“I doubt he was taking any chances,” I said. “I’ve checked the dates of the missions he flew.” They were all on an RAF memorial website. “And I correlated them with the dates of broadcasts by the Flare Path Orchestra.”
“Actually, I correlated them for him,” said Tinkler. “It was a fascinating database merge. I can tell you all about it over lunch.”
Danny Overland was looking at me. “And…?”
“And he always flew on a mission the night after a broadcast.”
“So what?” said Gerry.
“Very unlikely, statistically speaking,” said Tinkler.
“We were always broadcasting. And always flying bloody bombing missions.”
“Not Colonel Honeyland,” I said. “He flew very few missions. And always the night after he’d made a broadcast with the band.”
“You think he was sending a message?” said Overland. I nodded.
“What message?” said Gerry.
“‘I’m coming tomorrow, don’t shoot me down.’” I looked at Gerry. “You said yourself he was like your good luck charm. When he flew a mission with you, you knew you’d all come back safely.”
“But not that one time,” Gerry said. “Not the time we got shot to pieces by the Junkers.”
“No, not that one time,” I said. “Of course, I checked that date, too.” I looked at Danny Overland. “It was the night after a broadcast, of course. And it’s a broadcast you might remember.” Overland began nodding vigorously. He was way ahead of me.
“The night I refused to make Lucky’s changes,” he said.
“That’s right,” I said. “When you performed the tune called ‘Whitebait’. You told us Lucky was called away to High Wycombe during the session.”
“That’s right, summoned to see Bomber Harris.”
“So he wasn’t there to supervise the broadcast.”
Danny Overland nodded thoughtfully. “And while the cat was away, the mice did play. I was able to change the orchestration. I removed the steaming heap of shit he’d added.”
“And when you did that,” said Nevada, “you removed his message.”
I studied Overland. “I guess he was upset when he heard it,” I said.
“Yeah, he hit the fucking roof. I remember now. He was at Springfield House with Bomber Harris, receiving the benefit of the commander’s wisdom. And of course they knew what time the band was being broadcast, so they switched on the radio and had a listen.” Overland grinned savagely. “It was a ritual. Apparently Harris always listened, presumably smoking a pipe and tapping his toes in a restrained manly manner.”
He took out a cigarette. “And all the while in the music were the coded messages Lucky was transmitting to the enemy.” He lit the cigarette.
“But not that time,” I said.
Danny Overland breathed smoke. “No, not that time. And when he found out, he went fucking spare. Because he’d committed to flying a mission the following night. He couldn’t back down.”
“And now he had to face the same risks as the rest of you.”
Gerry was looking very pale. “Oh my god,” he said.
“What’s the matter?”
“The first time you came here, the night of the wedding, remember? I told you all about that mission, us getting shot to bits by the night fighter, Lucky flying home on one engine, how he won the DFC… But there was something I didn’t tell you.”
Gerry sighed and shifted uneasily in his chair, as though it had suddenly grown uncomfortably constraining. “I stopped myself telling you. Because it was top secret. Seems a bit silly doesn’t it, worrying about something being a secret all these years later? But I had never told nobody, and I suppose it was a hard habit to break.”
“Tell us now,” I said.
“Well, like I said, we were being shot to bits by the Ju 88C. It looked like we were done for. Then Lucky opened this satchel he had brought with him and took out this flare. Special emergency flare, he said. We dropped it out of the bomb doors.”
Gerry paused, staring out not at the sunny garden around him but some unimaginable inner landscape, a night of terror in the skies over Germany more than half a century ago. “And the flare went off. It was the strangest colour. Sort of a pale purple. Like lilac or lavender. I’d never seen one like it before. And as soon as the flare lit up, the Junker broke off the attack.”
He came back from that night over war-torn Europe and was looking at us again. “Lucky told us the flare was some special new device that was being developed. Something that interfered with the instruments of the enemy planes. It was a prototype. Top secret.” He sighed. “That’s what he said it was.” He looked at me, blinking sadly. “But there never was a top secret device like that, was there?”
“No,” I said. “It was a signal flare to tell the German fighters that they were attacking one of their own. And to desist immediately.”
Gerry sighed again. “I always wondered why we weren’t all issued those purple flares.” He shook his head. “I also wondered, if it interfered with the German’s instruments, why it didn’t also interfere with ours.”
Danny Overland puffed fiercely on his cigarette, then exhaled smoke. “And all because I monkeyed with that broadcast.” He glanced at Gerry. “Sorry, mate.”
“And I don’t think he was just telling them when he was flying a mission,” I said. “There were far too many messages for that. I also believe he was providing vital information to try and help his masters win the war.”
Gerry looked at me. “Like what?”
“Like warning them of missions being sent to bomb important targets. I suspect he was busy at Bomber Command, too, using his influence to make sure that most of the targets chosen were as unimportant as possible.”
“Encouraging Harris to bomb civilians,” said Overland.
“Exactly. Doing everything he could to try and help Germany win the war.”
Gerry glared at me. “Well, he didn’t manage it, did he?”
“No, he didn’t,” I said. “But he was still a very valuable asset to them. Too valuable for the Nazis to risk losing. So they had a contingency plan in place, in case he was in danger. Hence the purple flare.”
Tinkler rubbed his hands. “Well, that’s settled,” he said. “Colonel Honeyland was a treacherous code-sending Nazi spy and also the Silk Stockings murderer. Now how about lunch?” A look from Nevada and he quickly fell silent.
“But that’s just the start of it,” I said.
Danny Overland frowned through cigarette smoke. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, it’s not over. People are still being killed.” Including, almost, me.
“Who?” demanded Overland. “What people?”
“There was a sound engineer who ran a studio in Camberwell Green. He was gunned down on the street.”
“What does a sound engineer in Camberwell Green have to do with anything?”
“He was making digital transfers of your records,” I said, “and he discovered they contained a code. He was shot dead in front of his studio. The police think it was a gang shooting, but I think that was just a convenient cover for the real killers.”
Overland tapped ash off his cigarette. “And who are the real killers?”
“People working for Joan Honeyland.”
“Oh come on now,” said Gerry.
I nodded. “She’s the one who hired us. She set the whole thing in motion. She wanted us to find the records so she could suppress them. But it backfired. The recording engineer noticed something.” I remembered the books about statistics that had lined the wall of his studio. “He seemed to be taking forever to do the transfers. There was a very good reason for that. He was holding onto the records, stalling for time, until he had enough samples to prove his theory. When I got the last batch of records from Gerry here, he had enough. And once he knew what he had, I suspect he was going to blackmail her.”
“Joan Honeyland? Lucky’s daughter?”
“Yes. So she had
him killed.”
“She did what?” said Gerry.
“Why would she be willing to do that?” said Danny Overland. “Just to protect the reputation of her old man?”
“More than his reputation,” I said. “His children’s books are worth millions. Providing she can sell them to the right media giant. And evidence of murder, treachery and rampant anti-Semitism would tend to dramatically reduce their market value.”
“Wait a minute,” said Tinkler. “So you’re saying Joan Honeyland killed the recording studio guy?”
“She arranged to have him killed.”
“It still doesn’t make any sense,” he said. “She has him killed and then she hires you to go in and steal back the records from his studio.”
“Yes,” said Nevada. “What doesn’t make any sense about it?”
“Well, if she’s going to hire someone to kill him, why not just get them to steal back the records as well?”
“Would you trust a hired goon with something as fragile as an antique disc of shellac?” I could see I’d scored a point with him. “Besides, Miss Honeyland knew she could depend on us to return the records to her. I don’t think she could trust the goons. In fact, I think there was serious conflict between her and the goons.”
Danny Overland was looking at me. “What sort of serious conflict?”
I said, “Judging by the fact that they fired a shot through Miss Honeyland’s window…”
“You think that was them?” said Tinkler.
I nodded. “They also ran her car off the road. Combined with the fact that they were holding onto one of her father’s records, which she must have wanted for herself, I get the picture of two parties who have shared interests, and occasionally shared actions, but who don’t trust each other and don’t like each other.”
“What shared interests?”
“Making a shit-load of money out of Lucky Honeyland’s children’s books,” said Nevada.
“You think the Nazis want a piece of that action?” said Tinkler.
I nodded. “I think it would buy a lot of guns.”
Overland considered all this. Finally he breathed out smoke, then waved his hand in the air to clear it away. He grinned at me. “Ah, you’re full of it,” he said. “You almost had me going for a minute there. But I don’t believe it.”
“What don’t you believe?”
Danny Overland shook his head. “Joan Honeyland isn’t a murderer.”
“What makes you sure of that?”
“If she’s so worried about those recordings, why did she make me a copy? I never liked her old man. And in all modesty, nobody in the world knows more about arranging than I do. What if I’d noticed something on those recordings?”
“The disc she provided for you was write-protected,” I said. “You couldn’t make copies. And she asked for it back, didn’t she?”
“Yeah, and I’ve given it back to her. I gave it back the other day at lunch…” He stopped. He took the cigarette out of his mouth and looked at it as if he was surprised to see it there. Maybe he was. He was supposed to be quitting.
“Lunch…” He frowned. “She invited me out for lunch the other day. And I took Jenny with me. And Jenny got sick afterwards.” He paused, then looked at me. “But you see, we’ve had this running joke in restaurants, Jenny and me, that whatever she orders turns out to be shit and whatever I order is great. So that day we switched. Switched meals. We’d been talking about doing it, and we finally did it.”
“And Jenny ate the food that was intended for you.”
“Yes.”
“And she got sick.”
We all looked at each other.
“I think Joan Honeyland is tying up loose ends,” I said.
Danny Overland shook his head. “You can’t be sure. You don’t have any proof, mate. All we’ve really got is a case of food poisoning.”
I said, “There’s one way to find out.”
32. ROYAL FESTIVAL HALL
“This is nice,” said Nevada. “Why don’t we go out and hear live music more often?” It was a beautiful spring evening, warm but fresh, with the river wind blowing in on us as we navigated the modernist concrete blocks of the South Bank.
“Because it sounds just like my hi-fi system at home,” I said.
“Yes, true, but at home there is no ordering of drinks for the interval. I love ordering drinks for the interval. You just order them and then go in and enjoy the music and then you come back out for the interval and they’re there, the drinks, waiting for you. They have appeared, as if by magic.”
We made our way to the bar of the Royal Festival Hall and proceeded to order drinks for the interval—a lengthy procedure given Nevada’s close scrutiny of the wine list and subsequent suspicious questioning of the bar staff before coming to a decision. But eventually we chose, ordered and paid.
The warning bell went off, and we filed towards the auditorium for the performance.
The crowd was mostly older people and largely casually attired, so we stood out on at least two counts. Nevada was dressed to the nines in a black strapless evening gown, stockings and stilettos, and she’d carefully selected my own outfit—a Woodhouse suit bought at a Red Cross shop in Chiswick and an Armani shirt from Oxfam in Hammersmith. I’d been allowed to choose my own shoes, provided I shined them.
We had evidently ended up a little overdressed for the occasion, but there had been no alternative. Nevada had got the bit between her teeth as soon as she’d heard that Opal was planning to dress up for the concert. Personally, I was surprised that she and Tinkler were even going to use the tickets Danny had given them. I couldn’t imagine it was the kind of music that would appeal to either of them.
We glimpsed them behind us in the crowd as we filed into the auditorium. They’d arrived characteristically late. Tinkler waved to me happily. Opal was on his arm, and a fair man would have had to admit she did look quite ravishing. She was wearing some kind of jade green tie-dyed silk creation that appeared to be wrapped around her body in somewhat the manner of an Indian sari. There was no evidence of anything holding it together except for a few strategic folds and also, even at this distance, no evidence of any underwear lurking beneath it. She was causing quite a stir, and Tinkler looked uxoriously proud.
“Just look at the gaudy little fox,” said Nevada. “Doesn’t she look ridiculous?”
“What do I know about women’s fashions?”
“A transparent evasion.”
“That’s not all that’s transparent,” I said.
“You’re going to pay for that, chum. No drinks in the interval for you.”
It was cool inside the auditorium with the happy buzz of conversation you get when people are finding their seats before a concert. I liked the Royal Festival Hall. I liked its wide, open spaces and its natural wood. It had a tradition of jazz going right back to when the South Bank had been created.
Over the years I’d heard Nina Simone, Dewey Redman and Lalo Schifrin here.
It wasn’t jazz tonight, though, at least not immediately. The first half of the concert consisted of Danny Overland’s acclaimed light orchestral music, written in the 1940s and 1950s. The second half would see some jazz surface, including the big band material from the war.
We edged to our seats, easing past those already sitting down with the usual cheerful apologies, and past the occasional difficult bastards who wouldn’t stand up so you had to graze their knees to get by. As soon as we were seated, Nevada was craning around to see if she could spot Tinkler and Opal. They were at the back.
“Good grief,” said Nevada, “they’re all over each other. He can’t keep his hands off her. And vice versa. They’re kissing. They’re pawing. Thank god we’re not sitting beside them. She’ll probably give him a blow job during the concert.”
“At least it will keep him awake,” I said.
The music in the first half wouldn’t have been Tinkler’s cup of tea, and it wasn’t really mine either. Light orchestral wa
s what our ancestors had before easy listening was invented. I could admire the nimble playing and the witty orchestrations, but ultimately it left me cold.
The second half was what I was waiting for. Jazz. Swing. The Flare Path Orchestra.
“Look there,” said Nevada suddenly.
Along the wall to our left were the boxes where the well-heeled elite sat. In the one nearest the stage was Joan Honeyland. Beside her was a neatly dressed young man. It took me a moment to recognise Albert without his chauffeur’s uniform.
They waved at us.
We waved back.
Despite her threats, Nevada did let me have a drink in the interval, in fact she sent me to fetch them while she went out onto the embankment to meet the composer and conductor, who was busy furiously smoking. She was standing upwind of him when I arrived. It had grown dark and a night wind was rippling along the Thames. The giant art-deco alarm clock of the Shell Mex building glowed at us from the other side of the river.
I was carrying two glasses of wine.
“Nothing for me, mate?” Overland looked dapper in his formal black conductor’s outfit.
“I thought you weren’t drinking because it was the evening of a performance.”
“No drinking before. Lots of drinking halfway through.”
“Really?”
“After the interval you’ll notice a marked new level of energy from the brass section.” I offered to get him something from the bar, which was now crammed and heaving, but thankfully he shook his head. “So what did you think of the music?”
Nevada convincingly gushed with praise, but Danny Overland was looking steadily at me. “Thanks, darling, I’m really glad you liked it. But I sense your boyfriend here has some doubts.”
“Well, he’s just a terrible music snob. That’s his problem.”
“So, mate?” said Overland, looking at me.
“It’s just not really my kind of stuff.”
“You don’t like light orchestral music?”
“No, not really.”
“Why not?”
“It’s a slippery slope,” I said. “And waiting at the bottom is Mantovani.”
He laughed. “Mantovani had his moments, you know. Fucking brilliant use of strings. He got all that from his arranger Ronald Binge.” He turned away from us and stared out at the river for a moment. He took a final drag on his cigarette, stubbed it out and then put the spent stub back in the pack that went back into his pocket. His jacket must have smelled like an old ashtray.
Victory Disc Page 31
