It was warm in the upstairs room at St Stephen’s Tavern. Warm and empty. It was the watering-hole of MPs – this being the summer recess, there was not one to be seen. Just the odd peer and the odder policeman, stranded like crabs in rock-pools at low tide. Empty, and warm enough for Wally to have forsaken his overcoat. But for the Mickey Mouse gloves he looked rather like a barrister, with his black jacket and striped trousers. He sat at a centre table, sipping neat vodka. When he saw Troy enter he raised the glass and indicated more of the same. Troy changed a fiver at the bar and set a glass apiece in front of Wally. He would have liked an ice cube in his, but he did not feel like hearing Wally’s lecture on how to drink vodka.
‘I am sorry to drag you out, but this is as safe as anywhere. I have news, of sorts. I caught up with old Bobby Collington. A day or so after we last met he decided to retire. Something proved too much for the old man. I tracked him out to a seaside boarding-house.’
‘Frinton?’
‘Herne Bay. Where he lives under the tender care of a Mrs Cravat, whilst looking in every estate agent’s for a suitable bungalow. The man is clearly through with London. Indeed, to invoke Dr Johnson, I thought he might be through with life. He was reluctant to see me, but I oiled his wheels. In fact, you owe me for a first-class return fare and a bottle of single malt. But … he eased up and he talked. The Ryans came into his office – I do not know precisely when, but it must have been around the time we last met – high on the thrill. Bobby thought they were drunk at first, but it dawned on him that it was the intoxication of action. After all, he and I and you saw so much of that during the war. The garrulousness of it all. The constant, compulsive rehashing of a moment. As potent as any drug, you will agree. They told him how they had, and I quote, “bumped off a copper’s nark”.’
‘They did,’ said Troy. ‘Or, at least, I can see how they might think he was a copper’s nark.’
‘Understandably Bobby panicked. He told them he wanted out and offered to sell them his remaining share of the club for twenty thousand pounds. He took five. Within forty-eight hours he had let his flat in Marylebone, and set off for Kent with a suitcase and a portable gramophone. He says he will never go back to London. Nor, alas, will he ever repeat anything of what he told me. I don’t know what use it would be in court anyway, but I rather think Bobby would die before he’d testify against the Ryans. They have him well and truly scared.’
‘I need a witness, Wally.’
‘Collington is not your man. I begin to wonder who is. This pair seem to scare the living daylights out of everyone they meet. You need a very brave man, a very foolish man … or else you should be praying they do something utterly stupid.’
‘I’m working on that,’ said Troy.
He bought Wally another vodka, left two fivers under the glass, saw the gloved hand make them disappear like a music-hall conjuror, and went back to the Yard.