Riptide

§ 68

Troy walked home in the creeping, thin darkness of late May. Not so much night as a veil across the day. Troy walked home, feeling for the first time that day that he was free of Cormack, feeling for the first time in a while that he might also be free of Kitty. Home the back way. Along William IV St, into the curve of Chandos Place and up Bedfordbury to the end of the narrow alley that was Goodwins Court, and Troy’s home. It was a mistake. Halfway up Bedfordbury,

by a block of Peabody Dwellings, the sound of marital strife blew out of an open first-floor window and cut the air.

‘You spent it? You spent it all? You miserable bugger! You miserable drunken bugger!’

He knew the voice well. His near-neighbour Alice McArdle. And she could only be talking to her husband, Ardle McArdle-and she was exaggerating. Ardle McArdle was a happy drunk-as a rule. On the occasions when he wasn’t he’d been known to knock Alice about. Troy had booked him once, flattened him twice, dunked him in the horse-trough in Chandos Place on half a dozen occasions, and on two or three had prevented Alice from almost murdering him by confiscating the rolling pin. McArdle was only miserable when confronted, as now, with the consequences of having spent his pay packet on beer, and the onset of sobriety.

As a young copper, learning his job through the soles of a pair of size-six, unbendable police boots, pounding the paving stones of Stepney and Limehouse, Troy had on many occasions wondered what the role of a copper was. To nick villains: well, that went without saying. George Bonham, his station sergeant and mentor (‘Wot?’ had been Bonhams’s only response to Troy’s use of that word) had defined the job for him. ‘This is what we do. This is what coppers are for. If we’re not this, what use are we? As a copper you’re sort of a village wise man, an elder, and age’s got nothing to do with it-comes with the pointy hat, when you put it on that’s what you become-the village wise man-like it or lump it.’ After six months on the beat Troy had fed the line back to George, revised it. ‘We’re witch doctors,’ he said. ‘People expect us to be able to do what they cannot do themselves. A sort of magic. It’s not that we’re better than they are-we make them better than they are themselves.’ ‘Bloody hell,’ Bonham had said, and left it at that.

Troy stopped. Looked up at the flapping curtain in the open window. Felt the onrush of copper’s magic. Pricked back his ears. There was a key phrase in the rise of Alice’s rage.

‘I’ll swing for you, you bastard!’

At which point she would begin destroying the family crockery piece by piece, beating Ardle about the head with it until there wasn’t a plate left to smash, and her drunken husband collapsed to the kitchen floor.

Troy dashed up the stairs. The voice in his head that might have told him he’d already played the boy scout today, and shot the bolt of his white magic, silent in his head.

Alice had McArdle cornered in the kitchen-a couple of dinner plates shattered at his feet. She had her back to Troy. He grabbed her by the shoulder as she lunged at her husband once more.

‘Alice!’

She spun round-the weapon in her hand sliced through Troy’s shirt, and tore a gash in his chest two inches below the nipple.

Troy clutched his ribs with his right hand. Watched the blood seep between his fingers, saw Alice’s mouth open silently in shock. He looked at her hand still poised in the air. She’d stabbed him. Stabbed him with a potato peeler.

McArdle staggered to his feet just as Troy staggered backwards, bumped into a kitchen chair and sat down with a thump.

‘Jesus woman, you’ve killed a copper!’

Alice had her eyes fixed on Troy’s bloody shirtfront. Then she held up the potato peeler like a crucifix presented to Christ, dropped it and screamed. The gust of whiskied breath told Troy what he should have known all along. She was as pissed as her husband.

McArdle rinsed a dishcloth under the tap and came back to Troy with the dripping, smelly, grey mess, intending to apply it to the wound.

‘Do you want me to get septicaemia?’ Troy asked. ‘Why don’t you try and shut Alice up? I’ll be fine.’

Alice had resorted to a mantra of ‘Jesus, O Jesus, O Mary Mother of God.’

‘Alice woman. Will you shut yer gob! Mr Troy says he’ll be all right.’

Troy would only be all right if he got himself out of there and home. He got up, shaky on his feet, light-headed and made his way to the door. The next time, he’d let them murder each other.

Out in the street he took a breather against a lamp-post, not at all sure whether he was going to throw up or not. McArdle leaned out of the window.

‘Are you sure you’ll be all right Mr Troy?’

‘Fine,’ Troy lied. He’d only be all right if he got home and got to a doctor.

Fumbling with the key at his front door, he could feel the blood reach his legs-the wound must be deeper than he thought. He fell into an armchair next to the phone and dialled Scotland Yard. Whitehall 1212.

‘Is Mr Kolankiewicz still in the building?’

The constable on the desk said he’d ring round and call him back. Troy wriggled out of his jacket, pressed a cushion to his chest and lay still. A couple of minutes later the phone rang and he heard Kolankiewicz’s voice say, ‘What’s up? I was just leaving the Yard in search of a plate of tripe and onions and a bowl of hot plum duff with custard.’

‘I need… I need your professional services.’

‘Oh fuck, Troy-not again. I stitched you up only last year. You already look like Boris Karloff playing Frankenstein’s monster. Call your physician.’

‘And get signed off sick? Not on your nelly. Pick up a bag of tricks and get in a cab!’