Riptide

§ 71

As ever in the moment of hysteresis he reached for his eyeglasses. Cock down, glasses up, all passion spent, blind as a bat.

He’d not made a good job of it. He’d come too easily, blown his stack like a liquored-up high-school kid. Kitty did not seem to mind. She was smiling at him as she came into focus.

‘We’ll get through this, won’t we, Cal?’

One hand pulled lazily at a strand of his hair. It was more affectionate than any gesture he’d ever seen her make.

‘We will?’

‘Well-we got to. Ain’t we? I mean we’ll get through. We’ll catch the bastard, won’t we?’

It was an odd moment to pick, but perhaps now, for the first time, he could talk seriously to her.

‘Now you mention it, there are things I can do-things I have to do.’

‘Like what?’

‘I have to talk to my people. I can’t do a damn thing without I talk to them first.’

‘I thought you said they didn’t want to know.’

‘They didn’t. But they’re still the bosses. So I tell them what happened and then, if they say so, I can probably tell Nailer.’

‘Wot? Tell Nailer wot?’

The smile vanished, the other hand locked into his hair, held him like a wrestler. It hurt, but he didn’t move.

‘Kitty, I don’t know who killed your father. But there’ve been other people-the enemy-looking for the man he and I were chasing. It all revolves around him. I can’t name him without the say-so from my people, but if they do say so then my telling Nailer is the only chance he’s got of catching the killer. Without our man he doesn’t stand a chance. Without me he doesn’t stand a chance.’

She thrust him aside, leapt from the bed, naked and trembling with the force of her own anger.

‘Are you out of your bleedin’ mind? Tell Nailer! Nailer doesn’t want a result. All he cares about is the honour of the Met. And that’s not the same thing by a long chalk. You tell Nailer anything, you might just as well piss into the wind. You don’t want Nailer, you want a real copper, not one of those plodding berks.’

‘You’re the only real copper I know.’

‘Not me, you fool. I’m just plod, I am. A plonk in a uniform. You want… you want someone like… like an old boyfriend of mine.’

‘An old boyfriend?’

‘Chap I used to know on the Murder Squad. Flash as they come, but a first-rate copper.’

‘Aha.’

‘Yeah. Bloke I used to… go out with.’

Her mood had changed utterly. She wasn’t angry, it seemed, more cautious, almost coy.

‘A bloke?’ he echoed.

‘Troy,’ she said at last. ‘You want Frederick Troy.’

‘Kitty, come here.’

She sat down on the edge of the bed. He took her hands in his. She was calmer, but red in the face, still reeling from her own outburst.

‘Kitty. It was Troy got me out of the slammer. He was the cop the Yard sent when I phoned in the news of your father’s murder. He was the first to get there, the first to see Walter. Then Nailer came along and took over. At some point, he must have found out they had me and spoke up. If he hadn’t I’d still be in the cells.’

The look on her face told him not that she did not believe him, but that she would rather not believe him.

‘Little feller, black hair, black eyes, talks like a total joe ronce?’

Cal got up, searched through the pockets of his stinking, bloody jacket and fished out the bloodier handkerchief with its fancy, embroidered letter F.

‘This feller.’

He held out the handkerchief. She rubbed the scarlet letter between finger and thumb, felt the crispness of dried blood.

‘His blood? Your blood?’

‘Walter’s,’ he said simply.

‘So Troy knew my Dad was dead before I did?’

‘Before anyone but me.’

She crumpled the handkerchief, flakes of brown blood wafting onto the sheets, and put it to her cheek. She wept and cried, ‘The bastard. I’ll kill ‘im!’