Cormack said, ‘Don’t know the tall guy, but I hate to tell you who the little one is.’
‘Let me guess, Corporal Mussolini?’
‘Close-that’s Joe Buonaparte. He accents the “e” and never fails to tell you there’s a “u” in his name. You’ve played this before, haven’t you?’
‘I’m grateful for the education into the great American melting pot, but I rather think this is getting us nowhere,’ said Troy. ‘There’s simply too many of them.’
‘I don’t see what else we can do.’
‘I can,’ said Troy. ‘We can set a trap for our chap.’
‘Trap? What sort of a trap?’
§ 80
Troy stood outside a large block of working-class flats-the East London Dwelling Company’s Cressy Houses in Union Place, E1-a few yards from Stepney Green, a few more from the Stiltons’ house in Jubilee Street, a mile or so from Leman Street police station, where he had served as a uniformed constable before the war, and home to his old station sergeant, the recently widowed George Bonham. Troy climbed to the second floor and rapped at the door. Bonham towered over him, a duster in his hand, a floral pinny on his chest, a look of surprise on his face mingled with the unremitting sorrow which seemed to Troy to have been his lot since the Blitz and the death of his wife Ethel.
‘Freddie, long time no wotsit. Come in, come in, what brings you to this neck of the woods?’
Troy followed him to the sitting room, a box no more than ten feet by eight-the warm heart of a tiny flat in which George and Ethel had raised three sons. George had the china cabinet open. His wife’s collection of Crown Derby set out on the dining table.
‘I was just giving ‘em a bit of a going over. Didn’t like to see ‘em gathering dust.’
Troy “was sure they never gathered dust. This room was kept as a shrine to Ethel Bonham. In the six months since her death, George had changed not a thing. Troy would bet money that her clothes still hung in the mahogany-veneer wardrobe in the end bedroom, and that George still slept on one side of the bed only with two pillows side by side upon the bolster.
‘It’s almost six. Will you stay and eat?’
It was too early to eat-besides, Bonham was a dreadful cook. No man of his generation, and few of Troy’s, were in the slightest way capable of looking after themselves. Widowers were uncommon creatures, floundering through the latter life like beached sea monsters.
‘I’m afraid I can’t, George. It’s business. In fact I need your advice.’
Troy knew how flattered George could be by a simple lie, the slightness of exaggeration.
‘O’ course, Freddie. But I’ll put the kettle on all the same.’
Once the magic word ‘kettle’ had been uttered it was pointless trying to stop him. Tea was the universal salve-birth, marriage, death and all stations in between. Troy wondered how long Bonham’s tea ration lasted him. He made tea for two, black and sweet and of the consistency of molasses. You’d need a torch to see through it even before you put the milk in.
‘Well then, ask away. It’s not often you come to your old boss for a bit of advice.’
‘George, this has to be a secret. I’m investigating the death of Walter Stilton.’
‘Nuff said,’ said Bonham, nodding, tapping the side of his nose. Troy knew now that wild horses, let alone Scotland Yard, would not get him to talk. ‘He was a good ‘un, was Walter. A prince. And poor old Edna, left alone with all them kiddies. I’ve known Edna since I was a tot, y’know. Redmans Road Board School, 1894. Anything I can do for Walter, just name it.’
‘I need a private place.’
Bonham looked blankly at him.
‘Somewhere where we won’t be overheard or interrupted. Somewhere quiet.’
Bonham’s expression did not change.
‘Somewhere I can bend the law a little without old plod lumbering in.’
‘I see,’ said Bonham.
Troy wondered if he did.
‘You used to walk Tallow Dock down on the Isle of Dogs when you was on the beat, didn’t you? Well it got blown to buggery by the Luftwaffe just before Christmas. Hardly a house left with a roof on. Most of the warehouses are deserted now. You could set off a bomb down there and no-one would hear.’
Bonham paused as the word ‘bomb’, and the frequency with which they did go off these days, sank in.
‘There’s only one intact building left. Still got its roof-it was in use till last week. Might suit.’
‘Could I see it?’
‘Now?’
‘Car’s outside.’
Bonham stood. Troy tried and found a sharp pain shooting through his chest where Kolankiewicz had stitched him up.
‘Wossup?’
Troy prised himself off the chair by its arms, breathless and flushed.
‘Been in the wars, have you?’
‘Something like that.’
‘One day, Freddie, they’ll have to bury you in bits.’
Bonham swapped his pinafore for his police blue tunic and took his pointy hat off the sideboard where it sat like a horned tortoise. Driving down to Tallow Dock, he sat with his knees up to his chin, bent double in the little car, the hat clutched on his lap more like the world’s biggest cricket box.
Troy found himself staring. All the way across Stepney and down into Limehouse. The devastation was not unimaginable, but it was on a scale he had not bothered to imagine. He looked out at mountains of rubble-the detritus of lives lived and homes abandoned. Bonham looked at him.
‘You been up West too long.’
‘Eh?’
‘If this has come as a shock, then it’s ‘cos you don’t get down here enough. When was you last here? Ethel’s funeral?’
That had been over five months ago.
‘No-I’ve seen you since then… surely…?’
Bonham wasn’t helping.
‘I was here in February. I’m sure it was February.’ The making of an argument was curtailed as the Bullnose Morris reached the junction of Tallow Dock Lane and Westferry Road.
They turned right towards the river and pulled up about six hundred yards further on, within sight of the Thames and outside a vast warehouse. The company name was stencilled in white down the side of the building in letters ten feet tall-‘BELL AND HARROP. IMPORT EXPORT. EST. 1837. LONDON, SHANGHAI, HONG KONG.’
They stepped out onto shards of broken slate and glass. The only sign of life a roaming, skinny, mongrel dog. Bonham slipped on his helmet and tucked the strap into the dimple of his chin. It was a moment that never failed to strike awe into Troy. A man of five foot six, too short to be a copper except by a waiving of the rules, confronted by a man nearly seven foot tall from his boots to the little silver knob on top of his pointy hat. It was one of the reasons Troy had been so glad to become a detective in plain clothes. Bonham looked like a giant, a Greek warrior, Achilles or Agamemnon, Troy had looked like a gnome who’d lost his fishing rod.
‘Are we going in?’
‘Sorry, George. I was miles away.’
Bonham led off. Prised a door open with his giant’s paw, swung it back on its hinges with a mighty, metallic clang. Troy looked around. Once the echo of the clang had dwindled away, and the dog bolted, nothing stirred-and the only sound he could hear was the occasional hooting of ships on the Thames. George might be right. This could be just what he needed.
Inside, the ground floor was open to the second, a ceiling twenty feet high had mostly collapsed.
‘It’s the top floor I was thinking of,’ said Bonham. ‘Used to be old Georgie Bell’s office. We finally talked him into leaving a few days back. Or is that not what you want?’
‘No, that sounds fine. As long as there’s another way out.’ Bonham and Troy wound their way up the stone staircase to emerge right under the roof. A suite of low office rooms. A huge glass skylight, its coat of blackout paint peeling off in strips. A battered steel desk with a dip pen and inkwell, looking as though their owner had just stepped out for lunch. A forgotten Burberry on the back of the door.