Second Violin (23 page)

Troy did not argue.

Under moonlight,
infectious moonlight,
a madman dances.
Smeared in excrement,
naked as nativity,
Lord Carsington dances.

March 1940 . . .
London, the Phoney War or thereabouts

While the British Expeditionary Force was still on the Continent, the blast of war seemed scarcely to touch England. The bureaucracy did. It was a time of organisation and
regulation, a time of the amassing of paperwork – usually referred to as ‘bum fodder’ – a time of mass evacuation, of recruitment, of innovation and wild suggestion.
Everyone had ideas to help with the war effort, from the shoolboy designing giant tank-carrying submarines on his school jotter, to the man who wrote to
The Times
suggesting that the way to
be seen in the blackout was to carry a white Pekinese dog. Some suggestions were not so daft – growing one’s own vegetables for instance.

Tite Street might be fashionable. It was once, fifty years earlier, home to Oscar Wilde and might therefore be notorious as well as fashionable. At the end of Tite Street is a small green
Chelsea square, Tedworth Gardens. Shrubs, flowerbeds, a patch of grass, the odd tree, lots of railings, the unfortunate residue of visits by errant dogs . . . that sort of thing. One breezy
afternoon late in the spring of 1940, a big man – not a fat man or a stout man or a portly man, at this stage merely a big man – was ripping up shrubs and breaking turf in Tedworth
Gardens. His employer, home on leave and still in uniform, had come to the square in search of him, somewhat exasperated with his gentleman’s gentleman. But, as he had long learnt, you get
nowhere with this particular gentleman’s gentleman by showing exasperation. So he asked simply, ‘Busy, are you?’

‘Wossit look like?’

‘It looks to me as though you are a one-man pagan horde vandalising the flowerbeds and lawn of a rather pretty London square.’

‘Bugger off, then.’

‘No, honestly, what are you doing?’

‘I’m teaching me Aunt Fanny how to knit balaclavas for fuzziwuzzis. Wossit look like I’m doing, yer berk? I’m getting a patch ready for me spuds. ’Cos tomorrow a
bloke from Fullers’ brewery is bringing me a load of horse’s doins. Always pays to get yer spuds in before Good Friday. That’s what my old dad used to say anyway. And as I means
to grow King Edwards, the sooner they’re underground the better. I got some nice second earlies too, Edzell Blue, as nice a tater as you’ve ever got yer choppers into.’

‘Oh, I see,’ said his employer not seeing, and wishing there was someone around to press trousers and iron shirts and generally get him back into civvies for a weekend as a free
man.

The big man reached into the back pocket of his trousers, and thrust a Ministry of Food pamphlet into the man’s hand.

‘See for yourself.’

‘“Dig for Victory with Potato Pete”.’

‘That’s the little fellow, green hat, hobnail boots looks a bit like a spud with legs.’

‘Yes, I can see that.’

‘There’s another bloke, he’s based on a carrot he is. He’s a laugh too. I don’t know how they think ’em up.’

‘Yes. It’s alright. I get the picture. I meant . . . will you be long?’

‘Why are you askin’ me? Try askin’ old Adolf. I shall be diggin’ for victory for the duration of hossitilities. I won’t be the only one neither. There’s Lady
Diana from Tite Street and an old codger, Admiral Wotsisface, from Radnor Walk, and me. Yours Truly. We’s’ll have a patch each and a hut between us. Come back in a fortnight you
won’t recognise the place.’

‘Ah . . . quite . . . yes . . . I see . . . but . . . could you see your way clear to doing the odd bit of valeting before peace breaks out? At the moment I would appear to be a gentleman
without a gentleman.’

‘Course, old cock. Is it yer socks again? Just stick ’em on the pile. I’ll be doin’ a spot of darning once the nights start drawing in.’

‘Nights drawing in? It’s only March. You won’t be planting potatoes until November?’

‘No cock, by November I’ll be feeding the peelings to the pig.’

‘Pig? What pig?’

‘That pig.’

He wasn’t sure how he could have missed the pig, but once pointed out to him it was undeniable that a large white pig had fixed him with its beady eye from its chosen spot under a rose
bush.

‘You can’t be serious. This is . . . this is . . . Chelsea.’

‘Just watch me, old cock.’

The gentleman departed, doubtless to darn his own socks. We will not see him again. The gentleman’s gentleman remained, back bent over his spade, digging, as he put it, for victory. Of him
we shall hear more, but not for three or four years.

Little Vienna

Late Spring or Perhaps Early Summer 1940

Onions, Troy had learnt, was not one to count his chickens. An arrest would often as not result in a ‘Well done, lad’ – or worse, if no confession was
forthcoming, a ‘D’ye think you can make it stick in court?’ It was, Troy concluded, a modesty he would do well to share. He knew when he nicked Jack Seaton for the murder of his
brother-in-law in the January of 1940 that he could make it stick, confession or not, and any tendency to smugness would always be wiped out with the judge’s wearing of the black cap –
which was no kind of cap, more like a black silk handkerchief – and the majesty of the law reduced to the ritual mechanics of death. Hence, after a morning court appearance one day early in
June, the verdict ‘guilty’, the ritual so enacted, Troy, finding himself with no appetite for lunch, was in his office when Onions appeared in his doorway.

‘I heard,’ he said.

Troy said nothing.

‘’Nother feather in your cap.’

‘Another one for Tom Pierrepoint to breathe whisky fumes over before he ties the noose. Another body in quicklime.’

Onions looked at him quizically took the seat by the bleached and blackened bars of the gas fire – turned off by written instruction since the end of April and not on again until October,
regardless of the English weather – took out his Woodbines and lit up a cigarette.

‘I wouldn’t have thought you’d be much bothered by that. He had it coming after all.’

‘I don’t think I am much bothered. I became part of the business of death the day you brought me to the Yard. But I’d be less than human if I didn’t feel a sting at
sending another man to his grave.’

Onions ignored the obvious and said, ‘Business of Death? I reckon you read too many novels.’

Troy said nothing.

‘Have you got your teeth into another case?’

‘No,’ Troy said. ‘I hesitate to say this, but once I sling Seaton’s file back in the cabinet there’s not a lot on my desk.’

‘Good,’ said Onions. ‘Good, good.’

He drew deeply on his cigarette and slowly exhaled a plume of smoke.

‘How do you fancy a spell with the Branch?’

Troy didn’t, but this was hardly the moment to say so. Special Branch were, in Troy’s opinion, legalised thugs – door-kickers, head-crackers all – and to be in the Branch
required no police skill other than a blind obedience to orders, which in the case of the Branch came not from Onions or the Metropolitan Police Commissioner but from MI5.

‘I doubt I’ve any talents they’d want,’ Troy said more in hope than expectation.

‘Oh, but you do. Local knowledge.’

‘They want me to police Hampstead?’

‘Stepney.’

‘Stepney?’

‘The order’s gone out. We’re rounding up all the Category C aliens. C means mostly harmless buggers with the misfortune not to have their mitts on a British passport. Germans,
Austrians, some Eyties . . . lots of ’em in the East End . . . lots of ’em Jewish, I shouldn’t wonder. The view from on high is that rounding up the Bs last month was a bit of a
pig’s ear and it’s thought best if we put men in charge who’ve been there, been around a bit, worn out a bit of shoe leather . . . rather than a paddy wagon full of Branch blokes
bussed in for the raid.’

‘In other words, you want me to go back to Stepney and nick innocent people whom I got to know as a beat bobby?’

One more drag and exhale, then the fag was stubbed out in the otherwise pristine ashtray sitting on the tiles in the hearth.

‘I knew you’d get the picture. You’ll be working to Ernest Steerforth. D’ye know him?’

‘No.’

‘He’ll be the Chief Inspector in charge. You’ll be working with another local. Inspector Stilton. Walter Stilton. D’ye know him?’

‘Of course. He’s an old pal of George Bonham’s. Lives just around the corner from George. I know him . . . but I’ve not had much to do with him.’

‘He’s one of the best. Take it from me. You and Walter report to Steerforth tonight. Six o’clock, back at your old nick.’

Out on the coast, in the seaside village of Burnham-on-Crouch, much the same conversation was taking place.

Squadron Leader Orlando Thesiger had the task of interrogating any refugees from occupied Europe who landed on the North Sea coast anywhere between Southend and Harwich. The short description of
his job was ‘Spycatcher’. In this he was assisted by both Military Intelligence in the shape of a lanky laconic guards officer, Captain Charlie Leigh-Hunt, and by Special Branch in the
shape of a rotund, robust trencherman, Inspector Walter Stilton.

Walter Stilton prided himself on his German. It was the one positive thing he had salvaged from the Great War, an event otherwise viewed by him, as by so many of its veterans, as a fiasco. As a
married man with children, Stilton would have been low on the list for conscription, but as a patriot he had answered Lord Kitchener’s call to arms and volunteered for the London Rifle
Brigade, the 5th Battalion, commonly known as the Queen’s Westminster Rifles. In 1915 Lord Kitchener had needed him. It had seemed almost personal. In 1916 he was thrust into battle in the
bloodiest baptism of all – the Somme. He had been lucky. He was one of the few who lived. A few scrapes and scratches, a minor flesh wound to the upper left arm that had missed both bone and
artery and he was captured. Captured to sit out the rest of the war in Cottbus POW camp in Prussia – a
Kriegsgefangenenlager
fifty miles beyond Berlin, about as far from the Western
front as he could be without actually being on the Eastern front. Cottbus had thrived. He had not felt harshly treated. He had enough to eat and joined an active Amateur Dramatic Society, playing
Lady Bracknell in
The Importance of Being Earnest.
He had read more than at any other time in his life. But acting and reading alone could not fill the hours – so he had sat down with
his guards, decent enough blokes, he thought, like himself that bit older than the average soldier, and learnt German from them. By the time of his repatriation at Christmas 1918, he was fluent. He
had returned to his old job as a policeman, fathered more children, moved up the ranks at the Yard, transferred to the Special Branch – and found all but no use for his German. Until about
six months ago, when the Branch had assigned him to be the hands and feet of Squadron Leader Thesiger in MI5. It seemed to be the perfect job. The arrest powers of a London bobby allied to a
command of the German language. Who better to trail after spies? And who knew how many spies there were going to be in the wake of the fall of France? It had been low key so far, almost inactive at
times, but it was all in the preparation, Stilton thought, in being ready for the moment when the moment might come. And it was the perfect job.

Stilton wondered about the perks of the job. Might they in fact be just liberties? Thesiger hardly ever seemed to wear full uniform. When they had all set out for Burnham in the winter to set up
the unit he had favoured green corduroy trousers, black wellingtons and his RAF blouse. Today, flaming June, was clearly the morning after the night before. Thesiger had been up to town, got back
late and had worked through the morning in evening dress, bow tie hanging loose, studs popped. The concessions to uniform were, Stilton concluded, the scuffed RAF-issue shoes and the pale blue
braces. The peaked cap sat in his in-tray – but Stilton had never seen him wear that.

Thesiger had sent for both Stilton and Leigh-Hunt and was tut-tutting to himself as he leafed through a sheaf of papers and they sat waiting – Stilton looking idly around the room,
Leigh-Hunt even more idly jingling the coins in his pocket.

‘I’m not happy about this, really I’m not.’

‘Not happy about what, old man?’

Leigh-Hunt never used ranks. Not once had Stilton heard him address Thesiger as ‘sir’.

‘I have to let Walter go.’

‘What?’ Leigh-Hunt and Stilton said together.

‘Don’t panic, chaps. It isn’t permanent. Better not be anyway. Just when I thought we’d got the team up and running . . . but the Branch want Walter back in the East End
for a spell.’

Thesiger put the letter flat on his desk, looked straight at Stilton.

‘You don’t mind do you, Walter?’

‘Mind, sir? It’s not for me to mind. But as you say, I thought we’d just got up and running . . . and now we’ve no troops on the Continent and Jerry’s overrun it .
. . we’ll have our work cut out. Everyone who can nick a rowing boat in Belgium or Holland will do it . . . and Jerry’ll put spies in among ’em sure as eggs are eggs.’

‘Quite,’ said Thesiger at this brief summary of what they all knew. ‘But it won’t be for long. They want you to help with the internment of enemy aliens. You do know
London, you speak German and you’ve probably more experience of working with foreigners than nine out of ten coppers. They’re putting together a three-man team to take charge.
You’ll answer to Chief Inspector Steerforth . . .’

Stilton realised he had winced slightly at the name, and hoped Thesiger hadn’t noticed. Steerforth was a good copper, but was also Stilton’s idea of a ‘bit of a stickler’
and a ‘pain in the arse’.

‘. . . And you’ll have under you a sergeant, name of Troy, Frederick Troy . . . who is some sort of wunderkind at the Yard.’

‘I’ve met Troy, sir.’