by Jim Kelly
But then the bomb disposal officer reappeared and announced that military headquarters at Madingley Hall, on the outskirts of the city, had sent a messenger with orders to evacuate a quarter-mile sector of the Kite in case the time delay on the mysterious unexploded bombs (if they existed) might be two hours, or six. In this case military authority comfortably outranked the Borough’s, and so the crime scene would have to fend for itself until the next morning at the earliest.
Brooke’s writ could run no further until the area was safe.
He met his sergeant at the barrier.
‘You alright, sir?’ asked Edison, yawning.
While Brooke was a nighthawk his detective sergeant was partial to his bed, a Rip Van Winkle in fact. He had been known, while duty sergeant before the war, to sleep standing up at the Spinning House front desk.
‘I’m fine, Sergeant,’ said Brooke. ‘A bit of shock from the blast but I think it’s passed. Why don’t you go home to your bed? We can’t do anything until they’re sure there isn’t another bomb – although where it’s supposed to be hiding I’ve no idea.’
He stepped closer, dropping his voice, and told Edison about Mrs Pollard’s injuries and the thefts. Edison became very still, a sure sign – Brooke had learnt – that his detective sergeant was thinking.
‘In the overall scheme of things a little thievery is neither here nor there, Sergeant. But looting the dead is an inflammatory crime. It may ring alarm bells. So let’s do our jobs, and keep mum for now if we can. We don’t want vigilantes on the streets.’
‘It’s the kind of thing that gets about, sir.’
Brooke nodded. ‘I’ve asked the ambulance crew to be discreet, but you’re right, gossip is a national sport, especially now the government has shut down the racing and the football.
‘Let’s make an early start. I’ll see you at seven at the Spinning House. And, Edison …’ Brooke produced the leather gloves he’d found draped over the bannisters at number 36 from his greatcoat pocket. ‘Mrs Edison must have a Kilner jar – or similar – to spare?’
Edison was a keen grower of fruit and vegetables. He ran an allotment on the edge of town. Jam, and other preserves, was his wife’s speciality. Air-tight glass jars were a crucial tool. One of which would preserve the evidence perfectly.
‘She’s dozens,’ said Edison. ‘We’ve got raspberries and strawberries to bottle. We’ll be living on it by Christmas.’ Rationing was now in full swing and home-grown produce highly prized.
‘You’ve come in the car?’ asked Brooke.
Edison nodded. His pride and joy was an elegant Wolseley Wasp. One of the perks of rejoining the Borough was a regular supply of petrol coupons to keep it on the road.
‘Then take these now,’ he said, handing over the gloves. ‘They were at the scene. Pop them in a jar and bring them in. As I say – seven, my office.’
His sergeant smelt the gloves. ‘Our man’s a driver? I doubt the residents have a car – it’s a decent street, but they won’t own a car unless it’s for trade.’
‘It may mean nothing. As you say, Mr Pollard may have been a mechanic, or a bus driver, or work in a factory – who knows. But they might be the thief’s. Just keep them safe.’
He watched Edison drive off in his Wasp, its ruby red paintwork covered in a thin layer of ash, a plume of exhaust hanging in the night air.
The residents were being moved on, to friends and neighbours in other parts of the city, or the shelters, or the rest centre at the school, where tea and sandwiches were promised.
Brooke elected to walk home. It was now a fine summer’s night and a crowd had gathered on Parker’s Piece, watching smoke drift over the rooftops from the bombsite. News of fatalities had clearly spread, for as Brooke strode past he sensed the hushed whispers, and noted that while several people had brought their children out with them they held them close, in tight family circles. Soldiers stood smoking by their tents. The all-clear had sounded, and a few cars, headlights swaddled with regulation tape, crept past the scene, and on into the heart of the old city.
Brooke followed, the metal Blakeys on his leather shoes cracking out a rat-tat-tat-tat on the pavements, following the kerbs, painted white to help pedestrians in the blackout. Claire always said she could spot him a mile away by the walk: his body seemed to narrow to his feet, which trod a line, the pace always metronomic and brisk. She said that at rest, if he stopped to light a cigarette, especially with his ever-present hat, he looked like a nail driven into the ground.
He passed the Borough’s headquarters at the Spinning House, a medieval pile which had once been the city’s workhouse, judging that he could do little at such a time to begin the search for his cold-hearted thief. He’d planned to rest at home, but felt instead the need to talk, and catch his breath.
The street ahead was deserted, the blackout creating a narrow canyon of shadowy brick and stone. Even without a siren the city was plunged into this Stygian gloom every night. In the shadows, above the gates of Trinity College, Brooke saw that the hideous stone figure of Henry VIII had lost its royal mace yet again. Students stole it on a regular basis, then left it to be found, so that it could be laboriously returned by a bowler-hatted porter atop a ladder. With the outbreak of the war student japes had been outlawed by the proctors – the university police – but it seemed that, like the rest of the population, undergraduates felt that with so many men away in the forces the leashes of adult authority had slackened. Crime, particularly petty crime, had become a national pastime.
Brooke paused in a doorway and lit one of his precious Black Russian cigarettes. His father had slipped a packet in his kit bag – alongside a copy of the Iliad – when he’d seen him off at the station in 1917. The brand was difficult to get but a fragrant pipe shop off Market Hill ordered them from Sobranie, the makers. He let the nicotine circle his lungs, and for the first time since the blast felt a slight dizziness dissipate. His mind focused on the image of Nora Pollard’s butchered fingers. Looters were another symptom of social disintegration, the weakening of public discipline. With so many capable police officers now in military uniform Brooke felt acutely the weight of duty, for in a real sense he was the force’s sole senior detective, given that the other inspector oversaw the uniformed branch. He thought he had as much chance of finding his looter as catching the oik who’d lifted Henry VIII’s mace.
Opposite Trinity’s gatehouse, an alleyway ran down the side of the university bookshop. A roadster, an old man judging by the grey hair showing at the collar of a dirty macintosh, lay curled up by a line of bins, a cat sitting upright beside him, as if on guard. Vagrants were common now on the streets, as the mild nights stretched out, despite the city bomb shelters which were open to all. Brooke understood their wariness, for the public shelters were run with brisk formality by what they were beginning to call ‘the authorities’. Rules were listed on printed sheets with the imprimatur of the government’s local potentate: the regional commissioner. Brooke had some sympathy for those who complained of the overbearing nature of the wartime government because he’d always despised fussy regulations, and those who made them.
Twenty feet down the alley, a fire-escape ladder led up three floors. Brooke scaled it with confidence, then crossed a flat platform to a second ladder, which decanted him onto a further level, from which a short set of ironwork steps took him to the apex of the roof. Here, on a prefabricated ledge, the Observer Corps had set a lookout post. A low wall of sandbags protected the edge, which gave a 180-degree panoramic view of the Backs – that great sweep of river where the colleges ran down to the water. Set back by a chimney breast, a conical hut had been constructed in steel, and contained a Primus stove, a bunk and – vitally – a military landline telephone, linked exclusively to what they were all now instructed to call the BCC, the Bomb Control Centre.
Jo Ashmore, in her smart OC uniform and tin hat, was standing at the fixed mount for her field glasses, the ghost of a smile on her newly made-up lips. Brooke always
got the impression that she arranged herself by way of greeting: the short haircut to within a millimetre of her collar, the gas mask set on the hip, but the truth was she was always what Claire called ‘smartly turned-out’.
‘Ah. The night detective. Tea? Or something stronger?’
The conical hut hid a bottle of malt whisky.
‘Just tea,’ said Brooke, looking out over the rooftops.
Ashmore had noted the condition of Brooke’s greatcoat. ‘Good God, Brooke. Have you been rolling in the gutter?’
‘I was in the pub on Earl Street when the bomb came down. Fifty yards the other way and I’d be in pieces.’
She studied his face. ‘You should see a doctor.’
‘I’ll see Claire. It’s shock. I just need to sleep.’
They both laughed. His chromic insomnia was a constant source of conversation at the OC post, with Jo proffering possible solutions, while he thought of reasons why they wouldn’t work.
Brooke told her about the casualties at number 36, and the evidence of looting, although he asked her not to put anything on the grapevine until the news got out.
‘I’ll get tea,’ she said, removing a single piece of light debris from Brooke’s shoulder.
The cluster of lights and drifting smoke in the Kite were just visible to the east. The searchlights, stationed at the ack-ack barrage on the hills to the south, swung round in search of lone raiders, casting circles and strange distortions of circles on the low clouds, as if agitated by having failed to locate the deadly bomber until too late. Otherwise the city was as it almost always was: silent, tense certainly, but not in any way greatly disturbed from its ancient customs. Raids such as the one that had destroyed the Pollards’ home were extremely rare. For the most part Cambridge felt itself on the far reaches of the conflict.
The town clocks began to strike twice, marking the hour.
‘I’ve added some Dutch courage,’ called Jo from the hut. ‘You look as pale as a ghost, Brooke.’
Ashmore had grown up in the villa next to the Brooke family home at Newnham Croft, where the water meadows spread out into the headwaters of the Cam. Here a pair of Victorian homes had been built, their gardens running down to the towpath. She’d played with Brooke’s children, Joy and Luke, running amok in the fields and along the banks. The two families had become intertwined, sharing high days and holidays, Sunday lunches, and even days at the distant beaches on the Norfolk coast. The children had given Brooke a wide berth. The hero of the desert war – who’d served, it was whispered, alongside the great Lawrence of Arabia – was a figure of legend. Ashmore had recently confessed that Brooke had cut an intimidating figure behind his array of exotic glasses. The sudden appearances in the river, hauling himself out to limp up to the house, were another source of mystery. Luke, his son, had confided to the other children that on winter nights El Aurens himself would appear at the house, uninvited, and whisk his father away for secret talks with the Fenland Bedouin, presumably camped out around a fire of bog oak.
Ashmore’s own story was racy. She had fallen in with what was called the ‘fast set’ before the war. There had been parties in London, a married man, a scandal averted. Her father, a professor of history with hardly a trace of humour in his overbred personality, who had been largely absent from the family home for decades, had demanded his daughter pursue a low profile. His own academic career, and the eventual mastership of his college, hung in the balance. She’d promptly volunteered for the Observer Corps and dedicated her nights to keeping alert, but aloof. She’d just met a young pilot, a patient at the local burns unit, and the romance seemed to have put a light back in her eyes. Brooke wondered if the meddling professor would demand to vet the young man’s reputation if he were unlucky enough to be taken home to meet his sweetheart’s father.
They drank their hot toddies.
‘You do look dreadful, Brooke. Why don’t you sit down?’
She fetched a metal stool and he slumped, gratefully, an elbow on the sandbag ledge. He didn’t feel dizzy, but he did feel exhausted.
Brooke took one of Ashmore’s Craven As.
‘Did you clock the bomber itself?’ he said. ‘There was no siren.’
She nodded, a hand resting on the metal sighting table with which she could plot incoming EA – enemy aircraft. Once she had a bearing and a height she rang it through to the BCC.
‘Not until it was too late. Clever, actually. All that cloud cover you’d think they’d just drop the bombs and skedaddle, or not bother. But they flew in low and must have picked up something – the road maybe, or the river, or the railway.
‘I had the report in ASAP. Not quick enough, obviously. The ack-ack had a go from Coldham’s Common after she’d made her run but she was too fast. A Heinkel. It’s just a one-off raid to show they can do it – boost morale, that kind of thing.
‘They were aiming for the railway station again – that’s the intel. Hoping for a bit of luck. They won’t be back for a while.
‘Your bomb was the fourth. They wasted three along the river on their run-in, and then dropped the rest on the shunting yards, on the way out. There’s some damage but they reckon the mainline will be up and running by the end of tomorrow. Odd, isn’t it? In peacetime the whole network collapses if a signal breaks. These days they perform miracles without exception.’
‘And no second run?’
‘Nope. Once the ack-ack picked them up they were on borrowed time.’
They sat in companionable silence watching the runway lights at Marshall airfield flicker into life to welcome the return of night fighters, presumably sent up to chase the raiders away.
‘How’s your flight lieutenant?’ said Brooke, trying to find a bright note.
‘The skin graft didn’t take,’ she said.
‘Sorry,’ he said.
Flight Lieutenant George Wentworth had been trapped in his Spitfire by an electrical fire after making an emergency landing in a field of hops outside Canterbury. He’d suffered third-degree burns to the left side of his face. The hospital unit at Ely, north of Cambridge, had a reputation for patching up the injured and getting them back in the air. Brooke had met Wentworth: the burns were bad, but only to one side of the face.
‘Least they tried,’ she said. ‘Next stop’s Queen Mary’s; that’s south of London, in the hills. Last time round they rebuilt people’s faces, plastic surgery they call it. After the Somme, and Verdun. If anyone can help it’ll be them.’
She filled her lungs with night air.
‘It’s a pig of a drive, and I don’t have the coupons to make regular trips. I’ll have to take the bloody train. It’s out in the Surrey Hills. It’d be quicker to walk.’
‘You could get a posting nearby,’ offered Brooke, smiling.
Unkindly, Brooke imagined her rather enjoying the mercy-dash by train, climbing up into the pine trees of the Weald to some lonely halt, then getting a taxi to a Gothic pile, to see her wounded lover.
‘No. I’ll make the trip. George says he doesn’t want me throwing my life away. Whatever that means.’
‘It means he’s a decent man.’
Brooke stood, leaning over the parapet and looking down into the street. The door set within the gates of St John’s College opened and a porter in a bowler hat and coat stepped out in a rectangle of golden light, and then was gone, swallowed up by shadows.
Ashmore smoothed down her uniform.
‘Word is …’
This phrase, heard widely in this second year of the war, was generally code for any bit of gossip which could be dressed up as real information. Ashmore’s sources were, however, better than most. Madingley Hall sent regular notes on military dispositions, and Brooke knew that the OCs across the city swapped and cross-checked information.
‘There’s nothing in the papers or on the radio but the word is the Luftwaffe’s switched tactics,’ she said. ‘They were going for ports, shipping, convoys. They wanted a peace deal then. Now it’s going to be the RAF on th
e ground, then industry, infrastructure – so oil depots, railways, factories. And all this on a big scale, Brooke, not lone bombers.
‘They hit the Midlands the other night, a big tyre factory apparently. OC in Birmingham city centre saw the smoke and it’s fifteen miles away. And Bristol, and Hull, and loads of places around London – Croydon comes up a lot. And the East End, and Portsmouth. And …’ She dropped her voice to an unnecessary whisper. ‘One of the pool drivers for Civil Defence says they’ve been trying to knock out the masts along the coast – the radar. No luck so far, but if they take that down I won’t be getting early warnings any more. Mind you, I didn’t get any tonight so what’s the difference?’
She rested a hand on the black Bakelite telephone.
‘They reckon we’ll hit back hard,’ she said. ‘That’s what this Berlin raid’s all about.’
She smoked her cigarette with elegant poise. ‘One of the messengers from Madingley knows a bloke who’s got a sister in Holland. She says they flattened Rotterdam to get the Dutch to surrender. All gone, he said – not a brick left standing on a brick. Just some church left in the middle. And fifty thousand dead, Brooke. Think of that. Think of it here.’
Brooke didn’t want to think of it. His son Luke had been caught up at Dunkirk. He’d made it back in the hold of a coal ship, and had then mysteriously disappeared, being sent north to an undefined ‘posting’. His letters were oddly vague and Brooke couldn’t shift the suspicion that young Luke had done what his father had expressly forbidden: he’d volunteered for something.
‘Cambridge should be alright,’ he offered, watching the army patrol boat sliding past on the river below, where a gap in the college roofs gave a view of the water.
‘I tell you what is alright,’ said Ashmore. ‘Oxford. Know why?’
Brooke stood, shaking his head. ‘Go on, why?’
