John Lawton - Riptide

‘Wossup?’

Troy prised himself off the chair by its arms, breathless and flushed.

‘Been in the wars, have you?’

‘Something like that.’

‘One day, Freddie, they’ll have to bury you in bits.’

Bonham swapped his pinafore for his police blue tunic and took his pointy hat off the sideboard where it sat like a horned tortoise. Driving down to Tallow Dock, he sat with his knees up to his chin, bent double in the little car, the hat clutched on his lap more like the world’s biggest cricket box.

Troy found himself staring. All the way across Stepney and down into Limehouse. The devastation was not unimaginable, but it was on a scale he had not bothered to imagine. He looked out at mountains of rubble-the detritus of lives lived and homes abandoned. Bonham looked at him.

‘You been up West too long.’

‘Eh?’

‘If this has come as a shock, then it’s ‘cos you don’t get down here enough. When was you last here? Ethel’s funeral?’

That had been over five months ago.

‘No-I’ve seen you since then… surely…?’

Bonham wasn’t helping.

‘I was here in February. I’m sure it was February.’ The making of an argument was curtailed as the Bullnose Morris reached the junction of Tallow Dock Lane and Westferry Road.

They turned right towards the river and pulled up about six hundred yards further on, within sight of the Thames and outside a vast warehouse. The company name was stencilled in white down the side of the building in letters ten feet tall-‘BELL AND HARROP. IMPORT EXPORT. EST. 1837. LONDON, SHANGHAI, HONG KONG.’

They stepped out onto shards of broken slate and glass. The only sign of life a roaming, skinny, mongrel dog. Bonham slipped on his helmet and tucked the strap into the dimple of his chin. It was a moment that never failed to strike awe into Troy. A man of five foot six, too short to be a copper except by a waiving of the rules, confronted by a man nearly seven foot tall from his boots to the little silver knob on top of his pointy hat. It was one of the reasons Troy had been so glad to become a detective in plain clothes. Bonham looked like a giant, a Greek warrior, Achilles or Agamemnon, Troy had looked like a gnome who’d lost his fishing rod.

‘Are we going in?’

‘Sorry, George. I was miles away.’

Bonham led off. Prised a door open with his giant’s paw, swung it back on its hinges with a mighty, metallic clang. Troy looked around. Once the echo of the clang had dwindled away, and the dog bolted, nothing stirred-and the only sound he could hear was the occasional hooting of ships on the Thames. George might be right. This could be just what he needed.

Inside, the ground floor was open to the second, a ceiling twenty feet high had mostly collapsed.

‘It’s the top floor I was thinking of,’ said Bonham. ‘Used to be old Georgie Bell’s office. We finally talked him into leaving a few days back. Or is that not what you want?’

‘No, that sounds fine. As long as there’s another way out.’ Bonham and Troy wound their way up the stone staircase to emerge right under the roof. A suite of low office rooms. A huge glass skylight, its coat of blackout paint peeling off in strips. A battered steel desk with a dip pen and inkwell, looking as though their owner had just stepped out for lunch. A forgotten Burberry on the back of the door.

‘I don’t want to be surprised,’ Troy said.

Bonham looked puzzled.

‘Is there another way in and out?’

Bonham yanked off one of the blackout screens, slid up a sash window and pointed down the fire escape.

‘Goes all the way down to the first floor. After that you’d have to jump into the alley. But I reckon nobody could get up that way. O’ course you’ll have to be careful of the light if there’s a raid on-but don’t worry about wardens, they’ve given up on Tallow Dock.’

‘You mean there’s electricity?’

Bonham flicked the light switch on and off to show him. It was a bonus. Troy had been dreading having to catch a murderer by the dim glow of a bull’s-eye torch.

‘They haven’t got round to cutting it off yet. They will though.’

This looked right. In fact it looked ideal. Troy would never have chosen Coburn Place for a stake-out. He would have chosen a place like this. Indoors, with a quick escape route if it all went wrong. And, above all, no witnesses.

‘I think this will do the trick, George,’ he said.

‘What exactly is the trick, then, Fred?’

‘It’s less of a trick and more of a trap.’

‘I see,’ said Bonham, not seeing. ‘A trap, who for?’

‘Wish I knew,’ said Troy. ‘Wish I knew.’

Troy and Cormack sat facing each other in his sitting room at Goodwin’s Court. Cormack had brought a bottle of bourbon-not a drink Troy was accustomed to. Sweet, heady stuff. He knew what his dad would say, that it was a cheek to call it whisky-but Troy was rather taken with it. After three large glasses it eased the pain in his ribs. He began to feel a bit less like a puppet held together by

Kolankiewicz’s staples.

After three large glasses Cormack managed to utter, ‘Kitty, I’ve been meaning to ask you about Kitty…’

And Troy said, ‘Later. We’ve got work to do.’

Cormack rallied, stuck his elbows on his knees and tried to look a bit less as though booze had just dumped him down in the armchair.

‘You cracked it?’

‘I think so. We’re going to set a trap.’

‘That’s what you told me yesterday. So what’s new?’

‘We re-run the same plan that Walter did. I’m going to send you a note asking you to meet me at such and such a time and such and such a place, and you’re going to let it sit in your in-tray at the embassy till somebody reads it.’

Cormack exhaled, a breathy explosion somewhere between a guffaw and complete incredulity.

‘You actually think that’ll work?’

‘We know whoever it is reads your mail, right?’

‘Sure. But the same scam twice-he’ll never fall for it.’

‘Which is why the trap needs very tasty bait. I’m going to say that I’ve found Stahl. And that this is the only way Stahl will meet you.’

‘You’re assuming that Stahl is of interest to our man.’

‘If he isn’t then we’re lost. But equally, I can see no other reason why our man would ever have wanted Walter Stilton dead. And I’m damn sure Walter died because whoever read his letter deduced that Walter was close to finding Stahl. Much as Walter avoided stating it.’

Cormack thought about this. Just mentioning Walter’s name seemed to bring tears; to his eyes.

‘He had found Stahl. I just didn’t know that. He went off on his own and said he’d keep me posted and didn’t.’

‘We won’t make that mistake.’

Troy had tried to make a glib phrase sound as reassuring as he could, but for half a minute he did not know whether Cormack was going to agree to the scheme or not.

‘Where is such and such a place and when is such and such a time?’

‘I thought tomorrow night. Say around eleven p.m. And I chose a place on the Isle of Dogs-‘

‘We have to go on a boat?’

‘Let me finish-not that kind of island-it’s a promontory that sticks out into the Thames opposite Greenwich. It’s where most of London’s docks are. I’ve got us a warehouse, or what’s left of one, in Tallow Dock. There’s only one way in but two ways out. It couldn’t be better. You turn up at the agreed time, but meanwhile I’ve got there half an hour earlier. We’ll be ready for him.’

‘Just a minute. Why can’t I be the one to get there early?’

‘Because “our man” knows what you look like. He’d be much more likely to follow you than to follow me. In fact, I’m acting on the assumption that he’ll work out for himself that killing Walter is unlikely to have made you give up-but also that he hasn’t a clue about me. There’d just have to be somebody like me-logically-some other copper doing what Walter did. I’m playing up to his expectations.’