Black Out (15 page)

‘English what?’

‘They call it salad cream.’

Zelig pulled a face of disgust and stared down at the mess in his right hand.

‘I guess,’ she added, ‘it’s what they eat when they can’t get mayo. You could call it ersatz mayo.’

She pulled back and closed the door. Zelig was still staring at his hamburger, with enough meat in it to use up the average British ration for a week. Troy sat down in the only chair on his side of the desk. For the first time Zelig seemed to notice him. He took his seat again and with it a huge bite at his burger. However distasteful he seemed hell bent on finishing it in three bites. Troy
thought if he didn’t speak soon he would try counting his chins, or perhaps the hairs on his head. He was fifteen stone and bald but for a halo of stubble that circled his skull just above the tops of his ears.

‘Sho?’ Zelig said, showering the top of his desk with breadcrumbs.

‘I’m Sergeant Troy of the Murder Squad at Scotland Yard. Squadron Leader Pym at MI
₅
referred me to you. There’s one or two things you might be able to help us with.’

‘I doubt that.’ Zelig gulped down enough food to choke himself to death and snatched another bite and a slurp of coffee. The hamburger was reduced to a moon-shaped sliver. For someone so obviously addicted to food he seemed to extract remarkably little pleasure from it.

‘I need to know if your people have brought anyone out of France or Germany—’

‘My people?’ Zelig emphasised ‘people’ as though it were a meaningless word in a language he did not speak.

‘Your … ‘ Troy sought for the right word, ‘agents … You do have agents in Europe?’

‘No comment.’

Troy felt like hitting Zelig. Surely Pym had briefed him on the purpose of the visit. Why else was he seeing him? Why then was he forcing Troy to dot the i’s and cross the t’s?

‘You don’t seem to be in the picture, Colonel.’

‘Rough me up a sketch. I’m all ears.’

All gut more like, thought Troy.

‘We are investigating a death – murder we believe – we also believe that the victim was German.’

‘One less Kraut to worry about.’

Troy ignored the remark. ‘I’ve established that he was not a spy, and as far as I can that he was not a refugee. I was wondering therefore if he was … ’

Troy couldn’t think of the right word – there seemed to be no single word which simply and precisely described what Troy thought the late Herr Brand to be. But, spoken or not, Zelig seemed to know it.

‘Nothin’ doin’,’ he said.

The door opened again and the WAC hurried in and placed a note in front of Zelig.

‘Hey. Just a minute, Sergeant.’

She held on to the door and coyly looked back at him over her right shoulder. Troy followed Zelig’s gaze, from her backside down to her stiletto heels.

‘Is that skirt army issue?’

‘It’s green, isn’t it?’ she replied.

‘So’re dollar bills ‘n’ apples. It’s too damn tight – grips your ass like it’s been stuck on. You walk like you been sewn together at the knees. And those shoes.’

‘What about ‘em?’

‘They ain’t regulation neither.’

‘Up yours,’ said Tosca, and banged out.

It occurred to Troy that there was a certain choreography to their banter – a vulgarian’s Burns and Allen, and it all seemed to be so timed as to prevent Zelig ever getting to an answer. If Troy did not seize the initiative now he might as well forget it. He turned on his best copper-in-the-witness-box style in the hope of dragging Zelig back to the subject.

‘Have you brought out any Germans who have subsequently gone missing?’ he said clearly and succinctly.

‘Like I said,’ the fat man replied almost nonchalantly, ‘nothin’ doin’.’

‘Do you mean that you have or you haven’t?’ Troy persisted.

‘I mean,’ said Zelig, ‘that it’s none of your damn business.’

For several seconds they sat in a silence emphasised and punctuated by the sound of Zelig finishing hamburger and coffee. Troy weighed up the odds. If the man really was the buffoon he appeared to be then he probably knew nothing – after all the British army was full of desk-bound majors, pushing paper around simply to prevent them repeating the charge of the Light Brigade, and what better use for the Colonel Chinstrap of the American army than to have him liaise with the British. Or was he so consummately playing the buffoon that he would never reveal a speck of what he knew? The mystery remained. Why had Zelig gone to the trouble of seeing him? Just for the pleasure of saying no?

Troy got up, thanked Zelig for his time in the briefest of polite terms and headed for the door.

‘Any time,’ he heard Zelig croak as the door closed and he found himself once more looking at Sergeant Tosca. Clearly, he had interrupted something. A tall, languid-looking American in the uniform of a major sat on the end of her desk, one leg swinging gently, his head bent over to her as though simultaneously signifying relaxation and flirtation – sharing a secret. He chuckled deeply. She smiled in return, and as Troy’s presence became obvious the two pairs of eyes swivelled towards him.

‘All through?’ she said.

The Major was extracting a cigarette from a large silver case. He snapped it to and tapped the end of the cigarette on the desk-top.

‘You have a light?’ he said to Troy, and aimed the cigarette towards him.

Troy shook his head and blinked at the sudden flash as Tosca struck the wheel on a Zippo lighter and held it out to the Major. He bent closer, drew on the tobacco and muttered something Troy couldn’t hear. She laughed in response, listening to the Major but looking at Troy.

‘Yes thank you. All through,’ said Troy.

He left feeling that a shared, exclusive joke just about summed up his dealings with Britain’s closest ally. He sat in the car listening to the rain beat a tattoo on the roof, wondering how much of this was down to Pym, how much of it simply natural bloody-mindedness on the part of Zelig. Would Pym have gone to such trouble to make a fool of him? Was he too just passing the buck – making Troy chase Zelig with questions for which Pym already had the answers?

The Packard staff car was still in front of him. The driver’s door opened. The WAC lieutenant-chauffeur walked around the boot between the Packard and the Morris, and stood erect by the near passenger door. Troy looked back at Norfolk House. One of the MPs was coming across the pavement opening a large umbrella, the other stood to attention by the door. Suddenly Troy knew exactly who they were expecting. He reached the step just as Eisenhower walked under the cover of the umbrella. He’d crossed some invisible frontier – a forearm, half-buried in leather gauntlet,
swung gently across his chest, and the MP spoke softly to him.

‘Far enough, buddy. Whatever it is, now is not your moment.’

For a second Troy and Ike were eye to eye, then Ike was in the staff car and moving out into St James’s Square.

‘Sorry. You weren’t down to see the man were you?’ said the MP.

‘No,’ said Troy, ‘no, I wasn’t.’

The rain was beginning to soak through his overcoat. He went quickly back to the car. Was it worth the try? One bald-headed American was probably much the same as any other bald-headed American. The only difference lay in the amount of scrambled egg on the cap. Though, being fair, Troy felt certain Ike had better table manners.

The woman at the front desk at MI
₅
HQ in St James’s Street looked at Troy’s warrant card and phoned up.

‘Squadron Leader Pym is in conference,’ she told Troy. Throughout the day, at odd intervals, she told Troy the same thing over the phone to Scotland Yard. At six o’clock Troy was debating with himself whether to tell Onions, buttonhole Pym at Albany or relieve Wildeve at Tite Street as he had promised. He tried Pym’s home number, which he had memorised the night before.

‘I’ve been trying to reach you all day.’

‘So I’ve heard. Troy, you just don’t know when to give up do you?’

‘I’d be a poor excuse for a copper if I gave up in the face of a crude stonewalling like the one Zelig gave me.’

‘That’s got nothing to do with me. I can’t help you any more than I have.’

Troy could hear the tremor in Pym’s voice, the tone hovering somewhere between exasperation and anger.

‘If Zelig had no intention of telling me anything, then why did he agree to see me?’

‘I don’t know, and I wish to God you’d stop asking. I cannot, cannot, cannot talk to you!’

Troy was silent for a moment. He heard Pym sigh deeply and knew he had let slip something he now regretted. He wondered what kind of a dressing-down Pym had spent the day listening to. Who had been giving him the hell that betrayed itself now in his exhaustion and nervousness? Blurting out the one thing he should not.

‘You know, Neville, if you wanted me to give up there was no more sure fire way of ensuring I didn’t than by telling me what you just told me. Who’s told you not to talk to me?’

Pym’s tone was subdued now, spent of anger and shot through with weariness. ‘Troy, I can’t help you. Really I can’t. If only you knew … If you have any sense of … if you … for God’s sake let this one drop.’

‘I can’t do that.’

‘Then don’t drag me down with you.’

Troy heard Pym put down the receiver. Whatever doubts he had had about the cover-up of von Ranke’s murder and the motive for it – for Brand’s and Wolinski’s – blew away like will o’ the wisp. Pym had lit a flame in his imagination and he could feel it tingle down into his fingertips – the sheer pleasure of pursuit. He caught the bus out to the Chelsea Embankment to meet Wildeve.

At the corner of Tite Street and Royal Hospital Road Wildeve was nowhere to be seen. But that was just as well. If Troy could see him so could anyone else. He walked on towards the Chelsea Embankment.

‘Psst.’ He heard as he passed the house opposite number 55.

‘Psst.’ Again. With more urgency if a psst could have it.

Troy looked down to see Wildeve’s hand groping towards his ankle from the area steps of the house.

‘Down here!’ he whispered.

Troy swung open the gate to find Wildeve sitting on the steps with his eyes at ground level. He slipped down next to him.

‘These people seem to have closed up for the duration,’ Wildeve whispered. ‘Absolutely perfect. The better hole, eh?’

‘Jack, if they’ve gone away why are we whispering?’

Wildeve opened his mouth, but Troy waved it shut. ‘What’s happening?’

‘Absolutely nothing. I got here around noon. Took me that long to dry out. I know she’s in. I’ve seen her at the first-floor window a couple of times.’

‘Alone?’

‘I think so. The girl’s come and gone a few times. And there’s been the usual handful of tradesmen up and down to the basement door. If there’s anyone else up there with her they’ve been here since the morning. I’ve seen no one.’

‘OK,’ Troy said. ‘Go home and get warm.’

‘Good-oh. I was beginning to think you’d never get here.’

‘Who is it tonight?’ asked Troy.

‘Another Wren. All the nice boys love a sailor.’

Wildeve looked both ways at the top of the steps, and then left again, like a child observing a thoroughly dinned kerb drill, and headed off in the direction of the river. An hour and a half later, Troy sat in the pitch darkness, feeling frozen stiff and utterly bored. How had Wildeve stuck it for the six or more hours? He stood up to ease the cramp in his right leg, rubbed at the scar on his arm, which seemed to ache in the damp, and dusted off his trousers. A flash of light came suddenly from the first-floor window, and he caught a quick glimpse of a woman’s face, a hand at the blackout making some minor adjustment. It was unmistakably, even in the briefest glance, the same woman he had seen in Stepney. A face so striking one could hardly forget it.

Troy crossed the street, staring up at the window, but no further light or movement came from it. An impulse seized him. He walked up to the front door and rang the bell. He heard the clump of lazy, tired feet banging up the stairs from the basement, and the door inched open. A young housemaid, cap awry, stockings crumpled as though pulled up in a hurry, stood in the doorway.

‘Yes?’ she said.

‘Sergeant Troy,’ said Troy, showing the card.

‘Tradesman’s entrance downstairs,’ said the girl, and swung the door to. Troy jammed his foot in the way and braced an arm against the door. Tradesman’s entrance! Good grief, could the woman not hear the toff in his voice? Had a few years on the beat rendered him indistinguishable from the butcher’s boy? He reached into his jacket pocket and handed her one of his private calling cards, the pre-war ones without rank and giving his parents’ address.

‘Take this and hand it to Lady Diana. Tell her Mr Troy would like a word. Now!’

The girl snatched the card and ran, leaving Troy standing in the hall. A minute passed in silence, then the girl returned.

‘The mistress says as how I’m to show you up,’ she said half-whispering. ‘Coppers is always tradesman’s door. That’s what cook says,’ she added impudently.

Diana Brack contrived a dramatic entrance. She strode the width of the room to meet Troy, her hand extended in a firm, masculine handshake.

‘Mr Troy. I’m so sorry. The usual cliché applies. One cannot get the staff nowadays.’

She stood at least five foot ten and was dressed in Vesta Tilley garb. A tailored and pleated version of men’s striped trousers flapped around her long legs and pinched in tightly at her waist – a black silk shirt, complete with silver cufflinks, rippled from broad shoulders across a small bosom. A single strand of pearls at the the throat. This was hardly a gesture to femininity, for the whole appearance contrived femininity in irony. Her skin was china white. Her black hair shone with a rich lustre, curling thickly a couple of inches above the shoulder, and flopped carelessly over her right eye. As she took back her hand she flicked the strand clear of her face and Troy looked into eyes that were a rich, deep green. It was, he thought, a snook cocked at fashion with more panache than he had seen in a long time. A devastating study in black and white. He appreciated the frustration of Wildeve’s brothers and the late Al Bowlly. Here was a face to kill or die for. Diana Brack was beyond doubt one of the most beautiful women in London. Troy thought it must plague her father badly that she was still single at thirty-four. Not that her age showed. He would have put her
somewhere in her mid-twenties, but that her manner showed more self-assurance.