John Lawton - Riptide

The car took the hump of a narrow bridge, swung left into a maze of tiny streets and two-storey houses, right at an old Victorian school and pulled up.

‘We there?’ said Cal.

‘Yep. Chantry Street, Islington.’

They got out. One side of the street-the odd numbers-was intact, bar a few broken windows: the other side, the evens, wasn’t. It was in pieces. Some houses stood, some didn’t. None of them seemed inhabited. It was almost familiar. Cal was getting used to this. Could you go to any borough in the east and find most of it missing?

Stilton was leafing through a wire-bound spiral notebook, muttering ‘Bugger, bugger, bugger.’

‘Odd or even, Walter?’ said Cal. ‘We have a fifty/fifty chance.’

‘Here we are. Wallfigz. 20 Chantry Street… oh bugger!’

They found number 21 and stood with their backs to it. 20 was a heap. And there wasn’t much more of the house next door.

‘Saturday night’s got a lot to answer for,’ said Cal.

‘No. This is older. This looks like it happened weeks ago.’

In front of the ruin of number twenty-two an iron manhole was set in the pavement. A head appeared from it, level with Stilton’s boots. The dusty blonde head of a child. A filthy child. A child from The Water Babies, looking as though it had just been sent up to sweep the chimney. Stilton squatted down.

‘What are you doing down there at this time of night, young lady?’ he asked.

‘Who wants to know?’

‘I do. Chief Inspector Stilton CID.’

‘Dad says not to talk to coppers.’

‘Would that be because you’re looting?’

‘Looting! I ain’t nicked nuffink! It’s our house, this is. Dad sent me to get a bucket o’ coal.’

‘Bit young to be sent down a manhole, aren’t you?’

‘I’m ten! Besides, Dad don’t fit. Nor do none of me bruwers. ‘Ere, cop hold of this.’

Cal took the bucket from her as she pushed it up. Then her head and shoulders filled the manhole. Her hands found the rim and she flipped herself up to the pavement with the skill of a practised gymnast. She was in a vest and knickers, and black from head to foot.

‘Tell me,’ Stilton went on. ‘Did ye know the bloke who lodged next door?’

“Ow much?’ said the child ‘You want me to grass someone up, it’ll cost.’

‘A tanner.’

‘Bob.’

Stilton stuck his hands in his trousers pocket and dug out a few coppers.

‘Ninepence,’ he said, counting them out one by one.

The child stuck out her hand and said, ‘Done.’

‘Now. Did ye know him?’

‘Wot? ‘Im wot lived wiv Mrs O’Rourke?’

‘If she lived at number twenty, yes.’

‘Yeah, I knew Fish Wally.’

‘The raid? A while back, was it?’

‘It were in March. Day before me birthday. Mum’d saved up flour an’ marge an’ neggs for ages to make me a cake, then ‘Itler blew it to bits. I din’t get none of it.’

‘And Fish Wally-he was still here then?’

‘Oh yeah. We was all down the shelter, when the street got blown to bollocks. Dad told Wally he should come and live with us at Mum’s sister’s till ‘e got fixed up. But ‘e wouldn’t have none of it. Dug around in the rubble for a day or two. Found his razor and his spare trousers and off ‘e went. Dad says ‘e ain’t seen ‘im since.’

Cal could see that Stilton wanted to say ‘Oh bugger’ again but, however foul the child’s vocabulary, could not bring himself to add to it.

‘You know,’ he said, ‘I think it’s time you were in bed. And I think it’s time I had a word with your dad.’

Troy wondered what time it was. He was not like his father-a man who could awaken at any time, instinctively know what time it was, calculate how much was left to dream and go back to sleep for a precise period of time, be it ten minutes or four hours. More often than not Troy did not sleep. It was still dark, darkish-Kitty stood in outline near the foot of his bed, caught in a sliver of moonlight where Troy had peeled back the black-out. He watched her roll a stocking up one leg, back bent, one leg ramrod straight, the other bent into a curiously balletic, attractive pose, toes on point as she eased out the rucks at the knee, passed hand over hand up her thigh and hooked it onto her suspenders. He watched her. She watched him. As dispassionate as could be. Not a flicker on that disarmingly pretty face. He felt as far from her affections as… as if he were light years away-away from her warmth, away from heat and light. Aphelion. It was a too-familiar moment. The pure detachment of the woman from the man. He knew it too well. With any other woman it would be him looking on so detachedly. She dressed without a smile. Left without a word.

At breakfast in Claridge’s next morning Cal found two men eating his breakfast: Walter Stilton and a face he thought he vaguely knew, stuffing itself with tea and toast. Stilton got up, clapped him on the shoulder as though greeting him at a private party he was hosting-when in fact it was pretty much the other way round.

‘Calvin. You’ll remember our man Constable Dobbs?’

Ah-the copper Stilton had ‘bollocked’ in front of him a few nights back.

‘Sure,’ he said.

‘Bernard,’ said Dobbs. ‘Bernard Dobbs.’

Cal pulled up a chair.

‘Tell me, Walter. Do you think the War Department budget will run to three breakfasts in a single day? I’m kind of peckish after last night.’

Dobbs froze mid-munch. His teeth locked onto the toast, his eyes flickering between Stilton and Cal. Too much brass around a single table for his own comfort. Then Stilton gave him his cue, roared with laughter and waved at a waitress as though he’d been eating at Claridge’s all his life. Dobbs munched on in relief.

‘I’ve worked out a plan,’ Stilton began. ‘Belt and braces.’

‘What? Belt and what?’

‘It’s an old saying up north. Belt and braces. What the nervous man does to keep his trousers up-wears both belt and braces-you call ‘em suspenders, least they do in Hollywood-that way if one snaps your trousers still stay up.’

‘I see,’ said Cal, not seeing, wondering at the power of gravity in the north of England.

‘Bernard, here. He’s going to stand guard outside the Lincoln. We know Fish Wally goes in there. If he spots him he calls in to the Yard. It’s routine stuff, but it might just work. Besides, our Bernard’s good at standing outside boozers, aren’t you Bernard?’

Dobbs avoided meeting Stilton’s gaze.

‘And us. We do the streets and the caffs.’

‘What streets?’ said Cal. ‘What caffs?’

‘Well-if I’d been bombed out I’d go back to my own. If you see what I mean. It’s possible Wally has gone back to the Polish bits of London. It’d make sense. He’d be more likely to get fixed up that way. They’d look after him. Get him another room. Slip him a bob or two till he’s found his feet. So you and I are going to tramp the beat in Polish London.’

‘Putney?’ said Cal.

‘Well remembered, lad. Putney it is. And if that draws a blank we’ll look across the other side of the river in Fulham.’

‘Walter, how long will this take?’

Stilton laughed. ‘How long’s a piece of string?’

A more appropriate question might have been, ‘How long is a piece of elastic?’ Four days later, they had tramped, as Walter so accurately put it, the streets, cafeterias and public houses of Putney-meeting suspicion, hostility, curiosity and, on occasion, hospitality-to no avail. Cal could not conceal his sinking spirits. He could not tell, any more than he thought Stilton could, whether these motley refugees of Mittel-Europa were co-operating or lying. No one had seen Fish Wally. No one would admit to having seen Fish Wally.