Troy was first to arrive. He’d not been to the Ivy in a while. His father had favoured the Ivy, in much the same way he favoured the Garrick, the London club that was very actorish, a bit bookish, when he could have joined clubs full of other newspapermen. He had liked the Ivy for its theatrical flair, something Troy found he could take or leave. To find himself seated at the next table to Margaret Lockwood, James Mason, or Douglas Fairbanks Jr. did not thrill him, although he thought it might have thrilled his father if only the old man had known who they were. His father’s idea of a film star was Douglas Fairbanks Sr.
Troy liked the Ivy because he liked Art Deco—on his one trip to the United States, long before the war, he had watched, spellbound, the work on a new skyscraper, an Art Deco masterpiece to be called the Chrysler Building
The bloke steering customers to their seats seemed vaguely familiar to Troy, and clearly Troy was more than vaguely familiar to him, as he had greeted him by name. As ever, Troy thought, it was his father they remembered. He was merely an adjunct.
He felt as out of touch as his father. The place was doubtless stuffed with talent, and he didn’t think he recognized anyone. He could be content looking at the menu. Menus at a time when almost everything required one to produce a coupon or to queue, at a time when bread was an unappetizing shade of grey, when lard was rationed to two ounces a week, cheese to one and a half ounces, butter to seven, and the water from boiled carrots passed off as soup . . . were like works of fascinating fiction. A list of ingredients constituted a good read. The menu in a place like the Ivy was worth a Balzac or a Dickens or two. A prewar menu was a journey into a foreign country: Filet d’agneau aux fines herbes Poulardine rôtie à la broche, zabaglione—“I nearly wept when they got to the soufflé.”
For no reason he could think of, not that he was drooling, Troy felt like the convict in the opening chapters of Great Expectations—Abel Magwitch—so hungry the food scarcely touched the sides on the way down. And then it dawned on him why he had thought of this. On one level he had recognized a film star—Valerie Hobson, who had played Estella in the recent film of Great Expectations, was sitting at the next table.
Jordan swept by her table with a blown kiss and a, “hello, Valerie,” to plonk himself down opposite Troy.
“Have you ordered?”
“No.”
“I could eat a horse,” Jordan said, picking up his menu, “but I’ll settle for bangers and mash.”
While Jordan’s head was down in the menu, Troy said softly, “Do you really think we can discuss this in public?”
“Discuss what? Old Wally didn’t tell me a thing. Just said you were investigating the killing on the Northern Line and needed to meet me . . . or someone very like me.”
“And you came without knowing why?”
“Oh, no, Inspector, I came knowing exactly why. I would imagine you think your father’s famous—and you’d be right—or that your brother’s famous—he will be one day I’m sure—but that you aren’t. Believe me, Troy, in my profession ‘The Tart in the Tub’ case is legend. You took on the OSS, the Branch, and MI5 . . . you are known, Troy, you are known. Of course, I wouldn’t turn down the chance to meet you. Odd thing is we’ve never met before.”
Troy did not know how to take this. The killing of Diana Brack had been four years ago. He doubted he would be allowed to forget it. It had cost him half a kidney, all his heart, delayed his promotion, and made him a bête noire with the Special Branch and certain members of military intelligence. It was why he’d asked for someone unknown to him and trustworthy. But Jordan was smiling. He might be frank, blunt even, but he was smiling.
“Shall we order?”
“Bangers and mash will be fine,” said Troy.
“And listen for a moment, would you.”
Jordan waved a hand in the air, drawing an arc in the space between them. Troy listened; Troy looked around.
“Now, can you honestly tell me you can hear anyone else’s conversation? Can you hear anything except for the odd ‘darling’ above the hubbub? And we have to allow them that—they’re actors.”
Over bangers and mash—“I nearly wept when they got to the onion gravy”—Troy told Jordan everything he had found . . . Wally’s suspicions, the Russian gun, the Russian inscription.
Jordan ate, listened, made indeterminate movements of the head that Troy could interperet as neither nodding nor shaking, and eventually said, with a mouthful of sausage, “I put two and two together. Wally asking me to meet you, the front pages of the London papers . . . Wally can be very discreet when he wants but it was obvious what was at the heart of his request. And the name of André Skolnik rang a few bells. I knew you’d be asking about him even if I didn’t know what you’d be asking. There’s a file on him. I read it before I left the office this morning. He was vetted, very quickly, after Dunkirk. So many people were, it’s almost meaningless—there’s a file on you from that time, as I’m sure you know—we were looking for a Nazi fifth column, which, mercifully, didn’t exist. There are no entries between then and early 1946, when someone thought it worthwhile, in view of our changed relationship with Poland—stuck behind what we weren’t yet calling the Iron Curtain—to look once again at Polish nationals who’d been granted British citizenship. Skolnik has been British since 1937. I vetted some of the Poles myself at that time. Not Skolnik, but I can assure you he was vetted again, very quietly. The second look yielded nothing. Ever since the hot war turned chilly, it’s been my job to know who the Russians have got working for them over here, and I can tell you now, André Skolnik was not one of them. I could name you several who are, from trade union leaders to members of the House of Lords, but Skolnik wasn’t working for the Russians.”
“You’re absolutely certain of that?”
“Yes.”
“Do you know who vetted Skolnik?”
“Of course, and I can’t tell you.”
“But somebody talked to him, somebody trailed him, somebody interviewed friends and known associates?”
“‘Known associates’—very Scotland Yard. Troy, I can’t discuss our methods, either. Read what you like into me saying it was done ‘very quietly.’ Ask yourself . . . in 1940, did any of us talk to you?”
Troy said nothing.
“Quite,” said Jordan.
Troy leaned in a little closer across the table. He might just annoy Jordan and if he did he wanted be sure what he said was smothered in “darlings.”
“Consider that your people might have made a mistake. It hardly seems a high priority, checking out Poles who’d been here twenty-odd years. Supposing someone in your department preferred wielding a rubber stamp to wearing out his shoe leather and just stamped Skolnik’s file in the interests of a quiet life?”
“Spoken like a copper. And I won’t deny we have lazy buggers, drunken buggers, and that there are one or two who think I’m a flash bugger, but take it from me, Troy, it was done properly, and in the absence of any other evidence—”
“The gun.”
“Coincidence. You said yourself, Swiss-made. Probably just looks Russian.”
“The inscription?”
“Most Poles speak some Russian. Wally does, after all.”
“So . . . more coincidence?”
“I’m afraid so. I think you’re doing what the taxpayer pays you to do, Troy. You’re looking for a murderer, not an assassin. Someone who knew him. Some jealous girlfriend, some bloke who’d got fed up waiting for money to be repaid . . .”
Troy knew in his bones this was not the case but said nothing. Instead, he said, “Is there a way I can reach you without going through Wally?”
Jordan handed Troy his card, called for the bill, and said, “By all means, keep in touch . . . this has been . . . shall we say . . . simpatico.”
Troy had not got what he wanted. He had a dead spook on his hands and, given the brick wall any copper hits sooner or later in trying to investigate a dead spook, he wanted MI5 to pick up the case and let him move on to something he could solve.
He wondered how much thought, how much self-conscious flash buggery had gone into the choice of a word like “simpatico.” But Jordan was right. He liked the man; he’d been charmed by the good looks, the easy manner, and the gentle blue eyes. It had been frustrating, but it had been simpatico.