A Little White Death (49 page)

There were no lights on in 71 Marsh Lane, Camberwell. Troy knelt down, pushed the letterbox inwards and pressed an ear to it. Among the myriad creaks and hums of a silent house
he thought he could hear the uncontrollable rhythm of someone sobbing.

He stuck his hand through the letterbox to see if there was a latchkey hanging by a string on the inside. In so many English homes there would be. There wasn’t. He gripped his revolver by
the barrel and tapped out the pane of stained glass nearest the lock. The shards fell with a soft tinkle like chimes in a breeze onto the doormat. He stepped in, pointing the gun ahead of him.
Something inside told him Blood had shot his bolt, that he was harmless now. He could hear Blood’s gun firing on an empty chamber, the ratchet sound as the chamber spun, then the futile slam
of the hammer falling. It would have been a matter of seconds for Blood to reload and blow Troy away, and he hadn’t done it. The hand had kept on squeezing the trigger until the brain noticed
it was all over – as though the man himself could not hear the firing.

Troy followed his nose. He could see the sitting room by the light of a street lamp streaking in through the open curtains. Before he saw it he could smell it. Dinner was set for two. The
all-pervasive steamy reek of bad cooking, dinner canteen-style, the glory that was grease. One plate of meat and two veg was half eaten, the knife and fork crossed on the edge. The other was
covered with an up turned plate to keep it warm. A sauce bottle stood sentry duty by it. A cut-glass bowl of tinned fruit salad sat on the sideboard next to an unopened can of condensed milk. Mrs
Blood had made the effort to wait for her husband, and given up. It looked like the routine of a million British marriages, a thousand spoilt dinners.

A whimper came from the corner by the fireplace, darker than he could see. He stared, levelled the gun and let his eyes resolve the darkness. A small woman was huddled between the wall and a
glass-fronted display cabinet. Pieces of broken china and shattered plaster of Paris lay scattered around the shuddering figure of Mrs Blood. She moaned. Troy bent down and took her hands from her
face. She screamed, eyes wide, staring into his. A bruise the size of a half-crown coin across her cheek and eye, a streak of blood snaking from one split nostril. She snatched her hands back and
began to whimper again. Blood had come in, found her halfway through dinner and batted her sideways with all the force of his right hand.

‘Where’s Percy?’

She sobbed and would not look at him.

‘Where’s Percy?’

It seemed to Troy that she did not really know he was there, that she could hear the sound of his words and not their meaning.

Blood was not on the ground floor. Troy went up the stairs. Every creak seemed louder than a gunshot.

Every door opened onto the same landing, and every door except the one at the top of the stairs stood open. He tried the handle. The door was locked. He bent down and peered through the keyhole.
The key had been turned from the inside. He bent lower, and found a split panel in the door. The interior was lit by the street lamp. With his eyes no more than two or three feet off the ground he
found himself staring at the feet of Percy Blood as they swayed slowly back and forth. The lamplight glinted off his shoes, buffed to a military shine, and a dripping stream of excrement ran off
one shoe to puddle on the carpet below.

He kicked in the door with a single blow. It crashed back against the wall, stirred up a new current of air and set Blood swinging all the more. Troy looked up. The eyes popped, the tongue
protruded and the smell of shit began to fill the room. The man had prised open the trapdoor to the attic, looped a towrope around the main beam of the house and kicked away the stepladder. The
room was half stripped, half newly papered. Pots of paint lay dotted around the floor, a dustsheet across the bed. Chief Inspector Blood had whiled away his sick leave redecorating the front
bedroom, and when his mind had finally flipped, simply ascended the same ladder to his death. A scaffold for the D-I-Y.

Blood had had the foresight, or perhaps merely the anger, to rip the phone from the wall. Troy did something he had not done in years. He stood in the middle of the street and blew his police
whistle. It had lain so long in his coat pocket that his first blast produced nothing but a cloud of fluff and dust. His second brought forth the unmistakable contralto honk of the Metropolitan
Police Force Emergency Whistle. He blew and blew until he heard the clatter of police boots on paving stones.

A stout constable lumbered into sight at the street corner, running for Troy for all he was worth and scarcely touching five miles an hour. He stopped so suddenly that his boots skidded on the
pavement and the studs in the soles showered sparks like striking flint. Troy stood, warrant card in his right hand, the gun in his left hanging loosely at his side. The man stared at the gun and
did not speak. Troy moved under the lamp, held out his warrant card, and let the man get a good look at him.

‘Do you know who I am?’ he said.

‘Yessir.’

‘Then knock up the neighbours, find one with a telephone and call the Yard. Superintendent Wildeve, Murder Squad. We have one body and one injured. Then dial 999 and get an ambulance.
I’ll be in number 71.’

It would be ten minutes or more before anyone else arrived. Mrs Blood had not moved from the safety of her corner. He went back into the bedroom, threw the dustcover off a chair and sat down
with the carcass of the late Chief Inspector Blood still swaying gently to and fro. He had fucked up and he knew it. His ‘eighteen hours to come to your senses’ had been uttered to a
man who had long ago lost his senses. It had cost Mary McDiarmuid her life, and cost him the only lead he had. It crossed his mind that he should cut Blood down, but he didn’t. As his ears
grew accustomed to the house, the sound of sobbing crept up the stairs to him. There might still be something he could do for her, but he didn’t. He sat and he listened to her cry until the
sound of a police siren coming down the street drowned out her sobs.

Dawn was coming up over Sir Wilfrid Coyn’s shoulder. Not that he saw it. He had his face in his hands, the base of his palms buttressing his cheekbones, eyes down,
staring at the top of his desk. Quint could see it, but Quint was far too busy pacing and shouting. Only Troy saw the weak glow of autumn sunlight straining to break free over Bermondsey. He sat
facing the two of them in silence.

‘I don’t bloody believe this. I just don’t believe it. Two coppers dead in a single evening. It’s the worst we’ve had since I don’t know when. Why in
God’s name didn’t you send a squad car to Camberwell?’

‘They would not have got there any quicker than I did,’ Troy said softly.

‘At least you’d have had back-up; you wouldn’t have been steaming in on your own!’

‘Blood was already dead. Mary was already dead.’

‘Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ!’

Quint fumbled in his pocket for a cigarette. His lighter would not strike and he slammed both down onto Coyn’s desk.

‘Cowboys,’ he was saying. ‘Complete bloody cowboys!’

This seemed to jolt Coyn to life. He took away his hands and stared at Troy. ‘It’s a mess, Freddie,’ he said simply.

‘Cowboys!’ Quint repeated.

Coyn shot him a look. He retreated to the window, found another cigarette and matches and lit up.

‘Daniel has a point,’ said Coyn.

‘Cowboys?’ Troy echoed as though the term meant nothing to him.

‘You do seem to have displayed a somewhat cavalier attitude, Freddie.’

‘Blood killed Fitzpatrick. I had enough evidence to convict him of that. Then he shot Mary in front of me and Clark. He ceased to be a copper at that moment. I pursued him as I would
pursue any murderer. You can call it what you like, I call it my duty.’

Quint could not stay silent. ‘Call it what we like – you arrogant bugger! It’s what the press’ll call it that bothers me. Two dead coppers, Troy. Two dead coppers on a
single night! Just think about that!’

Coyn picked up a handwritten sheet of foolscap from his desk. Pushed aside the five-page report Clark had spent the last hour typing up for Troy.

‘I’ve read Constable Selwyn’s report. He’s the beat bobby you summoned. He says he thinks you were carrying a gun when he got to you.’

Quint snatched the cigarette from his lips long enough to say, ‘What?’

‘He’s mistaken,’ said Troy.

The Webley now lay in the middle drawer of his desk.

‘He’s confident enough to have put it in writing.’

‘In that light, at that time of night? He’s rash to be confident of anything.’

Quint exploded. ‘You’re lying! You’re a lying son of a bitch! You went there armed to the teeth to tackle Blood. You’re as mad as he was. What did you think you were
going to do? Shoot him? Jesus Christ, Troy, it’s not ten minutes since the Ryan brothers! Or did you think we didn’t hear about that up in Birmingham. Troy, everybody knows you shot the
Ryan brothers!’

‘Constable Selwyn made an understandable mistake,’ said Troy.

‘And is this an understandable mistake?’

Coyn picked up a second sheet and pushed it across the desk to Troy. It was a standard Scotland Yard medical certificate.

‘The chief surgeon passed it onto me. The signature seems to baffle him. Said he cannot make head nor tail of it. I can. It says Kolankiewicz.’

Troy said nothing.

‘Freddie, you’ve been unlucky. You’ve lost a good colleague, you’ve lost a suspect and you’ve taken a bullet yourself. Go home and take a week’s sick
leave.’

Troy covered his left hand with his right, felt the crisp and bloody bandage beneath his fingers.

‘It’s just a scratch.’

‘Go home, man!’ Coyn stood up and put every ounce of energy into three short words. His voice boomed far louder than the rantings of Quint. He went borscht red in the face. He
roared.

Troy left. It was the first time he had felt the slightest twinge of respect for the man.

When he got back to his own office, Jack and Clark were waiting. Clark quietly getting on with his paperwork, oblivious to the time of night or day, Jack sitting on Mary
McDiarmuid’s desk yawning and rubbing at his eyes in a desperate effort to stay awake.

‘Well?’ he said.

Troy closed the door, beckoned them into the inner office and closed the door on that too.

‘I’ve given them my report – and I’m back on sick leave.’

‘They’ve shut down the case. After a night like this?’

‘I didn’t say that. It’s me they’ve shut down. For a week. Until I heal.’

Troy held up his bandaged left hand.

‘However, I don’t know what difference it’ll make. Percy Blood was all we had.’

‘And you still don’t think he killed Clover?’

‘I know damn well he didn’t.’

Troy opened his briefcase and swept the contents of his desktop into it.

‘Do you have anything relevant to the case? Either of you?’

‘Papers,’ said Eddie. ‘Lots of papers.’

‘Nothing,’ said Jack. ‘I gave it all to you.’

‘Take it all home with you,’ Troy said to Clark. ‘Don’t leave anything lying round.’

Troy pulled open the middle drawer of his desk and stuck his gun into his briefcase. Jack tossed a polythene bag onto Troy’s desk. It banged down heavily. It was a gun, an army-issue
Webley. Just like Troy’s. Just like the one that killed Fitz.

‘Blood’s?’ said Troy.

‘He must have collected them. It was on the hallstand. Next to his hat and gloves. All in a row, ship-shape and Bristol fashion.’

‘Heworegloves?’

‘Doesn’t matter. He didn’t wipe it down first. There are prints all over it. It’s empty and it’s been fired. Absolutely reeks of it.’

‘Good. Because I never got so much as a glimpse of Blood. Eddie?’

‘Dark side of the street, sir. Perfect cover.’

‘I don’t know what happens next. Coyn or Quint or both of them never wanted us to catch Blood. My guess is that at the end of the week, once the press interest in two dead coppers
has given place to the latest teenage heart-throb or the biggest tits on the Golden Mile, Coyn will pronounce. He’ll let us go on or he’ll wrap up the case. It would help enormously to
know which of them wants it wrapped, but all the same it won’t stop us.’

‘I do find myself asking why they would want it stopped,’ said Jack.

‘I shouldn’t think either of them would relish a Scotland Yard scandal.’

‘That presumes they knew it was Blood when they first told me to drop it. You’re not saying they knew it was Blood, are you?’

‘No. No, I’m not. But I do think that somewhere in the collective mind of our masters the notion was formed that to look too closely into the death of Paddy Fitz would win no
favour.’

‘That sounds just a bit shy of conspiracy,’ Jack said.

‘Then it’s as precise as I would want it to be.’

Jack insisted on walking home with him. It was as clear as day – it was day – but Troy did not object. He shoved the gun back under the loose floorboard by the hatstand, popped a
Mandrax and fell into bed hoping for dreamless sleep and if not dreamless, then not to dream of Mary.

He dreamt of Tosca. It came back to him as he sat in the bath after peeling the bandage off his hand. It had stuck like glue, and he soaked it in the water until it softened
and he could strip it from the wound. The cut was not deep. He had been lucky. It had missed the fine bones in the back of his hand. But it was broad and ragged. He took nail scissors to the dead
tissue and trimmed it. It would leave a scar, one of the worst of his many. And then he remembered Tosca counting up his scars. One night in 1944, when there were fewer than he had now –
playing this little piggy. Not the clean, clinical touch of the young woman who had diagnosed his TB, a lingering, playful touch, circling his wounds as though each were some sensory, erogenous
organ unique to him. And then he remembered his dream.

She had come to him last night. Still aged thirty-odd, still in her WAC’s uniform – Master Sergeant Larissa Tosca, United States Army. He was forty-eight, as he was now, pale,
battered.