‘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.
§ 76
He had drifted beyond his station-he was at Baker Street. At least a name he knew, but when he emerged at street level, to a darkening sky, it was not a part of Baker Street he recognised. He flagged a cab. The romance had suddenly gone out of tube travel. Where was Sherlock Holmes when you needed him?
When he got back to Claridge’s Kitty was sitting in the dark, curtains open, a summer breeze gently blowing. It seemed to him that she might have sat and waited in that position all day. Silently focused on him. Oblivious to all else. A poker face if ever he saw one.
‘Did it go all right?’
Cal did not know what to say to her. It was Troy he needed to talk to, and he did not know how to talk to Troy with Kitty present. He could not calmly discuss her father’s murderer with Troy whilst she was sitting there.
‘I guess so. I have to call Troy. Do you know his number?’
She picked up the phone, asked for a number and handed the receiver to Cal.
‘Troy-it’s me, Calvin Cormack.’
‘So soon,’ said Troy.
‘What?’
‘Never mind. I’m listening.’
‘I’ve just seen Stahl. He was waiting for me when I left your house. Cornered me on the subway.’
‘He was watching?’
‘Ever since I got here, it seems. He was… in Islington.’
Cal dearly wanted not to have to state the obvious. Let the place-name be enough for Troy and too little for Kitty. Kitty was watching him across the room, expressionless. Cal turned his back on her. Troy let him off the hook.
‘You mean he was there when Walter died?’
‘Yes.’
‘And he says he didn’t do it?’
‘He says he saw…’
Again Cal searched for a word best chosen not to cause alarm.
‘He saw…’
‘The perpetrator,’ said Troy-a bland, unemotive police term-‘He saw the perpetrator?’
‘Yes.’
‘And he can identify him?’
‘No. But he gave us a lead. An American soldier out of uniform.’
‘How on earth does he know that?’
‘The shoes. Regulation US Army brown roundies. Just like the ones I wear.’
There was a prolonged silence. Cal could hear his own breathing, coming back to him through the earpiece above the crackles and static hiccups of the connection. Kitty walked around him, came back into view still staring at him out of no particular expression, nothing he could read. Then Troy said, ‘Let me talk to Kitty.’
Cal was startled. Troy was deducing far too much.
‘She’s there isn’t she?’
‘Well… yes.’
Cal handed the phone to Kitty.
‘He wants to talk to you.’
‘Wot?’ she said flatly, paring any feeling from her voice.
‘Was your father a Dickens reader?’ Troy asked.
‘Eh?’
‘Did he read the novels of Charles Dickens? To be precise, do you know if he’d ever read Great Expectations?’
‘Only every summer holiday. Two weeks at Walton-on-the-Naze. He’d fish off the end of the pier all morning and sit on the beach all afternoon with Pip and Joe Gargery. When I was a nipper he read it out loud to us at bedtime. Read it to all of us. One after another. Same battered book, reeked of fish. I still think of Pip whenever I smell cod.’
‘Wot larx, eh?’
‘Yeah. Wot larx.’
‘Tell Calvin I’ll be round in the morning, first thing.’
Kitty put the receiver back in its cradle, weeping silently-the dam burst-great, bulbous salt-tears coursing across her cheeks. Cal put his arms around her. Almost happier now that she proffered recognisable feeling to which he could react.
‘What’s wrong?’
‘Wot larx,’ she said, and wept the more. Cal still didn’t know what it meant.
She wept an age. His shirt was soaked. He lifted her head by the tip of her chin and said, ‘I love you, Kitty.’
She said, ‘Yeah. Great, init?’
§ 77
Troy was having a very early breakfast when someone knocked on his door. At first he didn’t recognise the young woman clutching a large brown paper envelope. She thrust it into his hand, and then he knew. That new girl out at Hendon who worked for the Polish Beast. Anna something or other. She declined his offer of a cup of coffee, told him Kolankiewicz wanted it back and dashed. Troy had never thought of himself as a charmer. If he had, this might have punctured his ego. Pity, she was a looker.