Read Old Flames for Free Online Page B

if I thought they’d have taken it. As it was I took it outside and I put a match to it. Good riddance, say
I. We have to keep up with the times, don’t you agree?’
    Troy did not agree. He was not at all sure what this much-used phrase meant. Cockerell gobbled more kedgeree—a surprising appetite for a man so thin—and did not seem to expect an
answer.
    ‘I’ve three shops,’ he went on. ‘In the North and Midlands. One in Derby, one in Alfreton and my HQ in Belper.’
    The precision of ‘North and Midlands’ struck Troy as oddly mechanical, somehow devoid of humanity. A place in which no one could really live. The stilted language of a contestant in
the regional finals of a ballroom dancing competition. Troy knew Derby. He had spent the best part of a week there hunting down a poisoner in 1951. The other two were merely names, although for
some reason Belper sounded vaguely familiar to him.
    ‘I import and export. The Contemporary look. Mainly Scandinavia, you know. That’s where the best of the new comes from nowadays. But I buy anywhere and I sell everywhere. All over
Europe.’
    Cockerell finished the last of his kedgeree, pressing his fork down on the last few grains of boiled rice. As if by magic, Mary appeared with the toast. One small silver rack for Troy, and one
small silver rack for Cockerell. The difference was that Troy’s toast was a uniform golden brown, while Cockerell’s was white on one side and black on the other. Troy would be damned
before he’d trade so much as a slice with this living monument to British boredom. Cockerell scarcely seemed to notice. He scraped away sturdily with his knife at a rock hard slab of
refrigerated butter and prattled on. Had Troy considered the attractions of wall-to-wall carpeting? The phrase meant nothing to Troy. Cockerell explained and even drew the swirls and curves of his
own favourite design on the back of an envelope for him.
    ‘There,’ he said proudly. ‘ Skaters. It’s all the rage. At least it will be. I’ve thirty rolls in the Belper shop.’
    ‘Tell me,’ Troy asked, finishing his toast and knowing he could duck out of any consequences. ‘What brings you to Portsmouth? Wall-to-wall ward room? Scandinavian-design
barnacles?’
    Cockerell was more than momentarily flummoxed. Troy had said so little, perhaps, that any question, however sarcastic, might stun him to silence. But it seemed more than that. He reddened a
little, looked down at his toast and marmalade, and then, shrugging, looked back at Troy, a faint smile on his thin lips, a lost look in his pale blue eyes.
    ‘Oh, you know, bit of this, bit of that …’
    It was a lie. As limp as Troy’s own. But if a voluble bore finally resorted to a lie that dribbled down into silence, Troy would at least be grateful for the silence. What matter if the
man was away from home, having, as English euphemism so tartly put it, his bit on the side?
    True to Troy’s definition of type, he pulled the glass ashtray towards him, pushed away his plate and took a packet of Senior Service from his pocket. The man positively reeked Rotary
Club. Troy wondered once more about the suede shoes.

§7
    Troy was late. He had dawdled. He checked his watch. It was a quarter to ten. A clear, crisp spring morning. The kind of April Troy thought presaged a good summer. The guard at
Her Majesty’s Dockyard Portsmouth—a place known throughout what remained of the Empire as Pompey—looked at Troy’s warrant card and scanned a list of names.
    ‘You’re not the last,’ he said. ‘Not quite. I’ve yet to see hide nor hair of Inspector Cobb.’ He turned, arm outstretched. ‘Second hut on your
left.’
    Troy followed where he pointed. He thrust open the door of a wooden hut, and found himself facing a loose squad of five bleary policemen. Four of them sat at a table, one of them
slumped forwards on his arms quite obviously fast asleep. Troy thought he recognised some of them. A young man, no