Free Black Out by John Lawton

the money they get they spend monopolising the buttered scones of Olde England!’ The Arkansian smiled through the glass, easy grace letting good manners get the better of his temper. It was wasted on Kolankiewicz, who promptly turned his hand around and gave the man two fingers. Taking it for a Churchillian gesture, the American waved back with a Victory V. Kolankiewicz stomped off down the pavement. Troy felt he had witnessed some major national confrontation in miniature.

§ 14
    It was Thursday morning before Troy got back to the Yard. Kolankiewicz had not spoken to him for nearly three days. Wildeve was out, but there was a message on his desk – ‘Anna Pakenham called. Still can’t find files. We have more German refugees than sheep in these islands. JW.’
    Troy called Anna.
    ‘What was the verdict?’ she asked.
    ‘I didn’t wait to find out. Kolankiewicz’s evidence made me look like a fool.’
    ‘No, Troy, he’s the fool. He’s going to have to explain how a full dossier can just vanish. All I’ve got are my shorthand notes and I’m afraid they don’t make too much sense. I use a pencil, which can look rather grubby twelve months on, and I only learnt when we lost the regular girl to the ATS.’
    ‘The calibre of the bullet would help.’
    ‘Forty-five. Numbers always go down in plain English.’
    ‘Automatic?’
    ‘Can’t be sure. And before you ask the bullet was with the clothes and personal effects, such as they were, and they’ve gone too.’
    ‘Kolankiewicz didn’t mislay anything,’ said Troy. ‘Doesn’t this sound more like they’ve been stolen?’
    ‘I don’t know. We’ve been burgled once and I put that down to a moonshiner. All we lost were fifteen quarts of pure alcohol. There’s no value in the dossier on an unidentified man.’
    ‘Unless of course you want to be certain he stays that way.’

§ 15
    The weather broke. January had been unseasonably mild, February the aberrant frost, and now March seemed to offer the promise of an early spring and a wet one. At City HQ Troy sat in a dampbasement while the desk sergeant burrowed into the stacks for 1943’s file on an unknown man found dead on Tower beach, and watched the winds of March blow the rain in sheets down the dirty glass, thick as milk-bottles, set high up the wall at pavement level, while the snows of winter dissolved and ran in clanging streams down iron pipes en route to the Thames.
    He heard the heavy uneven step echoing down the stacks long before Sergeant Flint limped into sight.
    The man stopped by the table where Troy sat and set down a bundle of foolscap folders nearly a foot thick. He was breathing heavily and slumped into his chair sighing with relief.
    ‘You weren’t limping the last time we met,’ said Troy.
    ‘Bit o’shrapnel,’ the sergeant replied. ‘1941. Doctors said I’ll never walk right again. Afore the war o’course that would’ve been the end of bein’ a copper. But … things bein’ what they are.’
    He cut the stack in two like giant playing cards.
    ‘If you wouldn’t mind … I’ve narrowed it down, but I just couldn’t lay me hands right on it. Odd that, seein’ as ’ow it’s recent. Good job Mr Malnick is gone. Stickler for order he was. I let something slip he’d give me a rocket.’
    Troy was already tearing halfway through April, setting files aside at three times the speed the sergeant could muster.
    ‘Where did Mr Malnick transfer to?’ he asked.
    ‘It wasn’t a transfer. He got accepted for the RAF.’
    ‘What? At his age? He must be fifty. He was turned down by the RAF when I was here during the invasion of Poland.’
    ‘That wasn’t the first time neither. His wish was granted.’
    ‘What do you mean?’
    ‘I think someone pulled a string for him. He was out of the force with a speed that took everyone by surprise. I remember the Super commenting on it. He was a copper on Friday and a flight lieutenant on Monday.’
    ‘When was this?’
    ‘Straight