When Troy got into his office the next morning there was a paper bag of greying mashed potato sitting on his desk. It was soggy and it was leaking. He took a cellophane bag from his desk and dumped the mess inside. Cellophane was a “wonder product,” the sort of thing the papers were full of, the sort of thing that was going to transform our lives—or if not all our lives then the life of that much-anticipated figure of advertising land, the housewife known as “Mrs. 1950.” So far, this was the only use Troy had found for it. It kept evidence clean and dry and visible. He dropped the dirty, oily gun into a second bag. He’d get the morning’s work out of the way and take both over to Hendon for Kolankiewicz to examine.
Jack came in carrying two mugs of tea and kicked the door to with his foot.
Troy looked into the mug. The tea was grey and greasy, almost yellow.
“Yesterday’s leaves,” Jack said. “I think that must be mug number eight off a single teaspoon. We’re the lucky ones. I hear rumors of a chap in Vice who’s learnt to make tea from sawdust.”
“The last time you told me that tale it was rabbit droppings.”
“Ah, but even they’re rationed now. Besides, where would I get rabbit droppings in the middle of London?”
Troy set his tea down untouched. Glanced quickly at his in-tray, then settled himself behind his desk facing Jack. Jack pulled a face like a schoolboy downing a spoonful of castor oil and supped on his poverty brew.
“You first,” Troy said.
“101 Charlotte Street is split into flats. Some as small as bed-sitting rooms, all with shared bogs, none bigger than kitchen, bed, and sitting room—which was what André Skolnik had. On the first floor, front. Landlord not on site—the bloke in the flat below said he’d been there since 1934 and that Skolnik was already living there when he moved in. Skolnik was a painter, not very successful but well-known among what my mother would contemptuously call ‘the Bohemian set.’”
“A bit of a bum, in other words?”
“Quite. And I’d describe his standard of living, based on his flat and possessions, as austere . . . if that weren’t too overworked a word. Nah, I can do better than that . . . seedy . . .”
“Threadbare?”
“Yep. Just like the suit he died in and the spare jacket and trousers in the wardrobe. And the socks nobody bothered to darn for him. This was a bloke who lived close to the bottom of the heap. A man who kept a small pile of rusting razor blades on the side of the wash basin just in case he could squeeze one more shave out of them, and reheated the same pool of lard in the bottom of the frying pan to infinity regardless of the debris of previous meals matted into it.”
Troy didn’t much feel like drinking scummy Scotland Yard tea in the first place. After that unappetizing description he’d tip it away as soon as he could. There might be another use for cellophane bags after all.
“But as far as I can gather he didn’t much mind. The downstairs neighbor, Gibbs . . . left-leaning sort of bloke . . . works in Collet’s bookshop . . . used an odd turn of phrase . . . not one I’d ever thought of but it’s apt . . . ‘André dropped out years ago, that is, if he ever bothered to drop in in the first place.’ Lived hand-to-mouth quite happily as long as he’d known him.”
“Did he say what Skolnik had done during the war? He was almost too old for conscription.”
“Forty-four, you said yesterday. Born 1904? Then, yes, he was just too old for the call-up. Could have volunteered at that age, I suppose, but no, our Mr. Skolnik wore the tin hat of self-righteousness.”
“I see. Air-raid warden.”
Jack slipped into a grumpy Cockney mimicry, “’Ere, put that light out!”
“In a Polish accent, Jack.”
“No can do, old man. Gibbs was no help in the immediate sense. Hadn’t seen Skolnik for three or four days. Said there was no pattern to his social or working life. Friends came and went, sometimes weeks without a sound from upstairs, sometimes people tramping up and down the stairs half the night. And no, he couldn’t think of anyone in particular by name.”
“Women?”
“Not lately. Gibbs seemed to think Skolnik had had his flings and at forty-four wasn’t much of a catch. And I can’t imagine any woman putting up with the state of his kitchen or his bathroom. But what struck me, for all the mess . . . there wasn’t much evidence of painting considering he was a painter, so I asked Gibbs and he said Skolnik kept a studio in Rathbone Street. Top floor. Said something about a northern aspect. Painters seem to want northern light, dunno why. I went round there with the keys I found in Skolnik’s pocket but none of them fitted, so I’ve left it for now. If Mr. Gibbs doesn’t find the key in Skolnik’s flat by about 10 o’clock, I’ll go round there with a locksmith. Meanwhile, I have Constable Gutteridge watching the door.”
It was Troy’s turn. He had wondered how much to tell Jack. He had wondered how much he might eventually have to tell his chief superintendent, Stanley Onions. Fish Wally had been right, one’s credibility mattered.
“Does Onions know?”
“He must do. He’ll have read the duty log, and even if he hadn’t, it’s in most of the morning papers. He’s prowling corridors right now. That’s why the door’s shut. But . . . there has been a bonus to releasing Skolnik’s name, to say nothing of releasing yours. I, as your dogsbody, took a call not fifteen minutes ago—”
Jack reached into his inside pocket and flipped open a small black notebook.
“—from one Laura Narayan.”
“What kind of a name is that? Sounds sort of Indian.”
“Dunno. When in doubt I always plump for Welsh.”
“Did she sound Welsh?”
“Absolutely not. As posh as you or I, posher if that’s at all possible, the epitome of a deb voice.”
Class in England was never far away as an issue or a dilemma, and it bred suspicion. At last we were one nation under Socialism, the end of deference, but the suspicion lingered, the suspicion thrived on accent and emblem. Jack could on occasion be seen wearing his old Etonian tie. Troy’s brother Rod habitually wore his old Harrovian tie when not wearing his Labour MP’s near-obligatory red. Troy didn’t. He wore plain black—as Onions had remarked more than once to him, “You look like you’re going to a funeral, lad.” All the same, most of Scotland Yard referred to Jack and Troy collectively, suspiciously, as “the Tearaway Toffs.”
“Laura Narayan of Fitzjohn’s Avenue, Hampstead. She was very upset but through the tears managed to tell me that Skolnik had been with her yesterday afternoon until about four thirty. Appears she was one of his pupils. I think this is what we call a lead.”
Troy listened, scribbled down the address as Jack spoke, then described loose circles in the air with his left hand and a pencil.
“It fits,” he said. “Skolnik gets on the Underground at Hampstead, city-bound train . . . first place he can change to a West End train is Camden . . . gets out at Camden . . . crosses to the other line to board a train to Goodge Street . . . and gets shot as the train pulls in.”
Jack was staring at Troy across the top of his mug, quizzically.
“Why so precise?”
“If you’re going to shoot someone you’d want as much noise as possible to mask the sound of the shot and, if, as you and I both surmise, you mean to walk away as cool as cucumber once you’ve done it, you want a rush of people heading for the exit to blend into . . . a human tide to carry you along.”
“Smartarse.”
The telephone on Jack’s desk in the outer office rang. He left to answer it. Troy heard a, “Yes, jolly good, half an hour? Fine,” and then Jack reappeared.
“Gibbs. We have a key to Rathbone Street.”
“I’ll take the gun and the mash to Kolankiewicz. And I’ll call on Miss, or is it Missis, Narayan—?”
“Missis,” Jack said.
“. . . on the way back.”
Ten minutes later, as Troy passed Jack’s desk on his way out, Jack was on the phone again. He cupped a hand across the mouthpiece.
“Freddie? I’ve just realized. You haven’t told me a bloody thing!”