John Lawton - Riptide

At the top he thought he could hear a faint moaning. Nothing else but the elements. The glare of overhead light bursting from the office into the black pit of the stairwell. He looked into the first room. The naked lightbulb swinging gently at the end of its cord like a hanged man twisting on the gibbet-a black-coated man was slumped against the far wall with blood congealing on his head. A revolver on the floor in front of him. One huge hand spread across the cracked linoleum as though performing a five-finger exercise. Troy bent down and lifted the man’s head. The wound was just above the left ear. It looked like a gunshot, but it was superficial-the bullet had simply stripped the skin, scraped the bone and glanced off. Troy touched the face, smeared away the blood gathering in the left eyebrow with the ball of his thumb, felt and saw the scar above the eye. He looked like Wolfgang Stahl. The pianist’s hands, the duellist’s scar. Was he Wolfgang Stahl? He ought to be Wolfgang Stahl. It had better be Wolfgang Stahl-it would be so handy if he were. But what was he doing here? And who had shot him? More importantly, who was moaning if Stahl was not? And he heard the door swing to on unoiled hinges and turned to see another man, clutching a bloody wound to his stomach, easing himself off the wall behind the door.

Troy did what he thought any intelligent person should do when confronted by a man pointing a gun at him-he raised his hands. The man was struggling to find words. He’d lost a lot of blood-it ran between his fingers, soaked into his overcoat and dripped to the floor. He could scarcely point the gun steadily. A small.35 automatic wavered between Troy’s chest and the wall. He ran through his list of handy mnemonics, watching the face dip in and out of light and shadow as the light bulb swung back and forth, wondering which one was this, which of all those bewildering American faces Cal had pointed out to him was this. Raymond Massey, it was Raymond Massey.

‘Put down the gun, Colonel Reininger,’ Troy said, putting his faith in the clichés of the job. ‘It’s all over.’

It was. Reininger coughed blood and collapsed. A bloody, silent mess in the corner. Troy slowly lowered his hands, wondering all the time if the gun were not suddenly going to jerk upwards in his hand and fire off one last shot. He took a few steps forward, kicked the gun from Reininger’s hand and breathed again. But he could still hear the moaning. He pushed at the door to the inner office. Cormack sat roped to a metal chair, black canvas gaffer tape across his mouth. And he was not moaning-he was grunting with all the force he could muster until his eyes almost popped.

Troy tore off the gaffer tape, started on the ropes, and Cormack began to gabble.

‘Troy-where the fuck have you been?’

And gabble.

‘Half an hour? Jesus Christ!’

And gabble.

‘Reininger was waiting for me when I got here. Stuck a gun in my ribs and then sapped me with the butt. I must have been out for a minute or two. When I came round he already had me trussed up like a turkey. He stood behind the door and waited, then I saw the door open and expected to see you walk in and get shot. It was Stahl! Jesus Christ it was Stahl! He didn’t even have to look. He shot Frank through the door at point-blank range, but when he stepped past it there was more firing-then the draughts caught this door and I couldn’t see any more. Tell me, for Chrissake tell me. Stahl’s dead, isn’t he?’

‘No-he’s out cold, but it’s just a graze. Reininger’s in a bad way, though.’

Troy undid the last knot. Cormack leapt to his feet and said again, ‘Troy-where the fuck have you been?’

Troy watched his eyes roll up in his skull, his legs buckle and his head hit the floor. He knelt down. The draught caught the door again and banged it shut. Troy let Cormack’s head loll against his hand-two bumps now instead of one-reassuringly warm, a pulse beating steadily, solidly in the neck. He’d fainted. The eyelids flickered, his lips opened, the merest of moans. Then the blast of a gun set the door shaking, swinging inward on its creaking hinges. Kitty stood framed in the doorway, head down, arm outstretched, a smoking revolver aimed steadily at the corner.

Troy crossed the room hoping she wasn’t completely mad, that she knew who he was and would not simply turn the gun on him.

She kept her gaze and her aim fixed. He looked at Reininger, lifeless in the corner, blood pouring down his face from the hole in his head. He looked at Kitty, blank and glassy-eyed.

‘Kitty,’ Troy said softly. ‘Give me the gun.’

Kitty seemed not to hear him.

‘Just give me the gun, Kitty.’

It was as though a light had gone on behind her eyes. A flash of attention. Suddenly she was looking at Troy, hearing him, the crazy stare gone from her face. She lowered the gun to her side.

‘Nah. I don’t think I’d better. You’re not wearing gloves.’

In the distance, faint as a whisper, Troy could hear the bells of a police squad car.

‘Give me the gun Kitty. We haven’t got a lot of time. We’ll need it to think up a story.’

‘No,’ she said. ‘You go.’

‘Go?’

‘There’ll be shit for this. You mark my words, Fred. They’ll want someone. Heads’ll have to roll for a cock-up like this. They’ll suspend us, bust us back to constables. Might as well be me. I’ll never be more than a sergeant. Never thought I would. You-you’re a hot tip to be Met Commissioner one day. There’s blokes at Bow Street running a book on you. Don’t disappoint ‘em. Nip down the alley while you can.’

She bent down. Pressed the gun into Stahl’s hand. It all looked so neat, so plausible. The grieving daughter on the trail of her father’s killer, arrives a moment too late to see rough justice done.

‘Cal’s all right, isn’t he? I mean he’s alive, isn’t he?’

‘He’s in the next room. A nasty lump on his head, but, yes, he’ll live.’

‘Then you’d better scarper.’

The bells of the police car rang louder now-at the most they could be only two or three streets away. The nearest nick was Millwall-if they came from the south they’d miss his car completely. If he stuck to the alleyways, they’d miss him too. Troy threw open the window to the fire escape, took a last look at Kitty, Kitty smiling faintly at him, Kitty among the carnage of a bloody night, and vanished into the dark and pouring rain.

‘I’m awfully sorry, but I’m afraid I’m going to have to lock you up.’ Cal relished the contrast. The first bobbies on the scene had burst in, truncheons up, yelling ‘Nobody move!’

Kitty was binding up the wound on Stahl’s head with strips she’d torn from her petticoat, like the solitary female in a John Ford western when the wagons have circled. She’d already licked her handkerchief and washed his face like a mother cat. Cal had never felt his wagons more circled.

‘Nobody is moving, you berk,’ she’d said. ‘Get on yer wireless and call an ambulance.’

Then they’d noticed the bloody heap that had been Reininger.

One dashed back to the squad car. The other stood and said ‘Jesus Christ’ over and over again, until Kitty said, ‘You don’t know what to do, do you?’

The ambulance arrived only minutes before a second squad car. They were loading Stahl onto a stretcher when two more cops walked in, a man in his late thirties and a younger one, younger even than Troy, who ran to the stairs and vomited at the sight of Reininger. Over the sound of his retching, the older man said, ‘Miss Stilton, isn’t it? Inspector Henrey, Murder Squad’-and turning to Cal-‘And you are?’

Cal told him, made the briefest of explanations, then Henrey said, ‘I’m awfully sorry, but I’m afraid I’m going to have to lock you up.’