Riptide

§ 65

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.’

‘I see,’ said Crawley noncomittally. He jerked his head sharply left as though stung by an insect. ‘Enoch?’

Nailer rattled it off. Terse, precise and fuck you. ‘I found this Yank… standing over the body… a recently fired gun in his possession… I have two eyewitnesses who saw him go into Coburn’s Place about twenty minutes before… he was the only person to enter the alley in the timespan we’re concerned with… and no-one, ‘cept you, is vouching for the man… his line is that Walter summoned him there by letter… needless to say he can’t produce the letter… you don’t have to be Agatha Christie to solve this one.’

‘Might I ask who your witnesses are?’

‘Couple of streetwalkers… pair o’ prozzies… working Islington Green. They reckon they were stood there from about quarter to ten, and they were still there when I got there. They say he walked right past them-inches away.’

Another involuntary twitch from Crawley. Clearly, he wasn’t too happy with this as testimony. No barrister in his right mind would relish putting a prostitute in the box and asking her to swear a credible oath.

‘Did they see anyone else?’ Troy asked.

‘I’ve already said they didn’t.’

‘I mean anyone, anyone at all. You said they were there from about 9.45 and were still there when you arrived. That’s well over an hour, nearer an hour and a half. Who else did they see go into Coburn Place?’

‘Nobody-they saw Cormack, that’s what matters! How big do you want the letters, Mr Troy? They saw Cormack!’

This was inverse logic. Cormack was found in the alley. Ergo, he had at some point gone up it. This scarcely needed witnesses. What mattered was what the two whores did not see.

‘They can’t have been that alert, then, can they? I went up the alley twenty minutes or so after Cormack. If they didn’t see me, who’s to say who they might have missed twenty minutes earlier?’

‘It’s who they did see that matters.’

‘Has it occurred to you, sir…’ It seemed to Troy the right moment at which to throw in a ‘sir’. ‘Has it occurred to you that for a prostitute to admit to you that she was off the street for any length of time might be seen by her as an admission of prostitution, and that the reason they told you they were there without break was because they did not wish to admit openly to prostitution in front of a policeman? They weren’t there when I went up the alley. Either they were being dozy-which I doubt, since their trade depends on spotting the single men-or else they weren’t there, and if they weren’t there when I got there, who’s to say where they were at 10 or 10.30? Most turns take less than five minutes, they could have had three or four men in rapid succession and still have kept their patch on the street. But Walter’s killer probably needed less than one minute.’

Nailer went from grey to red. Troy had done more than he meant to do; he had begun the logical demolition of the man, and it wasn’t over yet.

‘That isn’t the most important thing. Of course they missed the killer-‘

Crawley was looking hard at Troy, his discomfort self-evident.

‘-But they would also appear to have missed the victim.’

‘What?’ said Crawley.

‘Quite simply, sir, where were they when Chief Inspector Stilton went up the alley?’

It was so obvious, it was little short of calling Nailer stupid. Crawley tacked away from it. If Troy had been in his position, he thought, he would too-he would bat for his man.

‘There is, of course, the matter of the gun.’

And it was the intervention Troy had been all but praying for. For one of them to bring up the gun made it so much easier for him to say what he had to say.

‘Quite, sir, and I must say I’m baffled at the weight of evidence you seem to attach to it.’

‘I don’t follow, sergeant.’

‘Am I right in thinking that you’ve asked for no ballistic tests?’

The merest exchange of looks between Crawley and Nailer. Crawley spoke.

‘We’ve only the gun and the spent bullet that’s lodged in Chief Inspector Stilton. We don’t have the cartridge case to match up.’

This was old-fashioned thinking. This was the way ballistics had been until about nine or ten years ago. They could match cases; they had the greatest difficulty in matching or comparing bullets-even now it was a far from perfect science, but it was doable, and to a policeman of Troy’s generation it was the first thing one would ask to be done.

Nailer chipped in again. ‘Ballistics isn’t everything.’

Troy looked at Onions. He could have sworn the man blushed, ever so slightly, at the way Nailer betrayed their ages in the word-for-word repetition of what he had said himself. ‘I was on Murder for two years myself under Mr Onions’ predecessor. In my day if you caught a bloke with a gun in his hand at the scene of a murder you didn’t need to ask for the man in the white coat, you knew. Walter Stilton was shot just above one ear’ole. I should think you’d’ve noticed that for yourself. And I should think that when you’ve been in the job more than eighteen months, when you’ve done a bit more than spit and cough, when you’re not still wet behind the ears, you’ll know. When a small-bore bullet passes through that amount of bone it’ll bend-of course it’ll bend. A fat lot of use a bent bullet is. Where are you then, with the men in their white coats?’

Troy had always admired punctuality. It was a mark of civilisation-even in one so thinly civilised as the Polish Beast. Madge stuck her head round the door and said, ‘Professor Kolankiewicz is here, Mr Onions.’

‘Kolankiewicz? I didn’t send for him,’ Stan said blankly.

‘I did,’ said Troy.

‘You little shite!’ Nailer exploded. ‘You’ve fitted me up!’

‘Perhaps if you weren’t so keen to fit up the American, I wouldn’t have had to.’

Nailer got out of his chair, his right arm raised as though he’d thump Troy if there weren’t a superintendent and a desk between them. Crawley calmly pushed him back into it.

‘Mr Troy, I’ll thank you to treat my officers with more respect,’ he said without raising his voice. ‘Chief Inspector Nailer has served over twenty years in this force and deserves better.’

He turned his attention to Onions.

‘I deplore such tactics, Stanley. However, now that Professor Kolankiewicz is here we may as well see him.’

‘I agree,’ said Stan. ‘And Freddie, keep yer gob shut.’

Kolankiewicz bundled in, homburg pushed way back on his head, pockets bulging, a copy of the News Chronicle under one arm. He was not a serving police officer. Rank held no terror for him. He pulled up a chair, plonked it down next to Crawley and said ‘Which one you coppers got the gun?’

Troy could have sworn he heard a soft ‘Oh Jesus’ escape Onions’ lips. Crawley simply twitched again and jerked his head towards the box file on Onions’ desk.

‘It’s there. Sealed in cellophane. The suspect’s fingerprints are all over it.’

Kolankiewicz tore off the wrapper like a small boy attacking a Mars bar. He sniffed the barrel.

‘Smith and Wesson. Been fired.’

Nailer sighed at the obvious. Kolankiewicz ignored him and stripped the wrapper off the holster. A small black triangle of tough leather, a stainless steel clip on the flat side. Kolankiewicz sniffed that too.

‘It’s a closed holster,’ he said. ‘Unusual. It would complicate things.’

‘How?’ said Onions.

‘Bloke shoots some other bloke. Unless he stands around like Wild Bill Hickock blowing smoke off the barrel and boasting to every bugger that he’s Deadeye Dick, he puts it back in the holster straight away. In an open holster the barrel would protrude, the gases would be allowed to disperse at what I would term a normal rate. In a holster like this… well, you might as well put a cork up the barrel. Gases are trapped. Makes it difficult to say when the gun was fired. All you can say is that it was fired.’

Onions fixed his gaze on Crawley.

‘Does this help, Dennis?’ he asked without a trace of sarcasm.

Crawley gave a far straighter answer than Troy knew Nailer would attempt. The man might be a colossal prig, but he was honest.

‘It… er… it complicates matters. Cormack has admitted that he fired the gun five or six days ago… of course it would help if he told us at whom… but he’s claiming some sort of diplomatic immunity on that one.’

‘You want my professional opinion?’ Kolankiewicz said. ‘That’s why you got me here, is it not? My opinion is that if you had sent me the gun the night Stilton died we might be in a better position to judge, but as things stand I will say now that I cannot say with any reliability when this gun was fired. It is perfectly possible that this Cormack is telling the truth. But there is yet more.’

He tore the wrapper off the bullets and set one of them upright on the desk. He tugged at the bulge in his coat pocket and pulled out a large wad of cotton wool. A few seconds probing with his fingers and he set a second bullet, distorted and shapeless, next to the first. Every copper in the room looked at it. Nailer could not restrain a grin, the small man’s smirk of petty triumph.

‘As you boys can see, is bent to buggery. However…’

Kolankiewicz picked up the unspent bullet, whipped out his spectacles, and eyed it closely.

‘…It is the same calibre. Point 32, with full metal jacket made for a.35. The spent bullet I have shows a right hand twist, which is what it’d have if it too had come from a Smith and Wesson. There are not many.35 handguns. In fact Smith and Wesson are one of the few firms ever to make them. A small gun, 22 ounces, more powerful than their.32-that’s what I’d call a handbag gun-not as powerful as the Colt.38 or the Browning 9mm, but still some stopping power. I shall have to compare the bullet that killed old Stinker with a test shot. It’s all in the rifling-the twist.’

‘But,’ said Nailer, ‘it’s bent to buggery! You said so yourself.’

‘Trust me. I’m a smartyarse.’

It occurred to Troy that working for the Branch did not often bring Crawley into contact with the old immovable object that was Kolankiewicz. He spoke to him as though he’d been accosted by a particularly rude fishmonger who’d had the sheer neck to ring at the front door clutching six months of unpaid accounts. It came effortlessly, unconsciously perhaps, to men like Crawley to use a tone of voice that directed you to the tradesman’s entrance.

‘Let me understand you. You’re saying you can run tests on this?’

‘Yes. Difficult, but not impossible, so yes.’

Troy heard Stan draw in breath as though about to speak. But Nailer spoke first, reddening once more with anger and exasperation.

‘Scuse me sir, but this is bollocks. We shouldn’t be playing around with useless blobs of lead with what we’ve got. He was there, he had a gun, and he’s no explanation that adds up to piss in a tea-strainer as to why he was there or why he was with Walter at all. This immunity he seems to claim, this mission he says he’s on-it’s all bollocks. He did it. I know he did it. The Yanks know he did it. He’s a villain and they’ve disowned him. I say forget the damn tests and charge him now.’

It was a speech that left every man in the room, save Kolankiewicz who did not appear to be listening, slightly stunned.

Crawley jerked his chin off his chest, slowly turned to face his Chief Inspector and said, ‘Enoch, are you quite serious?’ in the same tone in which he might have said ‘Are you quite mad?’

‘Charge the bugger, charge him now!’

Onions turned to Troy-the injunction of silence lifted.

‘Mr Nailer,’ Troy began. ‘Does the phrase “diplomatic incident” mean anything to you?’

Nailer did not answer. He glared at Troy.

‘Has it occurred to you that far from being disowned Cormack might merely have fallen foul of the internal politics in what is known to be a very factional embassy, and that when they finally work out the mess he’s in they’ll want him back in one piece? You’ve held him for a couple of days. It’s his rotten luck that of all the English people he’s named I’m the only one available to speak for him, so you’ve had a romp watching his alibis topple like ninepins. But tomorrow or the day after the Americans will tire of playing games and they’ll ask for him back.’

Nailer glared still, and it seemed to Troy that he’d not understood one word of what he’d just said.

Crawley stood, stiff-necked, adam’s apple bobbing in his collar-head of house and captain of the first eleven rolled into one.

‘I’m fed up with this. I’m putting an end to it now. Mr Kolankiewicz, do your tests and send me the report.’

Publish and be damned. Nailer said nothing. Troy said nothing. Onions muttered the platitudes of rank. Chairs scraped back. Legs stretched. Kolankiewicz was out of the door in a flash, closely followed by Troy and Nailer.

Past Madge’s office, at the head of the stairs, Nailer tapped Troy on the shoulder. He was not about to let him go easily. The finger that tapped the shoulder now prodded him in the sternum.

‘You cheeky young bugger! I’ve been a copper since you were in nappies. I’ve been a copper more’n twenty years-‘

‘Then,’ Troy cut him off, ‘it’s a pity that in twenty years you’ve learnt fuck all.’

An inarticulate noise burst forth from Nailer-nothing clearer than ‘Wuuurgh!’ He lunged at Troy, fist clenched, missed and fell against the wall-purple in the face, a blood vessel in his forehead throbbing furiously. Troy ran down the stairs, chasing after Kolankiewicz.

He caught him on the ground floor, short, fat legs hurrying against the grain of his character.

‘You’re off to Hendon? I’m coming with you.’

‘You are welcome, my boy-but it is not to Hendon I go.’

‘Where then?’

‘You want your proof, don’t you? The death of a fellow flatfoot bothers you as much as it bothers Crawley’s creeps, does it not? Then we should go to the top. You may believe in the necessity of good forensics, but Nailer is typical not only of many of your colleagues but also of the Metropolitan Police bureaucracy. You know how I got my first comparison microscope? I built it myself. In 1934. I’m still using it-and in all the equipment with which the misers at the Yard have supplied me, there is nothing that I would grace with the words “state of the art”.’

‘So?’

‘So we go to the top man. Tell me-have you ever met Mr Churchill?’