A Little White Death Read online

  A LITTLE WHITE DEATH

  John Lawton is the director of over forty television programmes, author of a dozen screenplays, several children’s books and seven inspector Troy novels. Lawton’s work has earned him comparisons to John le Carré and Alan Furst. Lawton lives in a remote hilltop village in Derbyshire.

  THE INSPECTOR TROY NOVELS

  Black Out

  Old Flames

  A Little White Death

  Riptide

  Blue Rondo

  Second Violin

  A Lily of the Field

  First published in 1998 by Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, England

  This ebook edition published in 2012 by Grove Press UK, an imprint of Grove/Atlantic Inc.

  Copyright ©John Lawton, 1998

  The moral right of John Lawton to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of the book.

  ‘Ode on Celestial Music’ is quoted by kind permission of Brian Patten

  Every effort has been made to trace or contact all copyright-holders. The publishers will be pleased to make good any omissions or rectify any mistakes brought to their attention at the earliest opportunity.

  1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2

  A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN 978 1 61185 990 4

  Printed in Great Britain

  Grove Press, UK

  Ormond House

  26–27 Boswell Street

  London

  WC1N 3JZ

  www.groveatlantic.com

  For

  Sarah Teale

  ‘An Englishwoman in New York’

  Acknowledgements

  To Said Aburish, who read and corrected the Beirut chapters.

  To Carole Holden, Curator at the British Library, Bloomsbury, without whom several writers would vanish without trace into the BL index.

  To Diana Norman, who reads everything I write in typescript and offers good advice.

  To Ion Trewin, the editor who has ‘sat through’ these last three novels from start to finish, and lost nothing more than his pencil sharpener.

  To Sheena McDonald, who offered me a cool, Cape Cod bolt-hole just when I needed one.

  Ode on Celestial Music

  (or It’s the Girl in the Bathroom Singing)

  It’s not celestial music it’s the girl in the bathroom singing.

  You can tell. Although it’s winter

  the trees outside her window have grown leaves,

  all manner of flowers push up through the floorboards.

  I think – ‘what a filthy trick that is to play on me,’

  I snip them with my scissors shouting

  ‘I want only bona fide celestial music!’

  Hearing this she stops singing.

  Out of her bath now the girl knocks on my door,

  ‘Is my singing disturbing you?’ she smiles entering,

  ‘did you say it was licentious or sensual?

  And excuse me, my bath towel’s slipping.’

  A warm and blonde creature

  I slam the door on her breasts shouting

  ‘I want only bona fide celestial music!’

  Much later on in life I wear my hearing-aid.

  What have I done to my body, ignoring it,

  splitting things into so many pieces my hands

  cannot mend anything? The stars, the buggers, remained silent.

  Down in the bathroom now her daughter is singing.

  Turning my hearing-aid full volume

  I bend close to the floorboards hoping

  for at least one song to get through.

  Brian Patten, Notes to the Hurrying Man, 1969

  Contents

  Prologue

  § 1

  § 2

  § 3

  § 4

  § 5

  § 6

  § 7

  § 8

  § 9

  § 10

  § 11

  § 12

  § 13

  § 14

  § 15

  § 16

  § 17

  § 18

  § 19

  § 20

  § 21

  § 22

  § 23

  § 24

  § 25

  § 26

  § 27

  § 28

  § 29

  § 30

  § 31

  § 32

  § 33

  § 34

  § 35

  § 36

  § 37

  § 38

  § 39

  § 40

  § 41

  § 42

  § 43

  § 44

  § 45

  § 46

  § 47

  § 48

  § 49

  § 50

  § 51

  § 52

  § 53

  § 54

  § 55

  § 56

  § 57

  § 58

  § 59

  § 60

  § 61

  § 62

  § 63

  § 64

  § 65

  § 66

  § 67

  § 68

  § 69

  § 70

  § 71

  § 72

  § 73

  § 74

  § 75

  § 76

  § 77

  § 78

  § 79

  § 80

  § 81

  § 82

  § 83

  § 84

  § 85

  § 86

  § 87

  § 88

  § 89

  § 90

  § 91

  § 92

  § 93

  § 94

  § 95

  § 96

  § 97

  § 98

  § 99

  § 100

  § 101

  § 102

  § 103

  § 104

  § 105

  § 106

  § 107

  § 108

  § 109

  § 110

  § 111

  § 112

  § 113

  § 114

  § 115

  § 116

  § 117

  § 118

  § 119

  § 120

  § 121

  § 122

  § 123

  § 124

  § 125

  § 126

  § 127

  § 128

  Epilogue

  Prologue

  DECEMBER 1962

  NEW YORK

  Not once had it occurred to her to think of him as the kind of man who would bring down a government and close off an era. But at that time – in those days – to whom had it occurred? If she had thought about it, then, of course, he was no revolutionary – he was a sybarite. She knew revolutionaries. Short men, serious men, men who marked their seriousness physically by being bald or mustachioed, or both. She knew. She’d been introduced to Lenin before she was ten years old – in much the same way the devout took their children to be blessed by the Pope. She’d been blessed by Lenin. Fat lot of good it did her.

  He was heading for her now. Picking his way through this well-heeled Park Avenue party crowd, intent on her, smiling, charming, exchanging the odd wor
d, the odder kiss, with half a dozen socialites en route to her.

  ‘Signora Troy!’

  Always addressed her in Italian.

  ‘Bella, bella.’

  Then he kissed her.

  ‘Dr Fitzpatrick. What brings you back so soon?’

  He’d been over in August, or was it July?

  ‘The war, m’dear. The war. Had to see if the pavements of New York had cracked or its buildings crumbled.’

  ‘What war?’

  ‘Cuba.’

  ‘You mean October? You call that a war?’

  ‘Missiles piling up among the sugar cane, battleships squaring off in the Atlantic, half England in tears because the world is about to end before they’ve even lost their virginity. What would you call it?’

  ‘I’d call it diplomacy. I’d call it politics.’

  ‘Well you know what Churchill said about politics and war.’

  ‘War is politics by other means, and I think it was Thucydides.’

  ‘I meant the other way around. Politics is war by other means.’

  ‘No, that we call brinkmanship.’

  ‘Can I get you another drink?’

  When he got back with her Martini, she’d make damn sure they changed the subject. She’d all but ignored Cuba. It could not scare her. The panic that had seemed to grip everyone she knew had passed her by. She’d spent her whole life trapped between the USA and the USSR. Bound to get her one day.

  ‘What really brings you here?’

  ‘Can you keep a secret?’

  ‘Absolutely not.’

  ‘Work.’

  ‘Work?’

  ‘I treated the American ambassador in Harley Street last spring. He was kind enough to recommend me to the President.’

  ‘Jack Kennedy’s flying in doctors from England?’

  ‘I’d keep it quiet. It’s hardly a vote-winner, is it?’

  ‘Is he that ill?’

  ‘Addison’s is very wearing. In that sense it’s deadly. If he wins next November don’t bank on there not being a President Johnson by 1966 or thereabouts.’

  Now, that did scare her.

  ‘You know,’ Fitzpatrick said, ‘we took it very seriously in England.’

  ‘We back on Cuba?’

  ‘We’re sort of in the middle. I don’t just mean geographically. We none of us, none of the English, think of the Russians as bogeymen. I know some of the London Russians. Perfectly decent people.’

  So did she. She’d married one.

  ‘I have a friend works at the embassy. Thoroughly decent chap. Matter of fact I tried telling the powers that be that the Russians are human just like you or I. I wrote to one of the rising lights of the Labour Party to say as much during the Missile Crisis. If I can talk to the Russians, why can’t they?’

  She could scarcely keep the incredulity out of her voice. ‘You didn’t write to my brother-in-law?’

  ‘What? To Rod Troy? Good Lord, no. Rod’s not rising, he’s risen. He’s got as far as he’ll ever get while Gaitskell’s still alive. No, I wrote to Harold Wilson. He might be Prime Minister in nine or ten years’ time. Just wanted to drop the thought.’

  ‘Did he catch it?’

  Fitzpatrick shrugged.

  ‘Politicians,’ he said simply.

  Half an hour later she found herself on the front steps of the building watching packed cabs flash by – up and down Park Avenue. Fitzpatrick followed only minutes later, turning up his collar against the cold, looking up at the rich cobalt blue of a cloudless New York night sky.

  ‘Share a cab?’ she said, hoping he would dash out into the throng and find the last free cab in the city. He pointed down the street towards Grand Central.

  ‘I’m at the Waldorf,’ he said. ‘It’s only a short walk. Look, I’m in town for a couple of days. Why don’t you give me a call?’

  ‘Sure,’ she said. ‘Sure.’

  He walked off down Park Avenue. She looked again for the elusive yellow cab. Then a voice behind her, calling her name.

  ‘Clarissa. Clarissa.’

  She usually had to remind herself that this meant her. She’d added the C years ago as the simplest way of changing her name – Tosca by marriage to Troy, Larissa to Clarissa, a name she’d found on a bogus passport she’d used years ago – but it still sounded odd on anyone else’s lips.

  A tall young man in a black cashmere overcoat was coming down the steps towards her. It was Norman Somestein – Feinstein or Weinstein, one of the steins – one of the London publishers she worked for from time to time.

  ‘Share a cab?’ he said, exactly as she had done to Fitzpatrick. ‘I’ve a room at the Ansonia.’

  ‘Sure. I’ll get out the other side of the park, then you can take it on to Broadway.’

  Feinstein-Weinstein had better luck than she had had. He flagged down a checker cab and told the driver to take them to 72nd and Central Park West.

  Seated in the back, he said, ‘I didn’t know you knew Fitzpatrick.’

  ‘We ain’t exactly bosom buddies . . . but he comes over from England a lot . . . and we always seem to be at the same parties. Asks me to look him up if I visit London. But I ain’t been since 1960, so I haven’t. Maybe next time.’

  ‘I wouldn’t if I were you,’ said Feinstein-Weinstein. ‘He’s trouble.’

  ‘What kind of trouble? I mean. He’s very well regarded here. Did you know he’s here to see if he can prescribe for Jack Kennedy’s problem?’

  ‘Which one – his bad back, his roving cock or his Addison’s disease?’

  ‘The last – Fitz is some kind of expert in homeopathy.’

  ‘I’m sure he is – but this is America. The English aren’t so tolerant.’

  ‘Of what?’

  Feinstein-Weinstein had to think for a second. And when he spoke his tone had changed. He was spinning out something far less tangible.

  ‘Fitz mixes it. Mixes everything. Class and race, sex and politics, perfume and passion, you name it. He’s a mixer.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘This time he’s concocted too rich a blend. It’s volatile. It’ll blow up in his face. There’ll be blood on the streets, mark my words.’

  ‘Blood on the streets?’

  She assumed this was just an image, nothing more. Tears before bedtime.

  ‘And’, he added, ‘the English can be so unforgiving of a good scandal.’

  ‘Y’know. I think that’s kind of why I left them.’

  Two days later she phoned the Waldorf.

  ‘Ah,’ said Fitzpatrick, ‘I thought you’d given me up. I’m leaving for the airport in an hour.’

  ‘I just wanted to ask. Do you ever see my husband?’

  ‘Time to time – perhaps three or four occasions a year. I usually manage to contrive at least one. Freddie’s not the most sociable of beasts at the best of times.’

  ‘Could you give him a letter from me?’

  ‘Of course, but you might find the US mail quicker, or a telegramme perhaps?’

  ‘No – seems so impersonal – and he hates telegrammes . . . but a note you could deliver personally . . .’

  ‘Fine. I understand. Now why don’t you hop in a cab. We can have one last drinkie before I dash to Idlewild.’

  JANUARY 1963

  ENGLAND

  § 1

  When the snow lay round about. Deep. And crisp. And even. England stopped.

  First the roads, from the fledgling six-lane autobahns, known as ‘motorways’ – a word used as evocatively as ‘international’ or ‘continental’ – to the winding, high-hedged lanes of Hertfordshire, disappeared under drifting snow. Then, the telephone lines, heavy with the weight of ice, snapped. Then the electricity supply began to flicker – now you see it now you don’t. And lastly, huffing and puffing behind iron snow ploughs as old as the century and more, the railways ground to a halt at frozen points and blocked tunnels.

  It was the worst winter in living memory, and when and where did memory not live? It squa
tted where you did not expect it. And where you did. Not-so-old codgers would compare the winter of 1963, favourably or not, to that of 1947. Old codgers, ancient codgers, codgers with no calendar right even to be living at all, would trounce opinion with a masterly, ‘’T’ain’t nothin’ compared to 1895.’

  Rod Troy, Home Affairs spokesman in Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition, a Labour MP since the landslide of 1945, had reason to be grateful to his father, the late Alexei Troy. When refitting the stately Hertfordshire pile he had bought in 1910, as a final refuge after five years a wandering exile from Imperial Russia, he had installed electricity and the telephone – the first in the village – and omitted to remove the gas lamps. Gas was a hard one to stop. It wouldn’t freeze and it had no wires to snap. So it was that, in the middle of a blanketed white January Rod found himself cut off in Mimram House, marooned in snow, stranded in a post-Christmas limboland, bereft of wife and children, hunched over a traditional English pastime, by the romantic glow of gaslight, facing a short, dark, irritating alien he ruefully acknowledged as his younger brother Frederick.

  ‘How can you?’ he yelled. ‘How can anyone cheat at Monopoly?’

  ‘That’s what it’s for,’ Troy replied. ‘If you can’t cheat, I can’t see the point in playing.’

  ‘Grow up, Freddie. For God’s sake grow up. That’s just the sort of attitude you had as a child.’

  ‘It’s a childish game, Rod.’

  ‘It’s about rules and trust and codes of conduct. All games are!’

  Rod should have known better. Such argument had never cut mustard with Troy when they were children and in middle age it was inviting the pragmatic scorn he seemed to store up in spades.

  ‘No it’s not, it’s about which bugger can be the first to stick a hotel on Park Lane.’

  Rod swept the board to the floor. ‘Sod you then!’ And walked out.

  Troy passed an hour in his study, staring at the unchanging landscape, the monotony of white. He put John Coltrane’s ‘Giant Steps’ on the gramophone, but was not at all sure that he was not kidding himself that he had a taste for the music, and he was damn sure it didn’t go with England in January. Did Delius write no Winterreise? Had Elgar left no Seasons?

  It occurred to him that he should go and look for Rod before Rod found him. He would only want to apologise and Troy could not bear his apologies. It seemed wise to head him off at the pass. They might, after all, have to spend days cooped up like this, and while the house was big enough to lose a small army within, they would inevitably end up together and if Monopoly brought them to grief, God help them when Troy started to cheat at pontoon.