Riptide (aka Bluffing Mr. Churchill) by John Lawton Page A

in the mid-Atlantic with German U-boats on the prowl.’
    ‘That’s five, four and a half really – I don’t think you can have Greece and Crete in their entirety,’ said Rod unhelpfully. ‘There’s not a British
soldier in Greece, other than the POWs, and not a German one on Crete.’
    ‘Not yet,’ said Alex, ‘not yet.’
    ‘So what’s the other?’ Rod said.
    ‘Iraq,’ Troy said from the far end of the table.
    ‘Quite right.’ A nod of acknowledgement from his father. ‘Iraq it was. Five and a half fronts – if you like. However, I cannot but think of it in terms of the last war.
Eastern Front and Western Front. Sooner or later the pattern will reassert itself. And as to Hess being here: I don’t know why he’s here. I’d dearly love to be able to ask
him.’
    ‘Perhaps Churchill will let you,’ said Wells.
    Alex tilted his bowl, scooping at the last of a thin clear soup which Troy had found so tasteless as to be unidentifiable.
    ‘Winston and I are no longer as close as we were. I cannot remember precisely when we last spoke, but it must have been in 1939 or thereabouts.’
    ‘It was just after your editorial on the Nazi-Soviet Pact, Dad,’ Rod said.
    Troy would not have bothered. They all knew when it had been. The row had been volcanic.
    He felt hot breath upon his ear. Polly, clutching a bowl of steaming cabbage, was whispering to him.
    ‘It’s that Onions bloke from the Yard, young Fred. He wants you on the blower.’
    Troy ducked out, feeling his mother’s eyes upon him. Back in the study, the phone lay off the hook on his father’s desk. He picked it up and heard Superintendent Stanley
Onions’ Lancashire growl.
    ‘Are you free?’
    It didn’t matter if he wasn’t.
    ‘Body for you. A Mrs O’Grady, 11a Hoxton Street, phoned in. Lodger tripped and fell down a flight of stairs. Dead as a doornail. Better check it out. You never know.’
    ‘You never know’ just about summed up the working lives of two detectives on the Murder Squad.
    Troy made his excuses in the dining room. Saw his mother rise and throw down her napkin, coming round the table to him.
    ‘My dear, we have only just started the main course. Does Scotland Yard want you to starve?’
    Her words all at odds with her gestures, she kissed him on both cheeks, escorted him to the door and made no effort beyond the formality of words to detain him.
    ‘Is he still trying to write the same article?’ Troy asked as he slipped into his coat.
    ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘And he will tie us all in knots until he has done so. At the moment the idea is that he and Wells will write it together. I’ll be amazed if it survives
the evening. They’ll be at each other’s throats before the dessert if Rod doesn’t stop stirring.’
    ‘He doesn’t mean to. In fact he doesn’t know he’s doing it. He just drops bricks.’
    ‘Your faith in innocence would be touching were it not for your odd choice of profession.’
    It was odd. And she’d never let him forget it.

§ 21
    Cal dashed into Lippschitz Bros., slapped down two pounds ten shillings and grabbed the package the old men had for him.
    ‘Don’t you want to wait for a fitting?’ they yelled after him.
    ‘Don’t have the time!’
    It was a mistake. He stood in front of the mirror in his room at Claridge’s and cursed the name of Lippschitz. The waist bagged, the jacket hung on him like something made for Cab Calloway
to sport on Lenox Avenue, and the trouser cuffs let daylight onto his socks. He looked like a clown. Damn, damn, damn. And there wasn’t a spare second to do a thing about it. He ran for a
cab.
    He was wondering why Stilton had suggested a pub and not Scotland Yard or the American Embassy, wondering how he’d know Stilton if he saw him.
    It was too easy. He pushed open the saloon door of the Green Man in the Strand. A man leant against the bar, chatting happily to the barman in an accent Cal could not place, one hand in his
trouser pocket, one elbow on