John Lawton - Riptide

‘Yes. But treason was no part of it. I believed him to be Czech. Another victim. Like me.’

‘How much did you touch this victim for, Wally? Ten bob? A quid? Two quid?’

Fish Wally said nothing. Met Stilton’s gaze without blinking.

‘Faker Forsyte says he sold you two ration books. What did you do with the other?’

‘He told you that? He’s a liar.’

‘Have it your own way.’

Stilton left again. He could keep this up all night if he had to.

Around midnight he flipped the peephole on the cell door. Fish Wally was pacing the floor, restless and caged. Seconds out, thought Stilton, round three.

He set out the photographs once more. Smulders and Stahl.

‘I know,’ said Wally. ‘These you showed me at the crypt. I told you the truth then. I saw them both. I told you everything I knew. Do not fling these in my face and call me a liar.’

‘You didn’t mention the third bloke.’

‘What third bloke?’

Stilton pointed at the sketch of Stahl.

‘A third bloke who looked pretty much like this bloke.’

‘I told you. I saw no third bloke that night. This bloke is this bloke. Him I sold the book to. Him I took to Cash Wally.’

‘Not necessarily the same night.’

Stilton could almost hear Fish Wally thinking, wondering how much he could admit to without digging himself a deeper hole.

‘Wally-why do you think any of these blokes come to you?’

‘I’m known,’ he said. ‘Cash Wally is a misanthropist, a recluse. Hates humanity with a vengeance. Trusts only money and food. He needs me to help out. I’m known as Cash Wally’s cousin. In immigrant circles word spreads.’

‘I’m not talking about immigrant circles. I’m talking about these blokes. Germans.’

‘No-the older one, he is Dutch.’

‘No, Wally, he was Dutch.’

‘You killed them both!?’

‘Let’s just say they’re both dead. And Dutch or not, he was a German agent. We’d been watching him since he landed.’

‘I don’t believe you. Go on, get up and walk out again. Every time I call the bluff you walk out.’

Stilton leaned on his elbows, that bit the closer to Wally, his voice dropped to pianissimo.

‘They come to you, Wally, because you’re known. Known to the Abwehr as well as the immigrants. You’re part of their network, whether you know it or not, whether you like it or not. They’ve been using you to place their agents among immigrant groups in London.’

He knew he’d hit home. He knew Fish Wally would not call him a liar again. He was pale, his skin sagged like a punctured balloon. It was as though he had only to prick up his ears to hear the air hiss out of him. He knew Stilton was telling the truth. Stilton knew that he knew. He croaked out, ‘Stilton, what do you want?’

‘The third bloke. Probably came to you a day or two before these two. You sold him a ration book and you found him a room, right?’

Fish Wally said nothing.

‘I asked you about him. This is him.’

Stilton tapped the sketch of Stahl with his index finger.

‘I asked you about him. You sent me to the German. I had no picture of the German. I was asking you about this bloke.’

Fish Wally picked up the sketch. Looked at it for more than a minute.

‘I had always thought there was something wrong. The scar. The German had no scar. Do you have a pencil?’

Stilton took one from his breast pocket and gave it to him.

‘This one you call the third man. He had a scar. Not as pronounced as your sketch would have it. But he looked nothing like this.’

Fish Wally’s crab hands clutched the pencil awkwardly, but the tip flew across the paper with the facility of a skilled draughtsman. A thin, dark moustache, darker hair.

‘And here and here.’ Fish Wally tapped each temple. ‘Bald. The rest of the hair was black, turning to grey. I would say he was forty or more. Not the twenty-something you have here.’

‘And you sold him a ration book?’

Wally nodded.

‘And you got him a room?’

‘Yes.’

‘Where?’

‘Cash Wally was full that day. I sent him to the Welsh Widow in the Holloway Road.’

Stilton ordered tea for Fish Wally. When he got back about twenty minutes later, Fish Wally was swilling the dregs and asking for more. He looked at the sheet of foolscap Stilton held in his hand and said, ‘So, now we hit the bottom, eh, Walter? Now you charge me.’

Stilton took a fiver and a fountain pen from his pocket and pushed them across the table to him.

‘What’s this?’

‘Your wages. Just sign here. You’re one of us now.’

‘Eh?’

‘From now on you tell us everything. Every foreigner, whether you think he’s suspicious or not, that comes to you, you tell us. Sign, before I change my mind. Sign now. It’s this or spend the rest of the war in chokey.’

Fish Wally picked up the pen and read.

‘What am I signing?’

‘A receipt for five quid.’

‘Ah.’

‘And the Official Secrets Act.’

Walter Stilton ate with relish the inner organs of beasts and fowls. He was more than partial to thick giblet soup, the toughness of gizzard held no fear for him and stuffed, roast heart no symbol. When he could get it-when his wife had queued half a morning to get it-he loved liver slices fried in breadcrumbs-but most of all he adored to start the day with grilled mutton kidneys, faintly piss-tanged to the palate-a breakfast, if not fit for a king, then sweetly fit for a Chief Inspector of the London Metropolitan Police Force.

He moved softly about the kitchen. It had been light since before five and first light woke him better than any alarm clock. Tangible light in the basement room, the promise of the heat of the day beyond its windows. Summer mornings such as this made him peckish. He’d eat his plate of grilled kidneys, washed down with strong, sweet, milky tea, silently reading last night’s evening paper. And when he had done he would pad about the kitchen in his socks, shirtless, the braces hanging down his back like the reins of some giant and unruly toddler, making tea and toast for his wife. He was always first up-had been since the first morning of their marriage. It was a habit of his father’s. Handed down. A Derbyshire miner, at work before the world was awake, he would always light the fire, feed himself and take breakfast to his wife. It was the only domestic chore he would undertake-so it was with Stilton. He’d never washed so much as a cup and saucer in his married life, but he’d stoked the Aga and made breakfast every day of it.

A saucer of milk for the pusscat, then softly up the stairs to the first floor. Edna was awake, windows open, a curtain flapping gently in the summer breeze. Stilton set down the tray upon her knees and said nothing. He’d run out of things to say to her. And there was nothing she asked of him.

‘Will you be late home?’ she asked.

‘Hard to say, love.’

And in that the routine of conversation in the wake of the death of their children varied not one whit from the routine of thirty years and more. They neither had the vocabulary to prolong the manifestation of grief.

Stilton dressed. A clean shirt aired on the Aga’s front rail. The collar stud eased in with a practised thumb. His Metropolitan Police Bowls Team tie. His shiny black boots, the pusscat weaving between his legs and lashing out at the laces as he did them up.

Looking at himself in the mirror of the hallstand-a silent voice in the head telling him to look like a copper, shoulders back, a tug of the hatbrim, trying for the glint of steel in the eyes-he heard the creak of bedsprings in the room above and the plump thump of his plump wife’s feet on the floor. Day begun. He pulled the door wide, the morning light reflecting brightly off the broken facade of the house opposite, and stepped out into the last day of his life.