John Lawton - Riptide

He killed thirty minutes in the canteen in the hope of catching one of the few Branch coppers he knew personally-Sgt Peter Dixon, who’d started at the Yard the same day as Troy. He got lucky. Dixon came in, took his cup of oily tea and sat at another table, eyes closed, as though sleeping upright, without even noticing Troy. Troy took his tea over, and sat opposite Dixon. His eyes flickered open.

‘Freddie-long time no wotsit. How’s murder?’

‘You tell me, Peter. I hear you’ve got the case I was turfed off.’

‘Oh-the Yank, you mean. By God, it’s a rum one-running me ragged. Says he and poor old Stinker were on a secret mission together-would you believe he’s asked half the nobs in Britain to speak for him? Either they won’t or they can’t be found. Even asked for poor old Bernie Dobbs. I suppose you’ve heard he’s asked for you? Says you knew he was working with Walter.’

‘I know, I’ve just told Onions what I know. I saw Cormack and Walter together on the sixteenth. But as Onions said, I don’t know what it proves.’

‘Bugger all, as far as the Boss is concerned.’

‘You think he won’t let him go?’

‘No. It’s rum. I tell you, Fred, it’s rum. Nailer’s taking this one personally. It’s not as though he and old Stilton were mates. They weren’t. It’s more… there but for the grace of God… as though the Boss thinks it could have been him. I’ve never seen him like this. He’s worked himself up into a right tizzy.’

‘What does he think he’s got?’

‘Two eyewitnesses saw him go up the alley…’

‘Peter, that’s hardly surprising, as he was still there when I arrived. In fact it’s hardly evidence. There’s more than one way into that alley.’

‘Through the Green Man, you mean? A London local? On a Tuesday, just about the flattest night of the week? Just try walking through a local London boozer on a Tuesday and not being seen or remembered. If you wanted to commit murder that would be asking to get caught, wouldn’t it? You’d be setting foot in a nest of nosy-parkers just waiting for something or someone to break the monotony.’

Troy silently disagreed with this. He’d learnt early on in his time as a copper just how unobservant people could be.

‘You questioned them?’

‘Freddie-you teach me how to suck eggs and I’ll clock yer!’

‘All right. So what did your eyewitnesses see?’

‘Hold your horses… thing is, they didn’t see anyone else. Boss attaches a lot of importance to that. The way he sees it, we’ve got a foreign soldier, out of uniform, none of his own people vouching for him-that’s just downright peculiar, but the Boss thinks it means something-and the gun. It’d been fired, y’see. That’s the clincher. Catch a bloke with a smoking gun in his hand and you’ve got him… well… red-handed, haven’t you?’

‘It wasn’t smoking, Peter. I think I might have noticed that.’

‘Been fired recently, all the same.’

Troy found an Onionsism useful. ‘Doesn’t prove much, though, does it?’

Dixon shrugged and slurped noisily at his tea. Thought about it.

‘You seem pretty convinced of this bloke’s innocence, considering you met him only twice. Do you know something you’re not letting on, Fred?’

The man was more awake than he seemed. It was not a question Troy wanted to answer, so he didn’t.

‘If the boot was on the other foot, Fred, and it was your case, would I be sitting here telling you that catching a bloke with a discharged gun concealed about his person doesn’t prove much?’

‘Concealed?’ said Troy. ‘Concealed where?’

‘Clip holster, back of his waistband. Just hooks onto the trousers. And there’s one other thing.’

Dixon leant in close as though about to reveal the deepest secret. Troy followed, almost nose to nose.

‘Boss ever finds out you got any of this from me, you’ll be going to the next policeman’s ball with yer knob in a splint!’

Back in his office Troy tackled that which might prove much. He called Kolankiewicz at the lab in Hendon.

‘Did you do the postmortem on Walter Stilton?’

‘No-Spilsbury was asked to do this one in person.’

Troy supposed it was an honour accorded the fallen-to be cut open by the best pathologist in the land.

‘All I got was ballistics.’

‘You mean you’ve got the bullet?’

‘Yep.’

‘And?’

‘And what?’

‘How does it compare?’

‘To what?-for Chrissake-they sent me nothing to compare it with yet!’

Troy went back to Onions.

‘I need to talk to Nailer.’

‘You know where to find him then, don’t you?’

‘I mean… I need you to arrange a meeting with Nailer and Major Crawley.’

Crawley was the Superintendent in charge of Nailer-Onions’ opposite number. A former regular soldier, he was always referred to by his military rank-except among the constables, to whom he was inevitably ‘Creepy’.

‘What?’

‘Nailer’s sitting on evidence. He hasn’t asked for a ballistics test on the gun you said Cormack was found with.’

‘You can’t call that sitting on evidence. Ballistics isn’t everything.’

There were ways in which Onions was an imaginative copper and ways in which he was thoroughly a man of his generation.

‘Yes it is,’ Troy insisted. ‘Set up a meeting and get Nailer to bring the gun.’

Onions had been at best half attentive to the conversation. Now he pulled back. Put down his pen, ceased his jotting and looked squarely at Troy.

‘Oh God, Freddie. Don’t make me do this. Don’t make me tread all over Crawley’s toes.’

‘Stan-if I stick my nose into Nailer’s case without you standing behind my shoulder he’ll blast me into the middle of next week.’

‘Freddie-don’t make me do this.’

It was the middle of a hike-warm afternoon, May drifting towards June, by the time Onions assembled his cast.

Troy sat to one side of Onions’ desk, watching the dramatis personae take the stage. Onions, big, broad, blunt and Lancashire-on his feet glad-handing Crawley-an austere, upper-crust copper with the throttled vowels of the Edwardian age, hair almost a coiffure, a pencil-line moustache written on his top lip-and Nailer, like every Special Branch copper Troy had ever met, unimaginatively neat, but unimaginatively plain. The sort of copper happiest in boots, bowler and macintosh. The sort of copper who was careful to tip the dust out of his turnups at least once a week. But he looked awful, as though he was strained to breaking by this case-his eyes limpid and bloodshot, the plain, good suit now creased and crumpled as though he had slept in it, at odds with the near-military precision of his character. Dixon was right, he had worked himself into a ‘tizzy’. He looked to Troy to be teetering on the edge. All he needed was a nudge.

Crawley seated himself, crossed his legs and set a box folder on the desk in front of him. Nailer sat, conveniently, as far away from Troy as he could.

‘This is irregular, Stanley,’ Crawley kicked off. ‘I do hope you’ve something positive to contribute to our case.’

‘A bit irregular, Dennis, but hardly a revolution. You’ve a murder on your hands. And when one of our own goes down in the line of duty it’s up to us all to rally round, wouldn’t you agree?’

‘Quite,’ said Crawley, much as Troy might have said himself. Then, ‘I read the memo you sent round about the suspect, naturally.’ And turning to Troy, ‘I gather you’re offering an alibi for the man, sergeant?’

Now they were all looking at Troy, and Troy was wishing Crawley had not used the word ‘alibi’.

‘I knew Cormack was working with Chief Inspector Stilton, yes. I can’t say that I’d call that his “alibi”. By coincidence I was also the officer called out to the scene of the crime. What I saw has not led me to conclude that Cormack is the murderer. I felt it was time I…’ (What, for God’s sake, was the euphemism for ‘blew you bastards out of the water’?) ‘…time we… pooled our knowledge.’