‘So, superman. It’s not enough that you get to eat me every so often. You’ve got to eat me dinner as well.’
‘Kitty-for Christ’s sake!’
‘Wot you doin’ ‘ere anyway? I was coming over to see you a bit later.’
‘I’ll be there. We kind of hit the buffers this evening.’ The phone rang and rang. Kitty had slipped off a shoe and was running one stockinged foot up the side of his trousers towards his groin.
‘Bout what time?’
‘Kitty-I can’t tell you how uncomfortable this makes me. Your mother could walk in at any minute.’
Kitty shot to her feet as though stung and yanked at the kitchen door.
‘Will somebody answer that bloody phone!’
Then she folded her arms and glared at Cal.
§ 42
Stilton was saying ‘Yes, love.’ It was what he always said when he didn’t much want to listen to what his wife was trying to tell him. He picked up the ‘phone.
‘Boss. It’s me. Bernard.’
Instinctively Stilton looked at his watch. It was past ten. He tried to remember where Dobbs was supposed to be. Where he had left him. He ought to know and he didn’t.
‘Yes, lad.’
‘I been outside the Marquess of Lincoln. Waiting for Fish Wally.’
Oh bugger-he’d forgotten to pull Dobbs off watch when he’d received the tip-off about Fish Wally. The poor sod had been standing there for the best part of a week, and for the last few hours, at least, to no purpose.
‘Aye, well you can knock off now, Bernard. I found Fish Wally hours ago.’
‘I’m not there now, boss. I trailed him.’
‘No, Bernard, I said, I’ve already talked to Wally. Go home, lad, get some kip.’
‘No, boss, I’m not talking about Fish Wally. I mean the other feller. He came by the boozer at opening time. I followed him.’
‘What other feller?’
‘The one in that sketch.’
‘Stahl?’
‘Yes-Stahl.’
‘Bernard, where exactly are you?’
‘Cleveland Street, boss. Where it meets Warren Street. Corner house.’
Stilton bounded down the stairs, bellowed ‘We’re on again!’ at Cal, grabbed his mackintosh off the back of the door and ran back up the stairs.
The speed of it all left Cal standing, half in, half out of his chair, an untouched cup of steaming tea in front of him. An untouched steaming Kitty, too.
‘I… er… I guess this means I don’t know what time I’ll be home,’ he said lamely.
‘I know,’ Kitty answered. ‘You’re on again. So we’re off. Thanks. Thanks a million.’
§ 43
Troy sat up in bed reading one of his father’s newspapers. The old man had used the editorial column in the day’s London Evening Herald to air his views on the matter of two nations. There was not an editor in the land who, sooner or later, did not have recourse to Disraeli’s phrase. Two Nations, Trojan Horse, Phoenix from the Ashes-all the overworked clichés of journalism. Troy was amazed he got away with it. He had not put his name to it, but Troy knew his father’s prose style. Whilst overtly calling for Britain to pull together as one nation he was also pointing out at every turn that it was, inevitably, two nations, that the war was not the leveller that most of Britain now chose to pretend it was, and that the nation, undeniably, was riven with inequalities. We die together, we do not live together. Had it been less subtle it would have provoked the authorities to fits of rage, and the old man would find himself hauled in front of some ghostly committee accused of defeatism. But Alex Troy was nothing if not subtle.
The front door slammed. It had to be Kitty. Only Kitty had a key. But it was unlike her to storm in, Kitty crept in. Always trying to surprise him.
She appeared in the doorway of his bedroom. Leant against the door jamb and stared at him. He had no idea what had made her so pissed off. He knew it wasn’t him. It was, he thought, an anger all but spent-drizzled down into exasperation, sehnsucht and want.
‘Come back for another fuck?’ he said.
‘Don’t use that word. I’ve told you before, I don’t like it. I don’t want to hear it. I know it’s how they talk in your house. Those sisters of yours are foul-mouthed. But it’s not the way I was brought up to talk.’
Kitty kicked off her shoes, not caring where they fell. Turned her back on him and yanked at the silver buttons of her tunic. Kitty had not clicked with his sisters. It was unfortunate they’d ever met. They could not but look down upon a working woman-for her part, they weren’t ‘ladies’ and never would be. Kitty had a fair range of abuse and insult, but she drew the line at ‘fuck’. Troy didn’t think his sisters knew there could be a line.
Later, after the act she would not name by its bluntest single syllable, she was restless. Sprawled half on him, half off him, but unsettled. Troy opened his eyes. She looked away.
‘About this American of yours,’ he said.
‘Wot?’ Prising her head off his chest to look down at him. ‘Wot about him?’
‘I was wondering. What’s he like?’
‘You seen him. That night in the Salisbury. Tall, skinny, speccy, bit bald at the front. ‘Bout my age. Not exactly a looker, but… you know.’
‘I didn’t mean what does he look like. I meant… what’s he like?’
Kitty turned her back on him, swung her legs to touch the floor, looked back at him, arms out, hands resting on her knees, back bent, breasts pendulous.
‘Wot do you mean wot’s he like? You never asked before.’
‘I was curious.’
‘Nosy more like.’
‘Then indulge me.’
‘You want to know why I’m with him, don’t you?’
‘To be precise, I want to know why you’re not with him.’
She stared at the ceiling, dug her fists into her waist, arched her back and stretched her neck, breasts flattened out against her ribcage. A faint snap of cartilage as she unbent and looked back at him.
‘Well, since you ask, he’s-‘
§ 44
Stilton looked at his makeshift posse. The tall, speccy American. The short, sly, lazy London copper. He knew what duty and regulations demanded of him-that he take Dobbs into the house on Cleveland Street with him. But he also knew what he had promised the American. Besides, if it came to a bit of the rough stuff, Cormack looked as though he might handle himself a sight better than Dobbs.
Dobbs pointed up at the top-floor front window.
‘He’s in there. I watched the blackouts being drawn. There’s an old couple on the ground floor, but nobody on the first or second floors. Bloke on the third went out to work about half an hour ago. I had a quick word with him-a bus driver on the 73-says he thought the top floor was empty until today.’
‘Back way out?’ Stilton said.
‘There’s a door to the mews at the back, but the only way out of the mews is back into Warren Street. From the corner here you can see every way in and out.’
‘Good lad. You stay put. Me and the Captain are going in.’
They took the staircase in silence. It seemed to Stilton so like a repetition of what they had done in Marshall Street only a couple of hours ago that it needed no explanation. No one answered the door, and when Stilton pushed it in, it too banged against the wall of an empty room. But this room hadn’t been stripped and wiped-it was even more like the Marie Celeste. A burning cigarette lay on the side of an ashtray, curling wisps of smoke drifting towards the ceiling. A folded newspaper on the tiny dining table. A slice of toast with two bites out of it. A half drunk cup of tea.