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.
‘I don’t get it,’ he whispered to Cormack. ‘We’d have met him on the stairs.’
Cormack pointed silently at the ceiling and stepped out onto the staircase once more. The stairs narrowed up to a small door set in the roof, scarcely bigger than a hatchway. A chink of moonlight shone through it. The wind caught it, and the gap seemed to open and close as though winking at them. Cormack started up the last flight. Stilton put a hand on his shoulder and held him back.
‘Nay, lad. I came prepared. You didn’t.’
He reached into the long pocket of his trousers, pulled out a full-length Metropolitan Police truncheon and whacked it gently into the palm of his hand.
‘Walter,’ the American said softly. ‘Do you really think we need that?’
‘Dunno. But he’s running, isn’t he? That doesn’t bode well. Bloke who’s running from you can like as not turn on you.’
Cormack gave way. Stilton led off up the stairs and pushed gently at the door. There was a half moon in the sky, enough light to see by. He found himself on a flat roof high above Warren Street, facing a forest of chimney stacks. Stahl could be behind any one of them. He took a cautious couple of steps, then another and another and stood on the grey plain of roofing lead wondering which way next.
From behind the second nearest chimney stack a figure in a black hat appeared. He ran towards Stilton, so quickly, so quietly, Stilton had no time to react. He felt himself rooted to the spot as Stahl closed on him. Then he saw the arm swing up from his side and the glint of moonlight on metal – the gun in his hand.
Stilton felt a blow between his shoulder-blades – a shove that sent him sprawling, face down on the lead roof. Then a bang like the sound his Riley made when it backfired. He raised his head, like a Tommy peeping over the top into no-man’s-land, he thought, just in time to see Stahl hit the roof, flat on his back, dead. The wind caught the black hat and blew it out over the rooftops of London. He turned, flipped onto his backside. Cormack was staring intently at the body, his arm fully extended, clutching a gun. For a few seconds neither of them moved, then Cormack lowered the gun and looked at Stilton. Stilton was struggling to get one foot of leverage. Cormack crouched down – the hand that held the gun loose at his side, the other pushing him gently back down.
‘Sit awhile, Walter. We both should.’
Only now could Stilton hear the rasp of his breathing, see the deep rise and fall of his chest.
‘You’ve not done this before?’
‘No – but I’m trained for it. Had to be a first time. Almost inevitably. Or did you think that because I wore glasses and did a desk job I somehow wasn’t a real soldier?’
‘Dunno what I thought. What is that thing? A cannon?’
‘Smith and Wesson.’
Cormack’s right hand disappeared beneath his coat and the gun vanished into a discreet holster somewhere in the small of his back.
Stilton nodded at the corpse.
‘He’s dead?’
‘Yep.’
‘You’re certain?’
‘He didn’t leave me a lot of choice.’
‘Well – that pisses on the chips doesn’t it?’
Stilton struggled up, Cormack stood and lent his hand.
‘How’s that?’
‘Stahl. You just killed Stahl. All these days looking in every nook and cranny of the city and we end up with another stiff.’
‘That’s not Stahl, Walter.’
Stilton took a few heavy-footed paces towards the body.
‘Looks damn like ‘im to me.’
Cormack stood next to Stilton, looking down. Tall, blond, thirtyish, a neat hole in the forehead leaking blood.
‘It isn’t Stahl. Looks more than a little like him, but it isn’t. If it were, we’d be lying there instead of him.’
‘Could you see it wasn’t him when you shot the bugger?’
‘No – but like I said, he didn’t leave me much choice.’
‘So the only way to be certain was to kill ‘im. If you got ‘im it couldn’t be Stahl – if he got you it was?’
‘That’s about the size of it. ‘Cept it was you he was aiming at.’
‘Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ,’ said Stilton. ‘If he isn’t Stahl then who the bloody hell is he?’
The crunch of a boot made him turn before Cormack could answer. A fire-watcher in a blue blouse and a tin hat was crossing the roof from the house next door, striding towards them with all the importance of half a uniform built into his cocky swagger. A bantam of a man, in his sixties, short, wiry, the moustache almost as big as he was.
‘I ‘eard a bang.’
He flicked his torch on and off, saw it reflected in the dead eyes of the corpse.
‘Allo, allo, allo. What’s all this then?’
Stilton whipped out his warrant card, held it up to the man’s torch, shot Cormack an eyeball order as his hand reached beneath his jacket once more.
‘I could book you for nicking my lines, you realise. Got to be a copper to say “alio, alio, alio”.’
The man stared at the card.
‘You’re a copper?’
‘I didn’t print it meself, if that’s what you think. Chief Inspector Stilton, Scotland Yard.’
‘Like I said, I ‘eard a bang. It’s me job to investigate things that go bang.’
‘If you don’t bugger off, it’ll be your head that goes bang against my fist. This is coppers’ business. Go about your own business and say nowt to nobody.’
‘Charming,’ said the fire-watcher, but he left all the same.
‘Can you trust him?’ Cormack said softly.
‘God knows, but the sooner we call out the binmen for this one the better.’
‘Binmen?’
‘Cleaners – blokes who come out and take care of things like this.’
‘Shouldn’t we just dial 999?’
‘Not on your nellie. Nobody’s to know about this. If this gets out how can I ever boast to you again that there’s no spies in London we don’t know about? Thing is, I meant it at the time. I’d’ve put a fiver on it to be true – but there you are. I was wrong. No, this gets buried. I tell my people. You tell nobody – and in return I won’t mention you were the one with the gun.’
This last sentence was uttered in a closely conspiratorial stage-whisper.
‘It’s perfectly legit, Walter. I’m a serving army officer.’
‘You’re a serving army officer out of uniform. If that cockamamy suit’s the new American uniform, then I feel sorry for the lot of you.’
There was a pause. Stilton looked at the door again, making sure no one else was about to emerge armed with a torch and a daft question, half expecting to see Dobbs.
‘I have to leave you alone with him. I have to go and call my people, you see.’
‘That’s OK. I understand.’
‘Could you bear to touch him?’
‘Touch him?’
‘Someone’s got to go through his pockets.’
‘His pockets?’
‘Papers and that.’
Stilton searched for the right word and came up with the all too obvious. ‘Clues,’ he said, as though it were a technical term and somehow the arcane nature of it might be lost on Cormack.
‘That’s OK, Walter. I can look for “clues”.’
‘I’ll be about ten minutes. I’ll leave Dobbs out front to keep an eye open. Let’s just hope the buggers don’t take all night about it.’