Black Out by John Lawton Page B

followed Troy back to the kitchen still sniffing, smiling and hinting. ‘Good Lord. Eggs. Real eggs. Do I see real eggs?’
    ‘Yes. And if you hadn’t just eaten your fill at the Corner House I might say it would stretch to two.’
    ‘Ah … I haven’t you see. She stood me up, so I paid for my solitary cup of scummy tea and left. That’s when I saw you.’
    Troy reached for a second plate, set another glass down before Wildeve and pushed the bottle towards him.
    ‘I thought you weren’t due back until Monday,’ Wildeve said.
    ‘I felt fine, and I got a call from Stepney. My old station sergeant with a body on his hands. Onions didn’t object. Although he did try to stick me with another case. I had expected to see you. I presume you had your head down?’
    ‘In court. Two days cooling my heels at the Bailey.’
    Troy tipped the eggs into the sizzling pan. Wildeve picked up one of the half-shells and fondled it.
    ‘Real shells!’
    Wildeve could be infuriating and inspired by turns. He could gossip at a moment that demanded high concentration, and drop acute insight into conversation as though it were scarcely relevant and he thought it worth a quick mention in passing. He picked at the gossamer lining of the shell in fascination.
    ‘Just look at the speckles on this eggshell. I’ve seen nothing like it in, well … months. I say, and that’s real onion!’
    Troy decided not to take the bull by the horns. He set the meal in front of Wildeve, let him eat, drink and prattle about the beautiful Wren who had left him with a cold cup of tea on a Friday evening, interspersed with the business of the day that had taken him into the witness-box at the Old Bailey. He rolled the omelette around his palette as though it were either scalding him or was as scintillating asthe finest claret, and swigged finest claret like it was ginger beer.
    As he held out his glass for a refill Troy buttonholed him and launched into a quick synopsis of the case so far. Wildeve’s second glass sat untouched as he listened.
    ‘Bizarre,’ he said. ‘Bloody weird. That bobby has my sympathy. I’m not sure I wouldn’t have puked either.’
    ‘The problem is,’ Troy continued, ‘I’m due in court myself on Monday. Bernard Leahy’s up for the Portsmouth strangling at Winchester. I think there’s a good chance he’ll go for Not Guilty and deny the confession.’
    ‘Ah,’ said Wildeve, ‘so you need me to ride to the rescue?’
    He knocked back the second glass with a speed that would have appalled the late Alexei Troy.
    ‘Not quite, Jack. I need you to go through the aliens’ registration list at B3 over in Scotland House. Also the CRO. You might try the refugee organisations – though the first thing they’ll want from us is what we want from them – a name. I’ve a full set of prints from the hand. They’re in the top left drawer of my desk. Kolankiewicz biked them over while I was in Stepney.’
    ‘Bugger.’
    ‘Just do it, Jack. It’s the only way to begin.’
    ‘God, all that paperwork. You wouldn’t think a German would be so hard to find. There’s never one around when you want one.’
    ‘If he was here in 1940, then he would almost certainly have been rounded up in that wave of detentions after the fall of Norway. He may even have been interned. That means fingerprints.’
    ‘Well, he’s hardly likely to have arrived since, is he?’
    ‘It’s that possibility that worries me,’ said Troy.

§ 13
    As Troy stepped down from the witness-box the defending barrister rose and addressed the judge. He might want to recall Sergeant Troy, would Mr Troy therefore not leave the court in the course of the day, or Winchester overnight. This caught the prosecutionunawares. Sir Willoughby Wright got to his feet and indulged in a fabricated fit of coughing, whilst looking at Troy across the top of a white handkerchief the size of a government-surplus marquee. Troy made a circling motion with the index finger of his right