mercurial oddity. A titled wog no easier to pin down than a sprite. People came just to hear what he would say next. For a fellow-traveller, he travelled exceedingly well, and exceedingly well heeled. Bt., he was wont to joke, stood for better times.
‘I wondered, you see,’ Driberg was saying, ‘what he thought of you becoming a policeman. All his life – picking and pricking at order like a gnat on a dinosaur’s backside, and then you choose the law and with it the order he so despised. I think it must have hurt him deeply.’
‘What makes you say that?’
‘Because,’ Driberg said, turning for the
coup de grâce,
’he never talked about it.’
Perhaps the man was right. Words flowed from the elder Troy. Anyone who spent the currency of language like an Irish sailor on a drunken roll surely had a damning reason for silence? He had, for example, never answered any questions about the origins of his fortune. What use would the truth have been – that he had looted more than a million pounds’ worth of jewellery back in 1905? Some gnat’s prick.
‘And I was wondering,’ Driberg continued, ‘whether this too wasn’t part of the game?’
Troy said nothing. He watched the slice of toast on the end of the fork burst into flames and topple off into the fire, heard Driberg mutter ‘bugger it’ and listened to the generous gush of red wine filling up a glass.
§ 19
Alone in his office the following day Troy propped the photograph he had taken from Malnick – mentally avoiding the word stolen – against the telephone and contemplated it as the last light of afternoon slanted from the west to pick out the dead man’s faceand wink wickedly off the brass on the inkwell. A day to think, half of it spent driving Driberg back to London in pleasing, unstony silence, had left him with the beginnings of a pattern forming in his mind. He came into the Yard to find it peaceful and Saturdayish. No sign of Wildeve, and Onions was most certainly out on his allotment in a disused railway siding in Acton. Who these Germans were he had no idea, but he felt confident that the two crimes were related and that what they were was nestling just beneath the surface of the few facts he had. For a while it made sense to regard the two bodies as one – a two-headed creation from the castle of Baron Frankenstein. The phone rang.
‘I been thinking,’ said Kolankiewicz lazily.
‘So I heard.’
‘ ‘Bout trousers.’
‘Heard that too.’
‘And the beauty of trousers.’
‘Form and function in perfect harmony. Two holes exactly where your legs are.’
‘The beauty, the real beauty is in the turn-ups. Their capacity for capturing, storing and then yielding up to scrutiny the most surprising, the most overlooked items.’
‘What have you found?’
‘What would you want me to find?’
Troy looked at the scribbles he had made on the back of an envelope. The disparate parts of a whole that only existed in his guesswork.
‘I was wondering about the relationship between the bits we have. In particular what little forensics has revealed so far. Fragments of an alloy trapped by the fabric of the sleeve, you said. Acid burns, you said. And I was asking myself what’s missing that should be obvious in this time of death and glory?’
‘And?’
Troy paused, fearful of improvident word magic, as though utterance would invite divine denial. ‘Cordite,’ he said. ‘You found cordite in the late Herr Trousers’ turn-ups.’
‘I am sorry to have taken so long about it. When you see as many dead as I do they begin to blur into one colossal corpse. Theworld-carcass. It came back to me about an hour ago. Some smell, something that came wafting to me across the next-door neighbours’ compost heap – and there it was, the memory of cordite, delicately overlaid by the black stench of Thames mud in which the poor sod was found. Twelve months old, as vivid to the nose as
petit madeleine
to the tongue. You know what I think we
‘I wondered, you see,’ Driberg was saying, ‘what he thought of you becoming a policeman. All his life – picking and pricking at order like a gnat on a dinosaur’s backside, and then you choose the law and with it the order he so despised. I think it must have hurt him deeply.’
‘What makes you say that?’
‘Because,’ Driberg said, turning for the
coup de grâce,
’he never talked about it.’
Perhaps the man was right. Words flowed from the elder Troy. Anyone who spent the currency of language like an Irish sailor on a drunken roll surely had a damning reason for silence? He had, for example, never answered any questions about the origins of his fortune. What use would the truth have been – that he had looted more than a million pounds’ worth of jewellery back in 1905? Some gnat’s prick.
‘And I was wondering,’ Driberg continued, ‘whether this too wasn’t part of the game?’
Troy said nothing. He watched the slice of toast on the end of the fork burst into flames and topple off into the fire, heard Driberg mutter ‘bugger it’ and listened to the generous gush of red wine filling up a glass.
§ 19
Alone in his office the following day Troy propped the photograph he had taken from Malnick – mentally avoiding the word stolen – against the telephone and contemplated it as the last light of afternoon slanted from the west to pick out the dead man’s faceand wink wickedly off the brass on the inkwell. A day to think, half of it spent driving Driberg back to London in pleasing, unstony silence, had left him with the beginnings of a pattern forming in his mind. He came into the Yard to find it peaceful and Saturdayish. No sign of Wildeve, and Onions was most certainly out on his allotment in a disused railway siding in Acton. Who these Germans were he had no idea, but he felt confident that the two crimes were related and that what they were was nestling just beneath the surface of the few facts he had. For a while it made sense to regard the two bodies as one – a two-headed creation from the castle of Baron Frankenstein. The phone rang.
‘I been thinking,’ said Kolankiewicz lazily.
‘So I heard.’
‘ ‘Bout trousers.’
‘Heard that too.’
‘And the beauty of trousers.’
‘Form and function in perfect harmony. Two holes exactly where your legs are.’
‘The beauty, the real beauty is in the turn-ups. Their capacity for capturing, storing and then yielding up to scrutiny the most surprising, the most overlooked items.’
‘What have you found?’
‘What would you want me to find?’
Troy looked at the scribbles he had made on the back of an envelope. The disparate parts of a whole that only existed in his guesswork.
‘I was wondering about the relationship between the bits we have. In particular what little forensics has revealed so far. Fragments of an alloy trapped by the fabric of the sleeve, you said. Acid burns, you said. And I was asking myself what’s missing that should be obvious in this time of death and glory?’
‘And?’
Troy paused, fearful of improvident word magic, as though utterance would invite divine denial. ‘Cordite,’ he said. ‘You found cordite in the late Herr Trousers’ turn-ups.’
‘I am sorry to have taken so long about it. When you see as many dead as I do they begin to blur into one colossal corpse. Theworld-carcass. It came back to me about an hour ago. Some smell, something that came wafting to me across the next-door neighbours’ compost heap – and there it was, the memory of cordite, delicately overlaid by the black stench of Thames mud in which the poor sod was found. Twelve months old, as vivid to the nose as
petit madeleine
to the tongue. You know what I think we
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