A Little White Death (54 page)

‘Fine,’ said Troy. ‘Tell me who killed her.’

‘I don’t know!’

Troy put all his weight on the car door. Curran no longer screamed; he gurgled from deep within his throat.

‘Who killed Clover Browne?’

‘I don’t bloody know. And if I did, I wouldn’t tell you!’

‘Who killed Clover Browne?’

‘You’ll regret this, Troy. Believe me, you’ll regret it.’

Troy eased back, pulled the door open and let Curran roll into the gutter. He turned onto his side, nursing his damaged hand up one armpit.

‘It wasn’t Blood. Who was it?’

It took a few seconds before Troy realised that the rasping, wheezing noise that Curran made was laughter.

‘Blood?’ he was saying. ‘Blood? Blood? You’re a fool, Troy. A complete bloody fool. If you think you’ve got a thing on me – a single damn thing – then
arrest me. Go on, arrest me! Don’t expect me to make it easy for you. I won’t string myself up for your convenience. Go on, arrest me!’

Curran shoved down his throat what he had avoided thinking for days now. He had not a thing on him. The bastard was right. There was nothing they could discuss. Troy had but one question. All
important and pointless. Who killed Clover Browne?

Troy kicked him once and walked on.

Troy weighed his options. He could go back to the Yard tomorrow. The week Coyn had ordered him to rest was up. Once at the Yard he could then go back to Albert Hall Mansions
mob-handed and bring Curran in for questioning. But what was the question? He already knew the answer. The spooks had killed Fitz and Clover to cover up the honeytrap. If he got Curran to the Yard
his brief would have him on
habeas corpus
before the day was out.

He could ask Rod to put a question in the House, force the government to retreat into not answering for reasons of national security. But, from all he had said, Rod’s own people would come
down on him like a ton of bricks if he rocked the boat between now and the next election.

Or he could disinter the Webley, go round and shoot the little sod. How many killings could London take in a single week, and all with the same type of gun? Besides, that moment had passed. He
would willingly have shot him as he taunted him in the street this morning, but not now. It was too much like cold blood. As Nikolai had said, anyone can point a gun and pull the trigger.

He had blown it. He should not have approached Curran. He should not have lost his temper. He should have looked on from a safe distance.

He was still contemplating this mess of inaction when the phone rang.

‘Right, y’bugger!’

Angus. Angus Pakenham. Anna’s errant husband. He who had gone walkabout, as she put it, some time last winter.

‘Where are you, Angus?’

‘I’m in London. In a pub.’

Troy could have guessed that.

‘Are you going to see Anna?’

‘Can’t old boy, simply can’t. Got to see you though. Right away. Very urgent. Matter of life and death. Can you pop out?’

To a pub? To a pub with Angus Pakenham? A drunk with a genuine hollow leg? It might stop the grinding process that left Troy thinking he was trapped between two millstones. Take the wind out of
the sails. Better someone else’s problems than his own. Even better Angus’s problems, and they were legion, than his own. Whatever it was, it was hardly likely to be a matter of life
and death – that was just Angus-speak. Everything, without exception, was a matter of life and death to Angus. Besides, Angus was a raree. Miserable drunks like Egg Curran were ten a penny.
Every pub in London had them. But Angus was a daring, exquisite original.

‘Which pub are you in?’ ‘Pig Heaven. See you in half an hour.’ He rang off before Troy could ask more. Now, which pub was Pig Heaven? Angus’s habit was to
rechristen every pub he frequented. His names were usually the more apt, but since their purpose was concealment – from Anna if no one else – you had to remember what was what. Pig
Heaven, Troy was pretty sure, was a free house called The Eight Bells, down past Waterloo station, not two hundred yards from the Old Vic theatre. What he could not recall was why Angus called it
Pig Heaven.

He knew as soon as he pushed open the door. It was a drizzling early autumnal night – dammit, he had thought, the clocks go back in three weeks, and had wrapped up in overcoat and scarf
– and the public bar was miasmic with wet wool and cloth caps, a brown fug of steam and tobacco smoke, and strewn its length and breadth with sawdust. He dared not think about the spit. It
was a filthy hole of a pub, a veritable Pig Heaven. Cissie would love it, plenty of grot to nose around in, and he was immediately reminded of Angus’s definition of a truly bad pub –
‘Spit and sawdust, if you bring your own sawdust.’ He would chortle every time he cracked that one. Pig Heaven at least supplied its own, and in the middle of it all, alone at a corner
table, head bent over a vast sheaf of papers, a large malt whisky next to him, sat Angus. It seemed for the moment as though in the course of one day Troy had traded the old Russian for the mad
Celt, men living by the word, lost in paper.

Troy watched him, scribbling furiously on a foolscap sheet. His reddish hair was trimmed within its usual wayward limits, and there wasn’t really much of it left. Just a few brandy snaps
curling off above the ears. And he was shaved, as Troy could tell from the abundance of foam in one ear. But his suit was on its last legs, its last elbows and its last cuffs. His shoes looked as
though they leaked, and on a pisser of a night like this he’d be lucky not to get trench foot. He’d soak up half the puddles in London as though he were made of blotting paper.

‘Won’t be a mo’,’ he said without looking up.

Troy had not even thought the man had noticed him. He sat next to him and waited.

‘I’m on the last page now.’

‘Last page of what?’

‘Me memoirs.’

Troy’s heart sank. He was barking again. Poor, crazy, shellshocked, one-legged Angus – the poet-philosopher of half the pubs in central London, over the edge again.

Troy peeked. He could not read Angus’s handwriting. It seemed to him to meander across the page without achieving the definition that might enable him to perceive a single character. He
would not get a second chance. Angus wrote ‘The End’ in large capitals and turned the page face down onto the pile.

‘Cheers!’

He reached for his malt.

‘You’re not drinking!’

‘Er . . .’

Angus’s hand shot up for the barman before he could think of an excuse.

‘Tommy! Right, Troy, what are you on?’

‘Ginger beer,’ he bleated, knowing he had just solicited a lecture on the joys of grain and grape. But Angus ordered the drink without comment.

‘Long time no thingy,’ he said.

‘Quite,’ said Troy, waiting for the bang.

‘Seen anything of the old girl?’

This meant his wife, Anna.

‘As a matter of fact I have.’

‘Been giving her one, have you?’

‘What?’

‘I do hope you have. I haven’t been around for months. I was hoping she’d hook up with you again. Keep her off the streets and all that. Needs a good shag from time to
time.’

Troy said nothing.

‘Any chance you’ll be seeing her in the near future?’

‘It’s possible,’ said Troy, with no idea where all this was leading.

‘Good. I want you to give her this.’

Angus banged his fist down on the manuscript.

‘Your . . . memoirs?’

‘Me memoirs. Everything from when I first looked around the nursery to meeting you in this boozer tonight. The thirties, that time I knocked six of Mosley’s blackshirts out cold in a
pub in Wapping, the war, my old man blowing his brains out when he heard Chamberlain’s speech, the RAF, fucking Colditz, that glider we built in the attic to fly over the walls, the time I
thought fuckit and jumped, sawing off me leg, that nice little chap in the village who made the tin leg for me, all the benders, that time I got arrested outside Downing Street for challenging Eden
to come out and fight like a man, all the time I’ve spent in the wilderness contemplating me belly button. In short, the meaning of life! Free, free, I’m free of all of it
now!’

Troy began to wish he’d asked for something stronger, like Polish vodka.

‘Tell her to start with Weidenfeld and Nicolson, always liked their stuff. Then there’s Olympia in Paris. Always liked their stuff too. And if those buggers say no find out who
published Monty’s memoirs and send ’em there.’

Britain was awash in war memoirs. They’d all done them: Churchill, Monty, Horrocks . . . everyone, it seemed, but Auchinleck had set down a war memoir. P.R. Reid had told his
Colditz
Story
, Romilly and Alexander had had their
Privileged Nightmare
. . . Britain didn’t much need Angus Pakenham’s.

Troy sipped a ginger beer he didn’t want and let Angus prattle as he wrapped his masterpiece up in polythene carrier bags.

‘Do you remember that time we took on all those damn patriots during Suez? We knocked ’em into next week before they slung us out of the Two Dogs At It.’

This was not how Troy remembered it. He hadn’t hit anyone. It was all Angus.

He wondered how many layers there were going to be. Not one polythene bag, but six,orseven or . . . the last one Troy estimated to be number twelve. The package was now bulky and puffy.

‘Don’t want it getting wet on the way home,’ Angus said. ‘Troy, I want you to promise me faithfully you will deliver this safely to Anna.’

‘Do I have any choice?’

‘Good man!’

Angus clapped him on the shoulder with enough force to part body and spirit.

‘Right. Chop, chop. Can’t sit here all night.’

He downed his malt, Troy left his ginger beer, and they stepped out into a wet London night. The package had no handle by which to grip it. Troy undid his overcoat, loose upon his frame since
TB, and buttoned the bundle to his chest.

They walked on, north, in the direction of the Thames, and at the south end of the Hungerford Footbridge, fifty yards from the Royal Festival Hall, they went their ways.

Troy was halfway up the steps when Angus called out to him.

‘Free, free, as that black bloke said in Washington, Lord almighty free at last!’

‘Free of what?’ said Troy.

‘The war, dammit, the war!’

He walked on a few steps, then he turned back to Troy.

‘Of course I knew it would get me in the end.’

‘What? What would get you?’ said Troy.

Angus just swivelled, both arms on him juddering back and forth like the muzzles on Browning machine guns and said, ‘Takkatakkatakkatakkatakka!’

And then he walked off in silence, the tin leg swinging out at its inhuman angle, as ever setting himself a cracking pace few two-legs could ever match. Troy watched him out of sight and then
ascended to the bridge. He had reached the centre bay, a train rumbled out of Charing Cross and set the whole bridge shaking. He never heard the soft splash of shoes on wet tarmac as the man leapt
from the steel girders of the bridge. The blow to the head turned the world green. He vaguely, dreamily, had a sense of his right hand being laid flat on the parapet and seeing the butt of a gun
come down on it. But he felt no pain, and the green enveloped him.

When he awoke he found himself floating on his back in midstream. Unless he was very much mistaken he had just passed under Blackfriars Railway Bridge. He found himself wondering how many
bridges there were and in what order. He’d missed Waterloo – never one of his favourites; Blackfriars was far prettier, all neat in cast iron. Southwark was next. He glided under like a
man doing the most effortless backstroke the world had ever seen. Only when he’d shot by London Bridge and could see, by putting his head back, Tower Bridge looming towards him, upside down,
did he begin to think that he might be in a bit of a pickle. After Tower Bridge, no more bridges. Only the pool of London, the wider reaches of the Thames, then out into the estuary, into the North
Sea, past Chatham dockyard, the oil refineries on the Isle of Sheppey, Broadstairs, Ramsgate, the South Goodwins lightship, the Channel and next stop South Africa. Yes – it was a bit of a
pickle. High time he did something about it.

A motor boat appeared to be coming upriver straight for him. He rolled onto his belly and dived, only to find that as soon as it had passed he bobbed to the surface as surely as a cork. He was
stuck, on his back again. It was almost impossible to swim. Another gut-wrenching effort and he rolled over again, tore off his overcoat, and bobbed to the surface once more. There was something,
some wet and clammy creature clinging limpet-like to his chest. He tore at it furiously, digging into its puffy skin with his fingernails. It was tough as old boots. It seemed like minutes before
he cut through it, then in one great white rush it shot upwards to scatter down in a kaleidoscope of giant confetti on the water, soft as shrapnel. What the fuck was it? Whatever it was, without it
he was sinking. He rolled onto his belly once more, kicked off his shoes, sloughed off his jacket, found he could achieve a passable breaststroke and began to strike out for the shore.

Both hands hurt, but he couldn’t work out why. Not crippling pain, but sharpening pain, a pain that seemed slowly to be growing. He struck land. A Thames mudflat. He hauled himself upright
and took two steps into the mud. It sucked a sock clean off his foot. He stepped again and lost the other sock, but he was standing. He looked around. Lights glinting on the other side of the
river. But which side of the river was he on? Wapping? Or Rotherhithe – Injun country?

He turned to find an old stone wall, a rusty, weed-strewn iron ladder leading up to street level. He hauled himself up it. His right hand was bleeding badly, the left less so, but the week-old
wound had opened up. He found himself facing a blitzed warehouse, not a door or window intact, but from somewhere within it the glow of light, of fire. He staggered on. Into the warehouse, his bare
feet crunching over broken glass, leaving a trail of blood. The light was a bonfire, blazing on the stone floor of the warehouse, tended by two ragged children, a boy and a girl, of about nine or
ten years of age. They crouched by the fire. The boy fished out a charred potato with a stick and juggled it from hand to hand; the girl noticed Troy and stood up as he approached.