There were no lights on in 71 Marsh Lane, Camberwell. Troy knelt down, pushed the letterbox inwards and pressed an ear to it. Among the myriad creaks and hums of a silent house he thought he could hear the uncontrollable rhythm of someone sobbing.
He stuck his hand through the letterbox to see if there was a latchkey hanging by a string on the inside. In so many English homes there would be. There wasn’t. He gripped his revolver by the barrel and tapped out the pane of stained glass nearest the lock. The shards fell with a soft tinkle like chimes in a breeze onto the doormat. He stepped in, pointing the gun ahead of him. Something inside told him Blood had shot his bolt, that he was harmless now. He could hear Blood’s gun firing on an empty chamber, the ratchet sound as the chamber spun, then the futile slam of the hammer falling. It would have been a matter of seconds for Blood to reload and blow Troy away, and he hadn’t done it. The hand had kept on squeezing the trigger until the brain noticed it was all over – as though the man himself could not hear the firing.
Troy followed his nose. He could see the sitting room by the light of a street lamp streaking in through the open curtains. Before he saw it he could smell it. Dinner was set for two. The all-pervasive steamy reek of bad cooking, dinner canteen-style, the glory that was grease. One plate of meat and two veg was half eaten, the knife and fork crossed on the edge. The other was covered with an up turned plate to keep it warm. A sauce bottle stood sentry duty by it. A cut-glass bowl of tinned fruit salad sat on the sideboard next to an unopened can of condensed milk. Mrs Blood had made the effort to wait for her husband, and given up. It looked like the routine of a million British marriages, a thousand spoilt dinners.
A whimper came from the corner by the fireplace, darker than he could see. He stared, levelled the gun and let his eyes resolve the darkness. A small woman was huddled between the wall and a glass-fronted display cabinet. Pieces of broken china and shattered plaster of Paris lay scattered around the shuddering figure of Mrs Blood. She moaned. Troy bent down and took her hands from her face. She screamed, eyes wide, staring into his. A bruise the size of a half-crown coin across her cheek and eye, a streak of blood snaking from one split nostril. She snatched her hands back and began to whimper again. Blood had come in, found her halfway through dinner and batted her sideways with all the force of his right hand.
‘Where’s Percy?’
She sobbed and would not look at him.
‘Where’s Percy?’
It seemed to Troy that she did not really know he was there, that she could hear the sound of his words and not their meaning.
Blood was not on the ground floor. Troy went up the stairs. Every creak seemed louder than a gunshot.
Every door opened onto the same landing, and every door except the one at the top of the stairs stood open. He tried the handle. The door was locked. He bent down and peered through the keyhole. The key had been turned from the inside. He bent lower, and found a split panel in the door. The interior was lit by the street lamp. With his eyes no more than two or three feet off the ground he found himself staring at the feet of Percy Blood as they swayed slowly back and forth. The lamplight glinted off his shoes, buffed to a military shine, and a dripping stream of excrement ran off one shoe to puddle on the carpet below.
He kicked in the door with a single blow. It crashed back against the wall, stirred up a new current of air and set Blood swinging all the more. Troy looked up. The eyes popped, the tongue protruded and the smell of shit began to fill the room. The man had prised open the trapdoor to the attic, looped a towrope around the main beam of the house and kicked away the stepladder. The room was half stripped, half newly papered. Pots of paint lay dotted around the floor, a dustsheet across the bed. Chief Inspector Blood had whiled away his sick leave redecorating the front bedroom, and when his mind had finally flipped, simply ascended the same ladder to his death. A scaffold for the D-I-Y.
Blood had had the foresight, or perhaps merely the anger, to rip the phone from the wall. Troy did something he had not done in years. He stood in the middle of the street and blew his police whistle. It had lain so long in his coat pocket that his first blast produced nothing but a cloud of fluff and dust. His second brought forth the unmistakable contralto honk of the Metropolitan Police Force Emergency Whistle. He blew and blew until he heard the clatter of police boots on paving stones.
A stout constable lumbered into sight at the street corner, running for Troy for all he was worth and scarcely touching five miles an hour. He stopped so suddenly that his boots skidded on the pavement and the studs in the soles showered sparks like striking flint. Troy stood, warrant card in his right hand, the gun in his left hanging loosely at his side. The man stared at the gun and did not speak. Troy moved under the lamp, held out his warrant card, and let the man get a good look at him.
‘Do you know who I am?’ he said.
‘Yessir.’
‘Then knock up the neighbours, find one with a telephone and call the Yard. Superintendent Wildeve, Murder Squad. We have one body and one injured. Then dial 999 and get an ambulance. I’ll be in number 71.’
It would be ten minutes or more before anyone else arrived. Mrs Blood had not moved from the safety of her corner. He went back into the bedroom, threw the dustcover off a chair and sat down with the carcass of the late Chief Inspector Blood still swaying gently to and fro. He had fucked up and he knew it. His ‘eighteen hours to come to your senses’ had been uttered to a man who had long ago lost his senses. It had cost Mary McDiarmuid her life, and cost him the only lead he had. It crossed his mind that he should cut Blood down, but he didn’t. As his ears grew accustomed to the house, the sound of sobbing crept up the stairs to him. There might still be something he could do for her, but he didn’t. He sat and he listened to her cry until the sound of a police siren coming down the street drowned out her sobs.