That evening as he walked down Goodwin’s Court, he heard boots clattering after him, and turned to see Onions. He’d been sitting in the Salisbury, waiting. It was the way people Troy knew found to find him. Onions was pretty close to being the last person Troy expected to be waiting for him.
‘I was waiting.’
‘I know,’ said Troy, paused with the key in the lock not knowing what came next. There’d been rows between them – they’d known each other the best part of thirty years – but nothing like the last. Troy had left Tablecloth Terrace concluding that Onions would not speak to him again.
‘Are we going in?’ Onions asked, and Troy pushed the door open.
Troy tried letting routine carry them. He put the kettle on. Onions sat on the sofa and did not take off his mac. So far a typical Stan and Troy meeting, except that Stan usually had a bit more colour to his cheeks, and rarely, hardly looked his age. Grey before he was forty, and built like a docker, he had scarcely seemed to Troy to change. He was nearing seventy now. Perhaps Jackie’s death had been the one thing that could let time catch up with him? Perhaps Jackie’s death would be his death?
‘I hear you got something,’ he said.
Troy said nothing.
‘I hear you’ve been to see Percy Blood.’
Troy did not need to ask how he knew, although he was surprised at the speed with which he had been told. Blood would have complained to his cronies in Special Branch, and someone in the Branch would have been an old Onions protégé and would have called him at home. He thought of putting a small ad in The Times. ‘Commander Troy has been to see Percy Blood.’
‘What have you got on him?’
‘Not much. He’s crossed the line. Bullied the statements out of the Ffitch girls. He’s passing it off as routine – “We all do it, don’t we?” – but it wasn’t. I’m afraid it’s all I’ve got to go on. And it doesn’t connect with Jackie at all. I’m sorry.’
‘Doesn’t connect?’
‘I meant . . . well he didn’t interview her, did he?’
‘Of course he didn’t. I told him not to.’
‘What?’
‘I told that bugger Blood. I may be retired, but if he drags our Jackie into this I’ll see his career on the rocks.’
‘Blood knew?’
‘O’ course he bloody knew! I got word he was asking, so I met him in the Dog and Truss in Maiden Lane, and I told him. He left her alone or I’d sink him! I didn’t give the best years of my life to the Met to have my own grandchildren pestered by buggers like Percy Blood. The job owes me one favour. That’s it. I told him she knew nowt about owt – she’s wayward and she’s silly, but she’s not bent – and if I heard one more time that he was asking questions about her, I’d have ’im.’
That Clover Browne was Jackie Clover was the best-kept secret of the whole affair. The Ffitch sisters did not know – Fitz might have known – the press did not know; Rebecca West did not know; the prosecution had dropped the charge of procurement because they did not know, because they could not find Clover Browne, and they could not find her because her real name was so well concealed. But Blood knew. Blood knew? How did Blood know? Troy knew only because Stan had told him. All the efforts of young bloods like Alex Troy had failed to find her, but Percy Blood knew?
Suddenly Blood had moved from the periphery to the centre, simply because he knew. Troy was no further on, had not a scrap of new evidence – but Blood knew. It didn’t fit. Quite simply, it didn’t fit.
He had not been listening to Stan. He tuned back in and tried to pickup thethread.
‘She had so much to live for, her whole life ahead of her,’ Stan was saying.
Troy said nothing, and nodded his agreement.