On Wednesday a postcard arrived from Derbyshire, a black-and-white picture of what declared itself to be Chatsworth but was so faded it might be Waterloo Station or the Eddystone Light:
Getting stuck in. Don’t worry about me. May take a bit longer than I thought. Will have to find another phone box, so no more calls for a while. Old man Jessup called me a whore and every time I leave the house the curtains twitch. He’s itching to catch me on the phone and dot me one with his walking stick. I will be so glad to finally put this place in … its place.
SFXX
And on Thursday, just as Troy was lying to Eddie about his progress with the paperwork, Onions appeared in his office.
One nod of the head towards his left shoulder, and one syllable to Eddie, “Out.”
Most things in life washed over Eddie. He reacted minimally at the best and worst of times. He had a very English “I’ll put the kettle on” response to anything resembling a crisis. Troy did not scare Eddie, he exasperated him, and if his stories of life before he joined the force were to be believed, not half as much as Joe Wilderness did. The one thing that seemed to scare Eddie was Onions.
The door clicked to. Troy could almost hear Eddie’s ear flattening against the panel from the other side.
“You’re in the clear.”
“That must annoy one or two people in this building. Still, do we really care what Special Branch think?”
“Knock it off, Freddie. They bloody near had you this time. Jim Westcott gave a mixed report on you. I’ve no idea what you told him, but it wasn’t enough.”
“But it was all he was ever going to get. Now, Stan, could I get you a coffee? Eddie’s been shopping again, we have some rather nice roasts on offer, and an Italian delicacy that knocks an Eccles cake into a cocked hat.”
“I haven’t bloody finished yet! Sit!”
Times there were when Stan would address him much as though he were a badly behaved dog.
Troy took a chair next to the sputtering gas fire. Onions sat opposite him, stuck a cigarette through the grill and lit up.
“I’ve had to fight for you. Time after bloody time.”
“And time after time I have expressed my gratitude.”
“This time they nearly had you.”
“So you say, and I don’t agree. This time they thought they had me. Not the same thing at all.”
“The Branch wanted your balls. Five wanted your balls. What saved you was some bloke in Six that Dick White set on to you.”
“Let me know who, and I’ll send him a postcard.”
“You’re not taking this seriously, are you? I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again, for the last time, do not mess with the spooks. You’ve got a bloody long lifeline, money, class, family … but one day, Freddie, it’ll just bloody snap.”
Troy leaned a little closer, breathed in the acrid scent of cheap fags, and lowered his voice.
“It was you who told me to stay in Vienna after Burgess approached me. I wanted nothing to do with him. You wanted none of this coming back to us. But that’s exactly what staying on led to. A man ended up murdered, then you pulled me out. I could argue that spookery was none of my business, but murder was. But I won’t. It wasn’t my murder.”
“At last, summat we agree on.”
“There’s more. I want no more to do with spooks than you would have me do. But—there is one distinct advantage to the bastards setting Jim Westcott on to me.”
“The slate has been wiped clean. They’ll not dare come back at us with a chronicle of my sins again. I am washed clean. I have bathed in Jordan waters.”
Onions didn’t know Jordan Younghusband, and would not see a joke. He exhaled a cloud of noxious smoke.
“There’s more,” he said at last.
“Bad news is never-ending.”
“Dunno whether this is good or bad. Sir Clive Potter is announcing his retirement tomorrow.”
Potter was the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police Force, the top copper in London, the top copper in the land—a man who answered only to the Home Secretary. He’d been commissioner since 1951 and the re-election of Winston Churchill—he had been Churchill’s own choice. Few men served as long, few men would want to serve as long, and over the last year he had been muttering about his time being up. Troy thought the racial tensions bursting in London, particularly in Notting Hill over the summer, might be the last straw. The Met, Troy thought, was stuffed when it came to race. Whatever they did would be wrong.
“I see,” he said. “And you are come to tell me they want me as the next commissioner?”
He got a grin out of Onions with this.
“You cheeky bugger. You know as well as I do … you’re looking at the next commissioner right now.”
“Congratulations, Stan. It’s deserved and it’s overdue.”
“A couple of things bother me.”
They would, inevitably, not be the same things that bothered Troy. A knighthood went with the job. He could not help but see Stan as being uncomfortable as Sir Stanley. Few, if any, Met commissioners had been working class, none had ever had a northern accent as strong as Stan’s, most had a capacity for flattery and dissembling that seemed beyond Stan, few had his well-honed skill at being the right bull in the right china shop, and Troy doubted that any of them were as straight and decent as he. That was not to say that he was not devious, but that his deviousness was usually in the service of his decency. He was quite capable of telling Troy to break the rules if breaking the rules got the job done. And none of them, to Troy’s knowledge, had ever favoured brown boots as footwear. Perhaps he’d have to take Stan to Lobb’s in Jermyn Street and treat him to a couple of pairs of hand-made beetle-crushers?
“Such as?” Troy said.
“I’ll have to wear a fuckin’ uniform. Not all the time but, you know … I hate being in uniform.”
“And?”
“I’ll have less time to keep an eye on you. You’ll be running the Murder Squad without yer Uncle Stan at yer shoulder.”
“Really? Then bring on the bodies. I could use a good body right now.”