it.

Troy met with Blood alone in a stark, windowless room at the Yard. Three chairs, a table and an ashtray. He lumbered in. The old school of men like Wiggins and Blood had its
uniform. A heavy brown macintosh, a grey chalk-stripe suit that had seen better days, a row of biros peeping out from the breast pocket, a trilby, police-issue black boots that did not quite meet
the turn-ups of his trousers, and five o’clock shadow at any o’clock of the day. On formal occasions he probably wore a bowler and looked like a plainclothes copper from a Giles cartoon
in the
Daily Express
.

‘Do I need to ask what this is about? Or have the Ffitch sisters been complaining about me again?’

‘Take a seat, Percy.’

Blood sat opposite Troy, placed his hat on one corner of the table, and made no move to take off his mac. Symbolic of his belief that he’d not be here long.

‘It’s not about the Ffitch sisters. It’s about Patrick Fitzpatrick.’

‘Matter of record, sir. All in my notes. I had a case.’

‘I’ve read your notes. You don’t record striking Caroline Ffitch.’

‘I thought this wasn’t about the Ffitches, sir.’

‘And you don’t record your search for Clover Browne.’

‘Suspicions, sir. Hunches. We don’t record ’em all or our files would be as thick as the London phone directory. All I had on Clover Browne was a hunch and a
whisper.’

He was lying, and Troy knew it, but to chase him down this path would be a waste of time.

‘Tell me where you were on the 19th.’

‘At ’ome with the wife.’

‘Except when you saw the chief police surgeon here?’

‘That was in the morning. I went home for me dinner. We listened to the afternoon play on the wireless. I had a nap. Peggy washed up. I worked on one of me ships and when our tea was ready
Peggy called me into the dining room.’

‘What did you have for tea?’

‘Potted meat, slice or two of haslet. Nothing grand.’

Indeed it wasn’t – the offal-based fare of a working-class English family. But since it wasn’t, why would one remember? It seemed to Troy that Percy had put some effort and
planning into what he would and would not choose to remember.

Blood had stopped. There did not seem to be any reason, he had just stopped.

‘And?’ said Troy.

‘My wife told you, sir. Or had you forgotten? I’ll go over it again if you can’t recall. We had our tea, I went back to me ship. We listened to a dance band on the wireless and
we went up about half past ten.’

‘You didn’t go to Dreyfus Mews?’

‘No, I didn’t.’

‘When were you last in Dreyfus Mews?’

‘The day after I arrested Fitzpatrick. I obtained a search warrant and I looked for evidence in the case against him.’

‘Evidence of what?’

‘I had a case to make for pimping, if you recall, sir. I was looking for ready cash; I was looking for bank statements.’

‘And?’

‘I found neither. That’s in my notes too. But that proved nothing. In the end Fitzpatrick’s solicitor agreed to give us the bank statements. It was neither here nor there in
the end. Didn’t need to prove he dealt a lot in cash to prove he was pimping.’

‘What else did you find?’

‘It’s all in my notes.’

‘You’ve just told me your notes are selective. What else might you have found?’

It was a small miracle he hadn’t found Fitz’s letters from Wilson. Or maybe he had and thought nothing of them?

‘Such as?’

‘Such as a gun?’

‘No, sir. I didn’t find a gun.’

Mary McDiarmuid shoved the door open with her backside and set down a tray of tea for three. She took the third chair, said nothing, poured and passed a mug to each of them. Stuck a bowl of
sugar in front of Blood.

‘Do you think Fitzpatrick went out and bought the gun when he decided to end it all?’

‘I don’t know, sir. I haven’t given the matter a lot of thought.’

Blood was giving nothing away. The strength of his hostility to Troy buried any other response. Blood spooned in sugar and sipped at his tea. Troy followed suit and decided to backtrack.

‘You listened to the radio. What programme?’

‘A dance band. Like my wife told you the other day. A dance band.’

‘Whose?’

‘Whose?’

‘Whose band?’

‘Joe Loss. Joe Loss at the Hammersmith Palais.’

‘What did he play?’

‘“In the Mood”.’

This wasn’t good enough. Joe Loss played an awful, staccato, chunka-chunka version of ‘In the Mood’ the way Bob Hope sang ‘Thanks for the Memory’ – it was his
theme tune.

‘And what else?’

‘I don’t know, Mr Troy. I’m not musical. I never had the training. I didn’t have the benefits of your education, sir. One tune’s pretty much the same as another to
me. It’s the wife as likes music. I’ve got tin ears. I just got on with me ship.’

‘And you were home all night?’

‘I was.’

‘Do you know what time Fitzpatrick died?’

‘’Round midnight, according to the papers .’

‘And around midnight you were tucked up in bed?’

‘Fast asleep.’

‘Did you know the beat bobby moved the press on at about eleven fifteen?’

‘No. Should I?’

‘No. But I thought you might have known that they did that every night. It wouldn’t have been difficult to find out. Anyone who wanted to nipin and shoot Fitzpatrick would only have
needed to hang around one of the alleys to learn the routine. Did you know about it? Did you know Paddington Green moved the press on every night?’

‘Knew about it? Of course I knew about it. And I didn’t have to stand in dark alleyways at midnight to find out. Chief inspectors of the Branch don’t—’

‘Vice, Percy. You’re in Vice now.’

It occurred to Troy that Blood resented being in Vice as much as Wiggins resented having him.

‘I didn’t need to do that! DDI Harropat Paddington Green called me when the trial started. Said what did I want done about security at Dreyfus Mews. I said there was no security
problem, but that we shouldn’t let the press think they own the streets of London. He suggested showing the torch and truncheon, see the beat bobby looked in once a night. I agreed with him.
Wasn’t my decision. It was just good manners on his part to consult the arresting officer. Wasn’t for me to tell him how to do his job.’

It was a brilliant answer. Far, far better than a denial. He had paraded his knowledge and given chapter and verse on it as good, professional police work. And implicit in the answer was that he
thought Troy unprofessional.

Blood swigged at his tea, inwardly smirking, pleased with himself, giving nothing away.

‘You didn’t find a gun at Dreyfus Mews?’

‘I’ve already said. No. I didn’t.’

‘You don’t think that perhaps an old World War Two Webley might have been sitting in a desk drawer since 1945?’

‘No sir. I don’t. You might recall we had a firearms amnesty a couple of years back. Most decent folks handed their weapons in then.’

Troy hoped he wasn’t smiling. This was the first thing Blood had given him. He knew now how Blood had obtained the gun. Thousands of old buffers had turned in their Webleys – Troy
had vivid memories of one bloke staggering into Scotland Yard with a fully loaded Bren gun. Blood had simply helped himself from the pile when no one was looking. So had Troy.

Once more up the garden path with Percy.

‘So you didn’t find a gun at Dreyfus Mews?’

‘I’ve said – no.’