George Bonham might not have been the last man in England to sleep in a nightshirt – but he was the last whom Troy knew. He answered the door without a flicker of surprise, even though Jack’s hammering had clearly roused him from his slumbers.
‘Coffee, George. Black and sweet,’ Jack said.
‘You look awful,’ Bonham said, looking at Troy.
‘I know. People are kind enough to keep telling me.’
‘White as a wossname . . . sheet.’
Wildeve and Mary McDiarmuid lowered Troy on to the sofa. Robertson stood in the corner, clutching his helmet, looking stranded. Jack waved him down into a corner chair.
‘Where’s your inspector?’ Troy asked.
‘Beg pardon, sir?’
‘Where’s Inspector Milligan? We’re on his patch. I would have thought. . .’
He followed the Shrimp’s gaze to Wildeve.
‘Paddy’s had his problems,’ Jack said. ‘He’s in Liverpool on a compassionate. His dad. He’s dying.’
‘Dying?’
‘Lung cancer.’
‘Of course. He told me. I’m almost certain he told me.’ Troy sighed. ‘But . . . but … he should be here. We can’t do this without him.’
‘He’ll be back. And George is right. You do look bloody awful. This can wait. It can wait till morning. Let’s get you home as soon as we’ve got something warm inside you.’
‘There are things you should know.’
‘Wait for the coffee, Freddie. You haven’t enough breath to blow out a candle.’
Bonham stuck a mug of sickly sweet instant coffee into Troy’s hands, wrapping his fingers around it as though he thought it would slip from his grip.
Troy sipped and tried to pretend he thought it pleasant or beneficial. ‘Joey Rork,’ he said. ‘Or did I tell you that? Whatever. Joey Rork. A private eye from the States. Ex-NYPD. And I rather think he was out of his depth.’
Jack prompted: ‘In what way?’
‘I had dinner with him about three days ago. He’d been following Danny Ryan. Been doing that for a while. At dinner he produced a stack of photographs – he did that every time we met, but this time it was obvious he was getting very close to Danny. No long lenses. He was in the same room.’
‘Danny Ryan?’ Jack cut in. ‘Is this something to do with boxing?’
‘I doubt that. In fact I think Danny Ryan might be incidental. Rork wasn’t wild about my assurances that Danny was straight, but it was Ryan’s brothers that got his copper’s hackles up. He was absolutely convinced they were up to something.’
‘Who are these brothers? I’ve never heard of them.’
‘Neither had I – I kept telling Rork. I used to know Ryan before the war, and I’ve followed his career in the papers just like anyone else - and I’ve seen him in person perhaps a couple of times since, but as for any brothers, they were news to me. I don’t know them.’
There was a cough of polite attention-seeking from the other side of the room. Jack, George, Mary McDiarmuid and Troy all turned to look at the Shrimp – reddening slightly and wary of the position he was in.
‘Spit it out, Mr Robertson,’ Jack said.
‘You do know them, Mr Troy.’
‘I do?’
‘They was with me and Tub Flanagan and all them other kids that day you paid us all to search the bombsite where Alma Terrace used to be.’
‘That was—’
‘Nineteen forty-four, sir.’
‘I was about to say it was ages ago. Of course I don’t know them. I can’t even remember what they looked like.’
‘But they remembered you, Mr Troy. You was their hero. Right up to the end of the war that gang they used to have with old Tub was known as Troy’s Marauders. I was in it meself. I oughta know.’
Jesus Christ.
‘I was a hero meself for a while, ‘cos I found the cellar where the body was. But I was too small to hold me own against the twins, but they—’
‘Enough! I don’t want to hear this.’
Bonham muttered a sotto voce ‘I told you so’, and vanished into the kitchen.
Troy leaned back, stared at the ceiling and said, ‘Shit, shit, shit.’
Jack spoke softly: ‘Freddie, it’s time you went home.’
‘No, I should make a statement.’
‘You should be in bed.’
‘What’s the point? I’ll be wide awake in four hours, buzzing like a sodding bee.’
‘Bed,’ said Mary McDiarmuid, with more authority than Jack had mustered, and Troy let himself be hoicked up by one arm and steered to the door. ‘George,’ he said, turning back to Jack.
‘Later,’ Jack said. ‘Later.’
Mary McDiarmuid drove like Fangio. He was back on his own doorstep in less than twenty minutes.
‘Do you want me to come in, sir?’
‘No. I’ll be fine. Now, tell me, are you permanently assigned to me?’
‘In so far as you’re expected back, yes, sir. In the meantime I’m floating a bit too freely. I get whatever comes up.’
‘That can be remedied. But when we’re alone it’s Troy. Forget the rank. Save it for when Onions is about.’
He was fiddling with the door key and failing. She took it off him, turned the lock, shoved the door open and stuck the key back in his hand with a ‘Whatever you say, boss.’
Inside, he kicked off his shoes, sloughed his jacket on to the floor. He hadn’t the strength to pick it up. It could wait till morning. It could all wait till morning. He couldn’t remember when he’d felt so tired. He hauled himself up the stairs to the bathroom, scrubbed away the taste of champagne and vomit with his toothbrush, spat peppermint toothpaste at the basin – and as he did so caught a trace of something else on the air. Lately he’d known his nose to play tricks, not as many as his eyes, but he had found himself smelling the most unlikely things – rubber, salt and vinegar, cardamom. Now it was a scent. Something familiar but unplaceable. The upper frequencies of Dior? With the toothbrush still sticking out of the side of his mouth, he pushed open his bedroom door, and saw the round bump of Kitty’s backside in his bed. He could not fault her timing. At once appropriate and awful.