by Jim Kelly
A radio on the bar suddenly filled the room with the sound of the time pips: it was ten o’clock precisely.
The silence in the pub was church-like, as everyone braced for the worst. Brooke wondered whether Churchill’s broadcast of the previous week, in which he’d lauded the Spitfires and the Hurricanes, had hit the right note. It certainly sounded confident, assured. He’d listened to it in this very bar and in the silent beat after the final words a collective breath had been taken, before they’d all cheered.
The news broadcaster’s voice hit a similar upbeat note.
A man in the corner, filing a pipe, looked up at the radio.
‘The War Cabinet has just issued a short statement. Late last night upwards of one hundred bombers of the RAF conducted a successful raid on Berlin, dropping high explosives. The target was the German capital’s Tempelhof Airport. There were no British casualties …’
The cheer drowned the rest out. Brooke kept to his seat, wondering if it was wise for the RAF to bomb their capital, when the defence of their own was problematic. Grandcourt, seated too, nonetheless raised two small clenched fists beside his ears and grinned widely.
The cheers faded, but the radio was left on, playing a big band number, possibly in the hope of drowning out the chorus in the corner.
Despite the barroom clatter, Brooke’s ears registered a minute compression, a sense in which the air in the bar thickened slightly in those final seconds. The shell fell unseen through the night sky above the Kite, hurtling towards its point of impact. It was only in the final second that Brooke detected the high-pitched scream; a second in which he could think but not move, his blood still. Grandcourt had heard it too, possibly a beat before Brooke, and his mouth hung open, his pipe in his hand, his eyes lifted to the ceiling.
CHAPTER THREE
Brooke never remembered the moment of the blast itself. The first thing he could recall was that the windows of the Wellington Arms were gone, but there was no immediate sense that the outside had flooded into the bar, much more – it felt to him – the feeling of being inside had intensified, solidified even, pinning them down in their seats. The air itself was thick with debris, drifting slowly, dictated by some mysterious current. Like a stationary snowstorm it obscured all things, comprising particles of dust, of glass, of wood, of skin, of hair, and some strange thread-like substance somehow distilled from what had been present before the bomb. All this moved sluggishly across the bar, in mid-air. For a sickening moment Brooke felt that it was he who was drifting away, sliding past a reality that had been shattered. The sounds of the crowded bar had gone, leaving a distant dull bass soundtrack, made up of a thrum, which Brooke deduced was the diminishing echo of the explosion itself. And, belatedly, he could hear a distant air raid siren.
The most disturbing element of the scene in those first surreal moments after the impact was that some people who had been in the bar, particularly the man sitting on a stool by the door, had disappeared, while others, such as Grandcourt, were sitting where they had been and appeared untouched, except for the gradually accruing ash-white layer of dust. His friend’s face had a shocked blankness, while his eyes were full of fluid, his lips parted, his skin very tightly stretched over the bones beneath so that there was a real intimation, a disturbing one, that Brooke could discern the skull below.
Grandcourt was blinking slowly, and shaking slightly, but otherwise seemed uninjured.
While so much was intact – the bottle of mysterious liquid, for example, still stood on the table – there were several incongruous objects which had simply materialised: a window, carrying an etched image of a cricketer at the wicket, stood against the bar, the glass hardly cracked. A pair of curtains was wrapped round a light fitting over their heads.
The dull cotton wool of the soundscape parted for a second and he heard the rich heady swing of the big band on the radio, which still stood on the bar, although the barman had gone, as had all the bottles and glasses, and the tankards and cigarettes, which had been on the wooden shelves behind.
A man in a black uniform with ARP written on a tin helmet walked into the pub and looked around. Fresh-faced, he seemed oddly unimpressed by the scene of desolation. He said something, the sound muffled, and then – instantly – Brooke found himself outside the pub in the street, aware that time had jumped forward, although he was not in any way personally disorientated by the leap, because at precisely the same moment the real world of sound was back on, at full volume, and he was talking to a group of people, including the warden and a woman in a pink nightdress which was lightly sprayed with blood.
Several casualties lay on blankets in the street. All seemed to be alive, being comforted by strangers, and he recognised the barman. A fire engine stood in the middle of the street, from which a hose had been unfurled so that water could be played onto the roofs of the houses. The Wellington Arms looked derelict, with no lights, the white ash drifting out through the windows. Grandcourt was helping two men out into the street. A crowd had gathered, watching a squad of civil defence men ferrying bricks into neat piles.
Brooke was aware that he was suffering from shock caused by the blast, and that it was loosening its grip, but only by degrees. He was being asked questions. The ARP warden was demanding something but Brooke couldn’t latch onto the meaning.
‘Everyone’s accounted for on my list,’ said the warden, holding the woman in the nightdress gently by the arm. ‘But this lady says the couple in number 36, that’s the Pollards, might not have gone to the shelter like they usually do. So they might be inside.’
He pointed at a house which had clearly taken the brunt of the blast. The facade was black, the windows gone and the roof torn away, while white smoke drifted from the wreckage.
‘That’s right,’ said the woman in the nightdress. ‘Arthur and Nora are fed up with it, dossing in a bloody shelter at their age. They said they might sit tight and get a decent night’s sleep for once. Arthur snores – he’s in the front room. Nora’s in the back. And Arthur’ll have the dog with him; they’re never apart, him an’ Pickles.’ She looked at the blackened house and covered her mouth. ‘But there’s not a sound, is there?’
The ARP warden took off his hat and pushed fair hair out of his eye. ‘It’s smouldering but the auxiliary fire boys say it’s out. Mind you, the whole lot still looks pretty rickety. It needs propping up. If the old dears are inside they wouldn’t have had much chance, but like I say, it’s your shout. Someone said you’re with the Borough. So you’re in charge.’
CHAPTER FOUR
Brooke had decided to enter the house, and had borrowed the warden’s tin hat, when a soldier approached, the bomb disposal insignia on his cap catching the light.
‘Witnesses say they heard several bombs falling,’ he told Brooke, not bothering to cite his rank or name. His voice was bored, matter-of-fact.
‘Well, there was one here for certain,’ said Brooke, pointing at number 36. ‘I reckon it came down behind, in the yard, and it’s blown out the windows, and the roof’s gone.’
‘You police?’ asked the soldier.
‘Inspector Brooke – the Borough.’
The officer made a careful note with a pencil in a small book before slipping it into the breast pocket of his uniform.
‘There may be others close by, Inspector. Bombs which haven’t gone up yet. Do you understand me?’
He stepped closer, rapidly transferring a cigarette to his lips from the same pocket which had taken the notebook. Brooke caught a whiff of shaving cream.
‘They might not go off if they’re faulty, or they might have time-delayed fuses; that’s the real danger. It’s a devil of a thing. They reckon one in Portsmouth took out twenty people when it finally went up – medics, nurses, relatives.’ He checked his watch and marched off. ‘The most common delay is one hour. That’s twenty minutes away in this case. You need to clear the area. We’ll check it out by daylight, but not before.’
Forty minutes lost? Brooke felt
sick, aware that a slice of his life had simply been wiped from the record.
‘I brought this, sir. I thought it might help.’
Brooke turned round to find Detective Sergeant Ralph Edison at his shoulder holding a loudhailer.
Relief flooded his blood stream like morphine.
‘Can you clear the street, Sergeant?’ said Brooke.
Edison had been in uniform for thirty years, the public face of the Borough, manning the duty desk at the Spinning House, the force’s headquarters. He’d retired before the war but had been recalled in plain clothes. Despite the loss of his uniform he still managed to radiate its authority.
Edison used the loudhailer to usher sightseers away, and then briskly ordered back the other emergency services. He gave them a five-minute deadline to leave the street, implying by tone of voice alone that failure to meet this target would result in a night in the cells.
Slowly the street began to clear, but not before a young woman in an ill-fitting khaki uniform pressed a mug of tea into the hand of the woman in the bloodstained nightie. No more than seventeen or eighteen, she held the old woman by the hand and told her to drink up, that it would do her good, and that she should come to the local relief centre, which had been set up in the primary school in the next street. And she should find a nurse for the cuts on her arms.
‘They’re clearing all the streets, dear. You can’t stay,’ she said. ‘You need to find a comfy spot at the LRC – that’s at St Joseph’s.’
Sometimes Brooke felt the war had ripped apart all the words in the world they needed to survive, leaving them with these useless acronyms: LRC, ARP, AFB, HE, BCC. He imagined the little tiles of a set of Scrabble being blown up in the air. But he could see the logic of it all. The organisation, the fussy officials, the application of rules and procedures inspired a sense of purpose, a steady reminder that everyone could cope.
The WRVS girl (There we go again, thought Brooke) was trying to get him to take a mug of tea too, while Edison was bearing down with the hailer to chivvy her away to safety.
Finally, the street was clear, and it took on a more dismal, threatening aspect. Smoke drifted out of the ruined house, while all the rest stood empty, windows shattered, dark and cold. Somewhere a dog barked rhythmically, without any sense of urgency.
Then time changed again.
Brooke found himself standing right in front of the stricken house, beside his sergeant, who was wiping his face with a large, immaculately ironed handkerchief.
The bomb, it appeared, had indeed fallen in the rear yard and ripped through the interior from the back, blowing the curtains out of the windows. The front room on the ground floor was visible through the gaping frame, blackened by smoke, but otherwise largely untouched. The wallpaper, which featured roses entwined, was still just visible.
Brooke checked his watch. He had fifteen minutes before the hour was up. The old couple might be dead, but they might not. They might have gone to the shelter. Or they might be trapped under falling bricks and rafters in bed. It was his duty to make sure they didn’t die in a second explosion, or in a collapsing house.
‘I’ll be as quick as I can, Sergeant. You get back to the barricade and make sure nobody strays close.’
The front door had been blown off its hinges and stood at an angle. He squeezed through, but by nudging the door dislodged it, and it fell with a crash, and the whole house seemed to shudder. Dust and ash drifted from above, and there was a fresh shower of falling glass in an upstairs room.
Halfway down the hall he got to the door into the kitchen, where supper plates were set on a table, smeared with vinegar and brown sauce. A single sliver of cod skin revealed the menu.
Brooke turned to go up the stairs and was surprised to see Edison standing on the doorstep, with his back to the house, bravely ignoring his previous order to retreat to the barricade.
A soldier appeared; not the bomb disposal man, but a captain in a pressed uniform.
‘What’s going on?’ he said.
‘The inspector’s taking a quick look. We’re in charge here,’ said Edison.
The soldier took a step backwards and surveyed the front of the house.
‘It’s his funeral. Bloody thing could come down any moment. We need to get engineers inside and put some steel supports up once we’ve got the all-clear: if it goes over the lot could come down.’
He looked at a map. ‘This is Earl Street, isn’t it? Who said you could close it off?’ He shrugged because it was clear Edison’s authority precluded answering peremptory questions. ‘Alright. Have it your way. Tell me when you’re done. I’m at the barricade.’
He marched out of sight, leaving Edison, who set his feet squarely apart as if he’d settled down for a nice quiet shift on point duty on Market Hill.
Brooke took the first three steps up the stairs and instantly felt the whole structure move an inch or more to the left, and then lurch back to the right. He stopped, waiting, desperate for the movement to stop.
Looking down he could see into the front room. A blackened dresser stood open, the shelf empty. What had it held? A piece of crockery? Porcelain? Down-at-heel family treasures? Had they been incinerated in the blast, or blown out of the window? There was a circular clear patch of wallpaper over the dresser, but no sign of a precious shattered plate or a broken mirror.
He felt the first stomach-tumble of unease. He took the next step up, and this time nothing moved, so he pressed on. The carpet and bannisters were untouched by the blast, but as he looked up he could see the night sky through a hole in the roof, the low clouds illuminated by a distant wandering searchlight.
Gaining the top landing, he felt much safer. It was an oddity of these bombs that the pressure wave simply blew out the main fire before it could start. The only danger other than collapse was a cracked gas main or shorting wires. Brooke stopped on the landing and sniffed the air: nothing, except the metallic dust, and the chemical edge of the explosives, and the dampness from the hose. Water was running down the walls, the stairs, and over the brass rods which kept the carpet in place.
He pushed open the door of the front bedroom.
The old man was in the bed, shuffled up against the back wall. He held the dog in a casual embrace. They were quite dead, Brooke could see that. There was no blood, or sense of violence, which was typical of blast victims. It looked as if the old man had turned inwards in those last seconds after the scream had become audible, possibly to protect the dog.
He took a moment to check the room. There was a chest and all the drawers were pulled out – not higgledy-piggledy, but by almost exactly the same distance. Brooke’s eyes scanned the room for further evidence – a rectangle of clean wallpaper had once protected a picture, and he could see the frame and the broken glass on the rug, but no canvas.
Out on the landing he noticed the gloves for the first time. They were a man’s leather driving gloves, and they’d been draped over the bannister rail carefully, so that they were balanced – fingers on one side, cuffs on the other. It seemed a miracle that they had preserved their position despite the blast, unless they had been left after the explosion had torn through the house. Brooke picked one up, and caught a faint whiff of petrol, so he held it to his nose and breathed in the fumes.
The coincidence made him stop. For a half-second he was back in the river watching the chemical burn on the surface with its poetic light. The street was silent, and somewhere a clock was ticking, so he moved on to the back room.
An elderly woman lay on the floor. She’d got out of bed, and the bomb had knocked her down, so she was lying along the skirting board. She had hardly any hair, but what there was lay under a hairnet, and her face was turned to the wall. From her thin legs and slightly fleshy arms, Brooke guessed an age of seventy to eighty.
Like the others she exhibited no mortal wounds. But there was a trickle of blood at one ear.
It was her hand, stretched out, which caught Brooke’s eye.
His uneasy
guts tumbled at last, recognising the crime for what it was.
The left ring finger and the middle finger beside it had both been severed neatly below the bottom joint, probably with a hacksaw blade. The mutilated stumps still bled. Brooke envisaged the act itself with a brutal clarity. The thief had come prepared, with his gloves, a bag perhaps, and the tools of his trade: a gemmy, a knife, a torch. Rifling through the wrecked rooms he’d taken anything of value, before finding Nora on the floor. The rings had been held fast by swollen joints. Desperate to get out before the emergency services arrived, he’d taken the fingers so that he could remove the stubborn jewels in his own sweet time.
Looting was an ugly word, and only ever whispered.
Brooke fled, pocketing the gloves.
CHAPTER FIVE
Once the stroke of the hour had passed and the area was judged safe, it fell to Brooke to ‘preserve the scene of crime’, as recommended by the Borough regulations. The offence itself demanded a serious response. Looting was listed under the Emergency Powers Act, the sweeping catch-all legislation which gave the government such draconian powers that its word was – literally – the law. The stipulated penalties for looting ranged widely, and there was plenty of room for leeway, but culminated in the gallows in the worst instances. Brooke was determined to follow the book, in case the powers that be decided it was time to make an example of the thief of Earl Street. The desecration of the body was, incidentally, an offence in itself.
The ARP rescue corps removed Nora Pollard’s corpse (her hand discreetly covered beneath a sheet), and that of her husband Arthur, and the dog – Pickles. On the way out of number 36 they met the RSD on the way in; Rescue, Shoring and Demolition needed to prop up the house, in order that its collapse did not threaten the entire street. Brooke, using a Borough radio car, requested a police photographer from County to take shots of the upstairs rooms, once the RSD had made it safe, while he prepared to make a thorough search of the house and organise an inventory. A constable was despatched to the local school to begin interviewing friends and neighbours. Had anyone seen the thief?
