John Lawton - Riptide

Wally was not home. Stilton was waiting for the blackout to be drawn. Then they’d nick him. It was Stilton’s turn to watch. Dobbs leaned against the wing of the Riley, looking pale and sleepy. Stilton was angry enough without this provocation.

‘Bernard-you nod off now and I’ll roast you on me truncheon like one o’ them Ayrab shish kebabs.’

Dobbs did not seem to have heard him. Stilton stepped back a few paces and shook him.

‘Eh?’ said Dobbs.

‘Have you been at the beer again, laddie?’

‘What? What chance have I had, boss? We been stuck here since before opening time. I was just feeling a bit dicky, that’s all-I’ll be fine now.’

Stilton stepped back to the corner just in time to see the blackout being drawn over Wally’s window.

‘We’re on,’ he said softly.

Dobbs yanked the ignition keys from his trouser pocket and eased his backside off the car.

‘Not so fast,’ Stilton said. ‘I want him to get his coat off, I want him to get his slippers on-kettle on, knees under the table, rolling ciggy. I want him to feel safe in his little nest before I drag him out of it and throw him in a cell.’

‘He’s really got your goat, hasn’t he, boss?’

‘Understatement, Bernard, understatement.’

Stilton let ten minutes pass, looked at his wristwatch and said, ‘Bring the car right up to the porch and leave the nearside back door open.’

He strode off, mackintosh flapping, trilby pulled down firmly. Once inside he tapped gently at Wally’s door, the friendly-shy knock of a neighbour wanting to borrow a cupful of sugar.

Fish Wally came to the door, yawning and smoking simultaneously, a fag glued with spittle to his lower lip. Stilton knocked the cigarette away, seized him by the arm and bundled him inside. The kettle sang on the hob, his baccy pouch lay open on the oil cloth, the cat occupied pride of place in the armchair-and Wally wore his slippers.

‘Stilton! What you-?’

Stilton grabbed the other arm and, in a gesture born of years of practice, slapped the cuffs on his wrists and clicked them closed.

‘For God’s sake, Walter-what do you want?’

Stilton found Fish Wally’s shoes under the table and threw them at him without a word. Wally took the hint, wrapped his crab hands around them and slipped them on. Stilton turned off the gas, opened the wire-mesh cold-larder above the sink, found a few scraps of fatty meat wrapped in greaseproof paper and dumped them in the cat’s howl.

‘You going to tell me what this is about? Or do I have to guess?’

Stilton took his coat off the back of the door and threw that at him too. The door slammed behind them, Stilton dragging Fish Wally by the scruff of his neck, down to the car and bundled into the back seat. Only when Dobbs had slipped the car into gear and set off down Drury Lane did Stilton speak.

‘You are not obliged to say anything, but if you do…’

‘For Christ’s sake, Walter-do we not know each other better than this?’

Dobbs crunched the car through the gears at the junction with the Aldwych, the metallic scraping filling the silence. Then Stilton said, ‘I thought I knew you, Wally. Now I’m wondering just who the hell you are.’

Fish Wally sat by himself in a cell at Scotland Yard, still in the handcuffs. Stilton checked his watch, Dobbs flopped down on a wooden bench in the corridor.

‘Let’s give him an hour on his jack jones. Tell the uniforms to leave well alone. No cups of tea and no chit-chat.’

‘Wh… wh… whatever you say boss.’

Stilton leant down and looked at Dobbs all but eye to eye. He’d gone deathly pale. And he could hardly put a sentence together.

‘Bernard-if I didn’t know better I’d swear you were one over the eight.’

‘I sh… sh… should be so lucky.’

‘I’m sending you home, laddie.’

‘I’ll get a cab.’

‘Bollocks-I’ll whistle up a squad car. Go home and go to bed. If you’re no better by the morning just give me a bell. I think you’re coming down with summat.’

Stilton put an arm around Dobbs and lugged him up to the ground floor. He seemed to go completely limp, as though someone had just cut his strings.

Back in his own office, he took out his little black notebook and the desk file he was supposed to type up regularly. He’d typed in nothing since the last time he was in Burnham-on-Crouch with Squadron Leader Thesiger. He couldn’t be arscd at the time and he could not be arsed now. Wally would be sitting down there, that seemingly unshakeable philosophical stance getting more wobbly by the minute. There was one thing Stilton could do that Wally couldn’t, and it would give him a nice edge in an hour or so-he could catch forty winks and get down there feeling a damn sight fresher than ‘me laddo’. Stilton slept. Forty winks became eighty winks. One hour became two.

‘Walter, are you going to stop playing games now and tell me what this is about?’

Stilton leant across the table and unlocked the handcuffs. Fish Wally rubbed at his wrists.

‘That Czech bloke you sent me after…’

“I heard-you lost him. Is that my fault?’

‘That Czech bloke you sent me after,’ Stilton said slowly and emphatically, ‘was a German.’

Fish Wally was galvanised. Head up, eyes wide. Perhaps Cormack was right. Or Fish Wally was a better actor than he’d ever thought?

‘What?’

‘A German-an Abwehr spy.’

‘I don’t believe you.’

‘Suit yourself

Stilton got up and left. As he locked the door a young constable appeared with a cup of tea.

‘Nowt for him. I’ll have that.’

‘But guvner, regulations-‘

‘Bugger regulations. He gets nowt till I say so.’

An hour later he came back. Wally was on his feet at once, shouting in his face.

‘I didn’t know! How the hell you expect me to know? You think I deal with Germans knowingly? You think I don’t have every reason in the world to hate Germans? What kind of a man do you think I am?’

‘Like I said. I don’t know any more.’

‘Pah!’ A wave of the arm, a puff of Polish contempt, but Fish Wally sat down again and faced Stilton.

‘We’re making progress, I see.’

‘Meaning?’

‘An hour ago you didn’t believe he was German.’

Fish Wally glared. He seemed to think it wiser to say nothing. Stilton took out four little paper books and laid them on the table between them as though he were playing patience. Four Ministry of Food ration books.

‘I got these off Faker Forsyte this afternoon.’

Fish Wally tried a ‘So?’ but it lacked total conviction.

Stilton put a fifth, slightly tattier book next to the others.

‘I took this one off the German last night. The bloke you told me was Czech. The bloke you fixed up at your cousin Casimir’s doss house.’

Fish Wally shrugged. A silent ‘So?’

‘Did you sell it to him?’

‘Why don’t you ask him?’

‘Not to mince words, I took it off the-body… the corpse of that German.’

Fish Wally flinched at this.

‘I’ll ask you again. Did you sell it to him?’

‘What if I did?’

‘Wally, I might expect remarks as stupid as that from the average London tea-leaf… but if that’s what you want. Firstly, it’s illegal to trade in counterfeit documents. Second… you’re a British resident now. We took you in. It’s ingratitude, it’s treason if you want it plain.’

‘Treason? Ingratitude? Good God, Stilton, what do you want from me? I am no traitor. I am a poor man. Worse-‘ He held up his hands again ‘-a broken man. I have a living to make where I can. But why should I betray England?’

‘So you did sell it to him?’