Читать книгу Snow Hill - Mark Sanderson - Страница 12

The cold air slapped his face. It was like walking into a washing line on Monday morning. He was half-sober already.

“Had a good time?” A policeman blocked his path, towering over him. Was he a marked man? He could not seem to turn round this week without bumping into a cop.

“Yes, thank you, officer.”

“Johnny Steadman, isn’t it?” His interrogator smiled pleasantly. All City cops were neat but this one somehow seemed neater. He had an open face and kind, slate-grey eyes.

“I’m Tom Vinson. I believe we have a mutual friend. Matt Turner?”

“You’ve just missed him.”

“Actually, I haven’t. I saw him just now, heading back to collect something from the station-house. That’s how I knew it must be you.” He took off a black glove and held out his hand. Johnny shook it.

“How d’you do.” Vinson’s grip was warm and firm.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you after all this time,” said Vinson. “Matt often talks about you. He looks up to you.” Johnny was surprised—and embarrassed.

“We’ve known each other since we were four years old.”

“That’s some friendship. Matt’s a good man to have on your side.”

“Indeed.” There didn’t seem much else to say, but Vinson was still blocking his way. “Well, it’s been a pleasure to meet you.” Johnny moved to the right. Vinson followed suit. He moved to the left. So did the policeman. “Was there something else?”

Vinson hesitated and looked round to check no one was within earshot. “This did not come from me, right? I believe you want to know if a cop has gone missing from Snow Hill. There’s only one person who was at the station last week who isn’t there now—a wolly who’s transferred to the Met.”

“That’s a bit odd. It’s usually the other way round.”

The City of London Police—stationed at the hub of the British Empire and accustomed to rubbing shoulders with the bankers and brokers of the financial capital of the world—considered themselves a cut above the Metropolitan Police who patrolled the rest of London. Rozzers were not being complimentary when they referred to their City counterparts as “the posh lot”.

“And how come a new recruit was given an instant transfer?” Johnny was fully alert now. “These things normally take weeks to arrange.”

“I don’t know when he applied to be moved,” stated Vinson. “The notice doesn’t say. What it does say is that it was for personal reasons. Something to do with a family tragedy.”

“What was his name?”

“Ah, I can’t help you there. It’s forbidden to divulge operational information.”

“Then can you at least tell me where he was transferred to?”

“Sorry. Still, there’s no need to go wasting your time investigating that dodgy tip-off now.”

“Thanks very much. It was good of you to tell me. I owe you.”

“Don’t mention it—really!” With a cheery nod, Vinson continued on his beat.

As Johnny continued down Giltspur Street his mind was so full of questions he barely registered his surroundings. Why was Vinson being so helpful? Had Matt told him about the tip-off? Was he trying to put him off the scent? It would be easy enough to find out the recruit’s name—Matt would tell him tomorrow—so why had Vinson withheld it? Was he afraid that Johnny would want to interview the lad? That didn’t make sense; policemen were forbidden to talk to the press—officially, anyway.

If Vinson was being straight with him, it would explain the absence of an outcry: nobody had died and there was nothing to hide. But if that were all there was to it, why bother to tell a journalist anything at all? And why had Bill not come up with anything about the transfer?

Johnny smelled a cover-up.

Johnny closed the front door and did not bother to lock it behind him. He stood in the narrow hallway shivering as the cooling sweat trickled down his back. It had unnerved him to see Matt so disturbed; he resolved to do everything he could to help without betraying Matt’s confidence. He felt he owed it to his friend, who had never ceased to trust him—even though he was in love with his wife.

One moment he had never been in love, the next he was head-over-heels. Lizzie was unlike any other woman he knew. She was witty, not flighty; independent, not clingy. She wore Chanel No. 5, not Coty Naturelle. Although middle class, she never betrayed the slightest hint of condescension. She infuriated her father by voting for the Labour Party. She liked Molière as much as musicals; read Compton Mackenzie, Elizabeth Bowen and Pearl S. Buck as well as movie and fashion magazines. And she loved Dickens.

Occasionally, when Matt was boxing in a tournament or wanted to meet up with his brothers to go to a match, he was only too happy for Johnny to take Lizzie to a matinee; earlier in the year the two of them had sat enthralled in a Shaftesbury Avenue theatre while Matt watched Arsenal beat Sheffield United in the FA Cup final at Wembley.

Back in the days when they were courting, Matt and Lizzie had often gone dancing with Johnny and whichever chorus-girl he was seeing at the time. It was only when they swapped partners, and Johnny slipped his arm round Lizzie’s slender waist, holding her tightly, sweeping her across the polished floor, her breath tickling the hairs on the back of his neck, that he felt truly alive. She had known how he had felt before he did. Nothing was said; nobody was to blame. It was not Johnny’s fault he loved her; it was not Lizzie’s fault that she merely liked him.

He could see why she’d fallen for Matt—he was good-looking, fearless and kind, someone who never hesitated to go to the aid of those in distress whether he was in uniform or not—but he could not help being disappointed. However, he put on a brave face—thus gaining stature in Lizzie’s eyes—and tried to concentrate on Matt’s blind happiness rather than his own overwhelming misery.

There was no doubt they made a beautiful couple. His speech had made every one laugh: “The trouble with being best man is that you don’t often get a chance to prove it.”

Standing in the darkness and silence of his empty house he wondered what the hell he had hurried home for. There was only his journal and a few family photographs to keep him company. Johnny’s father, Edward, had been killed at Passchendaele when he was three. He knew all too little about the short, stocky infantryman grinning proudly at the camera with a baby in his arms.

At school he had pored for hours over history textbooks, hoping to find out what men like his father had been forced to endure, but mostly the authors skated over the realities of warfare and instead focused on the causes and consequences of the conflict, with a paragraph or two of waffle about the honour and heroic sacrifice of the troops. He had tried to imagine the blood and the mud; the stench of the trench; the crawling lice and gnawing rats; the random, wholesale carnage and the mind-splitting shriek of the shells. However, reading was no substitute for the real thing. He had tried to talk to those who had returned from France, men who had seen the atrocity of war at first hand, but most of them, like Inspector Rotherforth, had clammed up or changed the subject, clearly reluctant to release the painful memories. The wounded look in their eyes was similar to the one now staring back at him in the mirror.

Johnny was haunted by his mother’s death. Having to stand by while she had screamed and screamed in agony—not for a few seconds, not for a few minutes, but until she was too exhausted to scream any more—had taught him all there was to know about powerlessness. He had been totally unprepared for the messiness of death.

He tramped up the wooden stairs to the bathroom that had once been his bedroom. The cold always made his bladder shrink. After the funeral he had made a conscious effort to jettison the past. Most of his wages as a reporter—which, although pretty low, were far more than he had ever earned before—had gone on converting the terraced two-up, two-down in Cruden Street into a modern bachelor pad. When the landlords learned about his new bathroom they had increased the rent and said they would do so again if he made any further alterations. He was on the mains now, what more did he want?

Why was it that any attempt to better yourself or your situation always proved, one way or another, so costly?