talk to.”
“It is, Kaz,” I said as he left to dress, glad he wasn’t watching me as I felt my face flush with betrayal. I sat alone, drinking the remains of my coffee, thinking how right he was and how guilty I felt at not being straight with him. I decided to come clean that afternoon, and get it out in the open. But first, I had an appointment at New Scotland Yard.
The rail fell in fat, slow drops, as if it couldn’t make up its mind, and it fit my mood. I pulled up the collar of my trench coat and set off from the Dorchester toward Westminster. It would be a straight shot on Park Lane, alongside Hyde Park, past Buckingham Palace, then down Birdcage Walk to Big Ben and Parliament. But I decided to reacquaint myself with the side streets of London. It had been a while, and I was in town to find a murderer. Backstreets and alleys might be useful.
I walked a few blocks through Mayfair, filled with neat, low brick buildings. Varnished doors with polished brass fixtures stood like sentries along the street. A few automobiles purred through the neighborhood, all shiny, low, and expensive. It was quiet, the kind of city quiet that money gets you. Black umbrellas hid faces from me, but I could’ve guessed: thin lips, narrow noses, bored eyes, all the marks of good breeding and high culture. It wasn’t my part of town.
The clouds finally cut loose and I ducked into a shop doorway, shaking myself like a soggy dog. In a minute the rain was gone and I headed south on Curzon Street to Half Moon, which I knew would take me across Piccadilly. On Curzon, where a row of houses should have been, there was nothing but stacked rubble. On either side of the cleared area, the buildings were boarded up and deserted. The rising trail of smoke and fire had left its trace around every window and door. Sooty black, each looked like the dark hand of death had marked that room, that family, for destruction.
I’d always liked Boston after a rain. It made everything seem clean, no matter how dirty it hadbeen. London was different. There was too much to wash away, even in the posh part of town. The gritty smell of coal smoke stuck in my nostrils, and the foul smell of burnt wood and charred family possessions rose from the brickwork. Rain always revived the memory of a fire, coaxing its odor out of blackened wood and scorched earth. The bricks were precisely stacked, cleaned of concrete, ready to be put up again, to form parts of new houses that would always smell a bit odd when it rained.
I went through St. James’s Square, eyeing Norfolk House, which stood in one corner, my future home away from home. It was taller than most neighboring buildings, seven stories. The windows started out large on the bottom floors, nearly vanishing into a series of tiny gables jutting out of the slanted slate roof. I guessed one of those would be mine, if I had a window at all.
I scooted around St. James’s Park, passing by the sandbagged War Rooms, where Churchill himself was probably growling into his special telephone, the hotline to the White House. Minutes later, I’d walked past Westminster Abbey, Parliament, Big Ben, the vaunted heart of the British Empire. Big Ben struck the quarter hour, the great bell still astounding me with its clear, deep tones. I’d heard it through static on news broadcasts hundreds of times, but when I heard it here, I thought of Edward R. Murrow reporting during the Blitz. We’d all gather around the radio, and the house would go quiet as we waited for his words.
This… is London.
I shivered. The damn place still gave me goose bumps. Or maybe it was the memory of Southie that it stirred up. I stood on the Embankment, watching the Thames flow dark and murky beneath me. For a moment, it was South Bay, and I was back walking a beat in the old neighborhood. But that seemed like so long ago, far more than barely two years. I tried to shake off the homesick blues, but it was getting harder as time passed.
Crossing the street, I craned my neck to take in the turreted white-and-red-brick headquarters of the London Metropolitan Police. New Scotland Yard. I went in and asked at the duty desk for Detective Inspector Horace Scutt. A uniformed constable showed me to the Criminal Investigations Department. Plainclothes. I walked into a room where any cop in the States would feel at home. Desks pushed together in the center, filing cabinets against the walls. A large city map on a bulletin board. Heavy black telephones ringing, and the low buzz of conversation, tinged with sharp frustration. The only difference was the tangy odor of stale tea leaves instead of coffee grounds.
“Excuse me,” I said, interrupting a detective who was perched on a desk, talking to an older man. The old fellow didn’t look like a suspect, more like a victim. His white hair was tousled, his cheek bruised, and dark brown stains on the front of his shirt marked where he’d bled. “Sorry, but I’m looking for Inspector Scutt?”
“Well, you’ve found him, lad. Now what do you want with him?” the older man asked.
“You’re Horace Scutt?” I tried to keep the surprise out of my voice. He looked ancient. Pure white hair and mustache, dark bags under his eyes, and the evidence of a beating added up to something other than a Scotland Yard detective. “Inspector Scutt?”
“Some days I wonder that myself. What’s your business here?”
The younger detective flashed a grin, but it wasn’t the friendly type. More like the kind you wear watching someone slip on a banana peel.
“Lieutenant Billy Boyle, Inspector. I was told to see you about the murder of Gennady Egorov, a Soviet Air Force captain.”
“Yes, we had a chap from the Home Office come by and instruct us to cooperate with you. So we must. Have a seat, Lieutenant, and we’ll go over the file with you.” Scutt nodded to the other detective, who went to gather the files.
“You have a rough night, Inspector?”
“Not as rough as it could have been. Half a dozen young ruffians escaped from the remand home at Wallington, then broke into the Home Guard armory at Upper Norwood. Got away with a couple of Sten guns and more ammunition than any sane man would want to carry around. Lucky for us, they fell out over who should have the guns and who were to be the ammo carriers.”
“Looks like they didn’t go down easy.”
“The young ones never do, Lieutenant, not if they’ve had a taste of incarceration.”
“If you don’t mind me saying, Inspector, aren’t you a bit too senior to be running around after armed kids?”
“I do mind, Lieutenant. Cosgrove told us we must cooperate with you, but that doesn’t mean I need to take any guff, now does it?”
“No, sir. Sorry, no offense intended,” I said. Scutt looked ready to jump out of his chair and go a couple of rounds. “Did you say Cosgrove? Big guy, big mustache? Stuffed shirt?”
“I’d say that fits the man,” Scutt said.
“He’s a major. MI5.” Military Intelligence, Section 5, was the British Secret Service, responsible for counterintelligence and security.
“I said he was no civil servant, guv,” the other detective said. “Didn’t I?”
“So you did, lad. Now, Lieutenant, what is your involvement with MI5?”
“As little as possible, sir. I had no idea Major Cosgrove would be in touch with you. I’m on General Eisenhower’s staff, and he asked me to look into this for him.”
“Not the worst answer you could’ve given. Go on.”
“I was a detective myself, Inspector. In Boston, before the war.”
“A bit on the young side for a detective, I’d say.”
“I made the grade just before Pearl Harbor. I’d been on the force for a while, but I didn’t spend much time celebrating my promotion. Next thing I knew, I was working for General Eisenhower.”
“Well, Lieutenant Boyle, we won’t hold Cosgrove against you, unless you give us reason to.”
“All I need to do is review the case, and let the general know if there’s any possibility of trouble with the Russians. I won’t get in your way, I promise.”
“Possibility of trouble with the Russians? Did you hear that, Flack?”
“Quite the joker he is, guv.”
“I guess there’s trouble with the Russians,” I said, wishing I hadn’t sounded like a naive colonial.
“You’ll find out, soon enough. DS Flack will go over the details of the case with you. I’m going to get some fresh clothes and a few hours’ sleep. No rest for the wicked or the young, Flack.” Scutt rose with an agility that surprised me, given his age if not his injuries.
“Roy Flack,” the younger detective said, extending his hand. “Detective Sergeant.”
