by Jim Kelly
‘They’re throwing everything at London. We may have to join this great armada in the air. Or we may be a lone wolf again with our own target – the docks at Hull, perhaps. It is out of our hands, my friend. So why worry?’
London was the talk of the mess. Maps and diagrams of the capital’s docks had been pinned up in the bar. There were rumours in Berlin, relayed to Waren by the cooks and the cleaners, the barman and the farmer who brought them milk, rumours of a ‘knockout blow’ ahead of an invasion. And there was talk of revenge for the RAF’s first daring raid on the German capital, of which there was still no news concerning casualties or damage.
Bartel had his eyes on the commandant’s quarters, a squat rustic bungalow with its own picket fence, which stood beside the gates on the far side of the runway.
‘Here he comes,’ he said, removing tobacco from his upper lip.
Oberst Fritsch had appeared, striding out across the grass, a folder loosely held against his chest.
Bartel buttoned up his tunic to the throat, and they walked to the briefing hut. The night was soft and the dew had begun to settle. The hut – at one time a small sports pavilion when the airfield was set out during the Great War – had a veranda and decorative woodwork. Bartel always thought it looked like a house from a fairy tale set in the woods, which made him think of his daughter Helga, and her invariable demands for a bedtime story. The baby – Ellen – would no doubt follow suit. If he lived long enough his life would be full of children’s stories.
It was clear that Oberst Fritsch’s story would be less of a comfort to his men. By the time Bartel and Schmidt had joined their crewmates on the stiff chairs set out in a row, their commanding officer had pinned up a series of aerial photographs on the ops board.
‘These have arrived from Berlin in the last hour. They are taken from thirty thousand feet,’ said Fritsch, swelling slightly, his polished buttons straining. ‘But pin-sharp.’
Bartel’s heart sank. All the shots showed the same landscape. A river running north, shadowed by a railway line, which crossed the water on a girder bridge. It was their one-time target in Cambridge: Bridge 1505.
‘There is no doubt, I am afraid,’ said Fritsch. ‘Despite your optimism you failed to destroy the bridge. You must return. This is now a target of the utmost importance.’
Fritsch’s weakness was cognac, and once he’d had enough, he was happy to regale his men with tales of his heroics in the Great War, when he had been a pioneer in the new science of aerial photography. At the Somme they’d attached cameras to balloons to get a view of the battlefield. Then to rockets, launched from behind the lines. But very quickly the pre-eminence of the aeroplane had been established. The necessary technical breakthrough had been the heated camera, which had allowed the aircraft to operate at high altitudes, beyond the range of fighters, or shells. Fritsch had piloted such craft into the stratosphere, and wore the Iron Cross as proof.
‘Bridge 1505,’ said Fritsch, leaning over and tapping a pointer on one of the pictures, revealing a shaving accident visible just below the line of his lumpen jaw, which he’d staunched with cotton wool.
‘This was taken this morning shortly after dawn from 30,000 feet. Note the approaching goods train to the south. Sixty trucks. Empty. And here,’ he added, pointing at the next picture. ‘This shows the same bridge, but in a second pass over the target two minutes later. The same train, now to the north of the river. So our bridge still stands, still functions, gentlemen. See for yourself – Leutnant?’
Couched as an invitation, it was in fact an order, an act of ritual humiliation.
Bartel stood and walked forward, taking a seat at a small table, upon which Fritsch set two apparently identical photographs. Bartel thrust his head into the aperture of an instrument set on the table which resembled a double microscope. It provided two magnified images of the photographs, allowing Bartel’s brain to merge them stereoscopically to form a three-dimensional image. The result was shockingly clear: the bridge stood, the river glittered beneath, the train thundered confidently north. On the river he could even see the fragile outline of a boat, an ‘eight’ – he’d rowed himself at home and noted the perfectly aligned oars. On either side of the river lay water meadows, and the mathematical grid of a set of small-holdings, Schrebergärten – allotments.
‘We must go back. We must go back soon,’ said Fritsch. ‘The key is the weather. There are at present no clouds to provide the cover we require. So not tonight. We are not – yet – in the business of flying suicide missions. Rest, or play football if you must, but if anyone breaks a leg I will personally sign their transfer permit to the Kriegsmarine and they can fly paper kites off a rolling deck for the rest of the war. You must enjoy the country air because there is no leave to Berlin. Everyone is confined to the base.’
There was silence then, as if he was daring them to complain.
‘Is it the raid?’ asked Bartel. ‘There are rumours of devastation, of casualties.’ His rank gave him this privilege, to ask the questions the others didn’t dare. ‘The cook says the RAF bombed the southern suburbs, and that the U-Bahn took a hit.’
Fritsch bounced slightly in his polished boots. ‘The cook should keep his mouth shut and concentrate on not boiling the potatoes to mush.’ He held up both hands. ‘The raid was a blow. But the damage was restricted. Yes, there have been casualties, but the city goes about its work and play as it always did. You will have leave soon.
‘Be patient. You are confined to the base, gentlemen, because I do not want anyone to go AWOL. The mission is of the utmost importance. A night in the bars of Berlin, or worse, the whorehouses, is not ideal preparation for such duties. And now. Pay attention.’
They took notes as Fritsch talked them through the flight plan. This time they would fly further north and approach from the coast of the Wash, that great gulf of sand and shallow tidal creeks which ate into the coastline of East Anglia. The river would lead them to the target again. Anti-aircraft fire was concentrated to the south and east. If they flew low, and fast, the fighters would still be on the ground when they struck. This time they must leave Bridge 1505 in ruins.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Brooke walked home along the towpath, exhausted now and desperate for rest, if not sleep. He’d done all he could to set in motion a murder enquiry: the hunt was on for the mysterious Lucifer, with the help of the Clarion Cycling Club, and Major Kohler would even now be making discreet enquiries with civil defence and the emergency services; if the brutal thief was hidden behind a uniform he might well have given himself away – a spending spree, perhaps, or an over-diligent search of a bombed-out house. Tomorrow, he’d go back to Earl Street and interview neighbours, friends and the oddly dysfunctional Pollard family. For now he planned to take to his bed, and wait for Claire to finish her night shift at the hospital.
Heading south, he reached the wider water meadows, where the path was marked by superannuated gas lamps, set out by the Victorians to illuminate starlit skating. They reminded Brooke of winter, but only briefly, because the warm soft night spoke only of the summer’s day that had gone: cloudless and hot. His Blakeys cracked on the gravel path, alerting a herd of ghostly white cattle, prompting an exodus through a gate towards a shadowy barn.
A quarter mile further brought him close to home, a cluster of old villas hidden amongst willows and ash. Here the main river took a tight looping horseshoe curve, and ahead of him on the path, on the ‘inside’ bank, he saw distinctly a man, on a camp stool, beside a glow-worm light, by which he appeared to be sketching. Brooke stopped, undetected, and watched for a moment.
The moon was just a sliver rising feebly over the trees, so Brooke took the opportunity to jettison his glasses at last, feeling with a sense of relief the cool air on his eyes. (His actual vision was 20:20 – although everyone who saw the tinted lenses assumed he had the sight of a mole.) The figure by the river stood and Brooke saw it was a man, and recognised the way in which he set his stout legs squarely a
part as he consulted a book by torchlight.
The air was extraordinarily still, and every sound seemed uncannily clear: the trickle of the summer river, the distant brr! brr! of the nighthawk, so that when he whispered the word it felt as if he’d launched a shout: ‘Peter?’
The man turned in his direction. ‘Eden? I thought you might come past one evening. I hope this is evidence that you are following my regime and going home to bed?’
As they shook hands Brooke produced his packet of Black Russians and they both lit up.
The lantern was set on a riverside bench so that it illuminated an open sketchbook, which was dotted with numbers and hieroglyphs and a grid of data. Dr Peter Aldiss had shared college rooms with Brooke before the Great War. A natural scientist, he was currently engaged in a series of experiments investigating the mysterious forces of circadian rhythm – nature’s extraordinary ability to match day and night to the needs and appetites of the animal kingdom. The work had caught the attention of Whitehall and the military, keen to find ways of keeping soldiers and sailors, not to mention pilots, alert during the long watches of the night. Aldiss was one of Brooke’s fellow nighthawks, and he’d often spend an hour in the scientist’s laboratory, watching over scuttling cockroaches, glowing fireflies or whispering hamsters.
This was a departure: science outside the laboratory.
‘Let me guess,’ said Brooke, watching the moonlight pick out the thread of a current in the river. ‘Is it owls? Are you monitoring their flights and mapping them against the progress of the moon?’
‘A change of tack,’ said Aldiss, lowering the light in the lantern. ‘I’ll show you – take a seat, and let your eyes get used to the shadows.’ He offered Brooke a metal box to sit on as the grass bank was already shiny with dew.
They sat diligently, the light shielded, their eyes switching to night vision. Brooke contemplated his friend, who sat with his hands on his lap as if they were dead weights. His intelligence was undoubted, but not apparent. People who met him were initially underwhelmed, guessing perhaps that he was a not very bright county solicitor. Dr Aldiss thought slowly, but with deliberate care, and often devastating logic. He was a master of patient experiment.
‘See?’ asked Aldiss at last, nodding to the far side of the narrow river, which lay in the shadow of a steep bank. ‘The question is, what makes them bloom now?’
Brooke stared into the darkness and saw nothing. Then one pale disc appeared, then twenty, then a hundred, until finally the colour was perhaps just discernible: a hint of yellow?
‘Oenothera biennis,’ said Aldiss. ‘Evening primrose to you. I’m trying to work out if it’s the moon that makes them bloom, or the temperature, or even the humidity. It’s a mystery. In broad daylight they’re shut up like clams.’
‘But why?’ asked Brooke. ‘Why bloom at night?’
Aldiss held out a small tin and flipped the lid. Inside was a large moth, pinned to its cushion. Brooke felt a distinct sense of sadness at the sight of such a delicate life, skewered to its nametag. Not for the first time he forgave his desert torturers for robbing him of a career in the natural sciences.
‘The sphinx moth,’ said Aldiss, which made Brooke think of Edmund Kohler, in his major’s uniform. ‘It pollinates the flowers, and it’s nocturnal, or possibly crepuscular – that’s another small mystery. Just like your good self, Eden. It thrives at dawn and dusk.’
Brooke’s condition had provided Aldiss with a living experiment, and a laboratory specimen he could interrogate.
For a few minutes Aldiss made notes. There were also plants on this side of the river, opening close to their feet, and he knelt down with a micrometer and measured the degree to which the petals had opened.
Eventually Aldiss closed the book. ‘I must get back to the lab. I may even sleep. Then it’s back at dawn.’
He began to pack up his gear with practised efficiency.
‘And how is the new regime?’ he asked Brooke, folding the footstool. ‘I trust you’ve followed it to the letter.’
Brooke’s sleeplessness had prompted the scientist to proffer a cure: Aldiss had been the one to set out the daily routine for him to follow, including at least an attempt at going to bed at a regular hour, after food and a hot bath, and an early walk in the light.
‘Do you want the numbers?’ asked Brooke.
‘Of course.’ Aldiss worked to the classic pattern: hypotheses were all very well. But in the end it was the hard numbers that really mattered; the very stuff of science.
‘In the last thirty days I have slept through the night twice.’
‘Compared to?’
‘In the previous thirty – once. In the thirty before that, none at all.’
‘There you are then. It’s very slow progress, but progress nonetheless. You may find that the odd night’s proper sleep is eventually habit-forming. Give it time.’
Brooke was thankful for the two nights, and much else, because it was Aldiss who’d first suggested that his insomnia – while undoubtedly prompted by his torture in the desert – might actually be to a degree inherent. This idea, that in some way his disability was a gift of birth, had made it easier to sleep, or at least easier to fail to sleep.
‘Go to bed, Eden,’ said Aldiss, shouldering his knapsack. ‘Or do you have a case that can’t wait for daylight to be solved?’
Brooke contemplated the river flowing past. The peaceful scene, the gently flowering primroses, jarred badly with the concept of murder, so he told his friend instead about the river catching fire, and that Grandcourt was even now seeking out the best brains in chemistry to analyse the liquid. He told him that the ‘authorities’, as such, had turned a blind eye to an earlier incident, and seemed happy to turn a blind eye to this one too. And he told him about the apparently coincidental links with the looting on Earl Street.
Aldiss seemed to absorb the information, and Brooke felt he could almost hear the wheels of his mind turning, processing, ordering, storing.
‘It’s in delicate balance, a river,’ said Aldiss. ‘Pouring petrol in it won’t exactly enhance its subtle rhythms.’
‘Will you keep an eye out?’ asked Brooke. ‘Or rather a nose?’
‘I will conduct a survey,’ said Aldiss. ‘I will take a sample each night, at the same time, and keep a record because I am a scientist. Police work seems to consist of guesswork and chance.’
Brooke laughed. ‘On a good day.’
‘I have three research sites for this experiment – here, and two more up towards Audley End. So that’s three lots of data. But I can do better than that. I’ve inveigled two of my undergraduate students and Dr Sutton from chemistry to lend a helping hand. All of them have three sites, and all upriver. Even more data, Eden. We’ll have enough to put forward a sound hypothesis. We’ll find the culprit. It’s probably a farmyard leaking fuel from a storage tank.’
‘Thank you,’ said Brooke. ‘If they find anything, let me know – the Spinning House will take a note if you phone.’
He was going to leave it at that but the niggling coincidence, the possibility of a link to Earl Street, made him pause. ‘And Peter. Tell these students of yours that if they do spot something, just come to me, or you, with a location. Don’t investigate. Don’t snoop. It’s not worth it, and it might be dangerous.’
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Brooke slept intermittently until dawn, when the first anxieties of the day ahead began to snare his overactive mind. Claire lay beside him in a deep slumber, so he slipped out of bed and made tea in the kitchen, taking a mug down to the riverside, where the Cam had been transformed into a channel of threaded mist, just an inch above the surface. Then the sun rose above the trees, a pale disc, and the heat burnt off the vapour, to reveal the green river beneath a blue sky. The temptation to take a swim was almost overwhelming, but he had a murderer to catch, so he left a note on the kitchen table, and fled.
By seven-thirty he was in Carnegie-Brown’s office, where he delivered a résumé o
f Dr Comfort’s preliminary results. The chief inspector’s judgement concurred with Brooke’s: the likelihood was the killer was an opportunist thief. There was no reason to believe organised looters had launched a brutal campaign to rob and kill the dead, and therefore no need to alert the Home Office, or more pertinently Scotland Yard. The press would be told that an elderly woman had been killed and robbed, but the mutilation of the body would remain confidential. The chief inspector would contact County and request uniformed assistance for door-to-door enquiries and other footwork. Brooke was to be afforded all the assistance necessary for a murder enquiry.
Back in his office he found Edison, and two young women, sat on his ‘Nile Bed’ – the day cot he’d brought on the quayside at Port Said, which was decorated with images of green rushes and white exotic birds.
Edison introduced them as Elsie and Connie Wylde, two of Nora Pollard’s granddaughters.
‘You’d better repeat what you’ve told me, girls,’ said Edison, standing with his back to the door. The sergeant’s advanced years excused the use of ‘girls’. He could be their grandfather. As to their ages, Brooke would have guessed Elsie was twenty, and Connie perhaps seventeen or eighteen. He couldn’t be sure. Young people were always eager to look like adults, and the war had accelerated the trend. Sometimes there seemed to be no intervening developmental stage between childhood and middle age.
Elsie wore no make-up, had an untidy bob, and was dressed in brown overalls. Connie, the younger, had shoulder-length hair, and she’d made a half-hearted attempt to apply lipstick. She wore a skirt and polished black shoes. Both had lively pea-green eyes, and fashionably pale skin.
‘Mum’s worried,’ said Elsie. ‘Our sister Peggy’s disappeared.’
Brooke recalled the stiff-backed matriarch Alice Wylde. He’d have to inform her soon – as next of kin – that her elderly mother had been murdered in her own home. It wasn’t the kind of information he could blithely tell her daughters.
