John Lawton - Riptide

Troy looked down at the wound. It was a mess, a ragged line made to look like a zip fastener with its row of regular, coarse black stitches. With a gesture like a conjurer about to manifest a pigeon, Kitty produced a handkerchief from her pocket-one of his, with his initial in the corner, the one she had helped herself to just the other night-and wiped his blood off her fingers.

‘What we’ve been to each other?’ Troy said. ‘Good God, Kitty, what do you think we’ve been to each other?’

‘Vodka still under the sink?’ Kolankiewicz asked.

Troy ignored him. He disappeared into the kitchen.

‘Kitty, why are you here?’

Kitty sat down on the armchair, stuck her hands back in her pockets and stared at him. Troy swung his legs to the floor and realised he’d be foolish in the extreme to try and stand.

‘Kitty, I’m very sorry your father’s dead. But taking it out on me isn’t going to bring him back.’

‘I’m here because.’

This construction had always baffled him. Russian had nothing like this. The incomplete ending implying that he should know how the sentence ended-that it was a moral issue to know, and a moral dereliction to have to ask.

‘What is it you think I can do for you?’

‘You can help Calvin catch the bloke who killed my dad.’

Troy sank back. He should have guessed – it was typical of Kitty to want the moon.

‘Jesus Christ.’

‘You can do this, Troy. Calvin can’t do a thing on his own. The Yard’ll run circles round him. He’ll wander round London like a dog at a fair.’

‘What you mean is that I should go up against Nailer for you.’

‘Nailer ain’t gonna catch him, now is he?’

‘Probably not.’

‘And you don’t have to go up against Nailer. You just have to sort of go round him.’

Troy said nothing. He hoped that if he said nothing for long enough Kitty might just give up and bugger off.

‘There’s no on else can do it,’ she went on, undeterred. ‘You owe me this, Troy. You do this for me. And if that don’t mean nothin’ to you, then do it for my mum.’

Troy sighed silently, began to work it out. He could not think that he owed Kitty anything, and her mum was not a viable instrument of emotional blackmail; she was simply a pleasant old woman in Stepney who’d invited the two of them to tea a couple of times last year, eyed him up and down as a potential husband and pronounced him ‘too posh’ as in ‘too posh, stick to your own kind Kitty’, but-he could backtrack, get Kolankiewicz to sign him off sick, make his apologies to Stan, take ten days while the wound healed, talk to this American, and if-what an if-he had a lead, follow it. He and the American might run circles round Nailer. It had that hint of satisfaction to it.

Kitty appeared over him, put a hand to his forehead.

‘You’re hot,’ she said.

‘I feel cold.’

She went upstairs, came back with a blanket and spread it over him.

‘Tomorrow,’ she said. ‘I can send him round tomorrow.’

‘You do that,’ he said. ‘Tonight’s not a good idea. Tomorrow. Not too early. Not before noon. Not before four. I’ll listen to his story. See what I can do.’

Kitty kissed him on the forehead, thought better of it and kissed him on the lips.

‘Oh, and not a word about you-know-what.’

And she did not even ask what had happened to him.

When she’d gone Kolankiewicz emerged from the kitchen, clutching a vodka bottle and a glass.

‘Good,’ said Troy. ‘I could do with a shot.’

‘Tough titty. Is for me. The idea that alcohol is good for the sick is a myth. It opens the blood vessels and hence lowers the body temperature, and with the blood you just lost that would not be good idea.’

‘But I feel hot.’

‘And two minutes ago you felt cold. QED. Now, you want to know what I think?’

‘Does it matter? You’re going to tell me anyway.’

‘I tell you what I tried to tell you this afternoon. If you going to stick nose into old Stinker’s death you should hear me out.’

‘I think I’m what you’d call a captive audience.’

‘You going to help the luscious Kitty, am I right?’

‘I don’t seem to have a choice.’

‘To find her father’s killer?’ ‘

Troy tried to shrug. It hurt too much so he said nothing.

‘Okey dokey. You will appreciate, death is my business. I see death every day.’

‘I’m not unfamiliar with the grim reaper myself. So could we get past the egg-sucking stage?’

‘When do you think I last saw two such deaths as these?’

‘Such deaths as what?’

‘The Dutchman, and then old Stinker.’

Troy craned his neck to get a better look at Kolankiewicz. It hurt too, but this was getting complicated. The look on Kolankiewicz’s face might just help.

‘Go on.’

‘Never in my years in the death business have I had two deaths quite so close together which you, in the force, are keen to ascribe to professional murder-let us say assassination.’

‘I’m really not following you. It may be blood loss, but you’ve lost me.’

‘Do you really think there are two such men on the loose? Two such assassins, even in wartime?’

‘I haven’t thought about it at all yet. But since you ask-what makes you think Walter was the victim of a professional hit?’

‘You heard Bob Churchill-a professional’s weapon, he said.’

‘A professional’s weapon but not necessarily a professional. As I recall, he made no comment on that possibility.’

‘I say again, Troy, do you really think there are two killers?’

‘I don’t know. But someone got the drop on the Dutchman. Sneaked up behind him and snapped his neck like a twig. Do you agree?’

‘Absolutely.’

‘No one got the drop on Walter. He was shot from the side. I’d even say he was turning to look at his attacker when the gun was fired. As though he was expecting someone. Whoever it was came up the alley was not the man he was expecting, but by the time he knew that it was too late. The man was within range and fired.’

‘You sure? That’s an awful lot of deduction.’

‘I had five minutes to look at the body before Nailer stormed in. I could draw you a picture.’

‘I never got to see old Stinker’s body. But if you going to chase this wild dog, I think you should consider the possibilities.’

Troy did not need to hear any more. It had been explicit in everything he’d heard while the American was under arrest, in everything Peter Dixon had told him, that the American and Stilton had been pursuing a man Cormack could not or would not name. Was he still in pursuit, had he abandoned his mysterious man-a German?-to find Walter’s killer? Or was he looking for two people now-whoever it was he was chasing and a murderer? Had it dawned on him that they might conceivably be one and the same person? Good God, what had Kitty let him in for? What had he let himself in for?

‘Did you see the report?’

‘No.’

‘Totally different MOs, of course. A world of difference between a hands-on killing and a shooting. Neither are for the squeamish, but I’ve always thought the former required nerves of steel and emotions scraped back to the bone. I could do with a look at Spilsbury’s report. Just to be certain I’m not wrong and that the shooting wasn’t to finish off a botched attempt. Can you nick me a copy?’

Kolankiewicz shrugged. ‘Easy peasy,’ he said. ‘Now, can I give you a hand up the stairs?’

‘I’ve nothing to wear.’

‘You sound just like my sisters every time we get ready for a dance up West.’

‘No-I mean. My suit’s a write-off.’

Cal held up the sad sack that had once been his fifty-shilling suit.