by Amy Myers
*
Back to that dell. No wonder it cried out to them so loudly. Two days had passed since Georgia’s visit to Sylvia, but still she was thrashing it over with Peter.
‘These idyllic bike rides,’ he had remarked. ‘I wonder if they led to idyllic sex.’
Immediately she thought of her earlier idea that Sylvia’s twins might have been Fairfax’s. ‘She married Norman Lake in December.’
‘Her great love affairs are either short-lived, or she needed a husband quickly.’
‘Where are we going with this?’ Georgia asked crossly. ‘That Richard Vane suddenly decided to take up cudgels and kill Fairfax?’
‘Perhaps,’ he said annoyingly. ‘At least this story about Tanner provides an answer to why the pilots are all so close together, although I’m not convinced that’s the whole story. It was after all a death that they were concealing from the proper authorities for whatever good reason, as they saw it. Even so, what bearing could that have on Patrick Fairfax’s death? If the truth had emerged, there would hardly have been violent repercussions, and Tanner’s family would surely have raised a legal scandal rather than set up a personal vendetta. They would have been too old for that in 1975, although his brother could in theory have been there. I don’t buy it. Besides, there’s one thing we should consider. We began this because of that dell. Does something occur to you?’
‘Yes,’ Georgia said. She’d been trying to suppress it though. ‘Which death was crying out to be reheard? Fairfax’s or Tanner’s?’
‘Back to the drawing board,’ Peter said glumly. ‘And time might be running out. I had a call from your chum Martin Heywood. He says the 362 gang is getting twitchy.’
‘What about?’
‘This plan for Battle of Britain Day in September. The publicity launch for the film at Woodring.’
She’d almost forgotten that. So typical of Martin’s approach to hold it there. Seek the inner meaning in sound bites.
‘It seems they’re getting worried by the concentration on Patrick’s death, rather than his life,’ Peter said. ‘He asked what the hell we’ve been stirring up. He got in quite a state.’
‘What did you tell him?’
‘I told him by holding it at Woodring he was doing quite a lot of stirring himself. He calmed down then, and said that he’d more or less told them he’d ensure the film would close on the heyday of the aviation club, and that his commentary for the reprint of This Life, This Death will focus on his aviation career. Jean Fairfax is apparently happy with that idea, and Martin said he might even get Alan Purcell to come over.’
‘He’s traced him?’ she asked in alarm. She didn’t want to be blamed for that.
‘No, but he thought there’d be no problem in doing so if he tells the pilots the heat will be off now Paul Stock’s been charged. I had great pleasure in telling him he’d also been set free again. Pity Heywood could only have been a toddler when Fairfax was killed. We could have pinned that on him. By the way, he said to tell you the letters seem to have stopped. What did he mean?’
Georgia explained and Peter frowned. ‘So perhaps the pilots are getting twitchy with reason. I don’t like the sound of this silent stalker of yours. Time to ask ourselves why.’
‘Perhaps we have the key in Tanner,’ she said, ‘and it’s time to turn it. And blow what Martin says. Let’s tackle the pilots.’
‘Which do you fancy? Not Bill. He speaks for the pack. We need a weak link.’
‘No,’ Georgia replied. ‘We need a strong link.’
‘Jan Molkar,’ Peter said.
*
The more she had thought about it, the better the idea sounded. Jan lived in Kent too, which was a help, albeit in Bexleyheath, the north of the county.
An anonymous place for someone who preferred to be anonymous himself, she thought as she pulled up outside his home five days later. Jan’s home was a pleasant 1930s semi-detached, neat, tidy, as anonymous as he, she thought as he welcomed her into a living room which was equally neat and tidy. His accent was still noticeable.
‘Tell me, Miss Marsh, why you come to me, not to Bill?’ he enquired, not accusingly but intently.
‘Because I haven’t spoken to you before.’ It was partly the truth.
‘I am honoured. But I think the reason is more. I was a teacher for many years, and I look for such things. You sought me out because you believe I might be the most objective?’
‘That could be,’ she acknowledged. Why not?
‘In that case, you might perhaps be wrong.’ He smiled slightly. ‘But please ask me what you wish to know.’
‘I have talked to Sylvia Lee, and to Alan Purcell.’
‘To Alan?’ His eyebrows rose. ‘That is more than any of us has done for many years. I last talked to him in 1975 when I telephoned to tell him of Patrick’s death.’
‘You telephoned?’ So at least there was some path of contact between them.
‘Yes.’ Jan did not fall into the trap of answering the question in her voice. ‘Alan was very shocked. Indeed we all were. But his death was not due to any one of us. There was no reason that we would wish to kill Patrick.’
‘I thought so too, until I heard about Oliver Tanner.’
‘Ah.’ Jan barely moved. He just became stiller. ‘We have talked about this; it seemed unlikely that you had learned about it, but possible.’
‘After Patrick’s death, you went on meeting, even though you might have felt absolved from having to go to Woodring Manor any more. It can’t have been an easy decision to conceal that death.’
‘Absolved? No. We all took that decision, and we must all remember.’
‘Why did you?’ she asked bluntly.
‘It is hard to explain, Miss Marsh, for this is a different age. You come from a different age. We saw death every day, and then we were faced with this terrible accident. There were terrible accidents to our friends every day, not all due to the enemy. Collisions, misjudgements, crashes – we lived with those. This was one more. If it had been reported, the squadron would have lost Patrick just at the moment when we most needed him to inspire us with his leadership in the battle. We were scrambled daily and two days later Malling itself was again under attack. Four days earlier, there had been a night raid on the airfield. There was a rumour going round – we blamed those two LMF pilots of whom Tanner was one – that Malling was being specially targeted by Hitler who would continue bombing it until we were all dead. We did not believe it, but the tension was rising. We needed Fairfax. For some weeks he’d been worried about Tanner and Smith’s reliability in battle, and here was one of them coming to tell him he was pinching his woman.
‘We agreed we would cover the story up. Tanner would have left the next day anyway, and so for him to have apparently deserted rather than face the LMF camp was logical, even that he might have drowned himself. The battle grew even hotter as days passed, and with the immediacy of each new struggle, what happened was forgotten, no matter the hows or whys. It was death. In the First War Tanner would have been shot, I think. And even by our time being LMF was a kind of death.’
‘Are you excusing what happened?’
‘No, Miss Marsh. I am explaining it. I have no need to excuse it,’ he said with dignity. ‘I will tell you why. My wife and children were killed in the German raid on Rotterdam, while I fought in Belgium. I saw the Nazis come, the refugees fleeing, civilians killed in terrible circumstances every day, machine-gunned by Stukas, bayoneted like pigs. For evil to flourish it is only necessary for good men to do nothing. To surrender, as Belgium had to, was to do nothing, even though it had good results in the end. Britain was perhaps saved because of the breathing space the surrender of Belgium gave it. I did not see it that way at the time, so I managed to get into France and then to England, where I was interned for several weeks while they worked out whether I was a German spy or not. When I convinced them I was an officer in the Belgian Air Force, they were only too happy to post me to a squadron, for the invasio
n was pending and they needed all the experienced pilots they had. My wife and children are gone, whether to an unmarked grave or they simply disappeared in the bombing. I never managed to find out. That is something one does not forget. Oliver Tanner was not a pacifist, but he refused to stand beside us to fight evil. He turned away. He died by accident and I am sorry, but I do not hold myself or Patrick responsible.’
‘So why go on meeting if Tanner’s death meant nothing?’
‘I did not say it meant nothing. I said it happened, and that is what we remember. It might have been right or wrong; we judge differently now.’
‘The decision was that Alan Purcell took Sylvia Lee home, while some of you drove the body to the coast.’
‘Who told you that, Miss Marsh?’
For a moment she did not understand, but then she saw his face, and a terrifying thought came to her. Jan looked his full age now.
‘You mean,’ she stammered, ‘that you didn’t take it to the coast? That . . .’
‘Yes, Miss Marsh. So far as we know, it is still at Woodring Manor, one of the reasons that Matt bought the hotel. We buried it that night. Even if we had the time, we did not have the petrol to get to the coast and back.’
Oh that dell, would she never be free of it?
*
‘You don’t look well, Georgia,’ Peter said in concern when she came back from Bexleyheath and reported in. ‘Go and lie down. We’ll talk later.’
‘Now,’ she said. She felt sick, and if she spoke out it might help. She pulled herself together and forced herself to tell her father, who listened gravely.
Then he said at last: ‘Georgia, there is more bad news, I’m afraid. There was a message on your answer service. A call from a Madame Roseanne Fleurie. She is a friend of Alan Purcell’s. She wanted you to know that Monsieur Arthur’s home was set on fire yesterday, while he was inside.’
‘He’s dead?’ She felt pitchforked into a crazy world. Surely he couldn’t be. That would mean a death directly to be laid at her door.
‘No, but he’s badly burned, and I gather it’s touch and go. He wanted to warn you.’
Chapter Thirteen
‘It’s too great a coincidence,’ Georgia said flatly. It was she who had stirred up this terrible hornets’ nest. She needed to think clearly, but she was still reeling from the altered scenario that Oliver Tanner’s death had brought. The attack on Alan Purcell must surely be another piece of this jigsaw. She had telephoned Madame Fleurie immediately, but there was no more news. Monsieur Arthur was alive, but most of the time unconscious. The police were with him – and so Georgia had no need to ask if there were suspicions that this was no accident.
Peter had been making his own investigations. Jacob was a retired Interpol officer from the Surété and, despite his ex status, when he asked questions they were smartly answered. There was little doubt it was an arson attack, Peter had told her. ‘The seat of the fire was by a rear window. And petrol was the accelerant.’
‘It was my fault,’ she told him bleakly.
‘Explain how,’ Peter challenged her briskly.
‘We tracked him down, virtually forced him to meet us, and I was being watched while I walked up to the restaurant.’
‘Imagination,’ he dismissed briefly. ‘You sensed it earlier and therefore were subconsciously waiting for it to happen again.’
‘I thought someone was about to push me in front of an underground train when I visited Sylvia.’
A short silence. ‘You didn’t tell me about that.’
She heard herself trotting out the hackneyed words: ‘I didn’t want to worry you.’
‘We know that there’s risk in what we do,’ Peter said reasonably. ‘All we can do is be aware of it. I am, however, also aware that you’re more vulnerable than I am.’
‘Are you sure about that?’ Her night horrors returned to her in full force.
He took her point. In the right circumstances a man in a wheelchair was an easier target than an active woman. ‘Do you want to stop work on this case, and announce the fact to the world?’
‘The world might not believe us, and anyway, we’re getting somewhere at last. It’s the trail we’re leaving behind us that worries me.’
‘Then we shall have to get a move on before we add to it. Look at this.’ He turned his attention to the desk before him.
‘Not Suspects Anonymous,’ she tried feebly to joke.
‘Why not? It’s as good as anything else.’
She forced herself to pay attention as he logged on and opened up the software. She watched May 10th 1975 play out before her eyes for the umpteenth time. ‘We’ve been seeing the link as between 1975 and Jack’s murder,’ she observed at last. ‘Suppose it goes deeper than that? That the link is between 1940 and 1975, and that Jack’s death was either unrelated or he began to suspect what it was all about?’
Peter looked at her for a moment. ‘Tanner? No, too great a time span between the three deaths. On the other hand, the 362 files disappeared from Jack’s computer and from his shelves. That does suggest a link of some kind. Jack’s murderer wouldn’t have had time for planting red herrings. Nevertheless, is a time frame of over sixty years of active violence conceivable?’
A silence while she thought about this. ‘Back to carers and minders?’
‘Minders of body or soul?’
‘Soul?’
‘Family reputation anyway.’
‘Which family? Paul Stock turns out to be Oliver Tanner’s nephew? Mary Fairfax takes a machete to Jack to defend her father’s good name? Vincent Blake, whom we’ve never followed up, turns out to be Ken Lyle’s younger brother?’
‘Why don’t you start looking for proof of all these interesting theories?’ Peter suggested mildly. ‘How about a trip to the Family Records Office?’
‘Ouch. Are you serious?’
‘Perfectly. Always do a tidy research job,’ Peter said sanctimoniously. ‘Do a clean sweep. We might have a look at Paul Stock’s origins, as well as the Vanes’, the Fairfaxes’ and the Tanners’. Even the other pilots’ families. Not to mention Ms Freeman’s.’
‘I’ll feel like a peeping Tom by the time I’ve finished,’ Georgia said, appalled.
‘Excellent,’ her father said irritatingly.
A long silence while she glared at him, and he stared her out. ‘When did we tell Luke he could have this book?’ Peter asked gloomily.
‘Next March.’
‘Can we tell him this one’s off, and we’ll find something else?’
‘Coward’s way.’
‘The LMF way. Are we missing something, Georgia? I’m beginning to think you were right. Suspects Anonymous is fine once you have the evidence to put into it. What it can’t do is point us in the right direction to search for it. Or suggest what’s missing.’
She agreed but nevertheless it didn’t stop him logging on, this time to put the new Tanner icon into action. He frowned. ‘It’s telling us that Sunday September first 1940 ended with Tanner as victim and out of play. Nevertheless, continuing to hit his icon for Monday the second results in a red cross on the screen in the sergeants’ mess, which is highlighted to indicate action of some sort.’
‘Eddie told me that Joseph Smith left that day and that Tanner’s effects were collected by the adjutant.’
‘Including his logbook presumably. Now I wonder what happened to that. It belonged to the pilot himself, and was presumably returned to the family. I also wonder,’ he added without drawing breath, ‘why Purcell is so very silent.’
‘I didn’t know the Tanner story when I met him. There’s obviously been at least a tacit taboo on any of them talking about it.’
‘In which case,’ Peter deftly picked up, ‘did Jan tell you the story with Bill’s permission, or was he stepping outside agreed limits?’
Georgia thought about this. ‘The latter, but knowing Sylvia had told me about her side of what happened.’
‘Then why was Alan attacked after he’d seen y
ou, not before, if the story wasn’t to get around? And how did his attacker know where he was living? Let’s assume that someone really was watching you on your Boulogne trip – not in threat to you, but to find out about Purcell. Who knew you were going to meet him?’
‘You and Luke, no one else.’
‘Sure?’
‘Positive. The ferry company knew I was going to Boulogne. No one else did. I doubt if Purcell told anyone.’
‘There I agree. How did you make the booking with SpeedFerries? Phone?’
‘Internet.’
‘How did you tell Luke?’
‘Email.’ Georgia did a double-take when she saw his expression. ‘Come off it, Peter. It’s not possible.’
‘It is. You could well have a hacker.’
Georgia closed her eyes. This was all she needed. ‘All my emails? All of my address book?’ She thought back rapidly. Yes, she had emailed Luke, and Jack. She’d been in contact with Sylvia by email too. And others.
‘If there’s a hacker, it has to be someone we know or hired by one of them.’
Visions of six elderly pilots – if one included Eddie – busily worming their way into computers seemed faintly ludicrous to Georgia. ‘How would they do it?’
‘Through Jack’s murderer, Georgia. You’d be in his address book.’
‘What now?’ She hadn’t meant it to come out as a wail, but it did and he looked at her kindly.
‘We send for Charlie, but meanwhile we know someone’s reading your mail, yes? So we do as with double agents. Send out false intelligence. Fortunately our hacker won’t be interested in sabotage, only in knowing what we are up to. Very well, we’ll tell him.’
*
When the internal telephone rang, it was the last straw. She’d just finished a session with Charlie on the telephone, another long conversation with Luke about the house, and preparing back-up files in case the worst happened.
‘Where have you been?’ Peter’s impatient voice demanded when at last she picked it up. He did not stop for an answer. ‘I’ll tell you what I’ve been doing. Talking to Oliver Tanner’s brother, Robert. Not an easy proposition since he was inclined to deny he had ever had a brother called Oliver. No, I didn’t tell him the story, merely that we were interested in Patrick Fairfax’s death. He did not howl and say, “It’s a fair cop, gov”, so I take it that he never had any involvement with 362 Squadron.’
