When the telephone rang again Troy was sure it was Anna calling to nitpick over details. It wasn’t. It was Charlie Walsh. Chief Inspector Charlie Walsh. The only copper in special branch who’d so much as give Troy the time of day.
“Day off, son?”
“Yes, sir. Just the one.”
“All right for some. So, you’re sayin’ you’ll be in tomorrow?”
“Yes, sir,” Troy said feeling slightly exasperated at the flat, northern, plain-bloke mask that Walsh habitually wore. “A normal working day.”
“How would you like it not to be a normal working day?”
Now, thought Troy, we are cookin’.
“Such as?”
“I’ve a nark. Name of Fish Wally. ’Appen you’ve heard of him?”
“Wasn’t he one of Walter’s?”
“He was. Recruited just before old Walter copped it in ’41.”
Walter was the late Chief Inspector Stilton. Murdered on the job. Troy had been part of the investigation. He had solved the crime. Not that he could tell anyone. Off the record and out of the courts the killer had paid the price. For a while he and Walter had been friends. For a while he and Walter’s daughter Kitty had been lovers, and that had put paid to the friendship.
“I inherited Fish Wally. He was a godsend during the war. Mixing with all them refugees, speaking all them languages . . . but truth to tell the Branch hasn’t had a lot of use for him since. I’d like to place him where he’d be more use.”
“With me?”
“I reckon anyone in Crime could use him. There’s not a dive nor a cove in Soho and Fitzrovia Wally doesn’t know. I thought of you cos you and Walter were pals. You were with him when we rounded up all the Krauts and Wops in 1940, weren’t you?”
Rather than discuss an episode he would sooner forget, an episode in which Walsh had had to vet Troy for Security—not that Walsh would mention it now—Troy said, “I think the Murder Squad can afford Fish Wally.”
“Fine,” said Walsh. “He’s got a place in Marshall Street, round the back of Liberty’s. Tek down this number . . .”