‘Bugger, bugger, bugger.’
The doctor clicked his bag shut, took one more look at his watch.
‘Important, was he?’
‘You could say that. Now, before you dash off to whatever’s made you look at your watch three times since I came into the room, cause of death. A professional opinion, if you please.’
The doctor actually blushed a little. Not so stupid as not to know when he was being bawled out. Cal slipped in behind Stilton as he stood up to tackle the doctor and looked at the body for himself.
‘Neck’s broken. Death was instantaneous. No marks to indicate any struggle. Your man on the door says he saw no-one come or go. Only other person in the house was the landlady. Ergo, I conclude the poor sod tripped on the top step, tumbled all the way to the bottom and broke his blasted neck. Happens all the time. Houses like these are death traps. If it wasn’t for the war we’d have ‘em all shut down as health hazards.’
‘Thank you. You can get off to your dinner now. It was your dinner you were anxious not to miss wasn’t it?’
The doctor said nothing. Picked up his trilby, jammed it on his head, last symbol of his damaged pride, and left. Stilton bent to the body again. Side by side with Cal. Cal had only ever seen a body once before, his maternal grandfather laid out in his casket-black suit, combed hair, mortician’s make-up, eyes shut. This man’s eyes were shut. He was almost prepared to bet that the young cop had closed them himself. In seven years as a soldier he’d never heard a shot fired in anger, unless it was Gelbroaster’s the other night, and he’d never seen a body that had just collapsed instantly into death like this. The heap that was death. A grim human puzzle. Take these parts, these tangled limbs, and rearrange them into human form.
‘You seen many corpses in your time, Mr Cormack?’
‘No,’ said Cal. ‘No, I haven’t.’
‘This is one Jerry I’d hoped to see live just a while longer. Long enough to find out what he was up to.’
They found Troy outside, leaning against the bonnet of his car, collar up. Hands deep in his pockets.
‘Was there something else, Sergeant?’
Troy stood upright. It made little difference to his size up against Stilton, but it indicated the right amount of deference to rank.
‘You know that’s no accident, don’t you?’
‘Mebbe.’
‘I’d recommend a full PM and Forensics out at Hendon. Whoever he was, and I’m sure you know better than I, he needs the works.’
‘I’ve handled suspicious deaths before, lad. I’ve seen dead bodies before.’
‘And I see them all the time. Forgive the plainness of this, sir-but murder is my business.’
‘Thank you, Sergeant. ‘Appen you’re right. And right now we should both be about our business. Dobbs!!!’
Stilton strode across the road to where Dobbs was hastily stepping on another butt.
Troy opened the door of his car. Looked straight at Cal.
‘Are you working with Mr Stilton?’
‘I guess I am,’ said Cal.
‘Then I wish you luck,’ said Troy.
He drove off. Cal could hear Stilton bawling out Dobbs. Half London could hear Stilton bawling out Dobbs.
‘You were in the pub. Weren’t you? In the Lion. Supping ale when you should have been watching the door!’
‘Boss, it was so quiet. Nothing was-‘
‘While you were wetting your slimy gizzard, someone slipped in and topped the bastard. Do you hear me Dobbs? We’ve lost him. He’s dead. Or did you think the Murder Squad sent Troy out to check his ration book? You stupid, stupid bugger!’
‘Honest, boss, it won’t ‘appen again!’
‘Too bloody right it won’t. Cos if it does they’ll be using your bollocks for target practice down at Bisley. Get in there now. Calm down old Peg before she bursts a blood vessel. Get hold of the meat wagon and get matey carted off. Do a house to house. Talk to the whole damned street. When you’ve done all that, get back to the Yard. Write out a full report of everything you’ve seen and done in the last seventy-two hours and have it on my desk before you go home tonight. Do I make myself clear, Mr Dobbs?’
When he came back to Cal, there was the whisper of a grin beneath the moustache.
‘That looked like fun.’
‘Oh it was Mr Cormack, I enjoyed every second of it.’
‘Good. Because I have a little advice for you.’
Stilton laughed out loud.
‘Come on, lad. Let’s hear it.’
‘That young cop is right.’
‘I know damn well he’s right.’
‘Then why did you ignore him?’
‘Let’s just say I don’t like being taught how to suck eggs by the likes of Frederick Troy. He may be Scotland Yard’s wunderkind, but as far as I’m concerned he’s still wet behind the ears.’
‘Then you’ll order a full autopsy?’
‘Of course.’
‘The Works?’
‘You’re beginning to learn the jargon. But why do you ask?’
‘This is the bit you won’t like.’
‘Try me.’
‘This dead German ‘was a hit man, right? An assassin?’
‘A Dutchman, but yes, an assassin.’
‘What kind of man gets the drop on a trained killer?’
‘I don’t know. You tell me.’
‘Another trained killer?’
‘You think there’s another one?’
‘One? Maybe. Or do you have a whole bunch of trained killers on the loose?’
It was Stilton’s turn to look at his watch.
‘We’ve missed my Czech for tonight. Do you fancy a spot o’ dinner?’
‘You know a good restaurant?’
‘I wasn’t thinking of a restaurant. I was thinking-would you like to come home? Have something to eat with me and the wife?’
Cal said nothing. He was almost too startled to speak. He’d primed himself for an eruption of bad temper, and he wound up with an invitation to dinner. He’d never been inside an Englishman’s home before. He’d heard they all thought of them as castles.
‘You can tell me your theory on the way over to Stepney.’
Stilton grinned over the word ‘theory’. Cal accepted silently and got back into the car.
§ 23
Cal had no grasp of London’s geography, but even the walk around London last Sunday morning, after the big raid, had told him that it lacked order. Following your nose only worked if you weren’t going anywhere. What London needed was a grid. True, the Washington streets he’d grown up with had nothing as romantic as Piccadilly or as historically obscure as Rotten Row-the best they could come up with was a prosaic Avenue C or M Street, and you’d never while away a lazy five minutes wondering about the origins of ‘M’-but they led somewhere. Major L’Enfant, Washington’s genius, had taken the stripes off the flag, drawn them as a grid across a swamp in Maryland, thrown the stars at them, one for each of the fifteen states at the time of the city’s inception, and where they hit declared a road junction and linked up the diagonals. What could be simpler? An easy-to-use city, with a few statues thrown in.
It was scarcely beginning to get dark as Stilton steered him across the urban chaos that was the East End, but blackouts were already being pulled tight in the houses they passed. One or two of the oncoming cars had put on their dim, hooded headlights. In real darkness, enough to see each other coming, not enough to see where you were going. A sense of caution seemed to have grown into the British motorist as a consequence. Cal doubted that Stilton clocked more than twenty miles an hour the whole way. He realised he would come to crave real darkness soon enough.
‘You’ve said nowt,’ Stilton said after about ten minutes of crawling along the half-empty streets.
Nowt? Cal tried to think of a rhyme, the key to meaning, unwilling to admit he didn’t know what the man meant.
‘You were going to tell me your theory about the killing.’
‘Oh, I see. Let’s get back to Stahl for a moment. I, I mean we, don’t know what Stahl is looking for. We don’t know why he doesn’t simply come in. It’s been implicit from the start that he’s running. But running from what?’