§ 95
Late in the evening Troy sat up in bed and read. He had finished The Professor. It had not been a cheery read. He had picked up another of Rod’s books at bedtime-No Bed for Bacon, by Caryl Brahms and SJ. Simon. Troy had no idea how two people could ever write a book together, but Rod had insisted it was a hoot. He was right, it was.
‘Wot’s so bleedin’ funny?’
He looked up from the book. He had not heard Kitty come in. She seemed always to steal in, to turn the key without noise and to tiptoe upstairs. She was framed in the doorway, hands deep in her pockets, looking tired and miserable. She didn’t wait for an answer.
‘I hope you had a better day than I did. I’ve had a rotten day. The Commissioner had me in, hauled me over the coals.’
‘And?’
Kitty kicked off her shoes, started tugging at hooks and eyes and press studs.
‘Suspended till Monday at least.’
She ducked out of the door. Troy heard the bath begin to fill, then she reappeared, stripped down to her underwear.
‘And on Monday he’ll deliver his verdict. That’s what he called it. Pompous old arse. If I’m booted off the force, why can’t he just tell me?’
Troy said nothing. Watched Kitty strip to naked for the umpteenth time that summer, stretch her cat stretch, arms up, long legs longer as she stood on her toes.
‘I’m going to have a bath. When I get back you’re going to put that book down and lick me dry. Capiche?’
He read on-the adventure of a ‘born leader of men’ and a performing bear. Then Kitty flopped onto the bed next to him, damp and scented.
‘Start on me backbone, work north and don’t stop till I tell yer.’
Around the back of her neck, Troy lifted her hair clear, ran his tongue around the rim of one ear and whispered, ‘Stan came to see me today.’
Her face, half-buried in the pillow. ‘That’s a passion-killer if ever I heard one.’
‘He told me the verdict.’
Kitty shot up, grabbed the pillow and whacked him with it.
‘You bugger, you bugger. You could have told me that quarter of an hour ago!’
She pinned him flat, straddled him, and grabbed him by both ears.
‘Tell me, tell me!’
‘A reprimand.’
Kitty let go. ‘Wot? Is that all? A bloody reprimand? After what we did?’
‘They don’t know the half of it. They don’t know you shot Reininger.’
‘I’d rather not have known his name.’
‘They don’t know, and Stan doesn’t know.’
‘You’re sure?’
‘Of course.’
‘And Calvin?’
‘I haven’t told him. Have you?’
‘He wouldn’t understand.’
She fell off him, lay on her side.
‘We’ve got away with it haven’t we?’ she said.
‘Looks like it. But then I find if you keep your mouth shut and stick to your story, you usually do.’
She was softening, almost smiling, the day left behind.
‘So no more suspension, and I keep me rank and me station?’
‘Kitty, how much reassurance do you need?’
‘Lots.’
She pointed at her sternum, a silky sheen of skin between her small breasts.
‘Start again. Reassure me some more.’
Troy woke around dawn to find Kitty awake too. He got up, slipped on his dressing gown and made tea. Her mood had swung back. She was miles away, sad and dreamy.
‘Kitty?’
‘Wot?’
‘Penny for them.’
‘If you must know-I was thinking about my other lover.’
‘What about him?’
‘Will I ever see him again? Do I want to see him again?’
‘I’d say it was up to you.’
‘But it isn’t, is it? He got hauled off!’
‘The Americans won’t be hard on him. He did a good job for them-it just didn’t work out perfectly.’
‘Wasn’t the Americans hauled him off. It was our lot. Some spook from MI something or other. I saw the two of them outside the Yard. I could hear the bloke blathering on. Posh voice. Bit like yours.’
She sipped at her tea. Troy thought at first she was choking, then she ran to the lavatory and threw up. He followed after a decent interval, found her pale of face, one arm resting on the pan, breathing heavily.
‘You make awful tea,’ she said.
‘Don’t be daft. It wasn’t the tea.’
‘Nah. I ate fish last night. Must have been off.’
Back in bed, Troy thought they might both sleep now. He was tired, Kitty must be exhausted. But she wanted to fuck, and in the morning the only thing that woke him was the sound of someone hammering on his door. Kitty slept through it. He looked at the alarm clock. It was gone ten. He threw on his dressing gown. It couldn’t be the Yard, could it? They’d phone, wouldn’t they? Descending the stairs he remembered there was a new boy at the Yard. He hoped he hadn’t chosen this moment to introduce himself.
He hadn’t. It was Cormack. Somehow Troy had got it into his head that he’d seen the last of Cormack.
‘Do you have the time? I need to talk.’
‘Of course,’ said Troy.
He glanced around the sitting room looking for evidence of Kitty’s presence and while Cormack had his back turned to close the door, he quietly booted her crash-helmet under the sofa and hoped she’d stay in bed.
Cormack slumped on the sofa. Troy could see the helmet framed between his ankles as menacing as a land-mine. He looked unhappy. He looked troubled.
‘I’m being sent home,’ he said. ‘I’m the man who knew too much.’
‘Is that really a hardship?’
‘I guess not. It’s not as though I were being deported. But… I had unfinished business here.’
‘Stahl?’
‘No-Stahl is finished business. Stahl is dead.’
Troy was shocked. He’d examined the man’s wound himself. It wasn’t serious.
‘Stahl killed himself. Jumped from a hospital window. I reckon your people have had the most hellish time covering up. But if you haven’t heard, then I guess they succeeded. Before he died he told me everything.’
Cormack ground to a halt, a tearful sadness in his eyes, his head shaking gently from side to side as though denying what he knew.
‘Which part of it was too much?’ Troy prompted.
‘All of it, I guess. Tell me… would you feel compromised if I told you? I have to tell somebody. I’d feel better telling you than Kitty. I don’t think she’d understand somehow.’
‘Fire away,’ said Troy, and he did.
Afterwards, Cormack seemed sadder than ever, as though a burden shared was a burden doubled. Little of it surprised Troy. Of course the Germans were going to invade. His dad had been telling him that for years. The bit about the slave state was new to him-but if you thought about it, it was merely an extension, the putting into practice, of everything they’d ever preached about the ‘inferior peoples’, the logical explosion of what they’d begun in Poland. The Jews and the Slavs were always going to catch it sooner or later. It was not surprising. It was shocking.
‘It leaves a bad taste in the mouth,’ Cormack said at last. ‘It leaves me wondering, guessing. Suppose it wasn’t Russia? I mean, supposing it was my country that was going to be attacked? Supposing Churchill and Roosevelt knew of an imminent attack on the States? Would they not tell us? Would they find it expedient to let it happen?’
Troy tried reassurance, the flat plains of uninspired logic. ‘I don’t think there’s a German bomber made that can reach America.’
‘You know what I mean. It’s the principle. I find it hard to have faith in a benign conspiracy.’
‘When will you be off?’
‘Two or three days, maybe four at the most. They’re sending me back on the clipper from Lisbon. In the meantime I’m hardly a prisoner. They’ve set no restrictions on my movements… and that kind of brings me to the other reason I called on you. I’ve been trying to find Kitty. I know the police let her go. And I phoned her sister Vera, but Vera doesn’t know where she is or else she won’t tell me. Never did figure out how to read Vera. I wondered-Kitty has