“And her great-grandmother was a statistician?”
“No, she was a code-breaker. And you need statistics to break codes.”
31. SIGNAL FLARE
“A pleasure to meet you, darling,” said Gerry, taking Opal’s tiny hand in his two enormous ones. “I knew your gran and she was a lovely girl. Really lovely. What happened to her was terrible, just terrible.” I was a little alarmed to see that there were tears gleaming in his rheumy old eyes.
There were suddenly tears in Opal’s eyes, too. “Thank you, sir,” she said. “It’s so nice to meet someone who met her, who remembers her.”
“Remember her? I could never forget her. Have a seat.” He gestured towards the white plastic table and chairs in a flag-stoned corner of the garden. It was a warm, glorious spring day and I was glad we were sitting outside.
Since I’d been buried alive, I’d acquired a new appreciation for fresh air.
We all sat down and looked around at the garden. It was quite a garden. There was sensibly little lawn, mostly just narrow strips of grass for access between the flower beds. We were basically sitting among flowers. “It’s a lovely place you’ve got here,” said Opal. I could see that Nevada was a little annoyed that she was doing all the talking, but the teenager had clearly established a rapport with our host and Nevada wasn’t about to interfere.
“It’s not bad, not bad,” allowed Gerry Wuggins, looking around.
“I really like the cowboy theme you’ve got going on.”
“Southwestern, love, it’s called Southwestern. Or ranch style.”
Nevada rather pointedly waited for Opal to stop talking so we could get down to business. There was still an undercurrent of hostility among us, between Nevada and Opal and, to a lesser extent, between Opal and myself. Tinkler seemed quite oblivious to it, and indeed to the beautiful day around us. Butterflies were dancing above the flower beds. But Tinkler looked bored.
Gerry got down to business.
“It was terrible what happened to your gran,” he said again. “But we never believed it was Johnny Thomas what done it.”
“I don’t believe it was either,” said Opal. Gerry’s eyes widened.
I said, “In fact, we have an idea of who it really was.” Gerry stared at me, moist eyes wide with surprise.
“You know who the killer was?”
“We think so,” I said.
“And it definitely wasn’t Johnny?”
“No, it wasn’t.”
He sighed and leaned back, as if a great weight had been lifted off his shoulders after all these years. Then he laughed a strange, bitter little laugh. Shrugging, he said, “I don’t suppose it matters any more, though, does it? I mean, what with it being over half a century ago now and with poor Johnny being dead all that time.”
Hanged for something he didn’t do, I thought.
“It matters a great deal,” I said.
“We know who the killer is,” said Tinkler smugly. “By the way, when is lunch?”
“Soon, mate,” said Gerry.
“More importantly,” I said, “we know why the killer did it.”
“Why he killed my great-grandmother,” said Opal.
Gerry shook his head. “Why would anyone want to kill that lovely girl? Her face used to light up when we played. You could always spot her in the audience. She loved our music. What was her favourite number?” He wrinkled his forehead. “What was that now?”
“You’re right,” said Opal. “She loved swing music. And she thought your band was the best.”
“We were, darling. We were the best.” He frowned and shook his head, an old man trying to remember. “What was that one she was always asking us to play?” His eyes were on other days. Gillian Gadon lived again, in his mind.
“Her favourite piece of music?”
“Yes.”
“By the Flare Path Orchestra?”
“Yes, love. Who else?”
“It was called ‘Cookies’,” said Opal. “I came across that in my research. She mentions it in a letter.”
Gerry snapped his fingers. “‘Cookies’! That’s it. That was her favourite tune. And do you know what the name means?”
“Not a sweet biscuit-like confection?” said Tinkler hopefully.
“No, mate. It was a 4,000-pound bomb.”
“Four thousand?” said Nevada.
“Yes, dear. We used to call them cookies. No one can say we didn’t have a sense of humour.”
“Four thousand pounds? Of high explosive?”
“Yeah, but don’t worry, we didn’t drop many on the enemy. They were ruddy great useless things. They just weighed the plane down. The idea was to dump them in the ocean as soon as you could after take-off—so you could gain some decent altitude and avoid the bloody night fighters. But high command got wind of it, us dumping the bombs. Somebody told them I suppose, somebody who went to the right schools and learned to do the proper thing. And after that the bastards went to diabolical lengths to stop us wasting their precious cookies. The buggers rewired the bomb release circuits so that the photoflash system would go off whenever we dumped one.”
There was silence in the garden for a moment. “Oh look, a squirrel,” said Tinkler. A small squirrel hopped across the lawn, passing near our table. It didn’t seem at all alarmed at our presence. “He’s probably on his way to lunch,” suggested Tinkler.
“That was the reason it all happened,” I said. “Because Opal’s great-grandmother loved swing music. Because she loved your band.” That’s why she got killed, I thought.
Opal nodded. “That’s why she became interested in the puzzle in the first place.”
“What puzzle?” said Gerry.
“My great-grandmother was a code-breaker. A junior code-breaker. A code-breaker’s assistant. After all, she was just a woman. She worked at Bletchley Park. You have heard of Bletchley Park?”
“Of course I have. Enigma and all that. She was one of their mob?”
“Yes. A cryptographer. She was always good at crossword puzzles, number puzzles—she used to call them ‘brainteasers’—all that sort of thing. So they took her on. Of course she was basically just a secretary at first, but then they realised how smart and talented she was.” Opal positively glowed with pride. “When they realised her abilities, they moved her into one of the huts where the real work was being done.”
“But it wasn’t all work,” I said. “Even during the war people had to take a break, even if it was only listening to the radio at night.”
“That’s right,” said Opal. “They called it the wireless. And my great-grandmother never missed a broadcast by the Flare Path Orchestra. That’s why she began to notice some strange things.”
Gerry’s big grey eyebrows angled up. “Things?”
“Patterns. In the music. Music and cryptography were her two passions. And a puzzle that combined them both was irresistible.”
Nevada leaned over and casually whispered in my ear, “Another sentence from her thesis.”
“Dissertation,” I murmured.
“Dissertation. Whatever.”
“The only problem,” said Opal, “was that no one would listen to her. No one believed she was on to something. So she set out to investigate it herself. She attended live concerts by the Flare Path Orchestra and met the men who were playing the music. She knew that one of them would have the answer.”
Gerry suddenly stood up. I realised he was looking down at the far end of the garden, where the driveway snaked up among trees from the front gate. A figure was standing there. A small, suntanned man in a short-sleeved shirt. His stance, even at this remove, was aggressive and cocky. It was Danny Overland. He paused and stared at us, ostentatiously shading his eyes with his hands.
“Come on, then,” shouted Gerry. “You took bloody long enough to get here.”
Overland shouted back, “You shouldn’t live so far out in the fucking sticks, should you?” He ambled from the drive, among the flower beds, to join us.
He pumped my hand energetically. “Sorry I’m so late. I got lost. That happens when you leave the city and venture into the outback.” Then he turned to Gerry, and the two old men embraced and grinned at each other. Overland looked around at the extensive gardens, the rambling ranch-style house. “You’ve done all right for yourself, Airman Wuggins.”
Gerry sighed contentedly, surveying his domain. “Not too shabby. Not too shabby at all.” He pushed out a chair, and Danny Overland sat down at the table with us.
“You drove down on your own?” said Nevada.
Overland nodded. “Jenny is out of action. Sick.” We all made sympathetic noises, even Tinkler, who’d never met her.
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“Yeah, no, very sick. Food poisoning. Really serious. They say she’s only still alive because she’s young and strong.” Overland grimaced. “If it had been me I’d be dead. And it could have been me.”
“Don’t be such a miserable old bugger,” said Gerry. “Can I get you a beer?”
Overland looked painfully conflicted for a moment but finally shook his head. “Best not.”
Gerry nodded, full of understanding. “Because you’re driving.”
“Not just driving. Conducting. You won’t have forgotten it’s my concert tonight.” He nodded at us. “I know they’ve got tickets. You gave them yours.”
“Uh, well,” said Gerry Wuggins, “you see, me and the missus…”
“Never mind explaining. You gave them your fucking tickets. Gave them away. Didn’t even sell them. Well, here are two more.” Overland slapped them on the table. “Now, I expect you to be there tonight. With the missus. No excuses. And here’s two for you.” He took out two more and gave them to Opal and Tinkler. Ticket sales obviously weren’t too brisk.
“Thank you,” said Opal, taking them.
“I can’t stay long,” said Overland. But he leaned back in the chair and smiled up at the sky, the sun on his face, like a man settling in for an extended stay. “I’ve got to get back early. It’s total chaos. Like I said, Jenny is out of action. I’ll have to leave soon.”
If that was the case, I thought I’d better move things along. “Opal was just telling us about her great-grandmother at Bletchley Park discovering that there was some kind of code being sent out in your broadcasts with the band.”
“Our broadcasts with the band? Our radio broadcasts?”
“Yes.”
Overland looked at me. His eyes gave nothing away. “The Flare Path Orchestra? Some kind of code?”
Gerry chuckled. “Yeah. They think we were sending messages to the enemy.”
“Not knowingly,” I said. “Only one person knew about it.”
“Two, if you count my great-grandmother,” said Opal.
“It’s ridiculous, though, isn’t it?” said Gerry.
“Actually embedded in the music?” said Danny Overland. “The message actually in the music?”
“Yes.”
“In existing tunes?” said Overland, giving me a hard stare. “Including well-known tunes?”
“Yes.”
“You’re not taking this seriously, are you?” said Gerry.
Overland looked at me. “The Flare Path Orchestra was like Glenn Miller’s outfit. It was an arranger’s band. If you wanted to plant codes in the music, you’d have to do it through the arrangers.”
“Exactly,” I said. “If Lucky Honeyland wanted to send a message, he had to get the arranger to make the necessary changes.”
“Lucky?” said Gerry. “Colonel Honeyland? You must be joking.”
“Without realising what they were doing, of course,” I said. “The arrangers were completely innocent.”
Danny Overland nodded thoughtfully. “At least that would explain why Lucky always insisted on interfering with my arrangements. And everybody else’s. We all thought he fancied himself as some kind of master orchestrator, which was a bit of a tragedy because he couldn’t tell a baritone sax from a banjo on his best day on earth…” He trailed off, thinking. “But it would also explain something else,” he said slowly. “Why he always insisted on adding such jarringly inappropriate instruments.” He looked at me. “Because it wasn’t the musical message he was interested in.”
“No,” I said. “He was more interested in the message being sent to his Nazi masters.” I’d already begun to formulate a very negative view of old Lucky.
“You’re not taking this seriously, are you?” said Gerry. “You can’t believe any of it. Lucky sending messages to the Germans?”
“More than that,” I said. “He killed Opal’s great-grandmother. He was the one who strangled her.” The Silk Stockings Murder, solved at last.
“Oh, come on, now.”
“Let me ask you something, Gerry,” I said. “Do you remember Lucky riding around the country at night on his motorbike?”
“Yeah.”
“Do you think he could have got to Kingsdown and back in the course of a night?”
Gerry paused to consider this. “Yeah,” he said finally. “Sure. It would have been a long run, but Bomber Harris had got him a special pass so he could use any road he wanted, and he always had priority. He was probably the fastest thing on wheels in England. But so what?”
“Let me ask you something else. Did he wear goggles when he was riding the bike?”
“Of course he did. So what? Why would he have killed that girl?” He looked at Opal. “Her poor gran?”
“He must have got wind that she’d found him out,” I said, “found out that he was a traitor and a Nazi spy. And she was on the verge of exposing him.”
“How?”
“From Johnny Thomas.”
Danny Overland nodded. “Johnny was the weakest of us arrangers. He wouldn’t stand up for himself. He would always do exactly what Lucky wanted him to. If someone wanted to find out what Lucky was up to—”
“Lucky wasn’t up to anything. He wasn’t a Nazi spy!”
“If anybody wanted to find out,” said Danny Overland gently, “Johnny would have been the man to talk to. Because he did most of his so-called musical work through Johnny.”
“That was why my great-grandmother got to know him,” said Opal. “That’s why she was with him.”
“She was pumping him,” said Tinkler, “for information, among other things.” And she’d ended up dead in his bed.
Gerry shook his head stubbornly. “You don’t really think Lucky was the Silk Stockings killer? And that he let poor old Johnny go to the gallows for it?”
“It would have been a neat way of silencing everyone who might be in a position to implicate him,” I said. “Two for the price of one.”
“But he went down there to be with that boy in his cell, right up to the minute they took him away to be hanged.”
“Maybe he had a guilty conscience,” said Nevada.
“Or he wanted to make sure Johnny Thomas didn’t tell anyone anything he shouldn’t,” I said. “Keeping an eye on him right up to the end. Or maybe he was just gloating.”
“Oh, come off it now,” said Gerry. “Lucky might have been a stuck-up toffee-nosed bastard, but he wasn’t a sodding spy, and he certainly wasn’t a bleeding cold-blooded murderer.”
None of us would meet his eye.
Danny Overland took out a cigarette, looked at it, and then carefully put it back in the pack. He smiled at us. “Trying to cut down. My official fan club has asked me to stop.”
“The man from dope,” I said.
“Don’t remind me,” said Nevada.
Overland squinted at me. “If Lucky was sending messages to the Germans, how did they get messages back to him?”
“In the same way, I imagine,” I said.
“In musical broadcasts?”
“Why not?” I said. “I seem to recall he was fond of listening to German broadcasts of a certain Berlin swing band.”
Gerry Wu
ggins stared at me. “That’s right. He did.”
Overland was nodding too. “He got a bollocking when someone found out, but the big man himself, Bomber Harris, intervened on his behalf.”
“And so Lucky was allowed to go on listening to the German broadcasts?” I said.
Danny Overland and Gerry looked at each other. “Yeah,” said Gerry. “As it happens, he was.”
Overland shifted his chair closer to his old friend. “Gerry,” he said, “do you remember when Lucky went after those records?”
“By the Berlin band? Yeah, I remember. We all had a good laugh about it at the time. He went all the way to Germany to get them, didn’t he? Some rare records by some Huns. We just thought he was a jazz nut.”
“I know one of those,” said Nevada, looking at me.
“That’s right,” said Overland. “Our boys were sweeping into Berchtesgaden, ransacking Göring’s house, taking all the plunder he’d accumulated during the war. Looting Nazi loot.”
“Re-looting,” said Tinkler. “It’s like re-gifting.”
“People were taking silverware, fine wine, paintings and tapestries. And all good old Lucky wanted was those records by the Berlin jazz men.”
“These would have been transcription discs?” I said. “Of radio broadcasts.”
“That’s right.”
“So they would have been unique. They would have been the only copies.”
“Right again.”
“I wonder what happened to them?” I said.
Danny Overland looked at Gerry. “We know what happened to them, don’t we?”
Gerry nodded. “Some poor bastard dropped them and broke them. Delivering them to our airfield. Swore he didn’t know what happened to them. Said he’d been ever so careful. Our boys almost beat him up.” He looked at me. “Because poor old Lucky had lost his beloved records.”
I remembered the story Gresford-Jones had told us. I said, “Curiously enough, the same thing happened to the transcription recordings of the Flare Path Orchestra that had been stored at High Wycombe. It seems Lucky wasn’t very lucky where his records were concerned.”
“It’s all very convenient,” said Nevada. “All of the evidence getting destroyed like that.”
“But he flew with us!” said Gerry.
Victory Disc Page 30
