Fish Wally sat by himself in a cell at Scotland Yard, still in the handcuffs. Stilton checked his watch, Dobbs flopped down on a wooden bench in the corridor.
‘Let’s give him an hour on his jack jones. Tell the uniforms to leave well alone. No cups of tea and no chit-chat.’
‘Wh . . . wh . . . whatever you say boss.’
Stilton leant down and looked at Dobbs all but eye to eye. He’d gone deathly pale. And he could hardly put a sentence together.
‘Bernard – if I didn’t know better I’d swear you were one over the eight.’
‘I sh . . . sh . . . should be so lucky.’
‘I’m sending you home, laddie.’
‘I’ll get a cab.’
‘Bollocks – I’ll whistle up a squad car. Go home and go to bed. If you’re no better by the morning just give me a bell. I think you’re coming down with summat.’
Stilton put an arm around Dobbs and lugged him up to the ground floor. He seemed to go completely limp, as though someone had just cut his strings.
Back in his own office, he took out his little black notebook and the desk file he was supposed to type up regularly. He’d typed in nothing since the last time he was in Burnham-on-Crouch with Squadron Leader Thesiger. He couldn’t be arsed at the time and he could not be arsed now. Wally would be sitting down there, that seemingly unshakeable philosophical stance getting more wobbly by the minute. There was one thing Stilton could do that Wally couldn’t, and it would give him a nice edge in an hour or so – he could catch forty winks and get down there feeling a damn sight fresher than ‘me laddo’. Stilton slept. Forty winks became eighty winks. One hour became two.
‘Walter, are you going to stop playing games now and tell me what this is about?’
Stilton leant across the table and unlocked the handcuffs. Fish Wally rubbed at his wrists.
‘That Czech bloke you sent me after
‘I heard – you lost him. Is that my fault?’
‘That Czech bloke you sent me after,’ Stilton said slowly and emphatically, ‘was a German.’
Fish Wally was galvanised. Head up, eyes wide. Perhaps Cormack was right. Or Fish Wally was a better actor than he’d ever thought?
‘What?’
‘A German – an Abwehr spy.’
‘I don’t believe you.’
‘Suit yourself.’
Stilton got up and left. As he locked the door a young constable appeared with a cup of tea.
‘Nowt for him. I’ll have that.’
‘But guvner, regulations –’
‘Bugger regulations. He gets nowt till I say so.’
An hour later he came back. Wally was on his feet at once, shouting in his face.
‘I didn’t know! How the hell you expect me to know? You think I deal with Germans knowingly? You think I don’t have every reason in the world to hate Germans? What kind of a man do you think I am?’
‘Like I said. I don’t know any more.’
‘Pah!’ A wave of the arm, a puff of Polish contempt, but Fish Wally sat down again and faced Stilton.
‘We’re making progress, I see.’
‘Meaning?’
‘An hour ago you didn’t believe he was German.’
Fish Wally glared. He seemed to think it wiser to say nothing. Stilton took out four little paper books and laid them on the table between them as though he were playing patience. Four Ministry of Food ration books.
‘I got these off Faker Forsyte this afternoon.’
Fish Wally tried a ‘So?’ but it lacked total conviction.
Stilton put a fifth, slightly tattier book next to the others.
‘I took this one off the German last night. The bloke you told me was Czech. The bloke you fixed up at your cousin Casimir’s doss house.’
Fish Wally shrugged. A silent ‘So?’
‘Did you sell it to him?’
‘Why don’t you ask him?’
‘Not to mince words, I took it off the body . . . the corpse of that German.’
Fish Wally flinched at this.
‘I’ll ask you again. Did you sell it to him?’
‘What if I did?’
‘Wally, I might expect remarks as stupid as that from the average London tea-leaf. . . but if that’s what you want. Firstly, it’s illegal to trade in counterfeit documents. Second . . . you’re a British resident now. We took you in. It’s ingratitude, it’s treason if you want it plain.’
‘Treason? Ingratitude? Good God, Stilton, what do you want from me? I am no traitor. I am a poor man. Worse –’ He held up his hands again ‘– a broken man. I have a living to make where I can. But why should I betray England?’
‘So you did sell it to him?’
‘Yes. But treason was no part of it. I believed him to be Czech. Another victim. Like me.’
‘How much did you touch this victim for, Wally? Ten bob? A quid? Two quid?’
Fish Wally said nothing. Met Stilton’s gaze without blinking.
‘Faker Forsyte says he sold you two ration books. What did you do with the other?’
‘He told you that? He’s a liar.’
‘Have it your own way.’
Stilton left again. He could keep this up all night if he had to.
Around midnight he flipped the peephole on the cell door. Fish Wally was pacing the floor, restless and caged. Seconds out, thought Stilton, round three.
He set out the photographs once more. Smulders and Stahl.
‘I know,’ said Wally. ‘These you showed me at the crypt. I told you the truth then. I saw them both. I told you everything I knew. Do not fling these in my face and call me a liar.’
‘You didn’t mention the third bloke.’
‘What third bloke?’
Stilton pointed at the sketch of Stahl.
‘A third bloke who looked pretty much like this bloke.’
‘I told you. I saw no third bloke that night. This bloke is this bloke. Him I sold the book to. Him I took to Cash Wally.’
‘Not necessarily the same night.’
Stilton could almost hear Fish Wally thinking, wondering how much he could admit to without digging himself a deeper hole.
‘Wally – why do you think any of these blokes come to you?’
‘I’m known,’ he said. ‘Cash Wally is a misanthropist, a recluse. Hates humanity with a vengeance. Trusts only money and food. He needs me to help out. I’m known as Cash Wally’s cousin. In immigrant circles word spreads.’
‘I’m not talking about immigrant circles. I’m talking about these blokes. Germans.’
‘No – the older one, he is Dutch.’
‘No, Wally, he was Dutch.’
‘You killed them both!?!’
‘Let’s just say they’re both dead. And Dutch or not, he was a German agent. We’d been watching him since he landed.’
‘I don’t believe you. Go on, get up and walk out again. Every time I call the bluff you walk out.’
Stilton leaned on his elbows, that bit the closer to Wally, his voice dropped to pianissimo.
‘They come to you, Wally, because you’re known. Known to the Abwehr as well as the immigrants. You’re part of their network, whether you know it or not, whether you like it or not. They’ve been using you to place their agents among immigrant groups in London.’
He knew he’d hit home. He knew Fish Wally would not call him a liar again. He was pale, his skin sagged like a punctured balloon. It was as though he had only to prick up his ears to hear the air hiss out of him. He knew Stilton was telling the truth. Stilton knew that he knew.
He croaked out, ‘Stilton, what do you want?’
‘The third bloke. Probably came to you a day or two before these two. You sold him a ration book and you found him a room, right?’
Fish Wally said nothing.
‘I asked you about him. This is him.’
Stilton tapped the sketch of Stahl with his index finger.
‘I asked you about him. You sent me to the German. I had no picture of the German. I was asking you about this bloke.’
Fish Wally picked up the sketch. Looked at it for more than a minute.
‘I had always thought there was something wrong. The scar. The German had no scar. Do you have a pencil?’
Stilton took one from his breast pocket and gave it to him.
‘This one you call the third man. He had a scar. Not as pronounced as your sketch would have it. But he looked nothing like this.’
Fish Wally’s crab hands clutched the pencil awkwardly, but the tip flew across the paper with the facility of a skilled draughtsman. A thin, dark moustache, darker hair.
‘And here and here.’ Fish Wally tapped each temple. ‘Bald. The rest of the hair was black, turning to grey. I would say he was forty or more. Not the twenty-something you have here.’
‘And you sold him a ration book?’
Wally nodded.
‘And you got him a room?’
‘Yes.’
‘Where?’
‘Cash Wally was full that day. I sent him to the Welsh Widow in the Holloway Road.’
Stilton ordered tea for Fish Wally. When he got back about twenty minutes later, Fish Wally was swilling the dregs and asking for more. He looked at the sheet of foolscap Stilton held in his hand and said, ‘So, now we hit the bottom, eh, Walter? Now you charge me.’
Stilton took a fiver and a fountain pen from his pocket and pushed them across the table to him.
‘What’s this?’
‘Your wages. Just sign here. You’re one of us now.’
‘Eh?’
‘From now on you tell us everything. Every foreigner, whether you think he’s suspicious or not, that comes to you, you tell us. Sign, before I change my mind. Sign now. It’s this or spend the rest of the war in chokey.’
Fish Wally picked up the pen and read.
‘What am I signing?’
‘A receipt for five quid.’
‘Ah.’
‘And the Official Secrets Act.’