They began with the gun.
“It’s filthy,” Kolankiewicz said. “Where did you find it?”
“Between the tracks.”
“Ach, you won’t get prints off this.”
“There won’t be any. He’d not have thrown it away if there were.”
Kolankiewicz wiped the gun clean. What appeared was a small, black-painted automatic that fitted into the palm of the hand. It was scarcely more than three inches long from butt to barrel. The paint was matte black—household paint. Kolankiewicz scraped at it with a penknife to reveal grey gunmetal.
“Odd thing to do,” he said. “As though someone wanted to disguise it. A gun still looks like a gun even if you paint it sky-blue-pink.”
“May I?”
Troy took the gun, turned it this way and that, took Kolankiewicz’s penknife, and scraped away at a hollow point on the butt.
“There’s about a dozen of these; what do they look like to you?”
“I seen some fancy guns in my time. Some even jewelled. To me they look like the settings on my mother’s engagement ring, as though they once held gemstones or some such. See, just by the trigger guard, a convex point remains.”
Troy scraped too clumsily at the protrusion and it came away in his hand.
“Damn!”
“No matter; let me see.”
Kolankiewicz rinsed the object, held it under a spotlight, and scraped the last of the paint away with his thumbnail. It gleamed, red and radiant.
“My God. It’s a ruby.”
“Correct, my boy. Now, smartyarse. Tell me who would want to paint over rubies?”
This was where Troy’s expertise outstripped Kolankiewicz’s, if only in the field of popular culture. He doubted Kolankiewicz had been to the pictures since they added sound.
“There was a film during the early part of the war,” he said. “You won’t have seen it. Bogart, Peter Lorre—”
“Ah . . . him I remember. The little German with the fish eyes.”
“—and Sydney Greenstreet.”
The name did not register with Kolankiewicz.
“It was called The Maltese Falcon, and the title referred to a statue studded with precious stones that had been passed around Europe for centuries disguised in black paint.”
“Save one, this has been stripped of its jewels.”
“That’s because, first of all, someone needed to move it around without its worth being recognized, and then they needed to cash in.”
“But missed one?”
“Quite.”
Kolankiewicz flipped out the magazine.
“It’s empty. I would say it held only three bullets. Did you find the spent case.”
“No. I was lucky to find the gun. The case may be on the tracks, too, but to get it I’ll need to close down the Northern line. I’ll get lynched for even asking. Can we work with what we’ve got?”
“What we’ve got is that bag of mashed potato you brought in.”
Kolankiewicz tipped the bag onto a sheet of blotting paper. Pushed a rubber-gloved finger around in the mess. Then he bent down and sniffed at it.
“We been calling this mash, right?”
“My word was baked.”
“Okay. Baked, mashed, shmashed . . . whatever. What do you think cooked it?”
“No idea.”
“Look here, at the end of my finger.”
Troy looked at black stains on white mash.
“Dirt?”
“Gunpowder residue.”
“Bloody hell. You don’t think—”
“Not yet, I don’t. Let’s examine the body before you leap to any conclusions. If you’re coming in, scrub up and find an apron.”