Late in the afternoon Kolankiewicz came in dressed ready for the street. He was clutching a large brown envelope. He took out two 10 × 8s, pinned them to the back of the door and slapped the flat of his hand across them.
‘They’re identical,’ he said. ‘I have all sixteen points. Enough to hang this Blood.’
‘I’m not out to hang him,’ Troy said.
‘What you have set out to do is of no matter. This case is now cast in iron. Blood would be a fool to plead anything but guilty. You may not want to hang him. Equally he may well hang. The choice is not yours.’
Troy looked at him, in his homburg and macintosh, already pulling his gloves out of his pocket, anxious to leave.
‘Why so ratty? What’s the hurry?’
‘Cribbage night at the Brickie’s Arms. Or had you forgotten?’
Troy had forgotten. Twice a week a group of old men sat in the Bricklayer’s Arms on Stepney Green and played cribbage. Among them Kolankiewicz and Troy’s old station sergeant from his first posting at Leman Street nick – George Bonham. Like Onions, George was now nearing seventy. A giant of a man unbent by age, thirty years ago he had taught Troy all he knew about the law and police work, ‘coppering’, as he called it. Troy had long ago outstripped his teacher. He had not seen George in how long?
‘I haven’t seen George in ages,’ he said aloud. ‘Not since . . .’
‘Not since you caught the plague,’ said Kolankiewicz bluntly. ‘Be a mensh and dropin some time. He always asks after you.’
‘Be a mensh’ was getting to be Kolankiewicz’s catchphrase. But he was right. When all this was over he would ‘dropin’.
Kolankiewicz left. Troy found himself staring at the prints. It was unmistakable. A small scar in the shape of a crescent moon slicing across the ridges on each one.
He could feel Mary McDiarmuid sneaking up next to him. ‘What now?’ she said, arms folded across her bosom, that steely look in her eye.
‘I’m going to arrest Chief Inspector Blood.’
She kicked the door to with the toe of her shoe. The rest of her body did not seem to move. Her arms remained symbolically folded, some Berlin Wall Troy had to cross to get what he wanted.
‘Bad idea,’ she said.
‘Bad idea?’
‘He’s still one of us. Bad idea. Bad form.’
‘He’s not one of us any longer.’
‘He’s a copper, Troy. I can’t say I think we owe him. In fact I can’t bring myself to say I think we owe Percy Blood a damn thing – but we owe something to the force. Troy, don’t go tearing down to Camberwell in a squad car to bring Blood back in cuffs. In his mad way Percy was right when he said he deserved better than that, if only because we all deserve better than that.’
‘What do you suggest?’
‘Go and see him. Off the record. Absolutely off the record. Tell him what you know and give him twenty-four hours to turn himself in. If he does that we can always say we didn’t get Kolankiewicz’s report till tomorrow. We can sit on it for the good of the force. When Blood turns himself in we charge him and let the record state that he came in voluntarily.’
Troy looked at his watch. It was almost five thirty.
‘Eighteen hours,’ he said. ‘If he doesn’t turn himself in by noon tomorrow I’ll go down there with the cavalry.’
‘You’re doing the right thing. Believe me, you’re doing the right thing.’