A Little White Death (36 page)

‘I suppose I was looking after her.’

‘Like . . . her guardian?’

Troy had never once let this word reach the level of conscious recognition, but yes that was what he had been. And a bloody awful one at that.

‘Daughter of a friend was she, sir?’

‘She’s the granddaughter of Sir Stanley Onions, the recently retired Commissioner of the Met.’

‘Oh, bloody hell. Oh, bloody hell.’

This, clearly, was more than the man could stand. He flustered himself to silence, the blood drained from his cheeks.

‘Tell me,’ Troy said, ‘do you have any doubts that this was a suicide?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Then you do. And so you should. Why don’t you write up the report from what you now know and drop it into Mr Wildeve’s office? Tell him you cannot accept the facts at face
value and request his department look into it. Quote the only witness – me – as saying I know of no reason why Miss Clover should have taken her own life. Do it before you go off shift.
See he gets it first thing in the morning. And I’m sure I don’t have to tell you, talk to no one about this.’

The constable seemed relieved to have a plan of action. He thanked Troy, put his warrant card on top of the sheet across his chest and fled.

Habit took over. Troy reached for his jacket to put back the card, and found the two envelopes Clover had left, one addressed to him, the other to Stan. He’d no memory of ever picking them
up. Damn. He should have told that young bobby there were notes.

He opened his.

He’d no idea what she was talking about. He thought about calling Stan. It would destroy him. Better to let him sleep. It might be the last good night’s sleepthe old man would ever
get. He put the letter marked ‘Grandad’ back into his pocket unopened.

He rose around six thirty the next morning, only minutes before the overhead neon lights flickered on with their blinking light and the clanking sound of their metal housings
expanding in the heat. He found a coinbox telephone on a trolley in the corridor.

Time to phone Stan.

He’d be up by now. Fire lit, first fag of the day, sitting by the range in his pyjamas and dressing-gown, cursing the cheerlessness of smokeless coal, and thoroughly relishing the onset of
autumn.

‘What’s up?’ he said, instantly suspicious. Troy never called at this hour. The Troy Stan had known was hardly ever up at this hour. Only murder got him up at this time of
day.

‘Where are you?’

‘I’m in the Charing Cross Hospital. Stan, Jackie’s dead.’

He’d learnt not to mince words about death. Stan had taught him that years ago in his first days at the Yard. ‘Forget “Sit down, I’ve something to tell you” –
just spit it out. There’s nowt ye can say’ll save ’em so much as an ounce of grief.’

All the same Stan’s response shocked him.

‘Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh!’

And he did not stop. His voice rose, louder and shriller. And he did not stop. ‘No, no, no’ might have made more sense, but this wasn’t denial. It was unstoppable, unplumbable
heartbreak. Troy heard the phone fall. Waited minutes, a passing age, before Stan picked it up.

‘Which ward?’

‘Bevan.’

‘I’ll be there in an hour.’

Stan sat backbone rigid on a hospital chair, his face bloodless – but shaved, shaved and groomed. Troy had never seen him turned out any other way, whatever the crisis,
and he could not count the crises in the best part of thirty years. His hair and his mac glistened with early-morning rain, and his shining black boots sat squarely on the lino, as unmistakably
police as a helmet.

He heard Troy out in silence. When Troy handed him Jackie’s letter, emotion betrayed him for the first time. He stretched out his hand and it seemed that he could not make himself grasp
it. The hand withdrew, dived into his pocket. Out came his glasses. Like grandfather like granddaughter – he was rarely caught wearing his glasses in public.

Troy waited till his eyes left the page and his fingers refolded it. He half expected Stan to return the letter, but he didn’t. He put it, almost delicately, back into its envelope and
slipped it into his pocket with his glasses. It occurred to Troy that few letters so private in intent were ever quite so public as suicide notes. It was evidence.

‘If there’s anything . . .’

Stan read his mind. Cut him short.

‘There isn’t. Just asks me to forgive her and to explain to her mother. Explain what, I ask you?’

‘Then it can be between you and her. No need for Jack to read it.’

‘Jack?’

‘Jack Wildeve. He’ll be here any minute.’

‘You don’t believe it was suicide?’

‘I don’t know what I believe.’

Stan stared right through him for almost a minute, then thrust the chair back with an ear-splitting scrape.

‘Her mother. I must see her mother.’

‘Stan!’ Troy called to his back. But he was up and lurching down the ward. At the doors he ran into Jack. Troy saw Jack put a hand out to Stan’s shoulder, heard softly spoken
condolences and saw Stan blunder on, speechless in his rage and confusion.

Jack looked as bad as Troy. ‘Been up all night,’ he said simply. ‘Got your message around four o’clock. Saw no reason why we should both lose a night’s sleep. You
don’t suppose there’s any chance of a cuppa, do you?’

‘They don’t do room service. You can drink mine when they bring it.’

Jack rubbed at his eyes with his fists and said, ‘Fire away.’

And when Troy had finished – how he spent the evening with Fitz, how he found Clover in a coma, where the damn pills came from – Jack said exactly what Stan had said.

‘You don’t think it’s suicide, do you?’

‘Inside pocket of my jacket,’ Troy said. ‘Just behind you.’

Jack read Clover’s letter.

A nurse appeared with Troy’s morning tea. Jack slurped at it greedily, sat with the letter in one hand, the teacup in the other and Troy used the distraction to wonder what he really did
think.

‘Ordinarily,’ Jack said, ‘I’d say it was pretty conclusive. You’re certain it’s her handwriting?’

‘I’ve never seen her handwriting. You’ll have to check with Stan.’

If Stan chose to show Jack his own note from Clover, so be it, but it seemed beyond the pale to Troy to mention it now.

‘I’m sure it’s genuine. It’s her turn of phrase. And it’s clearly the half-formed hand of a teenager. But since you ask, the note notwithstanding, I can’t
think of any reason why she should kill herself.’

‘Cheerful, was she?’

‘Cheerful enough. A damn sight more cheerful than me most of the time.’

‘And Fitz?’

‘Oh, he was fine, cocky – stupidly so.’

Troy had just enough warning of what was coming. Jack had slipped the question in as neatly as he would have done himself.

‘Fitz shot himself last night. About an hour and a half after he said goodnight to you at Leoni’s. Put the barrel of his revolver to his ear and blew his brains out.’

Jack took Troy’s keys. A new doctor took his blood pressure and listened to his heart, but then discharged him. He was home by ten o’clock. The front door propped
open, morning light streaking down the yard, projecting his shadow towards the inhumanly huge feet of a waiting, uniformed constable.

The man saluted and said, ‘Scene of Crime still inside, sir.’

It was as near to barring Troy’s way as the man would dare. Troy stuck his head around the door, just in time to hear the pop of a flash bulb. A police photographer was shooting the chair
and the coffee table from all angles. A fingerprint man was dusting doorknobs and tut-tutting to himself. Jack sat on an upright chair between the hallstand and the grandfather clock, jotting notes
into his little black book.

‘Ah, Freddie. Just in time. Prints are asking if you’ve had many visitors lately?’

‘None at all,’ said Troy. ‘Stan was the last and that was the day he brought Jackie round.’

Was that a glimmer of guilt he saw in Jack’s eyes? No one had been to see him. Not a damn soul. Not Swift Eddie, not Crazy Kolankiewicz, not Jack, not anybody.

Jack folded his notebook. ‘If you’re fit enough to talk we should find somewhere quiet and let this lot do their job.’

‘The Salisbury,’ Troy suggested. ‘Won’t be open for another hour. We can bang on the door till Spike opens and have the place to ourselves.’

Spike yelled, ‘Bugger off ’ through the closed door, and, ‘Go home, you drunken bastards.’

Jack rattled the door and said, ‘Open up! Police!’

What was traditional was also effective. The door inched back. Spike’s head appeared. ‘Good Lord. Mr Troy, and Mr Wildeve too. It’s not often we get the pleasure of both of you
at once. In fact, it can mean only one thing. Another dead ’un?’

‘Yes,’ said Troy. ‘Over the road. In the Court.’

Spike ushered them in. ‘What, right on your own doorstep?’

‘Closer,’ said Troy.

‘Jesus Christ,’ Spike said softly. He stepped behind the bar and shoved two glasses under the optics. ‘On the ’ouse,’ he said, and left them to it.

The two glasses sat either side of a tiny round table. The smell of the brandy almost brought Troy to retching. Neither of them wanted it.

Jack could not sit. He seemed to Troy to be at that stage of exhaustion where to settle would be to sleep. He pulled back a chair, slung his coat over it, and paced the room, rubbing at his
forehead, occasionally screwing his fists into his eyes. His notebook stayed buttoned up in his pocket. Troy rolled up his coat for a pillow and stretched full length on a mock-leather bench
beneath the window. He could feel the rumble of the traffic in St Martin’s Lane, he could see the fancy plasterwork of the ceiling if he looked straight up, and if he twisted his neck he
could hold a conversation with Jack’s knees.

They were wooden figures in a Swiss weather house – at opposite poles of activity.

‘Let’s go over the basics one more time,’ Jack began. ‘Jackie was Clover Browne?’

‘Yes.’

‘And Stan knew this, or he just suspected it?’

‘He knew.’

‘And Clover Browne was the third woman in the Fitz business?’

‘Yes.’

‘And how many people knew this?’

‘Every hack in London I should think. No one ran with it because of the libel laws, and because Vice apparently couldn’t find her and hence could not call her as a witness. I doubt
any newspaper wanted to be the first to name her. Stan’s instincts were right. If he could just keep Jackie from blundering into the press she was probably safe, and the good name of Onions
safe with it.’

‘It was Percy Blood’s investigation, wasn’t it?’

‘Yes.’

‘And Blood never identified Clover as Jackie? Hence the procurement charge was dropped?’

‘Without Clover the charge was nonsense. It was a waste of time charging Fitz with something so weak, but then so was so much else of what was produced as evidence. I went to the Old
Bailey most days. It was a botched case. I told Coyn as much. I don’t think the press know. Rod’s son Alex has been making all the running in the papers, and he’s never let slip
to me that he knew who Clover was. And if he knew he’d have asked. He’d have come to me with a stream of questions.’

‘Do you think Fitz knew?’

‘Knew what?’

‘Knew that he was entertaining the granddaughter of a senior policeman.’

‘I’ve no idea. It would not have bothered him if he did. He collected celebrity and pseudo-celebrity. I mean, it even seemed to amuse him to know me. I cannot work out whether he
enjoyed risk or whether he simply had no concept of it. As far as Fitz was concerned, risk was probably stealing or forging or killing – I don’t think he recognised a notion of social
risk. Rules were for idiots. Rules were not for him. Rules were made to be broken. But then, Fitz’s graspof reality struck me as being as flimsy as the case against him. I could not get him
to see that the judge meant to see him go down. He might have got off at appeal, but I really think this morning would have seen Fitz sent down for a couple of years. He’d have done a few
months before the appeal, and you know what a meal the hard boys would make of a man like Fitz. Couldn’t get that throughtohim.’

‘You don’t think he might have thought it through after the two of you parted, and thought the worst of it?’

‘It’s possible. Of course it’s possible. I might have tipped him over the edge. But I know this – he would never have chosen a gun as his ticket to the next world.
Anything but a gun. He hated guns. Went right through the war as an officer without even touching one. And why would any doctor have need of a gun to kill himself? Why would a man as fastidious as
Fitz leave a mess? He could have opened his doctor’s Gladstone bag, swallowed a handful of Nembutal and gone happily to Valhalla.’

‘So we agree.’

‘Do we?’

‘There is no evidence, at least none I’ve found at this very early stage, to suggest that Fitz was anything but alone at the time of his death. He’d given Pritch-Kemp a key and
he’s spent the past few nights with Fitz. Company, I suppose. Stopped him thinking. Pritch-Kemp let himself in some time after midnight, as he seems to have done every night this week, and
found Fitz dead. An army-issue Webley still in his hand.’

‘But?’

‘It was murder. I know in my bones Fitz was murdered.’

‘And Clover?’

‘How much faith do we put in coincidence?’

‘It’s a pretty cool customer who pumps a young woman full of drugs in Soho and then nips off to Paddington to shoot someone.’

‘But . . . as you said in the hospital, you have doubts. No reason to want to kill herself.’

This was a familiar moment, one they used to reach so often in cases. Jack was appealing to Troy to support his instinct. The vagaries of rank, the vicissitudes of ill-health meant nothing. Jack
was saying, ‘Let’s be a team.’ And Troy could not respond. He could not tell Jack that he knew in his bones that Jackie Clover was murdered. He knew nothing in his bones. His body
talked to him of raging silence.