Riptide

§ 75

Cal had always had a little difficulty with right and left. It seemed to go with eyeglasses and a generally poor co-ordination. The only two physical skills he had ever mastered were the bicycle and sexual intercourse, and he wasn’t too confident about either of those. Emerging from Goodwin’s Court, he turned left, and walked off in the direction of Trafalgar Square. Missing the subway sign he walked on-past Charing Cross railway station and down to within sight the river. He realised he was lost. Surely Troy would have mentioned crossing the river? But-there was another subway station. Its route map made no sense to him. Something from the Modernist school-a Mondrian or some such. A mass of coloured lines and precisely graded angles and countless interlocks, dozens of them, maybe even hundreds. He asked at the ticket booth.

‘Bond Street, guvner? You want the Bakerloo. Change at Oxford Circus.’

Bakerloo. That was easy. It was what you got when you married Waterloo to Baker Street. But he could have sworn Troy said Central-and he certainly hadn’t mentioned any changes.

The depth was startling. Washington had no subway. New York’s ran in trenches just below the surface, bolted to the Manhattan bedrock. This system required two escalators to take you down to an oppressively narrow tunnel, from which the train emerged as closely fitted as a cork in a bottle. He took a northbound train, sat in a completely empty car-he’d never seen a padded cell, but this could well resemble one-and stared at the map above the long row of seats. The train pulled into Trafalgar Square. He’d just about got the hang of it now. He’d found Bond Street on the map, though he still wasn’t wholly sure where he had gone wrong. A man got in-black hat, black suit-and sat opposite Cal, clutching a folded newspaper. Cal gave him the merest glance-the English were not inclined to impromptu chats with strangers-and went back to the map-still looking for the proof of his own error-how had he managed to miss a string of words as long as Tottenham, Court and Road?

The man took off his hat, Cal’s eyes drawn back to him by the gesture. Bald at the forehead and crown. Black hair turning salt and pepper. A small black moustache, and pale, steely-he thought the cliché insisted-blue eyes. It was Stahl. Stahl with his hair carefully shaved and dyed. He would never have known him but for the intensity of the gaze. Aimed at him like gun barrels. He should have guessed. Of course he would have changed his appearance. The police sketch looked nothing like him-it looked like ‘Peter Robinson’.

‘Wolf?’ he said tentatively.

‘Calvin,’ said an accented Mid-European voice.

‘I… I… don’t know what to say.’

‘Then perhaps you should listen instead. There is, after all, so much at stake.’

Cal started forward for no reason he could think of, got up from his seat half standing. Stahl waved him back down with the folded newspaper, like a gunel sticking a gun out through the fabric of his coat pocket. At once both hammy and effective.

‘You’re not carrying a gun, are you, Calvin?’

Cal sat back in the seat, felt his bottom bump against it sharply.

‘No,’ he said. ‘No, I’m not. I’m kind of off guns at the moment. Do you really need a gun? You didn’t seem to need one when you killed Smulders.’

‘Was that his name? No-a gun would have brought heaven and hell down about my ears. However, as you will observe, we are a hundred feet under London and quite alone.’

‘You surely don’t think you have anything to fear from me?’

‘No. Of course not. Just your willingness to panic.’

‘Then why didn’t you just come in?’

‘Who was I to trust? I had been safe in Berlin until someone gave me away. Someone on our side. That’s a very limited number of people.’

‘You mean you thought it was me?’

‘I didn’t know who it was, hence I suspected everyone and trusted no one.’

‘What changed your mind?’

‘Stilton.’

‘Walter? You met Walter?’

‘Stilton was beyond suspicion. He knew so little, after all. An honest copper, as the English are so fond of deluding themselves. Stilton convinced me you were innocent. An innocent, to be precise. “The lad’s guileless, could no more fib than George Washington and the cherry tree.” Said you couldn’t even keep your affair with his daughter a secret. Lies showed in your face like etching in glass.’

Cal felt he must be blushing deeper than bortsch. Was this what Walter really thought of him? Had Walter known everything?

‘Walter knew about me and Kitty?’

‘Calvin-I knew about you and Kitty. I watched her park her motorbike in Brook Street night after night. I should think the whole of Claridge’s staff knew about you and Kitty.’

‘You were watching me? All this time?’

‘Yes.’

‘And you met with Stilton?’

‘The night before he died. And the morning of the same day.’

‘How do you know he’s dead?’

‘I was there. Stilton wanted you and I to meet. I asked for somewhere outdoors with more than one way in and out. He chose Coburn Place. All three of us would have met there if everything had gone well. I got there first. I stood in the cellar of the pub next door. I was in total darkness, but I could see anyone who passed through the drayman’s hatch. I saw Stilton go by. A minute or so later a second set of feet passed by. I was about to step out, when I heard the unmistakable sound of a low-velocity bullet. A fraction louder than a silencer, nothing more than a pop, but enough to know it for what it was. Then the second man came back down the alley. I waited a couple of minutes, then I left. It was obvious Stilton had been killed. I didn’t need to see the body to know that.’

‘Couldn’t you have stopped it? I mean…’

‘I didn’t have a gun, Calvin. My only defence was to be closest to the exit. I bought this the day after.’

Stahl lifted the newspaper, to show a small revolver pointing down his leg, aimed at Cal’s groin.

‘But you did see the man who killed Walter?’

The train slithered into a station, the doors slid open. The soft hubbub of a thousand shelterers already preparing for a night’s sleep along the platforms. The whistle of a kettle on a primus stove. A smell like boiling collard greens.

‘Up to the knees, yes. I didn’t see his face.’

‘Oh hell.’

‘And,’ Stahl went on, ‘he had better taste than you, but his shoes no more matched the suit than yours do.’

Cal looked down at his shoes. Regulation army brown roundies. With the blue suit Tel Stilton had brought him from his brother’s wardrobe. Brown shoes, blue suit. Good God, what was Stahl saying? He looked up.

‘What now?’

But Stahl had gone.

Cal leapt through the door, snagged his jacket as the door hissed to on him, jerked it free and tried vainly to run after Stahl. He tripped almost at once over a man sprawled full length across the platform.

‘Ere. ‘Old yer ‘orses!’

He stumbled on. A human quagmire of arms and legs. He felt as though he had fallen into the grip of a giant octopus.

‘Wot’s a bloke gotta do to get a decent night’s kip ‘round ‘ere?’

‘Oo the bleedin’ ‘ell d’you fink you are?’

Someone reached up to thump Cal on the thigh and nearly brought him down. Someone else stamped hard on his toes. He fought his way to the exit, heard the predictable cry of ‘Don’t you know there’s a war on?’ following him, and way ahead saw Stahl striding up the escalator. He’d never catch him now. The blow to his leg had all but numbed the nerves. He was dragging it after him as though it were made of wood.

‘Stahl!!!’

Stahl stopped at the top. The staircase moving up beneath his feet, into an infinity of moire patterns that made Cal’s eyes swim.

‘Stahl! The shoes! What colour were the shoes?’

Cal heard his voice echo up the shaft, like shouting at God in the vault of some bizarre cathedral. But this wasn’t God, this was the Devil tempting Cal to think what he would not think. And instead of placing him on a pillar in the wilderness he had left him in the pit of darkness.

Stahl stood a second or two, looking down at Cal. Cal dragged himself onto the escalator.

‘Brown,’ Stahl answered, turned on his heel and vanished.