Black Out (Frederick Troy 1) Page 14

  Troy rode the train into London one coach away from the American. The sliding glass windows between the two coaches were down for ventilation and he could see across the gap into the next car. The man had the end seat by the door and had buried himself in a copy of the Evening News. The stations swept past-Hyde Park Corner, Green Park, Piccadilly Circus – and still the American did not move. He looked up as the train pulled into Piccadilly Circus just to check the name, but returned at once to the contents of his newspaper. At Leicester Square and Covent Garden he did not even glance at the station names. Where was he going? Troy had fully expected him to alight at either Leicester Square or Piccadilly Circus – the obvious stations for the West End, for Rainbow Corner, the huge American Servicemen’s Club in Piccadilly itself. As the train approached Holborn the American got up, shoved the newspaper into his pocket and stood by the doors. A second before they opened he gave a fastidious tug at the brim of his hat, then ducked and stepped out on to the platform as the door glided past. Holborn was worse than South Kensington. It was packed so tightly that passengers were all but fighting their way down to the exit, and the feeder tunnels were pouring yet more people on to the platform. Struggling to keep his man in sight Troy trod on a leg. It kicked back. Somebody yelled at him not to waste his time trying to get out – there was a raid on.

  With his eyes on the disappearing back of the American Major Troy edged his way along. He passed what appeared to be a heated argument between a middle-aged cockney housewife and a uniformed American corporal. He kept going. The American had made better headway. Troy was within seconds of losing sight of him completely, when he heard the row just behind him explode with anger, and with it the unmistakable ring of danger.

  ‘I’m telling you, lady, she’s gotta have it.’

  ‘Come orf it, she’s only fifteen. Who yer tryin’ ter kid?’

  Troy instinctively turned. The corporal had seized a young woman by the upper arm and with his free hand was threatening the housewife. Troy looked back to see the American almost at the exit.

  ‘Who am I trying to kid? She’s had five quids out of me, and she’s gotta have it!’

  ‘You bastard. She’s too young to be on the game, can’t you see?’

  ‘Frankly, lady, I don’t give a damn. All I know is she came on to me like a real commando.’

  The American disappeared into the exit tunnel. Troy turned just in time to see the corporal strike the woman in the face with a clenched fist. He ran, regardless of people underfoot and grabbed the corporal by his free arm. The man let go of the girl and pushed Troy backwards over a huddle of bodies. As Troy struggled to his feet the man was dragging the girl away. She screamed.

  ‘Mum! I didn’t! Honest I didn’t!’

  Troy dived for the man’s legs but failed to bring him down. He didn’t have the weight to rugby tackle a six-foot, fourteen-stone man. He felt himself dragged to his feet as the man seized him by the lapels. He smashed Troy backwards into the row of bunks. Troy got off one punch straight to the nose. It stopped the corporal momentarily as both hands left Troy and covered his face. All around them women were screaming. Before Troy could duck out, the man had him by the throat and pulled him into a side tunnel that led to the emergency spiral staircase. He banged Troy against the wall, pulled him off and swung him round full circle, banged him two or three times more, swung him full circle again and slammed him hard against the wall directly opposite the staircase. He let go and began to lash out wildly with his fists. Troy slumped, brought up a knee into the man’s testicles and as the hands stopped flailing at him neatly slipped one end of his handcuffs over the man’s wrist and closed it. He clipped the other over his own left wrist and with his free hand got off three or four hard blows to the face. The American collapsed on top of him, and suddenly all the world was dark and black and hot and smelt unbearably of cordite. And the screaming stopped.

  31

  Troy was crawling. It was a large open, muddy field under a blood-red moon. Away on the hill stood a figure he could only see as a silhouette, and Troy knew that he should move towards it. He tried to stand but found the mud sucked too powerfully on his hands, so he crawled on as the figure beckoned. His nightshirt clung wet and sticky to his back. Overhead the sky lit up with the searing glare of rockets. A man stood over him. His face resolving from a blur to recognisable features as the moon rolled away into the light of day and the figure on the hill vanished into transparency.

  ‘Freddie?’

  It was Wildeve. It was Wildeve. What in hell was he doing here?

  ‘Jack? What are you doing here?’

  Had he spoken? It seemed the words had not come from him.

  ‘Freddie. Do you know where you are? You’re in the Middlesex Hospital in Mortimer Street. You’ve been in an air raid.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You got hit by a bomb.’

  The room behind Wildeve shaped itself into form. It was a small hospital ward. He could see the beds opposite. Wildeve sat on the edge of his bed.

  ‘Sorry, Jack, I wasn’t quite in the world.’

  ‘You were almost out of it permanently.’

  ‘Tell me what happened.’

  ‘You were found in the corridor at the foot of the emergency stairs at Holborn station. Do you remember that?’

  Troy nodded.

  ‘A bomb hit the air shaft. Went straight down the spiral stairs like a hot knife through butter. Must have exploded about fifty feet above you. Turned the stairs into instant shrapnel. We found you handcuffed to an American soldier. He saved your life. Completely cushioned the blast. There was almost nothing left of his back. One piece of the stairs went right through him and stopped just short of your chest. He died outright. So did the others.’

  Troy was aware that Wildeve was almost whispering to avoid spreading alarm with his grisly tale, but felt he had to ask. It all seemed so vague.

  ‘Others? What others?’

  Wildeve looked around him to be certain he wasn’t being overheard and leaned closer to Troy.

  ‘The shelterers.’

  ‘What . . . ?’

  ‘Freddie, everyone in that corridor died except you. Most of the people on the platforms were killed. The Rescue boys reckon the total will be around six hundred and fifty. You’ve had a very lucky escape. They found you handcuffed to a corpse!’

  Wildeve paused. Troy sighed deeply, from tiredness not shock. The chance in six hundred hardly registered. There was a deep, numb throbbing in the back of his head. He saw in his mind’s eye the young American slamming him against the tunnel wall over and over again and felt the pain in his head and shoulders – a pain that had hit him so quickly he had not known he’d felt it until now.

  ‘What were you doing there?’

  ‘I was following the American. He came out of Brack’s house. I followed him to Holborn.’

  ‘Damn. I suppose that lead dies with him,’ said Wildeve.

  ‘No. Not the same man.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Not the same man. Another American. The man I was with wasn’t the man I was following. He got away from me. Down the exit tunnel.’

  ‘Lucky blighter.’

  Troy tapped Wildeve with his leg. He got up, and Troy threw back the covers and tried to swing his legs off the bed. His head swam and the room turned the same shade of bloody red he had seen in his dreams. Wildeve placed his hands gently on Troy’s shoulders and pushed him back.

  ‘Don’t be stupid, Freddie. You’ve had an almighty blow to the head. They want to keep you in for another day or so.’

  ‘Another? Jack, how long have I been here?’

  ‘Three days.’

  ‘Oh God.’ Troy sighed. ‘Jack, you’d better get over to Tite Street and watch for him.’

  ‘I’ve been at Tite Street most of the time. The only reason I’m not there now is that Diana is not an early riser. It’s only seven in the morning. Not that I’d expect you to know that. In fact you probably don’t know it’
s Saturday morning. Now who is this chap?’

  Troy told him.

  ‘You didn’t mention any American but Zelig,’ said Wildeve.

  ‘I didn’t think it was important. But now it’s very important. We must find out who he is.’

  ‘Well, it’s got to be me. You’re going to be out of it for a while.’ Wildeve paused, trying to take in the pieces Troy had dropped into his lap. ‘Do you think he saw you?’

  Troy remembered seeing the American gliding slowly and silently away from him, saw himself in pursuit, then leaping over the prone bodies, racing to meet the look of terror on that young girl’s face. Had she survived? Had she been blasted to pieces or burnt alive? Wildeve touched his shoulder, dragging him back to the present.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I said, do you think he saw you?’

  ‘No. I’m almost certain he didn’t. He took a devious route into London, but I think that was just instinctive caution. He wasn’t looking for a tail.’

  ‘Do you think he’s our man?’

  ‘I don’t know, but he’s there, isn’t he? It would be an odd coincidence for him to be in Zelig’s office and at Brack’s house. And he hid from me at Brack’s. He didn’t want to be seen. Zelig wouldn’t say anything about any possibility of a connection between the Germans and American operations, but somebody tore a strip off Neville Pym for letting me get that close. We now have that connection. The American, Diana Brack, Wolinski, to Brand and von Ranke.’

  ‘You know, Freddie, I haven’t a clue where all this is leading. I really couldn’t follow what you told Stan on Monday. I doubt that he could.’

  Troy tried to speak, feeling all the time the pain in his head get worse, begin to form above his left eye into a red, tumbling cloud, blown across his vision by the propellent power of his words.

  ‘I . . . I can’t tell you at this stage. It’s not clear in my own mind. Not clear at all. Do you see what I mean? It’s pieces, only pieces.’

  He had no idea whether Wildeve believed him. He prayed he would not press the point now.

  Wildeve stood up.

  ‘I ought to be going,’ he said. ‘I’ll look in tomorrow with your clothes.’

  ‘My clothes?’

  ‘They had to be cleaned. Your overcoat’s come up OK, but your shirt’s had it. It was impossible to get the blood out. I’ve ordered a new one from your man in Jermyn Street. Onions stumped up the coupons. He says you owe him, but I doubt he gets through a month’s clothing coupons in a year. He’ll be in to see you later, by the way.’

  Troy sighed again. He didn’t relish seeing Onions, who would ask a dozen questions for each one Wildeve asked, and was unlikely in the extreme to be as easily put off. The red cloud hovered in the corner of his eye. He put a hand up to his forehead to see if it would brush away. He rubbed at his temple and felt the gritty residue of the blast. His hair was full of flakes of concrete. For days afterwards he seemed to find it everywhere.

  32

  He had stood so long in the cold and the dark he had come to wish he could stamp his feet and flap his arms like a cabbie, just to keep his circulation going – but it would, almost by definition, be a poor attempt at shadowing anyone. Instead he leaned and yawned in the porch of number 23 St James’s Square, saw readers at the London Library go up the square, saw the staff come down as they left for the evening, and showed his warrant card to a constable.

  As the man stopped on the pavement to look up at him, Troy was struck by just how ridiculous a bobby looked in a cape and helmet and how glad he himself had been to get out of uniform. Glistening with rain and spattered with mud, this constable clearly felt nothing of the sort. He looked directly into Troy’s face and spoke firmly. ‘Waiting for someone, are we?’

  Why, oh why, thought Troy, does no one call me sir? He quickly held up his card. The constable angled his shaded lantern towards it. ‘I’m on duty,’ said Troy, and pocketed the card. ‘Keep out of the way.’

  ‘As you wish,’ replied the constable. ‘If you need me I’ll be round again in forty minutes.’ He plodded slowly on, his boots ringing squarely on the pavement, glancing quickly into each doorway as he passed.

  Troy let his gaze linger on the man’s back a fraction too long. In the blackout even a quarter moon was difficult to see by, and as he looked up again a woman in uniform was passing out of sight on the far side of the Square. If it was her he’d have to run to catch her. As he reached Norfolk House she was turning right into Charles II Street. He couldn’t even be sure it was her, and in the effort to catch up he lost all the feelings that had plagued him as he waited. Why was he hiding? He’d have to speak to her sooner or later. What was he going to say to her? Still he had no idea, but finding her in the first place now seemed all important. For no reason Troy could see, she crossed the street, glanced at the traffic and crossed back again. High heels seemed to be no obstacle to a fast walk – she moved rapidly in and out of the shadows, setting a pace Troy found hard to match. She had almost reached Lower Regent Street before Troy arrived at the thirty- to forty-feet gap at which he felt comfortable when tailing. She walked into Lower Regent Street and he lost sight of her. Seconds later she reappeared walking quickly back towards him, looking straight at him. There was no turning he could take and it was obvious she’d seen him. She came right up to him and stopped only four or five feet away. But for her stilettos she could not have been more than four foot eleven, and in the tight precise uniform she was puffing herself up like a young pigeon, ready for the confrontation. Troy seemed to tower over her in a way that did nothing to intimidate her.

  ‘You following me?’

  Troy fumbled for his warrant card. ‘Troy,’ he said feebly, ‘Sergeant Troy.’

  She glanced only momentarily at the card and looked back at his face, hard and inquisitive.

  ‘So how come you’re not in uniform?’

  ‘We don’t all wear uniforms.’

  ‘Aha.’ She paused. ‘I’m a sergeant too.’

  ‘I noticed.’

  With three conspicuous stripes on each olive-green arm he could hardly not notice. She half-turned as if to walk on and then turned back. She looked him down and then up, fixing her eyes on him again. They were a clear chestnut brown with not the slightest speck of green or hazel. She seemed to be trying to read his intentions in his face. Troy wished he knew what they were. The rosebud mouth flickered into something he took for a smile.

  ‘Ah well – no point in following on like some cheap gumshoe. We might as well go together. Your place or mine?’

  Troy said nothing. He’d no idea what she was talking about. She stared, she smiled. Still Troy said nothing – she walked on. Troy watched almost to the street corner. Zelig was right. The skirt was far too tight. Her backside moved like two ostrich eggs in a bag. She came back.

  ‘Are we gonna fuck or what?’ she said.

  ‘I . . . er . . .’ Troy almost choked, never having heard that word spoken by a woman outside of drunken scenes in police stations.

  ‘Now this is stupid. Or maybe you’re stupid. For Chrissake we can’t do it on the sidewalk. Come on, shake a leg as you guys say. I don’t live too far away – you’d only of had to follow me to Orrnnjj Street.’

  Troy wrestled with Orrnnjj Street and realised she meant Orange Street – a narrow, gently serpentine lane that ran between the Haymarket and the Charing Cross Road – two pubs, a chapel and a short row of Georgian houses. They crossed Lower Regent Street and the Haymarket almost in step. Once or twice she looked at Troy as though she thought he was a complete fool – very much what he felt. Into Orange Street the light disappeared suddenly and completely and the air seemed cold and quiet. He could hear the pick-pock of her high-heeled shoes on the pavement, but he couldn’t see her. She stopped. He bumped into her and heard her curse softly. Then she was rattling keys at a door and a piece of the night seemed to open up and swallow them.

  ‘Stay close behind me, right? Top floor, five flights, and there’s no lig
ht ’cos there’s no blackout. OK?’

  He followed blindly up two flights of stairs, groping his way hand over hand on the banister rail. Rain and moonlight slanted in through a broken pane on the second floor and he caught sight of her standing in the fraction of light, invisible from the wasp waist upwards. He tripped and banged a kneecap loudly on the stairs.

  ‘I told you. Stay close behind or you’ll break your goddam neck before we’re halfway up.’

  She bent down into the light so that he could see her face, and seized his right hand with her left.

  ‘You must be the clumsiest, dumbest bastard ever tried to pick me up.’

  With a gentle strength she guided and pulled him to a small doorway on the top landing. She rattled the keys once more.

  ‘Why did you wait in the rain all that time? You know where I work. OK. We’re in.’

  She flicked on the light and slammed the door shut. Troy found himself in a large bed-sitting-room that spanned the whole top floor of the house. At the front and back the roof came down almost to meet the floor, but in its vast centre the room held a large double bed, a dining table, a battered horsehair sofa, a wind-up gramophone and a wide, untidy scattering of woman’s clothing.

  ‘No apologies for the mess. I work most of the time. Come to think of it, if you’d told me last week you were coming I could have told you I don’t get off till past nine.’

  She kicked off her shoes and crossed to a large Kelvinator refrigerator. She’d stopped looking at Troy and he followed her with his eyes. She peeled off her battledress, aimed it at the sofa, gave Troy a grin and yanked open the fridge door.

  ‘How do you feel about bourbon?’

  She almost disappeared into the fridge.

  ‘I don’t know. I’ve never tried it.’

  It was physically impossible for her to look over the fridge door. She darted him a quick glance round the side and rummaged in the ice-box.

  ‘I got ice here. And I got a good Tennessee sour mash somewhere around.’ The door hissed and sucked shut. She put two glasses and an aluminium ice-tray down on the table. ‘The PX is pretty good. It’s not always Tennessee, but . . . goddam it there’s a war on.’